Small Favor

Chapter Twenty-nine

“Y ou’re the one who wanted a conversation,” I said. “And don’t call me Harry. My friends call me Harry.”

He turned one hand palm up. “And who is to say I cannot be your friend?”

“That would be me, Nick. I say. Here, I’ll show you.” I enunciated: “You can’t be my friend.”

“If I am to call you Dresden, it is only fair that you should call me Archleone.”

“Archleone?” I asked. “As in ‘seeking whom he may devour’? Kinda pretentious, isn’t it?”

For half of a second, the smile turned into something almost genuine. “For a godless heathen, you are entirely too familiar with scripture. You know that I can kill you, do you not?”

“We’d make a mess,” I said. “And who knows? I might get lucky.”

Really, really, really lucky.

Nicodemus moved a hand in acknowledgment. “But barring luck.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you offer such insouciance regardless?”

“Habit,” I said. “It doesn’t make you special or anything, believe me.”

“Oh, I picked the right coin for you.” He started to walk in a slow circle around me, the way you might a car at the dealership. “There are rumors that a certain Warden has been flinging Hellfire at his foes. How do you like it?”

“I’d like it better if it came in Pine Fresh and New Car instead of only Rotting Egg,” I said.

Nicodemus completed his circuit of me and arched an eyebrow. “You haven’t taken up the coin.”

“I would, but it’s in my piggybank,” I said, “and I can’t break the piggy, obviously. He’s too cute.”

“Lasciel’s shadow must be slipping,” Nicodemus said, shaking his head. “It has had years to reason with you, and still you refuse our gifts.”

“What with the curly little tail and the big, sad brown eyes,” I said, as if he hadn’t said anything.

One of his heels hit the ground with unnecessary force, and he stopped walking. He inhaled through his nose and out again. “Definitely the proper coin for you.” He folded his hands carefully behind his back. “Dresden, you have a skewed image of us. We were operating at cross-purposes the first time we met, and you probably learned everything you know about us from Carpenter and his cohorts. The Church has always had excellent propaganda.”

“Actually, the murder, torture, and destruction you and your people perpetrated spoke pretty loudly all by themselves.”

Nicodemus rolled his eyes. “Dresden, please. You have done all of those things at one time or another. Poor Cassius told me all about what you did to him in the hotel room.”

“Gosh,” I said, grinning. “If someone had walked in on us in the middle of that sentence, would my face be red or what?”

He stared at me for a second, and the emotion and expression drained out of his features like dewdrops vanishing under a desert sunrise. What was left behind was little more than desolation. “Harry Dresden,” he said, so softly that I could barely make it out. “I admire your defiance of greater powers than your own. I always have. But tempus fugit. For all of us.”

I blinked.

For all of us? What the hell did he mean by that?

“Have you not seen the signs around you?” Nicodemus asked. “Beings acting against their natures? Creatures behaving in ways that they should not? The old conventions and customs being cast aside?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re talking about the Black Council.”

He tilted his head slightly to one side. Then his mouth twitched at a corner and he nodded his head very slightly. “They move in shadows, manipulate puppets. Some of them may be on your Council, yes. As good a name as any.”

“Stop playing innocent,” I spat at him. “I saw the leftovers of the Black Council attack on Arctis Tor. I know what Hellfire smells like. One of yours was in on it.”

Nicodemus.

Blinked.

Then he surged forward-fast. So fast that by the time I’d registered that he was moving, my back had already hit the wall that had been twenty feet behind me. He hadn’t been trying to hurt me. If he had, the back of my head would have splattered open. He just pinned me there against the wall with one hand on my throat, tighter and harder than a steel vise.

“What?” he demanded, his voice still a whisper. His eyes, though, were very wide. Both sets of them. A second set, these glowing faintly green, had opened just above his eyebrows-Anduriel’s, I presumed.

“Ack,” I said. “Glarghk.”

His arm quivered for a second, and then he lowered his eyelids until they were almost closed. A moment later he very, very slowly relaxed his arm, allowing me to breathe again. My throat burned, but air came in, and I wheezed for a second or two while he stepped back from me.

I glared up at him and debated slamming him through one of those Corinthian columns by way of objecting to being manhandled. But I decided that I didn’t want to piss him off.

Nicodemus’s lips moved, but an entirely different voice issued from them-something musical, lyrical, and androgynous. “At least it has some survival instinct.”

Nicodemus shook his head as if buzzed by a mosquito and said, “Dresden, speak.”

“I’m not your friend,” I said, my voice rough. “I’m not your damned dog, either. Conversation over.” I took a few steps to one side so that I could move around him without taking my eyes off him, and started to leave.

“Dresden,” Nicodemus said. “Stop.”

I kept walking.

I was almost out of the room before he spoke again, resignation in his tone. “Please.”

I paused, without turning around.

“I…reacted inappropriately. Especially for this venue. I apologize.”

“Huh,” I said, and looked over my shoulder. “Now I wish I had brought Michael. He’d have fainted.”

“Your friend and his brethren are tools of an organization with its own agenda, and they always have been,” Nicodemus said. “But that’s not the issue here.”

“No,” I said. “The issue is Marcone.”

Nicodemus waved a hand. “Marcone is an immediate matter. There are long-term issues in play.”

I turned to face him and sighed. “I think you’re probably full of crap. But okay, I’ll bite. What long-term issues?”

“Those surrounding the activities of your Black Council,” Nicodemus said. “Are you certain you saw evidence of Hellfire in use at the site of the attack on Arctis Tor?”

“Yes.” I didn’t add the word dummy. Who says I ain’t diplomatic?

Nicodemus’s fingers flexed into the shape of claws and then relaxed again. He pursed his lips. “Interesting. Then the only question is if the contamination is among standing members of our Order or…” He let the thought trail off and glanced at me, lifting an eyebrow.

I followed the logic to the only other people in possession of any of the coins. “Someone in the Church,” I whispered, with a sick feeling in my stomach.

“Historically speaking, we get about half of the coins back that way,” Nicodemus noted. “What would you say if I told you that you and I might have a great many common interests in the future?”

“I wouldn’t say much of anything,” I said. “I’d be too busy laughing in your face.”

Nicodemus shook his head. “Shortsighted. You can’t afford that. Come with me for a week and see if you feel the same way when we’re done.”

“Even assuming I was stupid enough to go anywhere with you for an hour, much less a week, I saw how you treated Cassius. I’m not real eager to slide my nameplate onto his office door.”

“He didn’t adjust to the times,” Nicodemus replied with a shrug. “I wouldn’t have been doing him any favors by coddling him. We live in a dangerous world, Dresden. One adapts and thrives or one dies. Living on the largesse of others is nothing but parasitism. I respected Cassius too much to let him devolve to that.”

“Gosh, you’re chatty,” I said. “You were right. This is so much fun. It’s almost like…”

A horrible thought hit me.

Nicodemus was many things, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew I wasn’t going to sign on for his team. Not after the way he treated me the last time we’d met. He knew that nothing he said was going to sway me. I might have surprised him with that little nugget of information about Arctis Tor, but that could have been an act, too. All in all, odds were high that this conversation was accomplishing absolutely nothing, and Nicodemus had to know that.

So why was he having it? I asked myself.

Because the goal of the conversation doesn’t have anything to do with the subject or the context of the conversation, I answered.

He wasn’t here to talk to me about anything or convince me of anything.

He wanted to talk to me and keep me here.

Which meant that something else was about to happen somewhere else.

Wheels within wheels.

My God, it was a metaphor.

This conversation was a metaphor for the parley as a whole. Nicodemus hadn’t come to talk to us about violations of the Accords. He’d engineered the parley, and his motivation had nothing to do with subverting Marcone’s talents to the service of a Fallen angel.

He was after bigger game.

I whipped my staff toward Nicodemus, slamming my will through it in a surge of panicked realization, screaming “Forzare!” as I did. Unseen force lifted him from his feet and slammed him into one of the huge Corinthian columns like a cannonball. Stone shattered with a deafening crash like thunder, and a lot of rock started to fall.

I didn’t stick around to see how much. It wouldn’t kill him. I only hoped it would slow him down enough for me to get to the others.

“Kincaid!” I shouted as I ran. My voice boomed through the empty halls in the wake of the collapsing rubble. “Kincaid!”

I knew I had only seconds before all Hell broke loose.

“Kincaid, get the kid out of here!” I screamed. “They’re coming for Ivy!”