Small Favor (The Dresden Files, #10)

by Jim Butcher

“Well?” I asked her as she helped me. “How ’bout it? I got this sword that needs somebody to use it.” She sat me down on one of the bench seats in the ship’s cabin. She looked at the sword for a moment, seriously. Then she shook her head and said quietly, “I’ve got a job.” I smiled faintly and closed my eyes. “I thought you’d say that.” “Shut up, Harry.” “Okay,” I said.

“I’ll go,” I said. Charity’s face snapped up and she said, her voice suddenly very clear and distinct, “No.” Molly blinked at her mother. Charity stood up, her face blotched with tears, creased with strain, her eyes sunken with fatigue and worry. She stared at me for a long moment and then said, “Families stay, Harry.” She lifted her chin, sudden and fierce pride briefly driving out the grief in her eyes. “He would stay for you.”

I picked up the book. It was a battered old copy of The Two Towers. One page was dog-eared, and a bit of dialogue underlined in pencil. “‘The burned hand teaches best,’” I read aloud. I made my way back to my seat and shook my head. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Grimalkin mewled from the pew beside me, “That your experience with resisting the shadow of the Fallen One has garnered the respect of the Watchman, my Emissary.”

“The Watchman?” I stammered. Mab’s head moved slightly with the words, but it was Grimalkin’s mewling voice that actually spoke. “The Prince of the Host is all pomp and ceremony, and when he moves it is with the thunder of the wings of an army of seraphim, the crash of drums, and the clamor of horns. The Trumpeter never walks quietly when he can appear in a chorus of light. The Demon Binder takes tasks upon his own shoulders and solves his problems with his own hands. But the Watchman…” Mab smiled. “Of the archangels, I like him the most. He is the quiet one. The subtle one. The one least known. And by far the most dangerous.” I sorted through what knowledge I had of the archangels. It was meager enough, but I knew that much, at least. “Uriel,” I said quietly.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you want the Denarians stopped? Why send the hobs to kill the Archive? Why recruit me to save the Archive and Marcone in the event that the hobs failed?” Mab paused, turned, casually showing off the gorgeous curves of her calves, and tilted her head at me. “Nicodemus and his ilk were clearly in violation of my Accords, and obviously planning to abuse them to further his ambition. That was reason enough to see his designs disrupted. And among the Fallen was one with much to answer for to me, personally, for its attack upon my home.” “The Black Council attack on Arctis Tor,” I said. “One of them used Hellfire.” Mab showed me her snow-white teeth. “The Watchman and I,” Grimalkin mewled for her, “had a common enemy this day. The enemy could not be allowed to gain the power represented by the child Archive.” I frowned and thought of the silver hand that had batted the fallen angel and his master sorceries around as if he’d been a stuffed practice dummy. “Thorned Namshiel.”

“You still want me to push her away? You want her baseline to be what she shared with those animals?” Luccio frowned. “The Senior Council—” “Couldn’t find its heart if it had a copy of Grey’s Anatomy, X-ray vision, and a stethoscope,” I said. “No. They can lay down the law about magic. But they aren’t telling me who I’m allowed to befriend.”

The door opened, and Murphy and Kincaid arrived. Kincaid was moving under his own power, though very gingerly, and with the aid of a walking stick. I got out of the way, and he came over to settle down next to Ivy. She woke up enough to murmur something about cookies and a Happy Meal. He settled down on the bed beside her, and she pressed up against his arm before settling down to rest again. Kincaid, evidently exhausted himself, drew a gun, took the safety off, placed it on his chest, and went to sleep too. “It’s cute,” I whispered to Murphy. “He has a teddy Glock.”

Sanya swore and rubbed at his face. Then he said, “Come.” I followed him through the halls in the back of the enormous church until we got to the staff’s kitchen. He went to the fridge, opened it, and came out with a bottle of bourbon. He poured some into a coffee cup, drank it down, and poured some more. He offered me the bottle. “No, thanks. Aren’t you supposed to drink vodka?” “Aren’t you supposed to wear pointy hat and ride on flying broomstick?”

The reward for work well-done is more work. “Ain’t that the truth,” I muttered. I stuffed the book back in my pocket and hit the road again.

“Soulfire. Are you sure he said soulfire?” “Yeah,” I said wearily. “Why?” “Well,” the skull said. “Soulfire is…well. It’s Hellfire, essentially. Only from the other place.” “Heavenfire?” “Well…” Bob said, “yes. And no. Hellfire is something you use to destroy things. Soulfire is used the opposite way—to create stuff. Look, basically what you do is, you take a portion of your soul and you use it as a matrix for your magic.” I blinked. “What?” “It’s sort of like using rebar inside concrete,” Bob said. “You put a matrix of rebar in, then pour concrete around it, and the strength of the entire thing together is a great deal higher than either one would be separately. You could do things that way that you could never do with either the rebar or the concrete alone.”

“So what you’re saying is that this hand construct was made out of my soul,” I said. “Your soul and your magic fused together, yeah,” Bob said. “Your soul converted into energy. Soulfire. In this case, the spirit energy drawn from your aura right around your right hand, because it fit the construct so well, it being a big version of your right hand and all. Your standard force-projection spell formed around the matrix of soulfire, and what had been an instantaneous exertion of force became a long-term entity capable of manipulation and exertion to the same degree. Not really more powerful than just the force spell, as much as it was more than simply the force spell.”