said. “Doubt he was much like in the movies.”
“Wrote the Laws of Magic, founded the White Council, was custodian of one of the Swords and established a stronghold for the Council, too,” Molly said. “He must have been something else.”
“He must have been a real bastard,” I said. “Guys who get their name splashed all over history and folklore don’t tend to be Boy Scout troop leaders.”
“You’re such a cynic,” Molly said.
“I think cynics are playful and cute.”
There was no traffic at all in the main corridor, which surprised me. I mean, it was never exactly crowded, but you usually bumped into someone.
I headed for Warden country. There was a large dormitory set up for the militant branch of the White Council, where I could generally be confident of finding a surly, suspicious face. It was also very possible that Anastasia Luccio, captain of the Wardens, was there. The cafeteria and the administrative offices were nearby, so it was hands down the busiest part of the stronghold.
Warden country and the cafeteria were both empty, though there was a deck of cards spread out on a table in one of the lounges. “Weird,” I muttered. “All the checkpoints are business-as-usual or I’d think something was wrong.”
Molly frowned. “Maybe someone got into the heads of the sentries.”
“Nah. They’re jerks, but they’re not incompetent jerks. No one around here is going to get away with mental buggery for a while.”
“Buggery?” Molly asked.
“Hey, we’re in the United Kingdom. When in Rome.”
We went across the hall to administration and, finally, found someone: a harried-looking woman who sat at an old switchboard—the kind with about a million holes and plugs that had to be manually inserted and removed to run it. She wore a pair of ancient-looking headphones and spoke into an old radio microphone. “No. No, we have no word at this time. When we learn something, you will be informed.” She jerked the wire out, plugged it in under another flashing light, and repeated her spiel. I watched that half a dozen times before I literally waved a hand in front of her face to get her to notice us.
She stopped and blinked up at me. She was a matronly-looking woman, iron grey woven smoothly through her brown hair, which meant that she could be anywhere between forty-five and two hundred years old. Her eyes flicked over me and then Molly, and I saw her body tense. She eased her rolling chair a few inches back from us—like most of the older crew of wizards, she probably regarded me as a sociopath looking for a nice bell tower. The switchboard lights blinked on and off steadily. They were the old kind that made little clicking sounds as they did.
“Ah,” she said. “Wizard Dresden. I am quite busy.”
“It looks like it,” I said. “Wizard MacFee, right? Where is everybody?”
She blinked at me again, as though I had spoken in Ewok. “Why, they’re in the Senior Council’s residence hall. It was the only place big enough for everyone who wished to witness it.”
I nodded pleasantly and tried to remain calm. “Witness what?”
“The ambassador,” MacFee said, impatience touching her voice. She gestured at the switchboard. “You haven’t heard?”
“Was sort of busy yesterday,” I said. “Heard what?”
“Why, the Red Court, of course,” she said. “They’ve sent an ambassador plenipotentiary.” She beamed. “They want to change the cease-fire into a genuine peace. They’ve sent no less than Duchess Arianna Ortega to ask for terms.”
7
I felt my stomach flutter around inside me.
The duchess was playing dirty. As the Red Court envoy, of course she’d have some advance knowledge about her people’s intentions. There was no way in hell that this was a coincidence. It was too perfect.
If the Red Court was offering a return to the status quo—and older wizards love status quo, let me tell you—and adding in something to sweeten it to boot . . . the Senior Council would never authorize an action that would jeopardize such a peace. Not for some random little girl—and certainly not for the offspring of the White Council’s most famous maybe-psychotic problem child, Harry Dresden, and a half-vampire terrorist.
Plenty of the people on the Council thought I should have been beheaded when I was sixteen. It made the younger wizards think I was cool and dangerous, which probably explained my popularity with them. The older members of the Council, though, held the lion’s share of its influence and authority. That set would be happy to take any reasonable excuse to leave