Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,34

of Chicago had undressed down to his undershirt and slacks and was currently fastening the fittings on a vest of overlapping scales of some advanced-looking material that covered his torso closely enough to be custom fit. I’d seen him out of a suit only once before, and he’d been in rough shape at the time. Despite his age, Marcone was built like a light-heavyweight boxer. The muscles moving under his forearms were made of lean steel cable. As I watched, he shrugged into his suit shirt and began buttoning it up.

“Did you forget the next step in the dressing process, Dresden?” he asked, without looking up at me. “Or is this some sort of awkward sexual reconnaissance?”

With massive dignity, I put on my pants one leg at a time. “Locker room talk? Really?”

“It seemed something you would be capable of appreciating.”

I snorted and kept getting dressed. Marcone put on a gun belt and hung a pistol under each arm.

“I saw you earlier,” I said. “Facing Ethniu.”

He eyed me without actually looking at me.

The words tasted bitter and tainted in my mouth, but I said, “That took guts.”

His mouth twisted at one corner. “Ouch. That must have hurt.”

I nodded and spat into a trash can. “No idea.”

Marcone took up his suit jacket and shrugged into it. He adjusted it until the cloth fell without revealing the guns. “Do you know the difference between courage and foolhardiness, Dresden?”

“Any insurance adjuster would say no.”

He waved a hand at my banter, as though that was all the acknowledgment it deserved. “Hindsight,” he said. “Until the extended consequences of any action are known, it is both courageous and foolish. And neither.”

“Well,” I said, “tonight you earned yourself a Schrödinger’s Medal, I guess.”

He seemed to muse on that for a moment. “Yes,” he said, fastening one button. “I suppose I did.” He paused and glanced at me. “I notice you kept quiet.”

“Maybe I’m finally learning my lesson.”

“That’s not it.” Marcone tilted his head, frowning. “The only way that would have happened is, frankly . . . if you had not been present.”

Okay, well. Sometimes even the bad guys are right, more or less. I kept my mouth shut and finished getting dressed.

“Dresden,” Marcone said, “while I have enjoyed working with your queen, and find her business practices admirable, do not presume any sort of personal amity between us. At all.”

“Oh. I don’t.”

“Excellent,” Marcone said. “Then I will not need to explain how severely I will be obliged to react to you should you engage in any of your . . . typical shenanigans in violation of my territory or my sovereign rights under the Accords.”

“Really?” I said. “Right now, you’re comparing testosterone size?”

“I have no intention of dying tonight, Dresden,” Marcone said. “Nor of losing what I have fought to claim. I am a survivor. As, improbably, are you.” He nodded to me politely and spoke in a very quiet, reasonable tone that was all the more chilling for the absolute granite rumbling beneath the surface. “I only wish you to be aware that I mean to continue as I have begun. After tonight, I will still be here—and you, by God, will show respect.”

“Or what?” I asked him, lightly.

Marcone’s stare was not a matter for lightness. “I will pursue my rights under Mab’s Accords. And she will not protect you.”

I felt a little cold chill go through my guts, way down low. Marcone had me dead to rights there. I had violated his territory under the Accords, more than once. He’d just never wanted to shove it in the face of the White Council, who would have had no interest in bowing to a lesser power. Offhand, I wasn’t sure what the penalty would be for that kind of lawbreaking, but Mab’s idea of justice wasn’t exactly a progressive one. More to the point, her idea of justice was damned near an absolute: If I had broken her laws, I would deserve to be punished under them. My status as the Winter Knight would not matter to her in the least, except that she might be that much more annoyed before she executed me.

Dammit, Thomas. Why in the hell do you get me into messes like this?

“As long as we’re being honest,” I said, “you should probably know that I still think you’re a prick. I still think you’re responsible for a lot of good people getting hurt. And I’m going to tear you down one day.”

Marcone stared hard at me for a moment. He

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