"Absent friends," Luccio murmured, holding up her bottle.
I could get behind that toast. The rest of us muttered, "Absent friends," and we had a drink, and Luccio stared at her bottle for a moment.
I waited in the pregnant silence and then said, "So. Making me a Warden. That's a joke, right?"
Luccio took a second, slower taste of the ale and then arched an eyebrow at the bottle.
Behind the bar again, Mac smiled.
"It's no joke, Warden Dresden," Luccio said.
"As much as we all would like it to be," Morgan added.
Luccio gave him a look of very gentle reproof, and Morgan subsided into silence. "How much have you heard about recent events in the war?"
"Nothing in the past several days," I said. "Not since my last check-in."
She nodded. "I thought as much. The Red Court has begun a heavy offensive. This is the first time that they've concentrated their efforts on disrupting our communications. We suspect that a great many wizards never received word through our usual messengers."
"Then they found weaknesses in the communications lines," I said. "But they waited to exploit them until it would hurt us the most."
Luccio nodded. "Precisely. The first attack came in Cairo, at our operations center there. Several Wardens were taken, including the senior commander of the region."
"Alive?" I asked.
She nodded. "Yes. Which was an unacceptable threat."
When vampires take you alive, it isn't so that they can treat you to ice cream. That was one of the really nightmarish facets of the war with the Red Court. If the enemy got you, they could do worse than kill you.
They could make you one of their own.
If they managed to turn a Warden, especially one of the senior commanders, it would give them access to a treasury of knowledge and secrets-to say nothing of the fact that they would effectively gain, in many ways, a wizard of their own. Vampires didn't use magic in the same way that mortal wizards did. They tapped into the same nauseating well of power that Kemmler and those like him used. But from what I understood of it, the skills carried over. A turned wizard would be a deadly threat to the Wardens, the Council, and mortals alike. We never talked about it, but there was a sort of silent understanding among wizards that we would never be taken alive. And an equally silent fear that we might be.
"You went after them," I guessed.
Luccio nodded. "A major assault. Madrid, So Paolo, Acapulco, Athens. We struck at enemy strongholds there to acquire intelligence to the whereabouts of the prisoners. Our people were being held in Belize." She waved a hand vaguely at Morgan.
"Our intelligence indicated the presence of the highest-ranking members of the Red Court, including the Red King himself. The Merlin and the rest of the Senior Council took the field with us," Morgan said quietly.
That made me raise my brows. The Merlin, the leader of the Senior Council, was as defensive-minded as it was possible to be. He'd guided the White Council into the equivalent of a cold war with the Red Court, with everyone moving carefully and unwilling to commit, in the hopes that it would give the war time to settle away into negotiations and some kind of diplomatic resolution. An offensive action like a full assault from the Senior Council, the seven oldest and strongest wizards on the planet, had been long overdue.
"What changed the Merlin's mind?" I asked quietly.
"Wizard McCoy," Luccio said. "When our people were taken, he persuaded most of the Senior Council to take action, including Ancient Mai and the Gatekeeper."
That made sense. My old mentor, Ebenezar McCoy, was a member of the Senior Council. He had a couple of longtime friends on the Council, but that didn't give him a majority vote. If he wanted to get anything done, he had to talk someone from the Merlin's bloc into casting their vote with him-either that, or convince the Gatekeeper, a wizard who habitually abstained from voting, to take a stand with him. If Ebenezar had convinced Ancient Mai and and the Gatekeeper to vote with him in favor of action, the Merlin would have little choice but to move. the Gatekeeper to vote with him in favor of action, the Merlin would have little choice but to move.
And just because the Merlin was a master of wards and defensive magic did not mean that he couldn't kick some ass if he needed to. You don't get to be the Merlin of the White Council by collecting bottle caps, and Arthur Langtry, the current Merlin, was generally considered to be the most powerful wizard on earth.
I had seen for myself what Ebenezar McCoy was capable of. A couple of years ago he had pulled an old Soviet satellite out of orbit and brought it down into the lap of Duke Ortega, the warlord of the Red Court. He'd killed a ton of vampires in doing it.
He'd also killed people. He'd taken the force of life and creation and used it to wipe out the lives of mortals-victims of the Red Court's power. And it wasn't the first time he'd done it. Ebenezar, I'd learned, held an office that did not officially exist-that of the White Council's assassin. Known as the Blackstaff, he had a license to kill, as well as to break the other Laws of Magic when he deemed it necessary. When I learned that he was violating and undermining the same laws he'd taught me to obey, to believe believe in, it had wounded me so deeply that in some ways I was still bleeding. in, it had wounded me so deeply that in some ways I was still bleeding.
Ebenezar had betrayed what I believed in. But that didn't change the fact that the old man was the strongest wizard I'd ever seen in action. And he was the youngest and least powerful of the Senior Council.
"What happened?" I asked quietly.
"There was no evidence of the presence of the Red King or his entourage, but other than that the attack went as planned," Morgan said. "We assaulted the vampires' stronghold and took our people back with us."
Luccio's face twisted in sudden and bitter grief.
"It was a lure," I said quietly. "Wasn't it?"
"Yes," she said quietly. "We moved out and took our wounded to the hospice in Sicily."
"What happened?"
"We were betrayed," she said, and her words carried more sharp edges than a sack of broken glass. "Someone within our ranks must have reported our position to the Red Court. They attacked us that night."
"When was that?" I asked.
Luccio frowned, then glanced across the table at Ramirez.
"Three days ago, Zulu time," Ramirez provided quietly.
"I've not slept," Luccio said. "Between that and all the travel, I lose track." She took another drink of ale and said, "The attack was vicious. They were coming for the Senior Council, and their sorcerers managed to cut us off from escaping into the Nevernever for nearly a day. We lost thirty-eight Wardens that day, in fighting all over Sicily."
I sat there for a moment, stunned. Thirty-eight. Stars and stones, there were only about two hundred Wardens on the Council. Not every wizard had the kind of talent that made them dangerous in a face-to-face confrontation. Most of those who did were Wardens. In a single day, the Red Court had killed nearly 20 percent of our fighting force.
"They paid for it," Morgan rumbled quietly. "But...they seemed almost mad to die in order to kill us. Driven. I saw four different death curses unleashed that day. I saw vampires climb over mounds of their own dead without so much as slowing down. We must have taken twenty of their warriors for every loss of our own." He closed his eyes and his sour face was suddenly masked with very real and very human grief. "They kept coming."
"We had many wounded," Luccio said. "So many wounded. As soon as the Senior Council was able to open the ways into the Never-never, we retreated to the paths through Faerie. And we were pursued."
I sat up straight. "What?"
Morgan nodded. "The Red Court followed us into the territory of the Sidhe," he said.
"They had to know," I said quietly. "They had to know that by pressing the attack in Faerie itself they would anger the Sidhe. They've just declared war on Summer and Winter alike."
"Yes," Morgan said in a flat voice. "But it didn't stop them. They attacked us as we retreated. And..." He glanced at Luccio as if in appeal.
She gave him a firm look and said to me, "They had called demons to assist them." She inhaled slowly. "Not simply beasts from the Nevernever. They had gone to the Netherworld. They had called Outsiders."
I took a longer drink of Mac's ale. Outsiders. Demons were bad enough, but they were at least something I was fairly familiar with. The reaches of the Nevernever, the world of spirit and magic that surrounds the mortal world, are filled with all kinds of beings. Most of them really don't give a damn about mortal affairs, and we are nothing but a remote and unimportant curiosity to them. When beings of the spirit world are interested in mortal business, it's for a good reason. The ones who like to eat us, hurt us, or generally terrify us are what wizards commonly refer to as demons, as a general term. They're bad enough.
Outsiders, though, were so rarely spoken of that they were all but a rumor. I wasn't really clear on all of the details, but the Outsiders had been the servants and foot soldiers of the Old Ones, an ancient race of demons or gods who had once ruled the mortal world, but who had apparently been cast out and locked away from our reality.
There was a specific Law of Magic against contacting them-Thou Shalt Not Open the Outer Gates. No one wanted to be the one suddenly suspected of opening ways for the Outsiders to enter the mortal world. The Wardens absolutely did not play around with violations of the Laws of Magic. Their entire purpose in life was to protect the Council-first from violators of the seven Laws, and then from everyone else.
I eyed the folded grey cloak on the table in front of me.
"I thought only mortal magic could call up Outsiders," I said quietly.
Luccio said quietly, "You are correct."
My stomach lurched a little. Someone had told the Red Court where to find the Council. Someone had blocked off their escape route to the Nevernever so strongly that the most powerful wizards on the planet had required a full day to open them again. And someone had begun calling up Outsiders in numbers, sending them to attack the White Council.
The Council is not what it was, Cowl had said. Cowl had said. It has rotted from the inside. It will fall. Soon. It has rotted from the inside. It will fall. Soon.
"The Wardens fell back to fight a holding action against the Red Court so that our wounded could escape to safety," Luccio reported, her crisp voice at odds with her weary eyes. "That was when they loosed the Outsiders upon us. We lost another twenty-three Wardens in the first moments of combat, and many more were wounded." There was silence while she took a long pull from her bottle, emptying it, then setting it down sharply on the table, anger flickering in her eyes. "If Senior Council members McCoy and Liberty had not come to our aid, we might have all died there. Even with them, we managed to hold them only long enough for the Gatekeeper and the Merlin to raise a ward behind us, to give us time to escape."
"A ward? ward?" I blurted. "Are you telling me that they stonewalled an entire army army of vampires and demons? With of vampires and demons? With one one ward?" ward?"
"You don't get to be Merlin of the White Council by collecting bottle caps," Ramirez said, his voice dry.
I glanced aside at Ramirez. He grinned at me and swigged beer.
"McCoy was injured," Luccio continued.
Ramirez snorted. "Who wasn't? wasn't?"
Luccio snapped, "Carlos."
He lifted a hand in surrender and settled back onto his chair again, but his grin never faded.
"There were many injuries," Luccio continued. "But as the hospice in Sicily had been taken, we diverted the worst cases to a hospital we control in the Congo." She stared at her bottle for a moment. Her mouth opened, and then she closed it again. She closed her eyes.
Morgan frowned at her. Then he put a hand on Luccio's shoulder, looked at me, and said, "The vampires knew."
I got a sick, twisting feeling in my stomach. "Oh, God."
"It was daylight there," Morgan said. "And the place was a fortress of the Merlin's wards. There was no way for the vampires to breach it from the Nevernever, and nothing short of a demon lord could have broken through them." His mouth twisted, and his eyes glittered with rage and hate. "They sent mortals against us. Against men and women lying injured, unconscious, helpless in their beds." The anger in his voice seemed to strangle him for a moment.
"But..." I said. "Look, I know what it's like going up against mortals you don't want to kill. It's difficult, but they can be stopped. Fought. Bullets and explosives can be defended against."
"Which is why they used gas," Ramirez said quietly, stepping in where Morgan's and Luccio's voices had failed. His own tone was serious. His grin had vanished. "A nerve agent, probably sarin. They deployed it against the entire hospital, the people we had protecting it, and six square blocks of city around it." He put his own bottle down and said, "No one survived."
"My God..." I whispered.
There was dead silence.
"Ebenezar?" I asked in a whisper. "You said he was wounded. Was he..."
Ramirez shook his head. "Stubborn old bastard wouldn't go to the hospital," the young Warden said. "He went with one of the teams staging a counteroffensive with the Fellowship of Saint Giles."
"Thousands of innocent mortals died," Luccio said, and there was a slow, low snarl in her voice. She kept it tightly leashed and under control, but I heard it. I recognized it, and I knew what it was like to feel it permeating my words. "Women. Children. Thousands. And today I buried one hundred and forty-three Wardens."
I sat there, stunned.
In a single, vicious stroke, the Red Court had very nearly destroyed the White Council.
"They have crossed every line," Luccio said, her voice quiet and precise. "Violated every principle of war of our world and the mortal world alike. Madness. They have gone mad."
"They've committed suicide," I said quietly. "They don't have a prayer against the Council and the Faerie Courts alike."
"The Sidhe were taken by surprise," Morgan rumbled. "They aren't prepared for a fight. And we're holding on by our fingernails. We've got less than fifty Wardens capable of combat. Without our communications network in order, members of the Council have been attacked individually and by surprise. We don't know how many more wizards have died."
"And it gets even better," Ramirez said. "Agents of the Red Court are haunting the ways through Faerie. We were attacked on the way here, twice."
"Our priority," Luccio said, voice crisp, "is to consolidate our forces and to draw upon every available resource to restore the Wardens as a fighting force. We must draw the members of the Council together and make sure that they are protected. We're reorganizing our security." She shook her head. "And frankly, we must protect the lives of the Senior Council. So long as they are concealed from the enemy and still able to take action, they are a dangerous force. Together they wield more power than any hundred members of the Council, and it can be concentrated with deadly effect, as the Merlin showed in the Nevernever. So long as they stand ready to strike, the enemy cannot openly unveil his full strength."
"More important," Morgan growled, "the mortal wizards who betrayed us, whoever they are, fear the Senior Council. That is why their first move was an attempt to destroy them."
Luccio nodded. "If we can hold on until the Faerie Courts mobilize for action, we can recover from this attack. Which brings us to today," Luccio said, and studied me, tired and frank. "Every other Warden able to fight is currently either engaged against the enemy or safeguarding the Senior Council. Our lines of support and communication are tenuous." She gestured at those seated at the table. "This is every resource the White Council has to spare."
I looked at the weary captain of the Wardens. At the battered Morgan. At Ramirez, who had reclaimed his cocky smile, and at Yoshimo and Kowalski, untried, quiet, and frightened.
"Warden Luccio," I said. "May I speak to you privately?"
Morgan scowled and said in a hot voice, "Anything you have to say to her you can say to all-"
Luccio put her hand on Morgan's arm, a gentle gesture, but it cut him off. "Morgan. Perhaps you would be so kind as to get me another bottle. And I'm sure McAnally would be willing to provide us all with some dinner."
Morgan stared at her for a second, then at me. Then he rose, smudged the chalk circle with a boot, and broke the circle around the table, releasing the buzzing tension from the air.
"Come on, kids," Ramirez told the other two younger wardens, rising. "We have to go sit with Uncle Morgan while the other adults have a serious talk." He put a hand on my shoulder on the way past and squeezed. "Hey, bartender! Are those onion rings I smell?"
I waited until they had all settled down at the far end of the bar and Mac began to bring them some food. Then I turned to Luccio and said, "I can't be a Warden."
She studied me for a second and then asked, in a very precise, very polite voice, "And why not?"
"Because you people have been threatening to kill me for doing something I didn't do since I was sixteen years old," I said. "You're all convinced I'm some sort of hideous threat, and every time you get the chance you try to make my life miserable."
Luccio listened attentively and then said, "Yes. And?"
"And?" I said. "I've spent my entire adult life with the Wardens looking over my shoulder waiting for a chance to accuse me of things I didn't do, and trying to set me up and entrap me when you never found me doing anything."
Luccio's eyebrows shot up. "What?"
"Don't give me that," I said. "You know damned well that Morgan tried to provoke me into attacking him just before we got the treaty with Winter, so he and the Merlin would have an excuse to throw me to the vampires."
Luccio's eyes widened, and her voice came out harder. "What?" "What?" She shot a look at Morgan, and then back at me. "Are you telling me the truth?" She shot a look at Morgan, and then back at me. "Are you telling me the truth?"
There was some kind of cadence to the question that her words didn't usually have, and on pure instinct I reached out with my senses. I could feel a light tension in the air, humming like the space between the tines of a tuning fork.
"Yes," I told her. The humming chime continued unabated. "I'm telling you the truth."
She stared at me for a long second and then settled back onto her chair. The humming tension faded. She folded her hands on the table, frowning down at them. "Then...There were rumors. Of how Morgan behaved around you. But I thought that they were only that."