May 1070
I was pretty wary going into this meeting. I mean, Gauthier had pegged me as a wizard right away – and then not only had he not made much of an issue of it, or tried to force an earlier meeting, he had given me three days to prepare.
Vampires, and monsters in general, didn't tend to grow old and stupid. The second usually precluded the first, though there were exceptions like Madeline.
This guy didn't strike me as a Madeline, which meant he had a plan, and then probably a backup plan. Fortunately, so did I.
Gauthier and his two escorts were already there when I arrived, standing by the edge of the pond. An interesting choice, but given the pond didn't flow and wasn't very deep it wasn't a helpful one; you needed either running water or a lot of water to properly ground magic, preferably both.
Gauthier himself was wearing the same ensemble as before, though he'd added a pair of leather bracers and gloves. Besides those though he was unarmored, and the only weapon I saw was the same sheathed sword he'd had at his side the whole time. Of his two escorts, one was a large, buff max, six-three and broad shouldered, clad in a coat of mail and holding a spear, and the other was definitely a lady vampire – five eight, flowing black hair, looking thirty on the dot, with a very curvy yet not fat figure. And judging by how Lucille and Tim missed a step as we approached, they recognized her.
"Someone you know?" I asked quietly.
"Our aunt," Tim replied in the same pitch.
I fought back the urge to sigh and roll my eyes. "Of course you have an aunt you never mentioned," I muttered.
Even worse was the fact that this woman didn't fit Eflelda's description of the vampire she'd seen slinking about, which meant that Gauthier had at least one other Raith with him, probably hiding nearby. And then there was whatever he expected to occupy me. Joy.
Gauthier turned to look our way as we broke the treeline, and though he briefly paused in confusion on the sandwich in my hands, his gaze quickly flickered past me towards Tim before finally settling on Lucille.
The other succubus was the first to break the silence. "Dears, you look wonderful," she said with a voice like Madonna's. She took a step forward, and stopped when the twins at my side didn't reciprocate.
"As do you, Aunt Blandine," Tim said politely. Lucille didn't say anything at all. I spared a quick glance her way and found the most unconvincingly polite expression fixed on her face. It wouldn't have even looked right on a badly made doll, that's how poor it was.
Also, Blandine, really? What, was "Blanche" too on the nose?
I tamped down on that first quip. And then on the "what a happy family reunion" quip. Really, I was being downright diplomatic right then.
"Constable Renouth," I began. "Or Lord Renouth, or what you would prefer?"
"Constable Renouth," he said idly, still looking at Lucille. "Now, Lucille, I see you've done well for yourself and I congratulate you on that, but it is most impolite to speak to me through an… associate."
I couldn't see Lucille's expression all that well from my current position, not unless I glanced her way, but I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, her head turning to look at her father. The air filled with a tense, nervous silence before Lucille started laughing.
It wasn't a good laugh. It was the kind of laugh you'd make in response to a crazy joke that had no right to be funny. It was hysterical, and desperate, and angry, and completely uncontrolled. She sounded like she was in the throes of madness.
I gave her a very concerned look, hell everyone gave her a concerned look, even as she kept laughing and doubled over.
"You- you think- you think that I came here… of my own free will, and have… have him–" Her laugh caught on something and she broke down into hacking coughs, hammering a hand against her chest as she straightened. "You think I have him under control? The wizard's insane!"
"Uh-huh," I said slowly, Lucille's expression making me rather skeptical as to whether she was in any state to declare who was and wasn't sane.
After a few seconds, Gauthier reluctantly looked away from Lucille and turned to face me. "Why are you here, wizard?" he asked, an edge of steel in his tone.
"Like I told you, your children did me a favor, so I figured I would come here to support them," I said. "And so we're here."
"What favor?" Gauthier asked, glancing at Tim.
The man beside me sighed. "There was a demon. A rather large, rather vicious, and regicide-intended demon," Tim replied.
"I see," Gauthier said, his tone suggesting he really didn't. He looked back at me. "And because of this you feel… justified in stepping into a family matter."
"Yep," I said, popping the p. "They asked me to, after all."
Gauthier's eyes narrowed, and his gaze landed on Lucille. "What does he mean?" he asked quietly.
"He means," Lucille hissed, "that I want you, Father, to FUCK OFF!"
The yell tore through the woods, startling birds into flight and squirrels into little squirrely sprints. The Hunger-laced emotion carried by that yell made me sway a little, and Gauthier stepped back as if physically struck.
"Yes, yes that's the right way to put it," Lucille said, muttering half to herself. "I want you to fuck off. I want you to forget about me, and forget about my brother, and just stay here, in France, and never bother me again!"
"Lucy–" Blandy began.
"You are not any better," Lucille hissed, jabbing a finger in her aunt's direction.
"What has the wizard done to you, my daughter?" Gauthier asked.
"Nothing. He has done absolutely nothing, which is a far sight better than you!" she yelled.
Gauthier sighed and didn't say anything, at first. He just glanced at me and seemed to weigh whether it was a good idea to talk around me. He evidently decided yes. "Lucille, listen to me. King Philip is young and untested. His regents are dead or have been turned away from him. He is unmarried, pliable, and has expressed interest in meeting you–"
"I don't care," Lucille hissed. "I don't care in the slightest about your young puppet king. I don't care about whatever plans you have. I'd spend the rest of my life on England if it meant you never came within a hundred miles of me. No, I'd spend the rest of my life in a peasant's dirty hut if it meant you died screaming in agony!"
Now, I wasn't much of a father or caretaker. In my life, I'd looked after one mostly self-sufficient dog, and an even more self-sufficient cat. My only experience as a father was coming to save my daughter, and then I'd fucked things up by dying. But if there was one thing I had learned that might be applicable in this situation, it was how to break the tension.
In the silence that followed, I said, "Speaking as someone who lived in a peasant's hut for a few years, it's really bad. Definitely not an experience I care to revisit."
Lucille rounded on me, eyes silver and blazing. She glared at me for a few seconds, then took a few deep breaths and backed off, her eyes dimming to gray.
"Feel better?" I asked.
"Much," she sighed, running a hand through her hair and straightening it out.
Gauthier turned to face Tim. "And you, my son?"
Tim was silent for a few seconds, glancing Lucille's way with a concerned look. Then he nodded, slightly, almost imperceptibly, and looked back at his father. "I'm with Lucille," he said.
Gauthier wasn't a good father. I'd known that from the moment Lucille had silently confirmed the utterly fucked up way in which he had tried to comfort her after her first kill. And then there was the general hatred from Lucille and apathy from Tim. Point was, I didn't feel much pity for him.
But looking at his face after his children rejected him, at his eyes, the only thing I could think was: Ouch.
I gave him a few seconds and waited until he looked at me before I spoke. "And here's where I come in."
"Oh?" Gauthier asked dangerously.
"I'm guaranteeing their independence," I said.
"You think I would harm my own blood?" he asked quietly.
"Lucille certainly seems to think so, and I know enough about vampires to not give you the benefit of the doubt in this instance," I said. "If you weren't going to, if you were going to let them go their own way, then great, we're done here."
"You have no right to interfere in the affairs of the White Court, of my family," he said.
"Well, to the second, your children asked me to, so I'd say that gives me the right. And as to the first, we both know this isn't going to become an affair of the White Court. Because that would involve you admitting you screwed up with your own children," I said. "That's a sign of weakness in your Court, isn't it? And, also, if you try and escalate it to a matter of the White Court, then that's not a vampire moving against a wizard, that's the White Court moving against the White Council. You sure all your cousins would back you up on that?"
Gauthier's eyes flickered to either side of me. "Your peers would not back you in this."
"Try me and find out," I said in return. "Now, the way I see it, there are two ways this can go. You can vow to leave your children alone, and maybe, eventually, you'll work something out. You enjoy the sandwich I've made, and we all go our separate ways."
He frowned. "Sandwich?"
"Cheese, lettuce, onions, and beef between two slices of bread," I said. "It's good, I got the prime ingredients to put into this." I settled my staff against the crook of my arm, took the sandwich in my right hand, and held it out to him. "Or, you open door number two."
"And what does that lead to?" he asked quietly.
"You find out exactly why I'm so confident walking into a meeting surrounded by four vampires that are all related to each other," I said.
It was only partially a bluff. I had confidence that Amoracchius could sway the odds, if Gauthier and Blandy and Succubus Number Two were all he was relying on. But if he brought in a group of soldiers, called in his small army, I'd have bigger problems. But I was also fairly confident that he wasn't willing to escalate that much, not with so many other people around, not when very uncomfortable and pointed questions could be directed Gauthier's way. No, if he wanted to fight, the only way he could win would be to take down and turn the three of us, or at least his kids.
The air started to grow colder, so to combat it I let a little more magic leak out. It didn't go quite like I expected, since rather than making things warmer it just made things worse. Damn flip-flopping; couldn't it at least stay dramatically consistent?
"Four vampires," Gauthier mused. "I see you are unaware."
"The threat of vague implications usually doesn't work that well," I said. "Unless they're backed up by someone genuinely scary. Maybe you should be a little more specific."
Gauthier narrowed his eyes slightly. "Very well. Do you know what is the sword of French kings?"
I wracked my brain briefly before the answer came to me, along with a twinge of pain. "Joyeuse," I said. "Your point?"
Gauthier nodded. "Joyeuse. The sword of Charlemagne. The badge of office of the Constable of France. This sword." He drew the sword on "this."
The sword didn't burst into light as it was drawn. It didn't even gleam that brightly; its steel was polished, but not that reflective. Really, it just looked like a normal sword with a golden hilt.
But looking at it, I could still feel the power coming off it. Not as much as Amoracchius, maybe not even as much as Snickers, but definitely enough to hurt. And under most other circumstances, I would've been rather worried.
"I see we've progressed to the thinly veiled metaphor of waving our dicks around and comparing them," I said. "I take it this means you don't want the sandwich?"
"No. I present a third option to you, Wizard Dresden: turn around and leave, and no harm will come to you," Gauthier said, pointing Joyeuse at me.
"See, here's the thing: your 'third option' revolves around me being scared of Joyeuse. And I'll admit, it is a scary sword. But there's just one problem with that assumption." I took a bite out of the sandwich; it really was tasty. Lacked tomatoes though.
"Mine's bigger," I said. With my mouth full, it came out like Sean Connery had spoken. Then I pulled Amoracchius a foot out of its scabbard.
Supposedly, God once said, "Let there be light", and there was light. Well, this time God didn't say anything.
But there was still light.
It exploded out like a supernova, sharp and blinding and drawing a multitude of cries. But Gauthier got the worst of it. The light banished the cold, replacing it with the smell of sizzling flesh aflame with white fire.
The power of the Swords, when it came down to it, was to level the playing field. To try and take the supernatural out of the equation, to let an otherwise regular man fight monsters. And depending on the monster in question, it did that in different ways. Against demons, Red and Black vampires, transformed Denarians, Dragons, and so on, the ones where there was no difference between form and power, I wasn't too sure how it worked. Maybe it offered protection. Maybe it elevated the wielder. Maybe it just provided literally divine oodles of luck.
But one time, I'd faced down Nicodemus with Fidelacchius on my back. That time, I'd almost strangled him, and he survived only because his daughter saved him at the last moment. That time, Fidelacchius had fought back Anduriel's shadow and kept it from tearing me apart or throwing it away or whatever the androgynously voiced Fallen had wanted to do.
Now, there was a long list of ways in which Gauthier and Nicodemus were different. One was older and a lot harder to kill, for one. More patient. More paranoid. One was a lot prettier. But in my opinion, they both shared one rather key detail:
They were both humans, drawing power from a bonded, but still technically independent power source. And boy, was Gauthier tapping into it right now.
The light of Amoracchius dimmed as Gauthier backed up, flailing and screaming, and fell into the water of the pond, though even then he didn't stop struggling. As everyone else watched in shocked silence I stood there, eating my sandwich. Only once I was done did I let Amoracchius fall back into its scabbard, and regular old sunlight shone down on the clearing again.
"So, Blandine," I said idly.
The succubus whirled on me, posture tense. Her face looked raw and unattractive, like she'd spent eight hours in a tanning bed.
"When your brother fishes himself out of that pond, do tell him to, as your niece put it, fuck off," I said. "Or he gets another ray of sunshine."
Then I bundled up the cloth I'd been holding the sandwich in, stuffed it into a pocket, took up my staff, and turned around and strode away. I walked alone for about two to three seconds before Tim and Lucille caught up. If Gauthier had any other people in the woods around us, they didn't come out.
Tim and Lucille were both dead silent as we walked through the trees. I think they were both rather stunned. It wasn't until we broke the tree line that one of them finally found their voice.
"What did you name that sword, then?" Tim asked.
"I didn't name it anything," I said. "It had one when I got it."
"Then what is it called?"
"Amoracchius," I said. "The Sword of Love."
Author's Note: And thus ends Chapter V.
To answer: yes, Joyeuse was an actual threat there, and he had some other contingencies, Gauthier wasn't feeling wildly overconfident. He just wasn't expecting that.