Well, yes, we are approaching the final chapters! I'm guessing about 2 or 3 more...
Shorter one today due to Real Life (work is really being a bother. People really don't like being told to wear masks, keep their distance and please, no groups! Use the sanitizer we supply! Geez!).
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"I am very sure you know I am a wizard," Emris explained, voice so amiable and calm, it should be disengaging, but it set Harry on edge nevertheless. Maybe even more because of it.
Marcone, while seemingly completely unconcerned on the outside, was just as tense and ready. Harry could almost feel that tightness.
"Did the White Council send you?" he asked coolly. "Warden? If so, let me tell you I don't appreciate being bullied into meeting the new guys on the block. This is my city and I'm the warden. I don't intend to share." His voice had grown harder.
Yes, being a warden meant he was answering to the White Council, but they had kept out of his life, had been almost suspiciously absent. Maybe this was the reason why those two were here: an assessment and then a replacement. Well, if they had orders to chop off his head, Harry Dresden would not go easily. Not at all!
"Oh no, I'm not a warden." Emris chuckled as if that was the most ludicrous idea. "You probably know Lennart is not a wizard, nor any other kind of practitioner. I'm also not part of the White Council. I haven't been for a long time now. I grew… disenchanted over time." The friendly smile was there, but the eyes hardened.
Graine was less inclined to hide his distaste about the White Council. There was a kind of anger there, a disdain that was deeply rooted.
"I sincerely doubt you'd lead us to believe you are a dark wizard," Marcone said evenly, voice hard. "Trying to recruit the black sheep of the wardens. Or wooing a powerful man like Mr. Dresden into working for you." He leaned forward, just a fraction, eyes hard and unyielding. "Or proposing an ill-advised alliance with the Freehold of Chicago over your blatant dislike of the White Council."
Harry shot him a sharp look.
Emris smiled benignly. "No. We are our own agents, so to speak. There are many more who aren't allied, beholden or indebted to either side. We keep out of political matters and when we do interfere, it usually means it concerns our Protectorate."
Harry's magic churned and he felt Marcone's shift as if the man had physically moved, which he hadn't. He didn't even glance at his shield, but he knew. He simply knew. He still couldn't pin down Emris as anything but powerfully magical. A wizard, but he doubted he was dark. Something about him was strange, even weird, as if he was trying to dial down what he truly was. No wizard flaunted his power if not in a situation where showing your cards was required. But every wizard had a magical signature that gave someone else a baseline. Emris was all over the place.
And Lennart was absolutely mundane. The shield.
Emris had called him his shield, though not in those words. He had implied that they were connected, that it had taken them a human lifetime. Harry had thought five years were long, but maybe there were people even more stubborn than him and John.
At his side, Marcone assessed Graine and Emris like he would a business rival, hands folded, looking like he was listening to a power point presentation from someone trying to make a sale. Graine sipped his beer and gave Marcone a brief smile.
"I'm really nothing more than mundane. I don't hold a position like yourself, Baron," he answered the unspoken question. "I am not a Freeholding Lord and have never been part of the Unseelie Accords. Our Protectorate is not officially known to the signatories, but it is known to certain individuals in strategic positions. As Marlin's shield, I have been recognized by Faerie, of course."
Harry's fingers nearly dug into the wooden surface of the table, mind racing with all the new information that was dropped in their laps. Some of it really very much between the lines. And they knew a hell of a lot about them!
From whom? Where from? Not Faerie. It couldn't have been Faerie. Lea wouldn't reveal this to anyone, though maybe Mab… And if not Faerie, who else might know? The Council? They had to suspect something, but Emris had said the Council wasn't a favorite of them either.
"You, Mr. Marcone, as a shield and anchor to Harry, have been acknowledged the same way since you connected to him," Graine went on. "It strengthens your position within the Accords and it gave your Hold the status it has today."
The words had Harry's spine straighten and the magic curl in his belly. Marcone's leg pressed against his and he exhaled slowly, calming his nerves and refusing to give in to his temper. At least right now.
"How do you know all of this?" he asked, congratulating himself that he sounded so calm and collected.
"We have known about you, Harry Dresden, since you came to Chicago and first discovered your shield," Emris explained with absolute calm. "We have followed both your careers, with surprise mostly. You have made rapid steps in your development since you met and it only cemented the fact what you would become one day. Due to your so strong and powerful connection, Chicago is by now known as a Protectorate by the neutrals and grays, though in whispers only. Not many such places exist in this world and they mostly disappear off the maps in time for various reasons. Usually a place of power falls to one of the wizarding factions, in some cases Winter or Summer. I feared that to happen when you took on the mantle of the Winter Knight, even though it could never keep its hold on you."
Harry was frozen in shock, unable to understand what he was hearing. They had been… watching… all of that…?
"You watch and study prospective wizards of a certain potential." Marcone studied them with a cold, clinical expression. "You wait for them to go either way, black or white. You don't interfere. Like a science project."
"We don't watch or study," Lennart said with a slightly amused expression. "Harry has… stood out. In many ways."
"We also never interfere. That would change the odds, push an individual into one direction or another," Emris confirmed.
"And you wait for those uniquely powerful wizards to find their shield?" Marcone looked like a predator staking out its prey, assessing the situation with absolute detachment, making up his mind and plotting both kill points, fast exists and head-on confrontations.
"Yes."
"Where is your Protectorate?" he wanted to know.
"Far enough not to threaten you, Baron Marcone."
"That wasn't my question." Softly spoken, the words still carried a threat, a promise of violence.
"But that is my answer."
Marcone's face never changed, but Harry could feel the danger level rise.
"I'm afraid it is the wrong one. I don't appreciate being summoned and made a fool of." There was a tightness to his energy, his eyes so much sharper, harder, and growing colder. His back was ramrod straight, face a reflection of the ruthless soul that sat inside the mortal shell. "I also don't appreciate being spied upon."
"My request to meet us here was not meant as a summoning," Emris replied politely. "Nor would I dare to call you a fool or make you seem like one, Baron. I have the highest respect for you and what you have accomplished." He nodded at them both. "You have come a long way in a much shorter time than anyone I know. Myself included. You are very young, but you already have access to a power that would have destroyed almost all of the Senior Council at that age." He folded his hands, giving them an almost fatherly smile. "And I believe you have more questions than any book could ever answer. You cannot ask anyone else. The White Council's fear of anything too powerful is endless. You experienced that irrational fear, Harry. You know what lengths they go to. It was one reason why I finally decided to let myself disappear."
Dresden finally glanced at his companion. Marcone still looked like a statue, but he, too, was running all kinds of scenarios through his head.
"And the other?" John asked, latching on to that information.
"To keep Lennart safe, of course." The bespectacled eyes met Marcone's pale green ones. "I believe you have experienced how powerful that instinct is in yourself, Mr. Marcone. How it drives you, how it changes you. It doesn't diminish over time. It will always be there and it goes both ways. You may be the shield and you may be possessive and protective, but the wizard is just as protective. My continued presence among the Senior Council had proven to be disruptive to my connection to my shield."
"Disruptive. In what manner?" Marcone pressed on.
Emris' was suddenly quite serious and Harry saw the reflection of an old pain in his eyes. And those eyes also reflected an age that had him swallow.
"A shield is a mundane anchoring a practitioner. They know about the world of the supernatural because of that connection, about magic, and they are forever connected to a powerful wizard. Not everyone among the Senior Council looks favorably toward such connections. The Council tries to keep the involvement of mundane humans to a minimum, and there were times when such knowledge meant a death sentence."
Harry's magic spiked briefly.
Emris' smile was tight and filled with almost brittle emotions. "Lennart and I connected in a time when magic was almost normal. That changed. Times change. And the White Council has changed throughout the centuries. A shield will never be magical, be able to use magic, and that makes them a target and vulnerable to attack. I had to make a decision and I made the only one I could. For the safety of my anchor and shield. Someone else took over, took my place and my name," Emris smiled briefly. "And we disappeared, and with us our Protectorate."
The words of the Leanansidhe suddenly came back to him and Harry felt himself pale, brain stalling and sputtering. He knew he must look like a complete idiot as he wheezed. Graine looked amused, Emris just smiled.
Marcone's face was unreadable, but the way he bumped their legs together, he was very clear on the identity of the two men, too.
Harry's mouth ran dry. "Uh…" he stuttered. "No way you want to tell me you're…"
Emris. Emrys, the immortal… Which meant Lennart Graine… Ygraine… Lenn-Art…
He stared at the blond and his mouth dropped open, then snapped shut again. The man known to the world as Arthur Pendragon, son of Ygraine de Boise and Uther Pendragon, nodded, smiling.
Marcone was silent, his expression intense and almost inhuman. Hardened mobsters had wet themselves when faced with this expression and it felt like a gathering storm to Harry. No magic; a different kind of power that had enabled him to become the first human to rise to the position of a Freeholding Lord under the Unseelie Accords.
"Merlin Emrys," he said calmly, voice pleasant, not the least bit shocked. "Arthur Pendragon. Quite a reveal, I have to admit."
Dresden stared at him as if Marcone had lost his mind. Talking to the greatest wizards of all kind and the former king of England like they were… business associates? Marcone gave him a smirk in return, only briefly meeting the wide, dark eyes.
"We prefer Marlin and Lennart," Arthur-Lennart told him. "I haven't been Arthur for a while, though Art and Artie have popped up now and then." He smiled. "Names are just that. For us they hold no meaning, unlike those of faeries. You cannot invoke a wizard by his name spoken out loud three times. A soul is the same, no matter the name attached to it."
"Are you freaking serious?!" Harry whisper-hissed, voice rough.
The two men nodded.
"Hell's Bells!"
tbc...