FIC: Fair Trial (1/4) [The Dresden Files]
Feb. 22nd, 2009 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darktrent182TITLE: Fair Trial
DISCLAIMER: The Dresden Files doesn't belong to me – the TV series belongs to Lionsgate, and the characters themselves were created by Jim Butcher. Written for entertainment purposes, no money made, please don't sue, yadda.
FANDOM: The Dresden Files
PAIRING: Harry/Bob
WORD COUNT: 28,580
RATING: NC-17.
WARNINGS: Minor spoilers from the TV series include The Boone Identity. Minor spoilers from the books include Summer Knight, Blood Rites, and Proven Guilty.
SUMMARY: The meeting with the High Council looms, and Harry has to deal with the fallout.
PRAISE BE: An amazing amount of thanks goes out to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shiplizard, beachkid, and gehayi for their beta-reading, encouragement, and questions. This fic would've never seen the light of day, if not for you guys. Thank you very much!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is an installment in the Forged series.
***
After what had happened Saturday, the rest of the weekend went downhill from there.
Bob and I spent Sunday avoiding each other. He'd holed up in the lab early, and only came out to get himself a cup of instant coffee every couple of hours. I did some yoga, went running -- the usual, basically. The only words we said to each other was when the phone rang, and it had been a call for him. Today wasn't shaping up to be any better, and this coming afternoon, Bob and I were going up against the High Council.
We might not have said anything to each other since our argument on Saturday, but I knew there was a lot that I wanted to say. You'd think I would've been deliriously happy to find out that Bob really was in love with me, and had been for years. But there were too many questions I wanted to ask him. Why had he waited until I'd gone out on a date with Heather to tell me? He'd said that he'd been protecting me from myself, which was why he'd lied to me when I first told him how I felt about him, but he could have told me sooner. If he really had been in love with me, why hadn't he said anything after he'd been made mortal?
That last question stopped me cold. Had he been jealous when he'd kissed me, because I had been trying to move on? On Saturday, I had thought that the date with Heather had been a step in the right direction, since spilling my guts to Bob about how I felt hadn't been met with overwhelming enthusiasm. For my first attempt at getting back into the dating scene since Tara, it hadn't actually been that bad. Heather had been sweet, funny, pretty. The fact that she'd been a newly-made werewolf had only meant that she'd understand about the supernatural world being a part of my life, instead of most of the women I'd gone out with, who hadn't really believed in it, no matter how much they'd seen.
Bob could be the jealous type, especially if he thought that I wanted to try to get serious with Heather, or any other woman. But would he have gone that far? Would he have kissed me and told me that he loved me just so that I would turn my attention back to him instead of dating a werewolf? Had he really been lying to me when I'd first told him how I felt about him, or had he been lying on Saturday?
I shook my head and growled something to myself. This wasn't going anywhere.
I hauled myself off the couch, and headed for the kitchen. There was a mug sitting in the dish strainer, and a plate of slightly burned scrambled eggs sitting on the counter next to the stove, along with a fork and knife. I picked it up, tempted to pitch it in the trash, but my stomach growled peevishly at the thought of wasting food that I hadn't cooked. Finally, I sat down at the table and shoveled eggs into my mouth, annoyed while I did it.
Bob had made them, of course. His cooking hadn't proved to be any better than mine, but whenever I wandered into the kitchen to make something for myself yesterday, I'd found a plate of something edible waiting for me.
Halfway through my plate of eggs, a knock on the front door made me lean over in my chair to try to see who it was. When I didn't immediately recognize the silhouette through the blinds, I got up and grumbled my way down the hallway. I opened the door, ready to tell whoever it was to give me about ten minutes to finish opening the store, when Ebenezar McCoy grinned at me.
"Morning, Hoss!" he boomed, his voice too loud for my sleep-deprived ears. "How's it going? Mind if we come in?"
I blinked for a moment, and then the pronoun he'd used finally sank in. "We?"
I looked past him to see that a young, slender woman with dark brown hair and and a mischievous look in her eyes was standing next to him. She was pretty, making the thick jacket and blue jeans she was wearing look good. I blinked at her. "Captain Luccio?"
Anastasia Luccio, Captain of the Wardens, continued to smile at me. "Hello, Wizard Dresden. May we come in?"
I stepped back quickly, opening the door wider. "Yeah, sure," I mumbled. "Something happen? The meeting's this afternoon, isn't it?"
Ebenezar looked around the storefront, and then snorted at me. "Nothing's wrong. Just wanted to take you out to lunch is all."
"Lunch?" I blinked for what felt like the hundredth time and glanced at the clock on my desk.
Ebenezar chuckled. "Late night last night, huh. Where's Bob?"
"Lab," I mumbled, pointing a vague thumb behind me.
As if on cue, I heard the lab door open, and Bob asked, "Who's at the door?"
"Ebenezar and Captain Luccio," I shouted back. I looked over my shoulder and saw Bob coming down the hallway, smiling politely at the newcomers.
"Blackstaff McCoy," Bob said with a polite nod to Ebenezar, and then his smile grew when he saw Luccio. "Capitano Luccio," he murmured, taking her hand gently and brushing his lips against her knuckles. He said something in rolling, fluid syllables that I didn't catch, and Luccio gave him a brilliant smile, killer dimples making an appearance.
I wanted to glare at him, but that would've been like posting a sign on my forehead that said, 'Hopeless Idiot'. Instead, I turned back to Ebenezar. "What's going on?"
"Already told you," Ebenezar said, sounding remarkably patient. "I'm taking you out to lunch."
"I just ate," I blurted out. My brain still wasn't firing on all four cylinders. I glanced at Bob again, and then back at Ebenezar. "And we still have to figure out what we're going to do at the Council meeting."
Bob shook his head, and looked at me for the first time in two days. "I've been working on that, Harry. Go and eat something." He looked me up and down. "Stars know you need it."
I glared at him. "Aren't you coming?"
Bob shook his head. "The Captain and I felt it best to get better acquainted before the Council meeting, and we can do that better here." He gave me a small smile that made me feel a bit warm. "We'll be fine."
"Sure you will," I muttered, heading down the hallway to find my shoes. When I thought about leaving Bob and Luccio to get 'better acquainted', I found myself wanting to set something on fire.
So much for trying to get over him.
***
About twenty minutes later, the cab pulled up to a diner a few blocks from my place. Ebenezar paid the fare, and pretty soon, we were sitting down in a six-man booth in a corner and the waitress was leaving a stack of menus behind. The place had been fairly empty except for one or two people sitting at tables, and a group of three sitting in a four-man booth right next to ours. I only really noticed them because it's not everyday that you see a black woman, a Native American, and a guy who could've been a younger Santa Claus sitting together.
I frowned at Ebenezar curiously. "Shouldn't we be sitting in a smaller booth?"
Ebenezar shook his head. "This'll be fine."
I shot him a look, but he went back to looking over the menu. "What's going on, sir?" I asked.
He shrugged, his wispy white hair wafting in the air conditioning that seemed almost obscene given it was October. "There's some people I want you to meet, is all."
I frowned. "Who?"
He didn't look up from his menu. "Just some friends."
I snorted and picked up a menu for myself. We ordered after a little bit, and then I looked at Ebenezar again. "Ebenezar, why are we here? Because I'm not about to buy that you're in town just to take me to lunch."
"I'm not allowed to worry about you?" Ebenezar asked mildly, taking a sip from his coffee.
"You live in Missouri," I said flatly. "You hate going to Council meetings. What's going on?"
Ebenezar shot me an overly patient look, and exhaled through his nose. "What do you think is going to happen at this meeting, Hoss?"
I frowned, the question catching me off-guard. I wrapped my hands around my coffee cup and thought it over. "The Council is going to bring up the fact that Bob's alive. Bob argues his case, and with any luck, he won't be executed and stuck back in his skull."
"The Merlin's not going to throw him a party, Hoss," Ebenezar snorted, shifting in his seat. "You'll be lucky if he even gets to sit down in the conference room."
"Hell's bells, sir, he hasn't had time to do anything," I objected.
"And what about last time?" Ebenezar asked, looking me in the eye.
Mai hadn't been the first person to bring Bob back to mortality. That dubious honor went to my uncle's doppleganger, who'd brought Bob back in order to bring my uncle back from the dead so that Justin could go back to plotting against the High Council. Ebenezar knew about it because after I'd finally taken Bob home, he'd dropped by to "investigate" what had happened. Since Bob had died in my arms and went straight back to his skull, I had thought that had been enough to appease anyone on the High Council who would've wanted heads to roll.
I took a careful sip of my coffee and scowled.
"The Merlin liked Justin," Ebenezar said in a low voice. "He's not going to give a damn if Bob supposedly killed himself to save your life. He's just going to see a warlock who was able to break at least two Laws in less than twenty-four hours of being brought back from the dead."
"What the hell do you think I should do? Sell Bob up the river to save my own ass?" I hissed. "He saved my life. Hell's bells, the man taught me everything I knew about magic before I left home. I'm not turning my back on him." I might have wondered just exactly how Bob felt about me, but I knew that I couldn't watch him get executed. Not when I had a chance to do something about it.
"And if you stick up for him, you're going to look like a guardian who's fallen under Bob's sway," Ebenezar said mildly. "Let him get out of his own trouble. He's sure as hell done it enough over the centuries, if the Council records are anything to go by."
I gritted my teeth. "He died in my arms once. I'm not letting it happen a second time."
"So, now what, Hoss?" Ebenezar asked, eyes locked on mine. "Do you really want to be on trial all over again?"
"No, I don't," I snapped, "but if it means Bob gets to keep breathing, I'll do whatever it takes."
"And if that included soulgazing the Merlin?" Ebenezar asked in a low, hard voice. "Letting him see the darkest reaches of you, and knowing that he's not going to cut you any slack?"
"If he wants to soulgaze me to make sure I haven't become Bob's Sith apprentice, fine," I snapped. "Hell's bells, you met Bob. Did he seem like Evil Incarnate to you?"
Ebenezar looked at me, his bright blue eyes narrowing. After a long silence, he asked, "You really think he's worth saving?"
"Yeah," I said firmly. "I do."
Ebenezar fell quiet again, and then he nodded to himself. "What'd you think?"
I blinked, and then realized that he was addressing the three sitting at the adjacent table. The woman stood up, slender in her dark dress and a skeptical look on her face as she turned to face us. "He doesn't know nearly enough about the ghost's history, Ebenezar." She looked at me, taking in my hoody and scruffy face.
"I know enough about him," I replied, staring at her without meeting her gaze.
"Nearly nine hundred years of driving masters insane, and not only was he your first teacher in the Art," she said coolly, "but you murdered your uncle. That's hardly a defense that the Merlin will listen to, boy."
I narrowed my eyes at her before looking at Ebenezar. "Who is this?" I asked, trying to sound like I didn't want to do something ungentlemanly to her.
Ebenezar snorted. "Hoss, this is Martha Liberty. Mattie, Harry Dresden."
"Miss Liberty," I said, turning to her and straightening a little, "have you ever even met Bob?"
Her eyes narrowed. "No, I haven't," she said evenly, "but the Merlin has been the ghost's master at least twice. He is in a better position to know what the ghost is capable of."
I gritted my teeth. "His name is Bob," I snarled, "and he's not a thing that you can just order around."
"Da, that's true," a deep voice with a thick Russian accent said, and I saw the guy who'd reminded me of Santa Claus had stood up and joined us. "But the Merlin doesn't think that way. If you want to know how to beat your enemy, you must learn to think as he does."
I eyed him. "So, if I pretend to be an arrogant, self-righteous asshole with a narrow view of the world, I'll know how to beat him at his own game? Gee, that's pretty simple."
The big man grinned, his teeth a white flash amidst the flowing, black beard. "Arthur Langtry is a simple man."
"Harry, meet Simon Pietrovich," Ebenezar said with a smile. Simon nodded and nearly crushed my hand when I shook hands with him.
Martha didn't look amused. "The Merlin has been held his position for nearly three hundred years. Don't underestimate him."
Ebenezar scowled up at her. "He got where he is because he's a politician, Mattie. If what Bob's told me over the phone is true, he might have a plan for how to deal with him."
I frowned at him. "You're the one he's been talking to on the phone?"
Ebenezar blinked and frowned at me. "He hasn't said anything about it?"
I shook my head. "He showed me some notes on Saturday, but I've been busy with other stuff." It wasn't a complete lie. I actually managed to find someone's lost dog on Sunday while I was out.
Ebenezar squinted at me, and I resisted the urge to squirm.
"For someone who is willing to do anything to save his former mentor from execution," Martha said briskly, "I would have thought the two of you would be planning your defense together."
I squirmed a little. "We had a disagreement on Saturday," I admitted, feeling like I was a kid being sent to the principal's office. At Martha's raised eyebrow, I glared at her. "It's private."
"I see," she said. She turned to Ebenezar and asked, "Where is Hrothbert now?"
"At Harry's place," Ebenezar said. "He and Luccio are getting to know each other a bit better."
"Do you think that's wise?" she asked.
Before Ebenezar could answer, the third person from their table, the Native American who was wearing a worn leather vest over a white button-down shirt and a pair of blue jeans, got up from the table and joined us. His face reminded me of dried, sun-baked leather, but his eyes glittered. "They are so closely bound to the earth that they would speak no other tongue."
Ebenezar frowned up at him. "Have you been reading Last of the Mohicans again?" The man grinned at him. Ebenezar turned to me and said, "This is Listens-to-Wind, but I just call him Injun Joe."
I nodded, standing up a little to shake his hand. "Pleased to meet you."
Listens-to-Wind nodded and shook my hand. "Likewise."
"As Joe was saying," Ebenezar cut in when I sat down. "They're both blacksmiths, and they're going to talk shop 'til the cows come home."
I frowned. "To make sure that if Bob might want to take over Luccio's job, for example, Luccio won't object?"
Ebenezar shot me an innocent look. "That's an interesting idea, Hoss. Might want to mention it to Bob when I drop you off at the house."
I snorted, looking up at the three newcomers. "You're on the Senior Council, aren't you?"
The Senior Council was the seven-man ruling body of the High Council. If these were the friends that Ebenezar had been talking about who were on the Senior Council, they would be able to stop the Merlin by voting against him as a group. There was just one small problem.
I turned to Ebenezar without waiting for an answer from the three newcomers. "How exactly are you planning on getting the vote reduced to the Senior Council? There aren't extenuating circumstances, and if anybody else has heard about the boogieman stories about Bob, they'd vote to execute him on the spot."
"There aren't extenuating circumstances that you know of," Ebenezar told me.
"What do you mean?" I frowned, looking from him to the others.
Simon spoke up. "There have been signs that something is on the move, Wizard Dresden. We must be ready to meet it. Bob's return from the grave might actually save the Council from the worst of the damage."
"If the Merlin doesn't immediately kill him," I said. "And if the vote gets reduced to the Senior Council... what would you do?"
Simon squinted at me. "We would try to protect him, within reason. If he makes outrageous demands, he would be digging his own grave. There would be nothing we could do."
"But you would try to help him," I said, turning to look at Martha. We looked at each other without meeting each other's gazes, and she nodded after a long moment.
"We would, but we aren't all-powerful," she said. "Be sure to remind him that his execution might not be the worst that happens to him if he refuses to compromise."
I scowled. "Mai wanted to stick him in a dark hole and use him as her own personal weapons factory," I said in a low voice. "I'm going to make sure he's allowed to have a life outside of whatever he does for the Council."
For a moment, Martha seemed surprised, but she recovered her composure, and nodded to Ebenezar. "You have my support, Ebenezar. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other arrangements to make before this afternoon." With that, she swept out of the diner, her long, dark skirt swishing as the door swung closed behind her.
I looked at Simon and Listens-to-Wind. "What about you guys?"
Simon seemed to consider it for a moment, and then nodded. "We cannot guarantee that Bob will have much of a life outside of working," he said, "but as long as his proposal is reasonable, I don't see why we shouldn't take advantage of his skill." He nodded to Ebenezar and I. "I too must head out. I will see you both at the meeting."
Simon left, leaving only Listens-to-Wind. "And you?" Ebenezar asked.
"People do not do well in cages," Listens-to-Wind said. "What Martha Liberty does not realize is that the helpless are easy prey for evil."
Ebenezar narrowed his eyes. "That mean you'll support Harry?"
Listens-to-Wind nodded. "It does." He nodded to me. "It was good to meet you, Hoss Dresden."
"You too," I said.
He headed out of the diner, leaving me alone with Ebenezar. "Well, that was interesting."
Ebenezar snorted. "They needed to know what you were like, Hoss."
"And you couldn't have told me about this sooner?" I asked, getting irritated. This was the second time this weekend an old friend had manipulated me, and I was getting sick of it.
"What would you've done?" he asked bluntly. "You'd've told them to fuck off, and then you'd be up a creek without a paddle."
I managed to stop myself from wincing. "At least I'm not genuinely evil, right?"
"No, you're just pig-headed, and sometimes that can be just as bad," Ebenezar said.
"So, what's going to happen?" I asked. "If the Wardens think that Bob's a threat, they might behead first and ask questions later."
"They won't if I'm standing right there next to him," Ebenezar replied mildly.
"All the easier to kill him if he gets out of line?" I couldn't help a hard tone creeping into my voice.
The older man aimed a level gaze at me, unafraid to meet my eyes. We'd already soulgazed before, so there was no danger of it happening again. "I already know that there's more to him than meets the eye, Hoss. Unlike you, I've actually had a chance to read through the records the Council has on him."
I frowned. "What do they say?"
"Quite a bit," he said. "And nothing I'm supposed to tell you."
I was about to say something witty and cutting in reply, but our food showed up, and my stomach grumbled loudly. Shooting Ebenezar an annoyed look, I started in on my bacon and scrambled eggs. After I polished off the plate and drank half of my Coke, I asked, "Do you really expect me to believe you're not going to tell me?"
Ebenezar shot me a look and sighed. "The records are sealed, Hoss."
"And yet you read them?" I asked.
"Being the Blackstaff has some perks," he grunted. "All I can tell you is that he's not anywhere near sweetness and light as you might believe."
I scowled. "I know that, sir."
"Do you?" he asked pointedly. "Did you know that he's driven at least five guardians to suicide? And even more certifiably insane? And that his knowledge is responsible for a lot of the atrocities committed during World War Two?"
"That skull is a torture chamber and a prison all in one," I growled, keeping my voice down with a lot of effort. "He told me that masters can actually hurt him if they feel like it, and there's nothing he can do to protect himself unless he does whatever it is his master wants."
Ebenezar's expression went stony for a moment, and then he took a sip of his coffee. I think he didn't expect for me to know that. "What did you two fight about on Saturday?"
I blinked, thrown by the question. "Roommate stuff. Why?"
"He's going to be fighting for the right to stay alive, and you two aren't working on his defense because of 'roommate stuff'? Hoss, you need to learn to lie better."
"I'm still not telling you," I said flatly. "As soon as I get home, we'll start with the defense."
Ebenezar eyed me for a long moment, and then wiped his mouth with his napkin and set it on top of his bare plate along with his silverware. "You better."
***
Continue to Part Two.
DISCLAIMER: The Dresden Files doesn't belong to me – the TV series belongs to Lionsgate, and the characters themselves were created by Jim Butcher. Written for entertainment purposes, no money made, please don't sue, yadda.
FANDOM: The Dresden Files
PAIRING: Harry/Bob
WORD COUNT: 28,580
RATING: NC-17.
WARNINGS: Minor spoilers from the TV series include The Boone Identity. Minor spoilers from the books include Summer Knight, Blood Rites, and Proven Guilty.
SUMMARY: The meeting with the High Council looms, and Harry has to deal with the fallout.
PRAISE BE: An amazing amount of thanks goes out to
shiplizard, beachkid, and gehayi for their beta-reading, encouragement, and questions. This fic would've never seen the light of day, if not for you guys. Thank you very much!AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is an installment in the Forged series.
***
After what had happened Saturday, the rest of the weekend went downhill from there.
Bob and I spent Sunday avoiding each other. He'd holed up in the lab early, and only came out to get himself a cup of instant coffee every couple of hours. I did some yoga, went running -- the usual, basically. The only words we said to each other was when the phone rang, and it had been a call for him. Today wasn't shaping up to be any better, and this coming afternoon, Bob and I were going up against the High Council.
We might not have said anything to each other since our argument on Saturday, but I knew there was a lot that I wanted to say. You'd think I would've been deliriously happy to find out that Bob really was in love with me, and had been for years. But there were too many questions I wanted to ask him. Why had he waited until I'd gone out on a date with Heather to tell me? He'd said that he'd been protecting me from myself, which was why he'd lied to me when I first told him how I felt about him, but he could have told me sooner. If he really had been in love with me, why hadn't he said anything after he'd been made mortal?
That last question stopped me cold. Had he been jealous when he'd kissed me, because I had been trying to move on? On Saturday, I had thought that the date with Heather had been a step in the right direction, since spilling my guts to Bob about how I felt hadn't been met with overwhelming enthusiasm. For my first attempt at getting back into the dating scene since Tara, it hadn't actually been that bad. Heather had been sweet, funny, pretty. The fact that she'd been a newly-made werewolf had only meant that she'd understand about the supernatural world being a part of my life, instead of most of the women I'd gone out with, who hadn't really believed in it, no matter how much they'd seen.
Bob could be the jealous type, especially if he thought that I wanted to try to get serious with Heather, or any other woman. But would he have gone that far? Would he have kissed me and told me that he loved me just so that I would turn my attention back to him instead of dating a werewolf? Had he really been lying to me when I'd first told him how I felt about him, or had he been lying on Saturday?
I shook my head and growled something to myself. This wasn't going anywhere.
I hauled myself off the couch, and headed for the kitchen. There was a mug sitting in the dish strainer, and a plate of slightly burned scrambled eggs sitting on the counter next to the stove, along with a fork and knife. I picked it up, tempted to pitch it in the trash, but my stomach growled peevishly at the thought of wasting food that I hadn't cooked. Finally, I sat down at the table and shoveled eggs into my mouth, annoyed while I did it.
Bob had made them, of course. His cooking hadn't proved to be any better than mine, but whenever I wandered into the kitchen to make something for myself yesterday, I'd found a plate of something edible waiting for me.
Halfway through my plate of eggs, a knock on the front door made me lean over in my chair to try to see who it was. When I didn't immediately recognize the silhouette through the blinds, I got up and grumbled my way down the hallway. I opened the door, ready to tell whoever it was to give me about ten minutes to finish opening the store, when Ebenezar McCoy grinned at me.
"Morning, Hoss!" he boomed, his voice too loud for my sleep-deprived ears. "How's it going? Mind if we come in?"
I blinked for a moment, and then the pronoun he'd used finally sank in. "We?"
I looked past him to see that a young, slender woman with dark brown hair and and a mischievous look in her eyes was standing next to him. She was pretty, making the thick jacket and blue jeans she was wearing look good. I blinked at her. "Captain Luccio?"
Anastasia Luccio, Captain of the Wardens, continued to smile at me. "Hello, Wizard Dresden. May we come in?"
I stepped back quickly, opening the door wider. "Yeah, sure," I mumbled. "Something happen? The meeting's this afternoon, isn't it?"
Ebenezar looked around the storefront, and then snorted at me. "Nothing's wrong. Just wanted to take you out to lunch is all."
"Lunch?" I blinked for what felt like the hundredth time and glanced at the clock on my desk.
Ebenezar chuckled. "Late night last night, huh. Where's Bob?"
"Lab," I mumbled, pointing a vague thumb behind me.
As if on cue, I heard the lab door open, and Bob asked, "Who's at the door?"
"Ebenezar and Captain Luccio," I shouted back. I looked over my shoulder and saw Bob coming down the hallway, smiling politely at the newcomers.
"Blackstaff McCoy," Bob said with a polite nod to Ebenezar, and then his smile grew when he saw Luccio. "Capitano Luccio," he murmured, taking her hand gently and brushing his lips against her knuckles. He said something in rolling, fluid syllables that I didn't catch, and Luccio gave him a brilliant smile, killer dimples making an appearance.
I wanted to glare at him, but that would've been like posting a sign on my forehead that said, 'Hopeless Idiot'. Instead, I turned back to Ebenezar. "What's going on?"
"Already told you," Ebenezar said, sounding remarkably patient. "I'm taking you out to lunch."
"I just ate," I blurted out. My brain still wasn't firing on all four cylinders. I glanced at Bob again, and then back at Ebenezar. "And we still have to figure out what we're going to do at the Council meeting."
Bob shook his head, and looked at me for the first time in two days. "I've been working on that, Harry. Go and eat something." He looked me up and down. "Stars know you need it."
I glared at him. "Aren't you coming?"
Bob shook his head. "The Captain and I felt it best to get better acquainted before the Council meeting, and we can do that better here." He gave me a small smile that made me feel a bit warm. "We'll be fine."
"Sure you will," I muttered, heading down the hallway to find my shoes. When I thought about leaving Bob and Luccio to get 'better acquainted', I found myself wanting to set something on fire.
So much for trying to get over him.
***
About twenty minutes later, the cab pulled up to a diner a few blocks from my place. Ebenezar paid the fare, and pretty soon, we were sitting down in a six-man booth in a corner and the waitress was leaving a stack of menus behind. The place had been fairly empty except for one or two people sitting at tables, and a group of three sitting in a four-man booth right next to ours. I only really noticed them because it's not everyday that you see a black woman, a Native American, and a guy who could've been a younger Santa Claus sitting together.
I frowned at Ebenezar curiously. "Shouldn't we be sitting in a smaller booth?"
Ebenezar shook his head. "This'll be fine."
I shot him a look, but he went back to looking over the menu. "What's going on, sir?" I asked.
He shrugged, his wispy white hair wafting in the air conditioning that seemed almost obscene given it was October. "There's some people I want you to meet, is all."
I frowned. "Who?"
He didn't look up from his menu. "Just some friends."
I snorted and picked up a menu for myself. We ordered after a little bit, and then I looked at Ebenezar again. "Ebenezar, why are we here? Because I'm not about to buy that you're in town just to take me to lunch."
"I'm not allowed to worry about you?" Ebenezar asked mildly, taking a sip from his coffee.
"You live in Missouri," I said flatly. "You hate going to Council meetings. What's going on?"
Ebenezar shot me an overly patient look, and exhaled through his nose. "What do you think is going to happen at this meeting, Hoss?"
I frowned, the question catching me off-guard. I wrapped my hands around my coffee cup and thought it over. "The Council is going to bring up the fact that Bob's alive. Bob argues his case, and with any luck, he won't be executed and stuck back in his skull."
"The Merlin's not going to throw him a party, Hoss," Ebenezar snorted, shifting in his seat. "You'll be lucky if he even gets to sit down in the conference room."
"Hell's bells, sir, he hasn't had time to do anything," I objected.
"And what about last time?" Ebenezar asked, looking me in the eye.
Mai hadn't been the first person to bring Bob back to mortality. That dubious honor went to my uncle's doppleganger, who'd brought Bob back in order to bring my uncle back from the dead so that Justin could go back to plotting against the High Council. Ebenezar knew about it because after I'd finally taken Bob home, he'd dropped by to "investigate" what had happened. Since Bob had died in my arms and went straight back to his skull, I had thought that had been enough to appease anyone on the High Council who would've wanted heads to roll.
I took a careful sip of my coffee and scowled.
"The Merlin liked Justin," Ebenezar said in a low voice. "He's not going to give a damn if Bob supposedly killed himself to save your life. He's just going to see a warlock who was able to break at least two Laws in less than twenty-four hours of being brought back from the dead."
"What the hell do you think I should do? Sell Bob up the river to save my own ass?" I hissed. "He saved my life. Hell's bells, the man taught me everything I knew about magic before I left home. I'm not turning my back on him." I might have wondered just exactly how Bob felt about me, but I knew that I couldn't watch him get executed. Not when I had a chance to do something about it.
"And if you stick up for him, you're going to look like a guardian who's fallen under Bob's sway," Ebenezar said mildly. "Let him get out of his own trouble. He's sure as hell done it enough over the centuries, if the Council records are anything to go by."
I gritted my teeth. "He died in my arms once. I'm not letting it happen a second time."
"So, now what, Hoss?" Ebenezar asked, eyes locked on mine. "Do you really want to be on trial all over again?"
"No, I don't," I snapped, "but if it means Bob gets to keep breathing, I'll do whatever it takes."
"And if that included soulgazing the Merlin?" Ebenezar asked in a low, hard voice. "Letting him see the darkest reaches of you, and knowing that he's not going to cut you any slack?"
"If he wants to soulgaze me to make sure I haven't become Bob's Sith apprentice, fine," I snapped. "Hell's bells, you met Bob. Did he seem like Evil Incarnate to you?"
Ebenezar looked at me, his bright blue eyes narrowing. After a long silence, he asked, "You really think he's worth saving?"
"Yeah," I said firmly. "I do."
Ebenezar fell quiet again, and then he nodded to himself. "What'd you think?"
I blinked, and then realized that he was addressing the three sitting at the adjacent table. The woman stood up, slender in her dark dress and a skeptical look on her face as she turned to face us. "He doesn't know nearly enough about the ghost's history, Ebenezar." She looked at me, taking in my hoody and scruffy face.
"I know enough about him," I replied, staring at her without meeting her gaze.
"Nearly nine hundred years of driving masters insane, and not only was he your first teacher in the Art," she said coolly, "but you murdered your uncle. That's hardly a defense that the Merlin will listen to, boy."
I narrowed my eyes at her before looking at Ebenezar. "Who is this?" I asked, trying to sound like I didn't want to do something ungentlemanly to her.
Ebenezar snorted. "Hoss, this is Martha Liberty. Mattie, Harry Dresden."
"Miss Liberty," I said, turning to her and straightening a little, "have you ever even met Bob?"
Her eyes narrowed. "No, I haven't," she said evenly, "but the Merlin has been the ghost's master at least twice. He is in a better position to know what the ghost is capable of."
I gritted my teeth. "His name is Bob," I snarled, "and he's not a thing that you can just order around."
"Da, that's true," a deep voice with a thick Russian accent said, and I saw the guy who'd reminded me of Santa Claus had stood up and joined us. "But the Merlin doesn't think that way. If you want to know how to beat your enemy, you must learn to think as he does."
I eyed him. "So, if I pretend to be an arrogant, self-righteous asshole with a narrow view of the world, I'll know how to beat him at his own game? Gee, that's pretty simple."
The big man grinned, his teeth a white flash amidst the flowing, black beard. "Arthur Langtry is a simple man."
"Harry, meet Simon Pietrovich," Ebenezar said with a smile. Simon nodded and nearly crushed my hand when I shook hands with him.
Martha didn't look amused. "The Merlin has been held his position for nearly three hundred years. Don't underestimate him."
Ebenezar scowled up at her. "He got where he is because he's a politician, Mattie. If what Bob's told me over the phone is true, he might have a plan for how to deal with him."
I frowned at him. "You're the one he's been talking to on the phone?"
Ebenezar blinked and frowned at me. "He hasn't said anything about it?"
I shook my head. "He showed me some notes on Saturday, but I've been busy with other stuff." It wasn't a complete lie. I actually managed to find someone's lost dog on Sunday while I was out.
Ebenezar squinted at me, and I resisted the urge to squirm.
"For someone who is willing to do anything to save his former mentor from execution," Martha said briskly, "I would have thought the two of you would be planning your defense together."
I squirmed a little. "We had a disagreement on Saturday," I admitted, feeling like I was a kid being sent to the principal's office. At Martha's raised eyebrow, I glared at her. "It's private."
"I see," she said. She turned to Ebenezar and asked, "Where is Hrothbert now?"
"At Harry's place," Ebenezar said. "He and Luccio are getting to know each other a bit better."
"Do you think that's wise?" she asked.
Before Ebenezar could answer, the third person from their table, the Native American who was wearing a worn leather vest over a white button-down shirt and a pair of blue jeans, got up from the table and joined us. His face reminded me of dried, sun-baked leather, but his eyes glittered. "They are so closely bound to the earth that they would speak no other tongue."
Ebenezar frowned up at him. "Have you been reading Last of the Mohicans again?" The man grinned at him. Ebenezar turned to me and said, "This is Listens-to-Wind, but I just call him Injun Joe."
I nodded, standing up a little to shake his hand. "Pleased to meet you."
Listens-to-Wind nodded and shook my hand. "Likewise."
"As Joe was saying," Ebenezar cut in when I sat down. "They're both blacksmiths, and they're going to talk shop 'til the cows come home."
I frowned. "To make sure that if Bob might want to take over Luccio's job, for example, Luccio won't object?"
Ebenezar shot me an innocent look. "That's an interesting idea, Hoss. Might want to mention it to Bob when I drop you off at the house."
I snorted, looking up at the three newcomers. "You're on the Senior Council, aren't you?"
The Senior Council was the seven-man ruling body of the High Council. If these were the friends that Ebenezar had been talking about who were on the Senior Council, they would be able to stop the Merlin by voting against him as a group. There was just one small problem.
I turned to Ebenezar without waiting for an answer from the three newcomers. "How exactly are you planning on getting the vote reduced to the Senior Council? There aren't extenuating circumstances, and if anybody else has heard about the boogieman stories about Bob, they'd vote to execute him on the spot."
"There aren't extenuating circumstances that you know of," Ebenezar told me.
"What do you mean?" I frowned, looking from him to the others.
Simon spoke up. "There have been signs that something is on the move, Wizard Dresden. We must be ready to meet it. Bob's return from the grave might actually save the Council from the worst of the damage."
"If the Merlin doesn't immediately kill him," I said. "And if the vote gets reduced to the Senior Council... what would you do?"
Simon squinted at me. "We would try to protect him, within reason. If he makes outrageous demands, he would be digging his own grave. There would be nothing we could do."
"But you would try to help him," I said, turning to look at Martha. We looked at each other without meeting each other's gazes, and she nodded after a long moment.
"We would, but we aren't all-powerful," she said. "Be sure to remind him that his execution might not be the worst that happens to him if he refuses to compromise."
I scowled. "Mai wanted to stick him in a dark hole and use him as her own personal weapons factory," I said in a low voice. "I'm going to make sure he's allowed to have a life outside of whatever he does for the Council."
For a moment, Martha seemed surprised, but she recovered her composure, and nodded to Ebenezar. "You have my support, Ebenezar. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other arrangements to make before this afternoon." With that, she swept out of the diner, her long, dark skirt swishing as the door swung closed behind her.
I looked at Simon and Listens-to-Wind. "What about you guys?"
Simon seemed to consider it for a moment, and then nodded. "We cannot guarantee that Bob will have much of a life outside of working," he said, "but as long as his proposal is reasonable, I don't see why we shouldn't take advantage of his skill." He nodded to Ebenezar and I. "I too must head out. I will see you both at the meeting."
Simon left, leaving only Listens-to-Wind. "And you?" Ebenezar asked.
"People do not do well in cages," Listens-to-Wind said. "What Martha Liberty does not realize is that the helpless are easy prey for evil."
Ebenezar narrowed his eyes. "That mean you'll support Harry?"
Listens-to-Wind nodded. "It does." He nodded to me. "It was good to meet you, Hoss Dresden."
"You too," I said.
He headed out of the diner, leaving me alone with Ebenezar. "Well, that was interesting."
Ebenezar snorted. "They needed to know what you were like, Hoss."
"And you couldn't have told me about this sooner?" I asked, getting irritated. This was the second time this weekend an old friend had manipulated me, and I was getting sick of it.
"What would you've done?" he asked bluntly. "You'd've told them to fuck off, and then you'd be up a creek without a paddle."
I managed to stop myself from wincing. "At least I'm not genuinely evil, right?"
"No, you're just pig-headed, and sometimes that can be just as bad," Ebenezar said.
"So, what's going to happen?" I asked. "If the Wardens think that Bob's a threat, they might behead first and ask questions later."
"They won't if I'm standing right there next to him," Ebenezar replied mildly.
"All the easier to kill him if he gets out of line?" I couldn't help a hard tone creeping into my voice.
The older man aimed a level gaze at me, unafraid to meet my eyes. We'd already soulgazed before, so there was no danger of it happening again. "I already know that there's more to him than meets the eye, Hoss. Unlike you, I've actually had a chance to read through the records the Council has on him."
I frowned. "What do they say?"
"Quite a bit," he said. "And nothing I'm supposed to tell you."
I was about to say something witty and cutting in reply, but our food showed up, and my stomach grumbled loudly. Shooting Ebenezar an annoyed look, I started in on my bacon and scrambled eggs. After I polished off the plate and drank half of my Coke, I asked, "Do you really expect me to believe you're not going to tell me?"
Ebenezar shot me a look and sighed. "The records are sealed, Hoss."
"And yet you read them?" I asked.
"Being the Blackstaff has some perks," he grunted. "All I can tell you is that he's not anywhere near sweetness and light as you might believe."
I scowled. "I know that, sir."
"Do you?" he asked pointedly. "Did you know that he's driven at least five guardians to suicide? And even more certifiably insane? And that his knowledge is responsible for a lot of the atrocities committed during World War Two?"
"That skull is a torture chamber and a prison all in one," I growled, keeping my voice down with a lot of effort. "He told me that masters can actually hurt him if they feel like it, and there's nothing he can do to protect himself unless he does whatever it is his master wants."
Ebenezar's expression went stony for a moment, and then he took a sip of his coffee. I think he didn't expect for me to know that. "What did you two fight about on Saturday?"
I blinked, thrown by the question. "Roommate stuff. Why?"
"He's going to be fighting for the right to stay alive, and you two aren't working on his defense because of 'roommate stuff'? Hoss, you need to learn to lie better."
"I'm still not telling you," I said flatly. "As soon as I get home, we'll start with the defense."
Ebenezar eyed me for a long moment, and then wiped his mouth with his napkin and set it on top of his bare plate along with his silverware. "You better."
***
Continue to Part Two.
