I don't think we could find a focus strong enough for that question, barring perhaps the Accords themselves, and both Yog, and uju32 decided it wasn't worth burning that priceless focus on a question that specific to Winter.
Doesn't Mab know about Maeve being infected by Nemesis? I'm a little hazy on the details of the timeline, but isn't Cold Days all about her trying to get Dresden to kill Maeve so that Sarissa can be the Winter Lady because Maeve is infected?
I'm sorry, I don't quite know where on the timeline we're at currently
She didn't want him defiant per se, she wanted him strong-willed.
Defiance is just a marker for it.
This is much the same way Mother Winter treated Dresden on their first meeting after he became Winter Knight.
I shook my head, put my tools away, and then the ice just beneath my toes shattered and a long, bony arm, covered in wrinkles and warts and spots, and belonging to a body that would have been at least twenty feet tall, shot up and seized my head. Not my face. My entire head, like a softball. Or maybe an apple. Stained black claws on the ends of the knobby fingers dug into me, piercing my skin, and I was abruptly jerked down into the freaking ice with so much power that for a second I was terrified my neck had snapped.
I thought I would be broken for certain when I hit the ice, but instead I was drawn through it and down into the mud, and through that, and then I was falling, screaming in sudden, instinctive, blind terror. Then I hit something hard and it hurt, even through the power of the mantle, and I let out a brief, croaking exhalation. I dangled there, stunned for a moment, with those cold, cruel pointed claws digging into my flesh. Distantly I could hear a slow, limping step, and feel my feet dragging across a surface.
Then I was flung and spun twice on the horizontal, and I crashed into a wall. I bounced off it and landed on what felt like a dirt floor. I lay there, not able to inhale, barely able to move, and either I'd gone blind or I was in complete blackness. The nice part about having your bells rung like that is that mind-numbing horror sort of gets put onto a side burner for a bit. That was pretty much the only nice thing about it. When I finally managed to gasp in a little air, I used it to make a whimpering sound of pure pain.
A voice came out of the darkness, a sound that was dusty and raspy and covered in spiders. "Me," it said, drawing the word out. "You attempt to summon. Me."
"You have my sincerest apologies for the necessity," I said, or tried to say to Mother Winter. I think it just came out, "Ow."
"You think I am a servant to be whistled for?" continued the voice. Hate and weariness and dark amusement were all mummified together in it. "You think I am some petty spirit you can command."
"N-n-nngh, ow." I gasped.
"You dare to presume? You dare to speak such names to draw my attention?" the voice said. "I have a stew to make, and I will fill it with your arrogant mortal meat."
There was a sound in the pitch-darkness. Steel being drawn across stone. A few sparks went up, blinding in the darkness. They burned into my retinas the outline of a massive, hunched form grasping a cleaver.
Sparks danced every few seconds as Mother Winter slowly sharpened her implement. I was able to get my breathing under control and to fight past the pain. "Mmm . . ." I said. "M-Mother Winter. Such a pleasure to meet with you again."
The next burst of sparks gleamed off of an iron surface—teeth.
"I n-need to speak to you."
"Speak, then, manling," said Mother Winter. "You have a little time left."
The cleaver rasped across the sharpening stone again.
"Mab has ordered me to kill Maeve," I said.
"She is always doing foolish things," said Mother Winter.
"Maeve says that Mab's gone insane," I said. "Lily concurs."
There was a wheezing sound that might have been a cackle. "Such a loving daughter."
I had to believe that I was going to get out of this somehow. So I pressed her. "I need to know which of them is right," I said. "I need to know who I should turn my hand against to prevent a great tragedy."
"Tragedy," said Mother Winter in a purr that made me think of rasping scorpions. "Pain? Terror? Sorrow? Why should I wish to prevent such a thing? It is sweeter than an infant's marrow."
It is a good thing I am a fearless and intrepid wizardly type, or that last bit of sentence would have set my flesh to crawling hard enough to carry me across the dirt floor.
I was kind of hosed anyway, so I took a chance. I crossed my fingers in the dark and said, "Because Nemesis is behind it."
The cleaver's rasp abruptly stopped.
The darkness and silence were, for a moment, absolute.
My imagination treated me to an image of Mother Winter creeping silently toward me in the blackness, cleaver lifted, and I stifled an urge to burst into panicked screams.
"So," she whispered a moment later. "You have finally come to see what has been before you all this time."
"Uh, yeah. I guess. I know there's something there now, at least."
"So very mortal of you. Learning only when it is too late."
Rasp. Sparks. "You aren't going to kill me," I said. "I'm as much your Knight as Mab's."
There was a low, quiet snort. "You are no true Knight of Winter, manling. Once I have devoured your flesh, and your mantle with it, I will bestow it upon someone worthier of the name. I should never have given it to Mab."
Uh, wow. I hadn't thought of that kind of motivation. My guts got really watery. I tried to move my limbs and found them numbed and only partially functional. I started trying to get them to flip me over so that I could get my feet under me. "Uh, no?" I heard myself ask in a panicked, cracking voice. "And why is that, exactly?" "Mab," said Mother Winter in a tone of pure disgust, "is too much the romantic."
Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Mother Winter, right there.
"She has spent too much time with mortals," Mother Winter continued, withered lips peeled back from iron teeth as the sparks from her cleaver's edge leapt higher. "Mortals in their soft, controlled world. Mortals with nothing to do but fight one another, who have forgotten why they should fear the fangs and the claws, the cold and the dark."
"And . . . that's bad?" "What value has life when it is so easily kept?" Mother Winter spat the last word. "Mab's weakness is evident. Look at her Knight."
Her Knight was currently trying to sit up, but his wrists and ankles were fastened to the floor by something cold, hard, and unseen. I tested them, but couldn't feel any edges. The bonds couldn't have been metal. And they weren't ice. I didn't know how I knew that, but I was completely certain. Ice would have been no obstacle. But there was something familiar about it, something I had felt before . . . in Chichén Itzá.
Will.
Mother Winter was holding me down by pure, stark will. The leaders of the Red Court had been ancient creatures with a similar power, but that had been a vague, smothering blanket that had made it impossible to move or act, a purely mental effort.
This felt like something similar, but far more focused, more developed, as if thought had somehow crystallized into tangibility. My wrists and ankles wouldn't move because Mother Winter's will said that was how reality worked. It was like magic—but magic took a seed, a kernel of will and built up a framework of other energies around that seed. It took intense practice and focus to make that happen, but at the end of the day anyone's will was only part of the spell, alloyed with other energy into something else.
What held me down now was pure, undiluted will—the same kind of will that I suspected had backed up events presaged by phrases like "Let there be light." It was far more than human, beyond simple physical strength, and if I'd been the Incredible Hulk, I was pretty sure there was no way I'd have been able to tear myself free.
"Ahhh," said Mother Winter, during one last stroke of the cleaver. "I like nice clean edges to my meat, manling. Time for dinner."
And slow, limping steps came toward me.
A slow smile stretched my lips back from my teeth.
Mortals had the short end of the stick on almost any supernatural confrontation. Even most wizards, with their access to terrific forces, had to approach conflicts carefully—relatively few of us had the talents that lent themselves to brawling. But mortals had everyone else beat on exactly one thing: the freedom to choose. Free will.
It had taken me a while to begin to understand it, but it had eventually sunk into my thick skull. I couldn't arm wrestle an ogre, even with the mantle. I couldn't have won a magical duel with Mab or Titania—probably not even against Maeve or Lily. I couldn't outrun one of the Sidhe.
But I could defy absolutely anyone.
I could lift my will against that of anything, and know that the fight might be lopsided, but never hopeless. And by thunder, I was not going to allow anyone's will to stretch me out on the floor like a lamb for slaughter.
I stopped pressing at my bindings with my limbs and started using my mind instead. I didn't try to push them away, or break them, or slip free of them. I simply willed them not to be. I envisioned what my limbs would feel like coming free, and focused on that reality, summoning up my total concentration on that goal, that ideal, that fact.
And then I crossed my fingers and reached into me, into the place where a covert archangel had granted me access to one of the primal forces of the universe, an energy called soulfire. I had no idea how it might interact with the Winter Knight's mantle on an ongoing basis. I mean, it had worked out once before, but that didn't mean that it would keep working out. I felt certain that I was pretty much swallowing bottles of nitroglycerin, then jumping up and down to see what would happen, but at this point I had little to lose. I gathered up soulfire, used it to infuse my raw will, and cast the resulting compound against my bonds.
Soulfire, according to Bob, is one of the fundamental forces of the universe, the original power of creation. It isn't meant for mortals. We get it by slicing off a bit of our soul, our life energy, and converting it into something else.
Bob is brilliant, but there are some things that he just doesn't get. His definition was a good place to get started, but it was also something that was perhaps too comfortably quantifiable. The soul isn't something you can weigh and measure. It's more than just one thing. Because soulfire interacts with souls in a way that I'm not sure anyone understands, it stands to reason that soulfire isn't just one thing, either.
And in this case, in this moment, I somehow knew exactly what the soulfire did. It converted me, my core, everything that made me who I was, into energy, into light. When I turned my joined will and the blazing core of my being together, I wasn't supercharging a magical spell. I wasn't cleverly finding a weak point in an enchantment. I wasn't using my knowledge of magic to exploit what my enemy was doing.
I was casting everything I had done, everything I believed, everything I had chosen—everything I was—against the will of an ancient being of darkness, terror, and malice, a fundamental power of the world.
And the bonds and the will of Mother Winter could not constrain me.
There was a sharp, shimmering tone, like metal under stress and beginning to fail, but more musical, and a blinding white light that washed away the darkness and dazzled my eyes. There was a thunder crack, and a terrible force erupted from my wrists and ankles, throwing a shock wave of raw kinetic energy—a mere shadow of the true forces at work, a by-product—out into the space around me. In that whiteness, I caught an image of a shrouded, hunched dark form, flung from her feet to impact something solid.
And then I was free and hauling myself up onto my feet.
I backed up, hoping I hadn't gotten turned around in the flash, and a surge of relief went through me when my back hit a stone wall. I felt out along on either side of me, and my hand brushed something solid, maybe a small shelf made from a wooden plank. I knocked it off its peg. It fell to the dirt floor with a clatter and a clink of small, heavy glass jars. I leaned against the wall, dazed, panting, and gasped, in my deepest and most gravelly voice, "No one can chain the Hulk!"
I heard a stir of cloth in the darkness then, a slight grunt of effort, the faintest whistle in the air. I can't claim credit for being smart or cool on this one. Some instinct pegged which way the cleaver was coming and I flung my head sharply to one side. Sparks flew as the cleaver struck the wall where my skull had been and sank into it as if it had been made of rotten pine, not stone. It stayed there, making a faint vibrating sound as it quivered.
I have got to learn to keep my freaking mouth shut. I clenched my teeth together and stayed still, giving no indication of where I might be in the darkness. For a long time there was quiet, except for the breathing I fought to slow and silence. And then a horrible, slithering sound went through the blackness. It caught in Mother Winter's ancient throat, clicking like the shells of swarming carrion beetles. It wormed its way through the air like a swarm of maggots burrowing through rotten meat. It brushed against me, light and hideous, like the touch of a vulture's lice-infested feather, and I struggled to press myself back a little closer to the stone at the sound of it.
Mother Winter was cackling.
"So," she said. "So, so, and so. Perhaps thou art not entirely useless after all, eh, manling?"
For all I knew, Mother Winter had a whole cutlery set over there. I gathered my will into a shielding spell, but I didn't release it. Magic was like air and water to the fae. I had a feeling Mother Winter would have been able to home in on it.
"That was a test?" I whispered—behind my hand, so that it might not make it utterly obvious where I was standing. "Or a meal," she rasped. "Either would suffice."
And then brightness flooded the room.
I thought some massive force had inundated the area I stood in, but after a second I realized that it was a door. The light was sunlight, with the golden quality that somehow felt like autumn. I had to shield my eyes against it, but after a moment I realized that I was standing in a small, simple medieval-looking cottage—one in which I had been before. Everything in it was wooden, leather, clay, and handmade. The glass in the windows was wavery and translucent. It was a neat, tidy place—apart from one corner with a large, ugly, raw-looking rocking chair. Oh, and a spilled shelf of small clay pots with wax-sealed mouths.
"You can be so overly dramatic, betimes," complained an old woman's voice, as gentle and sweet as Mother Winter's was unpleasant. She came into the house a moment later, a grandmotherly matron dressed in a simple dress with a green apron. Her long hair, silver-white and thinning, was done up in a small, neat bun. She moved with the slightly stiff, bustling energy of an active senior, and if her green eyes were framed by crow's-feet, they were bright and sharp. Mother Summer carried a basket in one arm filled with cuttings from what must have been a late-season herb garden, and as I watched, she entered, muttered a word, and a dozen tiny whirlwinds cleaned thick layers of soot from the many-paned windows scattered around the cottage, flooding it with more warm light. "We'll need a new cleaver now." Mother Winter, in her black shawl and hood, bared her iron teeth in a snarl, though it was a silent one. She pointed one crooked, warty finger at the window nearest her, and blackened it with soot again. Then she shuffled over to a chair beneath the window, and settled into the resulting shadow as if it were a comforting blanket. "I do what must be done."
"With our cleaver," Mother Summer said. "I suppose one of our knives wouldn't have done just as well?"
Mother Winter bared her teeth again. "I wasn't holding a knife."
Mother Summer made a disapproving clucking sound and began unloading her basket onto a wooden table near the fireplace. "I told you," she said calmly.
Mother Winter made a sour-sounding noise and pointed a finger. A large mug decorated with delicately painted flowers fell from a shelf.
Mother Summer calmly put out a hand, caught it, and returned it to the shelf. "Oh, uh, Mother Summer," I said, after a moment of silence. "I apologize for intruding into your home."
"Oh, dear, that's very sweet," Mother Summer said. "But you owe me no apology. You were brought here entirely against your will, after all." She paused for a beat and added, "Rudely."
Mother Winter made another displeased sound.
I looked back and forth between them. Centuries of dysfunction in this family, Harry. Walk carefully. "I, uh. I think I'd prefer to think of it as a very firm invitation."
"Hah," said Mother Winter, from her hood. Her teeth gleamed. "The Knight knows his loyalties, at least."
Mother Summer somehow managed to inject her voice with profound skepticism. "I'm sure he's overjoyed to owe loyalty to you," she said. "Why did you bring him here now, of all times?"
More teeth showed. "He summoned me, the precious thing."
Mother Summer dropped her herbs. She turned her head toward me, her eyes wide. "Oh," she said. "Oh, dear."
Mother Winter's rocker creaked, though it didn't really seem to move. "He knew certain names. He was not wholly stupid in choosing them, or wholly wrong in using them."
Mother Summer's bright green eyes narrowed. "Did he . . . ?"
"No," croaked Mother Winter. "Not that one. But he has seen the adversary, and learned one of its names."
Calculation and thought flickered through those green eyes, faster than I could follow. "Ah, yes. I see," Mother Summer said. "So many new futures unwinding."
"Too many bright ones," Mother Winter said sullenly.
"Even you must think better that than empty night."
Mother Winter spit to one side.
It started eating a hole in the dirt floor a few inches from one of my feet. I'm not kidding. I took a small sidestep away, and tried not to breathe the fumes.
"I think," Mother Winter said, "that he should be shown." Mother Summer narrowed her eyes. "Is he ready?"
"There is no time to coddle him," she rasped. "He is a weapon. Let him be made stronger."
"Or broken?" Mother Summer asked.
"Time, time!" Winter breathed. "He is not your weapon."
"It is not your world," Summer countered.
"Excuse me," I said quietly.
Green eyes and black hood turned toward me.
"I don't want to be rude, ma'am," I said. I picked up the fallen wooden shelf from where I'd knocked it down, and put it back on its pegs. Then I bent and started putting the sealed jars back onto the shelf. "I'm still young. I make mistakes. But I'm not a child, and I'm not letting anyone but me choose which roads I'll walk."
That made Mother Winter cackle again. "Precious little duck," she wheezed. "He means it."
"Indeed," Mother Summer said, but her tone was thoughtful as she watched me restore the fallen shelf to order.
I kept on replacing jars, lining them up neatly, and spoke as gently and politely as I knew how. "You can take my body and run it like a puppet. You can kill me. You can curse me and torture me and turn me into an animal."
"Can," said Mother Winter, "and might, if you maintain this impertinence."
I swallowed and continued. "You can destroy me. But you can't make me be anything but what I choose to be, ma'am. I don't know exactly what you both are talking about showing me, ma'am. But you aren't going to shove it down my throat or put it up on a shelf out of my reach, either one. I decide for myself, or I walk out the door."
"Oh, will you?" said Mother Winter in a low, deadly whisper. Her overlong nails scraped at the wood on her chair's arms. "Is that what you think, my lamb?" Mother Summer arched an eyebrow and eyed Mother Winter. "You test his defiance against his very life, and yet when he passes you are surprised he does not leap to do your bidding?" She made another disapproving clucking sound. "He is brave. And he is courteous. I will show him what you ask—if he is willing."
Winter bared her teeth and spit again, into the same hole, and more earth hissed and melted away. She started rocking back and forth, slowly, and turned her gaze elsewhere.
Winter tests people. Its almost as if they are compelled to.
And its worth recalling that Mother Winter calls Mab soft at testing people.
This is the culmination of Mab's manipulations. Having Harry be hers "to shape as I please." She fully believes that. Fully intends to do that. It takes Uriel interfering to derail her plans:
The Queen of Air and Darkness is immensely powerful and very knowledgeable.
She is neither all-powerful nor all-knowledgeable.
She can deceive, but cannot lie, and can and has been wrong before.
Uriel says she's wrong, but honestly, that should have been obvious.
I mean, fucking seriously, Mab was unable to shape Maeve into the person she wanted her to be, and she was Maeve's mother, who raised her from birth, even before she became Winter Lady. She couldn't stop Lloyd Slate from becoming a traitor.
The idea that she was going to suddenly be able to reshape an adult Dresden in to some yes-man never passed the smell test.
He laughed in her face.
Of course she'd be irritated.
Thats like Dresden's superpower: irritating people who could squash him like a bug.
Her plans weren't ruined.
My dude, perhaps its best to actually read the whole thing for context:
The very ground seemed to quiver, to let out an unthinkably low, deep, angry growl. Mab's eyes snapped to Demonreach. "I have his oath, ancient one. What he has given is mine by right, and you may not gainsay it. He is mine to shape as I please."
"Dammit," I said tiredly. "Dammit."
And a voice—a very calm, very gentle, very rational voice whispered in my ear, "Lies. Mab cannot change who you are."
I struggled and twitched my fingers. "Five," I muttered, "Six. Seven. Heh." I couldn't help it. I laughed again. It hurt like hell and it felt wonderful. "Heh. Heh."
Mab had gone very still. She stared at me with wide eyes, her alien face void of expression.
"No," I said then, weakly. "No. Maybe I'm your knight. But I'm not yours."
Emerald fire flickered in her eyes, cold and angry. "What?"
"You can't make me your monster," I slurred. "Doesn't work. And you know it."
Mab's eyes grew colder, more distant. "Oh?"
"You can make me do things," I said. "You can mess with my head. But all that makes me is a thug." The effort of so many words cost me. I had to take a moment to rest before I continued. "You wanted a thug; you get that from anywhere. Lloyd Slate was a thug. Plenty where he came from."
Demonreach's burning eyes flickered, and a sense of something like cold satisfaction came from the cloaked giant.
"Said it yourself: need someone like me." I met Mab's eyes with mine and curled my upper lip into a sneer. "Go on. Try to change me. The second you do, the second I think you've played with my head or altered my memory, the first time you compel me to do something, I'll do the one thing you can't have in your new knight." I lifted my head a little, and I knew that I must have looked a little crazy as I spoke. "I'll do it. I'll follow your command. And I will do nothing else. I'll make every task you command one you must personally oversee. I'll have the initiative of a garden statue. And do you know what that will give you, my queen?"
Her eyes burned. "What?"
I felt my own smile widen. "A mediocre knight," I said. "And mediocrity, my queen, is a terrible, terrible fate."
Her voice came forth from lips so cold that frost began forming on them. The next drop of water to fall on me thumped gently, a tiny piece of sleet. "Do you think I cannot punish you for such defiance? Do you think I cannot visit such horrors upon those you love as to create legends that last a thousand years?"
I didn't flinch. "I think you've got too much on your plate already," I spat back. "I think you don't have the time or the energy to spare to fight your own knight anymore. I think you need me, or you wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of keeping me alive for this long, of taxing your strength this much to get it done. You need me. Or else why are you here? In Chicago? In May?"
Again, the inhuman eyes raked at mine. But when she spoke, her voice was very, very soft and far more terrible than a moment before. "I am not some mortal merchant to be bargained with. I am not some petty president to be argued with. I am Mab."
"You are Mab," I said. "And I owe you a debt for preserving my life. For giving me the power I needed to save my daughter's life. Don't think that I have forgotten that."
The faerie's expression finally changed. She frowned and tilted her head slightly, as if puzzled. "Then why this defiance? When you know I will take vengeance for it?"
"Because my soul is my own," I said quietly. "You cannot steal it from me. You cannot change it. You cannot buy it. I am mine, Mab. I have fought long and hard against horrors even you would respect. I have been beaten, but I have not yielded. I'm not going to start yielding now. If I did, I wouldn't be the weapon you need."
Her eyes narrowed.
"I will be the Winter Knight," I told her. "I will be the most terrifying Knight the Sidhe Courts have ever known. I will send your enemies down in defeat and make your power grow." I smiled again. "But I do it my way. On my terms. When you give me the task, I'll decide how it gets done—and you'll stay out of the way and let me work. And that's how it's going to be."
After a long silent moment, she said, "You dare give commands to me, mortal?"
"I can't control you," I said. "I know that. But I can control me. And I've just told you the only way you get what you want out of me." I shrugged a little. "Up to you, my queen. But think about whether you want another thug to command or an ally to respect. Otherwise, you might as well start cutting on me right here, right now, and get yourself somebody with less backbone."
The Queen of Air and Darkness stared down at me for silent moments. Then she said, "You will never be my ally. Not in your heart."
"Probably not," I said. "But I can follow the example of my godmother. I can be a trusted enemy. I can work with you."
Mab's pale white eyebrows lifted and her eyes gleamed. "I will never trust you, wizard." And then she rose abruptly and let my head fall back to the earth. She walked away, her silken gown hanging limply upon her insect-thin frame. "Prepare yourself."
Demonreach stirred. The pale tendrils and roots began withdrawing themselves from my arms, leaving small, bleeding holes behind.
"For what?" I asked.
"For the journey to my court, Sir Knight." She paused and looked over one shoulder at me, green eyes bright and cold. "There is much work to do be done."
And go look at Peace Talks and Battle Grounds.
Mab is quite satisfied with the Knight she got.
... I am honestly at a loss for words. Am I seriously having to explain the concepts of classified information, national security and unauthorized access to said information to you? Mab would absolutely be in her rights to imprison or murder Molly immediately as she learned about Molly's Crown ability. No one would even blink or think twice about it. Doing so would be the only rational choice on Mab's part if absolute unquestionable and inviolate loyalty to Winter Court couldn't be established immediately.
Let me give you a real world analogy. If, on September 12th, 2001 you visited a USA embassy in Switzerland, and gave the ambassador the coordinates of Osama Bin Laden, you would have been rewarded. If, at the same time, you demonstrated an ability to read Vladimir Putin's mail and listen in on White House situation room more or less at will from anywhere in the world? No one would ever hear from you ever again.
National security trumps other interests. It's better to prevent a rogue agent who can do untold damages from operating freely than to get some more information. Because they can always fail into enemy hands, if nothing else.
Respectfully, Yog, I will repeat:
That is an asinine argument to make. A parochial thesis that makes assumptions about cultural mores and touchstones of very different societies. It would be bad enough if you were doing this between human societies, let alone nonhuman ones.
This is not the human world. The Winter Court and the other Night People of the Dresdenverse do not operate by the rules of modern human geopolitics. The stakes that come into play are sometimes much higher than what human government holds ascendancy for the next decade.
Nationstate-level agreements that take years of negotiations in human society can be made on oral contracts, oaths and handshakes.
Mab has no claim on Molly's services. Molly is not Fae, nor is she in debt to the Fae. Mab might bargain or otherwise try to get her cooperation. She wouldn't even try any of the high handed bullshit you've been making claims about, both because she wouldn't be able to due to being Fae, and because it would cost her more than she's willing to pay.
===
Let me give you a Dresdenverse analogy:
If you walked into a Winter embassy or reception and displayed knowledge of their innermost secrets?
You would walk back out again. Freely.
King Corb did just that in Peace Talks when he walked in and insulted Mab while delivering the head of an Accord signatory without getting touched. Because supernatural guest right is an ironclad custom, and Winter unlike the US or Russia or whatever state there is, is compelled to keep its word.
Dresden has walked in and out of White Court territory while in possession of their secrets and no-one murdered him when he showed up as a guest and no-one else knew he was there. He literally slept under their roof in Blood Rites.
This was under the rule of Constantine Raith at the time, even, the serial rapist and murderer who killed his mother.
And even after his time, Lara Raith expended White Court influence to get a US military medevac for Molly from Chitchen Itza
Nicodemus Archleone and his Fallen literally commanded Winter military forces as a deal with the Queen.
And he walked with those military details in his head.
Freely.
Supernatural nations do not operate under your understanding of national security
People and nations who have to deal with each other over centuries and millennia remember that their behavior is remembered for a long long time. Even when they aren't Fae.
===
Let me go further.
If a Fae enters your house as a guest and sees one of your secrets, they cannot report it even if you are their enemy and it would help them or their faction.
Cat Sith came to the edge of the shadows so that his silhouette could be seen. His eyes reflected the light from the almost entirely curtained windows. "Sir Knight. How may I assist you?"
"Empty night, it talks," Thomas breathed. "How?" Molly asked. "The threshold here is solid. How did it just come in like that?"
Which was a reasonable question, given that Molly didn't know about my former cleaning service and how it had interacted with my old apartment's threshold. "Beings out of Faerie don't necessarily need to be invited over a threshold," I said. "If they're benevolent to the inhabitants of the house, they can pretty much come right in."
"Wait," Thomas said. "These freaks can walk in and out whenever they want? Pop in directly from the Nevernever? And you didn't tell us about it?"
"Only if their intentions are benign," I said. "Cat Sith came here to assist me, and by extension you. As long as he's here, he's . . ." I frowned and looked at the malk. "Help me find the correct way to explain this to him?"
Sith directed his eyes to Thomas and said, "While I am here, I am bound by the same traditions as would apply were I your invited guest," he said. "I will offer no harm to anyone you have accepted into your home, nor take any action which would be considered untoward for a guest. I will report nothing of what I see and hear in this place, and make every effort to aid and assist your household and other guests while I remain."
I blinked several times. I had expected Sith to hit me with a big old snark-club rather than actually answering the question—much less answering it in such detail. But that made sense. The obligations of guest and host were almost holy in the supernatural world. If Sith truly did regard that kind of courtesy as the obligation of a guest, he would have little choice but to live up to it.
Thomas seemed to digest that for a few moments and then grunted. "I suppose I am obliged to comport myself as a proper host, then."
"Say instead that I am under no obligation to allow myself to be harmed, or to remain and give my aid, if you behave in any other fashion," Sith corrected him. "If you began shooting at me with that weapon, for example, I would depart without doing harm, and only then would I hunt you, catch you outside the protection of your threshold, and kill you in order to discourage such behavior from others in the future."
Thomas looked like he was about to talk some smack at the malk, but only for a second. Then he frowned and said, "It's odd. You sound like . . . like a grade-school teacher."
"Perhaps it is because I am speaking to a child," Cat Sith said. "The comparison is apt."
Thomas blinked several times and then looked at me. "Did the evil kitty just call me a child?"
"I don't think he's evil so much as hyperviolent and easily bored," I said. "And you started it. You called him a freak."
My brother pursed his lips and frowned. "I did, didn't I?" He turned to Cat Sith and set his gun aside. "Cat Sith, the remark was not directed specifically at you or meant to insult you, but I acknowledge that I have given offense, and recognize that the slight puts me in your debt. Please accept my apologies, and feel free to ask a commensurate service of me should you ever have need of it, to balance the scales."
Cat Sith stared at Thomas for a moment, and then inclined his head. "Even children can learn manners. Done. Until such time as I have need of you, I regard the matter as settled, Thomas Raith."
Fae in your house cannot retaliate if you attack them while they are in your house. Right of self defense does not apply.
They can leave and attack you in revenge after they've left, but thats outside your house, AFTER you leave its protections.
This is in part why, when the Leanansidhe needed the diplomatic efforts of the Fomor sabotaged in the short story Bombshells?
She sent Molly, who is a mortal, and not magically bound by their promises, instead of sending a Fae.
The fact that you keep assuming that Fae are bound to operate like mortal governments jostling for geopolitical advantage in the middle of modern geopolitics is a persistent flaw in your otherwise generally well-reasoned arguments.
The Fae are logical and rational, but they are bound by codes that push certain behaviors.
And they are fighting an existential war, which imposes certain policy incentives on their leaders.
Like not actively disincentivizing people from telling them about goings on for fear of being killed.
The fact that you think the woman who was the driving force behind the current iteration of the Unseelie Accords would go ahead and sabotage her own efforts at enforcing order by killing people for having the capability for knowing stuff?
Is kinda mind boggling.
See all the oracular spirits out there who can be consulted by anyone who meets their price, and who Winter hasn't touched.
We literally see Ulsharavas onscreen.
That's a close equivalent.
We either give the information to Mab after extracting some very binding oaths, or we deliver the information unanimously, or we don't deliver it at all.
Doesn't Mab know about Maeve being infected by Nemesis? I'm a little hazy on the details of the timeline, but isn't Cold Days all about her trying to get Dresden to kill Maeve so that Sarissa can be the Winter Lady because Maeve is infected?
I'm sorry, I don't quite know where on the timeline we're at currently
Mab apparently discovered it at some point before Small Favor, which is Year 8 of the timeline.
We are currently about five or seven months before the start of White Night, which was in Year 7 of the canon timeline.
Its safe to assume that she currently doesnt know.
She didn't want him defiant per se, she wanted him strong-willed.
Defiance is just a marker for it.
This is much the same way Mother Winter treated Dresden on their first meeting after he became Winter Knight.
A slow smile stretched my lips back from my teeth.
Mortals had the short end of the stick on almost any supernatural confrontation. Even most wizards, with their access to terrific forces, had to approach conflicts carefully—relatively few of us had the talents that lent themselves to brawling. But mortals had everyone else beat on exactly one thing: the freedom to choose. Free will.
It had taken me a while to begin to understand it, but it had eventually sunk into my thick skull. I couldn't arm wrestle an ogre, even with the mantle. I couldn't have won a magical duel with Mab or Titania—probably not even against Maeve or Lily. I couldn't outrun one of the Sidhe.
But I could defy absolutely anyone.
I could lift my will against that of anything, and know that the fight might be lopsided, but never hopeless. And by thunder, I was not going to allow anyone's will to stretch me out on the floor like a lamb for slaughter.
I stopped pressing at my bindings with my limbs and started using my mind instead. I didn't try to push them away, or break them, or slip free of them. I simply willed them not to be. I envisioned what my limbs would feel like coming free, and focused on that reality, summoning up my total concentration on that goal, that ideal, that fact.
And then I crossed my fingers and reached into me, into the place where a covert archangel had granted me access to one of the primal forces of the universe, an energy called soulfire. I had no idea how it might interact with the Winter Knight's mantle on an ongoing basis. I mean, it had worked out once before, but that didn't mean that it would keep working out. I felt certain that I was pretty much swallowing bottles of nitroglycerin, then jumping up and down to see what would happen, but at this point I had little to lose. I gathered up soulfire, used it to infuse my raw will, and cast the resulting compound against my bonds.
Soulfire, according to Bob, is one of the fundamental forces of the universe, the original power of creation. It isn't meant for mortals. We get it by slicing off a bit of our soul, our life energy, and converting it into something else.
Bob is brilliant, but there are some things that he just doesn't get. His definition was a good place to get started, but it was also something that was perhaps too comfortably quantifiable. The soul isn't something you can weigh and measure. It's more than just one thing. Because soulfire interacts with souls in a way that I'm not sure anyone understands, it stands to reason that soulfire isn't just one thing, either.
And in this case, in this moment, I somehow knew exactly what the soulfire did. It converted me, my core, everything that made me who I was, into energy, into light. When I turned my joined will and the blazing core of my being together, I wasn't supercharging a magical spell. I wasn't cleverly finding a weak point in an enchantment. I wasn't using my knowledge of magic to exploit what my enemy was doing.
I was casting everything I had done, everything I believed, everything I had chosen—everything I was—against the will of an ancient being of darkness, terror, and malice, a fundamental power of the world.
And the bonds and the will of Mother Winter could not constrain me.
There was a sharp, shimmering tone, like metal under stress and beginning to fail, but more musical, and a blinding white light that washed away the darkness and dazzled my eyes. There was a thunder crack, and a terrible force erupted from my wrists and ankles, throwing a shock wave of raw kinetic energy—a mere shadow of the true forces at work, a by-product—out into the space around me. In that whiteness, I caught an image of a shrouded, hunched dark form, flung from her feet to impact something solid.
And then I was free and hauling myself up onto my feet.
I backed up, hoping I hadn't gotten turned around in the flash, and a surge of relief went through me when my back hit a stone wall. I felt out along on either side of me, and my hand brushed something solid, maybe a small shelf made from a wooden plank. I knocked it off its peg. It fell to the dirt floor with a clatter and a clink of small, heavy glass jars. I leaned against the wall, dazed, panting, and gasped, in my deepest and most gravelly voice, "No one can chain the Hulk!"
I heard a stir of cloth in the darkness then, a slight grunt of effort, the faintest whistle in the air. I can't claim credit for being smart or cool on this one. Some instinct pegged which way the cleaver was coming and I flung my head sharply to one side. Sparks flew as the cleaver struck the wall where my skull had been and sank into it as if it had been made of rotten pine, not stone. It stayed there, making a faint vibrating sound as it quivered.
I have got to learn to keep my freaking mouth shut. I clenched my teeth together and stayed still, giving no indication of where I might be in the darkness. For a long time there was quiet, except for the breathing I fought to slow and silence. And then a horrible, slithering sound went through the blackness. It caught in Mother Winter's ancient throat, clicking like the shells of swarming carrion beetles. It wormed its way through the air like a swarm of maggots burrowing through rotten meat. It brushed against me, light and hideous, like the touch of a vulture's lice-infested feather, and I struggled to press myself back a little closer to the stone at the sound of it.
Mother Winter was cackling.
"So," she said. "So, so, and so. Perhaps thou art not entirely useless after all, eh, manling?"
For all I knew, Mother Winter had a whole cutlery set over there. I gathered my will into a shielding spell, but I didn't release it. Magic was like air and water to the fae. I had a feeling Mother Winter would have been able to home in on it.
"That was a test?" I whispered—behind my hand, so that it might not make it utterly obvious where I was standing. "Or a meal," she rasped. "Either would suffice."
And then brightness flooded the room.
I thought some massive force had inundated the area I stood in, but after a second I realized that it was a door. The light was sunlight, with the golden quality that somehow felt like autumn. I had to shield my eyes against it, but after a moment I realized that I was standing in a small, simple medieval-looking cottage—one in which I had been before. Everything in it was wooden, leather, clay, and handmade. The glass in the windows was wavery and translucent. It was a neat, tidy place—apart from one corner with a large, ugly, raw-looking rocking chair. Oh, and a spilled shelf of small clay pots with wax-sealed mouths.
"You can be so overly dramatic, betimes," complained an old woman's voice, as gentle and sweet as Mother Winter's was unpleasant. She came into the house a moment later, a grandmotherly matron dressed in a simple dress with a green apron. Her long hair, silver-white and thinning, was done up in a small, neat bun. She moved with the slightly stiff, bustling energy of an active senior, and if her green eyes were framed by crow's-feet, they were bright and sharp. Mother Summer carried a basket in one arm filled with cuttings from what must have been a late-season herb garden, and as I watched, she entered, muttered a word, and a dozen tiny whirlwinds cleaned thick layers of soot from the many-paned windows scattered around the cottage, flooding it with more warm light. "We'll need a new cleaver now." Mother Winter, in her black shawl and hood, bared her iron teeth in a snarl, though it was a silent one. She pointed one crooked, warty finger at the window nearest her, and blackened it with soot again. Then she shuffled over to a chair beneath the window, and settled into the resulting shadow as if it were a comforting blanket. "I do what must be done."
"With our cleaver," Mother Summer said. "I suppose one of our knives wouldn't have done just as well?"
Mother Winter bared her teeth again. "I wasn't holding a knife."
Mother Summer made a disapproving clucking sound and began unloading her basket onto a wooden table near the fireplace. "I told you," she said calmly.
Mother Winter made a sour-sounding noise and pointed a finger. A large mug decorated with delicately painted flowers fell from a shelf.
Mother Summer calmly put out a hand, caught it, and returned it to the shelf. "Oh, uh, Mother Summer," I said, after a moment of silence. "I apologize for intruding into your home."
"Oh, dear, that's very sweet," Mother Summer said. "But you owe me no apology. You were brought here entirely against your will, after all." She paused for a beat and added, "Rudely."
Mother Winter made another displeased sound.
I looked back and forth between them. Centuries of dysfunction in this family, Harry. Walk carefully. "I, uh. I think I'd prefer to think of it as a very firm invitation."
"Hah," said Mother Winter, from her hood. Her teeth gleamed. "The Knight knows his loyalties, at least."
Mother Summer somehow managed to inject her voice with profound skepticism. "I'm sure he's overjoyed to owe loyalty to you," she said. "Why did you bring him here now, of all times?"
More teeth showed. "He summoned me, the precious thing."
Mother Summer dropped her herbs. She turned her head toward me, her eyes wide. "Oh," she said. "Oh, dear."
Mother Winter's rocker creaked, though it didn't really seem to move. "He knew certain names. He was not wholly stupid in choosing them, or wholly wrong in using them."
Mother Summer's bright green eyes narrowed. "Did he . . . ?"
"No," croaked Mother Winter. "Not that one. But he has seen the adversary, and learned one of its names."
Calculation and thought flickered through those green eyes, faster than I could follow. "Ah, yes. I see," Mother Summer said. "So many new futures unwinding."
"Too many bright ones," Mother Winter said sullenly.
"Even you must think better that than empty night."
Mother Winter spit to one side.
It started eating a hole in the dirt floor a few inches from one of my feet. I'm not kidding. I took a small sidestep away, and tried not to breathe the fumes.
"I think," Mother Winter said, "that he should be shown." Mother Summer narrowed her eyes. "Is he ready?"
"There is no time to coddle him," she rasped. "He is a weapon. Let him be made stronger."
"Or broken?" Mother Summer asked.
"Time, time!" Winter breathed. "He is not your weapon."
"It is not your world," Summer countered.
"Excuse me," I said quietly.
Green eyes and black hood turned toward me.
"I don't want to be rude, ma'am," I said. I picked up the fallen wooden shelf from where I'd knocked it down, and put it back on its pegs. Then I bent and started putting the sealed jars back onto the shelf. "I'm still young. I make mistakes. But I'm not a child, and I'm not letting anyone but me choose which roads I'll walk."
That made Mother Winter cackle again. "Precious little duck," she wheezed. "He means it."
"Indeed," Mother Summer said, but her tone was thoughtful as she watched me restore the fallen shelf to order.
I kept on replacing jars, lining them up neatly, and spoke as gently and politely as I knew how. "You can take my body and run it like a puppet. You can kill me. You can curse me and torture me and turn me into an animal."
"Can," said Mother Winter, "and might, if you maintain this impertinence."
I swallowed and continued. "You can destroy me. But you can't make me be anything but what I choose to be, ma'am. I don't know exactly what you both are talking about showing me, ma'am. But you aren't going to shove it down my throat or put it up on a shelf out of my reach, either one. I decide for myself, or I walk out the door."
"Oh, will you?" said Mother Winter in a low, deadly whisper. Her overlong nails scraped at the wood on her chair's arms. "Is that what you think, my lamb?" Mother Summer arched an eyebrow and eyed Mother Winter. "You test his defiance against his very life, and yet when he passes you are surprised he does not leap to do your bidding?" She made another disapproving clucking sound. "He is brave. And he is courteous. I will show him what you ask—if he is willing."
Winter bared her teeth and spit again, into the same hole, and more earth hissed and melted away. She started rocking back and forth, slowly, and turned her gaze elsewhere.
Winter tests people. Its almost as if they are compelled to.
And its worth recalling that Mother Winter calls Mab soft at testing people.
The Queen of Air and Darkness is immensely powerful and very knowledgeable.
She is neither all-powerful nor all-knowledgeable.
She can deceive, but cannot lie, and can and has been wrong before.
Uriel says she's wrong, but honestly, that should have been obvious.
I mean, fucking seriously, Mab was unable to shape Maeve into the person she wanted her to be, and she was Maeve's mother, who raised her from birth, even before she became Winter Lady. She couldn't stop Lloyd Slate from becoming a traitor.
The idea that she was going to suddenly be able to reshape an adult Dresden in to some yes-man never passed the smell test. He laughed in her face.
Of course she'd be irritated.
Thats like Dresden's superpower: irritating people who could squash him like a bug.
Her plans weren't ruined.
My dude, perhaps its best to actually read the whole thing for context:
The very ground seemed to quiver, to let out an unthinkably low, deep, angry growl. Mab's eyes snapped to Demonreach. "I have his oath, ancient one. What he has given is mine by right, and you may not gainsay it. He is mine to shape as I please."
"Dammit," I said tiredly. "Dammit."
And a voice—a very calm, very gentle, very rational voice whispered in my ear, "Lies. Mab cannot change who you are."
I struggled and twitched my fingers. "Five," I muttered, "Six. Seven. Heh." I couldn't help it. I laughed again. It hurt like hell and it felt wonderful. "Heh. Heh."
Mab had gone very still. She stared at me with wide eyes, her alien face void of expression.
"No," I said then, weakly. "No. Maybe I'm your knight. But I'm not yours."
Emerald fire flickered in her eyes, cold and angry. "What?"
"You can't make me your monster," I slurred. "Doesn't work. And you know it."
Mab's eyes grew colder, more distant. "Oh?"
"You can make me do things," I said. "You can mess with my head. But all that makes me is a thug." The effort of so many words cost me. I had to take a moment to rest before I continued. "You wanted a thug; you get that from anywhere. Lloyd Slate was a thug. Plenty where he came from."
Demonreach's burning eyes flickered, and a sense of something like cold satisfaction came from the cloaked giant.
"Said it yourself: need someone like me." I met Mab's eyes with mine and curled my upper lip into a sneer. "Go on. Try to change me. The second you do, the second I think you've played with my head or altered my memory, the first time you compel me to do something, I'll do the one thing you can't have in your new knight." I lifted my head a little, and I knew that I must have looked a little crazy as I spoke. "I'll do it. I'll follow your command. And I will do nothing else. I'll make every task you command one you must personally oversee. I'll have the initiative of a garden statue. And do you know what that will give you, my queen?"
Her eyes burned. "What?"
I felt my own smile widen. "A mediocre knight," I said. "And mediocrity, my queen, is a terrible, terrible fate."
Her voice came forth from lips so cold that frost began forming on them. The next drop of water to fall on me thumped gently, a tiny piece of sleet. "Do you think I cannot punish you for such defiance? Do you think I cannot visit such horrors upon those you love as to create legends that last a thousand years?"
I didn't flinch. "I think you've got too much on your plate already," I spat back. "I think you don't have the time or the energy to spare to fight your own knight anymore. I think you need me, or you wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of keeping me alive for this long, of taxing your strength this much to get it done. You need me. Or else why are you here? In Chicago? In May?"
Again, the inhuman eyes raked at mine. But when she spoke, her voice was very, very soft and far more terrible than a moment before. "I am not some mortal merchant to be bargained with. I am not some petty president to be argued with. I am Mab."
"You are Mab," I said. "And I owe you a debt for preserving my life. For giving me the power I needed to save my daughter's life. Don't think that I have forgotten that."
The faerie's expression finally changed. She frowned and tilted her head slightly, as if puzzled. "Then why this defiance? When you know I will take vengeance for it?"
"Because my soul is my own," I said quietly. "You cannot steal it from me. You cannot change it. You cannot buy it. I am mine, Mab. I have fought long and hard against horrors even you would respect. I have been beaten, but I have not yielded. I'm not going to start yielding now. If I did, I wouldn't be the weapon you need."
Her eyes narrowed.
"I will be the Winter Knight," I told her. "I will be the most terrifying Knight the Sidhe Courts have ever known. I will send your enemies down in defeat and make your power grow." I smiled again. "But I do it my way. On my terms. When you give me the task, I'll decide how it gets done—and you'll stay out of the way and let me work. And that's how it's going to be."
After a long silent moment, she said, "You dare give commands to me, mortal?"
"I can't control you," I said. "I know that. But I can control me. And I've just told you the only way you get what you want out of me." I shrugged a little. "Up to you, my queen. But think about whether you want another thug to command or an ally to respect. Otherwise, you might as well start cutting on me right here, right now, and get yourself somebody with less backbone."
The Queen of Air and Darkness stared down at me for silent moments. Then she said, "You will never be my ally. Not in your heart."
"Probably not," I said. "But I can follow the example of my godmother. I can be a trusted enemy. I can work with you."
Mab's pale white eyebrows lifted and her eyes gleamed. "I will never trust you, wizard." And then she rose abruptly and let my head fall back to the earth. She walked away, her silken gown hanging limply upon her insect-thin frame. "Prepare yourself."
Demonreach stirred. The pale tendrils and roots began withdrawing themselves from my arms, leaving small, bleeding holes behind.
"For what?" I asked.
"For the journey to my court, Sir Knight." She paused and looked over one shoulder at me, green eyes bright and cold. "There is much work to do be done."
And go look at Peace Talks and Battle Grounds.
Mab is quite satisfied with the Knight she got.
Respectfully, Yog, I will repeat:
That is an asinine argument to make. A parochial thesis that makes assumptions about cultural mores and touchstones of very different societies. It would be bad enough if you were doing this between human societies, let alone nonhuman ones.
This is not the human world. The Winter Court and the other Night People of the Dresdenverse do not operate by the rules of modern human geopolitics. The stakes that come into play are sometimes much higher than what human government holds ascendancy for the next decade.
Nationstate-level agreements that take years of negotiations in human society can be made on oral contracts, oaths and handshakes.
Mab has no claim on Molly's services. Molly is not Fae, nor is she in debt to the Fae. Mab might bargain or otherwise try to get her cooperation. She wouldn't even try any of the high handed bullshit you've been making claims about, both because she wouldn't be able to due to being Fae, and because it would cost her more than she's willing to pay.
===
Let me give you a Dresdenverse analogy:
If you walked into a Winter embassy or reception and displayed knowledge of their innermost secrets?
You would walk back out again. Freely.
King Corb did just that in Peace Talks when he walked in and insulted Mab while delivering the head of an Accord signatory without getting touched. Because supernatural guest right is an ironclad custom, and Winter unlike the US or Russia or whatever state there is, is compelled to keep its word.
Dresden has walked in and out of White Court territory while in possession of their secrets and no-one murdered him when he showed up as a guest and no-one else knew he was there. He literally slept under their roof in Blood Rites.
This was under the rule of Constantine Raith at the time, even, the serial rapist and murderer who killed his mother.
And even after his time, Lara Raith expended White Court influence to get a US military medevac for Molly from Chitchen Itza
Nicodemus Archleone and his Fallen literally commanded Winter military forces as a deal with the Queen.
And he walked with those military details in his head.
Freely.
===
Let me go further.
If a Fae enters your house as a guest and sees one of your secrets, they cannot report it even if you are their enemy and it would help them or their faction.
Cat Sith came to the edge of the shadows so that his silhouette could be seen. His eyes reflected the light from the almost entirely curtained windows. "Sir Knight. How may I assist you?"
"Empty night, it talks," Thomas breathed. "How?" Molly asked. "The threshold here is solid. How did it just come in like that?"
Which was a reasonable question, given that Molly didn't know about my former cleaning service and how it had interacted with my old apartment's threshold. "Beings out of Faerie don't necessarily need to be invited over a threshold," I said. "If they're benevolent to the inhabitants of the house, they can pretty much come right in."
"Wait," Thomas said. "These freaks can walk in and out whenever they want? Pop in directly from the Nevernever? And you didn't tell us about it?"
"Only if their intentions are benign," I said. "Cat Sith came here to assist me, and by extension you. As long as he's here, he's . . ." I frowned and looked at the malk. "Help me find the correct way to explain this to him?"
Sith directed his eyes to Thomas and said, "While I am here, I am bound by the same traditions as would apply were I your invited guest," he said. "I will offer no harm to anyone you have accepted into your home, nor take any action which would be considered untoward for a guest. I will report nothing of what I see and hear in this place, and make every effort to aid and assist your household and other guests while I remain."
I blinked several times. I had expected Sith to hit me with a big old snark-club rather than actually answering the question—much less answering it in such detail. But that made sense. The obligations of guest and host were almost holy in the supernatural world. If Sith truly did regard that kind of courtesy as the obligation of a guest, he would have little choice but to live up to it.
Thomas seemed to digest that for a few moments and then grunted. "I suppose I am obliged to comport myself as a proper host, then."
"Say instead that I am under no obligation to allow myself to be harmed, or to remain and give my aid, if you behave in any other fashion," Sith corrected him. "If you began shooting at me with that weapon, for example, I would depart without doing harm, and only then would I hunt you, catch you outside the protection of your threshold, and kill you in order to discourage such behavior from others in the future."
Thomas looked like he was about to talk some smack at the malk, but only for a second. Then he frowned and said, "It's odd. You sound like . . . like a grade-school teacher."
"Perhaps it is because I am speaking to a child," Cat Sith said. "The comparison is apt."
Thomas blinked several times and then looked at me. "Did the evil kitty just call me a child?"
"I don't think he's evil so much as hyperviolent and easily bored," I said. "And you started it. You called him a freak."
My brother pursed his lips and frowned. "I did, didn't I?" He turned to Cat Sith and set his gun aside. "Cat Sith, the remark was not directed specifically at you or meant to insult you, but I acknowledge that I have given offense, and recognize that the slight puts me in your debt. Please accept my apologies, and feel free to ask a commensurate service of me should you ever have need of it, to balance the scales."
Cat Sith stared at Thomas for a moment, and then inclined his head. "Even children can learn manners. Done. Until such time as I have need of you, I regard the matter as settled, Thomas Raith."
Fae in your house cannot retaliate if you attack them while they are in your house. Right of self defense does not apply.
They can leave and attack you in revenge after they've left, but thats outside your house, AFTER you leave its protections.
This is in part why, when the Leanansidhe needed the diplomatic efforts of the Fomor sabotaged in the short story Bombshells?
She sent Molly, who is a mortal, and not magically bound by their promises, instead of sending a Fae.
The fact that you keep assuming that Fae are bound to operate like mortal governments jostling for geopolitical advantage in the middle of modern geopolitics is a persistent flaw in your otherwise generally well-reasoned arguments.
The Fae are logical and rational, but they are bound by codes that push certain behaviors.
And they are fighting an existential war, which imposes certain policy incentives on their leaders.
Like not actively disincentivizing people from telling them about goings on for fear of being killed.
The fact that you think the woman who was the driving force behind the current iteration of the Unseelie Accords would go ahead and sabotage her own efforts at enforcing order by killing people for having the capability for knowing stuff?
Is kinda mind boggling.
See all the oracular spirits out there who can be consulted by anyone who meets their price, and who Winter hasn't touched.
We literally see Ulsharavas onscreen.
You need to refresh your memory about what the Fae are.
And just how important they consider their word and the word of their Court.
If you had a promise of safe passage, you might be able tk leave. The second it passes? You are a dead man walking. Believing Winter to somehow be softer and less serious about national security information protection is just bizarre.
You secure your vital security areas first, and seek opportunities second.
We have been warned in story that yes, Immortals will try to kill us if they learn of the crown. I agree with Bob about that. They will.
Yog help me out with something here, lets say we go with your plan, and nothing goes wrong. We get the drop on Maeve, we take her, and hold her without anyone noticing for the length of the ritual, then present it as a fait accompli to Mab and the whole of the Winter Court, how do we then explain how we knew to do this? How did we know Nemesis was a thing? How did we know Maeve was infected? How did we get it out of her? And how can the rest of the supernatural world replicate any of those feets?
Do you think Mab et all won't have questions along those lines? Potentially the exact same questions they would have if we merely passed the information along in the first place?
Any use of the information begs the question of how that information was acquired, that the question will be asked cant be avoided, save by sitting on our hands, which is something Molly as a character, wouldn't do at this point. I'm just genuinely confused about why you think taking the additional risk of acting first will obfuscate that?
If you had a promise of safe passage, you might be able tk leave. The second it passes? You are a dead man walking. Believing Winter to somehow be softer and less serious about national security information protection is just bizarre.
You secure your vital security areas first, and seek opportunities second.
We have been warned in story that yes, Immortals will try to kill us if they learn of the crown. I agree with Bob about that. They will.
You visit as a guest, you dont need a promise of safe passage.
Because Lol Hard Man is quite literally counterproductive if you want people to deal with you without fear of dying, instead of hiding their information until its too late.
Winter does not do shit that literally screws themselves over.
This is not the human world.
This is what WoD would call the Night World, and all sorts of supernatural factions have quirky information gathering modalities. Even the White Council has specialists in Divination.
And Winter is a superpower, not almighty. And they already are fighting a forever war.
If you honestly think they are going to go to war with half the world to deny them information?
I have a bridge you might want to buy.
And I will repeat:
Ulsharavas from Death Masks and Chaunzaggoroth from Fool Moon are but two examples of all sorts of oracular spirits and information brokers that that can breach people's information security.
They operate freely and without fear to anyone who meets their price and ethics.
Odin. The Archive.
Even Chandler, who is a Warden that works for the White Council, and whose specialty is Divination and apparentlytTime.
I could go on.
The idea that Winter murders people for just knowing or being able to find out stuff?
Is provably, demonstrably untrue.
Eh, I'd say that's a little bit far to go based on the evidence.
Does Winter specifically go out of its way to destroy all sources of supernatural insight? Probably not, do those known sources of said insight lead more dangerous lives because of their gifts? Almost certainly yes, its just common sense that they are targets for anyone wanting to silence them on matters of particular, blind their aligned faction, or compel them to use their gifts for a different patron.
The more we become known as a learner of secrets, the more danger we face from that front, and a full reveal of the Crown would have various factions target us for removal, I have no doubt, but I agree that Winter itself is unlikely to have us killed specifically for learning this secret, especial given the debt they will have with Molly for the reveal.
Now, Nemesis, Nemesis is going to want our heads over this, whether or not we can conceal the Crown, but that is the cost of doing business, given that I lost the argument to keep our heads in the sand.
We don't need to point out exactly who is Nemesis infected among Winter's forces, merely that we have credible information that someone close to Mab has been infected, as verified by our powers. That verification can be something as simple as claiming the one who shared this information with us believed the intel to be accurate.
Then we let Mab do the housecleaning without giving any indication to the full extent of our divinatory powers.
Now that Molly has Hellscry Chakra and has a crown backed read on what nemesis is would it be possible to get a ruling on if it can auto detect the infected, or is that still spoilers territory?
Let me give you a Dresdenverse analogy:
If you walked into a Winter embassy or reception and displayed knowledge of their innermost secrets?
You would walk back out again. Freely.
If you had a promise of safe passage, you might be able tk leave. The second it passes? You are a dead man walking. Believing Winter to somehow be softer and less serious about national security information protection is just bizarre.
You secure your vital security areas first, and seek opportunities second.
We have been warned in story that yes, Immortals will try to kill us if they learn of the crown. I agree with Bob about that. They will.
Uju32 is correct in saying that the fey don't operate on the same rules, but they certainly aren't going to ignore threats. If we walk up to Mab on neutral ground and brag about all the secrets of theirs we're going to steal we won't get attacked right then, but we'd probably get some form of pressure or negative attention from them one way or the other.
That said, you're jumping to a pretty serious extreme for what we're talking about here and failing to account for the fact that Winter has nuance to its motives and plans.
The fey haven't gotten as far as they have by acting like cartoon villains or parodies of government stooges.
There are a lot of people out there with the ability to be a threat to Winter one way or the other if they choose to be. Attacking them for existing just guarantees that at least some will live up to that potential. This is especially wasteful when there's a potential to get neutral parties to be obstacles for other people instead of them, or otherwise spinning the risk into reward.
This is where the danger would be; Mab is highly unlikely to immediately try violence, but she would be very interested in getting the most value out of it - and us - that she can*.
Especially if the introduction to this situation is Molly demonstrating the ability to hard counter a key tool of Mab's main opponents and saves one of the two people she's physically capable of caring for from an incurable fate worse than death.
This also ties into why I think being explicit about a promise or something would be a bad approach. No promise we actually extract coins stop her from playing games, and Molly is a tempting prize when it's all laid out.
If we do it directly at all my favored approach would be to simply refuse to explain. She'd be intensely curious and still covet our services, but even Mab is highly unlikely to come to the right conclusion about how tempting a target she's looking at without more information.
Winter has some ability to check for nemesis, it's just too hard and effort intensive to use for random screenings. Telling Mab that some of her servants are infected is like calling in a bomb threat. The person on the other end of the line basically has to follow up even if they think you're screwing around. She'll press, but we don't have to explain ourselves to her.
The tricky bit would be trying to sell her on perfect exorcisms without sounding like a plant ourselves.
Eh, I'd say that's a little bit far to go based on the evidence.
Does Winter specifically go out of its way to destroy all sources of supernatural insight? Probably not, do those know sources of said insight lead more dangerous lives because of their gifts? Almost certainly yes, its just common sense that they are targets for anyone wanting to silence them on matters of particular, blind their aligned faction, or compel them to use their gifts for a different patron.
The more we become known as a learner of secrets, the more danger we face from that front, and a full reveal of the Crown would have various factions target us for removal, I have no doubt, but I agree that Winter itself is unlikely to have us killed specifically for learning this secret, especial given the debt they will have with Molly for the reveal.
Now, Nemesis, Nemesis is going to want our heads over this, whether or not we can conceal the Crown, but that is the cost of doing business, given that I lost the argument to keep our heads in the sand.
Nope.
Wizards literally have directories of oracular spirits to consult for prophecies or predictions of the future, and for secrets:
"Great," I said, and rubbed at my eyes. "All right, then. Big-leaguers all around. I want you to track down the Shroud."
"No can do," Bob said.
"Give me a break. How many pieces of two-thousand-year-old linen are in town?"
"That's not the point, Harry. The Shroud is -" Bob seemed to struggle to find words. "It doesn't exist on the same wavelength as me. It's out of my jurisdiction."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm a spirit of intellect, Harry. Of reason, logic. The Shroud isn't about logic. It's an artifact of faith."
"What?" I demanded. "That doesn't make any sense."
"You don't know everything, Harry," Bob said. "You don't even know a lot. I can't touch this. I can't come anywhere near it. And if I even try, I'll be crossing boundaries I shouldn't. I'm not going up against angels, Dresden, Fallen, or otherwise."
I sighed, and lifted my hands. "Fine, fine. Is there someone I can talk to?"
Bob was quiet for a moment before he said, "Maybe. Ulsharavas."
"Ulsha- who?" "Ulsharavas. She's an ally of the loa, an oracle spirit. There's details about halfway through your copy of Dumont's Guide to Divinationators."
"How are her prices?"
"Reasonable," Bob said. "You've got everything you need for the calling. She isn't usually malicious."
"Isn't usually?"
"The loa are basically good guys, but they all have their darker aspects, too. Ulsharavas is a pretty gentle guide, but she's been harsh before. Don't let your guard down."
"I won't," I said, and frowned. "One more thing. Swing by Marcone's place and see if there's anything interesting there. You don't have to go all David Niven; just take a look around."
"You think Marcone's involved in this one?"
"His thugs already took a poke at me. I might as well find out whatever I can. I give you permission to leave in pursuit of that information, Bob. Get back before dawn. Oh, do we still have that recipe for the antivenom to vampire spit?"
A cloud of orange lights flowed out of the skull, across the table, and then up the stairs. Bob's voice, oddly modulated, floated back to me. "Red notebook. Don't forget to light the wardflame while I'm gone."
"Yeah, yeah," I muttered. I gave Bob a minute to clear my wards, then got down a three-candle holder with green, yellow, and red candles on it. I lit the green one and set the candleholder aside. I got out Dumont's Guide and read over the entry for Ulsharavas. It looked pretty simple, though you couldn't be too careful whenever you called something in from the Nevernever.
I took a couple of minutes to gather what I'd need. The oracle spirit couldn't put together a body for herself, not even a nebulous cloud of light, like Bob could. She required a homunculus to manifest in the mortal world. Dumont recommended a newly dead corpse, but as the only one I was likely to find was my own, I needed a substitute. I found it in another box and plopped it down in the center of my summoning circle,
I added a cup of whiskey and a freshly opened tin of Prince Albert's chewing tobacco to the circle, the required down payment to convince Ulsharavas to show up. It was the last of my whiskey and the last of the tins of tobacco, so I added Get more scotch and Prince Albert in a can to my to-do list, and stuck it in my pocket.
I spent a couple of minutes sweeping the floor around the circle, so that I wouldn't kick a stray hair or bit of paper across the circle and flub it up. After a brief deliberation I chalked down another circle outside the copper one. Then I took a moment to go over the guide a last time, and to clear my head of distractions.
I took a deep breath and gathered in my strength. Then I focused, reached down, and touched the copper circle, willing a tiny jolt of power into it. The summoning circle closed. I felt it as a tingling prickle on the back of my neck and a faint warmth on the skin of my face. I repeated the process with the chalk circle, adding a second layer, and then knelt down by the circle, lifting both hands palms-up. "Ulsharavas," I murmured, willing energy into the words. My voice shook oddly, skittering around tones in what seemed a random fashion. "Ulsharavas. Ulsharavas. One lost in ignorance seeks you. One darkened by the lack of knowledge seeks your light. Come, guardian of memory, sentinel of the yet to come. Accept this offering and join me here."
At the conclusion of the ritual words, I released the power I'd been holding, sending it coursing from me into the circle, and through it to seek out the oracle spirit in the Nevernever.
The response came immediately. A sudden swirl of light appeared within the copper circle, and briefly made the barrier around it visible as a curved plane of blue sparkles. The light drizzled down over the homunculus, and a moment later it twitched, then sat up.
"Welcome, oracle," I said. "Bob the Skull thought you might be of some help."
The homunculus sat up and stretched out pudgy arms. Then it blinked, looked at its arms, and rose to stare down at itself. It looked up at me with one eyebrow raised, and asked, in a tiny voice, "A Cabbage Patch doll? You expect me to help you while wearing this?"
It was a cute doll. Blond ringlets fell to her plush shoulders, and she wore a pink-and-blue calico dress, complete with matching ribbons and little black shoes. "Uh, yeah. Sorry," I said. "I didn't have anything else with two arms and two legs, and I'm pressed for time."
Ulsharavas the Cabbage Patch doll sighed and sat down in the circle, legs straight out like a teddy bear's. She struggled to pick up the comparatively large cup of whiskey, and drank it down. It looked like she was taking a pull from a rain barrel, but she downed the whiskey in one shot. I don't know where it went, given that the doll didn't actually have a mouth or a stomach, but none of it spilled onto the floor. That done, she thrust a tiny fist into the tobacco and stuffed a wad of it into her mouth. "So," she said, between chews. "You want to know about the Shroud, and the people who stole it."
I lifted my eyebrows. "Uh. Yeah, actually. You're pretty good."
"There are two problems."
I frowned. "Okay. What are they?"
Ulsharavas peered at me and said, "First. I don't work for bokkor."
"I'm not a bokkor," I protested.
"You aren't a houngun. You aren't a mambo. That makes you a sorcerer."
"Wizard," I said. "I'm with the White Council."
The doll tilted her head. "You're stained," she said. "I can feel black magic on you."
"It's a long story," I said. "But mostly it isn't mine."
"Some of it is."
I frowned at the doll and then nodded. "Yeah. I've made a bad call or two."
"But honest," Ulsharavas noted. "Well enough. Second is my price."
"What did you have in mind?"
The doll spat to one side, flecks of tobacco landing on the floor. "An honest answer to one question. Answer me and I will tell you what you seek."
"Yeah, right," I said. "You could just ask me for my Name. I've heard that one before."
"I didn't say you'd have to answer in full," the doll said. "I certainly do not wish to threaten you. But what you would answer, you must answer honestly."
I thought about it for a minute before I said, "All right. Done."
Ulsharavas scooped up more tobacco and started chomping. "Answer only this. Why do you do what you do?"
I blinked at her. "You mean tonight?"
"I mean always," she answered. "Why are you a wizard? Why do you present yourself openly? Why do you help other mortals as you do?"
"Uh," I said. I stood up and paced over to my table. "What else would I do?"
"Precisely," the doll said, and spat. "You could be doing many other things. You could be seeking a purpose in life in other careers. You could be sequestered and studying. You could be using your skills for material gain and living in wealth. Even in your profession as an investigator, you could do more to avoid confrontation than you do. But instead you consign yourself to a poor home, a dingy office, and the danger of facing all manner of mortal and supernatural foe. Why?"
I leaned back against my table, folded my arms, and frowned at the doll. "What the hell kind of question is that?"
"An important one," she said. "And one that you agreed to answer honestly."
"Well," I said. "I guess I wanted to do something to help people. Something I was good at."
"Is that why?" she asked.
I chewed over the thought for a moment. Why had I started doing this stuff? I mean, it seemed like every few months I was running up against situations that had the potential to horribly kill me. Most wizards never had the kind of problems I did. They stayed at home, minded their own business, and generally speaking went on about their lives. They did not challenge other supernatural forces. They didn't declare themselves to the public at large. They didn't get into trouble for sticking their noses in other people's business, whether or not they'd been paid to do so. They didn't start wars, get challenged to duels with vampire patriots, or get the windows shot out of their cars.
So why did I do it? Was it some kind of masochistic death wish? Maybe a psychological dysfunction of some sort?
Why?
"I don't know," I said, finally. "I guess I never thought about it all that much."
The doll watched me with unnerving intensity for a full minute before nodding. "Don't you think you should?"
I scowled down at my shoes, and didn't answer.
Ulsharavas took one last fistful of tobacco, and sat back down in her original position, settling her calico dress primly about her. "The Shroud and the thieves you seek have rented a small vessel docked in the harbor. It is a pleasure craft called the Etranger."
I nodded and exhaled through my nose. "All right then. Thank you for your help."
She lifted a tiny hand. "One thing more, wizard. You must know why the Knights of the White God wish you to stay away from the Shroud."
I arched an eyebrow. "Why?"
"They received part of a prophecy. A prophecy that told them that should you seek the Shroud, you will most assuredly perish."
"Only part of a prophecy?" I asked.
"Yes. Their Adversary concealed some of it from them."
I shook my head. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because," Ulsharavas said. "You must hear the second half of the prophecy in order to restore the balance."
"Uh. Okay."
The doll nodded and fixed me with that unsettling, unblinking stare. "Should you seek the Shroud, Harry Dresden, you will most assuredly perish."
"All right," I said. "So what happens if I don't?"
The doll lay down on her back, and wisps of light began flowing back out of her, back from whence Ulsharavas had come. Her voice came to me quietly, as if from a great distance. "If you do not, they all die. And this city with them."
Chapter Nine
I hate cryptic warnings. I know, the whole cryptic-remark concept is part and parcel of the wizard gig, but it doesn't suit my style. I mean, what good is a warning like that? All three Knights and the population of Chicago would die if I didn't get involved-and my number would be up if I did. That sounded like the worst kind of self-fulfilling crap. There's a case to be made for prophecy; don't get me wrong. Mortals, even wizards, all exist at a finite point in the flow of time. Or, to make it simple, if time is a river, then you and I are like pebbles in it. We exist in one spot at a time, occasionally jostled back and forth by the currents. Spirits don't always have the same kind of existence. Some of them are more like a long thread than a stone-their presence tenuous, but rippling upstream and down as a part of their existence, experiencing more of the stream than the pebble.
That's how oracle spirits know about the future and the past. They're living in them both at the same time they're delivering mysterious messages to you. That's why they only give brief warnings, or mysterious dreams or prophetic knock-knock jokes, or however they drop their clues. If they tell you too much, it will change the future that they're experiencing, so they have to give out the advice with a light touch.
I know. It makes my head hurt too.
I don't put much stock in prophecy. As extensive and aware as these spirits might be, they aren't all-knowing. And as nutty as people are, I don't buy that any spirit is going to be able to keep an absolute lock on every possible temporal outcome.
Like the citation makes clear?
Prophecy, seeing the future isn't exactly uncommon among spirits.
It even provides one of the most common ways that spirits manage to do it.
Some information sources are definitely at greater risk when its found out they can do so.
Especially mortals with prophetic or divination gifts.
Lots of factions would like to control such information sources exclusively.
But you dont see anyone trying to mug the Archive for information. Or Odin or one of his Valkyries.
Even though they are known to be information sources.
We don't need to point out exactly who is Nemesis infected among Winter's forces, merely that we have credible information that someone close to Mab has been infected, as verified by our powers. That verification can be something as simple as claiming the one who shared this information with us believed the intel to be accurate.
Then we let Mab do the housecleaning without giving any indication to the full extent of our divinatory powers.
"I have some skill at Divination."
Literally true, doesnt say anything more. Let her confirm it with her own resources.
If Mab's pointed at a target, she can confirm if the suspect is Nfested or not .
EDIT
We do need to buy at least one dot of Divination soon.
Um, forgive me if I'm misinformed, Dresden Files isn't one of my strong points, but didn't the Denarians try exactly that when they tried to corrupt the Archive? Or am I thinking of Fanfiction?
Um, forgive me if I'm misinformed, Dresden Files isn't one of my strong points, but didn't the Denarians try exactly that when they tried to corrupt the Archive? Or am I thinking of Fanfiction?
They did in canon.
Took around 15-20x of them iirc, possibly more, and the personal help of Archangel Lucifer to set up.
13x of them died in the process, and they still failed.
And made enemies of the Archive and Mab in the process.
Which is a gift thats still paying off.
They did in canon.
Took around 15-20x of them iirc, possibly more, and the personal help of Archangel Lucifer to set up.
13x of them died in the process, and they still failed.
And made enemies of the Archive and Mab in the process.
Which is a gift thats still paying off.
So, it does happen, even to established powers, the very fact that Nicodemus had Lucifer's help with this suggests they thought it was worth the risk once they had identified the opportunity, that they failed doesn't change that this was the calculus, especially as that object lesson hasn't happened yet.
I would argue that Molly, as she presently exists, percents a rather tempting target given she lacks the alliances built up over centuries, nor the personal power or reputation that would ordinarily serve as a deterrent for such actions.
But we are kind of arguing for the sake of it here, I agree with your position in large parts, I think the only point of contention is the level of danger inherent to the proposed action, not that we should act.
So, it does happen, even to established powers, the very fact that Nicodemus had Lucifer's help with this suggests they thought it was worth the risk once they had identified the opportunity, that they failed doesn't change that this was the calculus, especially as that object lesson hasn't happened yet.
I would argue that Molly, as she presently exists, percents a rather tempting target given she lacks the alliances built up over centuries, nor the personal power or reputation that would ordinarily serve as a deterrent for such actions.
But we are kind of arguing for the sake of it here, I agree with your position in large parts, I think the only point of contention is the level of danger inherent to the proposed action, not that we should act.
The point was that it took a major occult power to even try.
And they didn't try just because of her access to information(they've got Fallen, who were there at creation. They know shit no-one else does), they tried because the Archive also happens to be a major magical practitioner. MAJOR.
As in, more powerful than the Ladies of the Fae Courts according to Dresden's eyewitness testimony.
Only even got off the ground because they trapped her somewhere she couldn't tap magic or she would have killed them all trivially. Required essentially the entire incarnate Denarian Order to attempt, and they still failed with around 70% fatalities. As in, I counted 12ish Coins recovered.
People with access to information tend to be very hard targets in this universe.
And Molly entered that category at E2 with shintai.
So, it does happen, even to established powers, the very fact that Nicodemus had Lucifer's help with this suggests they thought it was worth the risk once they had identified the opportunity, that they failed doesn't change that this was the calculus, especially as that object lesson hasn't happened yet.
This is the sort of thing where the object lesson is one relearned periodically.
The thing with the Archive was a surprise because it was sort of a stupid idea that backfired exactly as anyone could have told them it would. Denarians going to Denarian though.
There is risk in exposing the crown, but the most significant ones would only come into play if the full "fuck your defenses" aspect became known.
The existence of other oracles is cover for us in this because people are primed to think of Molly's abilities as something related to the more common store brand equivalent instead of as an information gathering super weapon.
I don't know why you guys are so worried, even if mab wanted to she couldn't capture or kill us, we are really really deadly and roll wits+occult for antimagic, we could fight through every member of the winter court seen so far in the books and kill them all, expect mab maybe depending on how dp stats her. We are really really deadly with our sword and shintai and no circle can contain us, that's like their two big trips in this verse. everything else we just antimagic our way through.
Yog help me out with something here, lets say we go with your plan, and nothing goes wrong. We get the drop on Maeve, we take her, and hold her without anyone noticing for the length of the ritual, then present it as a fait accompli to Mab and the whole of the Winter Court, how do we then explain how we knew to do this? How did we know Nemesis was a thing? How did we know Maeve was infected? How did we get it out of her? And how can the rest of the supernatural world replicate any of those feets?
Do you think Mab et all won't have questions along those lines? Potentially the exact same questions they would have if we merely passed the information along in the first place?
Any use of the information begs the question of how that information was acquired, that the question will be asked cant be avoided, save by sitting on our hands, which is something Molly as a character, wouldn't do at this point. I'm just genuinely confused about why you think taking the additional risk of acting first will obfuscate that?
The best play, realistically, would be to launder information to Mab somehow without ever implying it's us that got that information. I am not sure how to do that, but that's the only safe way.
You visit as a guest, you dont need a promise of safe passage.
Because Lol Hard Man is quite literally counterproductive if you want people to deal with you without fear of dying, instead of hiding their information until its too late.
Winter does not do shit that literally screws themselves over.
This is not the human world.
This is what WoD would call the Night World, and all sorts of supernatural factions have quirky information gathering modalities. Even the White Council has specialists in Divination.
And Winter is a superpower, not almighty. And they already are fighting a forever war.
If you honestly think they are going to go to war with half the world to deny them information?
I have a bridge you might want to buy.
And I will repeat:
Ulsharavas from Death Masks and Chaunzaggoroth from Fool Moon are but two examples of all sorts of oracular spirits and information brokers that that can breach people's information security.
They operate freely and without fear to anyone who meets their price and ethics.
Odin. The Archive.
Even Chandler, who is a Warden that works for the White Council, and whose specialty is Divination and apparentlytTime.
I could go on.
The idea that Winter murders people for just knowing or being able to find out stuff?
Is provably, demonstrably untrue.
The difference is scale, and how free an agent is. Odin belongs to Winter, bound by them by his mantle as Winter King.
The very least I expect is an ultimatum of "sign Accords and take on a Winter Mantle, or else".
Basically, I rather don't think Bob is stupid or doesn't know what he's talking about. And I don't believe in Winter's generosity. And that's what you are saying - that Bob is absolutely 100% wrong about everything relating to Winter.
The Accords are too recent for the supernatural world, and they only carry the weight they do because Mab spent a lot of political capital on their creation and continues to spend to secure it. In addition to the examples given by Uju in the post you are responding to, only one (Odin) has a winter mantle and none of the others are new powers.
If we go by you statement, the others should be constantly being hunted by Winter and adding how powerful they are (White Council and Archive) and not take it lying down, the lack of news of Winter being at the very least a three-way struggle , one with the Outside and two with powers of creation, we can say that your statement is false.
Basically, I rather don't think Bob is stupid or doesn't know what he's talking about. And I don't believe in Winter's generosity. And that's what you are saying - that Bob is absolutely 100% wrong about everything.
But Bob doesn't know what he's talking about? He lives in fear thinking he's hiding from Mab and that Winter's constantly hunting him, when we know that she knows he still existed and that his new master was Dresden. If she wanted him dead, he would be long gone.
While he is not always wrong, his information and statements are not all 100% true either.
The Accords are too recent for the supernatural world, and they only carry the weight they do because Mab spent a lot of political capital on their creation and continues to spend to secure it. In addition to the examples given by Uju in the post you are responding to, only one (Odin) has a winter cloak and none of the others are new.
If we go by you statement, the others should be constantly being hunted by Winter and adding how powerful they are (White Council and Archive) and not take it lying down, the lack of news of Winter being at the very least a three-way struggle , one with the Outside and two with powers of creation, we can say that your statement is false.
Both White Council and Archive fulfill parts of Winter's core function (opposing outsiders), and neither of them have anything as potent as the Crown. Archive comes close, but still fails short. There are clear ways for how to keep her out of their secrets. There is no way to do so with the Crown. It either has to be crippled (like forcing Molly to burn certain topics and foci), or Molly has to be bound.
But Bob doesn't know what he's talking about? He lives in fear thinking he's hiding from Mab and that Winter's constantly hunting him, when we know that she knows he still existed and that his new master was Dresden. If she wanted him dead, he would be long gone.
While he is not always wrong, his information and statements are not all 100% true either.
What's funny to me is that, arguably, the thing about us that will draw the most heat from people seeking to eliminate us as a threat isn't the Crown. It's the fact that it's our nature to grow in power in the same way that it is the nature of Winter to be cold, and that we'll keep growing, forever, with no upper limit, and we're also immortal. Eventually, we will either die or be the most powerful thing in the setting, and "eventually" might be as soon as a few centuries from now. Any immortal that figures that out is going to try to either ally with us or kill us before we grow too big to deal with.
The only reason we haven't been warned about hiding that is because nobody knows IC, except for Heaven, which isn't telling, the Fallen, which want us dead but can't afford to reveal what we are to even their hosts for fear of rebellion, some miscellaneous really old beings who either haven't realized an Exaltation has been unleashed or have their hands tied for other reasons, and Molly and Usum, who might know instinctually but haven't fully grasped the implications IC. Usum has more of an idea, but we're too used to him puffing up our ego without realizing the truth behind the situation. Bob is getting closer to understanding what we are, but hasn't fully made the leap to fully understanding the nature of an Exaltation. He's still stuck on the idea of our power recovering rather than truly growing, and hasn't stumbled on the "no upper limit" part yet.
I don't know why you guys are so worried, even if mab wanted to she couldn't capture or kill us, we are really really deadly and roll wits+occult for antimagic, we could fight through every member of the winter court seen so far in the books and kill them all, expect mab maybe depending on how dp stats her. We are really really deadly with our sword and shintai and no circle can contain us, that's like their two big trips in this verse. everything else we just antimagic our way through.
Not at essence two we can't, but even setting that aside the answer to this question is something addressed in the story teller's guide section of the ExWoD book.
You threaten exalts by mote tapping them, and anyone with the ability to ship disposable minions to Chicago can exploit that.
Both White Council and Archive fulfill parts of Winter's core function (opposing outsiders), and neither of them have anything as potent as the Crown. Archive comes close, but still fails short. There are clear ways for how to keep her out of their secrets. There is no way to do so with the Crown. It either has to be crippled (like forcing Molly to burn certain topics and foci), or Molly has to be bound.
The red court and Fomor certainly don't do anything useful for winter and they were still members of the Accords.
A unilateral position of hostility towards anything strong enough to influence their operations is an untenable position for the fey to take.
They're one of the biggest fish allowed to cross into the mortal world, but they can't fight the whole world at once while doing their job at the gates.
The behavior you're describing is also directly the duty of summer to prevent. Since the courts aren't actively at war now I think we can assume the he.
Doesn't Mab know about Maeve being infected by Nemesis? I'm a little hazy on the details of the timeline, but isn't Cold Days all about her trying to get Dresden to kill Maeve so that Sarissa can be the Winter Lady because Maeve is infected?
