Jim Butcher - Odd jobs

“You are incorrect,” I said. “Moreover, you can’t have them. Get out.”

Mag stood up. The movement was slow, liquid. His limbs didn’t seem to bend the proper way. “Lord Marcone,” he said, “this affair is no concern of yours. I only wish to take the slaves.”

“You can’t have them. Get out.”

“I warn you,” Mag said. There was an ugly tone in his voice. “If you make me return for her-for them-you will not enjoy what follows.”

“I do not require enjoyment to thrive. Leave my domain. I won’t ask again.”

Hendricks shuffled his feet a little, settling his balance.

Mag gathered himself up slowly. He extended his hand, and the twisted stick leapt from the floor and into his fingers. He gave Gard a slow and well-practiced sneer and said, “Anon, mortal lordling. It is time you learned the truth of the world. It will please me to be your instructor.” Then he turned, slow and haughty, and walked out, his shoulders hunching in an odd, unsettling motion as he moved.

“Make sure he leaves,” I said quietly.

Gard and Hendricks followed Mag from the room.

I turned my eyes to Justine and the child.

“Mag,” I said, “is not the sort of man who is used to disappointment.”

Justine looked after the vanished fomor and then back at me, confusion in her eyes. “That was sorcery. How did you…?”

I stood up from behind my desk and stepped out of the copper circle set into the floor around my chair. It was powered by the sorcerous equivalent of a nine-volt battery, connected to the control on the underside of my desk. Basic magical defense, Gard said. It had seemed like nonsense to me-it clearly was not.

I took my gun from its holster and set it on my desk.

Justine took note of my reply.

Of course, I wouldn’t give the personal aide of the most dangerous woman in Chicago information about my magical defenses.

There was something hard and not at all submissive in her eyes. “Thank you, sir, for…”

“For what?” I said very calmly. “You understand, do you not, what you have done by asking for my help under the Accords?”

“Sir?”

“The Accords govern relations between supernatural powers,” I said. “The signatories of the Accords and their named vassals are granted certain rights and obligations-such as offering a warning to a signatory who has trespassed upon another’s territory unwittingly before killing him.”

“I know, sir,” Justine said.

“Then you should also know that you are most definitely not a signatory of the Accords. At best, you qualify in the category of ‘servitors and chattel.’ At worst, you are considered to be a food animal.”

She drew in a sharp breath, her eyes widening-not in any sense of outrage or offense, but in realization. Good. She grasped the realities of the situation.

“In either case,” I continued, “you are property. You have no rights in the current situation, in the eyes of the Accords-and more to the point, I have no right to withhold another’s rightful property. Mag’s behavior provided me with an excuse to kill him if he did not depart. He will not give me such an opening a second time.”

Justine swallowed and stared at me for a moment. Then she glanced down at the child in her arms. The child clung harder to her and seemed to lean somewhat away from me.

One must admire such acute instincts.

“You have drawn me into a conflict which has nothing to do with me,” I said quietly. “I suggest candor. Otherwise, I will have Mr. Hendricks and Ms. Gard show you to the door.”

“You can’t…,” she began, but her voice trailed off.

“I can,” I said. “I am not a humanitarian. When I offer charity it is for tax purposes.”

The room became silent. I was content with that. The child began to whimper quietly.

“I was delivering documents to the court of King Corb on behalf of my lady,” Justine said. She stroked the child’s hair absently. “It’s in the sea. There’s a gate there in Lake Michigan, not far from here.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You swam?”

“I was under the protection of their courier, going there,” Justine said. “It’s like walking in a bubble of air.” She hitched the child up a little higher on her hip. “Mag saw me. He drove the courier away as I was leaving and took me to his home. There were many other prisoners there.”

“Including the child,” I guessed. Though it probably didn’t sound that way.

Justine nodded. “I… arranged for several prisoners to flee Mag’s home. I took the child when I left. I swam out.”

“So you are, in effect, stolen property in possession of stolen property,” I said. “Novel.”

Gard and Hendricks came back into the office.

I looked at Hendricks. “My people?”

“Tulane’s got a broken arm,” he said. “Standing in that asshole’s way. He’s on the way to the doc.”

“Thank you. Ms. Gard?”

“Mag is off the property,” she said. “He didn’t go far. He’s summoning support now.”

“How much of a threat is he?” I asked. The question was legitimate. Gard and Hendricks had blindsided the inhuman while he was focused upon Justine and the child and while he wasted his leading magical strike against my protective circle. A head-on confrontation against a prepared foe could be a totally different proposition.

Gard tested the edge of her axe with her thumb and drew a smooth stone from her pocket. “Mag is a fomor sorcerer lord of the first rank. He’s deadly-and connected. The fomor could crush you without a serious loss of resources. Confrontation would be unwise.”

The stone made a steely, slithery sound as it glided over the axe’s blade.

“There seems little profit to be had, then,” I said. “It’s nothing personal, Justine. Merely business. I am obliged to return stolen property to signatory members of the Accords.”

Hendricks looked at me sharply. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I already knew the tone of whatever he would say. Are there no prisons, perhaps. Or, No man is an island, entire of itself. It tolls for thee. On and on.

Hendricks has no head for business.

Gard watched me, waiting.

“Sir,” Justine said, her tone measured and oddly formal. “May I speak?”

I nodded.

“She isn’t property,” Justine said, and her voice was low and intense, her eyes direct. “She was trapped in a den of living nightmares, and there was no one to come save her. She would have died there. And I am not letting anyone take her back to that hellhole. I will die first.” The young woman set her jaw. “She is not property, Mr. Marcone. She’s a child.”

I met Justine’s eyes for a long moment.

I glanced aside at Hendricks. He waited for my decision.

Gard watched me. As ever, Gard watched me.

I looked down at my hands, my fingertips resting together with my elbows propped on the desk.

Business came first. Always.

But I have rules.

I looked up at Justine.

“She’s a child,” I said quietly.

The air in the room snapped tight with tension.

“Ms. Gard,” I said, “please dismiss the contractors for the day, at pay. Then raise the defenses.”

She pocketed the whetstone and strode quickly out, her teeth showing, a bounce in her step.

“Mr. Hendricks, please scramble our troubleshooters. They’re to take positions across the street. Suppressed weapons only. I don’t need patrolmen stumbling around in this. Then ready the panic room.”

Hendricks nodded and got out his cell phone as he left. His huge, stubby fingers flew over its touchscreen as he sent the activation text message. Looking at him, one would not think him capable of such a thing. But that is Hendricks, generally.