JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

I scowled after him for a minute and muttered darkly under my breath.

“You confused him,” Sanya rumbled.

I glanced at the dark-skinned Knight. “What?”

“You confused him,” Sanya repeated. “Because of what you did.”

“What? Lying to the Council? I don’t see that I had much choice.”

“But you did,” Sanya said placidly. He reached into the gym bag on the floor next to him and drew out a long saber, an old cavalry weapon- Esperacchius . A nail worked into the hilt declared it a brother of Michael’s sword. He started inspecting the blade. “You could have simply moved to attack them.”

“By myself? I’m bad, but I’m not that bad.”

“He’s your friend. He would have come with you. You know that.”

I shook my head. “He’s my friend. Period. You don’t do that to your friends.”

“Precisely,” Sanya said. “So instead you have placed your own life in jeopardy in order to protect his beliefs. You risk your body to preserve his heart.” He brought out a smooth sharpening stone and began stropping the saber’s blade. “I suppose he considers it a particularly messianic act.”

“That’s not why I did it,” I said.

“Of course it isn’t. He knows that. It isn’t easy for him. Usually he’s the one protecting another, willing to pay the price if he must.”

I exhaled and glanced after Michael. “I don’t know what else I could have done.”

“ Da ,” Sanya agreed. “But he is still afraid for you.” He fell quiet for a moment, while his stone slid along the sword’s blade.

“Mind if I ask you something?” I said.

The big man kept sharpening the sword with a steady hand. “Not at all.”

“You looked a little tense when Tessa’s name came up,” I said.

Sanya glanced up at me for a second, his eyes shadowed and unreadable. He shrugged a shoulder and went back to his work.

“She do you wrong?”

“Barely ever noticed me. Or spoke to me,” Sanya said. “To her I was just an employee. One more face. She did not care who I was.”

“This second of hers, though. The one who recruited you.”

The muscles along his jawline twitched. “Her name is Rosanna.”

“And she done you wrong,” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

“’Cause when you talk about her, your face says that you been done wrong.”

He gave me a brief smile. “Do you know how many black men live in Russia, Dresden?”

“No. I mean, I figure they’re kind of a minority.”

Sanya stopped in midstrop and glanced at me for a pregnant moment, one eyebrow arched. “Yes,” he said, his tone dry. “Kind of.”

“More so than in the States, I guess.”

He grunted. “For Moscow I was very, very odd. If I went out to any smaller towns when I was growing up, I had to be careful about walking down busy streets. I could cause car accidents when drivers took their eyes off the road to stare at me. Literally. Many people in that part of the world had never seen a black person with their own eyes. That is changing slowly, but growing up I was a minority the way Bigfoot is a minority. A freak.”

I started putting things together. “That’s the kind of thing that is bound to make a young man a little resentful.”

He went back to sharpening the sword. “Oh, yes.”

“So when you say that Tessa prefers to take recruits she knows will be eager to accept a coin…”

“I speak from experience,” Sanya said, nodding. “Rosanna was everything that angry, poor, desperate young man could dream of. Pretty. Strong. Sensual. And she truly did not care about the color of my skin.” Sanya shook his head. “I was sixteen.”

I winced. “Yeah. Good age for making really bad decisions. I speak from experience, too.”

“She offered me the coin,” Sanya said. “I took it. And for five years the creature known as Magog and I traveled the world with Rosanna, indulged in every vice a young man could possibly imagine, and…obeyed Tessa’s commands.” He shook his head and glanced up at me. “By the end of that time, Dresden, I wasn’t much more than a beast who walked upright. Oh, I had thoughts and feelings, but they were all slaves to my baser desires. I did many things of which I am not-” He broke off and turned his face away from me. “I did many things.”

“She was your handler,” I said quietly. “Rosanna. She was the one getting you to try the drugs, to do the deeds. One little step at a time. Corrupting you and letting the Fallen take control.”

He nodded. “And the whole time I never even suspected it. I thought that she cared about me as much as I cared about her.” He smiled faintly. “Mind you, I never claimed to be of any particular intelligence.”

“Who got you out?” I asked him. “Shiro?”

“In a way,” Sanya said. “Shiro had just driven Tessa from one of her projects in…Antwerp, I believe. She came storming into Rosanna’s apartment in Venice, furious. She and Rosanna had an argument I never completely understood-but instead of leaving when I was told to do so, I stayed to listen. I heard what Rosanna truly felt about me, heard her report about me to Tessa. And I finally understood what an idiot I’d been. I dropped the coin into a canal and never looked back.”

I blinked at him. “That must have been difficult.”

“My entire life has been one of a snowball in Hell,” Sanya said cheerfully. “Though the metaphor is perhaps inverted. At the time I judged the action to be tantamount to suicide, since Tessa was certain to track me down and kill me-but Shiro had followed her to Venice, and he found me instead. Michael-not the Chicago Michael, the other one-met us at Malta and brought Esperacchius , here, with him, offering me the chance to work against some of the evil I’d helped to create. From there I have been Knighting. Is good work. Plenty of travel, interesting people, always a new challenge.”

I shook my head and laughed. “That’s putting a positive spin on it.”

“I am making a difference,” Sanya said with simple and rock-solid conviction. “And you, Dresden? Have you considered taking up Fidelacchius ? Joining us?”

“No,” I said quietly.

“Why not?” Sanya asked, his tone reasonable. “You know for what we fight. You know the good we do for others. Your cause runs a close parallel to ours: to protect those who cannot protect themselves; to pit yourself against the forces of violence and death when they arise.”

“I’m not really into the whole God thing,” I said.

“And I am an agnostic,” Sanya responded.

I snorted. “Hell’s bells. Tell me you aren’t still clinging to that. You carry a holy blade and hang out with angels.”

“The blade has power, true. The beings allied with that power are…somewhat angelic. But I have met many strange and mighty things since I took up the sword. If one called them ‘aliens’ instead of ‘angels,’ it would only mean that I was working in concert with powerful beings-not necessarily the literal forces of Heaven, or a literal Creator.” Sanya grinned. “A philosophical fine point, true, but I am not prepared to abandon it. What we do is worthy, without ever bringing questions of faith, religion, or God into the discussion.”

“Can’t argue with that,” I admitted.

“So tell me,” Sanya said, “why have you not considered taking up the sword?”

I thought about it for a second and said, “Because it isn’t for me. And Shiro said I would know who to give it to.”

Sanya shrugged and nodded his head in acquiescence. “Reason enough.” He sighed. “We could use Fidelacchius ’s power in this conflict. I wish Shiro were with us now.”

“Good man,” I agreed quietly. “He was a king, you know.”