JIM BUTCHER: SMALL FAVOR

There were four Wardens in the little living room, all of them grizzled veterans, two young members in the kitchen, and I was sure that there were at least two more outside, standing watch behind veils. I was challenged for a password in an amused tone by one of the young Wardens when I came in the kitchen door. I told him to do something impolite, please, and asked him where Luccio might be.

“That’s anatomically unlikely,” the young man replied in a British accent. He poured a second cup of steaming tea and said, “Drink up. I’ll let her know you’re here.”

“Thanks.”

I was sipping tea and sitting at Murphy’s table when Luccio came in a few minutes later. “Give us the room, please, Chandler, Kostikos.”

The younger men cleared out to the living room-a polite illusion, really. The house was too small to provide much in the way of privacy.

Luccio poured herself a cup of tea and sat down across from me.

I felt my shoulders tense up a little. I forced myself to remain quiet, and sipped more tea.

“I’m concerned,” Luccio said quietly, “about the Archive.”

“Her name is Ivy,” I said.

She frowned. “That’s…part of my concern, Harry. Your personal closeness with her. It’s dangerous.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Dangerous? I’m in danger because I’m treating her like a real person?”

Luccio grimaced as if tasting something bitter. “Frankly? Yes.”

I thought about being diplomatic and polite. Honest, I really did. But while I was thinking about it, I accidentally bumped the button that puts my mouth on autopilot, because it said, “That’s a load of crap, Captain, and you know it.”

Her expression went still as the whole of her attention focused on me. “Is it?”

“Yes. She’s a kid. She’s alone. She’s not some computer database, and it’s inhuman to treat her like one.”

“Yes,” Luccio said bluntly. “It is. And it’s also the safest way to deal with her.”

“Safest for who?” I demanded.

Luccio took a sip of tea. “For everyone.”

I frowned down at my cup. “Tell me.”

She nodded. “The Archive…has been around for a long time. Always passed down in a family line, mother to daughter. Usually the Archive is inherited by a woman when she’s in her early to mid-thirties, when her mother dies, and after she’s given birth to her own daughter. Accidents are rare. Part of the Archive’s nature is a drive to protect itself, a need to avoid exposing the person hosting it to risk. And given the extensive knowledge available to it, the Archive is very good at avoiding risky situations in the first place. And, should they arise, the power available to the Archive generally ensures its survival. It is extremely rare for the host of an Archive to die young.”

I grunted. “Go on.”

“When the Archive is passed…Harry, try to imagine living your life, with all of its triumphs and tragedies-and suddenly you find yourself with a second set of memories, every bit as real to you as your own. A second set of heartaches, loves, triumphs, losses. All of them just as real-and then a third. And a fourth. And a fifth. And more and more and more. The perfect memory, the absolute recall of every Archive that came before you. Five thousand years of them.”

I blinked at that. “Hell’s bells. That would…”

“Drive one insane,” Luccio said. “Yes. And it generally does. There is a reason that the historical record for many soothsayers and oracles presents them as being madwomen. The Pythia, and many, many others, were simply the Archive, using her vast knowledge of the past to build models to predict the most probable future. She was a madwoman-but she was also the Archive.

“As a defense, the Archives began to distance themselves from other human beings, emotionally. They reasoned that if they could stop adding the weight of continuing lifetimes of experience and grief to the already immense burden of carrying so much knowledge, it might better enable them to function. And it did. The Archive keeps its host emotionally remote for a reason-because otherwise the passions and prejudices and hatreds and jealousies of thousands of lifetimes have the potential to distill themselves into a single being.

“Normally, an Archive would have her own lifetime of experience to insulate her against all these other emotions and memories, a baseline to contrast against them.”

I suddenly got it. “But Ivy doesn’t.”

“Ivy doesn’t,” Luccio agreed. “Her grandmother was killed in a freak accident, an automobile crash, I believe. Her mother was a seventeen-year-old girl who was in love, and pregnant. She hated her mother for dying and cursing her to carry the Archive when she wanted to have her own life-and she hated the child for having a lifetime of freedom ahead of her. Ivy’s mother killed herself rather than carry the Archive.”

I started feeling a little sick. “And Ivy knows it.”

“She does. Knows it, feels it. She was born knowing exactly what her mother thought and felt about her.”

“How could you know this about her…” I frowned, thinking. Then said, “Kincaid. The girl was in love with Kincaid.”

“No,” Luccio said. “But Kincaid was working for Ivy’s grandmother at the time, and the girl confided in him.”

“Man, that’s screwed up,” I said.

“Ivy has remained distant her whole life,” Luccio said. “If she begins to involve her own emotions in her duties as the Archive, or in her life generally, she runs the serious risk of being overwhelmed with emotions and passions which she simply is not-and cannot be-psychologically equipped to handle.”

“You’re afraid that she could go out of control.”

“The Archive was created to be a neutral force. A repository of knowledge. But what if Ivy’s unique circumstance allowed her to ignore those limitations? Imagine the results of the anger and bitterness and desire for revenge of all those lifetimes, combined with the power of the Archive and the restraint of a twelve-year-old child.”

“I’d rather not,” I said quietly.

“Nor would I,” Luccio said. “That could be a true nightmare. All that knowledge, without conscience to direct it. The necromancer Kemmler had such a spirit in his service, a sort of miniature version of the Archive. Nowhere near as powerful, but it had been studying and learning beside wizards for generations, and the things it was capable of were appalling.” She shook her head.

I took a sip of tea, because otherwise the gulp would have been suspicious. She was talking about Bob. And she was right about what Bob was capable of doing. When I’d unlocked the personality he’d taken on under some of his former owners, he’d nearly killed me.

“The Wardens destroyed it, of course,” she said.

No, they hadn’t. Justin DuMorne, former Warden, hadn’t destroyed the skull. He’d smuggled it from Kemmler’s lab and kept it in his own-until I’d burned him to death, and taken it from him in turn.

“It was just too much power under too little restraint. And it’s entirely possible that the Archive could become a similar threat on a far larger scale. I know you care about the child, Harry. But you had to be warned. You might not be doing her any favors by acting like her friend.”

“Who’s acting?” I said. “Where is she?”

“We’ve been keeping her asleep,” Luccio said, “until you or Kincaid got here.”

“I get it,” I said. “You don’t think I should get close to her. Unless you’re worried about what’s going to happen when you wake her up and she’s really scared and confused.”

Luccio’s cheeks flushed and she looked away. “I don’t have all the answers, Dresden. I just have concerns.”