Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 29

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Harry reflects on the various types of fear a person can experience. These are associated with metals in a
vaguely alchemical way, albeit from the perspective of someone who thinks "alchemy" is a fancy word for potion making and has never seriously studied the art. The galvanizing fear that spurs you to action is silver, the fear that builds up in you at night, when you're alone and made the mistake of trusting how you feel about your life after 9 p.m. is leaden, and the fear Harry's currently experiencing, tight, anticipatory, unbearable, is coppery. Usually, when Harry is scared, the next thing that happens is he gets angry, but that's..not happening here. Maybe it's the missing chunk of his soul, maybe the situation is just to damn spooky, but anger has failed to materialize. He does, however, have a sword cane, which he characterizes as "real steel" rather than the kind that comes from men's magazine, a rather puzzling claim since I'm nearly certain those are made of steel too. Like, I know he means it's sharp, sturdy, and properly weighted so that it's actually usable as a weapon, but "real steel" and "made in the late Victorian Era" don't actually convey that. They probably had shoddily made, largely decorative, sword canes in 1889 too. Since anger has failed him, he looks to reason next. He's got a whole thing here about fear coming from ignorance and reason being how we reach knowledge. But there's also the much less abstract thing where engaging your think brain will tend to make the panicky lizard calm down and shut up. 

So he starts going through the facts of the case. Someone, presumably Mavra since it's her magic on the barbed wire spells, got the ghosts stirred up, which made the barrier go wibbly and let the Nightmare through. The Nightmare has it out for Harry, Michael, and the people they're close to. The Nightmare didn't come after them once the sun came down. Also they're surrounded by monsters. This is when we get Harry's second Plan Realization. He thinks Bianca is pulling a Vlad Tepesh - invite all her personal enemies over for a party and then kill. He specifically claims that Vlad burned the building down, but I have not been able to find any sources confirming that Vlad Dracula ever did any such thing, although with the state of search engines these days, it's possible I missed something. Certainly I have heard the "Invited his enemies for dinner and then burned the building down" story attributed to more than one historical figure over the years, and certainly, Vlad Tepesh is said to have killed (more precisely, impaled) over 200 of the boyars of Tîrgovişte following an Easter celebration at Poenari in1457, shortly after he took the throne of Wallachia for the second time (of three - Dracula sensationalism notwithstanding, this guy's history is legitimately kinda wild), and in 1462, the harbor town (now a small city) of Brǎila was burned to the ground by Mehmed the Conqueror, following a series of frustrating defeats against Vlad. Like, "invite all your personal enemies over for dinner and then burn the building down" sounds not only like something Vlad the Impaler would have done, but like something any number of his contemporaries would have done, I just can't confirm that any of them actually did. Nor can I confirm that either Dresden's conception of Bianca's plan or her actual plan were informed by the "Red Wedding" portrayed in George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords, as it came out some 10 months before Grave Peril, putting any influence of the former on the latter in the awkward zone of "Possible if Jim Butcher really liked it and his publishers were willing to accept revisions, plausible if he had an advance review copy and got the book early". 

Harry explains his theory to Michael and Susan, and of necessity to Thomas and Justine since they're also standing there. He also clarifies that Bianca would have to get him to break the rules of hospitality first, just killing everyone here, or even everyone she dislikes, would open her up to retribution from every enemy faction she involved, and the mistrust of every ally she has, which means she probably has a plan for forcing them to do that, and their best bet is obviously to get out of there before she can put it into action. Unfortunately, the only exit not blocked by Red Court vampires is instead blocked by Mavra. Michael thinks that without the Sword, he can take two, maybe three of them on himself - enough to possibly get Harry and Susan out, but not to get himself out with them. He's...disturbingly enthusiastic about this idea, and claims it's his job to protect people from things like the Red Court. Which may be true in broad terms, but it is not his job to protect people from the consequences of their own stupid decisions, on account of that whole Free Will thing. Justine, who's a regular human and has neither much choice in where she goes nor much idea what's going on around her most of the time, might be covered by his mandate, and it's actually possible that Thomas, who was sent here by his father, would be as well, but Harry and Susan both came to this thing voluntarily, in full knowledge of the danger involved. But of course that's not really the point. What Michael's actually expressing here is suicidal ideation. He lost the Sword, and while that was obviously Harry's fault, Michael doesn't see it that way. His wife and newborn son are in serious medical danger, and the doctors think he abuses Charity. He hasn't gotten much sleep the past couple days. He's probably getting a cold, with the amount of running around in the wet he did night before last. (I think it was night before last). So yeah, dying righteously to protect other people probably sounds pretty good right about now. Harry picks up on this pretty much immediately, but because he and Michael are both cisgender men, rather than saying something like "Are you doing okay?" he calls Michael's plan stupid and tells him to "ease off the martyr throttle".

Further planning is interrupted by Bianca's announcement that it's time to distribute gifts to the guests. She
also namedrops the Lords of Outer Night in the closing of her speech, the first time they've been referenced. The first one called up is Ferrovax, to whom she gives a small cask of gold. At least, I assume it's gold, since he's a dragon - technically all we're told is that it's "something that sparkled and shone".

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When they bow to each other before he leaves the dias, she dips her head a fraction lower than his, which is interesting, although I have no real idea what to make of it. Thomas is next up, and asks Harry to stand with Justine while he's talking to Bianca. Justine takes the opportunity to tell Harry that the Red Court hate Thomas, and Lord Raith was the one invited, but sent Thomas, lowest and least regarded of the White Court, as an insult. She characterizes Thomas as Lord Raith's "bastard", which is technically true - he and Maggie were never married - but doesn't really get at the relevant issues. So either Justine doesn't have the whole picture, she's deliberately simplifying to avoid having to explain the whole messy situation in the limited time they have to talk, or Jim Butcher's ideas about how the Raith household works aren't fully cooked yet. Apparently Bianca wanted Justine to be hers, presumably as an employee of the Velvet Room, but Thomas got her first, which also creates personal animosity between him and Bianca. Justine sort of implies that she blames herself for this, or at least lets Harry think that. He makes gestures in the direction of trying to rescue her from Thomas, but she shuts that down and asks instead that he take them with him when they make their escape. And if he doesn't agree to that, she'll try to get on Bianca's good side by telling her that Harry is planning to escape, and that she heard him talking about killing her, although the latter is not true. She also points out that if she and Thomas don't make it out, Bianca will almost certainly capture her and force her to do sex work. Harry says he won't let that happen to her, but that he's not willing to help Thomas, and asks why she cares, given that he's not human and is literally eating her life force. She points out that he's also a person and hasn't done anything to hurt Harry. He agrees, because he basically has no choice, it's the right thing to do, and also Justine smells nice. Thomas returns with a single one-way ticket to Hawaii and the deed to a condo there. When Harry informs him that they're all going to escape together, he apologizes and says he asked Justine not to get Harry involved. 

And then it's Harry's turn.  Nearly the first thing he does, once they're close enough to talk, is ask Bianca how she plans to kill him. Bianca instead explains why she's going to kill him, presenting an extremely skewed version of events in which Dresden provoked her, extracted her cooperation through threats, and drove her into the frenzied state in which she killed Paula. (Who is, notably, in this scene and this scene only, actually called Paula, despite being referred to as Rachel both before and after this point). What actually happened was that she attacked Dresden in the first 90 seconds of their conversation, taking his saying he wanted to talk about Jennifer Stanton as the final proof that, as she already suspected, he killed her. He only threatened her in response to her threatening him, and only laid out the consequences of her killing him - he didn't coerce her giving him the information he wanted. And what provoked her bloodlust was the bleeding from a scratch she gave him in that initial attack. She also tries to blame him for the destruction she's about to cause, because her desire for revenge was what motivated her to amass the power and allies necessary to carry out her Evil Plan. He lays out what he currently thinks that is, and she says if that's what he thinks happened, he's in for an unpleasant surprise. Then she shows him the headstone. Here lies Harry Dresden. He died doing the right thing. She says it comes with a plot in Graceland "near to dear little Inez". The wording there makes it sound like she's not just giving him a sense of the location, but I genuinely have no idea what she's talking about. It's either implied or established in Ghost Story that Mab was using Inez as an avatar to communicate with Harry while he's ghosty and she's busy, but I don't think we ever get a clear picture of who, or what, Inez is when she's not being used by Mab that way, much less what significance Bianca might attach to putting Harry, or his remains, in close proximity to her. Harry tries to do like Mavra just did to him, challenging Bianca to make the first move. She refuses, naturally, but makes it clear that when Harry does do something to break hospitality, she's not just going to kill him, she's going to kill Thomas, Justine, Michael, and Susan too. This also includes, and I cannot stress this enough, the third explanation of the rules of hospitality in this chapter. Gonna assume this was an issue of things being written or edited out of order. It's a small thing, but she calls him Harry here; he says not to, only his friends call him Harry, and she accepts the correction, addressing him as Mister Dresden immediately afterwards. I wouldn't call it out at all, except that it sits in notable contrast to the other times he's done the "My friends call me Harry" thing. Marcone accepted it, but made a show of it, almost condescendingly - he was making a point of being polite, showing that he can be reasonable, that he wants to work with Harry. Nicodemus engages with the implicit power play more directly, insisting that if he's going to call Harry "Dresden", Harry should call him "Archleone". Bianca...just accepts it. Apparently without thinking, since if she'd considered it even a little, I don't think she'd have made the concession just like that. This is not inexplicable - she's extremely new to having the kind of power necessary to challenge Harry, and she showed deference to Ferrovax as well, but that's kind of the thing - we're being shown a character in transition, in the middle of an active, perceptible character arc. And that's not usually something you do with a character you're going to kill this book unless you're trying to make them sympathetic.

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Michael asks Harry how it went, but Harry waves him off so he can think, try to figure out what exactly Bianca is going to do. Lea goes up, and receives what we later learn was the cursed dagger, although all we learn here is that it's something in a small, black case. Being fae, Lea must give a gift of equal value in return, and she gives Bianca Amoracchius. Everyone takes a second to appreciate it, and then Bianca calls Mavra to the dias. It's at this point that Harry figures out what Bianca was planning, but we get to see it play out as Bianca offer Mavra the sword, and Lydia, cleaned up since the last time Harry saw her, but drugged and restrained. At which point Michael also figures it out. Right here, right now, under these circumstances, the sword can be unmade, if Mavra uses it to kill an innocent. At some point I would like please to see the definition of "innocent" used by the forces that govern these things, given that Lydia has, among other things, voluntarily consorted with demons, or at least with Kravos, but if it just counts anyone under 21 as innocent by default regardless of anything they've done, that would be pretty fair. Now, unmaking one of the Swords is not, in all cases, an irreversible proposition, and Michael might know that, given that he wasn't terribly surprised by what happened with Fidelaccius. On the other hand, that's the sword of faith, and might be subject to different rules, and also, as we learn in I think Proven Guilty, the other two Swords have been reforged at some point in the past, maybe more than once, but Amoracchius hasn't, and that might matter. So might standing by and letting it happen, as compared to its being unmade by accident in a moment of passion. I think I brought this up a few chapters back, but how the hell was this orchestrated? Lea doesn't voluntarily work with the Red Court, any more than like, Nicodemus would. She stands to gain nothing, that I can see, from helping force Harry into this situation. Bianca must have known Lea was planning to give her the sword, but it also can't have been her original idea, because she invited Harry before Lea even got it. I guess she was hoping that just trying to kill Lydia would be enough to force Dresden to act? That's...a substantially weaker plan, not least because Mavra, who has no personal beef with Harry, wouldn't necessarily have been inclined to kill her right then and there if not for the opportunity it offered. She would have done it to force Michael's involvement, maybe, but neither she nor Bianca had any way of knowing Harry would bring him, and other parts of this plan seem to have been contingent on Susan's attendance. And yeah, okay, there's some solid evidence for Susan having been magically compelled to sneak into the party, and with Murphy taken off the board almost first thing, it's unlikely that Harry would have brought anyone other than Michael. But how on earth did they plan on getting the sword? There's no way Lea was in on the initial planning here.

Michael says they have to stop her. Thomas says it's one girl's life, and the sword, balanced against all of them. Harry takes perhaps 1.5 whole seconds to think about it, long enough for Michael get his knives out and prepare to go in alone, before he pulls the blade out of his sword cane. Thomas, who absolutely doesn't want to be here, draws his sword as well. Given that Harry's own description of his ability with a sword is that "among people who know more than nothing, I don't rate well", and that Thomas, while supernaturally strong and agile, is also scrupulously effort averse and probably hasn't gotten in a lot of practice, making Michael by far the most accomplished swordsman among the three of them, I feel like someone should maybe...trade weapons with him? Although I'm still kinda uncertain why he didn't bring one of his nonmagical backup broadswords. Were they all in the van, and he didn't feel like going back to the grocery store parking lot to grab one? Anyway, they form up and get ready to fight just a truly unreasonable amount of vampires. 

I'll try to be a little faster on the next post, I promise. Among other things, we're closer than it looks to the end of the "year" as I measure these things on my spreadsheet, and I'll have to pick up the pace if I don't want to end up even more behind than I did last year. Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!