Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 17

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Elaine's arms are cut up, but the worst injury is a deep stab wound in her upper back. The symbolism could not be much less subtle here - someone has been, or is about to be, betrayed, although for the life of me I can't actually remember who in this particular moment. I think it's that Elayne's injuries were, if not self-inflicted, at least taken on voluntarily (stabbing yourself in the back is a steep logistical challenge at the best of times) as part of a ploy to get Harry to go to Aurora's court - which was his next stop anyway (why didn't he bring Billy for that?) - or possibly just to get him to trust Aurora, but I'm not at all sure. Please let me know if I've said this before but I'm starting to think I should reread each book in its entirety before I start the analysis, so that the details of the plot are fresh enough in my mind to usefully discuss how they interact with things like symbolism and foreshadowing. We're also told that the stab wound is just inside Elaine's left clavicle, but if you get stabbed from behind high enough that the clavicle is the most useful skeletal reference point, you've been stabbed in the back, not the shoulder, so I think either Harry or Butcher got this wrong and we're meant to understand that she's been stabbed just inside her left scapula. 

Harry wants to take Elaine to the hospital, but she refuses, insisting that "they" will find her there, even if Harry is present to keep an eye on her. Instead she directs Harry to Aurora's court, currently accessible at the Rothchild hotel. So far as I can tell, no such hotel exists in real life. Listening to the audiobook, I initially thought it was the Rothschild hotel, and was a little concerned, because naming the base of operations of the human-looking-but-inhuman woman engaged in a conspiracy to destabilize a major global power structure after a Jewish family that is the subject of multiple antisemitic conspiracy theories several of which include the idea that they have forced the start of, or can control the outcome of, wars, would be uh, not great, especially in a series that already has to treat carefully because it is a core aspect of the premise that the lives of regular humans are routinely affected by the interplay of powerful forces and factions some of which are simply imperceptible to them but many of which have been deliberately concealed, and moreover, in which many real world political and ecological events or circumstances, including global warming, World War 2, and the general political and economic messiness of south and central America, are attributed to supernatural causes rather than the mundane ones that caused them in real life. I'm not sure how much omitting the 's' even matters here, especially since this chapter was sufficiently poorly edited for the clavicle/scapula issue described in the previous paragraph to make it through intact, so I was really hoping this was a real hotel that Butcher just picked because it matched the location or aesthetic he was after, but it's not and now here we are. I have absolutely no idea how much to read into this. Anyway, Harry does take her there, and when he has trouble figuring out which entrance will get him to the elevator "in the back" to which he was directed, Elidee, who has not forgotten that this was Harry's next stop anyway, emerges from his hair to direct him to the appropriate breezeway. 

Harry follows this unlit breezeway for longer than I suspect is entirely supported by the mundane physical reality of the building, carrying Elaine, who is probably starting to go into hypovolemic shock. It's almost completely dark, and he's on the point of setting Elaine down so he can get his amulet out to use as a light when the elevator opens right in front of him. As an aside, I feel like it would be in Harry's best interests to figure out a way to get light from his amulet that doesn't require an entire free hand, that seems like it should be possible. In any case, Aurora is in the elevator. We're not gonna find out she's Aurora for a while yet, but she is. She seems appropriately dismayed by Elaine's injuries, but assures Harry that the Lady will help her. Technically she says the Lady can see to her, which is gonna be mildly important in a minute. She also refers to Elaine as Ela, which could be a huge (unexplored) deal or could mean almost nothing. It's entirely possible that this is just supposed to establish that Elaine really does know these people, she has friends among them, spent time with them. On a writing level, making Harry deal with the fact that the Great Tragic Lost Love of His Life had an entire damn life of her own that had nothing to do with him, and that he knows nothing about, is a very solid choice even if that's all there is to it. But names can be Significant in faerie, in the supernatural world in general, and it's possible that we're meant to understand that Elaine never gave Summer even her whole first name, thereby significantly limiting their leverage over her, or at the other extreme that this is a Chihiro/Sen situation where they do have her Name and don't allow her to use it for herself. On the way up, Aurora realizes, or pretends to have just realized, that Harry is the Winter emissary. He explains that it's contract work, not any kind of permanent loyalty to them, but she doesn't seem convinced that this makes him safe or trustworthy. 

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The court of the Summer Lady presents itself as a small section of tropical rainforest. Harry specifically compares it to Borneo, but I don't know how specific that's meant to be. Borneo is a large island in the middle of Maritime Southeast Asia, southwest of the Philipines and northeast of Java and Sumatra, different parts of which belong to, in descending order of area, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, of which the lattermost exists only on the 2,226 square miles of Borneo it controls. (That's a bit smaller than Delaware). More significantly for our purposes, it sits almost directly on top of the equator, and home to some absolutely bonkers biodiversity, including 155 endemic species of Dipterocarpaceae, the largest tropical trees in the world, Rafflesia arnoldii, better known as the corpse flower, the reticulated python (longest snake in the world - if your elementary school class ever had a reptile guy come in and have the whole class hold a single Very Big Snake, it may have been one of these guys), the plain pygmy squirrel (tied for smallest squirrel in the world), and just, so many bat species. While it certainly wasn't the only viable choice, Borneo makes a very reasonable anchor point for our sense of what, physically and ecologically, Summer is about. I think that in its contrast this sort of diminishes Maeve, or at least her significance in Winter. There was no wind or snow in Maeve's court, no icy crystalline geometry, not much alive except people, but no marked absence of life either. No particular displays of the natural cycle of predator and prey, only some of its human-exclusive social abstractions, in sexual coercion and exploitative contracts, both of which are often described as predatory. There's not even much actual ice, outside of the Very Cold Water in the drinking glasses, which is a place humans also put ice, even if it takes a lot of effort or innovation to get it there. Not a lot of air and darkness in a well-lit underground ballroom. There are other physical and environmental aspects of winter as a season that don't really come up in the series, such that I'm not sure how much weight to give to their absence here - that sense of dormant potential in the seeds sleeping in the soil, the way freezing shreds the cells of most plants and animals, helping break dead things down into nutrients, the absolute silence of heavy snow. 

Harry follows Aurora through the forest to a clearing, where a variety of artists work, showcasing Summer's social and cultural aspect. Creation, collaboration, growth and healing. Here, I note, Maeve's court seems more closely matched with Aurora's. There's the cruelty and capriciousness, of course, but partying is very much within Winter's social sphere. So, to some extent, is sex. We don't see a lot of people drawing closer together against the dark and cold in Maeve's court, although I wouldn't say for certain that it's not happening - we don't see enough. The clearing also features marble statues, at least two of them of Lily, although Harry doesn't immediately catch this, a nice pond with benches and rocks to sit on, and of course Aurora's throne, shaped from the living wood of a gnarled tree. Harry immediately demands to know where Aurora is, and I'm inclined to give him a pass for not being polite here, on account of Elaine is actively bleeding to death in his arms. Korrick the centaur, who was working at a forge when Harry came in, is deeply offended that the Winter Emissary has come here. Which gives me some questions about what exactly an Emissary's job usually is in these situations. In this particular case, they're supposed to investigate and find evidence to support the conclusion that benefits their side (and it perhaps should have been a pretty big indicator that something was off that Elaine was tasked with proving Winter's involvement, rather than with finding the truth, or finding the mantle), but I don't know what they do when the issue isn't murder and theft, or even under precisely what circumstances they're a thing. But I don't know why the courts even bother choosing human emissaries if they're not to have greater freedom of movement, some amount of right to enter the other court's spaces so they can ask questions or deliver messages or whatever. Of course it's also possible that Korrick, specifically, is just a jerk who doesn't care if Harry can do his job, or is under orders from Aurora to perform these objections to slow things down and make everyone else (Aurora, Talos) look more reasonable in comparison. 

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Lord Talos overrides Korrick's objections, and has the pixies, who appear to just be around for this kind of
convenience in both courts, assemble a bed of leaves to put Elaine on, so Harry can finally set her down. Aurora and Talos try to convince Harry that Elaine will be fine for a while, and to sit down and have a snack, but he refuses until Talos does something to stabilize her. Since Aurora says he can "sustain" Elaine for a time, I think he's just feeding her some of his own strength, which is a little inelegant, as healing magic goes, but perfectly adequate to these purposes. Having been assured that someone is doing something about Elaine's condition, and granted safe passage under the Accords, Harry does accept the food Aurora offers him - a can of coke, a bag of potato chips, and a turkey sub. She says she hopes this is okay, and he says "marry me", which, Harry, are you perhaps very stupid? He thinks she's human at this point, but you do not, while standing in the actual, literal summer court, propose marriage to someone who is very clearly mixed up with the fae, unless you mean it and are prepared to live with the consequences, no matter how obvious it ought to be from context that you don't mean it seriously. As it happens, there don't seem to be any consequences from this, but I'm not at all sure that would have been the case if Aurora had survived past the end of the book. Anyway, Aurora asks what happened, and why Harry brought Elaine here rather than, I guess, leaving her to die, given that she's working for Summer and Harry's working for Winter, and he reiterates that this doesn't really put him on Winter's side. He asks if the clay bust she's working on is Lily, and she says it is, and points him to the two marble statues of her, one of which, of course, is the real Lily, holding the Summer Knight's mantle and turned to stone. He fills her in on Lily being missing, and asks if Aurora has any idea where she might be. Aurora once again (that's three times now, which is probably significant) expresses surprise that Harry would do something nice or helpful for an affiliate of Summer, this time explaining that Mab's other mortal agents are colder, crueler, and hungrier. Harry suggests that Mab wanted him because he has experience in murder investigations, and then his blood sugar hits the point where his brain starts working again and he realizes Aurora is, y'know, Aurora. She drops the glamour, making her nearly identical to Maeve, except that he hair is straight and not dyed, and Harry asks if she's going to stop being weird and help Elaine. She says, reluctantly, because she's stalling, that that depends on Harry. When pressed, she tells him that since she doesn't know why Mab chose Harry, she can't be sure his bringing Elaine to her for help, and her providing it, doesn't somehow serve Mab's ends, if only by making her expend power she'll need for something else. Harry says he's not trying to undermine anyone, he just wants help fro Elaine, to which Aurora replies that she believe him, but she doesn't trust him. Now, the most rational response to this would be "So what?" If she believes that his intentions in this situation are sincere, then whether she helps Elaine or not should be based on her best guess about whether and how someone else might be using Harry's good intentions to sabotage her, not on whether she trusts Harry. Unfortunately, normal, prosocial behavior, the kind we engage in when we're trying to be nice, or polite, or get something from someone, or just not be a jerk, generally discourages entirely rejecting the premise or relevance of what one's interlocutor said, so instead he asks "Why not?" She pulls out a lot of nonsense about how he, y'know, has a job, basically, and has occasionally made iffy decisions in order to not fucking die, all of which serves its only real purpose in leading up to pointing out that he's killed people, because her real aim here is to bring his painful emotions closer to the surface, make him easier to manipulate. Having thus put a stop to his objections, she circles back a little to his having made a deal with Lea, telling him that he was always meant to be a "destroyer", and that Lea taught him that the strong conquer and the weak are conquered, a philosophy which, I feel I must point out, Harry consciously and explicitly rejects at the end of the first book, not that he really seems to have subscribed to it in the first place. I mean, it's true up to a point - the strong do tend to conquer and the weak do tend to get conquered, that's a thing that happens, but that doesn't mean it's good or inevitable or even natural, and I note that even Aurora doesn't quite come out and accuse Harry of thinking that it is, because then he might notice that she's basically writing fanfiction about him. He says if she's not going to help he's taking Elaine to the hospital. She waffles some more, and but says she's already made up her mind, and what remains is for him to make up his. Harry once again asks for clarification rather than, y'know, noticing that she's fucking with him, which is understandable because her entire aim in this conversation so far as been to upset him enough that he doesn't realize he's being fucked with. 

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She says that Elaine's not the person most seriously hurt here, that it's Harry, who's been walking around with all this trauma and emotional pain, which apparently puts him at risk for turning evil. This might even be true, up to a point. I mean, it's definitely true that Harry generally doesn't notice how much physical and emotional pain he's in. It certainly does, as she says, make him vulnerable to "temptations that would normally be unthinkable", like the wolf belt in Fool Moon, and the vampire venom in Grave Peril. Based on Lara, Aurora herself, and at least one other person I think, it also means he's basically walking around wearing a sign that says "this guy is seriously hurting and will basically turn into a puddle for anyone who can offer him some respite", which is gonna make him a target for those in a position to offer those otherwise unthinkable temptations. Y'know, like Aurora is doing right now. Aurora asks him to let her "help" him, he asks how, and that's apparently all the permission she needs to do something that breaks all the internal barriers he has up against painful emotions he hasn't had time to deal with, and brings them right up to the surface, so painfully intense he actually gets some synesthesia about it, although for all I know that's a normal side effect of this spell or whatever it was. Maybe this is something the Summer fae do for artists to help them visualize their emotions so they can paint or draw them. This is followed by a sensation of warmth and relaxation, and I don't know if that's the natural endorphin rush following that kind of pain, or another thing this spell is meant to do. Aurora would certainly like Harry to think that it's the relief of having actually felt his feelings rather than suppressing them, but the way it all starts coming back after makes me think this is probably not the case. Whatever it is, he actually loses consciousness for a while, and wakes up with his head in Aurora's lap. 

Basically as soon as he's awake, Aurora tries to convince him to abandon his efforts to solve the case, and stay with her so she can keep doing that to him. Harry, reluctantly, refuses - he hasn't actually told her that his life is on the line if he doesn't do what Mab wants, and I'd be interested to know how her approach might have differed if he had. She might have been able to offer to secure the parts of the Ways controlled by Summer for the White Council, if Harry dropped the case, and that might have satisfied them, and certainly Harry would have at least looked into it, slowing down his progress on the actual investigation. But she may not have the authority to do that. In any case, Harry tells her he can't accept her offer, that he has a job to do. Aurora finally agrees, in so many words, to help Elaine, but first she explains to him that if the mantle isn't returned, Summer has to go to war against Winter, and they have to do it now, before the solistice, while the seasonal balance of power gives them enough of an upper hand to maybe win without their Knight. I cannot for the life of me figure out why she explained this to him. First of all, he didn't know his exact deadline before, and could have missed it without noticing if she hadn't pointed it out. Second, she makes it pretty clear, although Harry doesn't realize it right away, that this probably was not Winter's doing, because if they had just waited a couple of days, Summer wouldn't have been strong enough to retaliate, and they could have, should they have been so inclined, just hung out until December and then absolutely crushed Summer. She asks Harry to promise to do whatever he can to stop Winter, which I'm not really sure what she thinks she's getting out of that either. He says he can't make that promise, but will find the killer and sort things out, before the summer solstice. 

So here we are. I'm still only getting posts done about half as fast as I need to to really stay on track, but progress is progress and all that. Remember that if you want to see more of this blog, the easiest thing you can do is support me on Patreon (there's a button up top), although commenting, directly on posts or on Facebook when I share them, would probably also help. Until next time, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!