Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 27

Photo by Sergey M. Sazhin on Wikimedia Commons

Harry regains consciousness, stripped of all his magical gear except the pentacle, in a circle anchored to a ring of toadstools. He's able to stand, but makes no effort to physically escape. Outside the ring stand Aurora, Elaine, "Grum", the "unicorn", and Lloyd slate. Aurora is wearing an ankle-length, long-sleeved mail dress, which I would normally criticize as impractical, even if the fairy metal is light enough to make it wearable, but given that she's very literally a fairy princess, I suspect the look, the cool factor, actually contributes to this ridiculous garment's protective function, and may even make her better at killing stuff with a sword. Actually it occurs to me this might be part of why Emissaries are expected to participate in battles between the courts. You need a few humans around to perceive everyone's ridiculous Rule of Cool aesthetics, or they might not work right. 

Aurora starts making noises about how she regrets this, but Harry stood a real chance of stopping her, so now that he's served his purpose (getting the Unraveling, which was also taken while Harry was unconscious), she has to kill him. Harry asks why they haven't killed him already, and Slate says he agrees, that he would have preferred to just cut Harry's throat after Grum knocked him out. Harry asks why they're still calling him Grum, and prompts both Lord Marshal Talos and Korrick the centaur. They're both armed and armored similarly to Aurora, although Talos's armor is black, and I would really like a more detailed description of Korrick's kit since he's not on the standard human body plan. Aurora starts trying to question him, find out how much he knows, how long he's known it, and whether he told anyone, but he tells her to fuck off, and Elaine confirms that he's unlikely to comply when he knows Aurora's gonna kill him. Aurora says she's sorry that Harry "pushed her to this", which is just fucked, honestly, and then does a little mind control to make him start talking. He lays out the events to date, and her plan going forward, as he understands them, which I will not reiterate in its entirety, but there are a couple of things worth talking about in particular here. 

Elaine was the one to take Slate into Reuel's building, so that's our final confirmation that she's Mrs. Stapleton. The wet stuff on Reuel's sleeve was apparently water formed when Summer fire met Winter. This makes sense, based on things we see in like, Cold Days, but at this point it has not been established that the Knights can throw around ice and fire that way. I mean, Reuel might have been a wizard (it depends on which word Slate emphasized back in chapter 15), but Slate certainly isn't. This is an understandable oversight - this book has a lot of new information to introduce, and that information has to be structured so as not to give away anything too early, and that's hard, but even if we weren't gonna learn it ahead of time, it should have been explained here. Aurora wasn't the one who sent the Tigress against Harry, which is mildly interesting inasmuch as it's the only thing Harry's wrong about, and also that she claims she "doesn't hire killers", which given that she's working with Slate, I suppose depends a lot on your definition of "hire", and a little on your definition of "killer". As far as I know, she's not paying Slate in money, and he's not like, strictly an assassin. I mean he very much is an assassin, but the Winter Knight has other responsibilities too - the Tigress doesn't. Aurora did help Elaine fake her injuries, so I'm glad I remembered that right. But the attack at the Walmart doesn't add up for me. Harry asserts, and Aurora confirms, that she was waiting for him to come out of the Mothers' cottage, because she needs the Unraveling to de-statue Lily. Now, if this was the plan all along, it was already sort of shaky, because there were a lot of places where she had to guess just exactly right what Harry would do, and be confident he'd succeed in doing it, if she wanted him to get the Unraveling for her, and all she'd have had to go on is what Elaine can tell her, which is, y'know, ten years out of date. But there are two other problems here. First, I'm pretty sure she could have accomplished the same thing with a lot more certainty by saying "Oh, Harry, it's so terrible, someone has turned Lily to stone, won't you go and get an Unraveling for me?" and Elaine should have been able to tell her that. Second, if the idea was to get him to get the Unraveling, what did she stand to gain by the attack at the Walmart? I mean, given what comes next, it's possible Elaine knew the attack would fail, or helped arrange for us to fail, and felt this was a stronger position from which to suggest maneuvering Harry into getting the Unraveling for them before getting him out of the way. That's a guess, though, and I don't think it's ever really explained. 

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

Harry ends his recounting of Aurora's plan by saying he doesn't know why she's doing it, so she explains about ending the conflict between the courts by giving the Summer Knight's mantle to Winter, permanently disrupting the balance. She seems very sure that this needs to happen, and is not at all receptive to reason. She asks if Harry told the White Council. Harry responds impolitely, but Elaine steps in and tells her that he hasn't, that he told her they didn't understand. To the highly observant reader, this is a solid clue that Elaine's loyalties may not entirely be with Aurora, because I just went back and checked their conversation in Chapter 25, and while this could be referring to Harry's conversation with Morgan, he didn't tell her about that. Elaine is straight up lying here. Which is a risky thing to do with a Faerie Queen who can compel answers out of you. Harry doesn't catch this at all, which I'll forgive on account of the imminent peril and recent head injury. Harry appeals to Slate, as the only other human present who hasn't actively betrayed him, asking whether Aurora actually made him any promises, whether he really thinks she'd share power with a mortal the way he thinks she will. Slate actually looks concerned, for a second, but Aurora settles him down, without promising anything. Then he tries Elaine, who explains that this was the price of Aurora's help. If she doesn't do this, her own life is forfeit, and she doesn't care, or claims not to care, how many other people get hurt, as long as she survives. That one of those people is Harry...she cares a little, but not enough to do anything differently. Harry reflects on exactly how doomed he is here, and we get an explanation of the death curse, as Harry starts readying his, and Slate draws his sword. 

I'm still in frantic "get as much done as I can before the end of the month" mode, so you should get at least a couple more of these in the next couple weeks. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!