Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 28

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Slate is all ready to kill Harry, but Elaine stops him at the last second, giving away Harry's plan to use his death curse. Aurora doesn't think a human can leverage a strong enough death curse to do her any real harm, which is honestly kind of stupid. I don't know if this is the arrogance we sometimes see Nemesis display in its other hosts, or if Aurora just hasn't been paying attention, but it should be common knowledge that a mortal wizard is not something to take chances with. Elaine says it nicer than that, and Harry calls her a treacherous bitch. The sentiment is understandable, but I don't think he needed to get gendered about it. She suggests that Aurora "arrange" Harry's death and then leave him. Aurora's concerned that he won't be contained by the circle after she leaves, so Elaine tells her to call water, to drown him in mud, while Elaine puts a physical binding on him that will persist when they're gone. We're summarizing each step in the conversation, rather than skipping to the eventual decision because I think it's interesting to look at how Elaine manipulates Aurora here, how she takes advantage of Aurora's ignorance of both mortal magic and Harry and Elaine's particular history, but also how this relied on a very solid knowledge of what Aurora is like as a person and where her head is at right now. "Arrange his death" makes it sound like something complicated, something that will need to be figured out, and plays to Aurora's relative lack of experience with violence, so that she will ask Elaine for a suggestion. The notion of letting the earth "drink him", especially with that phrasing, makes it sound gentle and natural, while Elaine promises to take care of the hard part - keeping Harry in place. All Aurora has to do is make a mud puddle. It's very well done, and shows that Elaine is good at this, which is good information for later and may also tell us something about what spending most of her adult life in Summer was like. To say nothing of the fact that she has to do this all in a way that will keep Harry thinking that she's on Aurora's side, at least until they're out of earshot, which is at once easier and harder than manipulating Aurora, because she knows him very well, knows where his buttons are, since she was, as they say, there when they were installed, knows how he's likely to think about her, but also he knows her, and can read her a hell of a lot better than Aurora can. 

Elaine puts the binding on, smooth and fast, reflecting the superior focus Harry said she had a couple of chapters ago. This is also when we find out that she uses Old Egyptian for her magic, which concerning thing we know about her, because that's also what DuMorne used, although it may simply be another reflection of her being a better student, in some ways a better wizard than Harry, that she was able to make her magic work with the language she was given, rather than having to come up with something else. At the same time, Aurora does her think, filling the ground under Harry's feet with water. This creates immediate bubbles and a sulfur smell, which may suggest that there were Methanosarcina bacteria in the soil already, despite this not really being their usual habitat, and none of their symbiotes being present. That would make a certain poetic sense, here in Faerie, and especially a part of faerie currently being manipulated by a Summer Queen, since these guys played a role in the development of complex life on earth, and may in fact have been one of the first cellular life forms. Of course, it's just as possible that it bubbles and smells like sulfur because most of the people present, and perhaps the land itself, expect marshy ground to smell like that. Everyone else starts to leave, but Elaine comes closer. Harry asks why she did it, and she calls him an idiot, presumably for not yet getting that she's arranged this all to give him a better way out than getting stabbed by Slate and hoping to take Aurora with him. She says she couldn't risk Harry using his death curse on her, too, which should also be a clue, since Harry Would Not Do That, and he should trust her to know him at least that well, but he doesn't get it right away, because he's not doing his best thinking right now. She turns away, then turns back and says "It's just like old times." which here is code for "I am once again not actually betraying you, you giant dumbass." 

Harry starts feeling out the binding, hoping he can find a way to break it after Aurora's circle breaks, but before he finishes drowning in the mud. Trying this with a decent-quality binding is likely to be dangerous and unpleasant, but it's better than not trying. Then he gets it. Finally. The big clue was that Elaine is way too calm. She might betray him, might kill him, but she wouldn't do it with apparent indifference. This is not something that's really been clearly established about her for the reader before this point, but it's also not hard to guess, given that we know she and Harry used to be involved romantically, and we have some idea of what Harry finds attractive in a woman. "Passion" is pretty close to the top of the list. Harry takes a deep breath and confirms his suspicions about the binding. It's the one he and Elaine developed when they were kids, when one of them would do the mundane homework while the other did the magic homework, and then they would copy each other's work so they could finish faster and have time to have sex. And it's not a very good binding, because all the threads of hardened air are gathered at the back, creating a weak spot where someone who knows how to look for it can break through. I'd love to know what exactly is meant by "hardened air" here, because it was described earlier as physically flattening Harry's clothes against his body, but it's apparently permeable to both air and mud. He's all the way under before Aurora's circle breaks and he can actually do anything about it. The word he uses for the spell is "tappitytaptap", which is very Harry, but also, is onomatopoeia allowed? Can you use like, 'kaboom' for a spell? This has fascinating possibilities. He gets the binding open on the third try, but is of course still fully immersed in mud, so he has to forzare himself out, blasting himself well into the air and getting stuck in a tree, because that's the kind of day he's having. 

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He's about twenty feet up, dangling by his belt where it's stuck on a branch, and really hoping no one sees him like this, but doesn't have time to start getting himself out of it before the Gatekeeper, of all people, shows up. The Gatekeeper tries very hard not to laugh at Harry, with limited success, then helps him get down. Harry asks what he's doing here, and he says he was looking for Harry, that he's been monitoring him. He also says that the situation in Chicago is getting worse. Harry's ready to go running off and try to fix it, but the Gatekeeper points out that this is not, strictly speaking, his problem anymore. He solved the mystery, and the murder. He knows where the Summer Knight's mantle is, and who took it, and that it wasn't Mab. Technically, his Trial is ended, the White Council should have clear access to Winter's paths through the Ways, and as far as they're concerned, Harry can go home. It's a tempting idea. Harry, understandably, would very much like to go take a shower, eat a thing, and get some proper sleep. Technically it says "hot shower", but we're gonna chalk that up to wishful thinking on Harry's part, since he doesn't have hot water at home. Maybe this reflects his awareness that he won't, and kind of can't, actually walk away at this point, no matter how much he might like to. He told Meryl he would help Lily, and Aurora still has the Unraveling, and even if he can't use it to help Susan, which he's still hoping to do, Aurora's still gonna mess up the balance in Faerie if he doesn't stop her. And he feels sort of responsible for that last thing because the Unraveling is his, was given to him. So he says "no". Rashid presses, saying that the Council doesn't expect him to singlehandedly stop a war between the Faerie Courts, and Harry says no again. Rashid asks if he's sure, and he affirms that he is. The third refusal was apparently what the Gatekeeper was looking for, because he says that in that case, he'll vote in Harry's favor. This is basically understandable, since one of the key questions of Harry's trial is whether he comports himself, and uses his power, as a wizard ought, but considering he and Rashid are both human, I'm not sure why Rashid needed him to say it three times. Magical significance, maybe. Harry asks if he would have voted against him otherwise, and Rashid clarifies that he would have killed Harry himself, since voting against him would be the same thing, and he'd rather take full responsibility for that choice. I'm intrigued by his confidence that he could have killed Harry without violating the First Law. 

He gives Harry a little velvet bag, containing fairie ointment and small piece of the Stone Table, suitable for finding or accessing the Table with magic. Adding to the list of things that could really use follow up, where did he get that? How did he get that? How did anyone get that? It doesn't seem terribly likely that you could just take a chisel and knock a piece off that thing, even if circumstances were such that it existed and could be accessed, which, y'know, isn't the case most of the time. Harry points out that this is interference in his trial, and would upset the Council, and Rashid says that he's never said this before, but in this case, what the Council doesn't know won't hurt it. I suspect he's never said this before because when he violates the rules or customs of the Council, he's usually doing it by himself, or with people who don't need an explanation. He makes a portal back to Chicago, and Harry steps through, turning the mud on his clothes into ectoplasm, which the summer rain starts washing away. He has phone calls to make and a war to get ready for. 

What did I even used to say at the end, before I got so bad at posting regularly that I used this space to apologize for how long it's been and try to give some sense of when the next one was coming? Idk, it'll be a few days, probably. Until then, be Gay, do Crimes, and Read All The Things!