Small Favor

"By all means," Nicodemus said. He gestured with one hand, and the shadows-his shadow, I should say-suddenly fell away from the interior of the ruined lighthouse tower.

Red light filled that space, pouring up from the sigils and glyphs of the most elaborate greater circle I had ever seen-and I’d seen one made of silver, gold, and precious stones. This one incorporated all of those things plus art-grotesque pieces, mostly-sound, ringing forth in gentle, steady waves from upright tuning forks and tubular bells; and light, focused through prisms and crystals, refracted into dozens of colors that split and bent into perfectly geometric shapes in the air around the circle.

Ivy was trapped inside.

I’ve seen some fairly extreme abuse in my time, but it never gets easier to see more of it. Nick’s people had gone with most of the classics for breaking someone down, and then added in a few twists that wouldn’t be available to regular folks. They’d taken Ivy’s clothes, for starters, which in this weather was sadistic on multiple levels. They’d shaved her hair away, leaving her bald, except for a couple of sad, ragged little tufts of gold. She was curled up into a fetal position, and she floated in the air, spinning slowly and apparently at random. Her eyes were tightly closed, her face pale with disorientation, terrified.

Outside the circle they had chained a number of those hideous hunting beasts, hairless creatures that resembled nothing in the animal kingdom but fell somewhere between a big panther and a wolf. The creatures looked hungry, and stared intently at the floating morsel. One of them snarled and threw itself to the end of its chain in an effort to snap its fanged maw closed upon the girl’s vulnerable flesh. It couldn’t reach her, but Ivy twitched and let out a thready whimper.

As she spun and twirled-a deliberate echo of what she’d done to Magog at the Aquarium, I felt certain-the motion revealed dozens of tiny scratches and bruises, evidence of a small legion of petty cruelties. They would, however, seem nightmarish enough to a child who had never experienced real pain of her own. All of this-the pain, the helplessness, the indignity, all of it-would be that much more horrific and terrifying to Ivy for its novelty. Say what I would about pain being a part of the human condition, when it comes to seeing it inflicted on children, I’m as hypocritical as the day is long.

Some things just shouldn’t happen.

"There, you see?" the lord of the Denarians said. "Safe and sound, as agreed."

I turned my gaze back to Nicodemus, who was about ten seconds from an ass kicking-

– and caught a little glimmer of something approximating satisfaction in his eyes that made my combat-readying reflexes cool off almost instantly.

Ivy’s treatment hadn’t been only about putting her in the proper frame of mind to manipulate her.

It had also been about manipulating me. It wasn’t even all that tough to understand why. After all, I’d been in a situation something like this before.

It wasn’t enough for the Denarians to simply acquire the Sword. They couldn’t break or smash or melt Fidelacchius, any more than the Church could smash or melt the thirty silver coins. The power of the Sword was more than merely physical, and as long as it was wielded by those of pure heart and intent, it would take more than mere physical means to undo it.

Of course, if you handed the Sword to, for example, a wizard who was known for playing it shady once in a while, and who was known for having a bad temper, and who was known for occasionally losing it, and maybe for burning down a building or two when he got angry, that could change the situation entirely. Put him in an intense situation, give him a really good reason to be angry, give him a mighty magical weapon near at hand, and he might well seize it and use it out of sheer outrage-despite the fact that he wouldn’t exactly be acting from entirely pure motives by doing so. After all, I had come here, ostensibly in peace, to offer up the Sword as a sacrifice for the life of a child. If I then took up that same weapon and used it to strike at Nicodemus and company instead, I, its rightful bearer, would be employing Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith, in an act of treachery.

Once I’d done that, then the Sword would just be a sword, an object of steel and wood. Once I’d done that, then Nicodemus and his insane little family could destroy the weapon. They needed someone to make that mistake, someone to make that choice, in order to unmake the weapon, just as any bearer of a coin had to make the choice to give it up to be free of the Fallen inside. They needed someone with a right to the Sword to choose to abuse that right.

I’d made that mistake once already, on a stormy night much like this one, when Michael had asked me to carry Amoracchius for him. I’d used the Sword of Love to try to save my ass from the consequences of my own bad decisions and nearly gotten it destroyed as a result. It would have been unmade, in fact, if not for the intervention of my brother-even if I hadn’t known about our kinship at the time. Thomas had. He’d been looking out for his little brother even then.

Don’t get me wrong: At times I can be a little thick-particularly when there’s a woman involved. There’s just no way I’m stupid enough to make a mistake quite that enormous twice.

But…

Nicodemus didn’t know that I’d made it even once, now, did he?

Oh, he knew me pretty well. He knew how angry his actions had made me, how I would react to the sight of what they’d done to Ivy-and he was counting on me to react according to my nature, in order to help him unmake Fidelacchius.

This was going to be a dangerous game, going up against an opponent who had been around as long as Nick had, but I couldn’t win if I didn’t play-and I needed to buy a little more time and make sure that both of our prizes were on hand before we started the fireworks.

So I gave him what he wanted.

I slammed the end of my staff down onto the ground with my left hand, reached up to seize the hilt of Fidelacchius with my right, and snarled, "Get her the hell out of that thing, Nicodemus. Right now."

They laughed at me, all of them together, relaxed and insulting. It would have sounded rehearsed if it were any less well coordinated. Instead, it came off like something they’d done so often over the years that it simply came naturally now. "Look at his face," Tessa murmured, a little-girl giggle in her voice. "It’s all red."

I clenched my jaw as hard as I could. It wasn’t much of a stretch to keep pretending to be angry, but I tried to go all Method actor on them. Eat your heart out, Sir Ian. I jerked the Sword a couple of inches from its sheath. "I’m warning you," I said, trying to get a good look around. "Let the girl go before this gets ugly."

I must have been doing a pretty good job with the acting. Michael’s voice, high-pitched with alarm, came from behind me. "Harry," he said, urgently, "wait."