Summer Knight Quotes
Figured it might be pertinent to a particular AU. This came after poking through Summer Knight.
"The Knights are entrusted with power by the Sidhe Courts. They're tough."
"I don't know much about them," I confessed. "They're some kind of representative of the faeries, right?"
"Don't call them that to their faces, Harry. They don't like it any more than you'd like being called an ape."
"Just tell me what I'm dealing with."
Bob's eyelights narrowed until they almost went out, then brightened again after a moment, as the skull began to speak. "A Sidhe Knight is mortal," Bob said. "A champion of one of the Sidhe Courts. He gets powers in line with his Court, and he's the only one who is allowed to act in affairs not direclty related to the Sidhe."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that if one of the Queens wants an outsider dead, her Knight is the trigger man."
I frowned. "Hang on a minute. You mean that the Queens can't personally gun down anyone who isn't in their Court?"
"Not unless the target does something stupid like make an open-ended bargain without even trying to trade a baby for--"
"Off topic, Bob. Do I or don't I have to worry about getting killed this time around?"
"Of course you do," Bob said in a cheerful tone. "It just means that the Queen isn't allowed to actually, personally end your life. They could, however, trick you into walking into quicksand and watch you drown, turn you into a stag and set the hounds after you, bind you into an enchanted sleep for a few hundred years, that kind of thing."
"I guess it was too good to be true. But my point is that if Reuel was the Summer Knight, Mab couldn't have killed him. Right? So why should she be under suspicion?"
"Because she could have done it indirectly. And Harry, odds are the Sidhe don't really care about Reuel's murder. Knights come and go like paper cups. I'd guess that they were upset about something else. The only thing they really care about."
"Power," I guessed.
"See, you can use your brain when you want to."
I shook my head. "Mab said something had been taken, and that I'd know what it was," I muttered. "I guess that's it. How much power are we talking about?"
"A Knight of the Sidhe is no pushover, Harry," Bob said, his tone earnest.
"So we're talking about a lot of magic going AWOL. Grand theft mojo." I drummed my pen on the table. "Where does the power come from originally?"
"The Queens."
I frowned. "Tell me if I'm off track here. If it comes from the Queens, it's a part of them, right? If a Knight dies, the power should snap back to the Queen like it was on a rubber band."
"Exactly."
SK, pages 123-124
"...How tough would it be to kill one of this Knights?"
"A flight of stairs wouldn't do it. A couple of flights of stairs wouldn't do it. Maybe if he went on an elevator ride with you--"
"Very funny." I frowned, drumming my pen on the table. "So it would have taken that little something extra to take out Reuel. Who could manage it?"
"Regular folks could do it. But they wouldn't be able to do it without burning buildings and smoking craters and so on. To kill him so that it looked like an accident? Maybe another Knight could. Among the Sidhe, it ws either the Winter Knight or one of the Queens."
"Could a wizard do it?"
"That goes without saying. But you'd have to be a pretty brawny wizard, have plenty of preparation and a good channel to him. Even then, smoking craters would be easier than an accident."
[...]
"Three Queens in each Court? Six? That's just silly."
"Not if you think about it. Each Court has three Queens: The Queen Who Was, the Queen Who Is, and the Queen Who Is to Come."
"Great. Which one does the Knight work for?"
"All of them. It's kind of a group thing. He has different duties to each Queen."
SK, pages 126-127
It was a man, maybe in his early thirties, medium build, maybe half an inch shy of six feet tall. He wore dark jeans, a white tee, and a leather jacket. Droplets of dark reddish brown stained the shirt and one side of his face. His scalp was bald but for a stubble of dark hair.
As he approached, I picked out more details. He had a brand on his throat. A snowflake made of white scar tissue stood out sharply against his skin. The skin on one side of his face was red and a little swollen, and he was missing half of the eyebrow and a crescent of the stubble on his scalp on that side --he'd been burned, and recently. He reached the throne and dropped to one knee before it, somehow conveying a certain relaxed insolence with the gesture, and extended the box to Maeve.
[...]
His face twisted in sudden fury. He took up the knife, rose to his feet, and stalked toward Maeve with murder in his eye.
Maeve drew herself up, her face shining with a sudden terrible beauty. She lifted her right hand, ring finger and thumb both bent, and murmured something in a liquid, alien tongue. Sudden blue light gathered around her fingers, and the temperature in the room dropped by about forty degrees. She spoke again, and flicked her wrist, sending glowing motes of azure flickering toward Slate.
The snowflake brand flared into sudden light, and Slate's advance halted, his body going rigid. The skin around the brand turned blue, then purple, then black, spreading like a stop-motion enhanced film of gangrene. A quiet snarl slipped from Slate's lips, and I could see his body trembling with the effort to continue toward Maeve. He shuddered and took another step forward.
Maeve lifted her other hand, her index finger extended while the others curled, and a sudden wind whipped past me, cold enough that it stole the breath from my lungs. The wind whipped madly around Slate, making his leather coat flap. Bits of white frost started forming on his eyelashes and eyebrows. His expression, now anguished as well as full of rage, faltered, and his advance halted again.
"Calm him," Maeve murmured.
Jen slipped behind Slate, wrapping her arms around his neck, leaving her mouth down close to his ear. Slate's eyes flickered with hot, violent hate for a moment, and then began to grow heavier. Jen ran her hand slowly down the sleeve of his jacket, fingers caressing his wrist. His arm lowered as I watched. A moment later, Jen slid the jacket from his shoulders. The tee was sleeveless, and Slate's arms were hard with muscle--and tracked with needle marks. Jen held out a hand, and another darting pixie handed her a hypodermic needle. Jen slipped it into the bend of his arm, still whispering to him, sliding the plunger slowly down.
SK, pages 177-180
"How does the mantle pass on from one Knight to the next?"
Mother Summer smiled, but the expression was a grim one. "It returns to the nearest reflection of itself. To the nearest vessel of Summer. She, in turn, chooses the next Knight."
SK, page 295
On the lead horse, the first whose hooves touched the ground on our side of the river, was the Winter Knight. Lloyd Slate was spattered in liquids of various colors that could only be blood. He bore a sword in one hand, the reins to his mount in the other, and he was laughing. Even as he landed, the nearby goblins mounted a charge.
Slate turned toward them, sword whirling and gathering with it a howl of freezing winds, its blade riming with ice. He met the first goblin's sword with his own, and the squat faerie soldier's blade shattered. Slate shifted his shoulders and sent his horse leaping a few feet to one side. Behind him, the goblin's head toppled from its shoulders...
SK, page 343
Evidently, whatever power it was that let Slate shrug off a bolt of lightning had been expended, or else it couldn't stand up to the cold steel of Fix's weapon.
SK page 350
Maeve stood there in her white armor, and Mother Winter stood behind her, all shrouded in black cloth. Before them on the ground knelt Lloyd Slate, broken, obviously in pain, his hands manacled to the collar around his throat, the whole made of something that looked like cloudy ice.
"We have a traitor among us," Mab purred. "And he will be dealt with accordingly. After which there will be an opening for a new Knight." She watched me and said, "I would have someone worthy of more trust as his successor. Accept that power and all debts between us are canceled."
"Not just no," I muttered. "Hell, no."
Mab's smile widened. "Very well, then. I'm sure we can find some way to amuse ourselves with this one until time enough as passed to offer again."
Slate looked up, blearily, his voice slurred and panicky. "No. No, Dresden. Dresden, don't let them. Dn't let them take me. Take it, please, don't let them keep me waiting."
Mab touched my head again and said, "Only twice more, then, and you will be free of me."
And they left.
Lloyd Slate's screams lingered behind them.
SK, page 365
I'll probably do Proven Guilty and Small Favor too at some point, but not right now. :)
"The Knights are entrusted with power by the Sidhe Courts. They're tough."
"I don't know much about them," I confessed. "They're some kind of representative of the faeries, right?"
"Don't call them that to their faces, Harry. They don't like it any more than you'd like being called an ape."
"Just tell me what I'm dealing with."
Bob's eyelights narrowed until they almost went out, then brightened again after a moment, as the skull began to speak. "A Sidhe Knight is mortal," Bob said. "A champion of one of the Sidhe Courts. He gets powers in line with his Court, and he's the only one who is allowed to act in affairs not direclty related to the Sidhe."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that if one of the Queens wants an outsider dead, her Knight is the trigger man."
I frowned. "Hang on a minute. You mean that the Queens can't personally gun down anyone who isn't in their Court?"
"Not unless the target does something stupid like make an open-ended bargain without even trying to trade a baby for--"
"Off topic, Bob. Do I or don't I have to worry about getting killed this time around?"
"Of course you do," Bob said in a cheerful tone. "It just means that the Queen isn't allowed to actually, personally end your life. They could, however, trick you into walking into quicksand and watch you drown, turn you into a stag and set the hounds after you, bind you into an enchanted sleep for a few hundred years, that kind of thing."
"I guess it was too good to be true. But my point is that if Reuel was the Summer Knight, Mab couldn't have killed him. Right? So why should she be under suspicion?"
"Because she could have done it indirectly. And Harry, odds are the Sidhe don't really care about Reuel's murder. Knights come and go like paper cups. I'd guess that they were upset about something else. The only thing they really care about."
"Power," I guessed.
"See, you can use your brain when you want to."
I shook my head. "Mab said something had been taken, and that I'd know what it was," I muttered. "I guess that's it. How much power are we talking about?"
"A Knight of the Sidhe is no pushover, Harry," Bob said, his tone earnest.
"So we're talking about a lot of magic going AWOL. Grand theft mojo." I drummed my pen on the table. "Where does the power come from originally?"
"The Queens."
I frowned. "Tell me if I'm off track here. If it comes from the Queens, it's a part of them, right? If a Knight dies, the power should snap back to the Queen like it was on a rubber band."
"Exactly."
SK, pages 123-124
"...How tough would it be to kill one of this Knights?"
"A flight of stairs wouldn't do it. A couple of flights of stairs wouldn't do it. Maybe if he went on an elevator ride with you--"
"Very funny." I frowned, drumming my pen on the table. "So it would have taken that little something extra to take out Reuel. Who could manage it?"
"Regular folks could do it. But they wouldn't be able to do it without burning buildings and smoking craters and so on. To kill him so that it looked like an accident? Maybe another Knight could. Among the Sidhe, it ws either the Winter Knight or one of the Queens."
"Could a wizard do it?"
"That goes without saying. But you'd have to be a pretty brawny wizard, have plenty of preparation and a good channel to him. Even then, smoking craters would be easier than an accident."
[...]
"Three Queens in each Court? Six? That's just silly."
"Not if you think about it. Each Court has three Queens: The Queen Who Was, the Queen Who Is, and the Queen Who Is to Come."
"Great. Which one does the Knight work for?"
"All of them. It's kind of a group thing. He has different duties to each Queen."
SK, pages 126-127
It was a man, maybe in his early thirties, medium build, maybe half an inch shy of six feet tall. He wore dark jeans, a white tee, and a leather jacket. Droplets of dark reddish brown stained the shirt and one side of his face. His scalp was bald but for a stubble of dark hair.
As he approached, I picked out more details. He had a brand on his throat. A snowflake made of white scar tissue stood out sharply against his skin. The skin on one side of his face was red and a little swollen, and he was missing half of the eyebrow and a crescent of the stubble on his scalp on that side --he'd been burned, and recently. He reached the throne and dropped to one knee before it, somehow conveying a certain relaxed insolence with the gesture, and extended the box to Maeve.
[...]
His face twisted in sudden fury. He took up the knife, rose to his feet, and stalked toward Maeve with murder in his eye.
Maeve drew herself up, her face shining with a sudden terrible beauty. She lifted her right hand, ring finger and thumb both bent, and murmured something in a liquid, alien tongue. Sudden blue light gathered around her fingers, and the temperature in the room dropped by about forty degrees. She spoke again, and flicked her wrist, sending glowing motes of azure flickering toward Slate.
The snowflake brand flared into sudden light, and Slate's advance halted, his body going rigid. The skin around the brand turned blue, then purple, then black, spreading like a stop-motion enhanced film of gangrene. A quiet snarl slipped from Slate's lips, and I could see his body trembling with the effort to continue toward Maeve. He shuddered and took another step forward.
Maeve lifted her other hand, her index finger extended while the others curled, and a sudden wind whipped past me, cold enough that it stole the breath from my lungs. The wind whipped madly around Slate, making his leather coat flap. Bits of white frost started forming on his eyelashes and eyebrows. His expression, now anguished as well as full of rage, faltered, and his advance halted again.
"Calm him," Maeve murmured.
Jen slipped behind Slate, wrapping her arms around his neck, leaving her mouth down close to his ear. Slate's eyes flickered with hot, violent hate for a moment, and then began to grow heavier. Jen ran her hand slowly down the sleeve of his jacket, fingers caressing his wrist. His arm lowered as I watched. A moment later, Jen slid the jacket from his shoulders. The tee was sleeveless, and Slate's arms were hard with muscle--and tracked with needle marks. Jen held out a hand, and another darting pixie handed her a hypodermic needle. Jen slipped it into the bend of his arm, still whispering to him, sliding the plunger slowly down.
SK, pages 177-180
"How does the mantle pass on from one Knight to the next?"
Mother Summer smiled, but the expression was a grim one. "It returns to the nearest reflection of itself. To the nearest vessel of Summer. She, in turn, chooses the next Knight."
SK, page 295
On the lead horse, the first whose hooves touched the ground on our side of the river, was the Winter Knight. Lloyd Slate was spattered in liquids of various colors that could only be blood. He bore a sword in one hand, the reins to his mount in the other, and he was laughing. Even as he landed, the nearby goblins mounted a charge.
Slate turned toward them, sword whirling and gathering with it a howl of freezing winds, its blade riming with ice. He met the first goblin's sword with his own, and the squat faerie soldier's blade shattered. Slate shifted his shoulders and sent his horse leaping a few feet to one side. Behind him, the goblin's head toppled from its shoulders...
SK, page 343
Evidently, whatever power it was that let Slate shrug off a bolt of lightning had been expended, or else it couldn't stand up to the cold steel of Fix's weapon.
SK page 350
Maeve stood there in her white armor, and Mother Winter stood behind her, all shrouded in black cloth. Before them on the ground knelt Lloyd Slate, broken, obviously in pain, his hands manacled to the collar around his throat, the whole made of something that looked like cloudy ice.
"We have a traitor among us," Mab purred. "And he will be dealt with accordingly. After which there will be an opening for a new Knight." She watched me and said, "I would have someone worthy of more trust as his successor. Accept that power and all debts between us are canceled."
"Not just no," I muttered. "Hell, no."
Mab's smile widened. "Very well, then. I'm sure we can find some way to amuse ourselves with this one until time enough as passed to offer again."
Slate looked up, blearily, his voice slurred and panicky. "No. No, Dresden. Dresden, don't let them. Dn't let them take me. Take it, please, don't let them keep me waiting."
Mab touched my head again and said, "Only twice more, then, and you will be free of me."
And they left.
Lloyd Slate's screams lingered behind them.
SK, page 365
I'll probably do Proven Guilty and Small Favor too at some point, but not right now. :)