I collected my cereal, an apple, and a big cup of the holy mocha, walked a ways, and settled down on a rock in the blinding light of morning in desert mountains. Captain Luccio sat down beside me.
"Good morning," she said. Luccio was a wizard of the White Council, a couple of centuries old, and one of its more dangerous members. She didn't look like that. She looked like a girl not even as old as Ramirez, with long, curling brown locks, a sweetly pretty face, and killer dimples. When I'd met her, she'd been a lean, leathery-skinned matron with iron grey hair, but a black wizard called the Corpsetaker had suckered her in a duel. Corpsetaker, then in Luccio's current body, had let Luccio run her through - and then Corpsetaker had worked her trademark magic, and switched their minds into the opposite bodies.
I'd figured it out before Corpsetaker had time enough to abuse Luccio's credibility, but once I'd put a bullet through Corpsetaker's head, there hadn't been any way for Luccio to get her original body back. So she'd been stuck in the young, cute one instead, because of me. She had also ceased taking to the field in actual combat, passing that off to her second in command, Morgan, while she ran the boot camp to train new Wardens in how to kill things without getting killed first.
"Good morning," I replied.
"Mail came for you yesterday," she said, and produced a letter from a pocket.
I took it, scanned the envelope, and opened it. "Hmmm."
"Who is it from?" she asked. Her tone was that of one passing the time in polite conversation.
"Warden Yoshimo," I said. "I had a few questions for her about her family tree. See if she was related to a man I knew."
"Is she?" Luccio asked.
"Distantly," I said, reading on. "Interesting." At Luccio's polite noise of inquiry, I said, "My friend was a descendent of Sho Tai."
"I'm afraid I don't know who that is," Luccio said.
"He was the last king of Okinawa," I said, and frowned, thinking it over. "I bet it means something."
"Means something?"
I glanced at Captain Luccio and shook my head. "Sorry. It's a side project of mine, something I'm curious about." I shook my head, folded up the letter from Yoshimo, and tucked it into the pocket of my jeans. "It isn't relevant to teaching apprentices combat magic, and I should have my head in the game, not on side projects."
"Ah," Luccio said, and did not press for further details. "Dresden, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about."
I grunted interrogatively.
She lifted her eyebrows. "Have you never wondered why you did not receive a blade?"
The Wardens toted silver swords with them whenever there was a fight at hand. I had seen them unravel complex, powerful magic at the will of their wielders, which is one hell of an advantage when taking on anything using magic as a weapon. "Oh," I said, and sipped some coffee. "Actually I hadn't really wondered. I assumed you didn't trust me."
She frowned at me. "I see," she said. "No. That is not the case. If I did not trust you, I would certainly not allow you to continue wearing the cloak."
"Is there anything I could do to make you not trust me, then?" I asked. " 'Cause I don't want to wear the cloak. No offense."
"None taken," she said. "But we need you, and the cloak stays on."
"Damn."
She smiled briefly. The expression had entirely too much weight and subtlety for a face so young. "The fact of the matter is that the swords the Wardens have used in your lifetime must be tailored specifically to each individual Warden. They were also all articles of my creation - and I am no longer capable of creating them."
I frowned and imbibed more coffee. "Because..." I gestured at her vaguely.
She nodded. "This body did not possess the same potential, the same aptitudes for magic as my own. Returning to my former level of ability will be problematical, and will happen no time soon." She shrugged, her expression neutral, but I had a feeling she was covering a lot of frustration and bitterness. "Until someone else manages to adapt my design to their own talents, or until I have retrained myself, I'm afraid that no more such blades will be issued."
I chewed some cereal, sipped some coffee, and said, "It must be hard on you. The new body. A big change, after so long in the first one."
She blinked at me, eyes briefly wide with surprise. "I... Yes, it has been."
"Are you doing okay?"
She looked thoughtfully at her cereal for a moment. "Headaches," she said quietly. "Memories that aren't mine. I think they belong to the original owner of this body. They come mostly in dreams. It's hard to sleep." She sighed. "And, of course, it had been a hundred and forty years since I'd put up with either sexual desire or a monthly cycle."
I swallowed cereal carefully instead of choking. "It sounds, ah, awkward. And unpleasant."
"Very," she said, her voice quiet. Then her cheeks turned faintly pink. "Mostly. Thank you for asking." Then she took a deep breath, exhaled briskly, and rose, all businesslike again. "In any case, I felt I owed you an explanation."
"You didn't," I said. "But thank y - "
Automatic weapons fire ripped the dew-spangled morning.
Luccio was moving at a full sprint before I'd gotten my ass up off the rock. I wasn't slow. I've been in enough scrapes that I don't freeze at the unexpected appearance of violence and death. Captain Luccio, however, had been in a lot more scrapes than that and was faster and better than me. As we ran, there was the continued chatter of weapons fire, screams, and then a couple of awfully loud explosions and an inhuman scream. I caught up to the Captain of the Wardens as we came into sight of the breakfast area, and I let her take the lead.
I'm pigheadedly chivalrous. Not stupid.
The breakfast area was in a shambles. Folding tables had been knocked over. Blood and breakfast cereal lay scattered on the rocky ground. I could see two kids on the ground, one screaming, one simply doubled over in a fetal position, shaking. Others were lying flat, faces in the dirt. Maybe thirty yards away, in the ruins of what had been a blacksmith's shop, the only remaining brick wall was missing an enormous circle of stone - simply gone, probably in one of those weird, silent green blasts Ramirez favored. I could see the barrel of a heavy weapon of some kind lying on the ground, neatly severed about a foot behind its tip. Whoever had been holding it was likely gone with the bricks of the wall.