Toot Toot speaks Russian. Your argument is invalid.

 

Toot can understand and speak languages he never would have logically been exposed to before to any real degree, and given the context we've been given since, it's implied this is simply something he can instinctively do. He doesn't know Russian. He speaks, and it can be in Russian. He hears when other people speak, and he can understand them. It is not the shape of the words that matters. It is the speaking.

And if a fairy can do it, so could others.

 

How do you suppose Binder's name is pronounced? Binder as in like a school binder, or binder as in bin-der?

 

He's called Binder because his knack is in binding beings of the Nevernever. Binder is derived from bind, so it would be binder as in notebook binder.

 

Thank god someone other then me pointed that out, I cbf to go through researching it. Jean dies if someone fucking sneezes around her.

 

I still stand by everything else I said, though.

 

[speculation]On this account specifically, I'd say it's some sort of Genius Loci Harry gets from being the Warden. He is able to understand the prisoners, so to speak, so as to better guard himself (and others) against them.[/speculation]

Also, I enjoyed the Lovecraft reference during the opening Parkour sequence. Speaking of, that sort of puts a dent in my speculation, because he understands the skinwalker and Harry Potter, but not the Lovecraftian being.

 

1-2 pages earlier, a monster spoke gibberish to him. If he were able to understand them, it would not have been gibberish.

 

Unless it wasn't actually saying anything. For all we know it could have just been Lovecrafting in Harry's general direction.

 

I don't know why you think everything in Demonreach is capable of intelligent communications, would be able to Polygot English, or would be willing to do so for Harry even if they could.

 

Okay. In Dresden's meeting with his inner self, he's got a silver snowflake pinned to his heart. Well at his heart, on the shirt, obviously. Thoughts on the deeper meaning of this? Except a hint that obviously Mab/Dresden is going to be the otp in the coming backs.

 

That Mab has laid her mark on him? That she's possibly twisting his emotions beyond what the Mantle is doing? That he now equates Winter with Molly to some extent and his relationship with her is now linked to that?

Too many options, could be any of them.

 

I don't think she'll actively compell him to do anything. I think her manipulations will be far subtler than active magical tampering. Plus, Mab is the mantle, isn't she? Sorta.

 

She has done it before so she's obviously willing to do it if need be. It's also more subtle than just putting a Geas on him, which is far more Mab's style.

 

Knowing that I would be forced to drive for five hours to spend time with boring relatives that don't like me on top of a mountain for several days with no internet in anticipation of a mediocre fireworks display that would be 80% obscured by trees, I decided to make the best of a completely time-wasting situation by rereading Skin Game and making note of all of the instances of 'wizard,' so that they could be definitively archived because why the fuck not.

In the process, I realized that we had all missed something kind of super important in Skin Game, and I know we all missed it, because if somebody here had caught it, they would have mentioned it before now.

But before we get to that, let's go ahead and get the doublespeak out of the way. This will be going in chronological order, and I will provide citations, necessary background to place the statement, and additional commentary on it if necessary.

I'm going to stop here and say something real quick, for just a second. And that is that all of you who haven't reread Skin Game, you need to do so again. And those of you who have, do it again, but read more carefully. Jim snuck in a lot of little jokes and double-entandre that only make sense and you can only catch when you realize that Harry and Grey are working together, and he was also really sneaky about how he worded some things. For instance, the "one thing you learn hanging out with people like Mab" line; the first time through, you think he's talking about Goodman Grey, because a lot of emphasis was placed on how confident and relaxed Grey was.

Only once you read it for the second time, knowing the secret and paying attention to the wording, do you realize that Harry is actually talking about Nicodemus here, not Grey.

I didn't bookmark these jokes, as I was only marking 'wizard' instances, but there are a fair number of them, and if one is near a 'wizard,' I'll make note of it.

You really need to reread the book and appreciate it for yourself.

Pay attention to what Grey says here in the end. Realizing that his attitude is a front, there's a double-entandre here, where he's using the situation to appear to be saying one thing, but in actuality he seems to be giving Harry a nod and agreeing with his take on the issue.

Note the cheeky joke that references the fact that Harry and Grey are conspiring with each other.

Also, note again the double-entandre present here. The second go around, the 'impatient sigh' suggests he's not irritated with Harry, but with the fact that they cannot speak freely.

Also, bonus points for spotting subtle details: on the very next page over, Nicodemus tells them they'll be dividing their forces into two vans, and tells everyone who will be riding with whom.

In one of the vans, the only person riding who isn't a Denarian Knight is Binder. With the debatable exception of Binder, and obviously without realizing it because he thought Grey was on his side, Nicodemus divided the heist gang up directly down the line between the people who were on his side and the people who weren't. Nicodemus was riding with Deidre, Genoskwa, and Ascher, while Harry rode with Michael, Anna Valmont, and Grey.

And another bonus point. At the end of that page, and the beginning of the next one, Michael and Nicodemus have this exchange:

Muh foreshadowing.

Another something I marked is on page 290-291. It's further evidence that there were things going on in the background we know nothing about. Nicodemus lets slip something without realizing it when pointing the gun at Valmont to open the safe, and that is that Nicodemus is on a timescale here. The entire operation the heist took place in was time sensitive. They can't just back out and try again later. Something was forcing Nick's hand.

Again with the double meaning. On the surface, Grey is getting tired of Harry being flippant and making jokes. In actuality, he's asking Harry if he wants to spring the trap now, or keep going. It seems as though Grey was getting impatient with playing along with Nicodemus.

Also, yet more evidence that something is going on besides a mere disagreement over the disposition of Deidre is on page 298, when Tessa appears and seals herself into the vault with Harry. She says "You. This is all your fault," and goes on to say "your death will end the chain even more readily than the accountants."

This is important for two reasons. Three, actually, if you'll let me turn back the clock to something that happened earlier.

1.) This entire situation cannot possibly be construed as being "all Harry's fault." It makes no sense. Tessa must be talking about something besides the heist.

2.) Killing or not killing Harvey wouldn't have changed anything about whether or not the heist would have worked. Grey didn't need a living sample, just a sample. Do note that Harvey was already dead when Grey took some of his blood. The entire point of the debate in the car during the stakeout was whether or not they should just kick in the door and rip his head off, or if watching and abducting him was better.

"Killing the accountant" would not have stopped the heist. Not at all. So when Tessa talks about "ending the chain," she cannot be talking about the heist. She's referring to something else entirely.

3.) Deidre actually confronted Tessa during the incident with Harvey. When Harry talked to her afterwards, she almost slipped up and said "I went to say goodbye," but caught herself before she did. So in retrospect, we know for certain that Deidre went alone to Tessa to tell her goodbye, and Tessa did nothing.

So.

Not only have none of Tessa's actions actually been about stopping the heist, but if her goal had merely been to prevent Deidre from being sacrificed, she could have simply kidnapped or incapacitated Deidre when she went to say goodbye to her.

Also, we know for a fact that Tessa showed up with Nicodemus to help destroy Michael's family and Harry's daughter. This doesn't make sense if we assume Tessa's aim this whole time was to save Deidre, because Tessa and Nicodemus have not spoken to each other in decades for things a whole lot less important than "you murdered my daughter." Once upon a time, around when Tessa was first introduced, Michael and Forthill told us that Nicodemus and Tessa rarely work together, and when they do, it's because they both want the same thing.

So why, if saving Deidre was all she cared about, would Tessa be there, standing next to the person who killed her, helping to destroy the Carpenters?

It doesn't make sense if you assume that saving Deidre was her goal. So obviously, it wasn't. She was there to kill Harry and Harvey, and Harvey was already dead.

Just like in the case of Proven Guilty, something else is going on here in the background that had nothing to do with the plot we were bearing witness to. Tessa was playing a completely different game than Nicodemus was, and contrary to what it superficially seems, it couldn't possibly have had anything to do with 'saving" Deidre.

Harry and Harvey are somehow connected in a way that had nothing to do with the heist, and Tessa wanted them both dead for it.

Again, I can't help but drift back to the guess I made a few pages back, where Tessa was the one responsible for corrupting the services of the Church that deal with the coins. I feel as though this may have had something to do with it. Harvey handled a lot of anonymous accounts for the Chicago area, which would probably include the budgets of any such organizations that operated in the area. And Harry has definitely helped the Church on more than one occasion, even if it was indirectly.

If Tessa was trying to keep the corruption a secret, then her hit list would presumably be three people long: Harry, Harvey, and Michael. Harry and Michael are the only two people who could have figured out that the coins are going back into circulation too fast for it to 'merely' be the nature of how they work (and they did figure it out at the end), and Harvey, assuming he was the local bookkeeper the Church used for their operations in the area, would have had access to many financial records that could have potentially proven such corruption existed.

All three of them could have potentially ruined her plans, and of the three of them, she directly attempted to murder two of them. The third she can't really touch; Michael's protection as a Knight, active or retired, prevents that sort of thing, even if it can't stop crazed cultists with shotguns. So she's got a 1:1 record for going after the people she could actually go after who could have ruined such a plot, and she also got in on a plan to burn down the house and murder the family of the one person she couldn't.

However, that is all purely speculation. We cannot be sure what Tessa's motives actually were yet. We can only say for certain that, given what she has said and how she has behaved, she was not interfering with Nicodemus's operations with the intent of saving her daughter. Something else was at play here.

Again, the double meaning. Grey sounds like he's threatening Harry, but in truth, he's asking if he wants to spring the trap. Harry's answer: no, not quite yet.

And then, of course, there's the last one, with a double-dose helping of double-entandre and cheek.

Notable because literally every sentence is a double-entandre. The pair of them seriously outdo themselves here.

"I never pretended to be anything but a villain." No, he really didn't ever pretend to be anything else. He only ever pretended to be a villain.

And I'm fucking amazed Harry was able to only grind his teeth instead of laughing.

Also, one final thing I'd like to note, before we move on to the topic I mentioned at the beginning: there's some really subtle foreshadowing in the conversation Harry has with Kringle.

See, here's the thing about a narrative: rarely if ever are we ever told or shown something that won't become relevant later, particularly if the person telling the story takes a moment out of the story to actually distinguish this feature and something of interest and curiosity, and not merely some background detail.

Jim took a moment out of the story to distinguish something during the opening scenes with Harry at Demonreach. He made it a point to run a highlighter over one prisoner in particular. Someone who didn't sound crazy, or evil, or world-endingly apocalyptic. Someone who sounded, in fact, rather British.

Now, the official theories flying around are that it's Merlin, which wouldn't actually be that bad of a guess, as Merlin was, according to legend, imprisoned by his erstwhile apprentice. And of course the joke made here was that it was Harry Potter.

But the way Jim so clearly brought it up, and then completely dropped it without saying another word, makes it seem important. And then there's something Kringle says.

When Harry asks Kringle on page 375 how Kringle knows that Goodman Grey will be on Nick's hiring list, this was his response.

"There are four operatives who could play one role Nicodemus needs filled in this venture," he said. "Two of them are currently under contract elsewhere, and the third is presently detained. That leaves Nicodemus only one option, and I know he won't exercise it until the last possible moment - and he's not far away."

I'll repeat that again, because I feel it bares repeating.

There are four people in the world who could fill in the niche that Nicodemus needs for his heist. Two of them are under contract elsewhere. One of them is currently detained.

Jim made a point in the very beginning of the book of showing us a prisoner we would naturally be curious about, and then dropping the subject. And then, near the very end, he made it a point to mention that there were specifically four people who could do what Goodman Grey could do for Nicodemus, and one of them was detained somewhere.

So not only did he make it a point to mention both of these things, he also made it a point to put both pieces of information on opposite ends of the book.

Goodman Grey is either a Nagloshii, or the Scion of one. Presumably a Scion, since he's not a walking leyline, and Harry couldn't feel reality straining to reject him like he did with Shagnasty. And one could easily imagine how the Scion of a Nagloshii, or something like that, might wind up in Demonreach.

I think we saw our third man already, at the beginning of the book. It was the prisoner Harry spoke with who told him to go away and leave him be, because he's someone who needs to be here.

Just something to think about.

And that's all she wrote. I'll put the super important thing in another post, because honestly, this one has run on long enough.

 

My nerd-boner is nudging the roof at this point. Points wel made. Wasn't Tessa injured from fighting Harry, though? Perhaps she had not recovered sufficiently to keep Deirdre from escaping. Also. The accountant. Could that note be a reference to Mab?

She does keep her accounts in order, that's actually what the book revolves around, and Tessa has tried to kill her. ( I haven't compared this to the actul quotes, so I might be a mile off.)

Edit: If the prisoner and Grey are the same person, which I'm iffy about, would the rent be for getting to stay on Demonreach? 0.o

 

The prisoner and Grey can't be the same person. Kringle said there were only four people in the world who could fill the niche that Nicodemus needed for the heist. Two were already contracted, one was 'detained,' and Goodman Grey was the fourth. So Kringle knew Nicodemus would have to hire Grey. That's how they were able to set up Grey as a plant.

What I'm saying is that I think the prisoner in the beginning of the book who had a British accent and the "detained" third person who could have also fulfilled the criteria Nicodemus needed are the same person. I don't know if that means he's also a Scion of a Nagloshii, if he's merely a different breed of shapeshifter, or if he simply possesses talents or powers that would have also allowed him to bypass the retina scan without overtly using magic to do so.

What he actually is is up for debate. I simply think the detained third possible choice is the prisoner from the beginning.

Or it's Merlin. Either or.


Also, now that someone else has posted, and the posts won't automerge, let's talk about the thing I noticed that was important.

But before I do, I want you to do me a favor. When I quote things in this post, when I'm citing something directly, read it. Read it completely. Slow your reading speed down a notch or two from what it normally is, and take the time to digest every word. Because this is a game where individual words matter an awful lot, and reading quickly is why I, and I suspect many other people, missed this the first time around.

You with me on that? Okay.

A lot of us didn't like how Butters touching the sword instantly fixed it. We felt that it was bullshit. I waxed poetic about how it didn't seem like an appropriate action. How people must chose to die to protect others all the time in the Dresden universe, and how that couldn't possibly be enough to warrant it. I even came back later and made a hypothesis that perhaps the Swords are, in their own way, just as persistent as the coins, and that they would take any opportunity presented to them to fix themselves.

I still believe this, to a degree. At least the part about how Amoracchius has been broken and restored many times, how Fidelicchius has been broken and restored once or twice, and how Nicodemus is running a campagin of purging information as much to keep the Knights and their allies in the dark about what they can do as it is about keeping them in the dark about his own methods and motives, anyway.

But in the other aspects of this? Well. We were wrong. Because the sword didn't fix itself because Butters touched it.

Uriel told us, expressly told us, how the sword was able to fix itself. We just weren't paying attention because we were too busy being dissatisfied with what had happened.

I'm going to say it again.

The sum of those acts created a Sword that is, in some ways, greater than what was broken.

Butters didn't fix the Sword of Faith.

Harry, Butters, and Murphy fixed the Sword of Faith.

Now, that alone is a revelation that I'm pretty sure most people here missed, if only because I'm certain it would have been brought up by now if it hadn't been. And that alone assuages nearly all of the issues I had with this, as it deftly counters the idea that it was somehow through the sheer virtue of Butters alone that the Sword was able to ignite once again. It was the joint actions of Harry, Murphy, and Butters taken together that gave the blade it's spark again.

But this rabbit hole goes deeper. How much deeper? Well. Let's look at those three acts a little more closely.

Do you see anything interesting about those events? Think back real hard. Was there a pattern to them? Something that connected them?

There are three swords.

Amoracchius, the Sword of Love.

Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith.

Esperacchius, the Sword of Hope.

Think about that. Now look back at the three things that happened. You see it now?

Yes? No? Let's keep talking, and I'll see if you can see it the way I realized it, by paying close attention to the words people use.

Murphy broke Fidelacchius, yes. But why did she break it? What happened?

She had Nicodemus dead to rights. She caught him by surprise, put him in a lock, forced him back, and then got him with a combination of skill and leverage. She demanded that Nicodemus tell Genoskwa to let go of Harry. Nicodemus did.

Then Nicodemus surrendered, dropped his coin to the ground, and ordered Genoskwa to kill Harry.

Murphy realized she'd been had. She screamed "damn you," raised the sword, and as she brought it down, it's light went out. Then Nicodemus broke it, crippled her leg, and was about to kill her and probably Harry as well when Michael came out.

Before Michael appeared, Nicodemus said this:

And he was right. By the Law of the Swords, in that instant, Karrin Murphy's intent was not pure.

But. But there was something else here as well. Let's go to the next page.

From the lips of devils and fallen angels, we have it. Murphy broke Fidelacchius for Love.

But we aren't finished yet.

After this happens, Harry picks up the pieces of the sword, takes them inside Michael's house, and puts them on the dining room table. Then they're forgotten about for two hundred pages.

So let's fast forward. Heist succeeded, fans thoroughly coated in shit, Harry makes it back to Michael's house just in time to watch vans full of cultists pull up to the curb.

The defense they mount fails. Charity gets taken. Butters is panicking and doesn't know whether he should go after Charity or take the kids and try to run, knowing that no matter which he does, they're going to all die anyway, and at the worst possible time, boom. Earring gone. Harry is literally incapacitated by blinding, crippling pain. He can't move. He's in so much pain he can't even scream. He's down, out of the fight, done and done.

And then two things happen, in quick succession.

Butters walked out there, knowing full well that he was going to die, knowing full well that he couldn't possibly win, or even put up much of a fight.

Why?

He told us why. He believed that if he walked out there on his own, he would die. And he believed that, in doing so, he would give somebody or something enough time to get there and save Harry, Charity, Uriel, and the children.

Butters held absolute, unshakable Faith in the idea that something would deliver his friends from danger, if only he could buy enough time for it to do so.

But we aren't done yet. Because that's the first thing that happened.

Something else happened too, on the very next page.

Do you see it now?

Murphy broke the Sword for Love. Butters walked out of that house to meet his death because he had Faith that the seconds he would buy would allow someone or something to come and save his friends. And Harry fought through crippling, murderous pain to reach the hilt of Fidelacchius and throw it out the front door, because he refused to let go of Hope.

Faith. Hope. And Love.

Butters touching the Sword didn't fix it. That had nothing to do with anything. The heavy lifting to fix the Sword had already been done by the time he touched it.

It wasn't fixed by Butters. It wasn't even really fixed by Butters, Harry, and Murphy, because the three of them on their own are 'just people.'

But as Uriel told us in The Warrior, 'just people' are what makes the difference in the war between light and darkness. Real power is in honesty and kindness and doing what's right in everyday circumstance. 'Just people' are the real soldiers, and normal, everyday life is the front lines.

And Harry, Butters, and Murphy are all soldiers on that front line. And it was their actions, their behavior, their choices, that allowed this to happen.

Fidelacchius was fixed because of Faith, Hope, and Love. That's what brought the Sword of Faith back. That's what gave it the power to return after being broken. Butter's Faith, Harry's Hope, and Murphy's Love, together, didn't just have the power to fix the Sword of Faith. It had the power to bring the Sword back stronger than it had ever been before.

We missed it completely. The symmetry. The pattern. Swing and miss, we didn't notice, because we were too busy being angry about Butters, because we're idiots. Love and Hope were even mentioned directly by name, and yet we still didn't make the connection.

But. I'm not done yet.

Oh no. We aren't done yet. Because there's one more layer to this rabbit hole. There's one more step down we can take to go deeper.

Because you see, there's some foreshadowing here, if you're paying attention.

What was Murphy's act? Love.

What was Butter's act? Faith.

What was Harry's act? Hope.

Notice something interesting about that?

Murphy, like Michael, has handled two of the swords before. But of the two of them, which one seemed more powerful in her hands? Which one was she best suited for?

Amoracchius. The Sword of Love.

Butters, who was willing to spend his life on the idea of Faith, who knowingly chose inglorious death because he trusted that his friends would be saved by another in the time he could buy, wielded what Sword? What blade called to him?

Fidelacchius. The Sword of Faith.

And finally, Harry Dresden, the man who fought through bitter agony in the face of darkest defeat because he refused to let go of the light of Hope. The Keeper of the Swords, entrusted with the ability and the right to grant them when the time, place, and person is right. He's handled two of them extensively.

But he's never, ever touched the third.

Jim puts a lot of emphasis in the Dresden Files on the importance of 'asking the right question.' And that's why, with that in mind, I know what one question I would like to ask him, if I could ever ask him a question.

My question to Jim would be "Is there a reason Harry, keeper of the Swords of the Cross, has handled two of them for years, and yet not once has he ever so much as laid a finger on the Sword of Hope?"

Jim has confirmed that Amoracchius won't be coming off the shelf for real until the start of the Apocalypse Trilogy. I think I know what's going to happen when it does. We're going to have three Knights of the Cross again.

And I'd make a wager with you right now that not only could I put a name on all three of the Knights, but I could tell you what Swords they'll bear, too.

 

To make a wager, you'd actually have to name the knights. I'd like to see your theory on that... And yeah, the stuff above is brilliant.

As for the stuff with Grey. I was half-asleep writing that. Obviously he couldn't just get out of Demonreach. Seems to me that the reason the guy who sits there does, it because he fulfills some sort of function for the prison.

 

Did you even read the last part of the post?

Harry - Esperacchius
Karrin - Amoracchius
Butters - Fidelacchius

 

Okay, I think we may have made a tiny mistake somewhere along the line. The info I'm reading - specifically, page 47 of Proven Guilty - has Michael saying that Amoracchius is the only Sword that's never been re-worked.

Also having a brain fart - when did Murphy handle Amoracchius?