I was recently looking at
Elegast's theory index and was surprised to notice that the Gatekeeper is no longer up as a suspect for fixing Little Chicago. This surprised me, as I seem to recall that he was the original suspect. So I decided to make this topic to try to get him back on the list, as I consider him the most likely suspect; maybe I'll be able to convince others.
This topic can be seen as discussing two ideas. The first aspect will focus on the things that point to Rashid being the one who did it. A considerable part of this evidence is based on Rashid's ties with Winter, however, so the inevitable argument will be made that the evidence does not truly differentiate between Rashid and the current forerunner, Mab. So the second focus of this post will be why Rashid is a more likely Culprit than the Queen of Air and Darkness.
There are five things needed of whoever fixed Little Chicago. In order of difficulty, they are:
1. Whoever did it waited until Bob was out of Harry's place before they did anything. So they had to know about Bob.
2. Whoever did it had to have known that Little Chicago existed and had a fatal flaw.
3. Whoever did it had to understand the magic involved well enough to fix the problem.
4. Whoever did it had to be able to work enough magic inside Harry's house to be able to fix the problem.
5. Whoever did it had to have a way to get into Harry's lab past his wards to fix it.
Let's tackle the points from easiest to hardest. As the topic is rather long, I've separated each one into its own spoiler box.
The Culprit's Point of EntryThere are five ways shown so far for someone to get inside Harry's apartment:
1. Prior invitation
2. Sneaking through the wards like Elaine did in Summer Knight.
3. Getting through Lea's garden.
4. A fae who only intends actions that benefit the home's owner(s) can pass the wards (AKA, the route that the brownies and the Guard have been using since Summer Knight, which Harry never wondered about because he always knew how it worked, but only explained to us when it came up in Cold Days with Cat Sith).
5. Per
Serack's rather neat analysis, Thomas, as a person who lives in the house and was present at the time, invited the person in.
Of the list above, it becomes clear that Mab has at the very least two possible points of entry, namely, the brownie route, and Lea's garden (as the inheritor of Lea's deal with Maggie, she owns the garden while Lea is on ice). However, a closer look at Cold Days suggests that Mab could not have used those routes. Thomas' reaction to Cat Sith's presence in his home means that Thomas has no knowledge of Fae being capable of bypassing thresholds uninvited. Serack's analysis strongly suggests that Thomas saw whoever fixed LC; if it was Mab and she used either of those routes, Thomas could not have reacted in Cold Days the way he did. The only remaining option, then, which explains Mab entering the apartment with Thomas aware of her is for Thomas himself to have invited her in.
Meanwhile, thanks to Rashid's connection with Winter, and his knowledge of the Ways thereof, I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't know how to get to Lea's garden. Without Lea there, the garden's defenses cannot possibly stop the most dangerous member of the Senior Council, so I see no problem with him getting into Harry's apartment through this route, where he is either surprised by Thomas, or performs the same spell he did in Demonreach's dock during Turn Coat and knocks the vampire out (an unexpected nap would certainly explain Thomas' jumpiness).
Of course, once inside, our culprit still has to fix the flaw in LC. Which leads to the next section.
There are three ways we've been shown so far for someone to work magic inside another's home:
1. They are invited in (Grave Peril)
2. They overpower the home's threshold (as Harry did to Anna Ash's threshold during White Night)
3. If they are Fae, the threshold will not stop their magic if it is beneficial to the home's owner(s).
We've seen what Mab's presence, let alone her power, does to Chicago's weather. And the events of Proven Guilty take place during a particularly sweltering mid-July. If Mab had used her magic in Harry's place, I get the feeling there would have been some mention of the lab being cooler than it should be, and I can't recall anything like that in the books.
From the events of White Night, we know roughly how much power one can exert through a bachelorette's threshold (according to Harry, less than 1% bleeds through). That automatically cuts down on the list of mortal practitioners with the oomph to fix Little Chicago without an invitation to Senior Council-level individuals only.
Even then, depending on the nature of the flaw, it could be argued that even a Senior Council wizard could not fix the problem. Which brings us to the next point.
According to Bob's comment, the problem was a missing transition coupling in the power flow, which would have redirected all the power directly through LC's user (hilarity ensues). In electrical terms, the fixer had to trace the circuit, find the problem, and modify the circuit without cutting the power. How hard would it be to discover the flaw?
On the one hand, Bob and Harry failed to see the flaw while building the model. On the other, as soon as Bob saw the difference in LC, it became patently obvious to him that the previous design was flawed. So this isn't a "No one could have seen that coming" kind of flaw, but rather a "how did I not see that in the first place" kind of flaw. I get the feeling that if someone had told Harry that there was a flaw in the design, it wouldn't have taken him that long to find it either. After all, let's look at some examples of how "hard" it is to read a magical circuit, as it were:
- In Storm Front, it takes Harry less than a night to figure out how Sell's spell would have to work.
- In Fool Moon, it takes mere minutes for Harry to figure out the Loup Garou's circle.
- In Summer Knight, Elaine figures out Harry's wardings, even though the last time they'd known each other, Harry had never made a ward in his life (though they both probably had reinforced Justin's).
- In White Night, it only takes moments for Harry to figure out the spells used by the Ordo Lebes.
- Again in Ghost Story, it only takes moments to figure out the brick-ward around Murphy's house.
- In Last Call, Molly figures out the nature of the spell in the beer in less than an hour. Harry admits the only reason he didn't do it himself was because figuring out delicate spells is something he's bad at, and he is confident he woulda gotten it eventually anyhow.
So yeah, figuring out spells seems to be quite easy for wizards; the knowledge base needed to figure out spells is exactly what separates a wizard, one of the wise, from a sorcerer. If one then realizes that Rashid's job description boils down to analysing magic, it becomes clear that he would have the ideal skill set to figure out what was wrong with LC and fixing it, particularly if the fixer goes in knowing that there's a deadly flaw somewhere, which is, of course, the next point.
This is the most interesting bit of the puzzle. How could anyone know about a flaw in a secret tool that had never been used in the first place? The consensus, of course, is foresight. So let's look at the people who we know have foresight, and we know were involved in this book.
1. Whoever directs the Knights of the Sword.
2. The Gatekeeper.
Here I'm going to state something that I suspect will be generally disagreed with: I believe Mab does not personally have foresight, but rather, she has access to it courtesy of her friends and allies, namely (in order of closeness to her), her husband, the Winter Mothers, her close ally the Gatekeeper, and her sometime ally Uriel.
That both Michael's team and Rashid are directly messing with the timeline is pretty evident: Michael's convenient appearance during his daugther's trial is so evident that Harry actually counted on it happening, as did the Gatekeeper himself.
The Gatekeeper's interference is shown in three parts: he knew when to open the door to let Michael in, he was the one who pointed Harry toward the coming dark magic, which both started the whole thing and meant Harry was in hand to get Molly's phone call and get the ball rolling, and lastly, from a
Doylist perspective, we are told that he's messing with the timeline by Bob.
Speaking of Bob, he's actually the last bit of the puzzle.
I believe it is fair to say that whoever fixed LC made sure to do so when Bob was not around to tattle on him/her/it. This precaution is sound: we learned in Ghost Story that Bob sees what's happening in the Lab, even when he appears to be asleep (since he has a recording of Molly changing during the events of Its My Birthday Too). This is the one area where Mab utterly obliterates Rashid. Cold Days provides clear evidence that Mab know exactly where Bob is hiding, as much as Bob would like it to be otherwise.
On the other hand, since Luccio knows what Bob is, even if she doesn't know where he is, and Cowl knew where Bob was, it would not fully surprise me if Rashid also knew enough about Bob to wish to avoid him.
As for why Rashid has not condemned Harry for having such a dangerous ally, well, as Rashid himself said in Summer Knight: "Sometimes what the Council does not know does not hurt it."
Of course, this begs the question what, exactly, are the fetches doing at Splattercon!!! if Mab didn't see it coming. So here's what I think happened:
Bob tells Harry that there are three possible reasons for a phobophage attack: natural predation (it is, after all, the equivalent of an all you can eat buffet to them), someone summoning them, or someone sending them. Harry decides to focus (as is his usual method) on the answer that he's most likely to be able to interfere with, and assumes someone is summoning them. As we know, Harry got this wrong (if there had been a summoner, they would have appeared in Harry's detection ward; instead, he identified Molly's black magic taint only. This, incidentally, suggests that Maeve either can shield her presence from this type of magic, or she was not present during the third attack.
I propose that the fetches discovered the convention and chose to predate on it themselves without any outside interference by anyone. However, when they did their first attack on Pell, meant to secure their entry and exit point, they stumbled on something unexpected and important: boyfriend Nelson was also on the restroom, and he had the marks of having been fear-spelled. This likely intrigued them, possibly enough to let Mab know.
During their second attack, however, their curiosity was definitely intrigued: here was another victim of fear-tampering (Rosie), and something else happened that really raised a flag: someone put up a murk ward.
Here's another bit that I think will get me some discussion: I think the murk ward was instinctively made by Molly trying to defend herself and her "friend", and trying to keep Harry from finding out she could do magic. Why do I think this? Because mind tampering is her first strength, and because we know her first spell was caused by fear of being discovered. We also know from Harry's confrontantion with her at the church at the end of the book that she can call a considerable amount of power when she's afraid (enough to slow Harry momentarily, but not enough to stop him.
At this point, the fetches had to inform their Queen about what was going on. Being as they're Mab's spies, they probably discover about the Sandra Marling / Glau coalition to implicate Raith for Molly's Black Magic, and go to Mab, who tells them to stop the Black Council from gaining such an important resource; this is both why the Scarecrow is sent out after Glau, and why the final attack is so different from the rest, with many fetches involved.
Of the classic investigative triangle, the previous points focus on means and opportunity. In conclusion, I would like to take a look at the final piece of the puzzle: motive. Cold Days is interesting, because in it we learn that Mab was not preparing Molly to become the Winter Lady, but rather thought she would make a better Summer Lady. However, I don't think that the events of Cold Days were completely unexpected. I propose that Rashid's whole purpose in setting Harry up to save Molly was specifically so that she would be there when the time came, and she would become the next Winter Lady. It is as he said to Harry in Cold Days: Harry was the cavalry, come to save the whole debacle initated by Maeve's possession and Harry setting Summer's fire into Winter's Wellspring.
So, with better means, a clearer motive, and ample opportunity, I humbly propose that Wizard Rashid, the Gatekeeper, was the one who fixed Little Chicago as one of the first pebbles that would end with the avalanche of Margaret Katherine Amanda "Molly" Carpenter as Winter Lady. Apologies for any typos or errors I missed, and I would certainly love to hear everyone's thoughts and feedback.
