Faeries tithe to Hell

[morriswalters]

Maeve was setting Mab up to look insane.  This starts in PG.  This is pitched to Lily for Cold Days.  In PG Mab is down a Knight and Lea. Maeve is in doubt. The power balance if broken and Mab dare not make a move.  Rashid can hold the Outer Gates and she can defend the Well Spring. At that point she is fully committed and has no resources to attack anywhere else.

The game in Small Favor was always about taking Ivy.  Titania is the one bordering on insanity.  Nic wants Ivy and Titania wants Harry.  Marcone is the key.  Since he is now a member of the Accords he can be attacked.  Harry explicitly foreshadows this in White Knight.

"Freeholding lord," I said. "It means he's entitled to rights under the Accords—like rights of challenge when someone kills his employees. It means that if a supernatural power tries to move in on him, he'll have an opportunity to fight it and actually win."

Once Nic grabs Marcone and Mab declares Harry to be her Emissary, he is a target.

“This is another point of contention between you and Titania.”
“When one Court moves, the other perforce moves with it,” Mab said.
I croaked, “Titania wants Marcone dead?”
“Put simply,” she replied. “And her Emissary will continue to seek your death. Only by finding and saving the Baron’s life will you preserve your own.”

The put simply is a mild understatement. Harry was going to die and Marcone saved him.  Once he became a Freeholding Lord he was screwed. Nic is just taking advantage of the situation to snatch the Archive.  As a minor note, this I believe, is the only time we see Anduriel manifest.

For all you PG fans the definitive evidence that the BC struck at Arctis Tor.  And that it was Thorned Namshiel.

And among the Fallen was one with much to answer for to me, personally, for its attack upon my home.”
“The Black Council attack on Arctis Tor,” I said. “One of them used Hellfire.”
Mab showed me her snow-white teeth. “The Watchman and I,” Grimalkin mewled for her, “had a common enemy this day. The enemy could not be allowed to gain the power represented by the child Archive.”

I frowned and thought of the silver hand that had batted the fallen angel and his master sorceries around as if he’d been a stuffed practice dummy. “Thorned Namshiel.”
Mab’s eyes flashed with sudden, cold fury and frost literally formed over every surface of the chapel, including upon my own eyelashes.

[kbrizzle]

@morriswalters
Absolutely agree that Maeve was setting Mab up to look insane, doesn’t mean Mab can’t take advantage of it when it suits her purpose.

Well Nic attacks Marcone before a Mab picks Harry which leads me to think that his plan was adaptable to whoever the mediator was.

Also Marcone has Gard save Harry in DB in a dark alleyway behind Bock’s place - how would Titania know about this & be angry enough to kill Marcone. I think it makes more sense that she just wants to kill Harry & damn the consequences (if that includes Marcone dying then so be it, she’s not feeling terribly rational for a few years).

I would argue that Nic only attacked Marcone because he was likely the weakest Signatory in order to test the Accords - he could’ve attacked Marcone a couple of years earlier & gotten away with it scot free since no one else cared about Marcone the Chicago gangster.

[g33k]

... For all you PG fans the definitive evidence that the BC struck at Arctis Tor.  And that it was Thorned Namshiel...

Thank you for the specific quotes!

I still assert that we only know that a Denarian was in the attack, not the BC. Mab may just have ignored Harry's nonsensical babbling about a "black council," or presumed it was specifically limited to the forces in the Denarian-led assault.  Mab's silence on the topic doesn't really PROVE the BC, or that the BC is anything other than "mortal wizards who do Nemesis' bidding," etc...

Also, Mab's reaction to T.N.'s name doesn't show that Harry was right; it could as easily be showing she's pissed at Harry for still being so stupidly blind...

[g33k]

... I would argue that Nic only attacked Marcone because he was likely the weakest Signatory in order to test the Accords - he could’ve attacked Marcone a couple of years earlier & gotten away with it scot free since no one else cared about Marcone the Chicago gangster.

No, he attacked Marcone because of the nearly-inevitable fall of the dominoes:  Marcone -> Gard -> Harry -> Ivy.

Yes, he needed Baron Marcone, not Mobster Marcone.

But Ivy was the target, and Harry was the access.  Other Accorded parties presumably wouldn't have called upon the Archive; or at least, not reliably so (and how many violations of the Accords d'you suppose Nic could manage, before people tumble to the fact that Nic's goal is to get into negotiations, rather than to win any of the specific violation (not to mention the likely long-term anger of Mab)).

[morriswalters]

Thank you for the specific quotes!

I still assert that we only know that a Denarian was in the attack, not the BC. Mab may just have ignored Harry's nonsensical babbling about a "black council," or presumed it was specifically limited to the forces in the Denarian-led assault.  Mab's silence on the topic doesn't really PROVE the BC, or that the BC is anything other than "mortal wizards who do Nemesis' bidding," etc...

Also, Mab's reaction to T.N.'s name doesn't show that Harry was right; it could as easily be showing she's pissed at Harry for still being so stupidly blind...

De nada.  Unless Jim chooses to share we can't know for certain.  So if your interpretation works for you it's all good.

[toodeep]

Two questions have come to me from reading the last page of comments
1.  Harry thought that the grabbing of Marcone was a 2 step potential plan by Nic - he could take and get a small win by keeping Marcone even if Dresden didn't call the Archive, and he would have a shot at the archive if the Archive was brought in.  What if Nic had more reason to believe that the Archive would be brought in?  He's worked with Mab before, Mab brought in Harry.  Did Mab want/help Nic to bring in the Archive so that Nic would break the Accords (and fail) to "motivate" him to go after the goods in Skin Game?  After all, that book set up everything that drove Skin Game and the goods from Skin Game are necessary for the final endgame.

2.  If Harry is the only resource Mab has to kill mortals, how does she pull off the Hobs attack in the railway station?  Why does she do that?

[morriswalters]

2.

The Hobs were there to kill the Archive.  Everybody else was collateral damage. And Ivy isn't the Archive, the spirit inside Ivy is the Archive. And that spirit isn't human.

[toodeep]

2.

I don't think so, because
1.  Ivy is human and thus protected against the winter court whether she has access to the archive or not - and I don't think the Hobs had the means to attack the Archive construct separate from its access point through Ivy.  Her free will as a human is what makes the Archive so dangerous and scary.  Though I suppose the idea of the Archive having free will might be a red herring and her decision making is changing because Ivy is nfected like Maeve was...

2.  We've seen Ivy magically in action.  I do not believe the Hobs provided a significant threat to her if she truly moved against them.  she conserved her resources in case there was a real threat out there behind the Hobs, which as far as we know there wasn't.

[Mira]

1.  Ivy is human and thus protected against the winter court whether she has access to the archive or not - and I don't think the Hobs had the means to attack the Archive construct separate from its access point through Ivy.  Her free will as a human is what makes the Archive so dangerous and scary.  Though I suppose the idea of the Archive having free will might be a red herring and her decision making is changing because Ivy is nfected like Maeve was...

   Ivy I believe has free will, however the Archive does not.  However usually the host is trained in the rules and use of the Archive..  I don't know if you'd call it a bit of a "catch 22"  the host in theory has free will but isn't free to exert it.  It could be that it isn't Ivy that was infected, but her mother who chose to kill herself rather than submit to the limitation of her free will and jealous of her baby for having a lifetime of free will choices before her. 

[morriswalters]

It's in the text.  I don't know what to say other than that.

[toodeep]

It's in the text.  I don't know what to say other than that.

It's in the text that that is what Harry believes.  We all know that Harry doesn't always see all the angles.

[Mira]

It's in the text.  I don't know what to say other than that.

   It's muddy though, because the Archive doesn't totally run the show, the Host has some control, at the same time the Archive influences the Host heavily..  If I understand Luccio correctly the danger in giving the current Host her name, Ivy, and treating her like a real little girl, she will become normal, emotionally.  The theory goes if that happens she will react to all the resentments and injustices that past Hosts have felt because the Archive will have passed them on to her.  If that happens things can get out of control rather quickly because she still has human free will, so it is best if she stays coldly remote emotionally.

[morriswalters]

Ivy isn't fully human and it's why the Council fears her.  She also a Signatory of the Accords and according to canon,

Most people who consider the idea aren't willing to agree to be a good, traditional host for, let's say, a group of Black Court vampires, and don't want to get caught up as a mediator in a dispute between the major powers. They don't want to make themselves the targets of possible challenges, either, so not many of them even try it." I rubbed at my jaw. "And no one who is just a vanilla human being has tried it. Marcone is breaking new ground."

As to the Hobs.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you want the Denarians stopped? Why send the hobs to kill the Archive? Why recruit me to save the Archive and Marcone in the event that the hobs failed?”

Mab showed me her snow-white teeth. “The Watchman and I,” Grimalkin mewled for her, “had a common enemy this day. The enemy could not be allowed to gain the power represented by the child Archive.”

Once the Archive inhabits the host the only way to lose it is to kill yourself.  This is what Ivy's mother did.

[kbrizzle]

@toodeep

1. Did the hobs actually kill anyone in the train station? All we know is that they were sent to attack the Archive’s train. I do think it’s possible that Nfected Maeve sent the hobs.

2. Note what Kincaid tells Harry in Changes when Harry seeks Ivy’s help in finding Maggie Jr - Ivy literally cannot help Harry. This leads me to believe that Ivy only has limited free will at best - kind of like the Summer or Winter Knight (we see what happens to Harry when he says to screw Winter Law in CD).

[didymos]

1. Did the hobs actually kill anyone in the train station?

Yes:

Not that I could blame him. Not all the remains I’d passed had been those of hobs.
 Three security guards were down, one maybe ten feet from the stairs, the other two on the stairway itself. They had fallen separately in the darkness.
I’d passed several other bloodstains that had almost certainly been fatal to their donors, unless the falling water had made them look more extensive than they actually were. I’d never encountered hobs face-to-face before, but I knew enough about them to hope that whoever had spilled that blood was dead. Hobs had a habit of hauling victims back into their lightless tunnels.

Butcher, Jim. Small Favor (The Dresden Files, Book 10) (pp. 206-207). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.