What if Eb is 100% correct about everything?

[KurtinStGeorge]

No person that you know, under almost any condition, would break an accused murderer from out of jail.  It isn't a rational response.

It is under certain circumstances.
1. You have the means to do so.
2. You believe you can get away with doing so.  I mean, not just pulling off the escape but believing you can avoid the legal repercussions.
3. You believe what you are doing is right; and people are capable of believing a lot of crazy s**t, or simply not caring about right and wrong.

There are plenty of historical examples of individuals and groups of supposedly responsible people doing far worse.  The case of the FBI agents who covered up for the gangster Whitey Bulger; over a long period of time while he committed numerous crimes and multiple murders, are a prime example.  I personally know a former District Attorney who knowingly protected a rapist from prosecution because he thought he was getting more valuable information to convict a group of supposedly worse individuals.  (I don't mean he gave this person a lighter sentence, I mean almost complete protection from prosecution.)  I also know a couple of police officers (The detectives who investigated the rapes allegedly committed by individual in question.) who discussed putting a hit on that same rapist because they thought they would be doing "the right thing."  And they thought they could get away with it.

   
Family is important, but Harry has more at stake with a daughter, then a single man. This is all well and good if Harry's destiny is to become King of the world, but kinda shortsighted if not.

I don't know what Jim is trying to accomplish but his motivations are kinda lame.  I could see going to the wall while Thomas hangs out in a cell. Instead he has the Swart whatevers execute Thomas with a slow death, even though they say he is awaiting judgement. It's just plain stupid and doesn't hang together very well.

I don't blame Harry for his feelings, but I would have preferred it if Harry had a better justification for them.  He knew that Thomas was set up, but couldn't prove it or something similar.  However, the actual breakout was something that Lara wanted and that Harry was obligated to help her accomplish.  He didn't really have a choice in the manner.  What would have been far darker would have been if Lara hadn't asked Harry for any favors, if he had just volunteered to help Lara without being compelled to do so.

I do understand what you mean by it feeling a bit lame, like events didn't hang together very well.  What bothered me more was that Harry wasn't asking questions beyond, "Why would Thomas do this?"  Once Harry realized that Thomas didn't have a rational reason, other than perhaps he had been pressured by someone or something else to do it in order to protect Justine, Harry didn't go any further.  Simple questions like "Why was Etri the target?" or "Could it have been an inside job?" or even "Isn't it convenient that Mab told Harry he owed paying off two favors to Lara just before she needed them to rescue Thomas?" are all ideas that should have been floating through Harry's mind, even if he didn't have a way to immediately start investigating any of them.  Even if none of those ideas led anywhere, they would have been great misdirection for the readers to ponder over.  At least it would have been things the Harry we used to know would have done.  He is supposed to be a detective after all.

And why is Harry all of a sudden having abandonment issues?  He's picked a piss poor time to get all angsty about being left in a lurch. Hell Thomas should be angry, his mother left him after making sure he was a serial killer by birth.

Oh, I think this has been coming on for a long time.  Harry has had almost nothing good to say about being an orphan (and why would he?), at any time during the series.  He didn't know that Ebenzer was his grandfather until well after he had grown up and moved to Chicago or this would have most likely come out pre-Storm Front when Harry was a teenager living with Ebenezer.

Now add that to the old anger that Susan once kept Harry's daughter a secret and hidden from him, the realization that Ebenezer was thinking of doing the same thing and that the Winter mantel with its territorial imperative was pushing Harry to fight, and it was easy for Harry to run with his feelings.

Your point about Thomas is not invalid.  If the series was about the lives of two characters; Harry and Thomas and each of them shared the story's narration, I think we would hear a lot more of what Thomas thinks and feels about Margaret LaFey.  Jim covers this by making Thomas go silent and angsty when he gets angry or he feels something is too personal to discus.
   

Putting that aside for the moment, having Thomas suffer the pain of all the many that he has hurt has been something that has been needed.  As sympathetic as he is he has committed murder multiple times and being Harry's brother doesn't make him fit company for a child.  Eb is right, down the line and Harry is wrong.  Lara is a 1000 year old murderess who has had to have killed hundreds.  And even she admits she can't always control it.  Harry and Jim are in a fantasy.  In the real world Lara and Thomas would be hunted by their prey and exterminated.

Minor question, but is Lara 1,000 years old?  Where did you get that info?  I just checked the Dresden Files Timeline and I didn't find a reference for her date of birth.  Is it from something Lara said in one of the books?

As far as Thomas being made to suffer all the terrible things he has done to others, I think you are correct.  Other forum members have guessed that this is a part of Thomas' redemption arc and I agree with them.

Ebenezer may be right about the White Court, but what he was thinking about doing was wrong.  There is a difference between being right and being self righteous; especially if that attitude leads someone to the point where they can do absolutely anything they feel is right no matter how much it may harm other people.  Several people on this forum have posted the idea that perhaps Ebenezer has been slowly corrupted by his use of the Blackstaff, that it doesn't completely shield him from the effects of using black magic.  I think it's far more likely that having and repeatedly using this ability over more than two centuries is the corrupting influence.  I think "power corrupts" was actually said by Harry or Karin during one of their conversations in Peace Talks, so perhaps it's one of the themes Jim is playing with in this book and the larger story of both PT and Battle Ground.

The Dresden Files is a fantasy series, but you're not wrong about Lara.  I think someone with Lara's abilities would have to be incredibly discreet; far more than we see in the series, to enslave and knock off victims without having numerous family members attempt to track her down and kill her.

[vultur]

I think someone with Lara's abilities would have to be incredibly discreet; far more than we see in the series, to enslave and knock off victims without having numerous family members attempt to track her down and kill her.

Normal people don't know about Whampires, and Whampire-induced death doesn't look like murder to mundane eyes (heart attack for Raiths, suicide for Skavis, etc.) So mundane family members of mundane victims have no reason to look for a murderer. I don't think Lara generally feeds on people who have supernaturally-aware family members or friends capable of retaliation.

Also, Lara is probably relatively controlled, and doesn't kill when she doesn't intend to - which means probably long-term Raith thralls, who are likely chosen specifically not to be missed.

And unless you're on at least a Warden's power level, how would you retaliate against Lara anyway? She's a mind-bender, it's not like she's likely to be arrested, and if she was she wouldn't stay there long. A normal mortal (or less powerful supernatural) attempt at direct murder would be really unlikely to succeed.

The Accords keep Lara largely safe from people who are powerful enough to hurt her, as long as she follows the rules...

[morriswalters]

It isn't that you couldn't break someone out of jail, it's just that it is almost never a good thing to do. I get that in the Dresdenverse it's about power., but Harry doesn't really question why it is playing out this way.  He just thinks that he is going to free Thomas or burn trying.

Which meant I didn’t have to go out in a blaze of glory, or at least gory, that very moment.

Butcher, Jim. Peace Talks (Dresden Files) (p. 70). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I don't call that rational, even less so when you  have your daughter and babysitter and dog upstairs trapped among your soon to be enemies.

I thought I read somewhere she was a thousand years old, but maybe not.  It just may have been an overabundance of enthusiasm for the topic.

[vultur]

@vultur
The White Council went to war over Harry, even if it was kicking and screaming, and Jim has Harry call this out in the dialog.

Yeah, kind of, but they had to do that anyway - the Red Court was already planning war against the Council.

Also, Harry back at the end of GP didn't have the non-Council positions (Warden of Demonreach and Winter Knight) he does now. He also didn't have the reputation he's accumulated in the books from SK to SG.

Harry the powerful but inexperienced maverick wizard was a much less intimidating figure than Harry the Winter Knight, destroyer of the entire Red Court, slayer of immortals.

The Winter Knight is a significant supernatural figure already. With all Harry's other accomplishments and connections added to the Mantle, he's pretty terrifying even without the Council's backing. And that's assuming that his enemies don't know about Demonreach, which is a whole other level of terrifying.

Part of this is that we know Harry isn't going to use his more evil options to full effect, since we see his POV. But his enemies likely don't know that, especially after the whole "extinction of the Red Court" incident.

[vultur]

I'm not so sure about how much of a problem Svartalves would be. We've never really seen them in action. We've just repeatedly heard no one wants to mess with them.

Oh I am sure they are scary and highly competent. But... on the other hand everyone acts like an assassination attempt by Thomas acting alone is a plausible threat to Etri's life. That wouldn't have been true for the Red King or Mab or Titania or Kringle or the Erlking.

[ClintACK]

Etri isn't the king of all svartalves, though, is he? He's just the head of the svartalf embassy in Chicago -- so, more equivalent to Bianca in Grave Peril than to the Red King.

We're told repeatedly that no one messes with the svartalves, and we've never seen them lose a fight. "Froggy" in Bombshells had Molly handily outclassed and Etri casually starts hacking pieces off him and submerges him in the floor without bothering to wait for security. Compare that to the difficulty Marcone had with Mag in Even Hand. Molly (in Bombshells) and Harry (in Peace Talks) both point out that even the norse gods never got into a fight with the svartalves. It's possible that their reputation is undeserved, but did you notice the stockpiles of vehicles and weapons when they were taking Harry to see Thomas? Shades of Vadderung's armory.

[vultur]

Etri isn't the king of all svartalves, though, is he? He's just the head of the svartalf embassy in Chicago -- so, more equivalent to Bianca in Grave Peril than to the Red King.

I thought he was called a head of state in PT.

We're told repeatedly that no one messes with the svartalves,

I think that has more to do with connections than overt power, rather like the White Court.

I mean, they are seriously big deals, sure. Their rulers not being "mostly retired god" to demi-god level like the Red King, Kringle/Odin, Erlking, Mab, and Titania doesn't at all make them insignificant. The White Court is extremely scary, for example.

But they seem to be one of the "Wyld faerie organizations", less powerful than Summer or Winter. So they are unlikely to go kill the Winter Knight for something he did as a direct agent of Mab, as that would be essentially an act of war against Winter.

But anyway, that's not really my point. The White Court is really scary - but I have no doubt that Harry would attack them if he saw it as the right thing to do, the only way to protect the people he's committed to protect. He did do it to Cowl, Aurora, the entire Red Court, etc. Going to war against things beyond his "weight class" when he sees it as the right thing to do is pretty much Harry's trademark.

So why does Eb think that "the svartalves are going to try to kill you" is an useful thing to say to deter Harry?

[Mira]

Etri isn't the king of all svartalves, though, is he? He's just the head of the svartalf embassy in Chicago -- so, more equivalent to Bianca in Grave Peril than to the Red King.

We're told repeatedly that no one messes with the svartalves, and we've never seen them lose a fight. "Froggy" in Bombshells had Molly handily outclassed and Etri casually starts hacking pieces off him and submerges him in the floor without bothering to wait for security. Compare that to the difficulty Marcone had with Mag in Even Hand. Molly (in Bombshells) and Harry (in Peace Talks) both point out that even the norse gods never got into a fight with the svartalves. It's possible that their reputation is undeserved, but did you notice the stockpiles of vehicles and weapons when they were taking Harry to see Thomas? Shades of Vadderung's armory.

Which says the "escape" itself was a mere set up, if Thomas had remained in the embassy compound, it would have been more difficult if not impossible for Harry and company to
get to him let alone remove him.  I think Lara knows a lot more than she is telling, it was why
she went to Mab calling in her "favors" before Thomas ever killed anyone.  How much she knows about the assassination attempt at this time before it happened is unclear.  But I think Lara knew,
so went to Mab for insurance.  Or it is a replay of Skin Game,  Mab knew before hand, couldn't or wouldn't stop Thomas for some really complicated political reasons, then arrange with Marcone to
have Thomas moved to a place where he could be freed.  Vadderung also seems to be in on it to some degree, since both he and Mab seem to be aware of Harry and what he is doing, but say nothing about it.  Depending on the reasons it might be what gets Harry out of the Winter Knight's gig in the end with Molly's help.

[ClintACK]

The Svartalves seem to be insane when it comes to duty and balancing the scales. If Harry did wrong them, on his own recognizance, they wouldn't let it go because they fear Mab. In this case, though, their obsession should lead them to target all their vengeance on Lara, if they know that Harry was formally working for her to repay a favor.

We're told Etri is "what amounted to a head of state" and "the heaviest hitter [Harry] knew of among his people", but he's also described as "the head of the svartalf embassy". That's not a description you'd give to a king.

I do think there's something of a setup going on, but I'd be shocked if it ends up with Harry freed from Winter. In Peace Talks he manages to become even more entangled with Winter, owing a new favor to the Winter Lady. And his public behavior during the peace talks will have isolated him even more than usual, confirming everyone's suspicions -- from acting the part of Mab's thug with the too-blatant-not-to-be-a-setup sidhe fiddler to sexually assaulting a valkyrie right there on the dance floor in true Lloyd Slate fashion; from being so jumpy he almost attacks Strength-of-a-River-in-his-Shoulders at the buffet line to being seen having sex with the White Queen; and worst of all when the peace talks collapsed into brutal violence with einherjaren gunned down in the great hall and Mab drop-kicked through multiple walls, Harry was completely AWOL. His one assignment from the wardens was security, and when they needed security the most, he wasn't there.

[Mira]

I do think there's something of a setup going on, but I'd be shocked if it ends up with Harry freed from Winter. In Peace Talks he manages to become even more entangled with Winter, owing a new favor to the Winter Lady. And his public behavior during the peace talks will have isolated him even more than usual, confirming everyone's suspicions -- from acting the part of Mab's thug with the too-blatant-not-to-be-a-setup sidhe fiddler to sexually assaulting a valkyrie right there on the dance floor in true Lloyd Slate fashion; from being so jumpy he almost attacks Strength-of-a-River-in-his-Shoulders at the buffet line to being seen having sex with the White Queen; and worst of all when the peace talks collapsed into brutal violence with einherjaren gunned down in the great hall and Mab drop-kicked through multiple walls, Harry was completely AWOL. His one assignment from the wardens was security, and when they needed security the most, he wasn't there.

The Fomor did throw a "monkey wrench" into whatever Mab's plans were originally. It is very suspect that on the eve of the talks suddenly Lara shows up calling in favors and Mab willing to lend her Knight for them. Then the assassination attempt, so what game is Lara playing? How is it that Thomas was willing to go along with the plans? Did Lara promise him a way to keep Justine safe if he went along? If the above is true, apparently Lara wanted assurance that her brother would be rescued. How much were Marcone, Vadderung, and even the Svartalves, themselves in on the plans?  Could it be that it was an attempt by them to sabotage their own talks?

1] Thomas becomes such an insider that he is able to get past the Svartalve security.  Putting
him in perfect position to make the attempt in the first place.
 2] The Svartalves agree to allow Harry to get little Maggie out instead of holding her as "leverage."
 3] The Svartalves agree to allow Thomas to be moved to Marcone's castle in the middle of the talks.
    The guard placed on Thomas is light, considering what supposedly he is guilty of.
   4] Before things go to hell, both Vadderung and Mab seem to be aware of what Harry is doing, but look the other way.

You could be right about Molly cashing in on the little bargain she made with Harry to keep him as Knight.  However if I am right, once Harry finds out that Mab was behind what happened to Thomas he will really be pissed.  Mab is going to have to do some really fast talking to ever get Harry to cooperate with her again. 

[ClintACK]

If it ends with Thomas and the baby safe and Hunger-free, as a result of a Bargain, Harry will be mad that he was out of the loop, but not at all displeased.

The key moment for Harry-Mab relations, I think, is when he asks her to trust him and she does. The next step will be Mab actually telling him what her endgame goal is and trusting him to work towards it, rather than trying to strongarm and manipulate him into doing it -- and I think we could see that in some aspect of Battle Ground. There are tons of small plots going on surrounding the big thing (which itself is just a distraction for what's happening at the Outer Gates) -- I'd bet there's one that could be handled quickly if Mab were to simply tell Harry her goal and point him in the right direction.

(My current working theory is that the Lara-Mab-Marcone plot is designed to smoke out the Nemfected and other traitors among the Accords signatories. I'd imagine lots of suspects being fed information or put in what looks like a pivotal position, so they'll be tempted to betray the alliance and expose themselves.)

[Mira]

If it ends with Thomas and the baby safe and Hunger-free, as a result of a Bargain, Harry will be mad that he was out of the loop, but not at all displeased.

  "If," is half of life as my dear old father used to say.  That still might happen but I don't believe it
will be by the end of Battle Ground.  I get the feeling that Thomas is going to remain in stasis for at
least a book or two.  I think Mab is trying to make amends for that, among other things to Harry in Christmas Eve.

The key moment for Harry-Mab relations, I think, is when he asks her to trust him and she does. The next step will be Mab actually telling him what her endgame goal is and trusting him to work towards it, rather than trying to strongarm and manipulate him into doing it -- and I think we could see that in some aspect of Battle Ground. There are tons of small plots going on surrounding the big thing (which itself is just a distraction for what's happening at the Outer Gates) -- I'd bet there's one that could be handled quickly if Mab were to simply tell Harry her goal and point him in the right direction.

There is no proof that she trusts him fully,untill she lets him in on her plans.  I think by the end of Battle Ground he will have earned her trust.  But at the same time given the Knights, Ladies, and her working relationship with Titania the last thousand years or so, old habits die hard.  We will have
to see how flexible she can be, and it will be critical that she is.

(My current working theory is that the Lara-Mab-Marcone plot is designed to smoke out the Nemfected and other traitors among the Accords signatories. I'd imagine lots of suspects being fed information or put in what looks like a pivotal position, so they'll be tempted to betray the alliance and expose themselves.)

Yeah, but that has become such a catch all, given the kind of risks and sacrifices of the likes of Harvey and now Thomas, I think it goes beyond just smoking out traitors and the Nemfected. I think there are less costly ways of doing that.  Now I wouldn't be shocked, kind of turning your theory around a bit, if Marcone, Lara, or Mab were infected and that is why at least one of them was willing to play this game.  Planting division and doubt are sure ways to defeat, it seems to me that was the goal of whoever put Thomas up to going through with this plot.

[vultur]

In this case, though, their obsession should lead them to target all their vengeance on Lara, if they know that Harry was formally working for her to repay a favor.

Exactly.

We're told Etri is "what amounted to a head of state" and "the heaviest hitter [Harry] knew of among his people", but he's also described as "the head of the svartalf embassy". That's not a description you'd give to a king.

Eh... I don't think he's exactly a king, if he were he'd be outright a head of state, not just "what amounted to".

But I don't think he's several levels of authority down like Bianca relative to the Red King, she wouldn't even be "what amounted to a head of state".

I think that description puts him at the top level of authority among the svartalves, but not necessarily the only person at that level (he might be one of a number of essentially equal nobles).

[Mira]

I think that description puts him at the top level of authority among the svartalves, but not necessarily the only person at that level (he might be one of a number of essentially equal nobles).

Who may have been in on his own assassination, which was part of a bigger plan to disrupt the talks.  However it got botched, there was a death, and suddenly the stakes were raised a bit higher.