“Because getting stronger isn’t about just pushing hard,” I said. “It’s a lot more important to push steady. Come back again and again. Push too hard, you don’t have a chance to recover, the muscles don’t get to grow, injuries are more likely. It’s a tortoise and hare thing.”
“Turtles and hair?” Fitz asked. “What the hell?”
“We’ll have to cover some Aesop,” I said. “Lot of good practical knowledge in there.” I tossed him a protein shake in a box and took one for myself.
“Harry,” he said. He frowned down at the shake, took a deep breath, then faced me and said, “I’m sorry. I tried to use magic that night. With the ghouls. I kept gathering it, but I couldn’t hold it all together. It just…slipped right through my fingers.”
I shook my head. “It’s hard to do it when you have to think your way through every step. It takes time and practice to turn it all into reflex so you can use it under pressure. Most wizards are even older than me before they can do magic smoothly in a fight.”
“A lot of the Wardens are younger than you.”
“Everyone has different talents,” I said. “Things they’re good atnaturally. The Council recruits Wardens from among the wizards with natural gifts at evocation.” I shook my head. “Honestly, in a lot of ways they’re the weakest. Evocation gets things done in a hurry, and if you’ve got to fight there’s nothing like it—but it’s short-term, and it’s got really limited application. Better to be an enchanter, like Ancient Mai. Or a diviner like the Merlin.”
“Diviner?”
“Wizard who specializes in getting, using, and disseminating information,” I said. “It’s where I’ve worked hardest to shore up my weaknesses as a practitioner. Knowledge is power, kid. Especially for us.”
He drank half of his shake and nodded thoughtfully. “Like me with shades. That’s where my talent is.”
“Prezactly,” I said. “I want you to start putting in half an hour at the range after we lift. Only use force and fire for now.”
“So almost every day,” Fitz said. “ ’Cause to grow I need regular practice.”
“Discipline, discipline, discipline,” I said, nodding. “Without discipline, you don’t use power. It uses you. You wind up doing things only out of strong emotion, without reason and balance. People get hurt. Most likely yourself.”
Bear thumped into the gym. She had moved with a little more bounce and energy ever since the fight with the ghouls.“Seidrmadr,”she said quietly. “There’s trouble. You’d better come down.”
“Come on, Fitz,” I said. “Let’s go deal with some conflict.”
—
I got downstairs and found a delegation from the magical community waiting for me, headed up by Artemis Bock.
Bock was the owner of Bock Ordered Books, a social locus of the city’s magical community, and we hadn’t always seen eye to eye. He wasn’t really anything more than the most minor practitioner imaginable, and that mostly because he had read a lot of books. He was knowledgeable on theory, though, savvy to the magical world, and generally one of those guys the Wardens looked in on now and then. He was comfortably overweight, somewhere in his fifties, wearing jeans and a button-down shirt and a cardigan.
He had a handful of his cronies from the store with him, two of the old salts I sometimes saw playing chess at Mac’s—and a young couple who had been through a beating.
“Bock,” I said calmly, as I came down the stairs to the grand hall. The kids staying in the castle had half days of school in one of the meeting rooms upstairs, so the place was largely empty except for a couple of the Knights of the Bean who were hanging around on duty, playing cards.
“Dresden,” he said brusquely, nodding. “We need to talk.”
I gestured at the nearest table and said, “Come on in. Sit down. Fitz, see if the kitchen has any of that hot cider the Ordo made for us left.”
“Got it,” Fitz said and hurried out.
Bock shepherded the young couple into the seats next to him and settled down across from me.
“Okay,” I said. “Introductions?”
“This is Roger and Bess,” Bock said quietly. “They’re Kin.”
Kinwas a general term for people who had supernatural beings somewhere a few generations back in their ancestry. Generally speaking, it got applied to people who were pretty much no different from vanilla mortals, except for being a little weird and having family knowledge of the supernatural world, and maybe some of the most minor abilities. You probably know some people who are Kin. Visit any Renaissance fair and you’ll see some. Also, those folks with the really good dyed hair, where you can’t see any roots growing in? Probably them, too.
Roger was a thin kid, early twenties, glasses, kind of stork-like, with an Adam’s apple that extended almost as far as his chin. He had absolutely black hair and nutmeg-colored skin. His lip had been split, and one of his wrists had been sprained or broken and was heavily wrapped. Bess was a tiny moonfaced pale thing, stocky and curvy. Her hair was silver despite her youth, and very long, though tied back in a tail. She wasn’t looking up, but her face was heavily bruised and I could see more bruises spreading out toward her collarbones from her shoulders.
“Hi, guys,” I said gently. “I’m Harry Dresden.”
“We know who you are,” Bess said in a whisper.
