I studied him for a moment, trying to assess what had happened to him. There was blood coming from several cuts around his face, where his thin, elderly skin had broken open under a sharp blow—across his cheekbones, his brow ridges, and on his chin. His lip had been split and was swelling. He’d taken a beating from someone’s fists—or possibly from open-handed slaps delivered with supernatural speed.

That felt right. The old priest, a living, breathing symbol of everything Aristedes resented, must have shown up to talk. No matter how polite the father had been, his simple presence would have been challenge enough to the ego of anyone like the sorcerer. Challenges could be answered only with violence, and the slaps he delivered would have been both painful and insulting.

Forthill’s left arm was pressed against his ribs. He’d fallen and curled up around his midsection. The sorcerer must have given him some body blows as well. Broken ribs, maybe, or worse. Everything about trauma was worse when it happened to the elderly—thinner skin, less muscle, less bone, worn organs. They were vulnerable.

I ground my teeth and looked around the camp. Aristedes had left a guard to watch Forthill. He was a boy, and he might have been a very scrawny and underfed ten-year-old, at most. He sat near the fire barrel, shivering, holding a rusted old steak knife. His eyes roamed everywhere, but he wouldn’t look at the priest’s still form.

Forthill suddenly shuddered and let out a soft moan before sinking into stillness again.

The little boy with the knife looked away, his eyes suddenly wet. He wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth. I wasn’t sure which sight hurt more.

I clenched my jaw. What animal would do this to an old man? To a child? I felt my skin beginning to heat up, a reflection of the rage that had swelled up inside me again.

“It is better not to let such thoughts occupy your mind,” said a very calm, very soothing voice.

I spun to face the speaker, the words of a spell on my tongue, ghostly power kindling in the palm of my right hand.

A young woman stood over Forthill, opposite me, in a shaft of sunlight that spilled in through a hole in a blacked-out window. She was dressed in a black suit, a black shirt, a black tie. Her skin was dark—not like someone of African ancestry, but like someone had dunked her in a vat of perfectly black ink. The sclera, the whites of her eyes, were black, too. In fact, the only things on her that weren’t ink black were her eyes and the short sword she held in her hand, the blade dangling parallel to her leg. They were both shining silver with flecks of metallic gold.

She met my gaze calmly and then glanced down at my right hand, where flickers of fire sent out wisps of smoke. “Peace, Harry Dresden,” she said. “I have not come to harm anyone.”