impersonates warden

“It gets less likely we’re going to be able to help him the longer we stand around gabbing,” Butters said. He recovered his bag, rummaged in it, and added, “This will work better with you here anyway.” He straightened up and tossed a folded square of grey cloth at Daniel. “Put that on. Stay next to me. Don’t talk.”
Daniel stared at the cloth dubiously, then looked at Butters.
“For Forthill,” Butters said quietly, softening his voice. “We’ll leave as soon as he’s safe, and you can take me straight to Karrin. You have my word. Okay?”
Daniel agonized over it for a couple of seconds. Then he nodded at Butters and unfolded the grey cloth.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly understanding the little guy’s plan. “Good call. The fabric isn’t exactly right, but it’s close. This could work.”
Butters nodded. “I thought it might. How should we approach it?”
“Small-timer like Aristedes is insecure about the size of his magical penis,” I said. “Give his ego a few crumbs and he’ll eat out of your hand.”
“We’ll have to go to radio silence,” Butters said. “There wasn’t time to make the headphones work with it.”
“If I think of anything imperative, I can tell Fitz. He’ll pass it on.”
Fitz looked nervously between Butters, Daniel, and me. “Oh. Uh. Sure. Because I can hear Dresden even without a radio.”
Butters drew a second square of grey cloth from the bag and then tossed the bag over to one side. Calmly, he unfolded the cloth and threw the hooded cloak it proved to be over his shoulders, fastening a clasp at his throat.
“So, Harry,” Butters said. “How do the Wardens like to make an entrance?”

Ghost Story Chapter 36, Page 384-386


Daniel Carpenter leaned back, lifted a size-fourteen work boot, and kicked the door leading to the factory floor completely off its hinges.
I was impressed. The kid had power. I mean, sure, the door was old and all, the hinges rusted, but it was still a freaking steel door. And it went a couple of feet through the air before it slammed down onto the floor with an enormous, hollow boom that echoed through the huge room beyond it.
“Thank you,” Butters said, in the absolutely obnoxious British accent he normally reserved for the nobleman his players were supposed to hate at our old weekly gaming sessions. He sniffed and strode onto the factory floor, his footsteps clear and precise in the empty space. The fake Warden’s cloak floated in his wake.
Daniel stomped along a step behind Butters, his dark brows lowered into a thug’s glower. It looked pretty natural on him. He had one huge hand clamped down on the back of Fitz’s neck and was dragging the kid along with brusque, casual power. Fitz looked intensely uncomfortable.
Butters stopped at a faint old line of chalk on the floor, regarded it for a moment, and then called out, “Hello? I say there, is anyone at home? I’m here to speak to the sorcerer Aristedes. I was told he was to be found here.” He paused for maybe a second and a half and added, “I’ve a warlock to catch in Trinidad in an hour. I would prefer not to draw this out.”
No one answered. There were soft, furtive sounds: an old tennis shoe dragging across the concrete floor with a faint squeak. Footsteps. A soft exhalation. A faint grunt of exertion.
“Warden,” Butters said. He picked at his teeth with his thumbnail.
Daniel’s shoulders locked up and tightened, and Fitz let out a short yowl. “It’s me!” he called out frantically. “It’s Fitz! Sir, they say they’re here to talk to you about the Fomor.”
“Fitz!” said a voice from off to one side. One of the kids from the drive-by, the little one, emerged from behind a set of metal cabinets. He got a look at Fitz’s situation and tensed into a crouch, ready to run.
“Hey, Zero,” Fitz said, trying to sound casual as he all but dangled from Daniel’s grip. “The boss home?”
There was a swishing sound, as if someone had thrown a large ball at considerable speed. And then Aristedes said, from directly behind us, “I am.”
Daniel twitched, but Butters concealed his reaction masterfully. He simply glanced over his shoulder and regarded Aristedes, who now stood in the newly doorless entryway. Butters arched an eyebrow, as if he’d seen the trick before but at least found it well-done, and turned to face Aristedes.
He gave the man a slight bow and said, “I am Warden Valdo. This is Warden Smythe.”
Daniel glowered.
“If you aren’t otherwise occupied, I wonder if we might ask for a moment of your time.”
Aristedes studied the three of them for a silent moment, his eyes narrowed. He was wearing a ragged, old dark blue bathrobe over loose cotton chinos and a tank top. The hair on his chest was thick and dark. The tattoos around his skull and over his cheekbones stood out sharply against his pale skin.
“You are from the White Council?” he asked.
Butters studied him for a moment and then sighed. “Should I start at the beginning again? Our files describe you as a minor but competent operator. Were they mistaken?”
Aristedes folded his arms, his expression a neutral mask. “I am, of course, aware of the White Council. What business do you have with me? And why are you holding my apprentice prisoner?”
I did a quick circle around Aristedes. Since I was all ghosty, he never knew I was there. He didn’t so much as get goose bumps on the back of his neck. I guessed that he was the opposite of Forthill: Being a selfcentered megalomaniac hadn’t prepared Aristedes to be sensitive to anyone’s soul at all.
“There’s a bulge under the robe at the small of his back,” I said to Fitz. “Blink twice for yes if you know what it is. Blink once for no.”
Fitz shot a glance at me and blinked twice.
“A weapon?” I asked.
Two blinks.
“Gun?”
One blink.
“Knife?”
Two blinks.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s definitely a need-to-know fact. If you get a chance, or if things get violent, tell Daniel about it.”
Two more nervous blinks.
I hesitated, and then said, in a gentler voice, “Hang tough, kid. I’ve been where you are. It’s going to be okay.”
No blinks. Fitz bit his lip.
Butters, meanwhile, kept the dialogue going. “Clearly, the Council finds the recent activities of the Fomor somewhat repulsive. Just as clearly, our recently concluded war with the Red Court has left us less able to act than we would have been otherwise.”
Which, thinking about it, probably wasn’t true. The Council finished the war with the Red Court with more active, experienced, dangerous Wardens than they’d had when it started. Granted, the vast majority of them were a bunch of kids Molly’s age or younger, but they were already veterans. But I was betting that the Fomor picking on a bunch of lowlevel talents was a problem that was fairly far down their priority list.
“I’d heard the Wardens were adept at coming to the point,” Aristedes said. “Should we start again at the beginning to give you another chance to get there?”
Butters gave the sorcerer a frosty smile and a small inclination of his head. “You and your crew are still here. That suggests competence. We approve of competence.”
Aristedes tilted his head to one side and was silent for a moment. “You’ve come to discuss a relationship of some kind?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Butters replied. “I’m not a recruiter. This is a visit. A ground-level evaluation, if you will.”
I hated to leave the three of them standing in front of Aristedes and his knife, with nothing but Butters’s gaming accent and a few yards of grey cloth to protect them, but we hadn’t come here to face down Aristedes. We were here for Forthill. The hasty plan I’d sketched with Butters called for me to locate the father while they kept Aristedes’ attention.
Besides, those cloaks represented something that Aristedes would respect, if he had two brain cells to rub together. The Wardens of the White Council had never been regarded as friendly figures like your local traffic cop. People feared them—probably all the more so since the war with the Red Court. The Wardens were the guys who gave you one warning, way before you were anywhere close to crossing the line by breaking one of the Laws of Magic. The next time you saw them, they were probably there to cut off your head.
Whether they were more respected or more feared depended greatly on one’s point of view, but no one ever, ever took them lightly.
It felt right somehow that Butters was trading on their fearsome reputation. Maybe it felt right because that reputation was, like me, immaterial—but not unable to alter events. The ghost of the Wardens’ ferocity could do as much as I could to keep an eye on my companions. So I wished them luck within the silence of my thoughts and set out to accomplish my part of the plan.

Ghost Story Chapter 37, page 387-391


“That seems reasonable,” Aristedes was saying to Butters. “May I ask one question?”
“Why not?” Butters answered.
Fitz was squirming in Daniel’s grip, leaning away from Aristedes. One look at his face told me why: He’d recognized something in his old teacher’s words or manner. I’d seen the faces of abused wives while they watched their husbands drink, sickly certain that the cycle of abuse would renew itself in the coming hours. Fitz knew what Aristedes looked like when he was about to dispense violence.
“Wardens,” Aristedes said. “Why do you not carry swords?”
Crap.
The question caught Butters off guard. He could have smoothed over the question with a good answer, or maybe even ignored it altogether convincingly—but he did the one thing he absolutely could not do if he was going to sell his false identity to Aristedes.
He hesitated.
Couldn’t blame him, I guess. He’d come lickety-split after Forthill, moving as fast as possible. We’d spent all of maybe ninety seconds on putting our plan together, which had only been possible thanks to Butters’s foresight in packing those cloaks—apparently, he’d thought it might be useful to have them on hand to create a Warden sighting or two, if it seemed like the city’s supernatural scene could use some reassurance. In our hurry to retrieve the good father, I hadn’t thought about the whole sword angle—for good reason. The hell of it was that Aristedes was reaching an accurate conclusion based on an erroneous assumption.
The swords of the Wardens were fairly famous in supernatural circles. Bright silver, supernaturally sharp blades, perfect for chopping off the heads of warlocks, and wrought with spells to deflect or disrupt magical attacks or enchantments. When you saw Wardens, you saw their swords.
Or, at least, that had been the status quo until recently. The enchantress who had made them, Warden Luccio, had lost her capacity to create them when Corpsetaker had swapped her into the body of a young woman with very little natural inclination toward magic. As a result, most of the new Wardens, starting with me, didn’t have a groovy sword. Which meant that most of the Wardens didn’t carry swords any longer.
But that impression, apparently, hadn’t trickled down to street level yet.
Things started happening very quickly.
Aristedes produced his knife, a wicked-looking number with a lot of extraneous points on it—an interpretation of a bowie knife, as done by H. R. Giger.

Ghost Story Chapter 37, Page 397-398