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CD Spoilers: The Case of the Stolen Walking Stick

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MegaPuff75:
I'm thinking she lost it in a game of cards, and Intelectus doesn't work at the poker table.

tze:
Given that we now know that Winter is fighting to keep the Outsiders beyond the Outer Gates---and Mother Winter, the most powerful creature of Winter, has apparently been injured by the loss of her "walking stick"---the theft of the Blackstaff takes on some interesting (and rather sinister) implications (if in fact the Blackstaff belongs to Mother Winter). Without the Blackstaff, Mother Winter apparently cannot physically take part in the battle at the Gates, as Mother Summer says Mother Winter almost never leaves her cottage. It seems like the loss of the Blackstaff crippled (in large part) the battle capabilities of Winter's most powerful agent (hard to do battle when you can't get yourself to the battlefield), which is something the Nemesis would presumably want very, very much.

So I wonder if the Nemesis, or some Outsider-friendly force in general, orchestrated the theft of Mother Winter's "walking stick"? That would mean that the Winter Queens have been targets for quite a while (I don't think we've ever been told exactly when the Blackstaff first came into the White Council's possession). And it makes quite a bit of strategic sense: first you cripple the most powerful Queen, then you go after the weakest Queen, leaving the Queen in the middle (Mab), the one actually in charge of the troops, incapable of calling for backup when you finally turn your attention to her.

Rashid doesn't actually say that the Senior Council in general (or Ebenezer in particular) know about the Winter Court/Outer Gates situation---he says the Council "knows only as much about our roles as it needs to---and that isn't much." There's no guarantee that the White Council has any idea of the implications of taking the Blackstaff away from Mother Winter. Knowing about Demonreach isn't the same thing as knowing about the Winter Court's actual purpose. And though I presume Mother Winter knows the Council has her staff, it's entirely possible that nobody mentioned the origins of the Blackstaff to Rashid himself, which would explain why he doesn't try to unilaterally get it back from Ebenezer; between wizards' penchants for secrecy and the Winter Queens' oft-mentioned pride, this might be a situation where people aren't sharing information (Mother Winter doesn't tell anyone what happened to the Blackstaff because it hurts her pride to ask for help, Rashid doesn't unilaterally get the Blackstaff back for her because nobody's ever told him what it really is), thus playing into the Nemesis's hands. And even if Rashid does know, he might not be able to get the Blackstaff away from Ebenezer without letting the Council know more about what's going on than apparently he wants them to know.

MijRai:
And in the sense of the White Council not knowing it all, you could perhaps link it to how Summer is the check for Winter's balance. Winter was becoming too powerful, too able to act both in defense and in offense. Perhaps the Staff had to be taken, to limit her nature from showing through and using the advantage to both fight the Outsiders and frost-ify the world. So Summer leaked a bit of the staff's abilities, and let the Council chomp at the bit for it before one of their cunning members managed to snatch it.

Arjan:
The staff was probably stolen by a wizard motivated and helped by one of the powers. The staff is needed for something and mother winter simply does not have the freedom to use it the way it is needed.

She probably knows.

The Rat Mage:
A huge theme in this book was that the Sidhe are titanically powerful, and we're all here wondering if some wizard stole something from a being more wise and experienced than /Mab/, who, lets remember, was running the long con this whole book. I find it far more likely that (assuming it's Mother Winter's) the staff was taken through some trickery orchestrated by a full Queen or Mother Summer, most likely the latter because of Summer's role in limiting the power of Winter upon mortals. Probably had more to do with a fae, and probably involved a bumbling wizard who didn't really know much about what was going on. Probably he/she got one of those lovely "rock and a hard place" choices. Merlin?

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