The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Proven Guilty final iteration.
morriswalters:
--- Quote from: KurtinStGeorge on November 22, 2019, 04:02:54 AM ---If Maeve was involved in any of this, it's something that pretty much can only be confirmed in a time travel Dresden story. Yes, in theory there could come a time when Harry works out most of the details and in a conversation or dispute with Mab, she reveals her daughter was responsible for the attacks, but that wouldn't be very good writing. It would be far better for Harry to go back in time and learn of Maeve's role that way. Plus, many of us assume it was future Harry who who hit the blue beetle from behind and spun Harry out near the beginning of PG.
--- End quote ---
By Cold Days everyone working against Mab is dead. Excluding any unknown members of the Black Council. Meave, Lily, Thorned Namshiel, Slate and the Reds.
Lily implies that Maeve sent the fetches.
--- Quote from: Proven Guilty ---“No, Murph,” I said. “They planned for that. This whole raid was a setup from the get go.” I jerked my head at Lily. “Wasn’t it.”
“That is one way to describe it,” Lily said quietly. “I would not, myself, interpret it that way. I had no part in bringing the fetches here—but their presence and their capture of Lady Charity’s daughter presented us with an opportunity to temporarily neutralize the presence of Mab’s forces upon our borders.
--- End quote ---
Maeve is infected by this point. We know this because it is at this point that Maeve starts selling the idea that Mab is Crazy. This will be the central point of Clod Days, is Mab crazy? And then there is this.
--- Quote from: Proven Guilty ---“I think we got played.”
“By the Summer Lady?”
I shook my head. “I think Lily got suckered just as much as we did.”
He frowned and rubbed at his head with one palm. “How so?”
“That’s the part I can’t figure,” I said. “I think someone set Molly up to be a beacon for the fetches. And I’m damned sure that it was no accident that those fetches took Molly to Arctis Tor when it was so lightly defended. Someone wanted me there at Arctis Tor.”
--- End quote ---
The last line is the heart of my central thesis, this was about Harry. Of course this is my head canon and as such may be terribly wrong.
As for who hit Harry this is answered in Cold Days indirectly. Proven Guilty is probably the point where Ace starts shadowing Harry. We can infer that he is shadowing Harry because he ends up using Lacuna as Harry uses Toot. And she is almost Toots size. Something possible only if he had been watching Harry for a long time.
@Bad Alias
Thanks.
Avernite:
My hypothesis that indeed the plan was always for Summer to get dumped into Winter's wellspring, and I think it is MAB who wanted that.
She probably had promised someone to 'order all her troops to stay at Winter's borders' which means she needed some way she didn't explicitly order to get them off.
Something like Summer's fire, which triggered responses beyond orders in all of Winter.
morriswalters:
I don't know that Mab planned it, but she made it possible for it to happen. I think that Mab's plan was to protect her future Knight. How it played out told her who the players were, and what they were into.
It also foreshadows a number of things if you assume that Michael was being moved on the Chessboard. That implies that Mab was playing with an Angel. Molly made a choice, but Harry was innocent of any knowledge of what was happening in the background. So Uriel, assuming it was him, could help Harry. But he couldn't save Molly. Which makes Uriel's gift to Harry in Small Favor more understandable.
g33k:
--- Quote from: morriswalters on December 01, 2019, 09:39:51 PM --- I don't know that Mab planned it, but she made it possible for it to happen. I think that Mab's plan was to protect her future Knight. How it played out told her who the players were, and what they were into ...
--- End quote ---
I DO think Mab planned it; or, if you'd rather: she set up some specific parameters (e.g. the apparently "weakened" Arctis Tor defenses) and then watched her enemies and frenemies (and putative allies) as everyone reacted, as plans unfolded.
I think this book is where Mab came to suspect Maeve; or maybe she already suspected, and this is where Mab proved that Maeve was compromised. This is where Maeve made a bald-faced lie; maybe Mab knew then, or maybe she needed to investigate to see if Maeve could possibly have been tricked into believing the falsehood, so that it wasn't a "lie" as it left her lips.
And there at the end... with fresh Summerfire dumped into the Winterwell... Mab broke cover, and winked at Harry Dresden.
She was up on the rooftop all along.
She saw the Fetch arrive ... with the daughter of a Knight of the Cross. Yeah, Uriel is involved with THAT situation; not to mention that sometime about then, there's a Hellfire-fueled assault on Arctis Tor: again, something of interest to Uriel! So she's gotten Maeve to break cover, and she's unmasked a Denarian; no small accomplishments!
Then Harry comes along, and HE sees (smells) the Hellfire, so Harry knows.
And then Harry does his Harrying, and we know how THAT turned out (oddly minimal property damage, given Harry's usual record).
And then she winked.
A wink can be many things; but it is always about secrecy, privacy: I know, and YOU know, but they don't know. It is complicitous, an alliance (however limited) between the two. It is communicating, and not acting:
if this had offended Mab, she could have taken out Harry then and there (but she was busy shaping her next Knight).
Mab -- a faerie, to whom secrets are valuable -- gave away the secret of her presence there on the roof.
I return to my prior theory -- Mab wanted Harry to do this specific thing.
Summerfire was just a distraction, though (likely an unpleasant one, but nothing Mab couldn't withstand).
What Mab got wasn't just Summerfire -- Mab (guardian of the Outer Gates) got the magic of a Starborn Wizard dumped fresh into the Winter Wellspring.
AND (bee tee dubs) she unmasked multiple key actors of the conspiracy against her.
You just don't get much more Win than Mab got that day.
morriswalters:
I'm pretty sure Mab had Molly brought there. All the pieces had to be moved to their proper places and times. Everything was designed to put all the players in the warehouse at the proper time to make sure that Harry didn't have to throw down with the Senior Council.
If you want to go full on tin hat, make Goodman Grey Sandra Marling and take his reticence at the Carpenter house in Skin Game as a call back to Proven Guilty, for which Uriel seems to be holding a bit of a grudge.
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