I agree about the favour, something that people often dismiss.

Unfortunately Jim has said things that make me think he dismissed it too.

I don't think Harry would have been able to imprison Mab without a "legal" reason.

I think this one is strictly about power. I don't think it has anything to do with anything other than will and power. I don't think fairy stuff has anything to do with it.

Now should is entirely different.

I don't think the mantle would have left Mab if she were imprisoned. And Harry needs to get out of the mantle "honestly," for a lack of a better word or Mab will get revenge on him.

If Jim goes by the letter of his deals Harry made with Mab, Harry can get out if Mab asks him for one more favor. This could happen if she needs Harry to do something that she has no right to otherwise order him to do. This could be to "lift a hand against those he loves" or just something the Queen can't command the Knight to do. There probably is something. Obligations run both ways.

Mab still hasn't cured Justine.

Harry should be starting to realize he is going to need Mab for whatever is coming.

I did overstate my position in favor of brevity. Uriel is definitely not controlling Harry, but Uriel is acting with intellectus. He knows exactly what a nudge will do at that moment and chose that moment particularly. It wasn't the first time Harry used magic in Small Favor.

And note that Harry hasn't used soul fire in anything nearly that advanced since. The closest is his noose on the skin walker. If it has been as advanced, Harry would have lifted the skin walker high enough that it couldn't have made a circle. Harry would have killed it.

There was a lot more of Uriel's skill in that specific use than Harry's, in my opinion.

I also think Namshiel is a bit of a light weight as far as Denarians go. He's very fortunate to have gotten Marcone as a host. Marcone would be scarier to me than Namshiel as an adversary if I was Harry. (I'd rather face Marcone because he has no interest in me going to Hell or suffering. He'd just kill me clean, if possible).

The text disagrees.

Ley lines. In Small Favor Luccio has a map of ley lines from Listens to Wind. In Cold Days, Harry starts marking conjunctions of ley lines, Molly finishes. The castle isn't mentioned.

Harry uses a ley line in Changes, but it wasn't a ley line of dark energy. It was the dark energy that would change Harry, not just energy. Harry considers using the ley line in Cold Days right before the Water Beetle shows up.

If you go back Turn Coat and see Harry's reaction to the ley lines in Edinburgh, it makes it hard to imagine he lived on one, let alone a conjunction of ley lines.

Bob says the castle "is ready to bring them together" and Harry narrates that the ley lines are drawn toward the castle like rivers suddenly forced to a new course.

The text isn't vague. The ley lines were not there before the battle in 12 Months. I'm fairly certain they aren't there after the battle either. They were relatively near. Near enough to be drawn to the castle. Maybe deep below the surface where they couldn't otherwise be accessed.

“You got those ley lines called up?” Merlin’s fortress, they had called it, this castle. And it had been built not only to shelter and protect, but to channel magical energy as well. Its layered enchantments gave it a metaphysical mass far beyond the weight of mere stone. Magically speaking, it was made of a superdense substance, like the material of a collapsed star. And like that material, it had its own kind of gravity. “It’s ready to bring them together,” Bob said.

As Bob began activating the castle’s enchantments, that gravity spread out, drawing toward it flowing rivers of natural magical energy in the earth—ley lines—drawing them toward it like a star being drawn into a black hole, like rivers caught in a massive earthquake suddenly forced to a new course.

I closed my fist, cutting off the energy, sent it back into the conjunction of the river of ley lines beneath me. The vast projection of my head went with it.

I'm fairly certain Harry would have noticed that his home was at a conjunction of ley lines. He'd seen Listen to Wind's map and Harry and Molly knew them from memory in Cold Days.

It could be a hint about who added a Calvin and Hobbes book to his library in Proven Guilty fixed Little Chicago.