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I'll be honest, I didn't really know what to think of the Immortal, at first. Immortals tend to be funny people, anywhere on a scale from Nicodemus-style urbane insanity to your mild eccentric-professor routine, with a few brainless thugs thrown in there for spice. In all my career as a wizard, I've met two, maybe three Immortals that you'd want to sit down and have a beer with, you know?
This one, Peter Matthews (the nom-du-jour only, of course - Immortals tend to be almost as paranoid about real names as Fae), I hadn't been sure. Definitely on the milder end, closer to the eccentric professor type, with a bit of a snarky edge that would have had him getting along with Bob like a house on fire. Actually ... quite a lot like Bob, really.
And Ivy liked him. He definitely had that much going for him. The way Ivy's face lit up when she saw in him the lobby, waiting for the Council meeting to start ... yeah, he got some points for that. Okay. A lot of points, fine, I'll give him that much.
But while I went into the meeting maybe warming up to him, a little bit, maybe beginning to think he might be alright, I didn't upgrade him to worthy of one of Mac's microbrews until after the Latin Incident. And yeah, it deserved capitals. Just for the look on the Merlin's face, just for putting that expression on Arthur Langtry's mug, the incident deserved capitalisation.
The Merlin was doing his usual make-it-pompous-and-flourishy-just-for-Dresden routine, really getting into the spirit of things while muggins here fumbled along muttering under my breath and wishing grumpily for a Latin dictionary, when Matthews suddenly muttered something that sounded a lot like "Sod this for a lark", and stood up abruptly. Shooting me a quick grin that wouldn't have looked out of place on Molly in the process, which really should have clued me in. I plead brain-death from trying to keep up with the Merlin's Latin.
The Merlin cut off in the face of him, blinking owlishly and disgruntledly, while the rest of the Council looked down at my new friend in polite confusion. Except for the Gatekeeper, who put a quick hand up to his mouth, and got a little smile from Matthews for his pains. I really, really should have figured out he was trouble then, but it wasn't until he opened his mouth and a spate of ... something, some strange bastardised mix of what sounded like Welsh and maybe the barrel-scrapings of a Latin dictionary ... that I twigged.
Whatever the hell the language was, Matthews was obviously completely fluent in it, words tripping off his tongue in a casual, sing-song lilt as he very obviously starting questioning the Merlin, frowning exaggeratedly and moving across the Council table when Langtry only blinked at him. He got most of the way down the table, until pretty much only the Gatekeeper was left unasked, before he trailed off into a bewildered, faux-annoyed silence, and glared in confusion at the lot of them.
Sitting primly in her seat beside me, Ivy bit back a giggle, looking startlingly young and proud as she grinned up at him.
"What?" Matthews asked, eventually. In pointed English, which I'm pretty sure was purely for my benefit. "You don't speak Western Brythonic? What about Romano-British?" He looked down along the line of them, straight-faced and ignoring the twin grins on the Archive and the Gatekeeper's faces. "I thought we were aiming for authenticism? The White Council of Wizards, and we can't even manage Merlin's native tongue?" He clucked disappointedly, shaking his head. "Come on, guys. High Latin gets you a claim to late medieval magical snobbery at best. If you're going to do ancient mystical grandstanding, at least put some effort into it, hmm?"
And there was a moment, a clear, beautiful moment, while Ivy snickered helplessly into my shoulder, and the Gatekeeper's face went so perfectly straight you could have used it as a ruler, where I thought the Merlin was genuinely having a fit of apoplexy.
It was poetry, I tell you. Western Brythonic poetry, even.
Yeah. That moment, right there? That was the moment I decided Peter Matthews was the kind of immortal you could cheerfully break open a bottle of McAnally's finest for.
Hells bells, could you blame me?