Heartland

XII

While the others came down to the kitchen to mob the take-out, Lafoutain led Marielle and me into the dining room. Delacroix glared at me as we passed in the hall, and judging by the expression on a few other faces, no one was terribly pleased to meet Marielle's new friend.

I could imagine their reaction if they knew the rest of it.

The dining room was in disarray. Chairs were scattered around the table, a collection of energy drink cans were piled in the corner of the room, and the top of the table was covered with newspaper effigies, sigil pages (scraps of paper covered with symbolic script done in heavy permanent marker), cheap tourist trinkets and other pewter icons used in warding, the stubs of a few candles: the signs of many hours of occult work. At the far end of the table, written out across several pages taped together, was a series of concentric circles, covered with handwritten scrawl and a scattering of black dots.

The working model of the society's network reminded me of a two-dimensional representation of the Tree of the Sephiroth, circles within circles. In the middle-Ain Soph Aur, the central point from which all light emanated-was the Hierarch, and floating throughout the concentric rings were small circles marked with names. The twenty-one Preceptors. More than half of them were filled in, and beside four of them were their Architect titles, written in all caps.

THE VISIONARY: Father David Cristobel. Dead.

THE HERMIT: Emile Frobai-Cantouard. Dead.

THE CRUSADER: Matthew Wincott. Dead.

THE NAVIGATOR: Pierre Juneaux. Dead.

I found Jacob Spiertz on the map. There was no title next to his name. They didn't know.

"It doesn't look good." Lafoutain gave voice to what we were all thinking.

I put my half-empty plate down and leaned over the diagram, reading some of the notes scrawled across the page. Names of the rank, with lines connecting them in a desperate attempt to chart allegiances. This wasn't all of them, not by a long shot, just the names of Watchers who could be clearly identified as belonging to one school of thought or another.

Once a magus reached Viator, a choice was declared-a rubric of occult study that took one under the aegis of one of the Architects. I had always thought it was an educational and vocational choice, but looking at the tangle of lines, I began to see the hierarchy in a different light. Given the circumstances and rampant paranoia now sweeping the rank, suddenly the distinction between schools of thought looked a lot like battle lines.

Is this what you wanted? I asked the spirit hiding in the Chorus. Is this your master plan? To force everyone to chose a side?

A dark whirlpool swirled in my skull, and the Chorus vanished like smoke into the yawning mouth. Lightning arced from my anger, lighting the mouth of the hole, and the outline of old spirits lit up in the smoke. I reached for them, my current electrifying their shapes. They whined and tried to slip down the hole faster, but I had a chain now. One and another and then another. Like tiny cut-outs for a Christmas tree, little children all holding hands.

Tell me. I need to know. Tell me what you want from me.

The whirlpool shivered and white ice formed on the rim of its lip. The hole closed and opened again, a parody of a mouth. Tell me what you want, it parroted back at me.

You came to me. You wanted me to kill you. In a time and place of your choosing. Away from their eyes.

The body must be destroyed, the whirlpool hummed.

Is this your answer? I demanded. Your Architects were supposed to Witness your death. They were supposed to be on hand to elect a successor. By dying out of sight, did you bring on this chaos?

Opportunity, Philippe whispered through the swirling motion of the Chorus. I gave them opportunity.

"Opportunity," I whispered, the word slipping out of me.

"Pardon," Lafoutain said, reminding me I wasn't alone.

The Upheaval, Cristobel reminded me, flitting across my perception like a ghost of a hummingbird. A trickle that became a flood. A crack in a dike means the wall is no longer strong; time becomes its greatest enemy.

"It was just a matter of time," I said.

"What was?" Lafoutain glanced at Marielle, who was toying with her food, not really eating much. "What does he know?"

"More than he realizes," she said. There was a strange expression on her face, a mixture of confusion, fascination, and a glimmer of something else. Revulsion?

Lafoutain stepped closer, his voice dropping into a near whisper. "Who is he? He said he came from Portland. We didn't have anyone in Portland." He looked at me. "Not anyone we could trust."

Marielle laughed, a hard bark of sound ripping out of her chest. I flinched at the sound, and Lafoutain grew more agitated. "What is going on?" he demanded. He blinked heavily, and his forehead was shiny with sweat.

I put my finger on Spiertz's name. "The Mason," I said. My hand drifted on its own accord across the map. Ulrich Husserl. "The Scryer." R. A. Kircherus. "The Thaumaturge." And three makes seven. Seven Architects.

But my hand kept moving, sliding across the page until it landed on Lafoutain's name. "The Sch-"

Lafoutain stepped forward and slapped my hand away from the map. He threw a nervous glance at the kitchen. "Enough," he hissed.

The Scholar. The whirlpool broke, scattering like snow in the mind.

Each of the nine has a distinct title, Cristobel's voice echoed in the fading spray of snow.

"There are nine," I said, staring at Lafoutain. "Not seven." The Chorus darted around the implications of the number nine. The rank was organized on the mystic resonance of sevens and threes. Seven ranks, seven sub-degrees. The higher ranks contained three times seven members. A third of the Preceptors were Architects. Threes and sevens. Nine was the cube of three, but it was an anomaly in the structure. It didn't seem to fit.

And Lafoutain wasn't a Preceptor. He was a rank below. A Protector of the Archives. But he was the Scholar. I knew it as concretely as I did the other names. I knew it because Philippe had known it, and that made it true.

"Your father named nine men as Architects," I said to Marielle. "Not the traditional seven. He built his own secret within the secrets." I indicated the map. "Visionary, Mason, Hermit, Scryer, Navigator, Crusader, and Thaumaturge. Those are the seven. But Philippe had two more." I looked at Lafoutain. "The Scholar. And the Shepherd. Who weren't Preceptors."

Lafoutain made a shushing motion with his hands. "Okay, okay. I hear you. Now shut up about it." He glanced toward the kitchen again. He was sweating clearly now. "They don't know." He glared at me. "No one knows."

"Except the three of us," Marielle said. I tried to get a read on her as something in her voice had made the Chorus shiver, but her expression was unreadable. She hadn't known, the Chorus hinted, not until you just told her. She didn't know about either of them.

But why did that matter? I asked the spirits in my head.

"Let's keep it that way." Lafoutain raised his eyes toward Heaven. "Let's keep it a secret. For now. Okay?" He swiped a hand across his forehead and when it came away wet, he looked at it dumbly as if he didn't know how that moisture had gotten there. He wobbled for a second, leaning forward against the table. "That panang." His mouth crooked into an awkward smile. "Spicier than I thought."

I pulled a chair closer and he sat down. His face was red, and his breath rasped in his throat. "Maybe some water," he said, tugging on Marielle's arm. "Could you get me a glass of water?"

She nodded, her face clearly showing concern now, and went to fetch the Bear a glass.

As soon as she was gone, Lafoutain grabbed my arm and pulled me close, his face next to mine. His eyes were clouded with pain, but they cleared for a second, filling with violet light. "Quickly," he said. "There isn't time."

"It's just a curry-"

He shook his head, sweat flying off his brow. "No, it's something else. Damnit. Undone by my stomach." A spasm of pain ran through his frame, and I felt his hand tremble on my arm. "Those little pricks betrayed us. I knew they were gone too long." He shivered. "They dosed the food, probably all of it."

I stared at the plates on the table. How much had I eaten? Had Marielle?

Lafoutain leaned heavily against me, his hand moving to my shirt so that he could bring my head close to his mouth. "The Shepherd," he hissed. "Do you know who the Shepherd is?"

The memory was there. Now that I knew what to look for. The burned face upraised, the eyes closed. The skull showing through the ravaged flesh. My hands touching his eyes and lips, delivering the benediction of rank. After the fall. So recently elevated, as if, in having survived being burned, he had proven himself capable.

I nodded. "I do."

"Does she?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so." The Chorus crawled under my skin. "She didn't know about you."

A crash of falling china came from the kitchen, followed by shouts. The Chorus flared into the peacock shield as they felt magick blossom in the other room. Instinctively, I moved toward the fight, toward Marielle, but Lafoutain held me tight.

"No man is an island," he whispered. "Not even Philippe." His grip faltered, and I nearly tore out of it, but he summoned strength from some reservoir and held me tight. "Do you trust her?"

I hesitated for a second, all this secrecy about the hidden Architects giving me a moment of pause. But only a moment. Speak what lies in your heart, wolf. Be true to me, and to yourself.

"Why shouldn't I?"

A spasm of pain wracked his face. "Don't be obtuse, Michael. Answer my question."

"Yes," I said. Committing myself. Making a choice. Be true.

He tried to nod his head, and only managed a slight tremor of his neck muscles. " 'It is more difficult to live with a woman without danger than to raise the dead to life.' Do you know who said that?" His voice was fading in and out, like the fluttering edge of foam on a wave, as his life ebbed. "Bernard of Clairvaux." He managed to tilt his head to the side enough to look up at me. The light glittering in his eyes gave his face some of its old humor back. "So very medieval of him, and yet so. . " The light faded, taking with it most of his remaining strength. His head fell forward again, and his voice was almost lost in his throat.". . daughters, not our sons that will. . Oh, my little chicken. I am so sorry. . "

I knelt beside him, so that he could look at me without having to lift his head. "I know who she is." Ex-lover of my old rival. The prize, as far as many of the Watchers were concerned. The woman whose heart I had broken. More than once. Daughter of the Hierarch.

He stared at me as long as he could, blinking through his pain. "I hope so," he murmured. "I truly do." A low moan started in his belly, and it occluded his throat. His grip on my hand loosened, and his shoulders slumped.

"Goodbye, old friend." The voice rising from my throat wasn't mine, and the impulse that moved my hand belonged to the spirit as well. "I'm sorry." My hand lifted his head, and even though the light was almost out in his eyes, he was still there. When the Chorus flared, the shadows fled from his face, and in his final moment, he could see again. He gazed at the light of the rampant Chorus, gazed at a face he no longer knew, and then closed his eyes as the light overwhelmed him.

I took his soul before it could escape.

The two who had gone for food were down, one of them permanently. Delacroix was still standing, his shirt and pants covered with a brown smear of sauce and noodles. Marielle was examining three others, all of whom were pale and sweating and looking like they were fighting losing battles with their stomachs. The Chorus found Vraillet in the front sitting room, all his wards extended, and tagged a couple more soul lights in the rest of the apartment-one in the bathroom just off the kitchen, throwing up as if his life depended on it. Which it probably did.

The room felt hot, and my palms were slick. The energy from Lafoutain's soul coursed through me, burning my veins. I had been poisoned too, though not as bad as some of the others. Given time, the Chorus could probably burn it out.

Lafoutain had been brought down by his appetite. He had eaten more than any of us, the nervous rapaciousness of a gourmand. Whatever the two had dosed the food with was quick-acting.

Delacroix put up his hand in a warding gesture, fingers splayed, when he saw me. "You," he said. "Who are you working for?" His magick changed, growing into a fiery halo around his head.

"Stop it," Marielle said. "He's with me." She gave the other magus a fierce stare.

Delacroix didn't drop his spell, nor the sneer that slid across his lips. "Who is he?" he asked as if I wasn't standing right there. "Being your fucktoy isn't enough of a seal of approval. Not anymore. Not after Briande sold us all out."

She reacted as if he had slapped her. The Chorus flinched at the sudden pulse of the ley beneath us, a heartbeat echoing through all of us, resonating off our bones. She moved during the echo, nothing more than a blur as I blinked, and Delacroix stepped back in surprise. Before my blink, she was kneeling beside one of the sick Watchers; after, she was holding the cheese knife to Delacroix's throat, forcing him back.

He was still blinking, trying to figure out how she had moved so quickly. "Say that again," she said in a quiet voice that cut through the tense atmosphere in the kitchen, "and I will cut your throat."

The cheese knife wasn't that sharp, but Delacroix and I both knew it had enough of an edge for her needs.

He swallowed heavily, pulling his head back from the small knife. There was a lump in his throat, and no matter how many times he swallowed, it wasn't going away.

"Markham is the only man you can be sure isn't trying to kill you," she said. "Unless you piss him off by being a child about things. And I won't stop him if he changes his mind, because you will, undoubtedly, have done something to deserve it." She pressed the knife against his throat. "Are we clear?"

Delacroix thought about it. Marielle was more patient than I would have been. I would have dropped him after about five seconds of this passive-aggressive sort of bullshit, but she waited him out. Never faltering. Never doubting he'd actually do it. Maybe she could read his heartbeat. Maybe she knew his heart better than he did, or maybe it was the shallow depth of his courage that she knew. But she waited, and after what seemed like an hour, Delacroix nodded. Only after he dropped his magick did she lower the knife.

Vraillet cleared his throat, drawing our attention toward the front hallway. "They're coming," was all he said. He had the shotgun in his right hand, and I noticed it was casually pointed in my direction. His eyes flicked toward the barrel of the gun as he felt my focus shift toward him, and he turned his wrist, moving the gun aside.

Marielle stuck the knife in the tiny slab of leftover Appenzeller on the center island. "We can't stay here," she said. "It's not a matter of defensibility anymore. They'll bring the whole building down." She glanced at me, pushing her hair back from her face. "It'd be easier."

"There's no back door," Vraillet said. He pointed the shotgun at the ceiling. "Two floors above us."

"One below," she said. "But that puts us closer to them."

"True," Vraillet said. His Will shrank to a shiny dot in the middle of his forehead, and then exploded outward in a thousand psychic lines. Each line snapped out a few dozen yards and then came back, flush with physical details of the materials it had just touched. Like a three-dimensional sonar that read through everything. The Chorus did something similar when they mapped lights for me, but Vraillet was doing a full scan.

His etheric sonar ping read the dining room too, and his Will wavered as he picked up the empty shell of Lafoutain. He took a half-step in that direction, but stopped himself. "Is he?" he asked.

"He's gone," I said.

His hands whitened around the stock and barrel of the shotgun, and his face tightened into an uncharacteristic display of emotion, an expression that was both monstrous and awkward on his face. When he exhaled, all the rage flowed out of him, and his Will tightened again. He looked at me once more, his eyes bright with violet light, and then he nodded. He touched his fingers to his lips and then pressed them against the barrel of the shotgun, and his Will bubbled around the mouth of the weapon, wrapping it in silence.

All business, that one. None of us would ever know how much the loss of his mentor meant. Lafoutain was gone; we had to get out: he knew what to do next. Armed with an etheric map of our surroundings, he was going to make an escape hatch. Up and out. The shotgun would make nice big holes for us to travel through, and the silence spell wreathing the weapon would keep our enemies from knowing what we were doing.

He was the sort of inhumanly focused magus that made me nervous. The kind whose Will couldn't be broken. I was glad he was on our side.

Marielle looked at the three incapacitated Watchers. "Walk out or die," she said. "We're not carrying any of you."

"What about Moreau?" Delacroix asked, pointing at the remaining Watcher who had brought the food. Moreau, a narrow-faced guy with a stylish haircut that probably looked better when he wasn't sweating profusely, had been sitting very quietly next to the wine cabinet, trying to be invisible through strength of Will.

"He's already chosen sides," she said coldly.

"No, wait," he whined. "It wasn't my choice." The other Watcher who had gone for food with him lay in a heap nearby, a red and gray stain leaking out from beneath his head. Moreau was trying not to look at him.

"You spineless fuck," Delacroix spat, a knot of hot magick sparking in his fist. "You just carried the food, is that it?"

My gut tightened as a psychic pulse blipped through the room. Vraillet had found a good spot in the ceiling and was making a hole with the shotgun. Moreau felt the psychic boom of the shotgun too, and the sound startled him. "I didn't know," he squeaked, his tongue loosened by the psychic noise. "Tevvys got a phone call. He wanted to make an extra stop."

"Where?" Delacroix asked.

"A Thai place. Over near Place de la Nation. He sent me in to get the food. It was already waiting for us." He held up his hands. "That's all I did. I just got the food. I had no idea it was poisoned." Moreau shook his head, his face crumbling into a shivering hole. "We came right back from there."

"Where was Tevvys when you went into the restaurant?" I asked.

Moreau's eyes widened. "In the car." He sat up a little straighter. "I thought he was in the car."

Delacroix glanced at me, and I shrugged. "It's deniability," I said. "But it doesn't mean anything."

"You're not listening to me," Moreau shouted, seizing the line of reasoning I had given him. "Tevvys was in the car by himself for a good five minutes while I was getting the food. He dosed it then. The Thai place was the last stop."

Marielle exhaled, and the ley pulsed with her. "The Thai food was poisoned too."

"No," Moreau wailed. "I didn't do it. I didn't do anything. Tevvys took a call. It was all Tevvys." His eyes darted toward the dead man.

"Tevvys can't help you," Marielle said. As if punctuating the seriousness of her tone, Vraillet's shotgun ruffled the ether again. A mundane-sounding cascade of plaster and wood rattled against the hallway floor.

"I didn't do anything." Moreau's voice shrank to a whimper.

"And your brothers are dead because you failed to act," Marielle snapped. "Which is worse? That you failed to save them, or that you participated-willingly or unwillingly-in an action that killed them?"

"That's not true." Moreau forced himself to move, scrambling to grab his dead partner. "His phone. Check his phone." He dug through the dead man's coat, rolling him over to do so. The front of Tevvys' head was gone, and it came away from the tile floor with a sucking noise. Moreau found the other man's phone and juggled it badly as we felt Vraillet put one more round into the ceiling in the hallway.

Marielle took the phone from Moreau's outstretched hand, and she went to thumb through the call log. She paused, and her expression went even colder than it already was. "It's locked. He's got it password protected."

Moreau's mouth moved, but nothing came out but a wordless sound like air leaking from a balloon.

Delacroix stepped forward, his magick swarming through his hair. Marielle stopped him and shook her head. "Get the others. Those who are mobile." Delacroix hesitated again and when she spoke again, her voice was like a whip on his naked flesh. "Now. Go follow Vraillet." Delacroix moved with some haste, and one of the Watchers on the floor staggered to his feet, swept up in the suggestion of Marielle's voice. He tottered into the hall.

Marielle knelt beside the other two. Only one of them was coherent. Barely. She kissed them both on the forehead, smoothing the tension and fright in their faces. "I'm sorry," she said. "Make them feel your pain."

Incredibly, the half-dead one came back from the brink of the Abyss with that.

Marielle stood up and walked over to me. She stared at Moreau until Delacroix came back from the rest of the apartment with one more Watcher in tow, and she kept staring until they went into the hallway. "My benevolence is boundless," she said. "But not infinite."

"You have to believe me," Moreau tried one more time, "I didn't know what was happening."

"You are lying," Marielle said, and Moreau's entire body tensed with a shock of realization. She knew, without a doubt; she wasn't calling his bluff, she was ripping it aside and looking right into his heart. She touched my wrist, and her fingertips vibrated with the echo of Moreau's jackhammer heartbeat.

"Tell me what he knows," she said to me, and with that, she was done with him. She removed her fingers, and the sudden void of the man's heartbeat was like he had ceased to exist. She left the kitchen, left me to ask Moreau in my special way.

Moreau's gaze darted after her, and then toward the hallway to the bedrooms. Gauging his chances.

I lit the Chorus up, and his attention snapped back toward me. The other two Watchers looked away as he started screaming.