Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls (7 page)

In our case: swords; under the Pont Alexandre bridge; at dawn, on New Year's Day.

It hadn't gone well. Antoine lost a hand. I got run through with his sword, after which I fell into the Seine. By the time I dragged myself out of the river, I was out of Paris. And staying out was the best solution to our problem. I went underground, and let them think the river had claimed me. Antoine was only too happy to consider me dead, and under the rules of combat, he was cleared of any transgression. It had been a fair fight, as far as those sorts of fights go.

And the status quo had been maintained for a few years. I went about my business: buying and selling black-market occult paraphernalia, sneaking into libraries and reading illegal texts, and looking for Kat. Five years later, I finally tracked her down in Seattle, where I found a group of magi involved in psycho-animism—the art of releasing the soul from the body. They were working on a secret project, one that had Watcher backing.

And the man sent to oversee the project was Protector Antoine Briande.

There are only twenty-one Protector-Witnesses at any time, and typically when one dies the election process is a long drawn-out affair. The same was true for Preceptor, the final
electable
rank beyond Protector, which was about as complicated and contentious as electing a new Pope. Mainly a series of political machinations and some ethically shaky tweaks to the Weave until a clear candidate could be identified. As for the Architects? They were Preceptors who were further elevated in ultra-secret ceremonies. We knew their titles, but none of us knew who they were. Part of the mystique of the
inner
Inner Circle. Even when you were on the inside, you were still outside: another one of those little reminders that each of us, regardless of our gained wisdom and knowledge, didn't know everything.

The rank was changing. Too many generations removed from their beginnings, the children forget the origin of a tradition; they forget the reasons for the old ways. Eager to get ahead, we eager youngsters think a title is a fancy word to impress the docile starfuckers, and we forget that it recognizes a body of experience and knowledge. We used to venerate our elders because they knew the secrets, because they'd taken the time to understand the inner workings of the universe.

Antoine defied history. He ran counter to the argument that, with age and experience, came understanding and mastery. He was, as far as I knew, the youngest man to ever hold the rank of Protector-Witness. Upstart, headstrong, and brilliant in his execution of magick and spellcraft, the man lived and breathed power. His connection to the leys—the energy lines, both natural and unnatural, that gave a magus access to power—was fundamentally instinctive. He didn't have to consciously think about connecting to the grid and drawing power. It was just
there
for him.

While the others were somewhat mystified by my lack of ability to tap the lines like other Journeymen and yet still do enough magick to pass the trials, Antoine suspected something like the Chorus. He knew why I couldn't ground myself well enough to draw power, just as he knew why that lack of egocentrism was also my ace. I took power from other souls, and I could even reach through them to the leys if they were connected. My soul was broken enough that I couldn't ground myself, but I could draw power from a radiant conduit more readily than anyone else.

Pluses and minuses. These are the crosses we bear. The damage done, and the way we survive.
The knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
John Milton, talking about the price of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The price of what we became when we touched the other side and learned the magick arts.

Two months ago, Antoine and I had faced off over the experimental device built by the Hollow Men, who had been working off an ancient design, cobbled together from a variety of medieval-era sources—both European and Islamic. The Key of Thoth harvested souls, storing them in a reservoir that a schooled magus could then tap as an energy source. Bernard du Guyon, the grubby-fingered alchemist who had figured out the lost Key, had tried to breach the Veil and do something unsavory with the Divine. If there even was a Divine Presence waiting for us, on the other side. All in all, there had been a lot of theory and not a lot of practical knowledge at the basis of their plan.

I got ahead of Antoine by catapulting him across a parking lot, trying my best to remove him from the field. The only way I got the drop on him was that I had had a reservoir of power, a mass of energy taken from others earlier that day. I slowed him down enough that I could throw a wrench in Bernard's plan. I couldn't stop the harvest, but I did mitigate the scale. And, while waiting for dawn and the opportunity to stop the remainder of Bernard's experiment, Antoine and I realized we had both been played.

The Hierarch had been shaping a grander pattern. Antoine had thought
he
had been manipulating the Hollow Men to his design, but his actions were still within the parameters of a larger plan. And it went back further than that: our duel under the bridge in Paris five years earlier had been part of that design as well, as had my subsequent exile. It hadn't been chance that we had found each other again in the Pacific Northwest. There, on the river's edge, Antoine had glimpsed the larger Weave and realized it wasn't his place to stop Bernard. It was mine. As a
Qliphotic
-damaged soul eater, I knew better than he did what the device was and how to destroy it.

And if I died in the attempt? Well, that would have solved the other nagging problem for Antoine.

Seeing the Weave isn't the same as scrying the future. It's more like seeing the complex combinations and permutations of possibilities. Manipulating the threads of the Weave is like using your hip to influence the ball on a pinball table. Just the right amount of force at the right time will cause a ripple in the fabric. You can't always control how the ripple spreads, but as you get better at it, you learn how much influence—how much pressure—you should bring to bear.

But there are always spots where there is too much interference. There are too many possibilities to consider, or the outcome of a situation is so radical and catastrophic that seeing behind the knot is too difficult. Maybe it was easier for the Old Man. Maybe he could see further than any of us.

But Antoine and I couldn't see beyond dawn. We didn't know what was going to happen when I returned to face Bernard in the tower.

And Antoine had been a little disappointed when I came back. It would have been easier if I had fallen—I didn't necessarily disagree with that assessment—but in the end, I hadn't been ready to be unraveled. When I returned from the tower, having broken the Key and liberated the captive souls, he and I had talked about the problem we had in common. A rebellion was forming in the rank, a schism that was going to have far-reaching repercussions, and based on what we had Seen of the Hierarch's hand in the Weave, he wasn't entirely unaware of the mutiny that was coming.

The rebellion would have a contingency plan in place, a secondary course of action to depose the Old Man, and the question we had wrestled with that morning was where would we be in the coming war. Which side would we support? Antoine had argued for signing up with the New Guard, and I had sided with the Old Man. Why? To be contrary to Antoine, partially, and partially because I still believed in the Hierarch, even though he had played us both. Somewhere in the discussion, Antoine changed his mind and, grudgingly, agreed that the Old Man's camp was the better place to be.

Or, at least, that had been the plan. But Antoine had come back to Paris and taken full responsibility for throwing Bernard's plan into disarray. While his argument that he did so to keep me hidden was sound, it wasn't the truth. It was a smoke screen, a subtle twist to the Weave that could draw my thread out of the pattern. If I didn't exist to the rest—if they didn't know about me enough to care that I was a wild card—then I wasn't necessary for this pattern. I had stopped Bernard, and taken away his toy. I had done the job I had been set up to do, and there was nothing else I could offer to the Hierarch. I could safely be removed from the pattern. That had been Antoine's take on my place in the Weave. I was a piece used, now useless, and easily discarded, and even though we had decided to wait for the Old Man's call, Antoine had been hoping that it would never come. That the Old Man would have no more use for me.

Philippe's visit to Seattle must have been a surprise to those around him. So close to the spring equinox. I had been wondering how he had managed to slip away from Paris without the entire rank knowing that he was gone, but then, he was the Hierarch. Misdirection and obfuscation were so ingrained in his psyche that he was probably incapable of not contorting and complicating everything.

But there was indeed more to his visit—again, part and parcel of his methodology—and I hadn't understood why he had come all the way out to Seattle to activate me for his final solution. I had had no idea how integral I was to be in his final hours.

The Hierarch had come to show me his cancer. He had come as close as he could to the place where his wounds had been inflicted upon him. The deaths in Portland had wounded him. Deeply. His power was fading, and his mind was starting to go too. He wouldn't survive long, especially if the Opposition discovered the extent of the blight laid upon him by the Key's detonation. He hadn't called me to his side. He had come to me instead, not to pass judgment on past transgressions against the family, but to ask a favor.

Ritus concursus.
To the victor go the spoils.

His ring, and his mind.

There were a couple of other party gifts which he hadn't explained, and the Chorus had been maddeningly unable to discern any concrete details about them. The key, an old twisted thing that was half-melted but resonant with magick. The tag, which read "Abbadon," I had long discarded. His deck of tarot cards—the Marseille pattern—and more than one card had notes scrawled in the margins. They were his private journal of occult knowledge. The High Priestess had Marielle's name written on it, and a cell phone number I assumed was hers.

What was I supposed to do with all this? Go to Paris. That was clear. Get under Antoine's skin. That was a happy by-product. Stay alive? Obviously.

The Hierarch had wanted me to be his harbinger, his angel of vengeance, and I had politely refused. But I hadn't walked away from him when he asked me to take his soul. I hadn't said no, which made me complicit in his design.

But I already was. That was the trap into which I had been forced. I was the outsider, the quintessential village idiot who had undertaken the great quest into the world of sacred darkness and who had returned. I was Campbell's Monomyth Hero: chosen against my will, imbued with the knowledge that would save or damn the kingdom, and destined to be cast out again in the end when the cycle spun to its inevitable conclusion.

Hurray for me. Last time I had thought this was the part I was playing too, and that hadn't turned out to be the case. Misguided and befuddled like the tarot's Fool, I had danced my way off the cliff.

I wasn't going to be
that guy
this time.

But Philippe knew that, which is why he offered me everything. He knew this was a carrot that would entice me.

There were two carrots, actually. And the combination of both would make me overlook the danger of returning to Paris. We make our own traps. Philippe was well aware of how readily we would walk into disasters we knew we should avoid. He knew, better than any of us, how little effort it took to sway us onto a different path than the one we meant to follow.

Here, little one, take my hand. I will show you the way.

He knew. He knew, beneath all my bluster and outrage, I had wanted this. I had wanted a focus. That was the way my thread was wound. It wouldn't take much to twist me to his plan, and it hadn't.

Stay here." Antoine admonished me as he put on his coat.

"And do what?" I asked. "Meditate?"

"If it helps."

"Where are you going?"

"I am a Protector, Michael. I have responsibilities. The Hierarch is dead. The rank will react, especially this close to spring, and I must be visible. We need to know what the rest will do, how much they will panic." He looked at me, his eyes guarded. "A lot of them will be thinking about it."

The Crown.

Each spring the Hierarch underwent a ceremonial renewal, a Coronation that was part pomp and circumstance and part cosmological rebirth. With Philippe gone, the question was: Who was to fill that void?

Without a clearly designated heir—me notwithstanding—the rank was going to turn into a chaotic mess of egos and agendas. Antoine was right. We needed information. Who was going to make a play for the Crown? Who had the resources to take it?
Who wanted it?

"How long?" I asked.

He shrugged, adjusting the cuffs of his coat. "I don't know."

An honest answer, but one that made the Chorus tighten against my spine. Too much uncertainty. Too much waiting. Too many things out of my control.

Antoine wasn't about to tie me down; he was, after all, leaving me on my own recognizance, which meant one of two things: a) he expected me to stay like a good house pet; or b) he expected me to bolt.

"I'll be here," I said as he walked toward the front of the narrow apartment.

He paused at the base of the stairs that led up to the street level and looked back, his eyes violet with light.

We both knew I was lying.

I remained in the single hallway of the apartment, listening to the sound of his boots against the stairs. The basement apartment wasn't much more than a trio of rooms off a central hallway, and it must have been in the center of the block as there were no windows. Not in the bedroom; not in the tiny kitchenette; not in the bathroom. It was a box, hidden away from the world. Good, if you wanted to be invisible; bad, if you were worried about someone coming after you.

A door at the top of stairs opened, spilling light down the wooden steps. For a second, the noisy sounds of Paris tumbled down into the basement, but then Antoine shut the door, and everything became quiet again. Muted and distant. Separated from the world. Isolated in this boxlike prison.