Lightbreaker

Antoine remained inscrutable, neither confirming nor denying my accusation. Giving me no sense if this was indeed the goal to which his machinations pointed. Had Antoine intended to step in at this point and take everything away from Bernard? Put himself at the top of the tower instead of his alchemist to face the dawn?

Devorah spoke from behind me. 'By thee adulterous Lust was driven from men, among the bestial herds to range.'

Lust. There is no room for it in God's pure realm. Lust was what imprisoned the soul in the flesh. Bernard's quest wasn't one of enlightenment, not in the way he approached it. 'What happens when God doesn't take lightly to the manner in which Bernard has assumed the mantle of Creator?' I asked. 'What happens when dawn arrives and Bernard realizes he's just a psychopath who has murdered an entire city in an effort to prove what may be nothing more than a philosophical distinction?'

'What if he isn't?' Antoine asked. 'Murder has been done in the name of God before. What is history but a litany of our efforts to show God our affection by smiting unbelievers. Hasn't Bernard done one better? He's taken those without real faith and made them part of his purpose. He's converted all of them. They are of one faith. One vision. How could God not love that?'

I sighed and rubbed at my face, feeling the scabs and stubble of the last twenty-four hours. Two paths. Was Bernard's way just a twisted variation of Severity?

This time yesterday I had been wreathed in fire, stalking Hollow Men through the shadows of their warehouse. I had been filled with vengeance, flush with the desire to do damage to those who had done harm to me. What had I brought to them? Not enlightenment. I had taken their souls, broken them upon the rack of my mind, and poured their spiritual essence into my vessel. They had been transformed, subjugated to my Will. Could my role be accorded the same distinction, the same rationale as an 'act of devotion to God'?

I had justified my actions over the years by warping John Stuart Mills' axiom of the Greater Good: what ultimately served a beneficial purpose was worth the destruction. Love under Will, as long as it was all my Will. Bernard was just applying the same axiom on a larger scale. Thousands died so that he could remake the world in his image, a design that was better simply because he had thought of it. Because he had faith in it.

This was the cosmological closure, the bending back of the Universe on itself to a single point. The big magico-religious Bang where the world could be created anew. Here, at the center of the world-at the axis mundi-we would be able to perform that Act of Demiurgery that reflected the initial creatio ex nihilo effected by God. Bernard would become God by imitating God.

I sighed, and looked at the single star floating above the sea of darkness. 'If this is the Apocalypse,' I wondered aloud. 'Then why did the Watchers send just a Protector? Shit, they would have sent all seven of the Architects. Philippe himself would even be here.' The Hierarch's name caused a twitch in Antoine's ruined face, a break in the Protector's death-mask face. A flinch. I had struck a nerve.

'He doesn't know you are here, does he?' I said.

Antoine didn't answer, and I knew him well enough to know that he wasn't deigning to not answer the question. He was ignoring me because he was thinking about something else entirely. The Weave had just shown him a new pattern-one he hadn't realized was there. That had been there all along.

He had suggested to Nicols and me the existence of a bigger picture, a larger scheme beyond my perception. I had ignored the hints-the presumptive tone had always been part of Antoine's character-but, seeing Antoine's mental peregrinations now, I realized the Weave's complexity may be more than he anticipated. There were threads still hidden, even from him.

'This isn't sanctioned by the Watchers.' I tried to chase the same threads. Tried to figure out what he already knew, and what he thought was the truer pattern. 'This is a rogue action. There is a revolt happening in the ranks, isn't there?'

It was the corruptive lure of power: that seductive siren that pulled us down into the flesh. I could read it plainly in Pender's face: he was in bed with Julian and Bernard. Siding with the Hollow Men had been his play for power. Just like Antoine, who sought to usurp this action for his own ends. A faction within the Watchers knew; they had sent Antoine, and hadn't realized their toy had his own ideas. Everyone wanted to use Bernard and Julian for their own design. Everyone had their own plan.

'Whoever remakes the world can challenge the Hierarch.' I spelled it out carefully, watching their faces for more clues. 'That's what this is all about. This is a power play for leadership of La Societe. Pender and the others thought they could hijack it from you, but you knew they were going to screw you, and you planned on taking it from them in turn. When the time was right. But, not for your brothers in Paris. For yourself. I was just the lucky distraction that everyone thought they could use on the others.'

'Perhaps,' Antoine said. I stared at his ruined face. Was that a smile on his burned lips? 'Perhaps there is another pattern beneath all of our machinations. A deeper Weave than we anticipated.'

'What do you mean?' Pender demanded. His hand twitched toward his coat, toward his gun. This conversation had suddenly gone off-script.

'Bernard is there,' Antoine said, inclining his head toward the star. 'We are here.'

'So?'

'There are three of us.'

Pender didn't get it. And I wasn't following either.

Antoine was definitely smiling now, a grim death's head. 'I was supposed to be here. The lieutenant was supposed to be here. But, you, Markham, dead man lost to us all, how did you manage to get here?'

'Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim my other half,' Devorah said, providing an answer to Antoine's question.

Answering so many questions. I Saw it too. Beneath the shimmering pattern of our threads, beneath the confusion of the cards and our efforts to interpret them. Under it all, I saw the design.

Tiny steps, seemingly unconnected in their inception-in the infinitesimal realm of their immediate effects. The false memory of Kat's hand on me, the confusion laid upon me in the woods and the poisonous cargo freely taken, the Chorus growing in my head. And then Paris: Marielle, a catalyst for the course prefigured for us; Antoine, an unwitting marionette, acting out his role at the bridge.

The actions of the past cascaded into the present: my arrival in Seattle, the discovery of Doug and Kat again; their connection to the Hollow Men, to Bernard, and to the diabolical plan concocted by Antoine's splinter group within the Watchers. All of it was woven into this knotted nexus. This point, this place. These players. A man, standing on the edge of the Abyss, who hadn't sought to be here. Not the detective.

Me.

The Watchers didn't believe in accidents, nor random chance. There were only machinations deeper than their own influence. Designs which they couldn't twist. And each of them could twist very deep.

And only one of them could twist deeper than the rest.

'I have to go back,' I said. My hand strayed to Reija's hair about my throat, fingers tracing the braid of our thread. What you do is who you are. . 'I'm going back.'

'What-?' Pender pulled out his gun, violet light rising in his eyes. 'You're not going anywhere.'

I looked at him sadly for a moment-he didn't understand what lay in the Weave-and then turned my gaze to Antoine. 'What say you, Brother?' This isn't done.

He nodded, and the metal cap on his hand sizzled into a new shape. Before Pender could realize what was happening-before I could react-Antoine stepped behind the other man and punched through his spine with his freshly formed hand. Silver fingers, wet with blood, erupted from the hollow of Pender's throat.

'It was never meant for me,' Antoine said, holding the struggling man upright with the force of his Will. 'I am a Watcher, mon ami. I had, indeed, forgotten that. I am to be your Witness.'

Pender's eyes fluttered, rolling back in his head. Antoine shook his hand, making the lieutenant's arms wiggle. 'Time is short,' he said. 'Take him while you can.'

'What?'

'It is a long walk,' Antoine said. 'You haven't the strength.'

'You have got to be kidding.'

'Take it.' Antoine's voice was hard, a commanding tone that brooked no more discussion. He flexed his metal fingers, and white fire vaporized Pender's spine. Pender's atlas bone exploded, blowing out the sides of his neck. The back of his coat caught fire.