Heartland

suspending the tiny child over the basin of purified water. The glistening stroke of a wet finger across the child's forehead.

Cristobel was Marielle's godfather.

She watched them, unafraid. Aware of what they were doing. Aware of the pulsating energy emanating from both men. The flow of life moving into the basin and then into her body. A secret ritual, hidden away from other witnesses.

Father Cristobel seemed unaware of my sudden realization, the tumult of memory happening in the blink of an eye. 'You were a useful tool,' he continued, 'hidden away before the fracture made itself known. You didn't know your part to play in his grand game, did you?'

I shook my head. 'No. I thought I was. . free.' That was a lie, but I had thought I was free of Paris. Evidently not. 'But that's not the case, and I need to know what my role truly is.'

Because Philippe won't tell me, and that's part of his design too. That's the difference between knowing and Knowing, and when the hard choice comes, he's going to want me to truly Know.

'Yes.' Father Cristobel sighed, and seemed to weigh some decision for a few moments. 'I will assume that your blindness extends to the events of the last few years within the family. You wouldn't-' He hesitated, as if he were mentally preparing himself for a task, one he knew had been coming, but hadn't expected it to arrive today. Hadn't expected it to ever come, but here it was.

'It has been. . a few years now,' he continued, sliding into the role he knew was his. 'Call them the 'Opposition,' for lack of a better term. They've been plotting a long time, but it was only recently we realized they were more than a bunch of idle dreamers.

'U.S. foreign policy had become even more of a disaster than we anticipated. Washington's cadre of radical capitalists had gutted their own economy and were turning their greedy eyes toward the EU. With this attention came a legion of tin-star despots who wreaked havoc at a bureaucratic level. Our influence in the U.S. became problematic. Every effort we made to control affairs vanished into a black hole, this vortex of uncertainty. Then, shortly after the last U.S. election, we lost an Architect.'

Emile Frobai-Cantouard, the Chorus offered, having just come up from the basement with this nugget of information. The Cantouards had ties to the vineyards of Champagne, and Emile had fought in the Foreign Legion. Sub-Sahara revolutions. His magick came from the desert. Most of the memories of the man were dim and distorted, like film that had been rescued from a fire. Philippe was much younger in these memories, a time before he became Hierarch. Distant memories that were starting to fade, history being subsumed into the muck of my soul.

'The Hermit,' I said, recalling Emile's Architect title.

'Yes,' Cristobel said. 'Emile Frobai-Cantouard. Do you know him?'

I shook my head. 'No. I have some recollection of the rank, almost like a dossier on some members, but I don't know which ones or how much data there is to be gleaned until I actually need it. It's a frustrating side effect of the process.'

'Do you know the others?' The question was casual, but the Chorus reacted to an underlying tension in his words.

'Who?' I asked.

'There are nine Architects, and I know the identity of three. I assume the others are equally-if not more so- ignorant of the others.'

'What do you mean?'

'Each of the nine has a distinct title, separate from his rank. Some of them recognize specialization, some of them are historical titles that bind them to a specific aspect of the Akashic Weave. As an organization, we have been consumed with secrecy for so long that the true masters have become faceless. We are just names, no longer real flesh and blood. The Architects cannot be held responsible for their actions and directives because they cannot be found.'

'Like. . the Secret Masters of the Illuminati,' I said.

He smiled. 'That is one of our names.'

In my gut, something twisted, and the Chorus dove after the elusive strand of thought. But they couldn't catch it, and any sense I had of Philippe floating near the surface of their boiling energy vanished. Something was wrong; something Cristobel had said wasn't true. Was he lying to me? The Chorus flexed, and strands of memory flared into arrays of white light. No, Cristobel was telling me what he thought was true.

'Someone knows,' I said. 'Someone knows who all of the Architects are.'

'Of course. The one who chose them. The Hierarch.'

And those names were hidden. I had a feeling they were there, down in the bowels of my subconscious, locked away in the secret vault Philippe had inserted in my head. A vault to which I had no key.

'What happened to Frobai-Cantouard?' I asked. The Chorus kept digging, sifting through uncatalogued memory.

Father Cristobel chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. He couldn't see my face, but he could read my confusion. My energy signature was in flux. 'He vanished. When Philippe could not find the end of his thread, he came to me. I can't wind the threads like he can, but I can chart them better. Over the next few weeks, as I searched for signs of Emile's thread, I noticed his history was being dissolved. Somehow, the morphic fields were breaking down his thread, almost as if there was some sort of unnatural decay devouring his presence. He couldn't be removed from the Akashic Record, but it was becoming more and more difficult to discern his history.'

'He wasn't dead?' I asked.

'No, in death, a thread withers, but it remains in the Weave. The next generation is laid on top of the last. In that way, the Weave is organic, a field that never becomes fallow. Each death provides nutrients from which new threads emerge.

'What was happening with Emile's thread was an obscuration, the like of which I had never seen before. He was hiding himself not only from us, but from history as well.' He touched the table, his fingers idly tracing a pattern on the laminate. 'In the course of searching for him, I learned the identity of two of the other Architects. They were searching for him too.'

'And they didn't have any more luck than you?'

He shook his head. 'The rest of the rank knew something was amiss, even if the Preceptors weren't passing the news along their chains. You can't See and not have noticed the abnormal shifts in the etheric flow across the Weave. This chaotic movement was interpreted by the younger rank as an opportunity for change.'

'Personal advancement,' I said. 'The old-fashioned way.'

'Yes. Ritus concursus. The old ways are so ingrained in us, aren't they?'

The old ways. I couldn't help but think of Antoine and our duel under the bridge.

'Protector Briande,' I asked. 'Do you know him?'

'Of course.'

'Whom did he kill to get his rank?'

When he came to Seattle last fall he was a Protector-Witness, a full rank higher than he should have been. Most likely, Antoine had taken Traveler in the year after our duel and, given the normal schedule for advancement, he should now have been an early-stage Viator-a couple degrees ahead of Henri. There were seven sub-degrees in Viator, and the trial for each one required-typically-a year of intense preparation. Somehow Antoine had managed to leap all of that, as well as whatever degrees of Traveler that he hadn't finished, in a single fight.

The identity of who he had killed for the rank was in my head somewhere, somewhere in the vast roster Philippe had kept of the rank-names, titles, allegiances, faces even-but they were all jumbled, as if they had been all tossed in a sack and shaken. Which one? I just needed a little hint.

'Protector Hieron.'

There. One of the names came into focus, and I could now bind his history to my memory of Antoine. Yves Hieron. Originally from Brussels; took his oath during the '70s; one of the Renaissance alchemists. Never married; dedicated to his research. Unremarkable trials. One of those who stay with a company for so long they become management by sheer weight of their organizational history.

Antoine's choice was, as ever, a tactical one. He took out an old scholar, a man who made safe, dependable choices, and who preferred to stay on the fringe. He had arbitrated more than a dozen disputes over the years, acted as a Witness to even more duels. Hieron had been a centrist, one who could be counted upon to hold the line.