Heartland

Her lips tightened to a thin line, and she looked out at the river again.

I took her silence as confirmation. 'You weren't that surprised to see me at the airport. You weren't expecting me. Not there. Not then. But, you knew I would be back. Almost as if, when I did turn up, you could stop wondering when I was going to. You could stop pretending I was dead.'

'I thought you were,' she said, and there was venom in her voice. 'For a long time.'

'Did Antoine tell you?'

She laughed. I had pricked an old wound in her heart, and what was leaking out was bilious and vile. 'Why would he do that?' she asked. 'That would be tantamount to admitting that he lied. That he failed.'

'Failed to do what?'

She ignored my question. 'When he came back from his trip to the States, he refused to see me. Father mentioned he had seen Antoine, in passing, as if it was nothing remarkable.' Her voice thickened. 'But, then, nothing Father ever said wasn't calculated. I knew he wanted me to see Antoine, just as he knew Antoine would refuse. When I called him, he brushed me off. 'I have something to do for your father, my dear'-you know that condescending tone of his-'I have to leave tonight. There isn't any time.' As if he could hide from me, as if I didn't know him well enough to know when he was lying, only because he was so bad at it. He wasn't working for my father. He was going into hiding, until he healed enough that no one would know what had happened to him.'

'He went to a spa,' I said. 'Down in Sardinia, I think.'

She nodded as I confirmed what she had suspected. 'I could hear it in his voice, and not just because his throat was burned. He had been beaten, and he was going to crawl off and lick his wounds like an injured dog. And I knew there was only one person who could force him to run and hide like that, who could hurt him that badly.'

'No,' I argued. 'There are others-many others-who could have done that.'

'But he would have reported the fight; and whatever they had done to him, he would have done worse to them. And he would have been proud of his injuries, because it meant he was stronger. But he didn't. He crept off and hid, which meant he hadn't won. And whoever had bested him had shown him mercy and let him live.'

'It wasn't like that.'

She laughed again, and the venom bubbled in her throat. 'Michael, however you see it doesn't matter. All that matters to Antoine is that you defeated him.'

'No, I-'

'Just like you had at the bridge.'

'No, he won. That's what the Record-'

She put her hand on my mouth and looked at me intently. 'Michael, the Record is wrong. Don't you see? You being alive means Antoine is a liar, and no matter what your intent was or is, his actions are his alone. He has to bear responsibility for them.'

My argument fell down through the empty hole that opened in my stomach-a bottomless pit-and I stood very near the rim. Like the Fool, dancing along the cliff's edge, unaware of the danger in front of him. One more step meant disaster.

Was I too late to stop myself? Was I already making that fatal misstep? Philippe had twisted me deep into his design, and Antoine had talked me into believing that he and I had a common goal: after the destruction of Portland, we were no longer enemies, but allies. But could I trust him? Were his actions altruistic or was he simply using me?

Show me altruistic occultism. After what happened in Ravensdale, John Nicols had asked me to show him that we weren't all seeking answers for our own ends, that we were conscious of and capable of a higher morality. Having seen the handiwork of the theurgic mirror, Nicols had wanted to know where he could hope to find a spark of decency. Some sign that mankind wasn't entirely fixated on fucking itself into oblivion. Did such a spark exist, or was belief in it simply an illusion of my own naivete?

What did Antoine want? What did I want, for that matter? Or Marielle?

The spirit of John Nicols morphed into another voice, a more recent addition to the echoes of the Chorus. Lafoutain and his skepticism. Did I trust her? Or was I blinded by the devotion I had inherited from her father? Or my own desire, even? Just as capable, if not more so, in misguiding me.

It is more difficult to live with a woman without danger than to raise the dead to life. Lafoutain had said that pithy aphorism belonged to Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth-century Cistercian monk who had helped guide the Templars to their glory against the bloody backdrop of the Crusades. Having raised the dead, I was inclined to agree with him, medieval morality aside.

'This isn't your fault,' Marielle said, misreading my confusion and silence, and for once, I kept my mouth shut. She removed her hand from my mouth and let it fall to her lap. A shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature on the exposed deck.

'My father had been sick for a long time.' She started again. 'Or maybe not that long at all. No one can be sure, really, because he kept it secret. He didn't trust anyone with the bad news. The only one who might have known would have been my mother. . ' Something akin to a smile moved across her face and she was much younger for a second. So much like the little girl in the field.'. . She was the only one he could never hide from. Not completely.'

The tiny girl was replaced by an older woman, one filled with a yearning hunger. 'That is why he liked you, Michael, you know. Why he took you in so readily. You were like him: bound to none, hidden to all.'

That is all you will ever be.

'I was-' She drew in a long breath. 'Not an accident. No, he wouldn't like me to call it that. I was unexpected. I wasn't-' She let the breath out in a noisy rush. '-I wasn't a boy. And that complicated things for him. Especially after my mother died. He didn't have a male heir. He didn't have someone he could readily groom to take his place. Whatever vision he had of the organization, of the future, was complicated by the fact that he had to turn it over to someone else. Someone who wasn't his offspring.

'Every father wants to know that his legacy is going to persevere. It isn't just a matter of propagating the species, but a matter of passing along an imprint of what you are and believe. Every parent wants to die knowing that their efforts are growing in the next generation, stronger and richer than they could ever imagine. The society was given a mandate to protect and secure, and Father had to find someone he could trust with this mandate. Really trust. Since it couldn't be his flesh and blood, he had to find someone else.'

Her eyes were bright and wet. I reached for her hand and she let me take it. Her skin was getting cold, and I could feel her pulse racing.

'I was-I still am-the Daughter of the Hierarch, and whether I like it or not, I am the prize. Father left everything to me. Material-wise. His villa. His apartments. His library. Everything. He didn't leave it to the society, and whoever becomes Hierarch is going to assume that the way he gets access to my father's legacy is by marrying me. To the victor go the spoils.

'But, the choice is mine. I can't be forced. Father made it very clear-many times over the years-that if I was to. . take up. . with any of the magi in the society, it was because I wanted it, not because I thought he would approve, or because I felt it was the right thing to do for the organization. I was free to choose. Anyone I wanted.'

'And you picked Antoine.' I hadn't meant to interrupt, but I couldn't stop myself. It came out somewhat sulkily and I wanted to take back the words the moment they left my mouth, but I couldn't. It was the way I felt, even after all this time. Even though I had been the one who had driven the wedge between them in the first place.

It still hurt, deep down in the black loam where the Chorus hid, and it wasn't the rejection, but the fact that Antoine had been right. She would choose him, in the end, because I would break her heart. I hated to admit that he had been right.

A tear tracked down her cheek. 'No,' she said. 'Antoine loves me as best he can, and he would move the world for me. But he-' She stopped, a sad smile moving across her lips.

My heart was pounding in my chest, a noise so loud I was sure she could hear it. I was sure the sudden flush of blood through my veins gave away my every secret. I felt like a fool for reacting to the barest hint in her voice, the tiniest possibility that-