Heartland

come away from my own thoughts to hear her. 'I am the chief librarian of the Archives. I have devoted my life to the illumination of knowledge. I don't like questions that appear to have no answer.' She waited for me to look at her before she continued. 'Like: Why did the Hierarch choose to give an untested, untrained, and uninformed magus-a dumb courier, at best-the symbols of his office? So that you could arbitrate?' She shook her head. 'I don't think so.'

Peace is not for us, Michael. Responsibility yes, but not peace.

Something popped in my chest. A reaction to those words, to this question. 'It's a perfectly valid answer,' I snapped. 'You just don't care for the inference that it carries. Philippe wanted someone untested, untrained, and uninformed in the ways of the organization because that would be someone he could trust. Not the rest of you.

'I am supposed to seem like a clueless monkey sent to deliver a message, and fortunately enough, I am pretty good at that sort of charade. But I'm not, and while this game of rubbing my nose in my lack of formal training might be fun for you, it's the very sort of self-righteous and sanctimonious attitude that has poisoned-'

She stiffened. 'I'm not-' With an angry swipe of her hand, she blanked the screen. 'You think this is about power? About me not being happy that after a lifetime of service to these Archives I'm supposed to eagerly welcome some rogue magus into my sanctum? 'Oh, sure, come in. No, I don't mind that you've thieved two of our more prized artifacts from us. No, not at all. I don't mind that you're a fucking clueless idiot who has no idea what is going on. It's okay. I'll wipe your ass and hold your hand.' '

Her vehemence surprised me, and I fumbled for a minute, trying to figure out where this came from. Okay, so maybe I had come on a little strong, but I was getting tired of everyone wondering how in the world I had managed to get the keys to the kingdom. 'It's not like that,' I said. 'I didn't ask for-'

'Oh, with all due respect, go fuck yourself.' She put her hands in her lap and sat rigid. Her eyes were moist, and she took several slow, deep breaths.

This isn't about you, Lafoutain murmured, and Nicols reminded me of the pain one takes on when death comes close to you.

'I'm sorry,' I said after a time with a voice that wasn't entirely mine.

'For what?' she asked sharply. 'You killed her father, not mine.'

I took a deep breath and pushed the Chorus away so that I could speak without their influence. 'I'm sorry,' I said, 'that your father isn't here to tell you himself how much he loves you, little chicken. I'm sorry that, in this instance, I am just a dumb courier, because it is no substitute for the real thing.'

A tear slid down her right cheek. When it fell onto her clasped hands, she became aware of it, and she came out of her mental trance. She sniffed once, and pushed the next tear back with a knuckle. ' 'Little chicken.' ' She shook her head. 'He hasn't called me that in. . a very long time.'

Her hands fell back into her lap and she stared out the window. 'My father and mother haven't spoken since I was seven. The last time I saw her was the summer of my twelfth year, when I visited her in Tromso. I didn't want to come back to Paris. My father had to send someone to come get me, and I hated him for a very long time for that. I didn't want to be his daughter; I didn't want to serve. I wanted to be my own person, to not be anyone's 'little' anything.'

When she paused, it would have been polite for me to ask what changed, what happened to make her feel differently about her father, but I couldn't find the words. My chest was tight, and the Chorus was a heavy weight, pulling me down.

'It doesn't matter what we think, does it?' she said. 'We can't control how other people love us, can we? Eventually we recognize that they do.'

With some awkwardness, I became fascinated with my shoes. And the carpet.

'Goddess help you, Michael Markham,' she said after an excruciating pause, 'if you are that alone.'

I chuckled. 'Far from it.' To lend the statement some weight, I met her gaze and dared her to call me a liar.

She looked away. 'Of course. How silly of me.'

Which only cut worse. To be so summarily dismissed.

She smoothed her hair, even though not a strand was out of place, and swiped her hand across the pad once more. The computer came out of sleep, and she found another icon. 'Is this the key you lost to Protector Briande?' she asked as another image came up on the flat screen.

We were done sharing, it seemed. Back to the business at hand.

On the slowly rotating image, the bow was intact, and I examined the intricate carving and scrollwork. 'Yes, though the top had been smashed.' It appeared to be a three-dimensional combination of several pentacles.

'Before or after you received it?'

'Before.'

'By Philippe?'

I searched my memory, and the Chorus swirled around my effort, both aiding and confusing my attempt. Philippe's spirit remained elusive, unwilling to come forward and offer a helpful hint. 'I don't know.' I wandered over to the screen to get a better look. 'Can you freeze it?'

She did, and I peered at the symbols. 'What are they?'

'We're not sure, and these are, at any rate, only a best guess. But we believe they are binding talismans.'

'And the blade is wrong,' I pointed out. 'The teeth were. . elusive. You couldn't focus on them. They kept changing.'

'I know. It's not possible to show that readily in this program,' she said. She was actually warming to me a little now, almost as if we had gotten past that awkward dance of verifying each other's credentials and were now talking as peers. Or almost peers. 'Even though the program used to draw this is a modified auto-CAD, it doesn't lend itself well to animated loops.'

'A loop? Not an endlessly random sequence?'

'Perhaps,' she shrugged. 'I've never actually seen the key. This graphic is an amalgamation of several sources.'

'What does it open?'

She selected another image from the computer and sent it to the remote screen. A still photograph of a castle on a rocky promontory. A rounded dome with a tiny gold figure mounted on the top stood at the peak of the hill. Around the base of the cliffs was an endless expanse of blue water. 'Do you know this place?'

'Mont-Saint-Michel,' I replied. 'On the coast.'

'Have you been there? Recently?'

'No,' I said, and then: 'Yes.' A flash of memory. The green grass of a cloistered space, surrounded by the peaked arches of a sanctuary. Then: vaulted ceilings with exposed ribs; an underground space, barely a niche, hidden behind one of the oldest walls. The floor before the small stone altar was covered in script, radial arms spiraling outward from a central starburst. Closer to the altar, there was a smaller starburst of script, and when I put the key in the center of the smaller image, all of the script-both sections-flashed white and violet, a series of wards coming to life.

The memory fled quickly as I tried to anchor it, and all I was left with was a smoldering sensation in my palm as if I had briefly held a warm stone.

'Which is it?' Vivienne asked.

'I'm having trouble with my memory. It's not all. . linear, and-' I searched for a good way to describe what it was like to have memories of a time prior to my birth. How could I tell her without going into an extensive discussion about what the Chorus was and what I did with it?

You can't. So keep it simple. Tell her a version of the truth. Something you can believe.

'No,' I said firmly. 'I visited once, many years ago. But I haven't been recently. What's there?'

'One of the two artifacts necessary for the Coronation.'

'Which one?' I asked, as if I knew what they both were.

'The Spear of Longinus.'