Heartland

like with the others, I know how not to be drowned by the flood of another life. I know how to swim through it. How to separate the knowledge from the fantasy, the history from the speculation, the desires from the dreams. I know how to make the sound and fury of another life part of mine.

When I wake from this dream, I am clutching a memory of a little girl, chasing geese in a field by the river. Marielle. So small, so young. Her face, alight with laughter, shining like a morning sun. I remember that day as if it were part of my past, as if that sense of contentment and security were mine.

But it isn't. It belongs to Philippe, from a time before he was Hierarch, before he slew his predecessor, and took the ring as his own. Before he, too, took a little bit of darkness into him.

He's in me still. This is how fathers pass on their legacies to their sons. This is how sins are perpetuated across the generations. This is how the myths take root, and how they grow.

Our hands betray what we have done.

I'm sorry, Father.

And Aristotle Emonet grabs his son's blood-slicked hands as Philippe takes the ring. He can't speak, not with his throat cut, but he can still do magick. One last time. He grips my wrists, a phantom memory handed down to me, and I hear his final thought before he dies. Te absolvo. I forgive you.

The word was on my lips when I opened my eyes. Absolvo. I sighed, and it slipped out of me, like the Word that started the World. Not a shout, but a tiny whisper of sound.

IV

The ceiling was rough, unpainted stone mottled with age. A heavy blanket held me down, and as I moved my arms to push it back, the bed frame creaked. Lifting my head, I examined the room. The air was dry, with a hint of mold. I was in a basement somewhere, in a room made up as a guest room. Bed, dresser, floor lamp, chair.

Man in chair.

Antoine was reading The Wall Street Journal. The light from the lamp spilled out in a cone of yellow illumination, and it reflected from the silver fingers of his right hand. His blond hair was shaggy, a different style than I had seen on him a few months ago. He was still growing it back from when it had all been burned away. His face was smooth and unblemished, making him seem all the more like a teen pop star with his delicate cheekbones and narrow mouth, and there was no hint of bruising from when Marielle had tagged him. A wool jacket was carefully folded over the back of the chair, and his clothes were tailored and expensive. Dark colors: charcoal and black. His tie had a hint of red, threads that seemed wet in this light.

He deigned to notice that I was awake, and his lip curled in a hint of a smile.

'You look-' My voice broke, and I sat up to clear my throat. '-you look. . well.'

'A couple of months at a private spa in Sardinia,' he said, lowering the paper. 'Thalassotherapy. Very invigorating. All that seawater. For a little while, I thought I was going to grow gills along with all my new skin.' He released the paper, and it floated in midair, shivering like a lover as he stroked it lightly with his silver fingers. With a gleam of violet light, it folded itself up and fell to the floor in a neat rectangle.

The Chorus backed up in my throat, making my mouth twitch with the acrid taste of ozone.

'You, on the other hand,' he said. 'You look a little haunted.'

'I wonder why.'

He smiled as he leaned back in the chair. He watched me for a minute, and I stared back, unwilling to give him anything else. You two will always mirror each other. The voice I heard in my head wasn't one of the Chorus; this was one of my own memories. Marielle, on the morning of the duel, acknowledging the eternal dichotomy of my relationship with Antoine.

'We've heard,' he said finally. 'A little over an hour ago. A call came in from the Consulate in Seattle. Our man there.'

'I see,' I said. An hour ago. I looked around for a clock. 'How long have I been out?' The skin of my face still ached where Marielle had slugged me. A few times, if I remembered correctly. Somehow my arrival had gone horribly awry.

Par for the course these days. Things had certainly been easier when I had been hiding in my self-dug hole.

Had they? asked a familiar voice in the Chorus.

Denial is always easier, John, I told the spirit of Detective Nicols.

Antoine's mouth twitched, fighting to hide another smile. 'You forgot her temper, didn't you?' He touched his cheek gently, and I knew I was supposed to notice his lack of bruising. 'That was quite a punch,' he said. 'I felt it, and it wasn't even meant for me.'

'Yeah,' I said, gingerly touching my face and exploring the warm skin. I'm sure there was some nice color developing. Antoine would enjoy that. 'She's gotten stronger.'

The gravity well she carried with her was new. She certainly hadn't exhibited that sort of psychic pull the last time I had been here, and it felt. . primal, for lack of a better world. Some sort of arcane magick that I didn't have any experience with.

'She's going to need it,' Antoine said. 'They're all going to be watching her now. Waiting to See.'

'Where is she?'

He lifted his shoulders.

'Seriously.'

'I don't know. She didn't come with us.'

'What? You left her there?'

'She refused to get in the car, and I didn't want to deal with Henri. He was lost in his magick. He never would have listened.'

'So you just-what? Threw me in the car and drove off?'

'Henri is not that stupid. He didn't want her.'

I shook my head. 'This wasn't what I planned. Not like this.'

He laughed, and the Chorus slithered in my gut, feeding on the bubbling magma of my guilt and anger. He was goading me, hoping I would try to wipe that smug grin off his face.

He wants the excuse to hurt you, the snakes in my belly reminded me. There is an imbalance of pain, a debt owed.

I shook them off. 'Yeah, well, okay. I guess it isn't my planning that brings us here anyway,' I said. 'Rough and tumble as it may be, we're still caught in the Hierarch's Weave.'

Antoine leaned forward. 'Are we?' His eyes glittered with violet light. 'Did he tell you as much?'

I threw back the comforter and swung my legs out of bed so that I had something to do. Something other than lying there, looking at him. 'Plainly? Of course not,' I said. 'It was like every other conversation with him. Soothsayer or Devil's Advocate: it changes with every sentence that comes out of his mouth.'

'How could you expect anything less? But after you talked, what did he give you?' He paused, waiting for my answer, and when none was quick in forthcoming, he prodded me a bit more. 'Other than his soul, of course.'

I considered denying it, but realized there was no point. Antoine knew how the Chorus worked. He had killed Lt. Pender-the Hollow Man contact in the Seattle Police Department-so that I could have enough energy to face Bernard. He had offered me another man's soul. I had refused, because it wasn't so much an offering as a yoke. It would have made us complicit in the willful thievery of another person's light, and while I didn't have any illusions about being a lightbreaker, I wasn't a soul eater. Not like that.

'He gave me a lot of heartache,' I said. 'Philippe gave me nothing but pain, Antoine. His, and yours, and Marielle's.'

His lips curled back from his teeth, a feral motion I had never seen on him before. More than a crack in his armor. This was Antoine, naked before me; before I could read him further, he disappeared, slipping beneath the ever-present layer of magickal distortion that wreathed him. Like a shark, always just under the surface.

'That's not completely true,' I said, as if the thought had just occurred to me. 'He did say you took credit for stopping Bernard. In your True Record, you were the one who destroyed the Key.'

His gaze was hooded, the glint of magick in his eyes nearly invisible. That inscrutable exterior. That marble