"Knew what?"
A small laugh jerked free of his chest. "You are far more trusting than I, old friend. Your vision is, indeed, deep and distant."
"Father Cristobel," I said. "You and the Hierarch had an understanding of the threads that defies my feeble grasp, and I'm glad you're impressed with the Old Man's plotting, but he told me very little. And he's gone. All I have left are fragments of his memory, and I can't control how and when they offer themselves to me. I am, for lack of a better word, a bit blind here."
He smiled at that, but the motion quickly died on his face. "Yes," he said, staring at a point behind me. "There are many knots in the fabric itself, and much. . that obscures the Record. It is difficult to see very far. Or very clearly." A shake of his head wiped the rest of the humor from his face. "The Hierarch wound tight and far, Lightbreaker, and trusted-perhaps too much-that the threads would move in the manner of his suggestion."
"Endgame," I said. "All the knots, coming undone."
"But will they unravel to his design, or someone else's?" Father Cristobel wondered. "How strong was his Vision?"
"That's the big question, isn't it?"
Father Cristobel stood and retrieved a bottle of whisky from the cupboard. He got two more glasses and filled each with a finger of liquor, nudged one toward me, and raised the other one. "Now is not the time for tea," he said, raising his glass. "To Philippe Emonet. My father, in spirit and in my heart."
Our Father. Holy Spirit. My Son. A confusion of histories overwhelmed my tongue and I settled for tapping my glass against his. The whisky was heavy, filled with the earthy taste of peat, and it went down like a hot coal.
Father Cristobel coughed. "Ah," he said, after taking a second sip. "It has been a while."
I turned the bottle so I could see the label. "A Lagavulin 16," I said. "It's a little mean when you first come back."
"Most things are," he said, pouring another portion for himself. "How long have you been away from the family?"
"A while." There was no point in denying it. I was starting to See how far back Philippe's planning went. "A little over five years."
"Ah, yes," he said, nodding. "Before the Upheaval." He set his glass down. "I know you. You are the rogue who left us, taking a hand and a heart with you."
I knocked back the whisky in my glass, the peaty burn killing the words in my throat. The fire of the scotch rose up from my stomach and inflamed my lungs.
"Markham," he said. "Yes, that is who you are. 'Michael,' she called you, but it isn't your Christian name."
"Landis," I said, my tongue burning. She. Such familiarity. I exhaled, fiery exhaust from the whisky, and memory turned in my head.
A small baby, wrapped in white linen. Marielle. A nocturnal baptism, here in this church, the glass Christ hovering overhead like a watchful angel. A younger Cristobel and Philippe, their hands 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."