"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. In a time of upheaval and crisis, Hieron would have been a steadfast soldier of the status quo.
The rest of the fights were small advancements, magi leap-frogging each other up the ladder, but probably nothing of any consequence in the long term. Old rivalries were settled and some narrow-minded bitterness about perceived slights were probably worked out, but nothing dramatic. Except for Antoine, who had stepped in and snatched a position of historical responsibility. Regardless of Protector Hieron's working knowledge of combat magick, he should have been able to withstand the assault of a gifted, yet nominally ranked Traveler. And yet, Antoine had won and in doing so transformed a resolute and steadfast Protectorate into a wildcard, a position held by an enigma whose allegiances and motivations were unknown.
I had thought I understood Antoine's motivations after Portland, and for a moment or two, when we had been talking earlier this morning, I thought I had a handle on what he wanted. But now, with the ring and key missing, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure Antoine wasn't pulling threads at a deeper level. He was slipping away from me, disappearing into that inscrutable void that no one could penetrate.
Not only did I not know the inner workings of Philippe's grand design, I was starting to realize Antoine's confusion and dismay at being played may have been an act. While he had professed to not be privy to Philippe's design, I was starting to wonder if the Old Man had underestimated his star student, if he had failed to penetrate Antoine's mask and See the naked Machiavellian desire in his heart.
Maybe it wasn't a matter of who had the best insight, but who could hide their true intent. Who could guard their heart best.
VIII
We've come to call it the Upheaval." Cristobel brought the conversation back on track. "Once the challenges started, the trickle became a flood. More duels were fought over the next twelve months than had been-cumulatively-over the last decade. There were two immediate results of this conflict: the rank was thinned, and those who survived were more inclined to be a fighting force than a group of scholars. The upwardly mobile brought with them a skewed morality. They didn't have any issue with using magick for personal gain; that was the underlying conceit in their intent. The theorists and the philosophers were cast aside, and what was left had a taste for blood. A taste that ran counter to Philippe's leadership."
"They'd lost their taste for Watching, hadn't they?"
The body must die. No wonder the Old Man had considered a scorched-earth solution. It was like God throwing up His hands and crying "Do over!" with the Flood.
"Precisely. A new direction that could come to fruition under new leadership." Father Cristobel's lips twisted downward. "I Saw the shape of it in the Weave, but thought it would only be a passing ripple. I didn't realize how much of an endemic change it would be until Philippe admitted he was ill."
"The cancer," I said. "I saw his leg."
Cristobel shook his head. "That came later, when he wasn't strong enough to repel it."
The black sores on his spirit, the darkness eating his brain.
"He was losing his mind," I said. I had felt it in my head, that cold touch, and I had mistaken it for a resurgence of the old Qliphotic hunger that had lain in my soul for so long. That ugly, gnawing hunger. I pushed the Chorus aside, and took a long hard look down there and considered the blackness.
No, this wasn't the same. Philippe's hurt was more of a void, an emptiness so much more terrifying for its alien silence. "Alzheimer's," I realized. "I thought there were therapies now. Stem cell treatments."
"They slow, but they don't cure," Cristobel said. "The decay is, ultimately, inevitable, an untenable condition for the Hierarch. He has to renew his Promise each spring, and if he isn't healthy, then he is. . rejected. . he is-"
"What?"
The priest was looking at me, Seeing through my skin. "You don't understand this, do you? You don't know."
"Know what?"
"Certain details of Philippe's history are clear to you-facts only he would know-and yet other aspects of being Hierarch are hidden."
"Maybe because I'm not the Hierarch."
"But you-" His brow furrowed, and I felt a tension in his energy field. A narrowing of focus as his magick intensified. As his Vision deepened. "You and he overlap. Your threads are intertwined to a point of being one, but you are still distinct souls. How-" Cristobel didn't finish his question.