"I want to hear what he has to say, sister. He did not come back from the hole the Protector threw him into just to toy with us." She directed her attention at me. "But tread carefully, solute frater. We are not caged animals. You cannot taunt us with impunity. Speak your offer plainly."
"I'll give you what I have in my head in exchange for whatever aid I need, and I acknowledge that part of that assistance will require you to be freed from your duties as keepers of the Archives."
"You can't release us," Vivienne ground out. "Only the Hierarch can do that. And until one is Crowned, there is no one who can release-"
"Not even your father?" I interrupted. The Hierarch may have been the one who could bring down the wards that kept them here, but I was willing to bet that Lafoutain-as Preceptor in charge of the Archives-knew as much as any man could about how the wards were maintained.
Her face went rigid, a mask of frozen emotion. I had just stabbed her, and she was trying to not show how deeply my jab had gone.
"I need to get to the Coronation," I said, listing the items on my fingers. "I need to get past the host of Watchers that are, obviously, standing guard to keep soluti fratres such as myself out."
"True," Nuriye acknowledged. "That's two." She noticed that I was holding the Valet of Cups with two fingers. With two raised, there was one left. "What's the last thing?"
"A pair of swords," I said.
"Swords?" she echoed.
I nodded. "All things must end the way they began. This started with a duel under the bridge five years ago. A duel over a woman. It's going to end the same way."
"A list of three," Nuriye said, with a curt nod. "In exchange for the knowledge of the Hierarch." She glanced at Vivienne and then at the other sisters. "We will have to consider your offer. It is a dangerous thing you ask of us, freedom or no." She returned her gaze to me. "I am not so stupid to think that the only thing you want is revenge against your rival. If we were to provide you access to the Coronation, we would be acting in opposition to the entire rank. We must consider whether the knowledge of one man is worth the wrath of all his brothers."
"I said that I would give you everything in my head," I said. "I've got more than one Architect up there. The Hierarch, the Visionary, and-" I looked at Vivienne. "-your father."
It was more than she deserved for what she had done to me, but I was past that now. My terms. Not hers. Not Philippe's. Not Marielle's. This is what I offer you. This is how we embrace the future.
"There is no need to consider this offer. I accept these terms, and the responsibility that comes with them," she said, and her voice broke.
The wall came down.
XXXIV
It turned out to be more than three things, in the end. Nuriye let it slide. The daughters of Mnemosyne were still getting a deal. In addition to the circle and the swords, I also asked for a corner in which to lie down for a few hours, some medical attention, and a new hand. Antoine was the better swordsman, and even though he was down a hand too, he had had five years to learn how to fight left-handed. If there was going to be a handicap, I wanted it to be in my favor.
I begged off on the transfer of the Architects for a few hours too, even though they were howling in my head. A slender daughter named Lusina brought me to one of the outer offices, and had me lie down on the leather couch in the room. With the lights off in the room, I concentrated on my breathing while she pushed and pulled ley energy through me, knitting bone and repairing flesh. She managed to apply a web of scabrous tissue to cover the wound made by the Spear, and although she couldn't do anything for my missing hand, she accelerated growth in the stump until it was a knot of scar tissue. Good enough.
Finally, she laid her hands on my forehead, quelling the restlessness in the Chorus, and for a little while, I slept.
When I woke, the sky was still dark, occluded with thick clouds. The Chorus, somewhat resigned to the fate in store for certain of their members, responded to my commands. They touched the ley, and felt the swollen frustration of the Akashic Weave. Dawn was only a few hours away, but you'd never know from the ambient light in the sky. The clouds were too thick, there was rain in the air, and the atmosphere around Paris was turgid with denial. The sun was going to break through the cloud cover when it rose, and if there wasn't a proper representative waiting to receive the blessing of the Land, the Weave was going to tear, and the grid was going to feel it. The psychic quake that had hit Mont-Saint-Michel was going to seem like hitting a bump in the road with your car in comparison.
The Watchers were going to be there. No question about that. Getting in on the party was going to be the best trick of my life.
The door to the room opened and Nuriye came in, carrying two wooden cases. She put one down on the floor beside the couch and set the other one on the seat next to me.
"Did you sleep?" she asked.
"Some," I replied. "Enough, I suppose."
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Never enough, is it?"
I shook my head.
"Vivienne is almost ready for you," she said. "But first, let us deal with your hand." She opened the latch on the case and lifted the lid.
The gauntlet lay in a velvet-lined casing. It was Renaissance-era, mid-sixteenth century, Italian by the looks of it. Two cuffs, six plates to the knuckle-plate, and the finger sleeves were solid pieces out to rounded caps. Silver and gold pieces, hand-etched with astrological symbols. The real surprise was the palm. Most gauntlets are metal overlays to leather gloves, attached via leather loops or ties to a pair of thin gloves. This pair had a hinged piece of silver that covered the palm as well, a piece that was covered with chiromantic markings.
"What is this?" I asked Nuriye. I caught sight of a tiny sigil in the bottom corner of the palm plate. It was the artisan mark of a well-known Italian armorer. "Caremolo Modrone?"
She nodded. "One of a kind. Built for a client who was fascinated by John ab Indagine's Introductiones Apotelesmaticae. The sixteenth-century bible on palm reading."
She picked up Cristobel's rosary from where Lusina had left it beside the couch as I had dropped off to sleep, and stroked the ball with two fingers while whispering to it. It quivered in her hand, but didn't trigger; she carefully fed it through the cuff of the gauntlet until it rested on the inside of the silver palm. She said one more word and the metal tines sprang out of the sphere, and with a metallic ring, the newly formed crucifix anchored itself inside the glove.
More words flowed from her lips and the Chorus tingled as they felt her magick. She stroked the beaded tail of the rosary, and violet light limned the black beads. When she wrapped the strand of beads around the cuff of the gauntlet, they stuck to the silver and gold plates. The whole hand started to shimmer with a violet light, and when she ran out of beads, she slipped the cuff over my newly healed stump. Wrapping her hands around both the cuff and my wrist, she squeezed, and the thousand pinpricks of her magick intensified for a moment and then vanished.
"Try it," she said as she removed her hands.
With some effort, I could make the hand open and close.
"You won't be doing needlepoint or brain surgery," she said. "But you can hold a sword." She smiled. "Or make a fist and hit someone."
"That'll do just fine."
"I thought it might." She patted the other case on the floor. "Speaking of swords. . "
"Have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying working with you instead of against you?" I asked.
Nuriye cocked her head to the side as she turned the sword case around and flicked open the latches. "Don't get too comfortable," she warned.