"Son of a bitch." Nicols drew his gun and pointed it at the Protector. "He knew they were going to do this." Antoine stared at me, ignoring the weapon. Watching my expression, Watching me untangle the threads.
Nicols' conclusion certainly seemed like the one Antoine was intimating, but I wanted to be sure. I wanted to See the threads, and make sure there wasn't some subtlety I was missing. Why would he condone such an experiment? Antoine wasn't being smug-he was as inscrutable as ever-and that made me consider the possibility there was some strand not yet revealed. "Bernard's an academic; he's not part of the family. He worked for you."
"Bernard du Guyon was a professor of Medieval Studies at the Sorbonne," Antoine agreed. "But there was a scandal, disputes about his methodology and awkward questions concerning a rare manuscript in the university's possession. He fled to Bonne, and became an alchemist.
"Well, he always had been an alchemist, really. Teaching gave him access to the university's collection of Renaissance and Medieval manuscripts, and the one in question was purported to be the second part of Ficino's Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae. M. du Guyon believed the text was filled with technical marvels, mechanical ways of realizing Ficino's theories."
"But that was his job, wasn't it?" I said. "To find heretical works and magickal grimoires in the archives. He knew you would pay him well for such artifacts."
Antoine shrugged. "Possibly. But we already had a complete catalog of the Sorbonne's collection. We've had it for sixty years. Anything dangerous had already been purged. The claims of both Bernard and the university as to the identity of this pamphlet couldn't be true. No such text exists. Nor has it ever."
"He thinks he's reconstructed The Book of Thoth. The real one. Where did he find the pieces? This second part of Ficino's Theologia. Was that part of it?"
Antoine shook his head. "It doesn't exist."
"A lot of things don't exist," I said. "That doesn't mean he hasn't read it."
Antoine smiled at that, his eyes flickering toward Nicols and the gun. "The mysteries of the occult. Seeing things that aren't there. Reading books that weren't ever written. All very confusing, don't you think, Detective?"
Nicols held the gun steady. "You haven't answered his question," he said. "Where did Bernard find the pieces?"
"Ah, you are going to be tenacious about this." Antoine sighed. "Well then, perhaps he had access to a very private collection. One that had all the right pieces. Maybe a complete copy of the Kitab al-Zuhra, for example."
"Someone tainted by a manuscript scandal isn't going to get access to any private collection," I pointed out.
"One came up for sale recently."
"Where?" I had three or four clients who would have leapt at a chance for Jabir's Kitab al-Zuhra. I should have heard about a copy going on the market.
"Vienna."
"The Van Groteon library?"
Antoine nodded, a glimmer of amusement on his lips.
"The whole library?"
He continued to nod.
"Who bankrolled him?" I couldn't keep the amazement out of my voice.
"Who indeed?"
"Fuck this verbal tap dance," Nicols said. The pistol shook in his hand. "You bankrolled him. You let him perform this experiment. You let this happen." His voice rose. "What the fuck did he do to these people!"
"He seeks the Key to Immortality," Antoine explained patiently.
"The what?" Nicols steadied his arm. His voice cracked on the word, his nerve dangerously close to breaking.
"The Way that allows access to God." Antoine was unmoved. "Given the opportunity, wouldn't you take it? Don't we all have questions we'd like to ask Him? About Sarah, for example?"
"Mother-" Nicols nearly fired his gun. The tendons in his neck were hard, and his face was wound into the spot between his eyes.
Antoine watched him, and nothing changed on the Protector's face. He just watched the other man struggle with his demons. Sarah. Don't we all have questions?
"Leave him out of this," I said. "He doesn't deserve to be kicked around." Nicols gasped at the sound of my voice, and realizing what he had almost done, he turned away from Antoine. His arm dropped to his side, and he held on to the gun tightly.
With the barest glimmer of disappointment, Antoine surveyed the tightening circle of zombies, the once-living population of Ravensdale, as they lurched and staggered toward the small hill upon which we stood. The members of the task force had stayed back, avoiding the shuffling soul-dead. "He's part of the Weave, Markham. Just like you and me." He raised his shortened right arm, and waved it to encompass the surrounding zombies. "Just like all of them. I can't cut him out of the pattern any more than you can."
"Stop trying to twist him, then. Let him find his own way."
"And you haven't twisted him? Is it not your interference in the Weave that set him on this path?"
"I've tried to guide him-"
"Like you've guided yourself?"
The flush in my cheeks spread to my neck and made my voice shake. "He's an innocent."
"No one is innocent," Antoine countered. "There is just ignorance and enlightenment."
I nodded toward the approaching line of zombies. "Is this enlightenment, then? You gave Bernard what he needed to build the mirror; you let him activate it. As a result, all these people have been collected. They've been harvested. For what purpose? Making Qliphotic shells? There is no 'Way' here. This is just carnage."
For an instant, Antoine's guard slipped and I saw the abject sorrow hidden beneath. Like a scar on his heart, he would never reveal the true temperament under his impenetrable psychic armor. Not to me. Not now. Even though we shared similar grief about what had happened, we stood on opposite shores, separated by a gulf of our own making. Separated by steel.
"You are summoning them. Like moths to your flame," he said, a grin smoothing over the break in his armor. "I will offer you a deal, mon ami. Divest yourself of your stolen energy and we shall talk about the past. And the future. You will not dissuade me from what must be done, but we can at least end it with some civility."
"The alternative?"
He sighed. "I have no time for distractions. Your thread in this part of the Weave is done. You will be removed. Decisively."
A single zombie was already halfway across the field, a staggered row of shambling soul-dead not far behind. They wanted my light and, in the same way I had obliterated the old man by the road with a blessing of that energy, Antoine wanted me to dismiss the dead of Ravensdale. One massive pulse, a coruscating stroke that would drive away all the darkness. A final blessing for the restless dead.
I have no time.
I had thought Bernard and the Anointed Hollow Men had planned to use their newly learned psychoanimist techniques to take over Antoine. But Bernard had hinted at a larger purpose for the theurgic mirror. If Antoine had bankrolled the creation of the mirror and this experiment, then why was he here? Why wasn't he with them?
Because they weren't finished. Ravensdale was just a test run, the first part of something else. But it couldn't be about theft. What was the point in taking all this energy? Unless. . there was a way to use it somewhere else. To do something. .
He seeks the Key to Immortality.
And not just Bernard, but everyone. Why wouldn't Antoine want it as well? But he had lost control. All of his coy obliqueness aside, his Watch had failed. He was on the defensive, reeling from this sudden reversal. Key pieces he had thought were under his control had disappeared.
I was a thorn, an old wound that refused to heal. He wanted me removed from the Weave. One less thread to follow. One less mischievious child-