Mark Teppo - Heartland

Robert Vraillet, the Chorus said, licking the taste of the man's magick off their claws. Lafoutain's man. A Viator.

Ignoring the dick-measuring moment between his bodyguard and me, Lafoutain led us back to the kitchen, sparing a single glance and a rueful shake of his head toward the dining room. "Still too much speculation," he said. "They don't know anything, and it makes them afraid."

The kitchen was filled with chrome-plated appliances. Dishes and the detritus from a serious pantry raid were scattered on the counter and center island, along with more than a few empty bottles of wine. Lafoutain picked up a cheese knife and attacked a quarter wheel of an aromatic hard cheese as he nodded toward the cupboards on the right-hand wall. "Get yourself a glass. There should be a few bottles of that Spanish excuse for a table wine still."

He flipped the knife over, sliding a piece of cheese into his mouth. "I sent Moreau and Tevvys out for more food, and they're backtracking to check for Watchers on their trail, or some other nonsense."

Marielle opened the cabinet behind us, and got down two glasses. I had just had tea, and wasn't all that thirsty, and I didn't think she was either, but this looked like a social nicety. After I took the offered glasses, she opened the cabinet below the stemware and revealed a temperature-controlled wine rack. "Nice setup," I observed. "Well, except for the sparse pantry, of course."

"Thank you," Lafoutain said. "But it's not mine." He pointed the knife at Marielle. "Friend of hers."

"Really?"

Marielle glanced back at me, hair falling across her face. She tried to read my expression, but I kept my face neutral.

Lafoutain was watching me, a half-smile sliding across his mouth. "She has a lot of friends," he teased.

I was thinking about the blonde woman's apartment, the one we ran off to on New Year's Day, and about the somewhat vacant apartment on the other side of the courtyard. Where are we? Somewhere safe; a friend's.

Marielle brought a bottle to the table, and Lafoutain fumbled through the mess on the counter for the bottle opener. "God help me, but I'm developing a taste for it," he said as she started to open the wine. "That's a sure sign of the Apocalypse."

"Or desperation," Marielle offered.

"Most assuredly," he said. He tapped the remnants of the cheese wheel. "Rioja and an Appenzeller." He shuddered. "That's the first sign, you know. When our standards start slipping. Next time, though, could you find a place with a decent liquor cabinet?"

"You wanted something defensible," she countered.

"True," he sighed. "See what I mean about standards?" He cut a slice of cheese and offered it to me.

It was softer than I expected, and had a fruity taste, like it had been soaked in apple cider. "This is good," I said.

Lafoutain snorted. "It's not even French," he said. "You are a philistine." His eyes flicked toward Marielle, who appeared to be concentrating on opening the bottle of wine. "In matters of food, of course," he amended.

My tongue was thick in my mouth. "Of course," I muttered. The Chorus chattered in my ear, the laughter of raucous birds. You can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy. The pretty things would always entrance the son of a potato farmer.

Marielle pulled the cork with a single, fluid motion, poured an inch in our glasses, and when Lafoutain nodded at the offered bottle without an ounce of irony in his expression, filled the empty glass next to him as well. She raised her glass, and we followed suit. "To fallen friends," she said quietly, reminding us why we were hiding out in an apartment that didn't belong to any of us. Lafoutain and I, for separate but not entirely unrelated reasons, leaped at the opportunity to change the topic, and we raised our glasses as well.

The wine was a little young, but not that bad. Good enough for the palette of a potato farmer.

Lafoutain set his glass down with a sigh that had nothing to do with the pairing of the wine and cheese. "Who?"

"Father Cristobel," I said.

"You are the Witness?"

I nodded. "At the Chapel of Glass. They cut us off from the ley and sent in a suicide squad."

"Guns and explosives? Against the priest? That seems ill-prepared on their part."

"Guns, yes; but they had locks on their souls with some sort of remote conduit. They blew the cage out from within and the subsequent implosion was. . partly an etheric quake. It brought the place down."

Lafoutain and Marielle exchanged a meaningful glance, and when she nodded, he continued the questions. "And you?" he asked. "How did you escape?"

"There's a tunnel beneath the chapel. Eventually it comes up in a maintenance shack in Pere Lachaise. Cristobel sacrificed himself so that. . " I trailed off with a wince as the Chorus pinned Cristobel's last memory into my mental scaffolding. A crushing sensation of an enormous weight. The cross and the glass. Bones shattering. The air being forced out of my lungs, along with what felt like every other organ in my body.

Lafoutain cut another slice of cheese and chewed it noisily while Marielle finished her first glass of wine and poured another. "That's ten," he said.

"Ten?" Marielle asked.

"We heard from Byatt in Amsterdam while you were out," Lafoutain said. "He says, on good authority, that Lysenski is gone. Rudolph Lysenski, Preceptor of the Northern Ice. Master of the temple up in Tromso, Norway," he added for my benefit.

"Are we sure he wasn't an Architect?"

Lafoutain shrugged. "Byatt won't Witness that fact, but he's pretty confident that Lysenski wasn't the Thaumaturge. He's too remote up there. . " Lafoutain's tongue touched the inside of his cheek as his voice drifted into silence. His expression was thoughtful, and he wasn't looking at me. He was looking through me, to an indistinct point beyond.

"I was one of the Witnesses at your trial for Journeyman," he said, as a different train of thought came to his attention.

"You were," I said.

"I was never called to Witness your trial for Traveler."

"No, sir."

"Why is that?"

I swallowed half of the rest of the wine in my glass. "I never took the trial."

Lafoutain raised an eyebrow, and cocked his head toward Marielle. "A Journeyman? Does your other boyfriend know?"

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Which one? Him, or the other?" A smile tugged at Lafoutain's mouth.

Marielle's answer was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a slender man with closely cropped brown hair. He stormed into the kitchen, arms raised in exasperation. Spotting us, he halted and realized he was in mid-gesture. "Ah, you've returned," he said to Marielle. Then his attention turned to me. "With a friend." We all heard the stress on the last word.

"Not a boyfriend," Lafoutain clarified.

"He's not-" Marielle started, and then stopped with a shake of her head. "Jean-Pierre Delacroix," she said, indicating the brown-haired guy. "Michael Markham."

Delacroix came forward, turning his awkward gesture into an outstretched hand. "M. Markham," he said. "A pleasure." His grip was firmer than I thought his frame could muster, and the Chorus chattered at the power humming in his palm. "Where have you come from?" he asked.

"Overseas," I said. "Just arrived."

"Oh, really?" Delacroix couldn't decide whose expression could tell him more, and he looked back and forth between Lafoutain and Marielle for a few moments. "Recently?"

"Yesterday," I said, aware that Lafoutain, for all his feigned indifference as he cut another slice of cheese, was paying close attention to my answer. His previous train of thought was still uppermost in his mind.

"Am I missing something?" Delacroix asked.

"I think we all are," Lafoutain said.