Mark Teppo - Heartland

The doorbell chimed, splintering the swirling mass of the Chorus. What had been forming in them-that niggling detail so frustratingly elusive-vanished. Gone, like a curl of cigarette smoke into the evening air.

Lafoutain wiped his hands on the nearest suitable cloth, which happened to be his shirt. "Finally." He strode into the hallway.

"Must be the food," I said.

Marielle nodded absently. She picked up the discarded knife and hacked off a corner of the shrinking block of cheese. "You know who attacked the chapel." It wasn't a question.

"Yes, Cristobel-" I caught myself. "The first thing they did was shut down access to the grid. Cristobel couldn't draw any power. Then, they sent in their goons. Redirecting energy flow like that is geomantic magick. There's only one Architect who specializes in that school of thought."

"And you think he's hiding himself to confuse us? If we can't reach him, we assume he's dead like the others."

"If you were taking on an opposing force that was probably-at least in raw numbers-larger than yours, yeah, I would. It'd be the tactically smart thing to do."

Lafoutain bustled back into the kitchen with a clutch of plastic bags in either hand. Two more men trailed behind him, carrying more of the same. They swarmed around us, clearing space on all available surfaces to lay out take-out containers. Marielle and I grabbed our wine glasses, the wine pull, and the unopened bottle, and got out of the way.

The newcomers were young-early twenties, wet-behind-the-ears Journeymen, still eager to do the menial tasks. They had been sent out on a quick food run, but it was clear they had over-compensated. The counters were filling fast with a variety of exotic choices. Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian: the mix of curries, spices, and sauces made my head spin and my mouth water.

Lafoutain didn't even bother with a plate. He dumped half of one container into another and then filled the space with vegetables and meat from the next two boxes. "Eat," he said, waving a pair of chopsticks at us. "Help us make some room. This may be the last hot meal any of us has for a long time."

"Fatalist," Marielle said, but she went to the cabinets and found a pair of plates.

"Pragmatist," he replied, shoving an egg roll in his mouth.

My stomach agreed with him.

While the others came down to the kitchen to mob the take-out, Lafoutain led Marielle and me into the dining room. Delacroix glared at me as we passed in the hall, and judging by the expression on a few other faces, no one was terribly pleased to meet Marielle's new friend.

I could imagine their reaction if they knew the rest of it.

The dining room was in disarray. Chairs were scattered around the table, a collection of energy drink cans were piled in the corner of the room, and the top of the table was covered with newspaper effigies, sigil pages (scraps of paper covered with symbolic script done in heavy permanent marker), cheap tourist trinkets and other pewter icons used in warding, the stubs of a few candles: the signs of many hours of occult work. At the far end of the table, written out across several pages taped together, was a series of concentric circles, covered with handwritten scrawl and a scattering of black dots.

The working model of the society's network reminded me of a two-dimensional representation of the Tree of the Sephiroth, circles within circles. In the middle- Ain Soph Aur, the central point from which all light emanated-was the Hierarch, and floating throughout the concentric rings were small circles marked with names. The twenty-one Preceptors. More than half of them were filled in, and beside four of them were their Architect titles, written in all caps.

THE VISIONARY: Father David Cristobel. Dead.

THE HERMIT: Emile Frobai-Cantouard. Dead .

THE CRUSADER: Matthew Wincott. Dead .

THE NAVIGATOR: Pierre Juneaux. Dead .

I found Jacob Spiertz on the map. There was no title next to his name. They didn't know.

"It doesn't look good." Lafoutain gave voice to what we were all thinking.

I put my half-empty plate down and leaned over the diagram, reading some of the notes scrawled across the page. Names of the rank, with lines connecting them in a desperate attempt to chart allegiances. This wasn't all of them, not by a long shot, just the names of Watchers who could be clearly identified as belonging to one school of thought or another.

Once a magus reached Viator, a choice was declared-a rubric of occult study that took one under the aegis of one of the Architects. I had always thought it was an educational and vocational choice, but looking at the tangle of lines, I began to see the hierarchy in a different light. Given the circumstances and rampant paranoia now sweeping the rank, suddenly the distinction between schools of thought looked a lot like battle lines.

Is this what you wanted? I asked the spirit hiding in the Chorus. Is this your master plan? To force everyone to chose a side?

A dark whirlpool swirled in my skull, and the Chorus vanished like smoke into the yawning mouth. Lightning arced from my anger, lighting the mouth of the hole, and the outline of old spirits lit up in the smoke. I reached for them, my current electrifying their shapes. They whined and tried to slip down the hole faster, but I had a chain now. One and another and then another. Like tiny cut-outs for a Christmas tree, little children all holding hands.

Tell me. I need to know. Tell me what you want from me.

The whirlpool shivered and white ice formed on the rim of its lip. The hole closed and opened again, a parody of a mouth. Tell me what you want, it parroted back at me.

You came to me. You wanted me to kill you. In a time and place of your choosing. Away from their eyes.

The body must be destroyed, the whirlpool hummed.

Is this your answer? I demanded. Your Architects were supposed to Witness your death. They were supposed to be on hand to elect a successor. By dying out of sight, did you bring on this chaos?

Opportunity, Philippe whispered through the swirling motion of the Chorus. I gave them opportunity.

"Opportunity," I whispered, the word slipping out of me.

"Pardon," Lafoutain said, reminding me I wasn't alone.

The Upheaval, Cristobel reminded me, flitting across my perception like a ghost of a hummingbird. A trickle that became a flood. A crack in a dike means the wall is no longer strong; time becomes its greatest enemy.

"It was just a matter of time," I said.

"What was?" Lafoutain glanced at Marielle, who was toying with her food, not really eating much. "What does he know?"

"More than he realizes," she said. There was a strange expression on her face, a mixture of confusion, fascination, and a glimmer of something else. Revulsion?

Lafoutain stepped closer, his voice dropping into a near whisper. "Who is he? He said he came from Portland. We didn't have anyone in Portland." He looked at me. "Not anyone we could trust."

Marielle laughed, a hard bark of sound ripping out of her chest. I flinched at the sound, and Lafoutain grew more agitated. "What is going on?" he demanded. He blinked heavily, and his forehead was shiny with sweat.

I put my finger on Spiertz's name. "The Mason," I said. My hand drifted on its own accord across the map. Ulrich Husserl . "The Scryer." R. A. Kircherus . "The Thaumaturge." And three makes seven. Seven Architects.

But my hand kept moving, sliding across the page until it landed on Lafoutain's name. "The Sch-"

Lafoutain stepped forward and slapped my hand away from the map. He threw a nervous glance at the kitchen. "Enough," he hissed.