Chapter 7

The air was fresh and warm. The skies were clear, and people of all descriptions mulled about doing whatever it was that Evos did here. The collective was the Sect’s answer to the vaulted and hallowed halls of their cathedral, but whereas the cathedral had an air of formality and prestige about it, clearly designed to make the simple Evo feel small in comparison to the whole, the collective felt more like a community. Far from being grandiose or imposing, this place made you feel part of something. The Cathedral had mountainous banks of bookshelves, all of the accumulated knowledge of their order, and hundreds of desks for that history to be studied, but I couldn’t even guess what the members of the Sect did while they were here. It was clearly more than just a gathering place, but what exactly that was, I had no idea.

I felt my eyes unconsciously wandering around them, watching them, and just taking in the subtle undertones of calm tranquility that seemed totally at odds with the turmoil in my chest as we walked away from the meeting house. Arthur was on one side of me, Agatha was on the other, and Charlotte was on the other side of her.

The council had sat in session for more than fourteen hours, apparently one of the longest meetings in their history. Whereas Charlotte had needed to see the replay of my conversation with Miguel six times to let it sink in, the council had only needed one. I’m not sure if it was a product of their age, maturity, or their group mentality, but they seemed to be a lot calmer about the whole thing than I was. That alone was stoking the embers of suspicion still inside me.

“I’m not sure how much help we can be,” Arthur said with the smallest hint of a sigh. “Ours is an insular society. We have had to keep to ourselves since our foundation to ensure our safety. Aside from our own history, the information given to you by that Inquisitor is news to us too. Although we agree with you that it is unlikely he is lying, we simply don’t have any new information to add to it.”

“But,” Agatha added. “We may be able to point you in a new direction going forward.”

Charlotte gave me a quizzical look from beyond Agatha. This was not the answer she had been expecting either. “I’m listening,” I said cautiously.

“As a group, we have had almost zero interaction with the Conclave for centuries,” Agatha explained. “But as individuals, some of us have had more experience with them than most. We do not believe that the majority of the members of the Conclave are aware of this peace treaty, and they certainly don’t know about the dialogue between the Conclave and the Inquisition.”

“What makes you say that?”

She paused for a moment, as if trying to word her response properly. “Let me ask you this, do you trust Uri?”

“No. I don’t trust any of them.”

“Yet, the looks of surprise and shock on the faces of people in Malaga, people you thought to be your enemy, were enough for you to be convinced of their honesty. During the hundreds of times I imagine you have watched the attack on the party in your mind, have you ever stopped to look at Uri’s face when it was all happening?”

I blinked for a moment. That was a damned good question. I had been so fixated on Faye and the mysterious attackers, I hadn’t really paid attention to any of the surviving Evos.

“He was as surprised as the others,” she went on. “At least to our eyes. But, we have to concede that, as you have rightly pointed out, our ability to spot deception is somewhat lacking. It would be wise for you to apply that logic to everyone who was at the party.”

“I ... hadn’t thought of that.”

“There is something else,” it was Arthur talking this time. “We cannot reconcile Uri’s involvement in this conspiracy with the fact that he directed you to Malaga. If he were involved, he would have wanted you as far away from anyone who could have given you the truth as possible.”

I hadn’t thought of that either.

“That’s true,” I nodded. “But Uri is a cog in the bigger machine, and he is completely loyal to it. Whatever I find out, he is going to report to someone higher. Even if Uri can be trusted, I have no way of saying the same about his superiors.”

“Yes, we considered the same thing,” Agatha answered. “But, there are some very simple truths that he will have no choice but to accept, even if he questions the communication between the Conclave and the Inquisition. Firstly, is the peace treaty. The Conclave keeps the memories of its most important members. Someone from that time would have known about it, and he would be able to access those memories to confirm it. Secondly, the meeting at the Villa, the note, and the revelations about Reinard Montreuax and the Royals ... That should be more than enough evidence that there are factions within the Inquisition, and it is not a single, united institution as we had all thought. One of those factions is responsible for attacking Evos, and he is going to want to find out why. The presence of a mole within the Conclave, coupled with the accusation of collaboration within the upper ranks ... should be enough for him to want to dig into this further. The Black Knights are an ancient order. It was ancient even when I was there. But their mandate is to protect the Conclave, even from its own members. Now, add to all of that the fact that this Miguel character has promised to put you in contact with his superiors. That is a much bigger deal than I think you realize, and Uri will certainly be interested in that. He may be convinced not to report any of this if it means finding and eliminating the source of the threat to the Conclave.”

I nodded. I would love to be able to say that my mind was racing with possibilities, but the simple fact was that I was distracted. It had never occurred to me that Faye, or at least some part of her, was waiting for me inside my city. I could still feel the differences inside me, the ones that happened as her city took on that bluish hue of mine, and a large lake representing her love of water grew in one of my parks. I instinctively knew, without having to check, that the lake and its crystal-clear turquoise waters were still there waiting for me. But the task at hand was too important to rush or put off. Considering the problem we were trying to deal with was the one responsible for her death, I couldn’t afford to get this wrong.

“I am going to need you to be careful,” I finally said, directing my statement more toward Charlotte than anyone else, but leaving that point vague enough for Arthur and Agatha to listen as well. “That note said they would be targeting anyone associated with me, and Charlotte certainly falls under the category of someone close to me.”

“I can look after myself,” Charlotte answered back with a smile that said although she appreciated my concern, she was not willing to hide from any perceived threat.

“I don’t doubt that,” I said back, making it equally clear that I wasn’t really asking. “But I would rather not take the risk. The same goes for the rest of you. That mansion was about as incognito as a white-power rally. You know how Inquisitors can be hurt now. I strongly recommend you take precautions.”

Agatha and Arthur flashed a glance at one another. “They have left us alone, for the most part, for a very long time,” Arthur commented.

“Yeah? Who’s they?” I leveled my stare at him. His lack of concern about this whole thing, mixed with his general non-committal demeanor, was starting to spike that suspicion again. “Until a few hours ago, you had no idea there were different groups within the Inquisition, and not all of them are hostile. Plus, you weren’t helping me before. I’m not asking you to pick a side, but not taking extra precautions is just...”

“Naive and foolish,” Agatha finished for me, nodding slowly.

“But we will not pick a side in this conflict; remaining out of the way and hidden is how we have always survived,” Arthur interjected. Another look was shared between the two elders. This was clearly not an issue that a consensus was shared on.

Charlotte, on the other hand, looked like she had been slapped. “Fuck that! You can all cower behind your walls if you want, but I have picked my side! Pete, I’m with you. I don’t know how much help I can be, I don’t care if I only serve as moral support, but I’m with you. If they want a fight, they are going to find one!”

I couldn’t help but smile at the fire behind her eyes. I gave her a grateful nod.

“Charlotte, the decision has been made. Going to war with an unknown enemy could put the entire Sect in danger,” Arthur spoke with a hint of warning in his voice. “More than that, violating the will of the council has consequences.”

“What are you going to do? Kick me out? Jesus, you are a coward,” Charlotte said in disgust, shaking her head and looking at Arthur like he was something she had just scraped off her shoe. “You may be able to sit back and let other people fight your battles for you... again... but I am not! This is a threat to all of us, and when they come for you, neither your position on the council nor your ability to hide like a rodent will be able to save you. You are on your own! I’m out!”

With that, and with the angry look still on her face, she vanished, presumably re-emerging in the real world. I cast a look at both of the elders. “Usually, I am the hot head,” I said with half a smile. “But she isn’t wrong. This threat, this conspiracy, has been responsible for every single Sect death for the past two centuries, and it’s only getting worse. There is no fence to sit on this time. Your unwillingness to act in the interests of your own self-preservation is more than a little concerning.” The slight smirk on Agatha’s face didn’t go unnoticed. “And doing nothing, trying to sit this one out, is not acting. I will see myself out. Thank you for meeting with me.”

“Good Luck, Pete,” Agatha said from behind that faintest of smiles.

Charlotte was already out of her seat and storming toward the mahogany doors by the time I left the mindscape and re-entered the real world. The other people around the table, people I knew to all be members of the council, were still sitting in their chairs, their eyes closed and their breathing level. She pulled both of the doors open and almost walked headlong into Margaret on the other side. “Charlotte! You should know better than to...”

“Margaret! Shut the fuck up!” Charlotte barked, leveling a stare at her that would have rivaled my look at the party.

“Well, in all my years, I have never...” The older woman said with an indignant gasp.

“And now you have. Now, move out of my way, or I will move you!”

Margaret timidly stepped aside. Charlotte stormed past her and toward the car. “For Fuck sake!” Her voice echoed from the hallway. “How the hell do I get out of this fucking place?!?”

We were most of the way home before she said anything. The gentle vibration of the engine and her eyes being fixed firmly on the road seemed to have calmed her down a little. “I’m sorry for that,” she said softly. “I love them like family, but sometimes...” An adorable little growl erupted from her lips. “ ... I’m so sick of them acting like none of this is our problem, and because it isn’t our problem, we should bury our heads in the sand and stay away from it. I’m not the only one that thinks that lack of action is no different than complicity, and this has been an issue for a long time now. Agatha is different from the rest of them; she is from a time when you either fought or you died. But most of the council would hide from their own shadows if it were possible. Jesus, I wasn’t expecting them to immediately start banging the war drums, but dismissing it out of hand like that was just ... it was chicken-shit!”

“Does it strike you as odd,” I said after nodding in agreement with her, “that the Sect is so unconcerned with being discovered that they meet in an actual mansion?”

Charlotte cast a glance into the rearview mirror, despite the stately home being well out of sight by now. “Hiding in plain sight, they call it,” she answered. “Evo powers had nothing to do with getting that place. Arthur is related to an Earl or something. His giving up his ancestral home for no explainable reason was agreed to be more suspicious than staying there.”

“Hmmm.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Just something nagging at me. I know you are a member there, and this may be a little difficult for you to answer without bias, but did anyone in that meeting seem even remotely concerned about being discovered?”

Charlotte didn’t answer for a few moments, but her hands tightened a little on the steering wheel.

“I mean, I know that keeping a low profile is technically being concerned,” I went on, “but the attack on the party was the largest and most deadly that has happened in a lifetime, there is a new faction of the inquisition actively hunting for us, and I was left a note that basically said that anyone associated with me is a target...”

“And they were acting like it was business as usual,” Charlotte finished for me.

“Yeah.”

She sighed heavily. “The problem with the council is that members like Agatha, members who remember what it was like to be part of the wider world, and not just members of the Sect, are in the minority. Arthur is almost a hundred years old, but all he has ever known is in that Collective. The idea that it is not enough for the younger generation, or that things happening in the outside world affect us as well, just doesn’t occur to him. He, and the council members like him, are insular and isolationist. At least, I hope they are. The alternative is that they are the sort of fools who believe that a problem will go away if you ignore it for long enough. Do I think we should be suspicious? No. But there is more than enough apathy and indifference there to come close to it.”

I nodded but didn’t answer. I turned my head and watched the world roll by the window as Charlotte navigated us toward home. “What do you think about what they said about Uri?” I asked after a while.

“I don’t know Uri,” my strawberry-blonde friend answered after a pause to consider her reply. “I had heard his name through the grapevine a few times when I was with the Conclave, everybody had, but it was never in a good way or in a bad way. It was only ever about how powerful he was. I never met him to make my own decisions. But the things Agatha and Arthur said about him do have a certain logic to them. It is Marco I don’t trust.”

“Alright, what is it about you and Marco?” I asked. “I’m not questioning you, but I just don’t see what is so bad about him.”

“I don’t know,” she huffed, a little exacerbation sneaking into her voice. “There is just something about him - like there is an ulterior motive behind everything he does.”

“Well, yeah. He’s trying to recruit you.”

“No, it’s ... It’s more than that. Look, have you ever had someone be really nice to you, but you can just tell that they are only doing it to get into your pants?”

I deadpanned her.

“Oh, right, yeah ... but you know what I mean. He’s not like a used car salesman who is always trying to sell you on the Conclave, and he has never acted all sleazy and lecherous. I have never got the sense that he is lying about anything. But there is just something about him that I don’t trust. This is not the first time I have thought about it. I want to say it’s just me, but every time I hear his name, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I have no idea why.”

I nodded, just considering what she said. Maybe it was a form of female intuition, maybe it was a personality clash, maybe it was a misunderstanding, but given my own mistrust of the entire Conclave, despite the fact that I knew that not all of its members were complicit in the conspiracy, I was hardly in a position to question her reasoning. Aside from being a little slow on the uptake when it came to my training, Marco had never done anything to deserve the suspicion I now held him in.

I sighed heavily as I turned my gaze back to the passing countryside. Marco was not the only person who that could be said about.

Jeeves, send a message to Uri. Tell him it’s time to meet ... alone.

There was something markedly different about my city when I stepped into it an hour later. Charlotte had dropped me back at the Queen’s Head, and, knowing what I would be doing, she bid me good luck and headed home.

My city had always been vibrant; there was an energy to it. The motes of white lights that zoomed overhead always had an urgency about their movements, the blue hue of the light being emitted from the metropolis’s buildings had always been bright and vigorous; everything had just felt ... alive.

It didn’t anymore. Everything was muted, dull, and dreary as if a thick, damp fog had descended upon the wide, tree-lined avenues. It hadn’t, the weather was as clear and bright as it had always been, but the city felt cold and empty. The color and the life had been sucked out of it.

My city was in mourning.

Grief, for those of you who are lucky enough to have never felt it, is a cruel emotion. The initial shock, the debilitating pain, that all fades. It allows you to act with a semblance of normalcy and behave much as you always have done. It lets other people, maybe even yourself, make the mistake of thinking that you are moving on, that you are healing. But the hurt, the heartache, that profound, marrow-deep sense of loss and emptiness never really goes away, and every now and again, something happens that reminds you of that hollow space where your chest used to be, and you are right back to square one again.

My city had no such luxury. It had started the process of merging with another; it had met its counterpoint, the mirror of everything that made it and me what we were. And it had been ripped away. I understood now that the bonding between Faye and me was in its infancy, but it was still the deepest connection I had ever dreamed of feeling. Faye had left her mark on my city, on my very being, and her loss was one I knew would haunt me for a very long time.

I sighed heavily as I looked out of the crystal clear, turquoise waters of the lake. Under any other circumstances, it would have been beautiful. Now it was just an acutely painful reminder of everything I would never have.

“Well, jeez, who pissed on your chips?” the soft and familiar Irish-lilted voice sounded from behind me.

My eyes closed. I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t really understand what Agatha had meant when she said Faye was waiting for me, whether it was just a memory, a representation, an idea of my ideal, or if it was actually her. This would be the last moment of hope that I’d have if the answer to that question was not the one I wanted.

I felt a hand slip into mine. “Pete, you can open your eyes, darlin’. I’m here. It’s really me.”

My eyes flickered open. I blinked through the blur of the quickly forming tears as I forced myself to look at her.

Her fiery red hair filled my vision, those gorgeous green eyes, the freckles, the soft curve of her jaw, and the gentle, affectionate, reassuring curl of her lips. “I’ve been watching yah,” she smiled. “You’ve been busy.”

“I ... I didn’t know ... I didn’t know you were here. I’m so sorry. I would have come if I had known.” I pulled her into my arms, wrapping them around her and squeezing tight as if letting her go would shatter the illusion, and she would fade away like the smell of her perfume on the breeze.

I could feel the wetness of her tears on my skin as she buried her head into my neck. “I’m sorry I left you,” She whispered.

“No, you have nothing to be sorry about. It was... them”

“Aye, and you certainly made sure they were sorry,” there was a sniff and the slightest of giggles. “Nicely done by the way. Now we just have to work out who they were.”

“You saw all that?”

“I did, love,” she pulled herself back to look at me properly, causing me to once again fall hopelessly into the green pools of her eyes. “This is like the ultimate definition of living vicariously. I see everything you do.”

“But ... Are you ... Are you... you?”

She smiled again. “I almost forgot, you’re still brand new, aren’t yah? Bonding is a complex process and not one that is easy to explain. But in essence, our minds recognize that we have found our perfect mate, then we sort of copy each other’s minds,” she explained as she led me to one of the benches that overlooked the lake. “Everything about us, all our memories, our personality, our values, everything is copied. When we say our cities merge, it isn’t literal. Your city has those big ol’ power plants that make you the glorious force of nature that you are, I would never have had access to them. Your marketplace would never have replaced mine, it couldn’t have, I still would’ve needed mine to breathe ‘n’ stuff. Same with your palace, we wouldn’t have become one person. But your mind would have changed your city to recognize my place in your life, just like mine would have changed to represent you. You grew your very own lake for me. What I am, is not the girl yah met at the party, but I am what your mind created as its representation of me...” I could feel myself slump as she said it. “ ... But, if it makes you feel any better, the copy is always perfect. I’m as close to the real me as you are ever going to find. I’m me in every way that matters, my love, warts ‘n’ all.”

I nodded slowly. Of course, it wasn’t the real her. It’s not like my mind downloaded her entire consciousness before she died. But I was starting to understand that her place here was not a result of her death but of the product of our bonding. Somehow, that made me feel a little better. “Will you always be here?”