Clockwork Prince tid-2 Read online

  “Don’t you mean ‘we’? You weren’t thinking of going looking for Will without me, were you?” she asked archly, and when he said nothing, she said, “That letter was addressed to me, James. I didn’t have to show it to you.”

  He half-closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, he was smiling crookedly. “James,” he said. “Ordinarily only Will calls me that.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No. Don’t be. I like the sound of it on your lips.”

  Lips. There was something strangely, delicately indelicate about the word, like a kiss itself. It seemed to hover in the air between them while they both hesitated. But it’s Jem, Tessa thought in bewilderment. Jem. Not Will, who could make her feel as if he were running his fingers along her bare skin just by looking at her—

  “You’re right,” Jem said, clearing his throat. “Magnus would not have sent the letter to you had he not intended you to be part of searching for Will. Perhaps he thinks your power will be useful. In either case—” He turned from her, going to his wardrobe and flinging it open. “Wait for me in your room. I will be there momentarily.”

  Tessa wasn’t sure if she nodded—she thought she had—and moments later she found herself back in her bedroom, leaning against the door. Her face felt hot, as if she had stood too close to a fire. She looked around. When had she started to think of this room as her bedroom? The big, grand space, with its mullioned windows and softly glowing witchlight tapers, was so unlike the tiny box room she had slept in in the flat in New York, with its puddles of wax on the bedside table, caused by her staying up all night reading by candlelight, and the cheap wooden-framed bed with its thin blankets. In the winter the windows, ill-seated, would rattle in their frames when the wind blew.

  A soft knock on the door drew her out of her reverie, and she turned, flinging it open to find Jem on the threshold. He was fully dressed in Shadowhunter gear—the tough leather-looking black coat and trousers, the heavy boots. He put a finger to his lips and gestured for her to follow him.

  It was probably ten o’clock at night, Tessa guessed, and the witchlight was burning low. They took a curious, winding path through the corridors, not the one she was used to taking to get to the front doors. Her confusion was answered when they reached a door set at the end of a long corridor. There was a rounded look to the space they stood in, and Tessa guessed they were probably inside one of the Gothic towers that stood at each corner of the Institute.

  Jem pushed the door open and ushered her in after him; he closed the door firmly behind them, slipping the key he had used back into his pocket. “This,” he said, “is Will’s room.”

  “Gracious,” Tessa said. “I’ve never been in here. I was starting to imagine he slept upside down, like a bat.”

  Jem laughed and went past her, over to a wooden bureau, and began to rummage through the contents on top of it as Tessa glanced around. Her heart was beating fast, as if she were seeing something she wasn’t meant to see—some secret, hidden part of Will. She told herself not to be silly, it was just a room, with the same heavy dark furniture as all the other Institute rooms. It was a mess, too—covers kicked down to the foot of the bed; clothes draped over the backs of chairs, teacups half-full of liquid not yet cleared away, balanced precariously on the nightstand. And everywhere books—books on the side tables, books on the bed, books in stacks on the floor, books double-lined in shelves along the walls. As Jem rummaged, Tessa wandered to the shelves and looked curiously at the titles.

  She was not surprised to find that they were almost all fiction and poetry. Some were titles in languages she couldn’t read. She recognized Latin and the Greek alphabet. There were also books of fairy tales, The Arabian Nights, James Payn’s work, Anthony Trollope’s Vicar of Bullhampton, Thomas Hardy’s Desperate Remedies, a pile of Wilkie Collins—The New Magdalen, The Law and the Lady, The Two Destinies, and a new Jules Verne novel titled Child of the Cavern that she itched to get her hands on. And then, there it was—A Tale of Two Cities. With a rueful smile she reached to take it from the shelf. As she lifted it, several scrawled-on papers that had been pressed between the covers fluttered to the floor. She knelt to pick them up—and froze. She recognized the handwriting instantly. It was her own.

  Her throat tightened as she thumbed through the pages. Dear Nate, she read. I tried to Change today, and failed. It was a coin they gave me, and I could get nothing from it. Either it was never owned by a person, or my power is weakening. I would not care, but that they whipped me—have you ever been whipped before? No, a silly question. Of course you haven’t. It feels like fire being laid in lines across your skin. I am ashamed to say I cried, and you know how I hate to cry . . . And Dear Nate, I missed you so much today, I thought I would die. If you are gone, there is no one in the world who cares if I am dead or alive. I feel myself dissolving, vanishing into nothingness, for if there is no one in the world who cares for you, do you really exist at all?

  These were the letters she had written her brother from the Dark House, not expecting Nate to read them—not expecting anyone to read them. They were more of a diary than letters, the only place where she could pour forth her horror, her sadness, and her fear. She knew that they had been found, that Charlotte had read them, but what were they doing here in Will’s room, of all places, hidden between the pages of a book?

  “Tessa.” It was Jem. She turned quickly, slipping the letters into the pocket of her coat as she did so. Jem stood by the bureau, holding a silver knife in his hand. “By the Angel, this place is such a tip, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find it.” He turned it over in his hands. “Will didn’t bring much from home when he came here, but he did bring this. It’s a dagger his father gave him. It has the Herondale bird markings on the blade. It should have a strong enough imprint of him for us to track him with it.”

  Despite the encouraging words, he was frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” Tessa asked, crossing the room to him.

  “I found something else,” he said. “Will has always been the one to buy my—my medicine for me. He knew I despised the whole transaction, finding Downworlders willing to sell it, paying for the stuff . . .” His chest rose and fell quickly, as if merely talking about it sickened him. “I would give him money, and off he would go. I found a bill, though, for the last transaction. It appears the drugs—the medicine—does not cost what I thought it did.”

  “You mean Will’s been cheating you out of money?” Tessa was surprised. Will could be awful and cruel, she thought, but somehow she had thought his cruelty of a more refined order than that. Less petty. And to do that to Jem, of all people . . .

  “Quite the opposite. The drugs cost much more than he said they did. He must have been making up the difference somehow.” Still frowning, he slid the dagger into his belt. “I know him better than anyone else in the world,” he said matter-of-factly. “And yet still I find that Will has secrets that surprise me.”

  Tessa thought of the letters stuffed into the Dickens book, and what she intended to say to Will about it when she saw him again. “Indeed,” she said. “Though it is not so much a mystery, is it? Will would do anything for you—”

  “I’m not sure I would take it quite that far.” Jem’s tone was wry.

  “Of course he would,” said Tessa. “Anyone would. You’re so kind and so good—”

  She broke off, but Jem’s eyes had already widened. He looked surprised, as if he were not used to such praise, but surely he must be, Tessa thought in confusion. Surely everyone who knew him knew how lucky they were. She felt her cheeks begin to warm again, and cursed herself. What was going on?

  A faint rattle came from the window; Jem turned after a moment’s pause. “That will be Cyril,” he said, and there was a slight, rough undercurrent to his voice. “I—I asked him to bring the carriage around. We had better go.”

  Tessa nodded, wordless, and followed him from the room.

  When Jem and Tessa emerged from the Institute, the wind
was still gusting into the courtyard, sending dried leaves skittering in circles like faerie dancers. The sky was heavy with a yellow fog, the moon a gold disk behind it. The Latin words over the Institute’s gates seemed to glow, picked out by the moonlight: We are dust and shadows.

  Cyril, waiting with the carriage and the two horses, Balios and Xanthos, looked relieved to see them; he helped Tessa up into the carriage, Jem following her, and then swung himself up into the driver’s seat. Tessa, sitting opposite Jem, watched with fascination as he drew both the dagger and the stele from his belt; holding the dagger in his right hand, he drew a rune on the back of that hand with the tip of his stele. It looked to Tessa like all Marks looked, a ripple of unreadable waving lines, circling around to connect with one another in bold black patterns.

  He gazed down at his hand for a long moment, then shut his eyes, his face still with intense concentration. Just as Tessa’s nerves began to sing with impatience, his eyes flew open. “Brick Lane, near Whitechapel High Street,” he said, half to himself; returning the dagger and stele to his belt, he leaned out the window, and she heard him repeat the words to Cyril. A moment later Jem was back in the carriage, shutting the window against the cold air, and they were sliding and bumping forward over the cobblestones.

  Tessa took a deep breath. She had been eager to look for Will all day, worried about him, wondering where he was—but now that they were rolling into the dark heart of London, all she could feel was dread.

  Chapter 9

  FIERCE MIDNIGHT

  Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,

  And the loves that complete and control

  All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows

  That wear out the soul.

  —Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Dolores”

  Tessa kept the curtain on her side of the carriage pulled back, her eyes on the glass of the window, as they rolled along Fleet Street toward Ludgate Hill. The yellow fog had thickened, and she could make out little through it—the dark shapes of people hurrying to and fro, the hazy words of advertising signs painted on the sides of buildings. Every once in a while the fog would part and she would get a clear glimpse of something—a little girl carrying bunches of wilting lavender, leaning against a wall, exhausted; a knife grinder rolling his cart wearily homeward; a sign for Bryant and May’s Lucifer Matches looming suddenly out of the gloom.

  “Chuckaways,” said Jem. He was leaning back against the seat across from her, his eyes bright in the dimness. She wondered if he had taken some of the drug before they left, and if so, how much.

  “Pardon?”

  He mimed the act of striking a match, blowing it out, and tossing the remainder over his shoulder. “That’s what they call matches here—chuckaways, because you toss them aside after one use. It’s also what they call the girls who work at the match factories.”

  Tessa thought of Sophie, who could easily have become one of those “chuckaways,” if Charlotte hadn’t found her. “That’s cruel.”

  “It’s a cruel part of the city we’re going into. The East End. The slums.” He sat forward. “I want you to be careful, and to stay close by me.”

  “Do you know what Will’s doing there?” Tessa asked, half-afraid of the answer. They were passing by the great bulk of St. Paul’s now, looming up above them like a giant’s glimmering marble tombstone.

  Jem shook his head. “I don’t. I only got a sense—a fleeting image of the street—from the tracking spell. I will say, though, that there are few harmless reasons for a gentleman to go ‘down to Chapel’ after dark.”

  “He could be gambling . . .”

  “He could be,” Jem agreed, sounding as if he doubted it.

  “You said you would sense it. Here.” Tessa touched herself over the heart. “If something had happened to him. Is that because you’re parabatai?”

  “Yes.”

  “So there’s more to being parabatai than just swearing to look out for each other. There’s something—mystical about it.”

  Jem smiled at her, that smile that was like a light suddenly being turned on in every room of a house. “We’re Nephilim. Every one of our life’s passages has some mystical component—our births, our deaths, our marriages, everything has a ceremony. There is one as well if you wish to become someone’s parabatai. First you must ask them, of course. It’s no small commitment—”

  “You asked Will,” Tessa guessed.

  Jem shook his head, still smiling. “He asked me,” he said. “Or rather he told me. We were training, up in the training room, with longswords. He asked me and I said no, he deserved someone who was going to live, who could look out for him all his life. He bet me he could get the sword away from me, and if he succeeded, I’d have to agree to be his blood brother.”

  “And he got it away from you?”

  “In nine seconds flat.” Jem laughed. “Pinned me to the wall. He must have been training without my knowing about it, because I’d never have agreed if I’d thought he was that good with a longsword. Throwing daggers have always been his weapons.” He shrugged. “We were thirteen. They did the ceremony when we were fourteen. Now it’s been three years and I can’t imagine not having a parabatai.”

  “Why didn’t you want to do it?” Tessa asked a little hesitantly. “When he first asked you.”

  Jem ran a hand through his silvery hair. “The ceremony binds you,” he said. “It makes you stronger. You have each other’s strength to draw on. It makes you more aware of where the other one is, so you can work seamlessly together in a fight. There are runes you can use if you are part of a pair of parabatai that you can’t use otherwise. But . . . you can choose only one parabatai in your life. You can’t have a second, even if the first one dies. I didn’t think I was a very good bet, considering.”

  “That seems a harsh rule.”

  Jem said something then, in a language she didn’t understand. It sounded like “khalepa ta kala.”

  She frowned at him. “That isn’t Latin?”

  “Greek,” he said. “It has two meanings. It means that that which is worth having—the good, fine, honorable, and noble things—are difficult to attain.” He leaned forward, closer to her. She could smell the sweet scent of the drug on him, and the tang of his skin underneath. “It means something else as well.”

  Tessa swallowed. “What’s that?”

  “It means ‘beauty is harsh.’”

  She glanced down at his hands. Slim, fine, capable hands, with blunt-cut nails, and scars across the knuckles. Were any of the Nephilim unscarred? “These words, they have a special appeal to you, don’t they?” she asked softly. “These dead languages. Why is that?”

  He was leaning close enough to her that she felt his warm breath on her cheek when he exhaled. “I cannot be sure,” he said, “though I think it has something to do with the clarity of them. Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, they contain pure truths, before we cluttered our languages with so many useless words.”

  “But what of your language?” she said softly. “The one you grew up speaking?”

  His lips twitched. “I grew up speaking English and Mandarin Chinese,” he said. “My father spoke English, and Chinese badly. After we moved to Shanghai, it was even worse. The dialect there is barely intelligible by someone who speaks Mandarin.”

  “Say something in Mandarin,” said Tessa with a smile.

  Jem said something rapidly, that sounded like a lot of breathy vowels and consonants run together, his voice rising and falling melodically: “Ni hen piao liang.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said your hair is coming undone. Here,” he said, and reached out and tucked an escaping curl back behind her ear. Tessa felt the blood spill hot up into her cheeks, and was glad for the dimness of the carriage. “You have to be careful with it,” he said, taking his hand back slowly, his fingers lingering against her cheek. “You don’t want to give the enemy anything to grab hold of.”

  “Oh—yes—of course.” Tessa looked quickly
toward the window—and stared. The yellow fog hung heavy over the streets, but she could see well enough. They were in a narrow thoroughfare—though broad, perhaps, by London’s standards. The air seemed thick and greasy with coal dust and fog, and the streets were lined with people. Filthy, dressed in rags, they slumped against the walls of tipsy-looking buildings, their eyes watching the carriage go by like hungry dogs following the progress of a bone. Tessa saw a woman wrapped in a shawl, a basket of flowers drooping from one hand, a baby folded into a corner of the shawl propped against her shoulder. Its eyes were closed, its skin as pale as curd; it looked sick, or dead. Barefoot children, as dirty as homeless cats, played together in the streets; women sat leaning against one another on the stoops of buildings, obviously drunk. The men were worst of all, slumped against the sides of houses, dressed in dirty, patched topcoats and hats, the looks of hopelessness on their faces like etchings on gravestones.

  “Rich Londoners from Mayfair and Chelsea like to take midnight tours of districts like these,” said Jem, his voice uncharacteristically bitter. “They call it slumming.”

  “Do they stop and—and help in some way?”

  “Most of them, no. They just want to stare so they can go home and talk at their next tea party about how they saw real ‘mug-hunters’ or ‘dollymops’ or ‘Shivering Jemmys.’ Most of them never get out of their carriages or omnibuses.”

  “What’s a Shivering Jemmy?”

  Jem looked at her with flat silver eyes. “A freezing, ragged beggar,” he said. “Someone likely to die of the cold.”

  Tessa thought of the thick paper pasted over the cracks in the windowpanes in her New York apartment. But at least she had had a bedroom, a place to lie down, and Aunt Harriet to make her hot soup or tea over the small range. She had been lucky.

  The carriage came to a stop at an unprepossessing corner. Across the street the lights of an open public house spilled out onto the street, along with a steady stream of drunkards, some with women leaning on their arms, the women’s brightly colored dresses stained and dirty and their cheeks highly rouged. Somewhere someone was singing “Cruel Lizzie Vickers.”