Clockwork Prince tid-2 Page 3

  “We have just lost our servants,” said Charlotte in a strained voice. “Without them—”

  “New servants will be provided to you, as is standard,” said the Consul. “Your late servant Thomas’s brother, Cyril, is traveling here from Brighton to join your household, and the Dublin Institute has given up its second cook for you. Both are well-trained fighters—which, I must say, Charlotte, yours should have been as well.”

  “Both Thomas and Agatha were trained,” Henry protested.

  “But you have several in your house who are not,” said Benedict. “Not only is Miss Lovelace woefully behind in her training, but your parlor girl, Sophie, and that Downworlder there—” He pointed at Tessa. “Well, since you seem bent on making her a permanent addition to your household, it would hardly hurt if she—and the maid—were trained in the basics of defense.”

  Tessa looked sideways at Jem in astonishment. “He means me?”

  Jem nodded. His expression was somber.

  “I can’t—I’ll chop off my own foot!”

  “If you’re going to chop off anyone’s foot, chop off Benedict’s,” Will muttered.

  “You’ll be fine, Tessa. It’s nothing you can’t do,” Jem began, but the rest of his words were drowned out by Benedict.

  “In fact,” Benedict said, “since the two of you will be so busy investigating Mortmain’s whereabouts, I suggest I lend you my sons—Gabriel, and Gideon, who returns from Spain tonight—as trainers. Both are excellent fighters and could use the teaching experience.”

  “Father!” Gabriel protested. He looked horrified; clearly this was not something Benedict had discussed with him in advance.

  “We can train our own servants,” Charlotte snapped, but the Consul shook his head at her.

  “Benedict Lightwood is offering you a generous gift. Accept it.”

  Charlotte was crimson in the face. After a long moment she bent her head, acknowledging the Consul’s words. Tessa felt dizzy. She was going to be trained? Trained to fight, to throw knives and swing a sword? Of course, one of her favorite heroines had always been Capitola in The Hidden Hand, who could fight as well as a man—and dressed like one. But that didn’t mean she wanted to be her.

  “Very well,” said the Consul. “This session of the Council is ended, to be reconvened here, in the same location, in a fortnight. You are all dismissed.”

  Of course, everyone did not depart immediately. There was a sudden clamor of voices as people began to rise from their seats and chatter eagerly with their neighbors. Charlotte sat still; Henry beside her, looked as if he wanted desperately to say something comforting but could think of nothing. His hand hovered uncertainly over his wife’s shoulder. Will was glaring across the room at Gabriel Lightwood, who looked coldly in their direction.

  Slowly Charlotte rose to her feet. Henry had his hand on her back now, murmuring. Jessamine was already standing, twirling her new white lace parasol. Henry had replaced the old one that had been destroyed in battle with Mortmain’s automatons. Her hair was done up in tight bunches over her ears like grapes. Tessa got quickly to her feet, and the group of them headed up the center aisle of the Council room. Tessa caught whispers on each side of her, bits of the same words, over and over: “Charlotte,” “Benedict,” “never find the Magister,” “two weeks,”

  “challenge,” “Consul,” “Mortmain,” “Enclave,” “humiliating.”

  Charlotte walked with her back straight, her cheeks red, and her eyes gazing straight ahead as if she couldn’t hear the gossip. Will seemed about to lunge off toward the whisperers to administer rough justice, but Jem had a firm grip on the back of his parabatai’s coat. Being Jem, Tessa reflected, must be a great deal like being the owner of a thoroughbred dog that liked to bite your guests. You had to have a hand on his collar constantly. Jessamine merely looked bored again. She wasn’t terribly interested in what the Enclave thought of her, or any of them.

  By the time they had reached the doors of the Council chamber, they were nearly running. Charlotte paused a moment to let the rest of their group catch up. Most of the crowd was streaming off to the left, where Tessa, Jem, and Will had come from, but Charlotte turned right, marched several paces down the hall, spun around a corner, and abruptly stopped.

  “Charlotte?” Henry, catching up to her, sounded worried. “Darling—”

  Without warning Charlotte drew her foot back and kicked the wall, as hard as she could. As the wall was stone, this did little damage, though Charlotte let out a low shriek.

  “Oh, my,” said Jessamine, twirling her parasol.

  “If I might make a suggestion,” said Will. “About twenty paces behind us, in the Council room, is Benedict. If you’d like to go back in there and try kicking him, I recommend aiming upward and a bit to the left—”

  “Charlotte.” The deep, gravelly voice was instantly recognizable. Charlotte spun around, her brown eyes widening.

  It was the Consul. The runes picked out in silver thread on the hem and sleeves of his cloak glittered as he moved toward the little group from the Institute, his gaze on Charlotte. One hand against the wall, she didn’t move.

  “Charlotte,” Consul Wayland said again, “you know what your father always said about losing your temper.”

  “He did say that. He also said that he should have had a son,” Charlotte replied bitterly. “If he had—if I were a man—would you have treated me as you just did?”

  Henry put his hand on his wife’s shoulder, murmuring something, but she shook it off. Her large, hurt brown eyes were on the Consul.

  “And how did I just treat you?” he asked.

  “As if I were a child, a little girl who needed scolding.”

  “Charlotte, I am the one who named you as head of the Institute and the Enclave.” The Consul sounded exasperated. “I did it not just because I was fond of Granville Fairchild and knew he wanted his daughter to succeed him, but because I thought you would accomplish the job well.”

  “You named Henry, too,” she said. “And you even told us when you did it that it was because the Enclave would accept a married couple as their leader, but not a woman alone.”

  “Well, congratulations, Charlotte. I do not think any members of the London Enclave are under the impression that they are in any way being led by Henry.”

  “It’s true,” Henry said, looking at his shoes. “They all know I’m rather useless. It’s my fault all this happened, Consul—”

  “It isn’t,” said Consul Wayland. “It is a combination of a generalized complacency on the part of the Clave, bad luck and bad timing, and some poor decisions on your part, Charlotte. Yes, I am holding you accountable for them—”

  “So you agree with Benedict!” Charlotte cried.

  “Benedict Lightwood is a blackguard and a hypocrite,” said the Consul wearily. “Everyone knows that. But he is politically powerful, and it is better to placate him with this show than it would be to antagonize him further by ignoring him.”

  “A show? Is that what you call this?” Charlotte demanded bitterly. “You have set me an impossible task.”

  “I have set you the task of locating the Magister,” said Consul Wayland. “The man who broke into the Institute, killed your servants, took your Pyxis, and plans to build an army of clockwork monsters to destroy us all—in short, a man who must be stopped. As head of the Enclave, Charlotte, stopping him is your task. If you consider it impossible, then perhaps you should ask yourself why you want the job so badly in the first place.”

  Chapter 2

  REPARATIONS

  Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;

  Ah, more than share it! give me all thy grief.

  —Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard”

  The witchlight that illuminated the Great Library seemed to be flickering low, like a candle guttering down in its holder, though Tessa knew that was just her imagination. Witchlight, unlike fire or gas, never seemed to fade or burn away.

  Her eyes, on the other
hand, were beginning to tire, and from the looks of her companions, she wasn’t the only one. They were all gathered around one of the long tables, Charlotte at its head, Henry at Tessa’s right. Will and Jem sat farther down, beside each other; only Jessamine had retreated to the very far end of the table, separated from the others. The surface of the table was liberally covered with papers of all sorts—old newspaper articles, books, sheets of parchment covered with fine spidery writing. There were genealogies of various Mortmain families, histories of automatons, endless books of spells of summoning and binding, and every bit of research on the Pandemonium Club that the Silent Brothers had managed to scrape out of their archives.

  Tessa had been tasked with the job of reading through the newspaper articles, looking for stories about Mortmain and his shipping company, and her eyes were beginning to blur, the words dancing on the pages. She was relieved when Jessamine at last broke the silence, pushing away the book she had been reading—On the Engines of Sorcery—and said, “Charlotte, I think we’re wasting our time.”

  Charlotte looked up with a pained expression. “Jessamine, there is no need for you to remain if you do not wish to. I must say, I doubt any of us was expecting your help in this matter, and since you have never much applied yourself to your studies, I cannot help but wonder if you even know what it is you are looking for. Could you tell a binding spell from a summoning spell if I set the two before you?”

  Tessa couldn’t help being surprised. Charlotte was rarely so sharp with any of them. “I want to help,” Jessie said sulkily. “Those mechanical things of Mortmain’s nearly killed me. I want him caught and punished.”

  “No, you don’t.” Will, unrolling a parchment so old that it crackled, squinted down at the black symbols on the page. “You want Tessa’s brother caught and punished, for making you think he was in love with you when he wasn’t.”

  Jessamine flushed. “I do not. I mean, I did not. I mean—ugh! Charlotte, Will’s being vexing.”

  “And the sun has come up in the east,” said Jem, to no one in particular.

  “I don’t want to be thrown out of the Institute if we can’t find the Magister,” Jessamine went on. “Is that so difficult to understand?”

  “You won’t be thrown out of the Institute. Charlotte will. I’m sure the Lightwoods will let you stay. And Benedict has two marriageable sons. You ought to be delighted,” said Will.

  Jessamine made a face. “Shadowhunters. As if I’d want to marry one of them.”

  “Jessamine, you are one of them.”

  Before Jessamine could reply, the library door opened and Sophie came in, ducking her white-capped head. She spoke quietly to Charlotte, who rose to her feet. “Brother Enoch is here,” Charlotte said to the assembled group. “I must speak with him. Will, Jessamine, do try not to kill each other while I am gone. Henry, if you could . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. Henry was gazing down at a book—Al-Jazari’s Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices—and paying no attention whatsoever to anything else. Charlotte threw up her hands, and left the room with Sophie.

  The moment the door closed behind Charlotte, Jessamine shot Will a poisonous look. “If you think I don’t have the experience to help, then why is she here?” She indicated Tessa. “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think she can tell a binding spell from a summoning one?” She looked at Tessa. “Well, can you? And for that matter, Will, you pay so little attention at lessons, can you tell a binding spell from a soufflé recipe?”

  Will leaned back in his chair and said dreamily, “‘I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.’”

  “Jessamine, Tessa has kindly offered to help, and we need all the eyes we can get right now,” said Jem severely. “Will, don’t quote Hamlet. Henry . . .” He cleared his throat. “HENRY.”

  Henry looked up, blinking. “Yes, darling?” He blinked again, looking around. “Where’s Charlotte?”

  “She went to talk to the Silent Brothers,” said Jem, who did not appear put out of temper to have been mistaken by Henry for his wife. “In the meantime I’m afraid . . . that I rather agree with Jessamine.”

  “And the sun comes up in the west,” said Will, who had apparently heard Jem’s earlier comment.

  “But why?” Tessa demanded. “We can’t give up now. It would be just like handing the Institute over to that awful Benedict Lightwood.”

  “I’m not suggesting we do nothing, you understand. But we’re trying to decipher what it is that Mortmain is going to do. We’re trying to predict the future instead of trying to understand the past.”

  “We know Mortmain’s past, and his plans.” Will waved his hand in the direction of the newspapers. “Born in Devon, was a ship’s surgeon, became a wealthy trader, got himself mixed up in dark magic, and now plans to rule the world with his massive army of mechanical creatures by his side. A not atypical story for a determined young man—”

  “I don’t think he ever said anything about ruling the world,” interrupted Tessa. “Just the British Empire.”

  “Admirably literal,” said Will. “My point is, we do know where Mortmain came from. It’s hardly our fault that it isn’t very interesting . . .” His voice trailed off. “Ah.”

  “Ah, what?” Jessamine demanded, looking from Will to Jem in a vexed manner. “I declare, the way you two seem to read each other’s minds gives me the shudders.”

  “Ah,” said Will. “Jem was just thinking, and I would tend to agree, that Mortmain’s life story is, quite simply, balderdash. Some lies, some truth, but very likely there isn’t anything in here that will help us. These are just stories he made up to give the newspapers something to print about him. Besides, we don’t care how many ships he owns; we want to know where he learned dark magic, and from whom.”

  “And why he hates Shadowhunters,” said Tessa.

  Will’s blue eyes slid lazily toward her. “Is it hatred?” he said. “I assumed it was a simple greed for domination. With us out of the way, and a clockwork army on his side, he could take power as he liked.”

  Tessa shook her head. “No, it is more than that. It is difficult to explain, but—he hates the Nephilim. It is something very personal for him. And it has something to do with that watch. It’s—it’s as if he desires recompense for some wrong or hurt they’ve done him.”

  “Reparations,” said Jem very suddenly, setting down the pen he was holding.

  Will looked at him in puzzlement. “Is this a game? We just blurt out whatever word comes next to mind? In that case mine’s ‘genuphobia.’ It means an unreasonable fear of knees.”

  “What’s the word for a perfectly reasonable fear of annoying idiots?” inquired Jessamine.

  “The Reparations section of the archives,” said Jem, ignoring them both. “The Consul mentioned it yesterday, and it’s been in my head since. We haven’t looked there.”

  “Reparations?” asked Tessa.

  “When a Downworlder, or a mundane, alleges that a Shadowhunter has broken the Law in their dealings with them, the Downworlder lodges a complaint through Reparations. There will be a trial, and the Downworlder will be accorded some sort of payment, based on whether they can prove their case.”

  “Well, it seems a bit silly, looking there,” said Will. “It’s not like Mortmain’s going to lodge a complaint against the Shadow-hunters through official channels. ‘Very upset Shadowhunters refused to all die when I wanted them to. Demand recompense. Please mail cheque to A. Mortmain, 18 Kensington Road—’”

  “Enough persiflage,” said Jem. “Maybe he hasn’t always hated Shadowhunters. Maybe there was a time when he did attempt to gain compensation through the official system and it failed him. What’s the harm in asking? The worst thing that could happen is that we turn up nothing, which is exactly what we’re turning up right now.” He rose to his feet, pushing his silvery hair back. “I’m off to catch Charlotte before Brother Enoch leaves and ask her to have the Silent Brothers check
the archives.”

  Tessa rose to her feet. She did not relish the idea of being left alone in the library with Will and Jessamine, who were bound to bicker. Of course Henry was there, but he seemed to be taking a gentle nap on a pile of books, and was not much of a buffer in the best of cases. Being around Will was uncomfortable in most circumstances; only with Jem there was it bearable. Somehow Jem was able to whittle down Will’s sharp edges and make him nearly human. “I’ll go with you, Jem,” she said. “There’s—there was something I wished to speak to Charlotte about anyway.”

  Jem seemed surprised but pleased; Will looked from one of them to the other and pushed his chair back. “We’ve been among these moldering old books for days now,” he announced. “Mine beautiful eyes are weary, and I have paper cuts. See?” He spread his fingers wide. “I’m going for a walk.”

  Tessa couldn’t help herself. “Perhaps you could use an iratze to take care of them.”

  He glared at her. His eyes were beautiful. “Ever and always helpful, Tessa.”

  She matched his glare. “My only desire is to be of service.”

  Jem put his hand on her shoulder, his voice concerned. “Tessa, Will. I don’t think—”

  But Will was gone, snatching up his coat and banging his way out of the library, with enough force to make the door frame vibrate.

  Jessamine sat back in her chair, narrowing her brown eyes. “How interesting.”

  Tessa’s hands shook as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She hated that Will had this effect on her. Hated it. She knew better. She knew what he thought of her. That she was nothing, worth nothing. And still a look from him could make her tremble with mingled hatred and longing. It was like a poison in her blood, to which Jem was the only antidote. Only with him did she feel on steady ground.

  “Come.” Jem took her arm lightly. A gentleman would not normally touch a lady in public, but here in the Institute the Shadowhunters were more familiar with one another than were the mundanes outside. When she turned to look at him, he smiled at her. Jem put the full force of himself into each smile, so that he seemed to be smiling with his eyes, his heart, his whole being. “We’ll find Charlotte.”