Clockwork Prince tid-2 Page 7

  “Why wasn’t he invited?” inquired Jem.

  “He’s too old—not meant to be running an Institute at all. He just refuses to step down, and so far Consul Wayland hasn’t made him, but the Consul won’t invite him to Councils either. I think he hopes Aloysius will either take the hint or simply die of old age. But Aloysius’s father lived to be a hundred and four. We could be in for another fifteen years of him.” Charlotte shook her head in despair.

  “Well, if he won’t see you or Henry, can’t you send someone else?” asked Jessamine in a bored voice. “You run the Institute; the Enclave members are supposed to do whatever you say.”

  “But so many of them are on Benedict’s side,” said Charlotte. “They want to see me fail. I just don’t know who I can trust.”

  “You can trust us,” said Will. “Send me. And Jem.”

  “What about me?” said Jessamine indignantly.

  “What about you? You don’t really want to go, do you?”

  Jessamine lifted a corner of the damp cloth off her eyes to glare. “On some smelly train all the way up to deadly dull Yorkshire? No, of course not. I just wanted Charlotte to say she could trust me.”

  “I can trust you, Jessie, but you’re clearly not well enough to go. Which is unfortunate, since Aloysius always had a weakness for a pretty face.”

  “Even more reason why I should go,” said Will.

  “Will, Jem . . .” Charlotte bit her lip. “Are you sure? The Council was hardly best pleased by the independent actions you took in the matter of Mrs. Dark.”

  “Well, they ought to be. We killed a dangerous demon!” Will protested.

  “And we saved Church,” said Jem.

  “Somehow I doubt that counts in our favor,” said Will. “That cat bit me three times the other night.”

  “That probably does count in your favor,” said Tessa. “Or Jem’s, at least.”

  Will made a face at her, but didn’t seem angry; it was the sort of face he might have made at Jem had the other boy mock insulted him. Perhaps they really could be civil to each other, Tessa thought. He had been quite kind to her in the library the night before last.

  “It seems a fool’s errand,” said Charlotte. The red splotches on her skin were beginning to fade, but she looked miserable. “He isn’t likely to tell you anything if he knows I sent you. If only—”

  “Charlotte,” Tessa said, “there is a way we could make him tell us.”

  Charlotte looked at her in puzzlement. “Tessa, what do you—” She broke off then, light dawning in her eyes. “Oh, I see. Tessa, what an excellent idea.”

  “Oh, what?” demanded Jessamine from the chaise. “What idea?”

  “If something of his could be retrieved,” said Tessa, “and given to me, I could use it to Change into him. And perhaps access his memories. I could tell you what he recollects about Mortmain and the Shades, if anything at all.”

  “Then, you’ll come with us to Yorkshire,” said Jem.

  Suddenly all eyes in the room were on Tessa. Thoroughly startled, for a moment she said nothing.

  “She hardly needs to accompany us,” said Will. “We can retrieve an object and bring it back to her here.”

  “But Tessa’s said before that she needs to use something that has strong associations for the wearer,” said Jem. “If what we select turns out to be insufficient—”

  “She also said she can use a nail clipping, or a strand of hair—”

  “So you’re suggesting we take the train up to York, meet a ninety-year-old man, leap on him, and yank out his hair? I’m sure the Clave will be ecstatic.”

  “They’ll just say you’re mad,” said Jessamine. “They already think it, so what’s the difference, really?”

  “It’s up to Tessa,” said Charlotte. “It’s her power you’re asking to use; it should be her decision.”

  “Did you say we’d be taking the train?” Tessa asked, looking over at Jem.

  He nodded, his silver eyes dancing. “The Great Northern runs trains out of Kings Cross all day long,” he said. “It’s only a matter of hours.”

  “Then, I’ll come,” said Tessa. “I’ve never been on a train.”

  Will threw up his hands. “That’s it? You’re coming because you’ve never been on a train before?”

  “Yes,” she said, knowing how much her calm demeanor drove him mad. “I should like to ride in one, very much.”

  “Trains are great dirty smoky things,” said Will. “You won’t like it.”

  Tessa was unmoved. “I won’t know if I like it until I try it, will I?”

  “I’ve never swum naked in the Thames, but I know I wouldn’t like it.”

  “But think how entertaining for sightseers,” said Tessa, and she saw Jem duck his head to hide the quick flash of his grin. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I wish to go, and I shall. When do we leave?”

  Will rolled his eyes, but Jem was still grinning. “Tomorrow morning. That way we’ll arrive well before dark.”

  “I’ll have to send Aloysius a message saying to expect you,” said Charlotte, picking up her pen. She paused, and looked up at them all. “Is this a dreadful idea? I—I feel as if I cannot be sure.”

  Tessa looked at her worriedly—seeing Charlotte like this, doubting her own instincts, made her hate Benedict Lightwood and his cohorts even more than she already did.

  It was Henry who stepped up and put a gentle hand on his wife’s shoulder. “The only alternative seems to be doing nothing, dearest Charlotte,” he said. “And doing nothing, I find, rarely accomplishes anything. Besides, what could go wrong?”

  “Oh, by the Angel, I wish you hadn’t asked that,” replied Charlotte with fervor, but she bent over the paper and began to write.

  That afternoon was Tessa’s and Sophie’s second training session with the Lightwoods. Having changed into her gear, Tessa left her room to find Sophie waiting for her in the corridor. She was dressed to train as well, her hair knotted up expertly behind her head, and a dark expression on her face.

  “Sophie, what is it?” Tessa inquired, falling into step beside the other girl. “You look quite out of countenance.”

  “Well, if you must know . . .” Sophie dropped her voice. “It’s Bridget.”

  “Bridget?” The Irish girl had been nearly invisible in the kitchen since she’d arrived, unlike Cyril, who had been here and there about the house, doing errands like Sophie. The last memory Tessa had of Bridget involved her sitting atop Gabriel Lightwood with a knife. She let herself dwell on it pleasantly for a moment. “What’s she done?”

  “She just . . .” Sophie let out a gusty sigh. “She isn’t very amiable. Agatha was my friend, but Bridget—well, we have a way of talking, among us servants, you know, usually, but Bridget just won’t. Cyril’s friendly enough, but Bridget just keeps to herself in the kitchen, singing those awful Irish ballads of hers. I’d wager she’s singing one now.”

  They were passing not far from the scullery door; Sophie gestured for Tessa to follow her, and together they crept close and peered inside. The scullery was quite large, with doors leading off to the kitchen and pantry. The sideboard was piled with food meant for dinner—fish and vegetables, lately cleaned and prepared. Bridget stood at the sink, her hair standing out around her head in wild red curls, made frizzy by the humidity of the water. She was singing too; Sophie had been quite right about that. Her voice drifting over the sound of the water was high and sweet.

  “Oh, her father led her down the stair,

  Her mother combed her yellow hair.

  Her sister Ann led her to the cross,

  And her brother John set her on her horse.

  ‘Now you are high and I am low,

  Give me a kiss before ye go.’

  She leaned down to give him a kiss,

  He gave her a deep wound and did not miss.

  And with a knife as sharp as a dart,

  Her brother stabbed her to the heart.”

  Nate’s face flashed in front of
Tessa’s eyes, and she shuddered. Sophie, looking past her, didn’t seem to notice. “That’s all she sings about,” she whispered. “Murder and betrayal. Blood and pain. It’s horrid.”

  Mercifully Sophie’s voice covered the end of the song. Bridget had begun drying dishes and started up with a new ballad, the tune even more melancholy than the first.

  “Why does your sword so drip with blood,

  Edward, Edward?

  Why does your sword so drip with blood?

  And why so sad are ye?”

  “Enough of this.” Sophie turned and began hurrying down the hall; Tessa followed. “You do see what I meant, though? She’s so dreadfully morbid, and it’s awful sharing a room with her. She never says a word in the morning or at night, just moans—”

  “You share a room with her?” Tessa was astonished. “But the Institute has so many rooms—”

  “For visiting Shadowhunters,” Sophie said. “Not for servants.” She spoke matter-of-factly, as if it would never have occurred to her to question or complain about the fact that dozens of grand rooms stood empty while she shared a room with Bridget, singer of murderous ballads.

  “I could talk to Charlotte—,” Tessa began.

  “Oh, no. Please don’t.” They had reached the door to the training room. Sophie turned to her, all distress. “I wouldn’t want her to think I’d been complaining about the other servants. I really wouldn’t, Miss Tessa.”

  Tessa was about to assure the other girl that she would say nothing to Charlotte if that was what Sophie really wanted, when she heard raised voices from the other side of the training room door. Gesturing at Sophie to be quiet, she leaned in and listened.

  The voices were quite clearly those of the Lightwood brothers. She recognized Gideon’s lower, rougher tones as he said, “There will be a moment of reckoning, Gabriel. You can depend upon it. What will matter is where we stand when it comes.”

  Gabriel replied, his voice tense, “We will stand with Father, of course. Where else?”

  There was a pause. Then, “You don’t know everything about him, Gabriel. You don’t know all that he has done.”

  “I know that we are Lightwoods and that he is our father. I know he fully expected to be named head of the Institute when Granville Fairchild died—”

  “Maybe the Consul knows more about him than you do. And more about Charlotte Branwell. She isn’t the fool you think she is.”

  “Really?” Gabriel’s voice was a sneer. “Letting us come here to train her precious girls, doesn’t that make her a fool? Shouldn’t she have assumed we’d be spying for our father?”

  Sophie and Tessa looked at each other with round eyes.

  “She agreed to it because the Consul forced her hand. And besides, we are met at the door here, escorted to this room, and escorted out. And Miss Collins and Miss Gray know nothing of import. What damage is our presence here really doing her, would you say?”

  There was a silence through which Tessa could almost hear Gabriel sulking. At last he said, “If you despise Father so much, why did you ever come back from Spain?”

  Gideon replied, sounding exasperated, “I came back for you—”

  Sophie and Tessa had been leaning against the door, ears pressed to the wood. At that moment the door gave way and swung open. Both straightened hastily, Tessa hoping that no evidence of their eavesdropping appeared on their faces.

  Gabriel and Gideon were standing in a patch of light at the center of the room, facing off against each other. Tessa noticed something she had not noticed before: Gabriel, despite being the younger brother, was lankily taller than Gideon by some inches. Gideon was more muscular, broader through the shoulders. He swept a hand through his sandy hair, nodding curtly to the girls as they appeared in the doorway. “Good day.”

  Gabriel Lightwood strode across the room to meet them. He really was quite tall, Tessa thought, craning her neck to look up at him. As a tall girl herself, she didn’t often find herself bending her head back to look up at men, though both Will and Jem were taller than she was.

  “Miss Lovelace still regrettably absent?” he inquired without bothering to greet them. His face was calm, the only sign of his earlier agitation a pulse hammering just beneath a Courage in Combat rune inked upon his throat.

  “She continues to have the headache,” said Tessa, following him into the training room. “We don’t know how long she’ll be indisposed.”

  “Until these training sessions are over, I suspect,” said Gideon, so dryly that Tessa was surprised when Sophie laughed. Sophie immediately composed her features again, but not before Gideon had given her a surprised, almost appreciative glance, as if he weren’t used to having his jokes laughed at.

  With a sigh Gabriel reached up and freed two long sticks from their holsters on the wall. He handed one to Tessa. “Today,” he began, “we shall be working on parrying and blocking . . .”

  As usual, Tessa lay awake a long time that night before sleep began to come. Nightmares had plagued her recently—usually of Mortmain, his cold gray eyes, and his colder voice saying measuredly that he had made her, that There is no Tessa Gray.

  She had come face-to-face with him, the man they sought, and still she did not really know what he wanted from her. To marry her, but why? To claim her power, but to what end? The thought of his cold lizardlike eyes on her made her shiver; the thought that he might have had something to do with her birth was even worse. She did not think anyone—not even Jem, wonderful understanding Jem—quite understood her burning need to know what she was, or the fear that she was some sort of monster, a fear that woke her in the middle of the night, leaving her gasping and clawing at her own skin, as if she could peel it away to reveal a devil’s hide beneath.

  Just then she heard a rustle at her door, and the faint scratch of something being gently pushed against it. After a moment’s pause she slid off the bed and padded across the room.

  She eased the door open to find an empty corridor, the faint sound of violin music drifting from Jem’s room across the hall. At her feet was a small green book. She picked it up and gazed at the words stamped in gold on its spine: “Vathek, by William Beckford.”

  She shut the door behind her and carried the book over to her bed, sitting down so she could examine it. Will must have left it for her. Obviously it could have been no one else. But why? Why these odd, small kindnesses in the dark, the talk about books, and the coldness the rest of the time?

  She opened the book to its title page. Will had scrawled a note for her there—not just a note, in fact. A poem.

  For Tessa Gray, on the occasion of being given

  a copy of Vathek to read:

  Caliph Vathek and his dark horde

  Are bound for Hell, you won’t be bored!

  Your faith in me will be restored—

  Unless this token you find untoward

  And my poor gift you have ignored.

  —Will

  Tessa burst out laughing, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Drat Will, for always being able to make her laugh, even when she didn’t want to, even when she knew that opening her heart to him even an inch was like taking a pinch of some deadly addictive drug. She dropped the copy of Vathek, complete with Will’s deliberately terrible poem, onto her nightstand and rolled onto the bed, burying her face in the pillows. She could still hear Jem’s violin music, sweetly sad, drifting beneath her door. As hard as she could, she tried to push thoughts of Will out of her mind; and indeed, when she fell asleep at last and dreamed, for once he made no appearance.

  It rained the next day, and despite her umbrella Tessa could feel the fine hat she had borrowed from Jessamine beginning to sag like a waterlogged bird around her ears as they—she, Jem, Will, and Cyril, carrying their luggage—hurried from the coach into Kings Cross Station. Through the sheets of gray rain she was conscious only of a tall, imposing building, a great clock tower rising from the front. It was topped with a weathercock that showed that the wind was blowing due north�
��and not gently, spattering drops of cold rain into her face.

  Inside, the station was chaos: people hurrying hither and thither, newspaper boys hawking their wares, men striding up and down with sandwich boards strapped to their chests, advertising everything from hair tonic to soap. A little boy in a Norfolk jacket dashed to and fro, his mother in hot pursuit. With a word to Jem, Will vanished immediately into the crowd.

  “Gone off and left us, has he?” said Tessa, struggling with her umbrella, which was refusing to close.

  “Let me do that.” Deftly Jem reached over and flicked at the mechanism; the umbrella shut with a decided snap. Pushing her damp hair out of her eyes, Tessa smiled at him, just as Will returned with an aggrieved-looking porter who relieved Cyril of the baggage and snapped at them to hurry up, the train wouldn’t wait all day.

  Will looked from the porter to Jem’s cane, and back. His blue eyes narrowed. “It will wait for us,” Will said with a deadly smile.

  The porter looked bewildered but said “Sir” in a decidedly less aggressive tone and proceeded to lead them toward the departure platform. People—so many people!—streamed about Tessa as she made her way through the crowd, clutching at Jem with one hand and Jessamine’s hat with the other. Far at the end of the station, where the tracks ran out into open ground, she could see the steel gray sky, smudged with soot.

  Jem helped her up into their compartment; there was much bustling about the luggage, and Will tipping the porter in among shouts and whistling as the train prepared to depart. The door swung shut behind them just as the train pulled forward, steam rushing past the windows in white drifts, wheels clacking merrily.