Clockwork Princess
Page 13

"Would you like this rather dreadful snuffbox someone gave me? It's silver, so I can't touch it," Woolsey said.
Magnus, standing at the bay window of the drawing room, the curtain pulled aside just enough so that he could see Will and Tessa on his front steps, clinging to each other as if their lives depended on it, hummed noncommittally in response.
Woolsey rolled his eyes. "Still out there, are they?"
"Quite."
"Messy, all that romantic love business," said Woolsey. "Much better to go on as we do. Only the physical matters."
"Indeed." Will and Tessa had broken apart at last, though their hands were still joined. Tessa appeared to be coaxing Will down the steps. "Do you think you would have married, if you hadn't had nephews to carry on the family name?"
"I suppose I would have had to. Cry God for England, Harry, Saint George, and the Praetor Lupus!" Woolsey laughed; he had poured himself a glass of red wine from the decanter on the sideboard, and he swirled it now, gazing down into its changeable depths. "You gave Will Camille's necklace," he observed.
"How did you know?" Magnus's mind was only half on the conversation; the other half was watching Will and Tessa walk toward their carriage. Somehow, despite the difference in their height and build, she appeared to be the one who was being leaned upon.
"You were wearing it when you left the room with him, but not when you returned. I don't suppose you told him what it's worth? That he's wearing a ruby that would cost more than the Institute?"
"I didn't want it," Magnus said.
"Tragic reminder of lost love?"
"Didn't suit my complexion." Will and Tessa were in the carriage now, and their driver was snapping the reins. "Do you think there's a chance for him?"
"A chance for who?"
"Will Herondale. To be happy."
Woolsey sighed gustily and put down his glass. "Is there a chance for you to be happy if he isn't?"
Magnus said nothing.
"Are you in love with him?" Woolsey asked-all curiosity, no jealousy. Magnus wondered what it was like to have a heart like that, or rather to have no heart at all.
"No," Magnus said. "I have wondered that, but no. It is something else. I feel that I owe him. I have heard it said that when you save a life, you are responsible for that life. I feel I am responsible for that boy. If he never finds happiness, I will feel I have failed him. If he cannot have that girl he loves, I will feel I have failed him. If I cannot keep his parabatai by him, I will feel I failed him."
"Then you will fail him," Woolsey said. "In the meantime, while you are moping and seeking yin fen, I think I may take myself traveling. See the countryside. The city depresses me in the winter."
"Do as you like." Magnus let the curtain fall back, blocking the view of Will and Tessa's carriage as it passed out of sight.
To: Consul Josiah Wayland
From: Inquisitor Victor Whitelaw
Josiah,
I was deeply concerned to hear of your letter to the Council on the topic of Charlotte Branwell. As old acquaintances, I had hoped you could perhaps speak more freely to me than you have to them. Is there some issue regarding her that concerns you? Her father was a dear friend of ours both, and I have not known her to do a dishonorable thing.
Yours in concern,
Victor Whitelaw
Chapter 6 Let Darkness
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H."
To: Inquisitor Victor Whitelaw
From: Consul Josiah Wayland
It is with some trepidation that I pen this letter to you, Victor, for all that we have known each other for some years now. I feel a bit like the prophetess Cassandra, doomed to know the truth and to have no one believe her. Perhaps it is my sin of hubris, which put Charlotte Branwell in the place she now occupies and from which she devils me.
Her undermining of my authority is constant, the instability which I fear it will cause in the Clave severe. What should have been a disaster for her-the revelation that she harbored spies under her roof, the Lovelace girl's complicity in the Magister's schemes-has been recast as a triumph. The Enclave hails the inhabitants of the Institute as those who uncovered the Magister and have harried him from London. That he has not been seen or heard from in the past months has been put down to Charlotte's good judgment and is not seen, as I suspect it is, as a tactical retreat and regrouping on his part. Though I am the Consul and lead the Clave, it seems very much to me that this will go down as the time of Charlotte Branwell, and that my legacy will be lost-
To: Inquisitor Victor Whitelaw
From: Consul Josiah Wayland
Victor,
While your concern is much appreciated, I have no anxiety regarding Charlotte Branwell that I did not touch on in my letter to the Council.
May you take heart in the strength of the Angel in these troubled times,
Josiah Wayland
Breakfast was at first a quiet affair. Gideon and Gabriel came down together, both subdued, Gabriel barely saying a word, aside from asking Henry to pass the butter. Cecily had placed herself at the far end of the table and was reading a book as she ate; Tessa longed to see the title, but Cecily had placed the book at such an angle that it was not visible. Will, across from Tessa, had the dark shadows of sleeplessness below his eyes, a memory of their eventful night; Tessa herself poked unenthusiastically at her kedgeree, silent until the door opened and Jem came in.
She looked up with surprise and a lurch of delight. He did not look unusually ill, only tired and pale. He slid gracefully into the seat beside her. "Good morning."
"You look much better, Jemmy," Charlotte observed with delight.
Jemmy? Tessa looked at Jem with amusement; he shrugged and gave her a self-deprecating grin.
She looked across the table and found Will watching them. Her gaze brushed his, just for a moment, a question in her eyes. Was there any chance that somehow Will had found some replacement yin fen in the time between returning home and this morning? But no, he looked as surprised as she felt.
"I am, quite," Jem said. "The Silent Brothers were of great assistance." He reached to pour himself a cup of tea, and Tessa watched the bones and tendons move in his thin wrist, distressingly visible. When he set the pot down, she reached for his hand beneath the table, and he clasped it. His slim fingers wound about hers reassuringly.
Bridget's voice floated out from the kitchen.
"Cold blows the wind tonight, sweetheart,
Cold are the drops of rain;
The very first love that ever I had
In greenwood he was slain.
I'll do as much for my sweetheart
As any young woman may;
I'll sit and mourn at his graveside
A twelve-month and a day."
"By the Angel, she's depressing," said Henry, setting down his newspaper directly on his plate and causing the edge to soak through with egg yolk. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to object, and closed it again. "It's all heartbreak, death, and unrequited love."
"Well, that is what most songs are about," said Will. "Requited love is ideal but doesn't make much of a ballad."
Jem looked up, but before he could say anything, a great reverberation sounded through the Institute. Tessa was familiar enough with her London home now to know it as the sound of the doorbell. They all looked down the table at the same time at Charlotte, as if their heads were mounted on springs.
Charlotte, looking startled, put down her fork. "Oh, dear," she said. "There is something I had meant to tell you all, but-"
"Ma'am?" It was Sophie, drifting into the room with a salver in one hand. Tessa could not help but notice that though Gideon was staring at her, she seemed to be deliberately avoiding his gaze, her cheeks pinking slightly. "Consul Wayland is downstairs requesting to speak with you."
Charlotte took the folded paper off the salver, gazed at it, sighed, and said, "Very well. Send him up."
Sophie vanished in a swirl of skirts.
"Charlotte?" Henry sounded puzzled. "What is going on?"
"Indeed." Will let his cutlery clatter onto his plate. "The Consul? Breaking up our breakfast time? Whatever next? The Inquisitor over for tea? Picnics with the Silent Brothers?"
"Duck pies in the park," said Jem under his breath, and he and Will smiled at each other, just a flash, before the door opened and the Consul swept it.
Consul Wayland was a big man, broad-chested and thick-armed, and the robes of the Consul's status always seemed to hang a bit awkwardly from his wide shoulders. He was blond bearded like a Viking, and at the moment his expression was stormy. "Charlotte," he said without preamble. "I am here to talk to you about Benedict Lightwood."
There was a faint rustling; Gabriel's fingers had clenched on the tablecloth. Gideon put a hand lightly over his brother's wrist, stilling him, but the Consul was already looking at them. "Gabriel," he said. "I had rather thought you might go to the Blackthorns' with your sister."
Gabriel's fingers tightened on the handle of his teacup. "They are quite overset in their grief for Rupert," he said. "I did not think now was the time to intrude."
"Well, you are grieving your father, are you not?" said the Consul. "Grief shared is grief lessened, they say."
"Consul-," Gideon began, shooting a worried look at his brother.
"Though perhaps it might be rather awkward to lodge with your sister, considering that she has brought a complaint against you for murder."
Gabriel made a noise as if someone had spilled boiling water over him. Gideon threw his napkin down and stood up.
"Tatiana did what?" he demanded.
"You heard me," the Consul said.
"It was not murder," said Jem.
"As you say," said the Consul. "I was informed that it was."
"Were you also informed that Benedict had turned into a gigantic worm?" Will inquired, and Gabriel looked at him in surprise, as if he had not expected to be defended by Will.
"Will, please," Charlotte said. "Consul, I notified you yesterday that Benedict Lightwood had been discovered to be in the last stages of astriola-"
"You told me there was a battle, and he was killed," the Consul replied. "But what I am hearing reported is that he was ill with the pox, and that as a result he was hunted down and killed despite offering no resistance."
Will, his eyes suspiciously bright, opened his mouth. Jem reached out and clapped a hand over it. "I cannot understand," Jem said, talking over Will's muffled protests, "how you could know that Benedict Lightwood is dead but not the manner of his death. If there was no body to find, it was because he had become more demon than human, and had vanished when slain, as demons do. But the missing servants-the death of Tatiana's own husband-"
The Consul looked weary. "Tatiana Blackthorn says that a group of Shadowhunters from the Institute murdered her father and that Rupert was killed in the brawl."
"Did she mention that her father had eaten her husband?" Henry inquired, finally looking up from his newspaper. "Oh, yes. Ate him. Left his bloody boot in the garden for us to find. There were teeth marks. Love to know how that could have been an accident."
"I would think that counted as offering resistance," Will said. "Eating one's son-in-law, that is. Though I suppose everyone has their family altercations."
"You are not seriously suggesting," Charlotte said, "that the worm-that Benedict should have been subdued and restrained, are you, Josiah? He was in the last stages of the pox! He had gone mad and become a worm!"
"He could have become a worm and then gone mad," Will said diplomatically. "We cannot be entirely sure."
"Tatiana is greatly upset," the Consul said. "She is considering demanding reparations-"
"Then I will pay them." It was Gabriel, having pushed his chair back from the table and risen to his feet. "I will give my ridiculous sister my salary for the rest of my life if she desires it, but I will not admit to wrongdoing-not for myself, not for any of us. Yes, I put an arrow through his eye. Its eye. And I would do it again. Whatever that thing was, it was not my father anymore."
There was a silence. Even the Consul did not seem to have a ready word to hand. Cecily had put her book down and was looking intently from Gabriel to the Consul and back again.
"I beg your pardon, Consul, but whatever Tatiana is telling you, she does not know the truth of the situation," said Gabriel. "Only I was there in the house with my father as he sickened. I was alone with him as he was going mad for the past fortnight. Finally I came here; I begged for my brother's help," Gabriel said. "Charlotte kindly lent me the assistance of her Shadowhunters. By the time we had arrived back at the house, the thing that had been my father had torn my sister's husband apart. I assure you, Consul, there was no manner in which my father could have been saved. We were in a fight for our lives."
"Then why would Tatiana-"
"Because she is humiliated," Tessa said. It was the first words she had spoken since the Consul had entered the room. "She said as much to me. She believed it would be a blight on the family name if the demon pox was known of; I assume she is trying to present some kind of alternate narrative in the hopes you will repeat it to the Council. But she is not telling the truth."
"Really, Consul," said Gideon. "What makes more sense? That we all ran mad and killed my father, and his sons are covering it up, or that Tatiana is lying? She never thinks things through; you know that."
Gabriel stood with his hand on the back of his brother's chair. "If you believe I would have so lightly committed patricide, feel free to bring me to the Silent City to be questioned."
"That would probably be the most sensible course of action," the Consul said.
Cecily set her teacup down with a sharp bang that made everyone at the table jump. "That is not fair," she said. "He is telling the truth. We all are. You must know that."
The Consul gave her a long, measuring look, then turned back to Charlotte. "You expect my trust?" he said. "And yet you conceal your actions from me. Actions have consequences, Charlotte."
"Josiah, I informed you about what happened at Lightwood House the moment everyone returned and I was assured they were all right-"