Clockwork Princess
Page 39

"Another automaton?" Tessa said without interest.
"How rude of me." Mortmain's eyes flicked to the creature. "Introduce yourself."
The creature's mouth opened; Tessa caught a flash of brass. It spoke. "I am Armaros," it said. "For a billion years I rode the winds of the great abysses between the worlds. I fought Jonathan Shadowhunter on the plains of Brocelind. For a thousand more years I lay trapped within the Pyxis. Now my master has freed me and I serve him."
Tessa rose, the blanket sliding to her feet, unheeded. The automaton was watching her. Its eyes-its eyes were full of a dark intelligence, a consciousness that no automaton she had seen before had ever possessed.
"What is this?" she said in a whisper.
"An automaton body animated by a demon spirit. Downworlders already have their ways of capturing demon energies and using them. I used them myself to power the automatons you've seen before. But Armaros and his brothers are different. They are demons with the carapaces of automatons. They can think and reason. They are not easily outwitted. And they are very difficult to kill."
Armaros reached across its body-Tessa could not help but note that it moved fluidly, smoothly, without the jerkiness of the automatons she had seen before. It moved like a person. It drew the sword that hung at its side and handed it to Mortmain. The blade was covered in the runes that Tessa had become so familiar with over the last months, the runes that decorated the blades of all Shadowhunter weapons. The runes that made them Shadowhunter weapons. The runes that were deadly to demons. Armaros should barely have been able to look upon the blade, much less hold it.
Her stomach clenched. The demon gave the sword to Mortmain, who handled it with the precision of a longtime naval officer. He spun the blade, swept it forward, and drove it into the demon's chest.
There was a sound of tearing metal. Tessa was used to seeing automatons crumple when attacked, or spurt black fluid, or stagger. But the demon stood its ground, unblinking and unmoving, like a lizard in the sun. Mortmain twisted the hilt savagely, then jerked the weapon free.
Its blade crumbled to ash, like a log burned away in a fire.
"You see," said Mortmain. "They are an army designed to destroy Shadowhunters."
Armaros was the only automaton Tessa had ever seen smile; she did not even know their faces had been built to accomplish such a purpose. The demon said, "They have destroyed many of my kind. It will be a pleasure to kill them all."
Tessa swallowed hard but tried not to let the Magister see it. His gaze was flicking back and forth from her to the demon automaton, and it was hard for her to say which he looked more delighted to lay eyes on. She wanted to scream, to throw herself at him and claw his face. But the invisible wall lay between them, shimmering slightly, and she knew she could not breach it.
Oh, you are to be more than his bride, Miss Gray, Mrs. Black had said. You are to be the ruin of the Nephilim. That is why you were created.
"The Shadowhunters will not be so easily destroyed," she said. "I have seen them cut apart your automatons. Perhaps these cannot be felled by their runed weapons, but any blade can shear metal and cut wires."
Mortmain shrugged. "Shadowhunters are not used to battling creatures against whom their runed weapons are useless. It will slow them. And there are countless of these automatons. It will be like trying to beat back the tide." He cocked his head to the side. "You see, now, the genius of what I have invented? But I must thank you, Miss Gray, for that last piece of the puzzle. I thought perhaps even you might be ... admiring ... of what we have created together."
Admiring? She looked in his eyes for mockery, but there was something of a sincere question there, curiosity mixed with the coldness. She thought of how long it must have been since he had had the praise of another human being, and took a deep breath.
"You are obviously a great inventor," she said.
Mortmain smiled, pleased.
Tessa was aware of the gaze of the mechanical demon on her, its tension and readiness, but she was more aware of Mortmain. Her heart was beating hard inside her chest. She seemed, as she had in her dream, poised on the edge of a precipice. To speak to Mortmain like this was chancy, and she would either fall or fly. But she must take the chance. "I see why you have brought me here," she said. "And it is not just because of your father's secrets."
There was anger in his eyes, but also a certain confusion. She was not behaving as he had expected her to behave. "What do you mean?"
"You are lonely," she said. "You have surrounded yourself with creatures that are not real, that do not live. We see our own souls in the eyes of others. How long has it been since you have seen that you have a soul?"
Mortmain's eyes narrowed. "I had a soul. It has been burned away by what I have dedicated my life to: the pursuit of justice and recompense."
"Do not seek revenge and call it justice."
The demon gave a low chuckle, though there was contempt in it, as if he were watching the antics of a kitten. "You would let her speak to you like that, Master?" he said. "I can cut out her tongue for you, silence her forever."
"It would serve nothing to mutilate her. She has powers you know not of," said Mortmain, his eyes still on Tessa. "There is an old saying in China-perhaps your beloved fiance familiarized you with it-that states, 'A man may not live under the same Heaven with the slayer of his father.' I shall erase the Shadowhunters from under Heaven; they will not longer live upon the earth. Do not seek to appeal to my better nature, Tessa, for I have none."
Tessa could not help herself-she thought of A Tale of Two Cities, of Lucie Manette's appeals to Sydney Carton's better nature. She had always thought of Will as Sydney, consumed by sin and despair against his own better knowledge, even against his own desire. But Will was a good man, a much better one than Carton had ever been. And Mortmain was barely a man at all. It was not his better nature she appealed to but his vanity: All men thought of themselves as good in the end, surely. No one believed themselves a villain. She took a breath. "Surely that is not so-surely you might again be worthy and good. You have done what you set out to do. You have brought life and intelligence to these-these Infernal Devices of yours. You have created that which might destroy the Shadowhunters. All your life you have pursued justice because you believed the Shadowhunters were corrupt and vicious. Now, if you stay your hand, you win the greatest victory. You show that you are better than they."
She searched Mortmain's face with her eyes. Surely there was some hesitation there-surely the thin lips were shaking slightly, surely there was the tension of doubt in his shoulders?
His mouth quirked into a smile. "You think, then, that I can be a better man? And if I were to do as you say, to stay my hand, you would have me believe that you would stay with me out of admiration, that you would not return to the Shadowhunters?"
"Why, yes, Mr. Mortmain. I swear it." She swallowed against the bitterness in her throat. If she had to remain with Mortmain in order to save Will and Jem, to save Charlotte and Henry and Sophie, she would do it. "I believe you can find your better self; I believe we all can."
His thin lips turned up at the corners. "It is afternoon already, Miss Gray," he said. "I did not wish to wake you earlier. Come with me now, outside the mountain. Come and see this day's work, for there is something that I wish to show you."
A finger of ice touched her spine. She straightened. "And what is that?"
His smile spread across his face. "What I have been waiting for."
To: Consul Josiah Wayland
From: Inquisitor Victor Whitelaw
Josiah: Forgive my informality, for I write in haste. I am certain that this will not be the only letter you will receive on this subject; in fact, it is likely not even the first. I myself have already received many. Each touches upon the same question that burns in my mind: Is Charlotte Branwell's information correct? For if so, it seems to me that there is a more than likely chance that the Magister is indeed in Wales. I know of your doubts in the veracity of William Herondale, but we both knew his father. A hasty soul, and too greatly ruled by his passions, but a more honest man you could not find. I do not think the younger Herondale a liar.
Regardless, as a result of Charlotte's message, the Clave is in chaos. I insist that we hold a dedicated Council meeting immediately. If we do not, the trust of the Shadowhunters in their Consul and their Inquisitor will be irrevocably eroded. I leave the announcement of the meeting in your hands, but this is not a request. Send out the call for the Council, or I shall resign my position and let it be known why.
Victor Whitelaw
Will was awoken by screams.
Years of training made themselves known instantly: He was on the floor in a crouch before he was even properly awake. Glancing around, he saw that the small room of the inn was empty save for himself, and the furniture-narrow bed and plain deal table, barely visible in the shadows-was undisturbed.
The screams came again, louder. They were emanating from outside the window. Will rose to his feet, crossed the room soundlessly, and twitched one of the curtains back to look out.
He barely remembered walking into town, leading Balios behind him, the horse clopping slowly in exhaustion. A small Welsh town, like other small Welsh towns, unremarkable in any particular way. He had found the local public house easily and turned Balios over to the ministrations of the stable-boy, ordering the horse rubbed down and fed a hot bran mash to revive him. The fact that he spoke Welsh had seemed to relax the innkeeper, and he had been shown quickly to a private room, where he had collapsed almost immediately, fully clothed, onto the bed and fallen into dreamless sleep.
The moon was bright above, its position indicating that it was not yet late in the evening. A gray haze seemed to hang over the town. For a moment Will thought it was mist. Then, inhaling, he realized it was smoke. Patches of bright red leaped up among the houses in the town. He narrowed his eyes. Figures were darting back and forth within the shadows. More screams-a flash that could only be blades-
He was out the door with his boots half-laced in barely a moment, seraph blade in hand. He pounded down the steps and into the main room of the inn. It was dark and cold-there was no fire, and several of the windows had been smashed in, letting in the chill night air. Glass littered the floor like chunks of ice. The door hung open, and as Will slipped through it, he saw that the upper hinges were nearly torn out of their mooring, as if someone had tried to rip the door free....
He slipped out the door and round the side of the inn, where the stables were. The smell of smoke hung thicker here, and he darted ahead-and nearly tripped over a humped figure on the ground. He dropped to his knees. It was the stable-boy, his throat cut, the ground under him a sodden mess of blood and dirt. His eyes were open, staring, his skin already cold. Will swallowed back bile and straightened up.
He moved toward the stables mechanically, his mind racing over the possibilities. A demon attack? Or had he stumbled into the middle of something non-supernatural, some feud between townsfolk, or God only knew what? No one seemed to be looking for him in particular, that much was clear.
He could hear Balios's anxious whickering as he let himself into the stable. It appeared undisturbed, from the plaster ceiling to the cobbled floor crisscrossed with drainage ditches. No other horses were stabled there that night, which was lucky, for the moment he opened the stall door, Balios plunged forward, nearly knocking Will over. Will was only just able to dart out of the way as the horse hurtled past him and out the door.
"Balios!" Will swore and took off after his horse, pounding around the side of the inn and into the main road of the town.
He stopped dead. The street was in chaos. Bodies lay crumpled, discarded at the side of the road like so much rubbish. Homes stood with their doors ripped open, windows smashed in. People were running in and out of the shadows haphazardly, screaming and calling for one another. Several of the houses were burning. As Will stared in horror, he saw a family spill from the door of a burning house, the father in a nightshirt, coughing and choking, a woman behind him holding the hand of a small girl.
They had barely staggered into the street when shapes rose up out of the shadows. Moonlight sparked off metal.
Automatons.
They moved fluidly, without faltering or jerkiness. They wore clothes-a motley assortment of military uniforms, some recognizable to Will and some not. But their faces were bare metal, as were their hands, which gripped long-bladed swords. There were three of them; one, in a torn red army tunic, moved ahead, laughing-laughing?-as the father of the family tried to push his wife and daughter behind him, stumbling over the bloody cobblestones of the road.
It was all over in moments, too fast even for Will to move. Blades flashed, and three more bodies joined the heaps in the streets.
"That's it," said the automaton in the ragged tunic. "Burn their houses and smoke them out like rats. Kill them when they run-" It raised its head, and seemed to see Will. Even across the space that separated them, Will felt the force of that gaze.
Will raised his seraph blade. "Nakir."
The shimmer of the blade blazed up, illuminating the street, a beam of white light amid the red of flames. Through blood and fire Will saw the automaton in the red tunic stride toward him. A longsword was gripped in its left hand. The hand was metal, jointed, articulate; it curved around the hilt of the blade like a human hand.
"Nephilim," the creature said, stopping a mere foot from Will. "We did not expect your kind here."
"Clearly," Will said. He took a step forward and rammed the seraph blade into the automaton's chest.
There was a faint sizzling sound, as of bacon frying in a pan. As the automaton gazed down in bemusement, Nakir crumbled away to ash, leaving Will's hand clutched around a vanished hilt.
The automaton chuckled, raising its gaze to Will. Its eyes crackled with life and intelligence, and Will knew with a sinking in his heart that he was looking at something he had never seen before-not just a creature that could turn a seraph blade to ash but a kind of machine that had will and cleverness and strategy enough to burn a village to the ground in order to murder the inhabitants as they fled.
"And now you see," said the demon, for that was what it was, standing before him. "Nephilim, all these years you have driven us from this world with your runed blades. Now we have bodies that your weapons will not work on, and this world will be ours."
Will sucked in his breath as the demon raised the longsword. He took a step back- The blade swung over and down- He ducked away, just as something hurtled alongside him in the road, something huge and black that reared and kicked and knocked the automaton aside.