Chain of Gold (33 page)

“That is only a story.”

“Haven't you heard?” James said bitterly. “All the stories are true.”

He flung the door open, desperate to get away from her. As he raced down the hall, the faces of strangers flew by in a blur; he heard his own name called and then he was down the stairs and in the entryway, seizing up his coat. The sky was cloudy overhead and shadows had gathered thickly in the courtyard, resting among the branches of the trees like ravens.

“Jamie—”

Matthew appeared out of the dimness, his hair bright in the dark entryway, his expression concerned. “Jamie, what's wrong?”

“Grace is marrying Charles,” said James. “Let it be, Math. I need to be alone.”

Before Matthew could say a word, James threw open the doors and fled, vanishing beneath the arched gates that marked the entrance to the Institute, the words carved on them gleaming in the dull sunlight.

We are dust and shadows.

Matthew swore, his fingers fumbling at the buttons of his coat. James had just vanished into the shadows outside the Institute without a single weapon on him, but Matthew was sure he could catch him up. He knew James's haunts as well as James knew them himself: all the places in the city James might seek out when he was upset.

His hands were shaking too badly to get the buttons right, though. He swore again and reached for the flask in his waistcoat. Just a nip to steady his hands and put him to rights—

“Was James—did he seem all right?” said a voice behind him.

Matthew turned, dropping his hand. Grace stood at the foot of the steps, a gray shawl like a spider's web wrapped around her thin
shoulders. Matthew knew she was thought strikingly beautiful by most, but she had always seemed like the shadow of a shadow to him, lacking vibrancy and color.

“Of course he isn't all right,” Matthew said. “Neither am I. You're marrying Charles, and none of us wants that.”

She pulled the shawl tighter about herself. “You don't understand. We all do what we must. I am doing what I have to do.”

“James has loved you, sincerely, since he was a child,” said Matthew. “And now you tear his heart to pieces? And for what? Charles will never feel half of what James feels for you.”

“Feelings,” she said with contempt. “That is all men think women want, isn't it? Sympathy—sentiment—nonsense. I have never felt any tenderness for anything or anyone living—”

“Have you truly never felt anything for anyone?” Matthew demanded, half-angry and half-curious.

She was silent for a long moment. “My brother,” she said at last, with a peculiar half smile. “But then, he is not now living.”

“So you never cared for James at all,” he said, full realization dawning slowly. “Has James disappointed you in some way? Or were you just tired of him before you even came to London? All the time you've spent with Charles, all the bloody carriage rides, all the whispering in corners—Lord, you planned this like a military campaign, didn't you? If the first regiment falls, always have a replacement at the ready.” He laughed bitterly. “I told myself I was a fool for being suspicious that you were going behind James's back. I didn't imagine half the truth.”

She looked paler than usual. “You would not be wise to spread such rumors. Let it be, Matthew.”

“I cannot.” He started in on his coat again; oddly his hands were steady, as if anger had flattened his nerves. “Charles is a bastard, but even he doesn't deserve—”

“Matthew,” she said, coming closer and laying her hand on his
elbow. He paused in surprise, looking at her face, upturned to his. He could see that the shape of it was indeed lovely, almost doll-like in its perfection.

She stroked her hand down his sleeve. He told himself he should pull back from her, but his feet seemed rooted to the floor. It was as if he were being drawn toward her, though he hated her at the same time.

“You feel something for me now, don't you?” said Grace. “Kiss me. I demand that you do.”

As if in a dream, Matthew reached for her. He grasped Grace's slim waist in his hands. He pressed his hungry mouth against her lips and kissed her, and kissed her. She tasted of sweet tea and oblivion. He felt nothing, no desire, no yearning, only an empty desperate compulsion. He kissed her mouth and her cheek and she turned in his arms, still holding his wrist, her body against his—

And then she stepped back, releasing him. It was like waking from a dream.

He flinched back in horror, stumbling away from Grace. There was nothing timid in that glance, nothing of the girl with her face downcast at the ball. The color of her eyes had turned to steel.

“You—” he began, and broke off. He couldn't say what he wanted to say:
You made me do that.
It was ludicrous, a bizarre abdication of personal responsibility for an even more bizarre act.

When she spoke, her voice held no emotion. Her lips were red where he had kissed her; he felt like being sick. “If you get in my way after this, if you do anything to impede my marriage to Charles, I will tell James you kissed me. And I will tell your brother, too.”

“As if they do not already know I am a terrible person,” he said, with a bravado he did not feel.

“Oh, Matthew.” Her voice was cold as she turned away from him. “You have no idea what terrible people are like.”

Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew

Wanted to know what the river knew,

For they were young, and the Thames was old,

And this is the tale that the River told.

—Rudyard Kipling, “The River's Tale”

James sat on the edge
of a stone bastion atop Blackfriars Bridge, his legs dangling over the edge. The dark-jade water of the Thames flowed by below. Small rowboats and lighters chugged alongside river barges, distinguished by their characteristic red-brown sails, like splotches of blood against the cloud-darkened sky. Aboard them, men in flat caps yelled to each other through the river spray.

To the north, the dome of St. Paul's glowed against a backdrop of thunderclouds; on the other side of the river, the Bankside Power Station puffed black smoke into the sky.

The rhythmic slap of the tidal river against the granite piers of the bridge was as familiar to James as a lullaby. Blackfriars was a special place in his family: it figured in quite a few of his parents' stories. He usually found it comforting here. The river rolled on,
regardless of the turmoil in the lives of the people who crossed the bridge or boated across the water. They could leave no real mark on the river, as their troubles left no real mark on time.

Now it was not comforting. Now he did not feel as if he could breathe. The pain he felt was physical, as if sharp steel rods had been slid through his ribs, stopping his heart.

“James?”

James glanced up. Matthew was walking toward him, his topcoat open. He was hatless, fair hair tangling in the breeze off the river, scented with coal and salt.

“I've been looking for you all over the City,” Matthew said, swinging himself up on the stone bastion beside James. James fought the urge to tell him to be careful. It was a long fall to the river, but Matthew's hands were steady as he braced himself. “Tell me what happened.”

James couldn't explain it—the choking feeling, the dizziness. He recalled his father saying that love was pain, but this felt other than pain. It felt as if he had been deprived of air almost to the point of death and now was gasping and choking on it, trying desperately to get enough into his lungs. He couldn't find words, couldn't do anything but lean over and put his head down on Matthew's shoulder.

“Jamie, Jamie,” Matthew said, and his hand came up to press itself strongly against James's back, between his shoulder blades. “Don't.”

James kept his face pressed into the tweed of Matthew's coat. It smelled like brandy and the Penhaligon's cologne Matthew nicked from Charles. James knew his body was bent in a somewhat awkward way, his hand gripping Matthew's shirtfront and his face jammed into his shoulder, but there was something about the comfort of your
parabatai
—no one else could give it to you, not mother or sister or father or lover. It was a transcendence of all that.

People were wont to dismiss Matthew—because of his clothes,
because of his jokes, because of the way he took nothing seriously. They assumed he was liable to break, to give way when things became difficult. But he wasn't. He was holding James up now, as he always had—and making it look easy, as he always had.

“I suppose there are a lot of useless things I could tell you,” he said in a low voice, as James drew back. “That it was probably better this happened sooner, and that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and all that. But it's all rot, isn't it?”

“Most likely,” said James. He was aware his hands were shaking in a way that reminded him of something. He couldn't quite recall what. He was having trouble focusing, ideas skittering about like mice diving away from an approaching cat. “I thought my life would be one thing. Now it seems it is to be entirely different.”

Matthew screwed up his face in a way parents often found adorable. James thought it made him look like Oscar. “Believe me,” he said. “I do know how that feels.”

James was slightly surprised to hear it. He'd walked in on Matthew in compromising positions before with girls and boys, but he'd never thought Matthew's heart was engaged with any of them.

There was Lucie, of course. But James suspected that Matthew did not love her, either, beyond the remnants of a childhood infatuation. Somewhere along the way, James sensed, Matthew had lost faith in most things. It would be easy for him to keep his faith in Lucie, but faith alone was not love.

James reached his hand into Matthew's coat. Matthew grumbled but didn't slap his hand away as James unbuttoned the inside pocket and drew out his
parabatai
's silver flask.

“Are you sure?” said Matthew. “The last time you were feeling heartbroken, you took shots at a chandelier with a mundane gun and nearly drowned yourself in the Serpentine.”

“I wasn't
trying
to drown myself,” James pointed out. “Besides, Magnus Bane saved me.”

“Don't mention that,” said Matthew, as James uncapped the flask. “You know how angry I am about that. I idolize Magnus Bane, you had one chance to meet him, and you embarrassed us all.”

“I'm quite sure I never mentioned any of you to him,” said James, and tipped the flask back. He choked. It was blue ruin: the cheapest, harshest kind of gin. It went down like lightning. He coughed and thrust the flask away.

“Even worse,” said Matthew. “How sharper than the serpent's tooth it is to have an ungrateful
parabatai
.”

“I'm fairly sure that isn't the original Shakespeare,” James said. “It was a good thing Bane was there,” he added. “I was in a bad state. I barely recall it. I know it was because of Grace—she had written to me to say we should cut off contact with each other. I couldn't understand it. I went out to drink, to forget—” He broke off, shaking his head. “The next day she wrote to me again to apologize. She said she had only been frightened. I wonder now if it would have been better had things ended then.”

“We do not get to choose when in our lives we feel pain,” said Matthew. “It comes when it comes, and we try to remember, even though we cannot imagine a day when it will release its hold on us, that all pain fades. All misery passes. Humanity is drawn to light, not darkness.”

The sky was full of London's black smoke. Matthew was a pale mark against the storm-dark sky; the bright fabric of his waistcoat shone, as did his fair hair. “Math,” James said. “I know you never liked Grace.”

Matthew sighed. “It doesn't matter what I think of her. It never did.”

“You knew she didn't love me,” James said. He still felt dizzy.

“No. I feared it. It is not the same. Even then, I could never have guessed what she would do. Charles will never make her happy.”

“She asked me to marry her last night—to run away and marry her
in secret,” said James. “I said no. Today, she told me it had been a test. It was as if she had decided that our love was already a broken and ruined thing, and was trying to prove it.” He took a ragged breath. “But I cannot imagine loving her more than I have—more than I do.”

Matthew's fingers whitened where he grasped the flask. After a long moment, he spoke with some difficulty. “You cannot torment yourself,” he said. “If it had not been that test, it would have been another. This is not an issue of love, but of ambition. She wishes to be the Consul's wife. Love has no place in this plan.”

James tried to focus on Matthew's face. It wasn't as easy as it ought to have been. Lights danced behind his eyelids when he closed them, and his hands were still shaking. Surely this could not be from one sip of blue ruin. He knew he wasn't drunk, but a feeling of detachment was still there. As if nothing he did now mattered. “Tell me, Matthew,” he said. “Tell me the name of the shadow that is always hanging over you. I can become a shadow. I could fight it for you.”

Matthew squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain. “Oh, Jamie,” he sighed. “What if I said there is no shadow?”

“I would not believe you,” said James. “I know what I feel in my own heart.”

“James,” said Matthew. “You're starting to slide off the bridge.”

“Good.” James closed his eyes. “Maybe I'll be able to sleep tonight.”

Matthew leaped down, just in time to catch James as he slumped backward off the wall.

James knelt upon the roof of the Institute. He knew that he was dreaming, yet at the same time it felt impossible that what was happening to him was not real: he could see London laid out before him as clearly as a painting, see its roads and alleys and boulevards, see the stars hanging high above the city, pale white as the pearly teeth of a child's doll. He could see
himself, as from a distance, see the black of his hair, and the deeper black of the wings that rose from his back.

He saw himself struggle with the weight of the wings. They were jagged and dark, with overlapping layers of feathers that shaded from deep black to gray. He realized then—they were not his wings: a monster knelt on his back, a creature whose face he could not see. A humped, misshapen thing, in pale gray rags, its sharp talons dug deep into his back.

He felt the pain. It was as fierce as fire, burning through his skin; he staggered to his feet, twisting and turning as if he could hurl the creature off him. Light blazed up all around him—pale gold light, the same light he had seen when he had passed into the shadow realm and then into the Chiswick greenhouse.

The light of Cortana.

He saw her there, the blade in her hand, her hair like fire. She cut at the creature on James's back, and with a searing pain it tore away from him, Cortana sunk deep into its body. It fell away, tumbling down the steep incline of the roof.

James's shirt was rags, soaked in blood. He could feel more blood trickling between his shoulder blades. Cordelia ran to him. She whispered his name:
James, James
, as if no one had ever spoken it before.

All about them the sky bloomed with brilliant lights. He could no longer see Cordelia. The lights formed into shapes and patterns—he had seen them before, the scrawls on the paper in Gast's flat. The knowledge of what they were tickled at the edge of his brain. He called out for Cordelia, but she was gone, like the dream he'd known she was.

When James woke in the morning, he was lying in his own bed. He was fully dressed, though someone had taken off his jacket and shoes and set them on a chair. In a velvet wing-backed chair nearby Matthew was dozing, his cheek propped on his hand.

Matthew always looked quite different when he was asleep. The
constant motion that was such a distraction when he was awake vanished, and he became one of those paintings he loved: a Frederic Leighton, perhaps. Leighton was famous for painting children in their innocence, and when Matthew slept, he looked as if sorrow had never touched him.

As if he knew he was being watched, he stirred and sat up, focusing on James. “You're awake.” He began to grin. “How's your head? Ringing like a bell?”

James sat up slowly. He had been with Matthew on many mornings when his
parabatai
was complaining of a bad head, or aches and misery and the need to swallow a glass of raw egg and pepper before he could face the day. But James felt nothing like that. Nothing hurt or ached. “No, but—how do I look?”

“Ghastly,” Matthew reported happily. “Like you saw the ghost of Old Mol and your hair's still sticking up.”

James stared down at his own hands, turning them over. His bare wrist still looked odd, the bracelet's absence like a glaring wound. But there was no actual pain, either physical or mental.

“On the other hand,” Matthew said, his eyes diabolically alight, “I can't say your parents were too pleased when I carried you in last night.…”

James bolted out of bed. His clothes were as rumpled as if he'd slept under a bridge. “You carried me? My parents were here?”

“They had indeed come back from their meeting with my brother,” said Matthew, “who was, apparently, very boring, which I could have told them.”

“MATTHEW,” James said.

Matthew held his hands up innocently. “I said nothing to them, but apparently Charles told them of his engagement to Grace at the meeting, and they deduced you were trying to drown your sorrows. I told them that you'd only had a sip of gin and they decried you as a lightweight.”

“Dear God.” James staggered to the washroom. Thankfully there was water in the pitcher, and a bar of sandalwood soap. He scrubbed himself down hastily and rinsed his hair. Feeling less revolting, he went into the dressing room, threw on new clothes, and returned to the bedroom, where Matthew sat on the foot of his bed with his legs crossed. He handed James a mug of tea without a word—exactly the way he liked it: strong and sugared, with no milk.

“Where did you produce that from?” James wondered aloud, accepting the mug.

Matthew hopped to his feet. “Come along,” he said. “Food has been laid on in the breakfast room. Let us sample some of Bridget's delicious eggs and I'll explain.”

James eyed his
parabatai
with suspicion. Bridget's eggs were famously awful. “Explain what?”

Matthew made a hushing gesture. Rolling his eyes, James slid his feet into shoes and followed Matthew through the winding corridors to the breakfast room, where food was still laid out. A silver urn with now-cold coffee in it, plates of veal chops, and James's least favorite, kedgeree. He settled at the table with a plate of mushrooms and toast. His mind felt surprisingly clear, as if he had come out of a strange fog. Even the toast and mushrooms tasted different.

He frowned. “Something's happened,” he said, realizing how quiet it was. Only the sound of clocks ticking in the Institute. The corridors had been devoid of people. He stood and went to the window, which looked out over the courtyard. It was empty of carriages. His grip tightened on the sill. “Matthew, has anyone—”