Chain of Gold (55 page)

“I am sure I am not the only one who fails to be astonished that
Tatiana Blackthorn has been dabbling in necromancy,” said Matthew. “But we must tell the Clave.”

James, taking the stairs two at a time, shook his head. “Not yet. I must do this first. I will explain more later, but we cannot destroy Grace's life.”

They had reached the top of a set of stone steps, leading downward into deep shadow. Cordelia was half-relieved to see the same expression on Matthew's face that she was sure was on hers. Surprise and distress.

“So you're going to go to
Idris
?” Cordelia said. “How?”

“There's a Portal in the crypt,” Matthew said tightly as the stairs ended with an entrance into an enormous stone room. It was not as dark as Cordelia had imagined: dim brass lamps gleamed on the walls, illuminating smooth stone walls and floors. “My father used to tinker with his experiments down here when he and my mother ran the Institute. Most of his work was moved to the laboratory in our home, but—”

He gestured toward a glowing square the size of a pier glass that adorned the far wall. Its surface rippled like water, alight with strange gleams.

“The Portal is still here,” said James. “It was locked down during the quarantine, but no longer.”

“It's still forbidden to Portal to Idris without permission from the Clave,” said Matthew.

“And you've become fascinated with the Laws suddenly?” James smiled. “I'll be the one breaking the rules, anyway. It is a simple thing for me to do: go through, destroy the object, and return.”

“You must be mad if you think that we're not coming with you,” said Matthew.

James shook his head. “I need you to remain here to open the Portal for me so that I can return. Give me twenty minutes. I know
my way around the house, and I know exactly where the thing is. Then open the Portal and I will come back through.”

“I don't know if this is a wise idea,” Cordelia said. “We've already stood and watched you disappear through one Portal, and look how that turned out—”

“We survived,” James said. “We killed the Mandikhor and wounded Belial. Many would say it turned out very well.” He moved to stand before the Portal. For a moment he was only a silhouette, a black shadow against the silvery surface behind him. “Wait for me,” he said, and for the second time in a week, Cordelia watched as James Herondale vanished through a Portal in front of her eyes.

She glanced at Matthew. He gleamed like one of the brass fixtures on the wall in a bronze velvet jacket and trousers. He looked as if he was ready to return to the Hell Ruelle, not to stand watch in a crypt.

“You didn't try to stop him,” she said.

Matthew shook his head. “Not this time,” he said. “There seemed no point.” He glanced at her. “I truly thought it was over. Even when Grace came by today, I thought he would send her away. That perhaps you had cured him of that particular disease.”

The words landed like arrows.
I thought you had cured him.
She had thought the same thing, somehow—had let herself believe it, let herself hope that James offering to read a book with her was something more than an offer of friendship. She had read his eyes, his expressions, all wrong—how could she have been so mistaken? How could she have believed he felt anything like she felt when she
knew better
?

“Because of the Whispering Room? That truly was just pretense.” The words sounded brittle to her own ears. It was not the truth—not for her, at least—but she would not be considered pitiable, not by Matthew or anyone else. “It was nothing else.”

“I find that I am glad to hear that,” Matthew said. His eyes were very dark, the green just a rim around the pupil as he looked at her. “Glad that you are not hurt. And glad—”

“I am not hurt. It's just that I don't understand,” Cordelia said. Her voice seemed to echo off the walls. “James seems an entirely different person.”

Matthew's mouth twisted in a bitter half smile. “He has been like this for years. Sometimes he is the James of my heart, the friend I have always loved. Sometimes he is behind a wall of glass and I cannot reach him no matter how I pound my fists against it.”

The Mask,
Cordelia thought. So Matthew saw it too.

“You must find me ridiculous,” Matthew said. “
Parabatai
ought to be close, and in truth, I would not want to live in this world without James. Yet he tells me nothing of what he feels.”

“I do not find you ridiculous, and I wish you would not say such things,” Cordelia said. “Matthew, you may speak however badly of yourself as you like, but it does not make it true.
You
decide the truth about yourself. No one else. And the choice about what kind of person you will be is yours alone.”

Matthew stared at her—for once, it seemed, speechless.

Cordelia stalked over to the Portal. “Do you know what Blackthorn Manor looks like?”

Matthew seemed to snap back to reality. “Of course,” he said. “But it has been only ten minutes.”

“I do not see why we must do as he says,” said Cordelia. “Open the Portal, Matthew.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and finally the corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile. “You are quite bossy for a girl whose nickname is Daisy,” he said, and went over to the Portal. He placed his palm against the surface, and it shimmered like disturbed water. An image evolved slowly from the center: a great old stone pile of a manor house, set far back from a spreading green lawn.
The lawn was overgrown, the black iron gates before the manor thick with twisting briars. They were thrown open, and through the gap Cordelia could see the blank stone face of the house, inset with a dozen windows.

As she stared, one of the windows went up in orange flames. Then another. The sky above the manor house turned a dark, foreboding red.

Matthew swore.

“He's burning the house down, isn't he?” said Cordelia.

“Bloody Herondales,” said Matthew, with a sort of epic despair. “I'll go through—”

“Not alone, you won't,” said Cordelia, and picking up the skirts of her blue frock, she leaped through the open Portal.

Though Grace and Tatiana had left it only recently, Blackthorn Manor had the air of a place long abandoned. One of the side doors was unlocked, and James found himself in an empty front hall, lit only by the moonlight pouring in through the great windows. The floor was covered in a thick, feathery dust, and above him hung a chandelier, so roped about with spiderwebs it resembled a ball of gray yarn.

He passed through the empty hall in the quiet of the moonlight and up the sweeping curve of the staircase. As he reached the second floor an oily film of blackness dropped before him: the upstairs windows had been covered with thick black curtains, and no light escaped around their edges.

He lit his witchlight rune-stone; it illuminated the long-dusty passage stretching before him. As he made his way down it, his boots crunched unpleasantly on the floor, and he imagined himself crushing the dried bones of tiny animals as he walked.

At the end of the corridor, in front of a curved wall of covered
windows, stood the metal creature: a towering monster of steel and copper. On the wall beside it, as he had recalled, hung a knight's sword with a wheel pommel, a rusty antique.

James took the sword down and, without a moment's hesitation, swung it.

It sheared through the torso of the clockwork monster, slicing it in half. The upper part of the body clanged to the ground. James drove down with the sword again, decapitating the creature; he felt half ridiculous, as if he were hacking an enormous tin can to pieces. But the other half of him was full of rage: rage against the meaningless bitterness that had consumed Tatiana Blackthorn, that had turned this house into a prison for Grace, that had turned Tatiana viciously against her own family and all the world.

He broke off, breathing heavily. The clockwork suit was a pile of scrap metal at his feet.

Stop,
he told himself, and oddly, he saw Cordelia in his mind, felt her hand on his arm, steadying him.
Stop.

He tossed the sword to the ground and turned to go; as he did, he heard a soft explosion.

The pile of shredded metal had caught fire and gone up as if it were tinder. James took a step back, staring, as the fire leaped up to catch at the spiderwebs stretched across the walls: they caught alight like burning lace. James jammed his witchlight back into his pocket; the corridor was already alive with gold and crimson, strange shadows shuddering against the walls. The smoke that rose from the smoldering drapes was thick and choking, emitting an acrid and terrible scent.

There was something hypnotic about the flames as they leaped from one set of drapes to another, like a bouquet being tossed down the corridor. If James stayed here, he would die on his knees, choking on the ashes of Tatiana Blackthorn's bitterness. He spun and made for the stairs.

Matthew didn't bother with an Open rune, just kicked the front door in and raced inside, Cordelia on his heels. The entryway was full of seething smoke.

Cordelia looked around in horror. She could see into a parlor with a high chimneypiece: it had probably once been a grand room but now was covered in dust and mold. A table hung with spiderwebs stood in the middle, still with plates set out: they were covered in rotted food, and mice and blackbeetles ran freely over the surface.

The floor was thickly coated in gray dust; a set of footprints wound up the stairs. Cordelia pointed and jostled Matthew's shoulder: “That way.”

They started toward the steps: at the top they could see a roaring inferno. Cordelia gasped as James appeared from the heart of the flames, racing down the stairs. He flung himself over the banister as the top steps caught alight, landing in the center of the entryway. He stared incredulously at Cordelia and Matthew.

“What are you
doing
here?” he demanded over the roar of the fire.

“We came for you, idiot!” Matthew shouted.

“And how were you expecting to get
back
?”

“There's a Portal in the greenhouse here that connects to the greenhouse in Chiswick,” Cordelia said. Grace had told her that; it felt like a million years ago. “We can return that way.”

From somewhere deep within the manor came a deep, grinding noise, as of the bones of a giant crumbling to dust. Matthew's eyes rounded. “The house—”

“Is on fire! Yes, I
know
!” James shouted. “To the door, quickly!”

It was a short way back to the front entrance. They ran, their feet sending up puffs of dust. They had nearly reached the door—Matthew was over the threshold—when the nearest wall caved in.
Cordelia staggered back as a wave of hot air struck her; she saw a plaster-covered wooden beam break free of the wall and sweep toward her, heard Matthew shout her name, and then something struck her from the side. She rolled over in the dust, tangled up with James, as the beam hit the floor with immense force, shattering the parquet.

She choked, gasped, and looked up: James had knocked her out of the way of the falling timber. His body pinned hers to the floor. The color of his eyes matched the flames all around them; she felt his breath, short and sharp, as they stared almost blindly at each other.

“James!”
Matthew shouted, and James blinked and got to his feet, reaching down to clasp Cordelia's hand. The blue of her dress glimmered as she rose, dotted with a thousand tiny glowing points of fire where sparks had landed.

It was not just her dress: everything was fire. In a daze, they raced for the front door, where Matthew stood; he had taken off his velvet jacket and was using it to beat out the flames consuming the threshold. James turned to lift Cordelia in his arms as if they were in some strange, fiery ballet, carrying her over the last burst of flames as they soared up and consumed the front doors of the manor.

The three of them staggered a good distance from the house into the weeds and scraggly grass of the gardens. At last they stopped, and James raised his head to stare at the manor house. It was burning merrily, sending up gouts of black smoke, turning the sky above it to the color of blood.

“You can put Cordelia down now,” Matthew said, a touch of acid in his tone. He was panting, his hair full of soot, his velvet jacket abandoned.

James set Cordelia carefully on the ground. “Your leg…?” he began.

She tried to push back a lock of her hair and found it full of
ash. “It's all right. It's quite healed,” she said. “Did you, ah…”

“Burn the house down? Not purposely,” said James. His already black lashes were clogged with soot, his face streaked with black.

“It coincidentally burned down while you were in it?” grumbled Matthew.

“If I could explain—”

“You cannot.” Matthew shook his head, scattering ash. “I am completely out of patience. The bank of patience is exhausted! I am not even being extended any patience on credit! You and I and Cordelia are going home, and once home, I will berate you at enormous length. Prepare yourself.”

James hid a smile. “I shall do exactly that. Meanwhile, the greenhouse. We should not linger here.”

Cordelia and Matthew fervently agreed. The three made their way to the greenhouse, which was empty save for a fallen-down grapevine, some bottles, and the Portal itself, which shone like a mirror, reflecting back the glaring red light of the fire.

James placed his hand on its surface. It shimmered, and Cordelia saw, as if at a distance, the Blackthorn house in Chiswick, and beyond that, the glittering skyline of London.

She stepped through.

The room at the Devil Tavern was cozy, a low fire burning in the grate—Cordelia had thought she might never want to see fire again, but she was pleased to have this one. The Merry Thieves were sprawled all about on the battered furniture: Christopher and Thomas on the old chesterfield sofa, James in an armchair, and Matthew in a seat at the round wooden table.