Chain of Gold (25 page)
Authors: Cassandra Clare
He grew lonely, and in his loneliness he grew bored. He dutifully went to the Louvre and had thoughts about what he saw, but nobody to share them with. He wrote them down in a notebook and wondered if he would ever look at it again. He counted the days until he returned to Spain, wondering how to tell Matthew that the city itself was not enough of a companion to satisfy him.
And then, unaccountably, he saw someone he knew.
Not a friend. Alastair Carstairs was definitely not a friend. But more than an acquaintance, surely. They'd been at the Academy together. Where Carstairs had been, not to put too fine a point on
it, awful. He had been one of the “mean boys,” the ones who played cruel and dangerous pranks. The ones who identified any other boy's quality that stood out and made sure to hammer it down with the force of their contempt and their laughter. In Thomas's case, that had been his size. He was short for his age, and narrow-shouldered, and he looked younger than he was.
Of course, that had been years ago. Thomas now towered above most people. In fact, he only spotted Alastair because he could see over the heads of the crowd between them.
Matthew had directed Thomas to Librairie Galignani, on the Rue de Rivoli, as a must-visit locationâ“It's the oldest English-language bookshop on the whole continent!” Thomas lingered over books of poetry, allowing himself to take a long time to decide what to buy. And then Alastair appeared.
Thomas hadn't decided yet whether to acknowledge Alastair, but he wasn't given much choice. Alastair was staring directly at him. As Thomas watched, Alastair's face went through a series of expressions: mild recognition, confusion, shock, exasperation, long-suffering forbearance.
Thomas gave him a little wave.
Alastair pushed his way through the people between them. “By the Angel, Lightwood,” he said. “You've become gigantic.”
Thomas raised his eyebrows. A few other people nearby did as well.
“This is your revenge, I suppose,” Alastair went on, as if Thomas had done this to him personally, “for all the times I called you âwee little Thomas' or âhalf pint' orâI can't remember, I'm sure I had something cutting and witty to say.”
“What are you doing in Paris?” Thomas said.
“What are
you
doing in Paris?” Alastair said back in a superior tone, as though he'd caught Thomas at something.
“I'm on holiday from my travel year in Spain.”
Alastair nodded. A silence fell. Thomas began to panic. They
were not friends. What Thomas knew about Alastair was mostly negative. He did not know what his duties were here.
He was thinking of ways to politely excuse himself, perhaps by fleeing the bookstore and returning some hours later, when Alastair spoke up. “Do you want to come to the Louvre, then? I'm going over there after this.”
Thomas could have said,
I've been already, thanks
, or
Actually, I have a pressing lunch engagement
, but he didn't. He had been alone for days. He said, “All right.”
So they went. It was crowded, and Alastair was grumpy about it, but he didn't take it out on Thomas. He didn't belittle the art. He didn't speak in rapturous tones, either; to Thomas's surprise, Alastair seemed content to place himself before a work of art and simply behold it for a long moment, letting it wash over his senses. His face was serious, his brow wrinkled, but Thomas was sure that it was the most content he had ever seen Alastair.
For his part, Thomas had visited this very museum and had assembled a number of, he thought, insightful observations about a number of pieces. He shared a few of these with Alastair, tentatively. He waited for Alastair to scoff, but Alastair just acknowledged Thomas's comments with a nod. Thomas had no reason to like Alastair, had in fact every reason to dislike Alastair, but in these small moments standing next to one another in the presence of a beautiful object, he was glad Alastair was there, and Alastair's acknowledgment of him, however small, made him feel better than he had since he'd arrived in Paris.
Maybe he had changed, Thomas thought. Maybe everyone grew up sooner or later. Maybe he had not even been that bad in the first place.
He thought back to his time at the Academy and decided that, no, Alastair had definitely been terrible in the first place. But he seemed calmer now, more thoughtful.
After they left the museum, Thomas and Alastair went for a walk along the Seine. Alastair wanted to know all about Madrid, and Thomas was even able to rise some stories from Alastair about his time in Damascus, and Morocco, and Paris itself. Having grown up in Idris and London, Thomas felt that Alastair must be very worldly. And yet he wondered if so much relocation would make a person lonely.
The Eiffel Tower rose in front of them, and Alastair gestured at it. “Have you been up there yet?”
“I have,” Thomas answered. “The view is stunning.”
“What do you think of the view from here?” Alastair asked.
Thomas had the distinct feeling that a trap was being laid for him, but he wasn't sure why, or how to avoid stepping into it. “I think it's a fascinating structure,” he said. “There's nothing like it.”
Alastair gave a mirthless chuckle. “Indeed there isn't. In fact, many Parisians are horrified by it. They find it ugly, hideous even, and they call it âEiffel's folly.'â”
Thomas looked up at the tower again. The sun was sinking, burnishing the metal with an orange-pink glow. For a moment it put him in mind of the soaring
adamas
towers that protected the Shadowhunter capital of Alicante, the way they caught the light of the setting sun and held it a little longer than one expected. “It isn't ugly,” he said. “It's just unusual.”
Alastair looked satisfied. “Quite right. Gustave Eiffel is a genius, and I feel certain he shall one day be appreciated. Sometimes you have to stand back and let people do what they are good at, even if it seems like madness at the time.”
They had dinner together at a bistro nearby, which Thomas thought was fairly decent, but Alastair described as “indifferent.” They talked late into the night; they closed down the restaurant while everyone else left and they were still talking: about books, travel, music, history. Thomas told Alastair that he planned to get
a tattoo of a compass rose on the inside of his arm. He hadn't told anyone else that, and Alastair seemed curious.
“Where on your arm?” he asked, and when Thomas showed him, Alastair ran his fingers over the spot, unselfconsciously, his fingertips tracing a path from the sensitive skin of Thomas's inner wrist to the crook of his elbow.
Thomas sat stunned and shivering, though he was hot all over. Alastair didn't seem to notice, only took his hand back and asked the waiter for the bill, which he paid. Alastair refused to tell Thomas where he was staying, but he told Thomas to meet him at a certain address the next afternoon, for a surprise.
Fifteen minutes after the meeting time, Thomas decided that Alastair was not coming, and was probably somewhere laughing about it, but Alastair did in fact appear, and even apologized for his lateness. He led Thomas to the doors of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin.
“I know we're supposed to avoid mundane things,” said Alastair, “but you must see this. It's a film. A moving picture! This one is the latest. It's called
Le Voyage dans la Lune
.”
Even Thomas could translate this, and for seventeen minutes they marveled together at what the mundanes had doneâmade pictures move, like a theater but in images projected onto a screen. There was a narrator who, Thomas supposed, told the story, but he couldn't follow it at all. He enjoyed it anyway, watching these mundanes in their strange costumes climb into a large metal box like an artillery shell, go to the moon, and be chased away by strange creatures already living there.
“Do you think it's real?” he said to Alastair as they walked out, blinking in the sudden light of the daytime.
“What? No, don't be stupid,” Alastair said, pushing a lock of dark hair behind his ears. People always fussed over blond hair, like Matthew's, as if it were special, but privately Thomas thought dark hair and eyes were much more striking. “It's like a play, or a magic
trick. That's what mundanes do; they can't do magic, so they play tricks that look like magic, but it isn't really.”
Alastair said goodbye to him at the end of the lane; he said he was leaving Paris the next day, but he continued to refuse to tell Thomas why he was there or where he was going or why he was leaving the next day. Thomas supposed that they weren't, after all, friends, though he had enjoyed the time they'd spent together. He wasn't fully sure what a friend was, if it wasn't someone you enjoyed spending time with.
The whole trip had seemed disconnected and dreamlike. Alastair had come from nowhere and now returned to nowhere, and Thomas had no idea when they would next see each other, or how they would act when they did. Were they now friends? Had they been friends these past few days?
“I return to Spain in a couple of days myself,” Thomas said.
Alastair gave a little chuckle. “It's odd that you came here from Madrid. Like taking a vacation from a vacation.”
“I suppose,” said Thomas. Then he frowned. “No, it isn't odd. A travel year isn't a vacation. It's an assignment to a post. Do you have to snipe at everything?”
Alastair looked startled. “I'm sorry,” he said after a long moment. “I don't mean anything by it.”
He seemed worried in that moment, and human and vulnerable in a way that made Thomas want toâwell, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do, but he stuck out his hand to Alastair, who stared at it for a moment, then slowly took it.
His hand was warm and calloused against Thomas's, and Thomas remembered the feel of Alastair's fingers on the inside of his arm and tried not to change expression. They shook.
Alastair had not asked Thomas about his friends or his family. Thomas hadn't asked Alastair, either. For these days it had been as though nobody else existed in the entire world.
“Well,” Thomas said. “Goodbye, Carstairs.”
“Goodbye, Lightwood. Try not to get any taller. You're starting to be off-putting in the other direction.”
Thomas watched Alastair walk away and waited for him to turn around one last time, but Alastair never looked back as he turned the corner and disappeared.
L
OYALTY
B
INDS
Close, side by side, from morn till night,
Kissing and dalliance their delight,
Whilst thou from human solace flying
With unrequited love art dying.
âNizami Ganjavi,
Layla and Majnun
The proprietor would not let
Lucie up to the Merry Thieves' private rooms at the Devil Tavern, so she was reduced to sending a message through Polly, the werewolf barmaid. She sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair and fumed as a mixture of Downworlders and magicians stared at her curiously: a small, bonneted girl with Nephilim runes, clutching an axe. In the corner, a kelpie who seemed to be marinating in a tank of gin gave her a beady look.
“Drain of pale?” inquired a wild-haired vampire, offering her a half-drunk bottle of gin.
“She doesn't drink.” It was Thomas, glowering. The vampire shrank back. Christopher appeared at Thomas's shoulder, blinking.
“I knew you'd be here,” said Lucie triumphantly.
“We very nearly weren't,” said Christopher. “We decided to use the laboratory upstairs instead of at Grosvenor Square since
Matthew and James weren't going to be here to be bothered or blown upâ”
Thomas shushed him. “Christopher, enough. Lucie, what's going on? Did something happen?”
After dragging the two of them outside, Lucie did her best to explain the situation without mentioning Jesse. She blamed Jessamine instead, and a gossip network between ghosts that she had invented on the spot. Fortunately, neither Christopher nor Thomas was the suspicious type.
“We need Matthew, and he's bloody gone off to Anna's,” said Thomas, after telling her the little they knewâthe letter that had come for James at Matthew's house, his determination to meet Grace, the time of the meeting set for ten o'clock. “He'll know where James has gone. James said it was where the two of them used to practice balance.”
“But what if we're too late?” said Christopher, vibrating with anxiety.
Lucie checked the clock that hung before the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, across the dark line of Fleet Street. They were quite near the Institute here. She could see its distinctive spire rising above the roofs of London. “Nine o'clock,” she said. “One of you must have a carriage. We'll go to Anna's.”
Which was how they found themselves a quarter of an hour later on Percy Street, Thomas helping Lucie down from his family's Victoria. The street was empty of pedestrians, though there were lights on in many windows. Lucie made out a shape sitting on Anna's stairs in the dark. She felt no surpriseâladies were always making cakes of themselves on Anna's doorstep.
Then Lucie made out broad shoulders on the silhouette and realized that the person on Anna's doorstep was a man.
He bolted upright, and the light from the arc lamps fell on him. On Percy Street, the streetlights were older and less reliable, their
fierce yellow burn stripping the world down to harsh lines. Lucie saw bright hair and a scowling face.
“Alastair?”
Thomas sounded astonished.
Christopher groaned as Alastair Carstairs raced down the street toward them, a whirlwind in an unbuttoned town coat. Beneath the coat his waistcoat was disarranged, and one side of his high wingtip collar was askew.
“You've lost your hat, Alastair,” said Lucie.
Alastair said, “I have lost my
sister
!”
Lucie went cold. “What do you mean? Has something happened to Cordelia?”
“I don't bloody know, do I?” said Alastair. “I let her go take tea with Anna Lightwood and now I return to pick her up at the agreed-upon time and they are both
gone
. I should never have left her alone withâ”
“Be very careful what you say about Anna,” said Christopher. Lucie thought she ought to have found it funny: Christopher, who was never angry, speaking in those icy tones to Alastair. But somehow, it was not funny at all.
Alastair advanced upon Christopher dangerously, but Thomas caught his arm as he went by. Lucie watched with great satisfaction as Alastair was brought to a complete standstill, without Thomas having to exert any particular effort. The muscles of Alastair's arm tensed beneath his coat sleeve as he strained against Thomas's grip. Alastair was tall enough, and looked strong enough, but he couldn't make any headway.
“Steady, Alastair,” said Thomas. “I know you are worried about your sister. We are worried about James. Better we discuss setting matters right than brawl in public.”
Alastair tilted his chin to meet Thomas's eyes, the line of his jaw a hard slash. “Let me loose,” he snarled. “And cease constantly addressing me by my first name. You are not a scrubby schoolboy trailing after me any longer.”
Thomas, his cheeks flaming red, whipped his hand back as if he'd been burned.
“Stop it!” Lucie snapped. Thomas had only been trying to be kind. “Matthew is most likely with Anna and Cordelia. He can chaperoneâ”
Alastair's expression went flat. “You think I would be relieved to hear she's with
Matthew
? You think I don't know a drunk when I see one? Believe me, I do. If he puts Cordelia in harm's wayâ”
There was the sudden and welcome rattle of wheels on stony road. They all whirled to see the Consul's carriage rolling up to Anna's house. The carriage door opened and disgorged Cordelia and Matthew, who was holding a rolled-up piece of velvet.
The two of them froze at the sight of the visitors. “What are you doing here?” Matthew said. “Has something happened to Barbara and the others?”
“No,” Thomas said hastily. “Nothing like that. But it is urgent. James is in danger.”
James walked through the night from the King's Road toward the Thames. Matthew had often taken him on impromptu tours of Chelsea, past Queen Anneâstyle buildings with their grand sweeps of stone steps and terra-cotta panels turning gold in the sunshine, pointing out the residences of famous poets and artists who had lived scandalous lives. Now the lit windows of the houses shone dimly through a heavy mist, which grew heavier as James approached the river.
The riverside at Chelsea Embankment was a promenade under plane trees heavy with leaves, visible only as dark clouds above James's head, their wet trunks illuminated by the ghostly globes of the cast-iron lampposts that lined the river's edge. The Thames, beyond the river wall, was barely distinguishable in the thick fog:
only the sound of a petrol-powered police boat chugging past and the gleams of a bobby's lantern on its wake betrayed the river's presence.
James was early. He started walking slowly toward the arch of Battersea Bridge, trying to quell his impatience and worry.
Grace.
He recalled their kiss in the park, the inchoate agony that had risen up inside him. As if he were being stabbed through with a needle. A premonition of demons, perhaps, the unknown danger so close, the shadow realm just touching this one. It was hard to know, but then it was hard to know anything that had to do with Grace. There were times when he thought of her that he felt such pain that all his bones seemed strung on a single wire, and he imagined that if the wire was pulled taut, it would kill him.
“How much is love meant to hurt?” he had asked his father once.
“Oh, terribly,” his father had said with a smile. “But we suffer for love because love is worth it.”
Suddenly she was there, as if she had appeared between one moment and another, standing beneath an ornate triple-headed lamppost at the near end of the bridge: a small, misty figure in the fog, dressed as she always was in light colors, her face a pale moon in the lamplight. James broke into a run, and she dashed down the steps of the bridge toward where he stood on the embankment.
When they reached each other, she threw her arms around him. Her hands were cool against the back of his neck, and he felt dizzy and assailed by memories: the crumbling walls of Blackthorn Manor, the shadows in the forest where they'd sat and talked together, her hand fastening the silver bracelet around his wrist.â¦
James drew away enough to look down into her face. “What happened?” he said. “Your letter said you were in danger.”
She dropped a hand now to circle his wrist, her fingers sliding over the band of metal as if to make sure it was still there. Her
fingers pressed against his pulse point. “Mama is mad with rage. I don't know what she will do. She told Charlesâ”
“I know what she told Charles,” he said. “Please tell me you were not worried about
me
, Grace.”
“You came to the house to see me,” she said. “Did you know that Cordelia was there?”
He hesitated. How could he say that he hadn't come to the house to see her? That there had been a momentâa terrible momentâwhen Cordelia had mentioned that Grace was in the house, and he'd realized he had not thought of her? How was it possible to feel such agony when someone's name was mentioned, yet forget them in duress? He recalled Jem having told him that stress could do terrible things to one's mind. Surely that was all it was.
“I didn't know until I arrived and saw her and Lucie,” he said. “I gather they wanted to see that you were all right. When I came, I heard the noises in the greenhouse, andâ” He broke off with a shrug. He hated lying to Grace. “I saw the demon.”
“You were being brave, I know, but Mama does not see it that way. She thinks you came only to humiliate her and remind the world of her father's misdeeds.”
James badly wanted to kick a lamppost. “Let me talk to her. We could sit down, all of us, my father and you and your motherâ”
“James!” Grace looked almost furious for a moment. “What my mother would do to me if I even suggested such a thingâ” She shook her head. “No. She watches everything I do. I was barely able to get out tonight. I had thought that coming to London might soften her toward you, but she has become harder than ever. She says the last time Herondales were at Chiswick House, her father and husband died. She says she will not let you destroy us.”
Tatiana is utterly mad,
James thought helplessly. He had not realized it had gone so much beyond spite. “Grace, what are you saying?”
“She says she will bring me back to Idris. That she was wrong to let me attend parties and events that you and your sister would be at, and the Lightwoodsâshe says that I will be corrupted and ruined. She will lock me away, James, for the next two years. I will not see you, not be able to write to youâ”
“That is the danger you meant,” he said softly. He understood. Such loneliness would seem like danger to Grace. It would seem like death. “Then come to us at the Institute,” he said. “The Institute is
there
to provide sanctuary to Nephilim in distress. My parents are kind people. We would protect you from herâ”
Grace shook her head hard enough to dislodge her small, flower-trimmed hat. “My mother would only petition to have the Clave return me to her, and they would do it as I am not eighteen yet.”
“You don't know that. My parents have influence within the Claveâ”
“If you truly love me,” she said, her gray eyes flaring, “then you will marry me. Now. We must elope. If we were mundanes, we could run to Gretna Green and marry, and nothing could tear us apart. I would belong to you, and not to her.”
James was stunned. “But we are not mundanes. Their marriage ceremony would not be considered valid by the Clave. Marry me in a Shadowhunter ceremony, Grace. You don't need her permissionâ”
“We cannot do that,” Grace protested. “We cannot remain in the Shadowhunter world where my mother can reach us. We must escape her influence, her ability to punish us. We must be married in Gretna and if needs be, we will let our Marks be stripped.”
“Let our Marks be stripped?” James went cold all over. Having your Marks stripped was the most severe punishment a Shadowhunter could endure. It meant exile and becoming a mundane.
He tried to imagine never seeing his parents again, or Lucie, or Christopher or Thomas. Having the bond that tied him to Matthew severed, like having his right hand sliced off. Becoming a mundane
and losing everything that made him a Shadowhunter. “Grace,
no
. That isn't the answer.”
“It isn't the answer for
you
,” she said coolly, “for you have always been a Shadowhunter. I have never been trained, never borne but a few Marks. I know nothing of the history, I have no warrior partner nor friendsâI might as well have been raised a mundane!”
“In other words,” said James, “you would be losing nothing, and I would be losing everything.”
Grace stepped out of James's arms. Pain took her place, the ache of being without her. It was physical, inexpressible, and unexplainable. It was simply what it was: when she was not there, he felt it like a wound.
“You would not be losing
me
,” said Grace.
“I don't want to lose you,” he said, as steadily as he could through the pain. “But we have only to wait a little while and we can be together without also losing everything else.”
“You don't
understand
,” Grace cried. “You can't. You don't knowâ”
“Then
tell me
. What is it? What don't I know?”
Her voice was hoarse. “I must have you do this for me, James,” she said. “I must. It is so important. More than you can know. Only say you will. Only say it.”
It seemed almost as if she were begging him to say it even if he did not mean it, but what would be the point of that? No. She must want him to mean it. To be willing to do it: risk the end of the only life he knew, risk never seeing any of those he loved again. He closed his eyes and saw, against the backs of his eyelids, the faces of his parents. His sister. Jem. Thomas. Christopher. Matthew. Matthew, who he would be damaging in a way that might never be repaired.
