Clockwork Prince (39 page)

“In a way it was really just the one spy,” Henry began, but fell silent as Charlotte gave him a look that could have melted glass.

“If Benedict Lightwood is working for Mortmain, he cannot be allowed to have custody of the Institute,” said Tessa. “In fact, that ball he threw last night ought to be enough to disqualify him.”

“The problem will be proving it,” said Jem. “Benedict will deny everything, and it will be his word against yours—and you are a Downworlder—”

“There’s Will,” said Charlotte, and frowned. “Speaking of, where
is
Will?”

“Having a lie-in, no doubt,” said Jem, “and as for him being a witness, well, everyone thinks Will is a lunatic as it is—”

“Ah,” said a voice from the doorway, “having your annual everyone-thinks-Will-is-a-lunatic meeting, are you?”

“It’s biannual,” said Jem. “And no, this is not that meeting.”

Will’s eyes sought Tessa across the room. “They know about Jessamine?” he said. He looked tired, but not as tired as Tessa would have thought; he was pale, but there was a suppressed excitement about him that was almost like—happiness. She felt her stomach drop as memories of the previous night—the stars, the balcony, the
kissing—
swept over her.

When had he gotten home last night? she thought. How had he? And why did he look so—excited? Was he horrified by what had happened on the balcony between them last night, or did he find it amusing? And dear God, had he told
Jem
? Warlock powders, she told herself desperately. She had not been herself, acting of her own will. Surely Jem would understand that. It would break her heart to hurt him. If he even cared . . .

“Yes, they know all about Jessamine,” she said hastily. “She was questioned with the Mortal Sword and taken to the Silent City, and right now we’re having a meeting about what to do next, and it’s dreadfully important. Charlotte’s very upset.”

Charlotte looked at her in puzzlement.

“Well, you
are
,” Tessa said, nearly out of breath from speaking so quickly. “And you were asking for Will—”

“And here I am,” said Will, throwing himself down into a chair near Jem. One of his arms had been bandaged, his sleeve pulled down partway over it. The nails of his hand were crusted with dried blood. “Glad to hear Jessamine’s in the Silent City. Best place for her. What’s the next step?”

“
That’s
the meeting we were trying to have,” said Jem.

“Well, who knows she’s there?” Will asked practically.

“Just us,” said Charlotte, “and Brother Enoch, but he’s agreed not to inform the Clave for another day or so. Until we decide what to do. Which reminds me, I shall have some choice words for you, Will, haring off to Benedict Lightwood’s without informing me, and dragging Tessa with you.”

“There was no time to lose,” said Will. “By the time we’d have roused you and made you agree to the plan, Nathaniel could have been and gone. And you can’t say it was a dreadful idea. We’ve learned a great deal about Nathaniel and Benedict Lightwood—”

“Nathaniel Gray and Benedict Lightwood aren’t Mortmain.”

Will traced a pattern on the air with his long, elegant fingers. “Mortmain is the spider at the heart of the web,” he said. “The more we learn, the more we know how far his reach extends. Before last night we had no clue he had any connection to Lightwood; now we know the man is his puppet. I say we go to the Clave and report Benedict and Jessamine. Let Wayland take care of them. See what Benedict spills under the Mortal Sword.”

Charlotte shook her head. “No, I—I don’t think we can do that.”

Will tilted his head back. “Why not?”

“Jessamine said it was exactly what Mortmain wanted us to do. And she said it under the influence of the Mortal Sword. She wasn’t lying.”

“But she could have been
wrong
,” said Will. “Mortmain could have foreseen just this circumstance and have had Nate plant the thought in her head for us to discover.”

“D’you think he would have thought ahead like that?” said Henry.

“Assuredly,” said Will. “The man’s a strategist.” He tapped his temple. “Like me.”

“So you think we should go to the Clave?” asked Jem.

“Bloody hell, no,” said Will. “What if it is the truth? Then we’ll feel like right fools.”

Charlotte threw her hands up. “But you said—”

“I know what I
said
,” said Will. “But you have to look at consequences. If we go to the Clave and we’re wrong, then we’ve played into Mortmain’s hands. We still have a few days before the deadline is up. Going to the Clave early gains us nothing. If we investigate, and can proceed on a surer footing . . .”

“And how do you propose to investigate?” Tessa inquired.

Will swiveled his head to look at her. There was nothing in his cool blue eyes to recall the Will of the night before, who had touched her with such tenderness, who had whispered her name like a secret. “The problem with questioning Jessamine is that even when forced to tell the truth, there is a limit to her knowledge. We do, however, have one more connection to the Magister. Someone who is likely to know a great deal more. That is your brother, Nate, through Jessamine. He still trusts her. If she summons him to a meeting, then we will be able to capture him there.”

“Jessamine would never agree to do it,” said Charlotte. “Not now—”

Will gave her a dark look. “You
are
all in a lather, aren’t you?” he said. “Of course she wouldn’t. We will be asking Tessa to reprise her starring role as Jessamine, A Traitorous Young Lady of Fashion.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Jem said in a subdued voice. “For Tessa.”

Tessa looked at him quickly, and caught a flash of his silvery eyes. It was the first time he had looked at her since she had left his room that night. Was she imagining the concern in his voice when he spoke of danger to her, or was it simply the concern Jem had for
everyone
? Not wishing for her horrible demise was mere kindness, not—not what it was she hoped he felt.

Whatever that might be. Let him at least not despise her. . . .

“Tessa is fearless,” said Will. “And there will be little danger to her. We will send him a note arranging a meeting in a place where we might fall upon him easily and immediately. The Silent Brothers can torture him until he gives up the information that we need.”

“Torture?” said Jem. “This is Tessa’s brother—”

“Torture him,” said Tessa. “If that is what is necessary. I give you my permission.”

Charlotte looked up at her, shocked. “You can’t mean that.”

“You said there was a way to dig through his mind for secrets,” Tessa said. “I asked you not to do that, and you didn’t. I thank you for that, but I will not hold you to that promise. Dig through his mind if you must. There is more to all of this for me than there is for you, you know. For you this is about the Institute and the safety of Shadowhunters. I care about those things too, Charlotte. But Nate—he is working with Mortmain. Mortmain, who wants to trap me and use me, and for what we still do not know. Mortmain, who may know
what I am.
Nate told Jessamine my father was a demon and my mother was a Shadowhunter—”

Will sat up straight. “That’s impossible,” he said. “Shadow-hunters and demons—they cannot procreate. They cannot produce living offspring.”

“Then maybe it was a lie, like the lie about Mortmain being in Idris,” said Tessa. “That doesn’t mean
Mortmain
doesn’t know the truth. I must know what I am. If nothing else, I believe it is the key to why he wants me.”

There was sadness in Jem’s eyes as he looked at her, and then away. “Very well,” he said. “Will, how do you propose we lure him to a meeting? Don’t you think he knows Jessamine’s handwriting? Isn’t it likely they have some secret signal between them?”

“Jessamine must be convinced,” said Will. “To help us.”

“Please don’t suggest we torture her,” said Jem irritably. “The Mortal Sword has already been used. She has told us all she can—”

“The Mortal Sword did not give us their meeting places or any codes or pet names they might have used,” said Will. “Don’t you understand? This is Jessamine’s last chance. Her last chance to cooperate. To get leniency from the Clave. To be forgiven. Even if Charlotte keeps the Institute, do you think they will leave Jessamine’s fate in our hands? No, it will be left to the Consul and the Inquisitor. And they will not be kind. If she does this for us, it could mean her life.”

“I am not sure she cares about her life,” said Tessa softly.

“Everyone cares,” said Will. “Everyone wants to live.”

Jem turned away from him abruptly, and stared into the fire.

“The question is, who can we send to persuade her?” said Charlotte. “I cannot go. She hates and blames me most of all.”

“I could go,” Henry said, his gentle face troubled. “I could perhaps reason with the poor girl, speak with her of the folly of young love, how swiftly it fades in the face of life’s harsh reality—”

“No.” Charlotte’s tone was final.

“Well, I highly doubt she wishes to see
me
,” said Will. “It will have to be Jem. He’s impossible to hate. Even that devil cat likes him.”

Jem exhaled, still staring into the fire. “I will go to the Silent City,” he said. “But Tessa should come with me.”

Tessa looked up, startled. “Oh, no,” she said. “I do not think Jessamine likes me much. She feels I have betrayed her terribly by disguising myself as her, and I cannot say I blame her.”

“Yes,” said Jem. “But you are Nate’s sister. If she loves him as you say she does . . .” His eyes met hers across the room. “You know Nate. You can speak of him with authority. You may be able to make her believe what I cannot.”

“Very well,” Tessa said. “I will try.”

This seemed to signal the end of breakfast; Charlotte darted off to call for a carriage to come for them from the Silent City; it was how the Brothers liked to do things, she explained. Henry returned to his crypt and his inventions, and Jem, after a murmured word to Tessa, went to gather his hat and coat. Only Will remained, staring into the fire, and Tessa, seeing that he was not moving, waited until the door shut behind Jem and came around to stand between Will and the flames.

He raised his eyes to her slowly. He was still wearing the clothes he had been wearing the night before, though his white shirtfront was stained with blood and there was a long, jagged rent in his frock coat. There was a cut along his cheek, too, under his left eye. “Will,” she said.

“Aren’t you meant to be leaving with Jem?”

“And I shall,” she replied. “But I need a promise from you first.”

His eyes moved to the fire; she could see the dancing flames reflected in his pupils. “Then tell me what it is quickly. I have important business to get to. I plan to sulk all afternoon, followed, perhaps, by an evening of Byronic brooding and a nighttime of dissipation.”

“Dissipate all you like. I only want your assurance that you will tell no one what transpired between us last night on the balcony.”

“Oh, that was
you
,” said Will, with the air of someone who has just recollected a surprising detail.

“Spare me,” she snapped, stung despite herself. “We were under the influence of warlock powders. It meant nothing. Even I do not blame you for what happened, however tedious you are being about it now. But there is no need for anyone else to know, and if you were a gentleman—”

“But I am not.”

“But you are a Shadowhunter,” she said venomously. “And there is no future for a Shadowhunter who dallies with warlocks.”

His eyes danced with fire. He said, “You have become boring to tease, Tess.”

“Then give me your word you will tell no one, not even Jem, and I will go away and cease to bore you.”

“You have my word on the Angel,” he said. “It was not something I had planned to brag of in the first place. Though why you are so keen that no one here suspect you of a lack of virtue, I do not know.”

Jem’s face flashed across her inner eye. “No,” she said. “You truly don’t.” And with that she turned on her heel and stalked from the room, leaving him staring after her in confusion.

Sophie hurried down Piccadilly, her head bent, her eyes on the pavement beneath her feet. She was used to hushed murmurs and the occasional stare when she went out and eyes fell upon her scar; she had perfected a way of walking that hid her face beneath the shadow of her hat. She was not ashamed of the scar, but she hated the pity in the eyes of those who saw it.

She was wearing one of Jessamine’s old dresses. It was not out of fashion yet, but Jessamine was one of those girls who dubbed any dress she had worn more than three times “historical” and either cast it off or had it made over. It was a striped watered silk in green and white, and there were waxy white flowers and green leaves on her hat. All together, she thought, she could pass for a girl of good breeding—if she were not out on her own, that was—especially with her work-roughened hands covered in a pair of white kid gloves.

She saw Gideon before he saw her. He was leaning against a lamppost outside the great pale-green porte cochere of Fortnum & Mason. Her heart skipped a little beat as she looked at him, so handsome in his dark clothes, checking the time on a gold watch affixed to his waistcoat pocket by a thin chain. She paused for a moment, watching the people stream around him, the busy life of London roaring around him, and Gideon as calm as a rock in the middle of a churning river. All Shadowhunters had something of that to them, she thought, that stillness, that dark aura of separateness that set them apart from the current of mundane life.

He looked up then, and saw her, and smiled that smile that changed his whole face. “Miss Collins,” he said, coming forward, and she moved forward to meet him as well, feeling as she did so as if she were stepping into the circle of his separateness. The steady noise of city traffic, pedestrian and otherwise, seemed to dim, and it was just her and Gideon, facing each other on the street.