Clockwork Princess (25 page)

“Regretting your decision to remain at the Institute, Gabriel?” The cool, familiar voice cut through Gabriel’s feverish thoughts, and he looked up with a gasp.

The Consul stood over him, outlined by weak sunlight. He wore a heavy overcoat, gloves, and an expression as if Gabriel had done something to amuse him.

“I—” Gabriel caught his breath, forced the words to come out evenly. “No. Of course not.”

The Consul quirked an eyebrow. “That must be why you are crouching here around the side of the church, in bloodstained clothes, looking as if you’re terrified someone might find you.”

Gabriel scrambled to his feet, grateful for the hard stone wall behind him, bearing him up. He glared at the Consul. “Are you suggesting that I did not fight? That I ran away?”

“I am not suggesting any such thing,” said the Consul mildly. “I know that you stayed. I know that your brother was injured—”

Gabriel took a sharp rattling breath, and the Consul’s eyes narrowed.

“Ah,” he said. “So that is it, isn’t it? You saw your father die, and you thought you were going to see your brother die as well?”

Gabriel wanted to scrabble at the wall behind him. He wanted to hit the Consul in his unctuous, falsely sympathetic face. He wanted to run upstairs and throw himself down by his brother’s bed, refuse to leave, as Will had refused to leave Jem until Gabriel had forced him away. Will was a better brother to Jem than he himself was to Gideon, he had thought bitterly, and there was no blood shared between them. It was that in part that had driven him back out of the Institute, to this hiding space behind the stables. Surely no one would look for him here, he had told himself.

He had been wrong. But he was wrong so often, what was one more time?

“You saw your brother bleed,” said the Consul, still in the same mild voice. “And you remembered—”

“I killed my father,” Gabriel said. “I put an arrow through his eye—I spilled his blood. Do you think I don’t know what that means? His blood will cry to me from the ground, as Abel’s blood called to Cain. Everyone says he wasn’t my father anymore, but he was still all that remained of him. He was a Lightwood once. And Gideon could have been killed today. To lose him as well—”

“You see what I meant,” said the Consul. “When I spoke of Charlotte and her refusal to obey the Law. The cost of life it engenders. It could have been your brother’s life sacrificed to her overweening pride.”

“She does not seem proud.”

“Is that why you wrote this?” The Consul drew from his coat pocket the first letter Gabriel and Gideon had sent him. He looked at it in contempt and let it flutter to the ground. “This ridiculous missive, calculated to annoy me?”

“Did it work?”

For a moment Gabriel thought the Consul was going to hit him. But the look of anger passed quickly from the older man’s eyes; when he spoke again, it was calmly. “I suppose I should not have expected a Lightwood to react well to being blackmailed. Your father would not have. I confess I thought you of weaker stuff.”

“If you intend to try another avenue to persuade me, do not bother,” Gabriel said. “There is no point in it.”

“Really? You’re that loyal to Charlotte Branwell, after all her family did to yours? Gideon I might have expected this from—he takes after your mother. Too trusting in nature. But not you, Gabriel. From you I expected more pride in your blood.”

Gabriel let his head fall back against the wall. “There was nothing,” he said. “You understand? There was nothing in Charlotte’s correspondence to interest you, to interest
anyone
. You told us you would destroy us utterly if we did not report on her activities, but there was nothing to report on. You gave us no choice.”

“You could have told me the truth.”

“You did not want to hear it,” said Gabriel. “I am not stupid, and neither is my brother. You want Charlotte removed as head of the Institute, but you do not want it to be too clear that it was your hand that removed her. You wished to discover her engaged in some sort of illegal dealing. But the truth is that there is nothing to be discovered.”

“Truth is malleable. Truth can be uncovered, certainly, but it can also be created.”

Gabriel’s gaze snapped to the Consul’s face. “You would rather I lied to you?”

“Oh, no,” said the Consul. “Not to
me
.” He put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “The Lightwoods have always had honor. Your father made mistakes. You should not pay for them. Let me give you back what you have lost. Let me return to you Lightwood House, the good name of your family. You could live in the house with your brother and sister. You need no longer be dependent on the charity of the Enclave.”

Charity
. The word was bitter. Gabriel thought of his brother’s blood on the flagstones of the Institute. Had Charlotte not been so foolish, so determined to take the shape-changer girl into the bosom of the Institute against the objections of Clave and Consul, the Magister would not have sent his forces against the Institute. Gideon’s blood would not have been spilled.

In fact
, whispered a small voice at the back of his mind,
had it not been for Charlotte, my father’s secret would have remained a secret
. Benedict would not have been forced to betray the Magister. He would not have lost the source of the drug that held off the
astriola
. He might never have transformed. His sons might never have learned of his sins. The Lightwoods could have continued in blissful ignorance.

“Gabriel,” said the Consul. “This offer is for you only. It must be kept a secret from your brother. He is like your mother, too loyal. Loyal to Charlotte. His mistaken loyalty may do him credit, but it will not help us here. Tell him that I grew tired of your antics; tell him that I no longer desire any action from you. You are a good liar”—here he smiled sourly—“and I feel sure you can convince him. What do you say?”

Gabriel set his jaw. “What do you wish me to do?”

Will shifted in the armchair by the side of Jem’s bed. He had been here for hours now, and his back was growing stiff, but he refused to move. There was always the chance that Jem might wake, and expect him there.

At least it was not cold. Bridget had built up the fire in the grate; the damp wood popped and crackled, sending up the occasional blaze of sparks. The night outside the windows was dark without a hint of blue or clouds, only a flat black as if it had been painted on the glass.

Jem’s violin leaned against the foot of his bed, and his cane, still slicked with blood from the fight in the courtyard, lay beside it. Jem himself lay still, propped up on pillows, no color at all in his pale face. Will felt as if he were seeing him for the first time after a long absence, for that brief moment when you were apt to notice changes in familiar faces before they became part of the scenery of one’s life once again. Jem looked so thin—how had Will not noticed?—all extra flesh stripped away from the bones of cheek and jaw and forehead, so he was all hollows and angles. There was a faint bluish sheen to his closed eyelids, and to his mouth. His collarbones curved like the prow of a ship.

Will upbraided himself. How had he not realized all these months that Jem was dying—so quickly, so soon? How had he not seen the scythe and the shadow?

“Will.” It was a whisper at the door. He looked up dully and saw Charlotte there, her head around the doorway. “There is … someone here to see you.”

Will blinked as Charlotte moved out of the way and Magnus Bane stepped around her and into the room. For a moment Will could think of nothing to say.

“He says you summoned him,” Charlotte said, sounding a little dubious. Magnus stood, looking indifferent, in a charcoal-gray suit. He was slowly rolling his gloves, dark gray kid, off his thin brown hands.

“I
did
summon him,” Will said, feeling as if he were waking up. “Thank you, Charlotte.”

Charlotte gave him a look that mixed sympathy with the unspoken message
Be it on your head, Will Herondale
, and went out of the room, closing the door conspicuously behind her.

“You came,” Will said, aware that he sounded stupid. He never liked it when people observed the obvious aloud, and here he was doing just that. He could not shake his feeling of discombobulation. Seeing Magnus here, in the middle of Jem’s bedroom, was like seeing a faerie knight seated among the white-wigged barristers of the Old Bailey.

Magnus dropped his gloves on top of a table and moved toward the bed. He put out a hand to brace himself against one of the posts as he looked down at Jem, so still and white that he could have been carved on top of a tomb. “James Carstairs,” he said, murmuring the words under his voice as if they had some incantatory power.

“He’s dying,” Will said.

“That much is evident.” It could have sounded cold, but there were worlds of sadness in Magnus’s voice, a sadness that Will felt with a jolt of familiarity. “I thought you believed he had a few days, a week perhaps.”

“It is not just the lack of the drug.” Will’s voice sounded rusty; he cleared his throat. “In fact, we have a little of that, and have administered it. But there was a fight this afternoon, and he lost blood and was weakened. He is not strong enough, we fear, to recover himself.”

Magnus reached out and with great gentleness lifted Jem’s hand. There were bruises on his pale fingers, and the blue veins ran like a map of rivers under the skin of his wrist. “Is he suffering?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps it would be better to let him die.” Magnus looked at Will, his eyes dark gold-green. “Every life is finite, Will. And you knew, when you chose him, that he would die before you did.”

Will stared ahead of him. He felt as if he were hurtling down a dark tunnel, one that had no end, no sides to grip to slow his fall. “If you think that would be the best thing for him.”

“Will.” Magnus’s voice was gentle but urgent. “Did you bring me here because you hoped I could help him?”

Will looked up blindly. “I don’t know why I summoned you,” he said. “I don’t think it was because I believed there was anything you could do. I think rather I thought you were the only one who might understand.”

Magnus looked surprised. “The only one who might understand?”

“You have lived so long,” Will said. “You must have seen so many die, so many that you loved. And yet you survive and you go on.”

Magnus continued to look astonished. “You summoned me here—a warlock to the Institute, just after a battle in which you were nearly all killed—to
talk
?”

“I find you easy to talk to,” Will said. “I cannot say why.”

Magnus shook his head slowly, and leaned against the post of the bed. “You are
so
young,” he murmured. “But then again, I do not think a Shadowhunter has ever called upon me before simply to pass the watches of the night with him.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Will said. “Mortmain has taken Tessa, and I believe now I know where she might be. There is a part of me that wants nothing more than to go after her. But I cannot leave Jem. I swore an oath. And what if he wakes in the night and finds I am not here?” He looked as lost as a child. “He will think I left him willingly, not caring that he was dying. He will not know. And yet if he could speak, would he not tell me to go after Tessa? Is that not what he would want?” Will dropped his face into his hands. “I cannot say, and it is tearing me in half.”

Magnus looked at him silently for a long moment. “Does he know you are in love with Tessa?”

“No.” Will lifted his face, shocked. “No. I have never said a word. It was not his burden to bear.”

Magnus took a deep breath and spoke gently. “Will. You asked me for my wisdom, as someone who has lived many lifetimes and buried many loves. I can tell you that the end of a life is the sum of the love that was lived in it, that whatever you think you have sworn, being here at the end of Jem’s life is not what is important. It was being here for every other moment. Since you met him, you have never left him and never not loved him.
That
is what matters.”

“You really mean that,” Will said wonderingly, and then, “Why are you being so kind to me? I owe you a favor still, don’t I? I remember that, you know, though you have never called it in.”

“Haven’t I?” Magnus said, and then smiled at him. “Will, you treat me as a human being, a person like yourself; rare is the Shadowhunter who treats a warlock like that. I am not so heartless that I would call in a favor from a brokenhearted boy. One who I think, by the way, will be a very good man someday. So I will tell you this. I will stay here when you go, and I will watch over your Jem for you, and if he wakes, I will tell him where you went, and that it was for him. And I will do what I can to preserve his life: I do not have
yin fen
, but I do have magic, and perhaps there is something in an old spell book I might find that can help him.”

“I would count it a great favor,” Will said.

Magnus stood looking down at Jem. There was sadness etched on his face, that face that was usually so merry or sardonic or uncaring, a sadness that surprised Will. “‘
For
whence had that former sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die?’”
Magnus said.

Will looked up at him. “What was that?”

“
Confessions
of Saint Augustine,” said Magnus. “You asked me how I, being immortal, survive so many deaths. There is no great secret. You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.” He drew away from the bed. “I will give you a moment alone with him, to say good-bye as you need. You can find me in the library.”

Will nodded, speechless, as Magnus went to retrieve his gloves, then turned and left the room. Will’s mind was spinning.

He looked again at Jem, motionless in the bed.
I must accept that this is the end
, he thought, and even his thoughts felt hollow and distant.
I must accept that Jem will never look at me, never speak to me again. You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all
.

And yet it still did not seem real to him, as if it were a dream. He stood up and leaned over Jem’s still form. He touched his
parabatai
’s cheek lightly. It was cold.