Clockwork Angel

15 FOREIGN MUD

"Miss Tessa." The voice was Sophie's. Tessa turned and saw her framed in the doorway, a lantern swinging from her hand. "Are you all right?"

Tessa felt pitifully grateful to see the other girl. She had been feeling so alone. "I'm not hurt. Henry has gone after the creatures, though, and Charlotte—"

"They'll be just fine." Sophie put a hand on Tessa's elbow. "Come, let's get you inside, miss. You're bleeding."

"I am?" Puzzled, Tessa put her fingers up to touch her forehead; they came away stained red. "I must have struck my head when I fell against the steps. I didn't even feel it."

"Shock," Sophie said calmly, and Tessa thought how many times in her employment here Sophie must have done these things—bandaged up cuts, wiped away blood. "Come along, and I'll get a compress for your head."

Tessa nodded. With a last glance over her shoulder at the destruction in the courtyard, she let Sophie guide her back inside the Institute. The next short while was something of a blur. After Sophie helped her upstairs and into an armchair in the drawing room, she bustled off and returned moments later with Agatha, who pressed a cup of something hot into Tessa's hand.

Tessa knew what it was the moment she smelled it—brandy and water. She thought of Nate and hesitated, but once she'd had a few mouthfuls, things began to swim back into focus. Charlotte and Henry returned, bringing with them the smell of metal and fighting. Tight-lipped, Charlotte set her weapons down on a table and called for Will. He didn't respond, but Thomas did, hurrying down the corridor, his coat stained with blood, to tell her that Will was with Jem, and that Jem was going to be all right.

"The creatures injured him, and he lost some blood," Thomas said, running a hand through his tangled brown hair. He looked at Sophie as he said it. "But Will gave him an iratze—"

"And his medicine?" Sophie asked quickly. "Has he had some of that?"

Thomas nodded, and the tight set of Sophie's shoulders relaxed just a bit. Charlotte's gaze softened as well. "Thank you, Thomas," she said. "Perhaps you can see if he requires anything else?"

Thomas nodded, and set off back down the corridor with a last glance over his shoulder at Sophie, who did not seem to notice. Charlotte sank down onto the ottoman opposite Tessa. "Tessa, can you tell us what happened?"

Clutching the cup, her fingers cold despite its heat, Tessa shuddered. "Did you catch the ones that escaped? The—whatever they are. The metal monsters?"

Charlotte shook her head gravely. "We pursued them through the streets, but they disappeared once we reached Hungerford Bridge. Henry thinks there was some magic involved."

"Or a secret tunnel," Henry said. "I did also suggest a secret tunnel, my dear." He looked at Tessa. His friendly face was streaked with blood and oil, his brightly striped waistcoat slashed and torn. He looked like a schoolboy who'd been in a bad scrape of some sort. "Did you see them coming out of a tunnel, perhaps, Miss Gray?"

"No," Tessa said, her voice half a whisper. To clear her throat, she took another sip of the drink Agatha had given her, and set the cup down before running through it all—the bridge, the coachman, the chase, the words the creature had spoken, the way they had burst through the Institute gates. Charlotte listened with a pinched white face; even Henry looked grim. Sophie, sitting quietly on a chair, attended to the story with the grave intensity of a schoolgirl.

"They said it was a declaration of war," Tessa finished. "That they were coming to wreak revenge on us—on you, I suppose—for what happened to de Quincey."

"And the creature referred to him as the Magister?" Charlotte asked.

Tessa pressed her lips together firmly to keep them from trembling. "Yes. He said the Magister wanted me and that he had been sent to retrieve me. Charlotte, this is my fault. If it weren't for me, de Quincey wouldn't have sent those creatures tonight, and Jem—" She looked down at her hands. "Maybe you should just let him have me."

Charlotte was shaking her head. "Tessa, you heard de Quincey last night. He hates Shadowhunters. He would strike at the Clave regardless of you. And if we gave you to him, all we would be doing is placing a potentially valuable weapon in his hands." She looked at Henry. "I wonder why he waited this long. Why not come for Tessa when she was out with Jessie? Unlike demons, these clockwork creatures can go out during the day."

"They can," said Henry, "but not without alarming the populace—not yet. They don't look enough like ordinary human beings to pass without exciting comment." He took a shining gear from his pocket and held it up. "I examined the remains of the automatons down in the courtyard. These ones de Quincey sent after Tessa on the bridge are not like the one in the crypt. They're more sophisticated, made of tougher metals, and with a more advanced jointure. Someone's been working on the design in those blueprints Will found, refining it. The creatures are faster now, and deadlier."

But how refined? "There was a spell," Tessa said quickly. "On the blueprint. Magnus deciphered it... ."

"The binding spell. Meant to tie a demon energy to an automaton." Charlotte looked at Henry. "Did de Quincey—?"

"Succeed in performing it?" Henry shook his head. "No. Those creatures are simply configured to follow a pattern, like music boxes. But they are not animate. They do not have intelligence or will or life. And there is nothing demonic about them."

Charlotte exhaled in relief. "We must find de Quincey before he succeeds in his goal. Those creatures are difficult enough to kill as it is. The Angel knows how many of them he's made, or how difficult they'd be to kill if they had the cunning of demons."

"An army born neither of Heaven nor Hell," said Tessa softly.

"Exactly," said Henry. "De Quincey must be found and stopped. And in the meantime, Tessa, you must stay in the Institute. Not that we want to keep you a prisoner here, but it would be safer if you remained inside."

"But for how long—?" Tessa began—and broke off, as Sophie's expression changed. She was looking at something over Tessa's shoulder, her hazel eyes suddenly wide. Tessa followed her gaze.

It was Will. He stood in the doorway of the drawing room. There was a streak of blood across his white shirt; it looked like paint. His face was still, almost masklike, his gaze fixed on Tessa. As their eyes met across the room, she felt the pulse jump in her throat.

"He wants to talk to you," Will said.

There was a moment of silence as everyone in the drawing room looked at him. There was something forbidding about the intensity of Will's gaze, the tension of his stillness. Sophie had her hand at her throat, her fingers nervously fluttering at her collar.

"Will," Charlotte said finally. "Do you mean Jem? Is he all right?"

"He's awake and talking," Will said. His gaze slid momentarily to Sophie, who had glanced down, as if to hide her expression. "And now he wants to speak to Tessa."

"But ..." Tessa looked toward Charlotte, who seemed troubled. "Is he all right? Is he well enough?"

Will's expression didn't change. "He wants to talk to you," he said, enunciating each word very clearly. "So you will get up, and you will come with me, and you will talk to him. Do you understand?"

"Will," Charlotte began sharply, but Tessa was already rising, smoothing down her rumpled skirts with the flat of her hands. Charlotte looked worriedly at her, but said nothing more.

Will was utterly silent as they made their way down the corridor, witchlight sconces throwing their shadows against the far walls in spindly patterns. There was blackish oil as well as blood splattered on his white shirt, smudging his cheek; his hair was tangled, his jaw set. She wondered if he had slept at all since dawn, when she had left him in the attic. She wanted to ask him, but everything about him—his posture, his silence, the set of his shoulders—said that no questions would be welcome.

He pushed open the door of Jem's room and ushered her in ahead of him. The only light in the room came from the window and from a taper of witchlight on the bedside table. Jem lay half-under the covers of the high carved bed. He was as white as his nightshirt, the lids of his closed eyes dark blue. Leaning against the side of the bed was his jade-headed cane. Somehow it had been repaired and was whole again, gleaming as if new.

Jem turned his face toward the sound of the door, not opening his eyes. "Will?"

Will did something then that amazed Tessa. He forced his face into a smile, and said, in a passably cheerful tone, "I brought her, like you asked."

Jem's eyes flicked open; Tessa was relieved to see that they had returned to their usual color. Still, they had the look of shadowed holes in his pale face.

"Tessa," he said, "I'm so sorry."

Tessa looked at Will—for permission or guidance, she wasn't sure, but he was staring straight ahead. Clearly he would be no help. Without another glance at him she hurried across the room and sank down in the chair by the side of Jem's bed. "Jem," she said in a low voice, "you shouldn't be sorry, or be apologizing to me. I should be the one apologizing. You didn't do anything wrong. I was the target of those clockwork things, not you." She patted the coverlet gently; wanting to touch his hand but not daring to. "If it wasn't for me, you never would have been hurt."

"Hurt." Jem spoke the word on an exhale of breath, almost with disgust. "I wasn't hurt."

"James." Will's tone held a warning note.

"She should know, William. Otherwise she'll think this was all her fault."

"You were ill," Will said, not looking at Tessa as he spoke. "It's nobody's fault." He paused. "I just think you should be careful. You're not well still. Talking will just tire you out."

"There are more important things than being careful." Jem struggled to sit up, the cords in his neck straining as he lifted himself, propping his back against the pillows. When he spoke again, he was slightly breathless. "If you don't like it, Will, you don't have to stay."

Tessa heard the door open and close behind her with a soft click. She knew without looking that Will had gone. She couldn't help it—a slight pang went through her, the way it always seemed to do when he left a room.

Jem sighed. "He's so stubborn."

"He was right," Tessa said. "At least, he was right that you don't need to tell me anything you don't want to. I know none of it was your fault."

"Fault has nothing to do with it," Jem said. "I just think you might as well have the truth. Concealing it rarely helps anything." He looked toward the door for a moment, as if his words were half-meant for the absent Will. Then he sighed again, raking his hands through his hair. "You know," he said, "that for most of my life I lived in Shanghai with my parents? That I was raised in the Institute there?"

"Yes," Tessa said, wondering if he was still a little dazed. "You told me, on the bridge. And you told me that a demon had killed your parents."

"Yanluo," said Jem. There was hatred in his voice. "The demon had a grudge against my mother. She'd been responsible for the death of a number of its demon offspring. They'd had a nest in a small town called Lijiang, where they'd been feeding on local children. She burned the nest out and escaped before the demon found her. Yanluo bided its time for years—Greater Demons live forever—but it never forgot. When I was eleven, Yanluo found a weak spot in the ward that protected the Institute, and tunneled inside. The demon killed the guards and took my family prisoner, binding us all to chairs in the great room of the house. Then it went to work.

"Yanluo tortured me in front of my parents," Jem went on, his voice empty. "Over and over it injected me with a burning demon poison that scorched my veins and tore at my mind. For two days I went in and out of hallucinations and dreams. I saw the world drowned in rivers of blood, and I heard the screams of all the dead and dying throughout history. I saw London burning, and great metal creatures striding here and there like huge spiders—" He caught his breath. He was very pale, his nightshirt stuck to his chest with sweat, but he waved away Tessa's expression of concern. "Every few hours I would come back to reality long enough to hear my parents screaming for me. Then on the second day, I came back and heard only my mother. My father had been silenced. My mother's voice was raw and cracked, but she was still saying my name. Not my name in English, but the name she had given me when I was born: Jian. I can still hear her sometimes, calling out for me."

His hands were tight on the pillow he held, tight enough that the fabric had begun to tear.

"Jem," Tessa said softly. "You can stop. You needn't tell me all of it now."

"You remember when I said that Mortmain had probably made his money smuggling opium?" he asked. "The British bring opium into China by the ton. They have made a nation of addicts out of us. In Chinese we call it 'foreign mud' or 'black smoke.' In some ways Shanghai, my city, is built on opium. It wouldn't exist as it does without it. The city is full of dens where hollow-eyed men starve to death because all they want is the drug, more of the drug. They'll give anything for it. I used to despise men like that. I couldn't understand how they were so weak."

He took a deep breath.

"By the time the Shanghai Enclave became worried at the silence from the Institute and broke in to save us, both my parents were already dead. I don't remember any of it. I was screaming and delirious. They took me to the Silent Brothers, who healed my body as well as they could. There was one thing they couldn't fix, though. I had become addicted to the substance the demon had poisoned me with. My body was dependent on it the way an opium addict's body is dependent on the drug. They tried to wean me off it, but going without it caused terrible pain. Even when they were able to block the pain with warlock spells, the lack of the drug pushed my body to the brink of death. After weeks of experimentation they decided that there was nothing to be done: I could not live without the drug. The drug itself meant a slow death, but to take me off it would mean a very quick one."

"Weeks of experimentation?" Tessa echoed. "When you were only eleven years old? That seems cruel."

"Goodness—real goodness—has its own sort of cruelty to it," said Jem, looking past her. "There, beside you on the bedside table, is a box. Can you give it to me?"

Tessa lifted the box. It was made of silver, its lid inlaid with an enamel scene that depicted a slim woman in white robes, barefoot, pouring water out of a vase into a stream. "Who is she?" she asked, handing the box to Jem.

"Kwan Yin. The goddess of mercy and compassion. They say she hears every prayer and every cry of suffering and does what she can to answer it. I thought perhaps if I kept the cause of my suffering in a box with her image on it, it might make that suffering a little less." He flicked open the clasp on the box, and the lid slid back. Inside was a thick layer of what Tessa thought at first was ash, but the color was too bright. It was a layer of thick silvery powder almost the same bright silver color as Jem's eyes.

"This is the drug," he said. "It comes from a warlock dealer we know in Limehouse. I take some of it every day. It's why I look so—so ghostly; it's what drains the color from my eyes and hair, even my skin. I wonder sometimes if my parents would even recognize me... ." His voice trailed off. "If I have to fight, I take more. Taking less weakens me. I had taken none today before we went out to the bridge. That's why I collapsed. Not because of the clockwork creatures. Because of the drug. Without any in my system, the fighting, the running, was too much for me. My body started feeding on itself, and I collapsed." He shut the box with a snap, and handed it back to Tessa. "Here. Put it back where it was."

"You don't need any?"

"No. I've had enough tonight."

"You said that the drug meant a slow death," Tessa said. "So do you mean the drug is killing you?"

Jem nodded, strands of bright hair falling across his forehead.

Tessa felt her heart skip a painful beat. "And when you fight, you take more of it? So, why don't you stop fighting? Will and the others—"

"Would understand," Jem finished for her. "I know they would. But there is more to life than not dying. I am a Shadowhunter. It is what I am, not just what I do. I can't live without it."

"You mean you don't want to."

Will, Tessa thought, would have been angry if she'd said that to him, but Jem just looked at her intently. "I mean I don't want to. For a long time I searched for a cure, but eventually I stopped, and asked Will and the rest to stop as well. I am not this drug, or its hold on me. I believe that I am better than that. That my life is about more than that, however and whenever it might end."

"Well, I don't want you to die," Tessa said. "I don't know why I feel it so strongly—I've just met you—but I don't want you to die."

"And I trust you," he said. "I don't know why—I've just met you—but I do." His hands were no longer clutching the pillow, but lying flat and still on the tasseled surface. They were thin hands, the knuckles just slightly too big for the rest of them, the fingers tapering and slender, a thick white scar running across the back of his right thumb. Tessa wanted to slide her own hand over his, wanted to hold his tightly and comfort him—

"Well, this is all very touching." It was Will, of course, having come soundlessly into the room. He had changed his bloody shirt, and he seemed to have washed up hastily. His hair looked damp, his face scrubbed, though the crescents of his nails were still black with dirt and oil. He looked from Jem to Tessa, his face carefully blank. "I see that you told her."

"I did." There was nothing challenging in Jem's tone; he never looked at Will with anything but affection, Tessa thought, no matter how provoking Will was. "It's done. There's no more need for you to fret about it."

"I disagree," said Will. He gave Tessa a pointed look. She remembered what he had said about not tiring Jem out, and rose from her chair.

Jem gave her a wistful look. "Must you go? I was rather hoping you'd stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must."

"I'll stay," Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. "I can minister angelically."

"None too convincingly. And you're not as pretty to look at as Tessa is," Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow.

"How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing at the radiance of the sun."

Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong."

"Besides," Will said, his eyes on Tessa, "it's hardly fair to keep Tessa from her brother. She hasn't had a chance to look in on him since this morning."

"That's true." Jem's eyes fluttered open for a moment; they were silvery black, dark with sleep. "My apologies, Tessa. I nearly forgot."

Tessa said nothing. She was too busy being horrified that Jem wasn't the only one who had nearly forgotten about her brother. It's all right, she wanted to say, but Jem's eyes were shut again, and she thought he might be asleep. As she watched, Will leaned forward and drew up the blankets, covering Jem's chest.

Tessa turned around and let herself out as quietly as she could.

The light in the corridors was burning low, or perhaps it had simply been brighter in Jem's room. Tessa stood for a moment, blinking, before her eyes adjusted. She gave a start. "Sophie?"

The other girl was a series of pale smudges in the dimness—her pale face, and the white cap dangling from her hand by one of its ties.

"Sophie?" Tessa said. "Is something wrong?"

"Is he all right?" Sophie demanded, a strange small hitch in her voice. "Is he going to be all right?"

Too startled to make sense of her question, Tessa said, "Who?"

Sophie stared at her, her eyes mutely tragic. "Jem."

Not Master Jem, or Mr. Carstairs. Jem. Tessa looked at her in utter astonishment, suddenly remembering. It's all right to love someone who doesn't love you back, as long as they're worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it.

Of course, Tessa thought. I'm so stupid. It's Jem she's in love with.

"He's fine," she said as gently as she could. "He's resting, but he was sitting up and talking. He'll be quite recovered soon, I'm sure. Perhaps if you wanted to see him—"

"No!" Sophie exclaimed at once. "No, that wouldn't be right or proper." Her eyes were shining. "I'm much obliged to you, miss. I—"

She turned then, and hurried away down the corridor. Tessa looked after her, troubled and perplexed. How could she not have seen it earlier? How could she have been so blind? How strange to have the power to literally transform yourself into other people, and yet be so unable to put yourself in their place.

The door to Nate's room was slightly ajar; Tessa pushed it open the rest of the way as quietly as she could, and peered inside.

Her brother was a heaped mound of blankets. The light from the guttering candle on the bedside table illuminated the fair hair spread across his pillow. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling regularly.

In the armchair beside the bed sat Jessamine. She, too, was asleep. Her blond hair was coming out of its carefully arranged chignon, the curls tumbling down onto her shoulders. Someone had thrown a heavy woolen blanket over her, and her hands clutched it, drawing it up against her chest. She looked younger than Tessa had ever seen her look, and vulnerable. There was nothing about her of the girl who had slaughtered the faerie in the park.

It was so odd, Tessa thought, what brought out tenderness in people. It was never what you would have expected. As quietly as she could, she turned away, shutting the door behind her.

Tessa slept fitfully that night, waking often amid dreams of clockwork creatures coming for her, reaching out their spindly metal-jointed hands to catch and tear at her skin. Eventually that dissolved into a dream of Jem, who lay asleep in a bed while silver powder rained down on him, burning where it struck the coverlet he lay under, until eventually the whole bed burned, and Jem slept peacefully on, oblivious to Tessa's warning cries.

Finally she dreamed of Will, standing at the apex of the dome of St. Paul's, alone under the light of a white, white moon. He wore a black frock coat, and the Marks on his skin were plain to be seen on his neck and hands under the glow of the sky. He looked down on London like a bad angel pledged to save the city from its own worst dreams, while below him London slept on, indifferent and unknowing.

Tessa was torn from her dream by a voice in her ear, and a hand vigorously shaking her shoulder. "Miss!" It was Sophie, her voice sharp. "Miss Gray, you simply must wake. It's your brother."

Tessa shot upright, scattering pillows. Afternoon light poured through the bedroom windows, illuminating the room—and Sophie's anxious face. "Nate's awake? He's all right?"

"Yes—I mean, no. I mean, I don't know, miss." There was a little catch in Sophie's voice. "You see, he's gone missing."