Clockwork Princess

5 A HEART DIVIDED

To: Members of the Council

From: Josiah Wayland, Consul

It is with a weighted heart that I take up my pen to write to you, gentlemen. Many of you have known me for a good number of years, and for many of those I have led you in the position of Consul. I believe I have led you well, and have served the Angel as best I could. It is, however, human to err, and I believe I have done such in appointing Charlotte Branwell head of the London Institute.

When I granted her the position, I believed that she would follow in the footsteps of her father and prove a faithful leader, obedient to the rule of the Clave. I also believed that her husband would stem her natural feminine tendencies toward impulsivity and thoughtlessness. Unfortunately, this has not proved to be the case. Henry Branwell lacks the strength of character to restrain his wife, and, unfettered by womanly duty, she has left the virtues of obedience far behind. Only the other day I discovered that Charlotte had given orders to have the spy Jessamine Lovelace recalled to the Institute upon her release from the Silent City, despite my express wishes that she be sent to Idris. I also suspect she lends an ear to those who are not friendly to the cause of the Nephilim and may in fact even be in league with Mortmain, such as the werewolf Woolsey Scott.

The Council does not serve the Consul; it has always been the other way around. I am a symbol of the power of the Council and the Clave. When my authority is undermined by disobedience, it undermines the authority of us all. Better a dutiful boy like my nephew, whose worth is untested, than one whose worth has been tested and found wanting.

In the Angel’s name,

Consul Josiah Wayland

Will remembered.

Another day, months ago, in Jem’s bedroom. Rain pounding against the windows of the Institute, streaking the glass with clear lines.

“And that is all?” Jem had asked. “That is the whole of it? The truth?” He’d been sitting at his desk, one of his legs bent up on the chair beneath him; he’d looked very young. His violin had been propped against the side of the chair. He had been playing it when Will had come in and, without preamble, announced that it was the end of pretense—he had a confession to make, and he meant to make it now.

That had ended the Bach. Jem had put the violin away, his eyes on Will’s face the whole time, anxiety blooming behind his silver eyes as Will had paced and spoken, paced and spoken, until he had run out of words.

“That is all of it,” Will had said finally when he was done. “And I do not blame you if you hate me. I could understand it.”

There’d been a long pause. Jem’s gaze had been steady on his face, steady and silver in the wavering light of the fire. “I could never hate you, William.”

Will’s guts contracted now as he saw another face, a pair of steady blue-gray eyes looking up at his. “I tried to hate you, Will, but I could never manage it,” she had said. In that moment Will had been painfully aware that what he had told Jem was not “the whole of it.” There was more truth. There was his love for Tessa. But it was his burden to bear, not Jem’s. It was something that must be hidden for Jem to be happy. “I deserve your hatred,” Will had said to Jem, his voice cracking. “I put you in danger. I believed I was cursed and that all who cared for me would die; I let myself care for you, and let you be a brother to me, risking the danger to you—”

“There was no danger.”

“But I believed there was. If I held a revolver to your head, James, and pulled the trigger, would it really matter if I did not know that there were no bullets in the chambers?”

Jem’s eyes had widened, and then he’d laughed, a soft laugh. “Did you think I did not know you had a secret?” he’d said. “Did you think I walked into my friendship with you with my eyes shut? I did not know the nature of the burden you carried. But I knew there was a burden.” He’d stood up. “I knew you thought yourself poison to all those around you,” he’d added. “I knew you thought there to be some corruptive force about you that would break me. I meant to show you that I would not break, that love was not so fragile. Did I do that?”

Will had shrugged once, helplessly. He had almost wished Jem would be angry with him. It would have been easier. He’d never felt so small within himself as he did when he faced Jem’s expansive kindness. He thought of Milton’s Satan. Abashed the Devil stood, / And felt how awful goodness is. “You saved my life,” Will had said.

A smile had spread across Jem’s face, as brilliant as the sunrise breaking over the Thames. “That is all I ever wanted.”

“Will?” A soft voice broke him from his reverie. Tessa, sitting across from him inside the carriage, her gray eyes the color of rain in the dim light. “What are you thinking of?”

With an effort he pulled himself out of memory, his eyes fixing on her face. Tessa’s face. She wore no hat, and the hood of her brocade cloak had fallen back. Her face was pale—wider across the cheekbones, slightly pointed at the chin. He thought he had never seen a face that had such a power of expression: Her every smile divided his heart as lightning might split a blackened tree, as did her every look of sorrow. At the moment she was gazing at him with a wistful concern that caught his heart. “Jem,” he said, with perfect honesty. “I was thinking of his reaction when I told him of Marbas’s curse.”

“He felt only sorrow for you,” she said immediately. “I know he did; he told me as much.”

“Sorrow but not pity,” said Will. “Jem has always given me exactly what I needed in the way that I needed it, even when I did not know myself what I required. All parabatai are devoted. We must be, to give so much of ourselves to each other, even if we gain in strength by doing so. But with Jem it is different. For so many years I needed him to live, and he kept me alive. I thought he did not know that he was doing it, but maybe he did.”

“Perhaps,” Tessa said. “He would never have counted a moment of such effort as wasted.”

“He has never said anything to you of it?”

She shook her head. Her small hands, in their white gloves, were in fists in her lap. “He speaks of you only with the greatest pride, Will,” she said. “He admires you more than you could ever know. When he learned of the curse, he was heartbroken for you, but there was also, almost, a sort of . . .”

“Vindication?”

She nodded. “He had always believed you were good,” she said. “And then it was proven.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said bitterly. “To be good and to be cursed, it is not the same thing.”

She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin, only the cloth of the gloves, and yet it did not matter. You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer. “You are good, Will,” she said. “There is no one better placed than I am to be able to say with perfect confidence how good you really are.”

He said slowly, not wanting her to move her hands away, “You know, when we were fifteen years old, Yanluo, the demon who murdered Jem’s parents, was finally slain. Jem’s uncle determined to relocate himself from China to Idris and invited Jem to come and live with him there. Jem refused—for me. He said you do not leave your parabatai. That it was part of the words of the oath. ‘Thy people shall be my people.’ I wonder, if I had had the chance to return to my family, would I have done the same for him?”

“You are doing it,” Tessa said. “Do not think I do not know that Cecily wants you to return home with her. And do not think I do not know that you remain for Jem’s sake.”

“And yours,” he said before he could stop himself. She withdrew her hands from his, and he cursed himself silently and savagely: How could you have been so foolish? How could you, after two months? You’ve been so careful. Your love for her is only a burden she endures out of politeness. Remember that.

But Tessa was only pulling aside the curtain as the carriage came to a stop. They were rolling into a mews, from whose entry hung a sign: ALL DRIVERS OF VEHICLES ARE DIRECTED TO WALK THEIR HORSES WHILE PASSING UNDER THIS ARCHWAY. “We are here,” she said, as if he had not said a word. Perhaps he had not, Will thought. Perhaps he had not spoken aloud. Perhaps he was only losing his mind. Certainly it was not unimaginable, under the circumstances.

When the carriage door opened, it brought with it a blast of cool Chelsea air. He saw Tessa raise her head as Cyril helped her down. He joined Tessa on the cobblestones. The place smelled of the Thames. Before the Embankment had been built, the river had come much closer to these rows of houses, their edges softened by gaslight in the darkness. Now the river was separated by a greater distance, but one could still smell the salt-dirt-iron tang of water.

The front of No. 16 was Georgian, made of plain red brickwork, with a bay window that jutted out over the front door. There was a small paved court and a garden behind an elegant fence with a great deal of delicate scrolling ironwork. The gate was already open. Tessa pushed through and marched up the front steps to knock upon the door, Will only a few steps behind her.

The door was opened by Woolsey Scott, wearing a canary-yellow brocaded silk dressing gown over trousers and a shirt. He had a gold monocle perched in one eye socket, and regarded them both through it with some distaste. “Bother,” he said. “I would have had the footman answer and send you away, but I thought you were somebody else.”

“Who?” Tessa inquired, which did not seem to Will to be germane to the issue, but it was Tessa’s way—she was forever asking questions; leave her alone in a room, and she’d begin asking questions of the furniture and plants.

“Someone with absinthe.”

“Swallow enough of that stuff and you’ll think you’re somebody else,” said Will. “We’re seeking Magnus Bane; if he isn’t here, just tell us and we’ll not take up more of your time.”

Woolsey sighed as if greatly prevailed upon. “Magnus,” he called. “It’s your blue-eyed boy.”

There were footsteps in the corridor behind Woolsey, and Magnus appeared in full evening dress, as if he had just come from a ball. Starched white shirtfront and cuffs, swallowtail black coat, and hair like a ragged fringe of dark silk. His eyes flicked from Will to Tessa. “And to what do I owe the honor, at such a late hour?”

“A favor,” Will said, and amended himself when Magnus’s eyebrows went up. “A question.”

Woolsey sighed and stepped back from the door. “Very well. Come into the drawing room.”

No one offered to take their hats or coats, and once they reached the drawing room, Tessa stripped off her gloves and stood with her hands close to the fire, shivering slightly. Her hair was a damp mass of curls at the back of her neck, and Will looked away from her before he could remember what it felt like to put his hands through that hair and feel the strands wind about his fingers. It was easier at the Institute, with Jem and the others to distract him, to remember that Tessa was not his to recall that way. Here, feeling as if he were facing the world with her by his side—feeling that she was here for him instead of, quite sensibly, for the health of her own fiancé—it was nearly impossible.

Woolsey threw himself into a flower-patterned armchair. He had plucked the monocle from his eye and was swinging it around his fingers on its long gold chain. “I simply cannot wait to hear what this is about.”

Magnus moved toward the fireplace and leaned against the mantel, the very picture of a young gentleman at leisure. The room was painted a pale blue, and decorated with paintings that featured vast fields of granite, gleaming blue seas, and men and women in classical dress. Will thought he recognized a reproduction of an Alma-Tadema—or at least it must have been a reproduction, mustn’t it?

“Don’t gape at the walls, Will,” said Magnus. “You have been all but absent for months. What brings you here now?”

“I did not want to trouble you,” Will muttered. It was only partly the truth. Once the curse Will had believed he was under had been proved, by Magnus, to be false, he had avoided Magnus—not because he was angry with the warlock, or had no more need of him, but because the sight of Magnus caused him pain. He had written him a short letter, telling him what had happened and that his secret was a secret no more. He had spoken of Jem’s engagement to Tessa. He had asked that Magnus not reply. “But this—this is a crisis.”

Magnus’s cat eyes widened. “What sort of crisis?”

“It is about yin fen,” said Will.

“Gracious,” Woolsey said. “Don’t tell me my pack is taking the stuff again?”

“No,” Will said. “There is none of it to take.” He saw dawning comprehension on Magnus’s face and went on to explain the situation, as best he could. Magnus didn’t change expression as Will spoke, any more than Church did when someone spoke to him. Magnus only watched out of his gold-green eyes until Will was done.

“And without the yin fen?” Magnus said at last.

“He will die,” said Tessa, turning from the fireplace. Her cheeks were flushed carnation pink, whether from the heat of the fire or from the stress of the situation, Will could not tell. “Not immediately, but—within the week. His body cannot sustain itself without the powder.”

“How does he take it?” Woolsey inquired.

“Dissolved in water, or inhaled—What has that got to do with anything?” Will demanded.

“Nothing,” Woolsey said. “I was only wondering. Demon drugs are a curious thing.”

“For us, who love him, it is a sight more than curious,” Tessa said. Her chin was up, and Will remembered what he had said to her once, about being like Boadicea. She was brave, and he adored her for it, even as it was employed in the defense of her love for someone else.

“Why have you come to me with this?” Magnus’s voice was quiet.

“You helped us before,” Tessa said. “We thought perhaps you could help again. You helped with de Quincey—and Will, with his curse—”

“I am not at your beck and call,” Magnus said. “I helped with de Quincey because Camille requested it of me, and Will, once, because he offered me a favor in return. I am a warlock. And I do not serve Shadowhunters for free.”

“And I am not a Shadowhunter,” said Tessa.

There was a silence. Then: “Hmm,” Magnus said, and turned away from the fire. “I understand, Tessa, that you are to be congratulated?”

“I . . .”

“On your engagement to James Carstairs.”

“Oh.” She flushed, and her hand went to her throat, where she always wore Jem’s mother’s necklace, his gift to her. “Yes. Thank you.”

Will felt rather than saw Woolsey’s eyes on all three of them—Magnus, Tessa, and himself—sliding from one to the other, the mind behind the eyes examining, deducing, enjoying.

Will’s shoulders tightened. “I would be happy to offer anything,” he said. “This time. Another favor, or whatever you wanted, for the yin fen. If it’s payment, I could arrange—that is, I could try—”

“I may have helped you before,” Magnus said. “But this—” He sighed. “Think, the pair of you. If someone is buying up all the yin fen in the country, then it is someone who has a reason. And who has a reason to do that?”

“Mortmain,” Tessa whispered before Will could say it. He could still remember his own voice:

“Mortmain’s minions have been buying up the yin fen supply in the East End. I confirmed it. If you had run out and he was the only one with a supply . . .”

“We would have been put in his power,” said Jem. “Unless you were willing to let me die, of course, which would be the sensible course of action.”

But with enough yin fen to last them twelve months, Will had thought there was no danger. Had thought that Mortmain would find some other way to harry and torment them, for surely he would see this plan could not work. Will had not expected a year’s worth of the drug to be gone in eight weeks.

“You do not want to help us,” Will said. “You do not want to position yourself as an enemy of Mortmain’s.”

“Well, can you blame him?” Woolsey rose in a whirl of yellow silk. “What could you possibly have to offer that would make the risk worth it to him?”

“I will give you anything,” said Tessa in a low voice that Will felt in his bones. “Anything at all, if you can help us help Jem.”

Magnus gripped a handful of his black hair. “God, the two of you. I can make inquiries. Track down some of the more unusual shipping routes. Old Molly—”

“I’ve been to her,” Will said. “Something’s frightened her so badly, she won’t even crawl out of her grave.”

Woolsey snorted. “And that doesn’t tell you anything, little Shadowhunter? Is it really worth all this, just to stretch your friend’s life out another few months, another year? He will die anyway. And the sooner he dies, the sooner you can have his fiancée, the one you’re in love with.” He cut his amused gaze toward Tessa. “Really you ought to be counting with great eagerness the days till he expires.”

Will did not know what happened after that; everything went suddenly white, and Woolsey’s monocle was flying across the room. Will’s head hit something painfully, and the werewolf was under him, kicking and swearing, and they were rolling across the rug, and there was a sharp pain in his wrist, where Woolsey had clawed him. The pain cleared his head, and he was aware that Woolsey was pinning him to the ground, his eyes gone yellow and his teeth bared and as sharp as daggers, ready to bite.

“Stop it. Stop it!” Tessa, by the fire, had seized up a poker; Will choked and put his hand against Woolsey’s face, pushing him away. Woolsey yelled, and suddenly the weight was off Will’s chest; Magnus had lifted the werewolf and shoved him away. Then Magnus’s hands were fisted in the back of Will’s jacket, and Will found himself being dragged from the room, Woolsey staring after him, one hand to his face where Will’s silver ring had burned his cheekbone.

“Let me go. Let me go!” Will struggled, but Magnus’s grip was like iron. He marched Will down the corridor and into a half-lit library. Will pulled free just as Magnus let go of him, resulting in an inelegant stumble that fetched him up against the back of a red velvet sofa. “I cannot leave Tessa alone with Woolsey—”

“Her virtue is hardly in danger from him,” Magnus said dryly. “Woolsey will behave himself, which is more than I can say for you.”

Will turned around slowly, wiping blood from his face. “You’re glaring at me,” he said to Magnus. “You look like Church before he bites someone.”

“Picking a fight with the head of the Praetor Lupus,” Magnus said bitterly. “You know what his pack would do to you if they had an excuse. You want to die, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” Will said, surprising even himself a little.

“I don’t know why I ever helped you.”

“You like broken things.”

Magnus took two strides across the room and seized Will’s face in his long fingers, forcing his chin up. “You are not Sydney Carton,” he said. “What good will it do you to die for James Carstairs, when he is dying anyway?”

“Because if I save him, then it is worth it—”

“God!” Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “What is worth it? What could possibly be worth it?”

“Everything I have lost!” Will shouted. “Tessa!”

Magnus dropped his hand from Will’s face. He took several paces backward and breathed in and out slowly, as if mentally counting to ten. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “About what Woolsey said.”

“If Jem dies, I cannot be with Tessa,” said Will. “Because it will be as if I were waiting for him to die, or took some joy in his death, if it let me have her. And I will not be that person. I will not profit from his death. So he must live.” He lowered his arm, his sleeve bloody. “It is the only way any of this can ever mean anything. Otherwise it is only—”

“Pointless, needless suffering and pain? I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that is the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.”

“I want more than that,” said Will. “You made me want more than that. You showed me I was only ever cursed because I had chosen to believe myself so. You told me there was possibility, meaning. And now you would turn your back on what you created.”

Magnus laughed shortly. “You are incorrigible.”

“I’ve heard that.” Will pulled himself away from the sofa, wincing. “You’ll help me, then?”

“I’ll help you.” Magnus reached down his shirtfront and drew out something that dangled on a chain, something that glowed with a soft red light. A square red stone. “Take this.”

He folded it into Will’s hand.

Will looked at him in confusion. “This was Camille’s.”

“I gave it to her as a gift,” said Magnus, a bitter quirk to the side of his mouth. “She returned all my gifts to me last month. You might as well take it. It warns when demons are close. It might work on those clockwork creations of Mortmain’s.”

“ ‘True love cannot die,’ ” Will said, translating the inscription on the back in the light from the corridor. “I can’t wear this, Magnus. It’s too pretty for a man.”

“So are you. Go home and clean yourself up. I will call upon you as soon as I have information.” He looked at Will keenly. “In the meantime do your best to be worthy of my assistance.”

“If you come near me, I shall bash in your head with this poker,” Tessa said, brandishing the fireplace instrument between herself and Woolsey Scott as if it were a sword.

“I’ve no doubt you would too,” he said, looking at her with a grudging sort of respect as he mopped the blood from his chin with a monogrammed handkerchief. Will had been bloody too, his own blood and Woolsey’s; he was doubtless in another room with Magnus now, getting more blood smeared everywhere. Will was never overconcerned with neatness, and even less so when he was emotional. “I see you’ve begun to be like them, the Shadowhunters you seem to adore so much. Whatever possessed you to engage yourself to one of them? And a dying one at that.”

Rage flared up in Tessa, and she considered smacking Woolsey with the poker whether he came near her or not. He had moved awfully quickly while fighting Will, though, and she didn’t fancy her chances. “You don’t know James Carstairs. Don’t speak about him.”

“Love him, do you?” Woolsey managed to make it sound unpleasant. “But you love Will, too.”

Tessa froze inside. She had known that Magnus knew of Will’s affection for her, but the idea that what she felt for him in return was written across her face was too terrifying to contemplate. “That’s not true.”

“Liar,” said Woolsey. “Really, what is the difference if one of them dies? You always have a fine secondary option.”

Tessa thought of Jem, of the shape of his face, his eyes shut in concentration as he played the violin, the curve of his mouth when he smiled, his fingers careful in hers—every line of him inexpressibly dear to her. “If you had two children,” she said, “would you say that it was all right if one of them died, because then you’d still have another?”

“One can love two children. But your heart can be given in romantic love to only a single other,” said Woolsey. “That is the nature of Eros, is it not? So novels would tell us, though I have no experience of it myself.”

“I have come to understand something about novels,” Tessa said.

“And what is that?”

“That they are not true.”

Woolsey quirked an eyebrow. “You are a funny thing,” he said. “I would say I could see what those boys see in you, but . . .” He shrugged. His yellow dressing gown had a long, bloody tear in it now. “Women are not something I have ever understood.”

“What about them do you find mysterious, sir?”

“The point of them, mainly.”

“Well, you must have had a mother,” said Tessa.

“Someone whelped me, yes,” said Woolsey without much enthusiasm. “I remember her little.”

“Perhaps, but you would not exist without a woman, would you? However little use you may find us, we are cleverer and more determined and more patient than men. Men may be stronger, but it is women who endure.”

“Is that what you are doing? Enduring? Surely an engaged woman should be happier.” His light eyes raked her. “A heart divided against itself cannot stand, as they say. You love them both, and it tears you apart.”

“House,” said Tessa.

He raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. Not a heart. Perhaps you should not attempt quotations if you cannot get them correct.”

“And maybe you should stop pitying yourself,” he said. “Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two.”

“Says the man who has none.”

“Oh!” Woolsey staggered back with his hand against his heart, mock swooning. “The dove has teeth. Very well, if you don’t wish to discuss personal matters, then perhaps something more general? Your own nature? Magnus seems convinced you are a warlock, but I am not so sure. I think there may be some of the blood of faeries about you, for what is the magic of shape-changing if it is not a magic of illusion? And who are the masters of magic and illusion if not the Fair Folk?”

Tessa thought of the blue-haired faerie woman at Benedict’s party who had claimed to know her mother, and her breath hitched in her throat. Before she could say another word to Woolsey, though, Magnus and Will came back in through the door—Will, as predicted, just as bloody as before, and scowling. He looked from Tessa to Woolsey and laughed a short laugh. “I suppose you were right, Magnus,” he said. “Tessa is in no danger from him. One cannot say the same in reverse.”

“Tessa, darling, put the poker down,” Magnus said, holding out his hand. “Woolsey can be dreadful, but there are better ways of handling his moods.”

With a last glare at Woolsey, Tessa handed the poker to Magnus. She went to retrieve her gloves, and Will his coat, and there was a blur of movement and voices, and she heard Woolsey laugh. She was barely paying attention; she was too focused on Will. She could tell already from the look on his face that whatever he and Magnus had said to each other in private, it had not solved the problem of Jem’s drugs. He looked haunted, and a little deadly, the blood freckling his high cheekbones only making the blue of his eyes more startling.

Magnus led them from the drawing room and out to the front door, where the cool air hit Tessa like a wave. She tugged her gloves on and nodded a good-bye to Magnus, who shut the door, closing the two of them out in the night.

The Thames glittered past the trees, the roadway, and the Embankment, and the gas lamps on Battersea Bridge shone down into the water, a nocturne in blue and gold. The shadow of the carriage was visible beneath the trees by the gate. Above them the moon appeared and disappeared between moving banks of gray cloud.

Will was utterly still. “Tessa,” he said.

His voice sounded peculiar, odd and choked. Tessa stepped quickly down to stand beside him, looking up into his face. Will’s face was so often changeable as moonlight itself; she had never seen his expression so still.

“Did he say he would help?” she whispered. “Magnus?”

“He will try, but—the way he looked at me—he felt sorry for me, Tess. That means there’s no hope, doesn’t it? If even Magnus thinks the endeavor is doomed, there is nothing more I can do, is there?”

She laid her hand upon his arm. He did not move. It was so peculiar, being this close to him, the familiar feel and presence of him, when for months they had avoided each other, had barely spoken. He had not even wanted to meet her eyes. And now he was here, smelling of soap and rain and blood and Will. . . . “You have done so much,” she whispered. “Magnus will try to help, and we will keep searching, and something may yet come to light. You cannot abandon hope.”

“I know. I know it. And yet I feel such dread in my heart, as if it were the last hour of my life. I have felt hopelessness before, Tess, but never such fear. And yet I have known—I have always known . . .”

That Jem would die. She did not say it. It was between them, unspoken.

“Who am I?” he whispered. “For years I pretended I was other than I was, and then I gloried that I might return to the truth of myself, only to find there is no truth to return to. I was an ordinary child, and then I was a not very good man, and now I do not know how to be either of those things any longer. I do not know what I am, and when Jem is gone, there will be no one to show me.”

“I know just who you are. You’re Will Herondale,” was all she said, and then suddenly his arms were around her, his head on her shoulder. She froze at first out of pure astonishment, and then carefully she returned the embrace, holding him as he shuddered. He was not crying; this was something else, a sort of paroxysm, as if he were choking. She knew she should not touch him, yet she could not imagine Jem wanting her to push Will away at such a moment. She could not be Jem for him, she thought, could not be his compass that always pointed north, but if nothing else she could make his a slighter burden to carry.

“Would you like this rather dreadful snuffbox someone gave me? It’s silver, so I can’t touch it,” Woolsey said.

Magnus, standing at the bay window of the drawing room, the curtain pulled aside just enough so that he could see Will and Tessa on his front steps, clinging to each other as if their lives depended on it, hummed noncommittally in response.

Woolsey rolled his eyes. “Still out there, are they?”

“Quite.”

“Messy, all that romantic love business,” said Woolsey. “Much better to go on as we do. Only the physical matters.”

“Indeed.” Will and Tessa had broken apart at last, though their hands were still joined. Tessa appeared to be coaxing Will down the steps. “Do you think you would have married, if you hadn’t had nephews to carry on the family name?”

“I suppose I would have had to. Cry God for England, Harry, Saint George, and the Praetor Lupus!” Woolsey laughed; he had poured himself a glass of red wine from the decanter on the sideboard, and he swirled it now, gazing down into its changeable depths. “You gave Will Camille’s necklace,” he observed.

“How did you know?” Magnus’s mind was only half on the conversation; the other half was watching Will and Tessa walk toward their carriage. Somehow, despite the difference in their height and build, she appeared to be the one who was being leaned upon.

“You were wearing it when you left the room with him, but not when you returned. I don’t suppose you told him what it’s worth? That he’s wearing a ruby that would cost more than the Institute?”

“I didn’t want it,” Magnus said.

“Tragic reminder of lost love?”

“Didn’t suit my complexion.” Will and Tessa were in the carriage now, and their driver was snapping the reins. “Do you think there’s a chance for him?”

“A chance for who?”

“Will Herondale. To be happy.”

Woolsey sighed gustily and put down his glass. “Is there a chance for you to be happy if he isn’t?”

Magnus said nothing.

“Are you in love with him?” Woolsey asked—all curiosity, no jealousy. Magnus wondered what it was like to have a heart like that, or rather to have no heart at all.

“No,” Magnus said. “I have wondered that, but no. It is something else. I feel that I owe him. I have heard it said that when you save a life, you are responsible for that life. I feel I am responsible for that boy. If he never finds happiness, I will feel I have failed him. If he cannot have that girl he loves, I will feel I have failed him. If I cannot keep his parabatai by him, I will feel I failed him.”

“Then you will fail him,” Woolsey said. “In the meantime, while you are moping and seeking yin fen, I think I may take myself traveling. See the countryside. The city depresses me in the winter.”

“Do as you like.” Magnus let the curtain fall back, blocking the view of Will and Tessa’s carriage as it passed out of sight.

To: Consul Josiah Wayland

From: Inquisitor Victor Whitelaw

Josiah,

I was deeply concerned to hear of your letter to the Council on the topic of Charlotte Branwell. As old acquaintances, I had hoped you could perhaps speak more freely to me than you have to them. Is there some issue regarding her that concerns you? Her father was a dear friend of ours both, and I have not known her to do a dishonorable thing.

Yours in concern,

Victor Whitelaw