Bitter of Tongue (2 page)

“Why are they all racing ahead?” Simon asked. “Um, not to tell you your job, but, brave team leader, maybe command them not to go too far.”

“Ah, give them a minute,” George said. “You know she kind of likes you.”

“What?” said Simon.

“Not that she’s going to do anything about it,” said George. “Nobody who likes you is going to do anything about it. On account of, nobody would enjoy having Isabelle Lightwood cut their head off.”

“Likes me?” Simon echoed. “Something about the way you’re talking suggests multiple people. Who like
me
.”

George shrugged. “Apparently you’re the type who grows on people. Don’t ask me. I thought girls liked abs.”

“I could have abs,” Simon told him. “I watched in the mirror once and I think I found an ab. I’m telling you, all this training is doing my body good.”

It wasn’t like Simon thought he was a hideous creature or anything. He’d now seen several demons who had tentacles coming out of their eyes, and he was fairly sure it did not revolt people merely to look upon him.

But he wasn’t Jace, who made girls’ heads spin around as if they were possessed. It made no sense that out of all the students in the Academy, Beatriz might like
him
.

George rolled his eyes. George did not truly understand the slow development of actual physical fitness. He’d probably been born with abs. Some were born with abs, some achieved abs, and some—like Simon—had abs thrust upon them by cruel instructors.

“Yes, Si, you’re a real killer.”

“Feel this arm,” said Simon. “Rock hard! I don’t mean to brag, but it’s all bone. All bone.”

“Si,” said George. “I don’t need to feel it. I believe in you, because that’s what bros do. And I’m happy for your mysterious popularity with the ladies, because that’s how bros are. But seriously, watch out for Jon, because I think he’s going to shank you one of these days. He does not get your indefinable but undeniable allure. He’s got abs to the chin and he thought he had the ladies of the Academy locked down.”

Simon rode on, somewhat dazed.

He’d been thinking that Isabelle’s affection for him was a stunning and inexplicable occurrence, like a lightning strike. (Gorgeous and courageous lightning whom he was lucky to be struck by!) Given current evidence, however, he was starting to believe it was time to reevaluate.

He had been reliably informed that he’d dated Maia, the leader of the New York werewolf pack, though he’d received the impression that he had well and truly messed that one up. He’d heard rumors about a vampire queen who might have been interested. He’d even gathered, strange as it seemed, that there was a brief period of time when he and Clary had gone out. And now possibly Beatriz liked him.

“Seriously, George, tell me the truth,” said Simon. “Am I beautiful?”

George burst out laughing, his horse wheeling back a few easy paces in the sunlight.

And Julie shouted: “Faerie!” and pointed. Simon looked toward a hooded and cloaked figure with a basket of fruit over one arm, emerging as if innocently from the mist behind a tree.

“After it!” roared George, and his horse charged for the figure, Simon plunging after him.

Marisol, far ahead, shouted: “Trap!” and then gave a scream of pain.

Simon looked desperately toward the trees. The faerie, he saw, had reinforcements. They had been warned the Fair Folk were all more wary and desperate in the aftermath of the Cold Peace. They should have listened better and thought harder. They should have planned for this.

Simon, George, Julie, and Beatriz were all riding hard, but they were too far from her. Marisol was swaying in her saddle, blood pouring down her arm: elfshot.

“Marisol!” Jon Cartwright shouted. “
Marisol
, to me!”

She pulled the horse toward his. Jon stood on his horse and leaped onto hers, bow already in hand and firing arrows into the trees, standing on the horse’s back and thus shielding Marisol like a strange bow-shooting acrobat. Simon knew he’d never be able to do anything like that, ever, unless he Ascended.

Julie and Beatriz turned their horses toward the trees where the concealed faeries were firing.

“They have Marisol,” George panted. “We can still get the fruit seller.”

“No, George,” Simon began, but George had already wheeled his horse toward the hooded figure, now disappearing behind the tree and the mist.

There was a spear of sunlight shooting between the trunk and the branch of the tree, a dazzling white line between the crooked arc of tree limbs. It seemed to refract in Simon’s eyes, becoming broad and fair, like the path of moonlight on the sea. The hooded figure was slipping away, half-disappeared into the dazzle, and George’s horse was inches from danger, George’s hand reaching for the edge of the figure’s cloak, George heedless of the course he had placed himself upon.

“No, George!”
Simon shouted. “We are not going to trespass into Faerie!”

He forced his own horse into George’s path, making George pull up, but he was so hell-bent on stopping George that he did not take into consideration his mount, now terrified and fleeing and urged to speed.

Until the white dazzling light filled Simon’s vision. He remembered suddenly the feeling of falling away into Faerie, soaked to the skin, in a pool filled with water: remembered Jace being kind to him, and how much he had resented that, how he’d thought:
Don’t show me up any further
, and his chest had burned with resentment.

Now he was tumbling into Faerie with the scream of a terrified horse in his ears, leaves blinding him and twigs scraping at his face and his arms. He tried to shield his eyes and found himself thrown on rock and bones, with darkness rushing at him. He would have been very grateful if Jace had been there.

*   *   *

Simon woke in Faerieland. His whole skull was throbbing, in the way your thumb did when you hit it with a hammer. He hoped nobody had hit his head with a hammer.

He woke in a gently swaying bed, slightly prickly under his cheek. He opened his eyes and saw that he was not exactly in a bed, but lying amid twigs and moss, scattered across a swaying surface constructed of wooden laths. There were strange stripes of darkness in front of his vision, obscuring his view of the vista beyond.

Faerieland almost looked like the moors in Devon, yet it was entirely different. The mists in the distance were faintly purple, like storm clouds clinging to the earth, and there was movement in the cloud suggesting odd and menacing shapes. The leaves on the trees were green and yellow and red like the trees of the mundane world, but they shone too brightly, like jewels, and when the wind rustled through them Simon could almost make out words, as if they were whispering together. This was nature run riot, alchemized into magic and strangeness.

And Simon was, he realized, in a cage. A big wooden cage. The stripes of darkness across his vision were his cage bars.

The thing that outraged him most was how familiar it felt. He remembered being trapped like this before.
More than once.

“Shadowhunters, vampires, and now faeries, all longing to throw me in prison,” Simon said aloud. “Why exactly was I so anxious to get back all these memories? Why is it always me? Why am I always the chump in the cage?”

His own voice made his aching head hurt.

“You are in my cage now,” said a voice.

Simon sat up hastily, though it made his head throb fiercely and all of Faerieland reel drunkenly around him. He saw, on the other side of his cage, the hooded and cloaked figure whom George had tried so desperately to capture on the moors. Simon swallowed. He could not see the face beneath the hood.

There was a whirl in the air, like a shadow whipping over the sun. A new faerie dropped out of the clear blue sky, the leaves of the forest floor crunching under his bare feet. Sunlight washed his fair hair into radiance, and a long knife glittered in his hand.

The hooded and cloaked faerie dropped his hood and bowed his head in sudden deference. Unhooded, Simon saw, he had large ears, tinted purple, as if he had an eggplant stuck to each side of his face, and wisps of long white hair that curled over his eggplant ear like cloud.

“What has happened, and why are your tricks interfering with the work of your betters, Hefeydd? A horse from the mundane world ran into the path of the Wild Hunt,” the new faerie said. “I do hope the steed was not of immense emotional significance, because the hounds have it now.”

Simon’s heart bled for that poor horse. He wondered if he too was about to be fed to the hounds.

“I am so sorry to have disturbed the Wild Hunt,” the cloaked faerie said, bowing his white head even further.

“You should be,” answered the faerie of the Wild Hunt. “Those who cross the path of the Hunt always regret it.”

“This is a Shadowhunter,” continued the other anxiously. “Or at least one of the children they hope to change. They were lying in wait for me in the mortal world, and this one pursued me even into Faerie, so he is my rightful prey. I had no wish to disturb the Wild Hunt and bear no fault!”

Simon felt this was an inaccurate and hurtful summary of the situation.

“Is it so? Come now, I am in a merry mood,” said the Wild Hunt faerie. “Give me your regrets and words with your captive—as you know, I have some little interest in Shadowhunters—and I will not bring back my lord Gwyn your tongue.”

“Never was a fairer bargain made,” said the cloaked faerie in some haste, and ran off as though afraid the Wild Hunt faerie might change his mind, almost tripping over his own cloak.

As far as Simon was concerned, this was out of the faerie frying pan and into the faerie fire.

The new faerie looked like a boy of sixteen, not much older than Marisol and younger than Simon, but Simon knew that how faeries looked was no indicator of their age. He had mismatched eyes, one amber as the beads found in the dark heart of trees, and one the vivid blue-green of sea shallows when sunlight strikes through. The jarring contrast of his eyes and the light of Faerie, filtered green through wickedly whispering leaves and touched with false gold, made his thin, dirt-streaked face wear a sinister aspect.

He looked like a threat. And he was coming closer.

“What does a faerie of the Wild Hunt want with me?” Simon croaked.

“I am no faerie,” said the boy with eerie eyes, pointed ears, and leaves in his wild hair. “I am Mark Blackthorn of the Los Angeles Institute. It doesn’t matter what they say or what they do to me. I still remember who I am. I am Mark Blackthorn.”

He looked at Simon with wild hunger in his thin face. His thin fingers clutched the bars of the cage.

“Are you here to save me?” he demanded. “Have the Shadowhunters come for me at last?”

*   *   *

Oh no. This was Helen Blackthorn’s brother, the one who was half-faerie like her, the one who had believed his family dead and been taken by the Wild Hunt and never returned. This was very awkward.

This was worse than that. This was horrific.

“No,” said Simon, because hope seemed the cruelest blow he could deal Mark Blackthorn. “It’s just like the other faerie said. I wandered here by accident and I was captured. I’m Simon Lewis. I  . . . know your name, and I know what happened to you. I’m sorry.”

“Do you know when the Shadowhunters are coming for me?” Mark asked with heartbreaking eagerness. “I—sent them a message, during the war. I understand the Cold Peace must make all dealings with faerie difficult, but they must know I am loyal and would be valuable to them. They must be coming, but it has been  . . . it has been weeks and weeks. Tell me, when?”

Simon stared at Mark, dry-mouthed. It had not been weeks and weeks since the Shadowhunters had abandoned him here. It had been a year and more.

“They’re not coming,” he whispered. “I was not there, but my friends were. They told me what happened. The Clave took a vote. The Shadowhunters do not want you back.”

“Oh,” said Mark, a single soft sound that was familiar to Simon: It was the kind of sound creatures made when they died.

He turned away from Simon, his back arched in a spasm of pain that looked physical. Simon saw, on his bare lean arms, the old marks of a whip. Even though Simon could not see his face, Mark covered it for a moment, as if he could not even bear to look upon Faerieland.

Then he turned and snapped: “What about the children?”

“What?” Simon asked blankly.

“Helen, Julian, Livia, Tiberius, Drusilla, Octavian. And Emma,” said Mark. “You see? I have not forgotten. Every night, no matter what has happened during the day, no matter if I am torn and bloodied or so bone-tired I wish I were dead, I look up at the stars and I give each star a brother’s name or a sister’s face. I will not sleep until I remember every one. The stars will burn out before I forget.”

Mark’s family, the Blackthorns. They were all younger than Mark but Helen; Simon knew that. And Emma Carstairs lived with the younger Blackthorn kids in the Los Angeles Institute, the little girl with blond hair who had been orphaned in the war and who wrote to Clary a lot.

Simon wished he knew more about them. Clary had talked about Emma. Magnus had spoken passionately this summer, several times, about the Cold Peace and had given the Blackthorns as an example of the horrors that the Clave’s decision to punish faeries had visited on those of faerie blood. Simon had listened to Magnus and felt sorry for the Blackthorns, but they had seemed like just another tragedy of the war: something terrible but distant, and ultimately easy to forget. Simon had felt he had so much to remember himself. He had wanted to go to the Academy and become a Shadowhunter, to learn more about his own life and remember everything he had lost, to become someone stronger and better.

Except that you did not become someone stronger and better by only thinking about yourself.

He did not know what they were doing to Mark in Faerie, to make his family slip away from him.

“Helen’s well,” he said awkwardly. “I saw her recently. She came and lectured at the Academy. I’m sorry. I had a demon take—a lot of memories from me, not so long ago. I know what it’s like, not to remember.”