Clockwork Princess (30 page)

“Your father’s order,” he said with a smirk.

Gabriel lowered his eyes to the papers—and his jaw dropped in horror.

“Gracious,” Cecily said. “Surely that isn’t possible?”

The satyr craned up to see what she was looking at. “Well, not with one person, but with a Vetis demon and a goat, most likely.” He turned to Gabriel. “Now, have you got the money for these or not? Your father is behind on his payments, and he can’t buy on tick forever. What’s it going to be, Lightwood?”

“Has Charlotte ever asked you if you wanted to be a Shadowhunter?” Gideon asked.

Halfway down the ladder with a book in her hand, Sophie froze. Gideon was seated at one of the long library tables, near a bay window that looked out over the courtyard. Books and papers were spread out before him, and he and Sophie had passed several pleasant hours searching through them for lists and histories of spells, details about
yin fen
, and specifics of herb lore. Though Gideon’s leg was rapidly healing, it was propped up on two chairs in front of him, and Sophie had cheerfully offered to do all the climbing up and down ladders to reach the highest books. She was holding one now called the
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
, which had a rather slimy-feeling cover and which she was eager to put down, though Gideon’s question had startled her enough to arrest her mid-descent. “What do you mean?” she said, resuming her climb down the ladder. “Why would Charlotte have asked me something like that?”

Gideon looked pale, or it might simply have been the cast of the witchlight on his face. “Miss Collins,” he said. “You are one of the best fighters I have ever trained, Nephilim included. That is why I ask. It seems a shame to waste such talent. Though perhaps it is not something you would want?”

Sophie set the book down on the table, and sat down opposite Gideon. She knew she should hesitate, seem to think the question over, but the answer was on her lips before she could stop it. “To be a Shadowhunter is all I ever wanted.”

He leaned forward, and the witchlight shone up into his eyes, washing out their color. “You are not worried about the danger? The older one is when one Ascends, the riskier the process. I have heard them speak about lowering the age of agreement to Ascension to fourteen or even twelve.”

Sophie shook her head. “I have never feared the risk. I would take it gladly. It is only that I fear— I fear that if I applied for it, Mrs. Branwell would think I am ungrateful for all that she has done for me. She saved my life and raised me up. She gave me safety and a home. I would not repay her for all that by abandoning her service.”

“No.” Gideon shook his head. “Sophie—Miss Collins—you are a free servant in a Shadowhunter home. You have the Sight. You know all there is to know of Downworlders and the Nephilim already. You are the
perfect
candidate for Ascension.” He placed his hand atop the demonology book. “I am a voice on the Council. I could speak for you.”

“I can’t,” Sophie said in a soft thread of a voice. Didn’t he understand what he was offering her, the temptation? “And certainly not now.”

“No, not now, of course, with James so ill,” Gideon said hurriedly. “But in the future? Perhaps?” His eyes searched her face, and she felt a blush begin to creep up from her collar. The most obvious and common way for a mundane to Ascend to Shadowhunter status was through marriage to a Shadowhunter. She wondered what it meant that he seemed very determined not to mention that. “But when I asked you, you spoke so strongly. You said that being a Shadowhunter was all you ever wanted. Why is that? It can be a brutal life.”

“All life can be brutal,” said Sophie. “My life before I came to the Institute was hardly sweet. I suppose in part I wish to be a Shadowhunter so that if another man ever comes at me with a knife in his hand, as my former employer did, I can kill him where he stands.” She touched her cheek as she spoke, an unconscious gesture she could not help, feeling the ridged scar tissue under her fingertips.

She saw Gideon’s expression—shock mixed with discomfort—and dropped her hand. “I did not know that was how you had been scarred,” he said.

She looked away. “Now you will say that it is not so ugly, or that you do not even see it, or something like that.”

“I see it,” Gideon said in a low voice. “I am not blind, and we are a people of many scars. I see it, but it is not ugly. It is just another beautiful part of the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”

Now Sophie did blush—she could feel her cheeks burn—and as Gideon leaned forward across the table, his eyes an intense, storm-washed green, she took a deep breath of resolution. He was
not
like her former employer. He was Gideon. She would not push him away this time.

The door of the library flew open. Charlotte stood on the threshold, looking exhausted; there were damp splotches on her pale blue dress, and her eyes were shadowed. Sophie sprang to her feet instantly. “Mrs. Branwell?”

“Oh, Sophie,” Charlotte sighed. “I was hoping you could sit with Jem for a bit. He hasn’t woken up yet, but Bridget needs to make supper, and I think her dreadful singing is giving him nightmares in his sleep.”

“Of course.” Sophie hurried to the door, not looking at Gideon as she did so—although as the door closed behind her, she was fairly sure that she heard him swearing softly and with great frustration in Spanish.

“You know,” Cecily said, “you really didn’t have to throw that man through the window.”

“He wasn’t a man,” Gideon said, scowling down at the heap of objects in his arms. He had taken the parcel of Magnus’s ingredients that Sallows had made up for them, and a few more useful-looking objects off the shelves besides. He had pointedly left all the papers his father had ordered on the counter where Sallows had put them—
after
Gabriel had tossed the satyr through one of the grimed-up windows. It had been very satisfying, with shattered glass everywhere. The force of it had even dislodged the hanging skeleton, which had come apart in a clatter of messy bones. “He was an Unseelie Court faerie. One of the nasty ones.”

“Is that why you chased him down the street?”

“He had no business showing images like that to a lady,” Gabriel muttered, though it had to be admitted that the lady in question had hardly turned a hair, and seemed more annoyed with Gabriel for his reaction than impressed by his chivalry.

“And I do think it was excessive to hurl him into the canal.”

“He’ll float.”

The corners of Cecily’s mouth twitched. “It was very wrong.”

“You’re laughing,” Gabriel said in surprise.

“I am not.” Cecily raised her chin, turning her face away, but not before Gabriel saw the grin that spread over her face. Gabriel was baffled. After her displayed disdain for him, her cheek and back talk, he had been quite sure that this latest outburst of his would prompt her to tell tales to Charlotte as soon as they returned to the Institute, but instead she seemed amused. He shook his head as they turned onto Garnet Street. He would never understand the Herondales.

“Hand over that vial there on the shelf, would you, Mr. Bane?” asked Henry.

Magnus did so. He was standing in the center of Henry’s laboratory, looking around at the gleaming shapes on tables around him. “What are all these contraptions, if I might ask?”

Henry, who was wearing two pairs of goggles at the same time—one on his head and one over his eyes—looked both pleased and nervous to be asked. (Magnus presumed the two pairs of goggles was a fit of absentmindedness, but in case it was in pursuit of fashion, he decided not to ask.) Henry picked up a square brass object with multiple buttons. “Well, over here, this is a Sensor. It senses when demons are near.” He moved toward Magnus, and the Sensor made a loud wailing noise.

“Impressive!” Magnus exclaimed, pleased. He lifted a construction of fabric with a large dead bird perched atop it. “And what is this?”

“The Lethal Bonnet,” Henry declared.

“Ah,” said Magnus. “In times of need a lady can produce weapons from it with which to slay her enemies.”

“Well, no,” Henry admitted. “That does sound like a rather better idea. I do wish you had been on the spot when I had the notion. Unfortunately this bonnet wraps about the head of one’s enemy and suffocates them, provided that they are wearing it at the time.”

“I imagine that it will not be easy to persuade Mortmain into a bonnet,” Magnus observed. “Though the color would be fetching on him.”

Henry burst into laughter. “Very droll, Mr. Bane.”

“Please, call me Magnus.”

“I shall!” Henry tossed the bonnet over his shoulder and picked up a round glass jar of a sparkling substance. “This is a powder that when applied to the air causes ghosts to become visible,” Henry said.

Magnus tilted the jar of shining grains up to the lamp admiringly, and when Henry beamed in an encouraging fashion, Magnus removed the cork. “It seems very fine to me,” he said, and on a whim he poured it upon his hand. It coated his brown skin, gloving one hand in shimmering luminescence. “And in addition to its practical uses, it would seem to work for cosmetic purposes. This powder would make my very skin glimmer for eternity.”

Henry frowned. “Not eternity,” he said, but then he brightened. “But I could make you up another batch whenever you please!”

“I could shine at will!” Magnus grinned at Henry. “These are fascinating items, Mr. Branwell. You think differently about the world than any other Nephilim I have ever encountered. I confess I thought your people somewhat lacking in imagination, though high on personal drama, but you have given me a completely different opinion! Surely the Shadowhunter community must honor you and hold you in high esteem as a gentleman who has truly advanced their race.”

“No,” Henry said sadly. “Mostly they wish that I would stop suggesting new inventions and cease setting fire to things.”

“But all invention comes with risk!” cried Magnus. “I have seen the transformation wrought on the world by the invention of the steam engine, and the proliferation of printed materials, the factories and mills which have changed the face of England. Mundanes have taken the world into their hands and made of it a marvelous thing. Warlocks throughout the ages have dreamed up and perfected different spells to make themselves a different world. Would the Shadowhunters be the only ones to remain stagnant and changeless, and therefore doomed? How can they turn up their noses at the genius that you have displayed? It is like turning toward shadows and away from light.”

Henry blushed a scarlet color. It was clear that no one had ever complimented his inventing before, except perhaps Charlotte. “You humble me, Mr. Bane.”

“Magnus,” the warlock reminded him. “Now may I see your work upon this portal you were describing? The invention that transports a living being from one spot to another?”

“Of course.” Henry drew a heavy pile of notepaper from one corner of his cluttered table, and pushed it toward Magnus. The warlock took it and flicked through the pages with interest. Each page was covered with crabbed, spidery handwriting, and dozens and dozens of equations, blending mathematics and runes in a startling harmony. Magnus felt his heart beating faster as he flipped through the pages—this was genius, real genius. There was only one problem.

“I see what you are trying to do,” he said. “And it is almost perfected, but—”

“Yes, almost.” Henry ran his hands through his gingery hair, upsetting his goggles. “The portal can be opened, but there is no way to direct it. No way to know if you will step through it to your intended destination in this world or into another world altogether, or even into Hell. It is too risky, and therefore useless.”

“You cannot do this with these runes,” said Magnus. “You need runes other than the ones you are using.”

Henry shook his head. “We can use only the runes from the Gray Book. Anything else is magic. Magic is not the way of the Nephilim. It is something we may not do.”

Magnus looked at Henry for a long thoughtful moment. “It is something that
I
can do,” he declared, and drew the stack of papers toward him.

Unseelie Court faeries did not like too much light. The first thing Sallows—whose name was not really that—had done upon returning to his shop had been to put up waxed paper over the window that the Nephilim boy had so heedlessly broken. His spectacles were gone too, lost in the waters of the Limehouse Cut. And no one, it seemed, was going to pay him for the very expensive papers he had ordered for Benedict Lightwood. Altogether it had been a very bad day.

He looked up peevishly as the shop bell tinkled, warning of the opening of the door, and he frowned. He thought he had locked it. “Back again, Nephilim?” he snapped. “Decided to throw me into the river not once but twice? I’ll have you know I have powerful friends—”

“I don’t doubt you do, trickster.” The tall, hooded figure in the entryway reached around and pulled the door shut behind him. “And I am very interested in learning more about them.” A cold iron blade flashed in the dimness, and the satyr’s eyes widened in fear. “I have some questions to ask you,” said the man in the doorway. “And I wouldn’t try to run if I were you. Not if you want to keep your fingers attached to your body….”

Tessa could never remember later if she had screamed as she had fallen. She remembered only a long and silent fall, the river and the rocks hurtling toward her, the sky at her feet. The wind tore at her face and hair as she twisted in the air, and she felt a sharp jerk at her throat.

Her hands flew up. Her angel necklace was lifting over her head, as if an enormous hand had reached down out of the sky to remove it. A metallic blur surrounded her, a pair of great wings opening like gates, and something caught at her, arresting her fall. Her eyes widened—it was impossible, unimaginable—but her angel, her clockwork angel, had grown somehow to the size of a living human being and was hovering over her, its great mechanical wings beating against the wind. She stared up into a blank, beautiful face, the face of a statue made of metal, as expressionless as ever—but the angel had hands, as articulate as her own, and they were holding her, holding her up as the wings beat and beat and beat and she fell slowly now, gently, like a puff of dandelion fluff blown on the wind.