The Infernal Devices 01 - Clockwork Angel (38 page)

“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.