Clockwork Angel

Page 40

“Tessa,” Charlotte said. “You remember Brother Enoch. He is here to help Nathaniel.”
With an animal howl of terror, Nate caught at Tessa’s wrist. She looked down at him in bewilderment. “Nathaniel? What’s wrong?”
“De Quincey told me about them,” Nathaniel gasped. “The Gregori—the Silent Brothers. They can kill a man with a thought.” He shuddered. “Tessa.” His voice was a whisper. “Look at his face.”
Tessa looked. While she had been talking to her brother, Brother Enoch had soundlessly drawn back his hood. The smooth pits of his eyes reflected the witchlight, the glare unforgiving on the red, scarred stitching around his mouth.
Charlotte took a step forward. “If Brother Enoch might examine Mr. Gray—”
“No!” Tessa cried. Wrenching her arm from Nate’s grasp, she put herself between her brother and the other two occupants of the room. “Don’t touch him.”
Charlotte paused, looking troubled. “The Silent Brothers are our best healers. Without Brother Enoch, Nathaniel …” Her voice trailed off. “Well, there isn’t much we can do for him.”
Miss Gray.
It took her a moment to realize that the word, her name, hadn’t been spoken out loud. Instead, like a snatch of a half-forgotten song, it had echoed inside her own head—but not in the voice of her own thoughts. This thought was alien, inimical—other. Brother Enoch’s voice. It was the way he had spoken to her as he had left the room on her first day at the Institute.
It is interesting, Miss Gray, Brother Enoch went on, that you are a Downworlder, and yet your brother is not. How did such a thing come to pass?
Tessa went still. “You—you can tell that just by looking at him?”
“Tessie!” Nathaniel pushed himself upright against the pillows, his pale face flushed. “What are you doing, talking to the Gregori? He’s dangerous!”
“It’s all right, Nate,” Tessa said, not taking her eyes off Brother Enoch. She knew she ought to be frightened, but what she really felt was a stab of disappointment. “You mean there’s nothing unusual about Nate?” she asked, in a low voice. “Nothing supernatural?”
Nothing at all, said the Silent Brother.
Tessa hadn’t realized how much she was half-hoping that her brother was like her until this moment. Disappointment sharpened her voice. “I don’t suppose, since you know so much, that you know what I am? Am I a warlock?”
I cannot tell you. There is that about you that marks you as one of Lilith’s Children. Yet there is no demon’s sign on you.
“I did notice that,” Charlotte said, and Tessa realized that she could hear Brother Enoch’s voice as well. “I thought perhaps she wasn’t a warlock. Some humans are born with some slight power, like the Sight. Or she could have faerie blood—”
She isn’t human. She is something else. I will study on it. Perhaps there is something in the archives to guide me. Eyeless as he was, Brother Enoch seemed to be searching Tessa’s face with his gaze. There is a power I sense you have. A power no other warlock does.
“The Changing, you mean,” said Tessa.
No. I do not mean that.
“Then what?” Tessa was astonished. “What could I—?” She broke off at a noise from Nathaniel. Turning, she saw that he had fought free of his blankets and was lying half-off the bed, as if he’d attempted to get up; his face was sweaty and deathly white. Guilt stabbed at her. She’d been caught up in what Brother Enoch had been saying and had forgotten her brother.
She darted to the bed, and with Charlotte’s assistance she wrestled Nate back onto the pillows, pulling the blanket up around him. He seemed much worse than he had been moments before. As Tessa tucked the blanket around him, he caught at her wrist again, his eyes wild. “Does he know?” he demanded. “Does he know where I am?”
“Who do you mean? De Quincey?”
“Tessie.” He squeezed her wrist tightly, pulling her down to hiss a whisper into her ear. “You must forgive me. He told me you would be the queen of them all. He said they were going to kill me. I don’t want to die, Tessie. I don’t want to die.”
“Of course not,” she soothed, but he didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes, fixed on her face, went suddenly wide, and he screamed.
“Keep it away from me! Keep it away from me!” he howled. He pushed at her, thrashing his head back and forth on the pillows. “Dear God, don’t let it touch me!”
Frightened, Tessa snatched her hand back, turning to Charlotte—but Charlotte had moved away from the bed, and Brother Enoch stood in her place, his eyeless face immobile. You must let me help your brother. Or he will likely die, he said.
“What is he raving about?” Tessa demanded wretchedly. “What’s wrong with him?”
The vampires gave him a drug, to keep him calm while they fed. If he is not cured, the drug will drive him mad and then kill him. Already he has begun to hallucinate.
“It’s not my fault!” Nathaniel shrieked. “I had no choice! It’s not my fault!” He turned his face toward Tessa; she saw to her horror that his eyes had gone entirely black, like an insect’s eyes. She gasped, backing away.
“Help him. Please help him.” She caught at Brother Enoch’s sleeve, and immediately regretted it; the arm beneath the sleeve was as hard as marble, and freezing to the touch. She dropped her hand in horror, but the Silent Brother did not seem to even notice her presence. He had stepped past her, and now put his scarred fingers against Nathaniel’s forehead. Nathaniel sank back against the pillows, his eyes closing.
You must leave. Brother Enoch spoke without turning from the bed. Your presence will only slow his healing.
“But Nate asked me to stay—”
Go. The voice in Tessa’s mind was icy.
Tessa looked at her brother; he was still against the pillows, his face gone slack. She turned toward Charlotte, meaning to protest, but Charlotte met her glance with a small shake of the head. Her eyes were sympathetic, but unyielding. “As soon as your brother’s condition changes, I will find you. I promise.”
Tessa looked at Brother Enoch. He had opened the pouch at his waist and was setting objects down on the bedside table, slowly and methodically. Glass vials of powder and liquid, bunches of dried plants, sticks of some black substance like soft coal. “If anything happens to Nate,” Tessa said, “I shall never forgive you. Never.”
It was like speaking to a statue. Brother Enoch did not respond to her with so much as a twitch.
Tessa fled from the room.
After the dimness of Nate’s sickroom, the brightness of the sconces in the corridor stung Tessa’s eyes. She leaned against the wall by the door, willing her tears back. It was the second time that evening she had nearly cried, and she was annoyed with herself. Clenching her right hand into a fist, she slammed it against the wall behind her, hard, sending a shock wave of pain up her arm. That cleared the tears, and her head.
“That looked like it hurt.”
Tessa turned. Jem had come up behind her in the corridor, as silent as a cat. He had changed out of his gear. He wore loose dark trousers tied at the waist, and a white shirt only a few shades lighter than his skin. His fine bright hair was damp, curling against his temples and the nape of his neck.
“It did.” Tessa cradled her hand against her chest. The glove she wore had softened the blow, but her knuckles still ached.
“Your brother,” Jem said. “Is he going to be all right?”
“I don’t know. He’s in there with one of those—those monk creatures.”
“Brother Enoch.” Jem regarded her with sympathetic eyes. “I know how the Silent Brothers look, but they’re really very good doctors. They set great store by healing and medicinal arts. They live a long time, and know a great deal.”
“It hardly seems worth living a long time if you’re going to look like that.”
The corner of Jem’s mouth twitched. “I suppose it depends on what you’re living for.” He looked at her more closely. There was something about the way Jem looked at her, she thought. Like he could see into and through her. But nothing inside her, nothing he saw or heard, could bother or upset or disappoint him.
“Brother Enoch,” she said suddenly. “Do you know what he said? He told me that Nate isn’t like me. He’s fully human. No special powers at all.”
“And that upsets you?”
“I don’t know. On the one hand I wouldn’t wish this—this thing I am—on him, or anyone. But if he isn’t like me, then it means he isn’t completely my brother. He’s my parents’ son. But whose daughter am I?”
“You can’t concern yourself with that. Certainly it would be wonderful if we all knew exactly who we were. But that knowledge doesn’t come from outside, but from inside. ‘Know thyself,’ as the oracle says.” Jem grinned. “My apologies if that sounds like sophistry. I’m only telling you what I’ve learned from my own experience.”
“But I don’t know myself.” Tessa shook her head. “I’m sorry. After the way you fought at de Quincey’s, you must think I’m a terrible coward, crying because my brother isn’t a monster and I don’t have the courage to be a monster all by myself.”
“You’re not a monster,” said Jem. “Or a coward. On the contrary, I was quite impressed by the way you shot at de Quincey. You would almost certainly have killed him if there’d been any more bullets in the gun.”
“Yes, I think I would have. I wanted to kill them all.”
“That’s what Camille asked us to do, you know. Kill them all. Perhaps it was her emotions you were feeling?”
“But Camille has no reason to care about Nate, or what happens to him, and that was when I felt most murderous. When I saw Nate there, when I realized what they were planning to do—” She took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know how much of that was me and how much was Camille. And I don’t even know if it’s right to have those sort of feelings—”
“You mean,” asked Jem, “for a girl to have those feelings?”
“For anyone to have them, maybe—I don’t know. Maybe I mean for a girl to have them.”
Jem seemed to look through her then, as if he were seeing something beyond her, beyond the corridor, beyond the Institute itself. “Whatever you are physically,” he said, “male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy—all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.” He smiled then, seeming to have come back to himself, slightly embarrassed. “That’s what I believe.”
Before Tessa could reply, Nate’s door opened, and Charlotte came out. She responded to Tessa’s questioning look with an exhausted-looking nod. “Brother Enoch has helped your brother a great deal,” she said, “but there is much left to be done, and it will be morning before we know more. I suggest you go to sleep, Tessa. Exhausting yourself won’t help Nathaniel.”