Clockwork Angel

Page 45

Tessa did as directed—and stared. The bank was gone; in its place was a half-timbered tavern, with great diamond-paned windows. The light within the windows was tinted with a reddish glow, and through the open front door more red light poured out onto the pavement. Through the glass dark shadows moved—not the familiar shadows of men and women, but shapes too tall and thin, too oddly elongated or many-limbed to be human. Bursts of laughter interrupted a high, sweet, thin music, haunting and seductive. A sign hanging over the door showed a man reaching to tweak the nose of a horned demon. Lettered below the image were the words the devil tavern.
This is where Will was the other night. Tessa looked toward Jem. He was staring at the tavern, his hand light on her arm, his breathing slow and soft. She could see the red light of the pub reflected in his silvery eyes like sunset on water. “Is this your favorite place?” she asked.
The intensity went out of his gaze; he looked at her, and laughed. “Lord, no,” he said. “Just something I wanted you to see.”
Someone came out the tavern door then, a man in a long black overcoat, an elegant watered silk hat placed firmly on his head. As he glanced up the street, Tessa saw that his skin was an inky dark blue, his hair and beard as white as ice. He moved east toward the Strand as Tessa watched, wondering if he would garner curious stares, but his passage was no more noted by passersby than that of a ghost would be. In fact, the mundanes who passed in front of the Devil Tavern seemed barely to notice it at all, even when several spindly, chittering figures exited and nearly knocked over a tired-looking man wheeling an empty cart. He paused to look around for a moment, puzzled, then shrugged and went on.
“There was a very ordinary tavern there once,” said Jem. “As it grew more and more infested with Downworlders, the Nephilim became concerned about the intertwining of the Shadow World with the mundane world. They barred mundanes from the place by the simple expedient of using a glamour to convince them that the tavern had been knocked down and a bank erected in its place. The Devil is a nearly exclusively Downworlder haunt now.” Jem glanced up at the moon, a frown crossing his face. “It’s growing late. We’d better move on.”
After a single glance back at the Devil, Tessa moved after Jem, who continued to chat easily as they went, pointing out things of interest—the Temple Church, where the law courts were now, and where once the Knights Templar had sustained pilgrims on their route to the Holy Land. “They were friends of the Nephilim, the knights. Mundanes, but not without their own knowledge of the Shadow World. And of course,” he added, as they came out from the network of streets and onto Blackfriars Bridge itself, “many think that the Silent Brothers are the original Black Friars, though no one can prove it. This is it,” he added, gesturing before him. “My favorite place in London.”
Looking out over the bridge, Tessa couldn’t help but wonder what Jem liked so much about the place. It stretched from one bank of the Thames to the other, a low granite bridge with multiple arches, the parapets painted dark red and gilded with gold and scarlet paint that gleamed in the moonlight. It would have been pretty if it hadn’t been for the railway bridge that ran along the east side of it, silent in the shadows but still an ugly latticework of iron railings stretching away to the river’s opposite bank.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jem said again, just as he had outside the Institute. “The railway bridge, it’s hideous. But it means people rarely come here to admire the view. I enjoy the solitude, and just the look of the river, silent under the moon.”
They walked to the center of the bridge, where Tessa leaned against a granite parapet and looked down. The Thames was black in the moonlight. The expanse of London stretched away on either bank, the great dome of St. Paul’s looming up behind them like a white ghost, and everything shrouded in the softening fog that laid a gently blurring veil over the harsh lines of the city.
Tessa glanced down at the river. The smell of salt and dirt and rot came off the water, mixing with the fog. Still there was something portentous about London’s river, as if it carried the weight of the past in its currents. A bit of old poetry came into her head. “‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,’” she said, half under her breath. Normally she would never have quoted poetry aloud in front of anyone, but there was something about Jem that made her feel that whatever she did, he wouldn’t pass judgment on her.
“I’ve heard that bit of rhyme before,” was all he said. “Will’s quoted it at me. What is it?”
“Spenser. ‘Prothalamion.’” Tessa frowned. “Will does seem to have an odd affinity for poetry for someone so … so …”
“Will reads constantly, and has an excellent memory,” said Jem. “There is very little he does not remember.” There was something in his voice that lent weight to his assertion beyond the mere statement of fact.
“You like Will, don’t you?” said Tessa. “I mean, you’re fond of him.”
“I love him as if he were my brother,” said Jem matter-of-factly.
“You can say that,” Tessa said. “However horrid he is to everyone else, he loves you. He’s kind to you. What did you ever do, to make him treat you so differently from all the rest?”
Jem leaned sideways against the parapet, his gaze on her but still faraway. He tapped his fingers thoughtfully against the jade top of his cane. Taking advantage of his clear distraction, Tessa let herself stare at him, marveling a little at his strange beauty in the moonlight. He was all silver and ashes, not like Will’s strong colors of blue and black and gold.
Finally he said, “I don’t know, really. I used to think it was because we were both without parents, and therefore he felt we were the same—”
“I’m an orphan,” Tessa pointed out. “So is Jessamine. He doesn’t think he is like us.”
“No. He doesn’t.” Jem’s eyes were guarded, as if there were something he wasn’t saying.
“I don’t understand him,” Tessa said. “He can be kind one moment and absolutely awful the next. I cannot decide if he is kind or cruel, loving or hateful—”
“Does it matter?” Jem said. “Is it required that you make such a decision?”
“The other night,” she went on, “in your room, when Will came in. He said he had been drinking all night, but then, later, when you—later he seemed to become instantly sober. I’ve seen my brother drunk. I know it doesn’t vanish like that in an instant; even my aunt throwing a pail of cold water in Nate’s face wouldn’t have roused him from stupor, not if he were truly intoxicated. And Will didn’t smell of alcohol, or seem ill the next morning. But why would he lie and say he was drunk if he wasn’t?”
Jem looked resigned. “And there you have the essential mystery of Will Herondale. I used to wonder the same thing myself. How anyone could drink as much as he claimed and survive, much less fight as well as he does. So one night I followed him.”
“You followed him?”
Jem grinned crookedly. “Yes. He went out, claiming an assignation or some such, and I followed him. If I’d known what to expect, I would have worn sturdier shoes. All night he walked through the city, from St. Paul’s to Spitalfields Market to Whitechapel High Street. He went down to the river and wandered about the docks. Never did he stop to speak to a single soul. It was like following a ghost. The next morning he was ready with some ribald tale of false adventures, and I never demanded the truth. If he wishes to lie to me, then he must have a reason.”
“He lies to you, and yet you trust him?”
“Yes,” Jem said. “I trust him.”
“But—”
“He lies consistently. He always invents the story that will make him look the worst.”
“Then, has he told you what happened to his parents? Either the truth or lies?”
“Not entirely. Bits and pieces,” Jem said after a long pause. “I know that his father left the Nephilim. Before Will was ever born. He fell in love with a mundane girl, and when the Council refused to make her a Shadowhunter, he left the Clave and moved with her to a very remote part of Wales, where they thought they wouldn’t be interfered with. The Clave was furious.”
“Will’s mother was a mundane? You mean he is only half a Shadowhunter?”
“Nephilim blood is dominant,” said Jem. “That’s why there are three rules for those who leave the Clave. First, you must sever contact with any and all Shadowhunters you have ever known, even your own family. They can never speak to you again, nor can you speak to them. Second, you cannot call upon the Clave for help, no matter what your danger. And the third …”
“What’s the third?”
“Even should you leave the Clave,” said Jem, “they can still lay claim to your children.”
A little shiver went through Tessa. Jem was still staring out at the river, as if he could see Will in its silvered surface. “Every six years,” he said, “until the child is eighteen, a representative of the Clave comes to your family and asks the child if they would like to leave their family and join the Nephilim.”
“I can’t imagine anyone would,” Tessa said, appalled. “I mean, you’d never be able to speak to your family again, would you?”
Jem shook his head.
“And Will agreed to that? He joined the Shadowhunters regardless?”
“He refused. Twice, he refused. Then, one day—Will was twelve or so—there was a knock on the Institute door and Charlotte answered it. She would have been eighteen then, I think. Will was standing there on the steps. She told me he was covered in road dust and dirt as if he’d been sleeping in hedgerows. He said, ‘I am a Shadowhunter. One of you. You have to let me in. I have nowhere else to go.’”
“He said that? Will? ‘I have nowhere else to go’?”
He hesitated. “You understand, all this is information I heard from Charlotte. Will’s never mentioned a word of any of it to me. But that’s what she claims he said.”
“I don’t understand. His parents—they’re dead, aren’t they? Or they would have come looking for him.”
“They did,” Jem said quietly. “A few weeks after Will arrived, Charlotte told me, his parents followed. They came to the front door of the Institute and banged on it, calling for him. Charlotte went into Will’s room to ask him if he wanted to see them. He had crawled under the bed and had his hands over his ears. He wouldn’t come out, no matter what she did, and he wouldn’t see them. I think Charlotte finally went down and sent them away, or they left of their own accord, I’m not sure—”
“Sent them away? But their child was inside the Institute. They had a right—”
“They had no right.” Jem spoke gently enough, Tessa thought, but there was something in his tone that put him as far away from her as the moon. “Will chose to join the Shadowhunters. Once he made that choice, they had no more claim on him. It was the right and responsibility of the Clave to turn them away.”