Clockwork Princess

Page 51

"Of course I remember."
"It was the moment I first knew I loved you," Jem said. "I will make you a promise. Every year, Tessa, on one day, I will meet you on that bridge. I will come from the Silent City and I will meet you, and we will be together, if only for an hour. But you must tell no one."
"An hour every year," Tessa whispered. "It is not much." She recollected herself then, and took a deep breath. "But you will live. You will live. That is what is important. I will not be visiting your grave."
"No. Not for a long, long time," he said, and the distance was back in his voice.
"Then that is a miracle," Tessa said. "And one does not question miracles, or complain that they are not constructed perfectly to one's liking." She reached up and touched the jade pendant about her throat. "Shall I return this to you?"
"No," he said "I will marry no one else, now. And I shall not take my mother's bridal gift to the Silent City." He reached out and touched her face lightly, a brush of skin on skin. "When I am in the darkness, I want to think of it in the light, with you," he said, and straightened, and turned to walk toward the door. The parchment robes of the Silent Brothers moved around him as he moved, and Tessa watched him, paralyzed, every pulse of her heart beating out the words she could not say: Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.
He paused at the door. "I shall see you on Blackfriars Bridge, Tessa."
And he was gone.
If Will closed his eyes, he could hear the sounds of the Institute coming to life early in the morning around him, or at least he could imagine them: Sophie setting the breakfast table, Charlotte and Cyril helping Henry to his chair, the Lightwood brothers sparring sleepily in the corridors, Cecily no doubt looking for him in his room, as she had several mornings in a row now, trying-and failing-to conceal her obvious worry.
And in Tessa's room, Jem and Tessa, talking.
He knew Jem was here, because the carriage of the Silent Brothers was drawn up in the courtyard. He could see it from the training room windows. But that was not something he could think about. It was what he had wanted, what he had asked Charlotte for, but now that it was transpiring, he found he could not bear to think on it too closely. So he had taken himself to the room where he always went when his mind was troubled; he had been throwing knives at the wall since the sun had come up, and his shirt was soaked with sweat and sticking to his back.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The knives hit the wall, each one in the center of the target. He remembered when he had been twelve, and getting the knife anywhere near its goal had seemed an impossible dream. Jem had helped him, showed him how to hold a blade, how to line up the point and throw. Of all the places in the Institute, the training room was the one he most associated with Jem-save Jem's own room, and that had been stripped of Jem's belongings. It was just another empty Institute room now, waiting for another Shadowhunter to fill it. Even Church did not seem to want to go into it; he would stand by the door sometimes, and wait as cats did, but he no longer slept on the bed as he had when Jem had lived there.
Will shivered-the training room was cold in the early morning grayness; the fire in the grate was burning down, a fanged shadow of red and gold spitting colorful embers. Will could see two boys in his mind, sitting on the floor in front of the fire in this same room, one with black, black hair, and one whose hair was as fair as snow. He had been teaching Jem how to play ecarte with a deck of cards he had stolen from the drawing room.
At one point, disgruntled upon losing, Will had thrown the cards into the fire and watched in fascination as they'd burned one by one, the fire punching holes in the glossy white paper. Jem had laughed. "You can't win like that."
"Sometimes it's the only way to win," Will had said. "Burn it all down."
He went to retrieve the knives from the wall, scowling. Burn it all down. His whole body still hurt. As he plucked the blades free, he saw that there were greenish-blue bruises on his arms despite the iratzes, and scars from the Cadair Idris battle that he would have forever. He thought of fighting beside Jem in the battle. Maybe he had not appreciated it at the time. The last, last time.
Like an echo of his thoughts, a shadow fell across the doorway. Will looked up-and nearly dropped the knife he was holding.
"Jem?" he said. "Is it you, James?"
"Who else?" Jem's voice. As he stepped forward into the light of the room, Will could see that the hood of his parchment robes was down, his gaze level with Will's. His face, eyes, all familiar. But Will had always been able to sense Jem before, sense his approach and his presence. The fact that Jem had startled him this time was a sharp reminder of the change in his parabatai.
Not your parabatai any longer, said a small voice in the back of his mind.
Jem came into the room with the soundless tread of the Silent Brothers, closing the door behind him. Will did not move from where he stood. He did not feel that he could. The sight of Jem in Cadair Idris had been a shock that had gone through his system like a terrible and wonderful incandescence-Jem was alive, but he was changed; he lived, but was lost.
"But," he said. "You are here to see Tessa."
Jem looked at him levelly. His eyes were gray-black, like slate shot through with streaks of obsidian. "And you did not think I would take the chance, whatever chance I could, to see you, too?"
"I did not know. You left, after the battle, without a farewell."
Jem took a few steps forward, into the room. Will felt his spine tighten. There was something strange, something bone-deep and different about the way Jem moved now; this was not the Shadowhunter's grace Will had trained himself over so many years to mimic, but something strange and alien and new.
Jem must have seen something in Will's expression, for he paused. "How could I say farewell," he said, "to you?"
Will let the knife fall from his hand. It stuck, point-down, in the wood of the floor. "As Shadowhunters do? Ave atque vale. And forever, brother, hail and farewell."
"But those are the words of death. Catullus spoke them over his brother's grave, did he not? Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias-"
Will knew the words. Through many waters borne, brother, I am come to thy sad grave, that I may give these last gifts to the dead. Forever and ever, brother, hail. Forever and ever, farewell. He stared. "You-memorized the poem in Latin? But you were always the one who would memorize music, not words-" He broke off with a short laugh. "Never mind. The rituals of the Brotherhood would have changed that." He turned and paced a few steps away, then spun abruptly to face Jem. "Your violin is in the music room. I thought you might have taken it with you-you cared for it so."
"We can take nothing with us to the Silent City but our own bodies and minds," said Jem. "I left the violin here for some future Shadowhunter who might wish to play it."
"Not for me, then."
"I would be honored if you would take it and care for it. But I left something else for you. In your room is my yin fen box. I thought that you might want it."
"That seems a cruel sort of gift," Will said. "That I might be reminded ..." What took you away from me. What made you suffer. What I searched for and could not find. How I failed you.
"Will, no," said Jem, who, as always, understood without Will having to explain. "It was not always a box that held my drugs. It was my mother's. Kwan Yin is the goddess depicted on the front. It is said that when she died and reached the gates of paradise, she paused and heard the cries of anguish from the human world below and could not leave it. She remained to give aid to mortals, when they cannot aid themselves. She is the comfort of all suffering hearts."
"A box will not comfort me."
"Change is not loss, Will. Not always."
Will pushed his hands through his damp hair. "Oh, yes," he said bitterly. "Perhaps in some other life, beyond this one, when we have passed beyond the river, or turned upon the Wheel, or whatever kind words you want to use to describe leaving this world, I shall find my friend again, my parabatai. But I have lost you now-now, when I need you more than I ever did!"
Jem had moved across the room-like a flicker of shadow, the Silent Brother's grace light upon him-and now stood beside the fire. The firelight illuminated his face, and Will could see that something seemed to shine through him: a sort of light that had not been there before. Jem had always shone, with fierce life and fiercer goodness, but this was something different. The light in Jem seemed to burn now; it was a distant light and a lonely one, like the light of a star. "You don't need me, Will."
Will looked down at himself, at the knife at his feet, and remembered the knife he had buried at the base of the tree on the Shrewsbury-Welshpool road, stained with his blood and Jem's. "All my life, since I came to the Institute, you were the mirror of my soul. I saw the good in me in you. In your eyes alone I found grace. When you are gone from me, who will see me like that?"
There was a silence then. Jem stood as still as a statue. With his gaze Will searched for, and found, the parabatai rune on Jem's shoulder; like his own, it had faded to a pale white.
At last Jem spoke. The cool remoteness had left his voice. Will breathed in hard, remembering how much that voice had shaped the years of his growing up, its steady kindness a lighthouse beacon in the dark. "Have faith in yourself. You can be your own mirror."
"What if I can't?" Will whispered. "I don't even know how to be a Shadowhunter without you. I have only ever fought with you by my side."
Jem stepped forward, and this time Will did not move to discourage him. He came close enough to touch-Will thought distractedly that he had never stood so close to a Silent Brother before, that the fabric of the parchment robes was woven of a strange, tough, pale fabric like the bark of a tree, and that cold seemed to emanate from Jem's skin the way stone held a chill even on a hot day.
Jem put his fingers under Will's chin, forcing Will to look directly at him. His touch was cold.
Will bit at his lip. This was the last time Jem, as Jem, might ever touch him. The sharp memory went through him like a knife-of years of Jem's light tap on his shoulder, his hand reaching to help Will up when he fell, Jem holding him back when he was furious, Will's own hands on Jem's thin shoulders as Jem coughed blood into his shirt. "Listen to me. I am leaving, but I am living. I will not be gone from you entirely, Will. When you fight now, I will be still by you. When you walk in the world, I will be the light at your side, the ground steady under your feet, the force that drives the sword in your hand. We are bound, beyond the oath. The Marks did not change that. The oath did not change that. It merely gave words to something that existed already."
"But what of you?" said Will. "Tell me what I can do, for you are my parabatai, and I do not wish you to go into the shadows of the Silent City alone."
"I have no choice. But if there is one thing I could ask of you, it is that you be happy. I want you to have a family and grow old with those who love you. And if you wish to marry Tessa, then do not let the memory of me keep you apart."
"She may not want me, you know," Will said.
Jem smiled, fleetingly. "Well, that part is up to you, I think."
Will smiled back, and for just that moment they were Jem-and-Will again. Will could see Jem, but also through him, to the past. Will remembered the two of them, running through the dark streets of London, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, seraph blades gleaming in their hands; hours in the training room, shoving each other into mud puddles, throwing snowballs at Jessamine from behind an ice fort in the courtyard, asleep like puppies on the rug in front of the fire.
Ave atque vale, Will thought. Hail and farewell. He had not given much thought to the words before, had never thought about why they were not just a farewell but also a greeting. Every meeting led to a parting, and so it would, as long as life was mortal. In every meeting there was some of the sorrow of parting, but in every parting there was some of the joy of meeting as well.
He would not forget the joy.
"We spoke of how to say good-bye," Jem said. "When Jonathan bid farewell to David, he said, 'Go in peace, for as much as we have sworn, both of us, saying the Lord be between me and thee, forever.' They did not see each other again, but they did not forget. So it will be with us. When I am Brother Zachariah, when I no longer see the world with my human eyes, I will still be in some part the Jem you knew, and I will see you with the eyes of my heart."
"Wo men shi sheng si ji jiao," said Will, and he saw Jem's eyes widen, fractionally, and the spark of amusement inside them. "Go in peace, James Carstairs."
They stayed looking at each other for a long moment, and then Jem drew up his hood, hiding his face in shadow, and turned away.
Will closed his eyes. He could not hear Jem go, not anymore; he did not want to know the moment when he left and Will was alone, did not want to know when his first day as a Shadowhunter without a parabatai truly began. And if the place over his heart, where his parabatai rune had been, flared up with a sudden burning pain as the door closed behind Jem, Will told himself it was only a stray ember from the fire.
He leaned back against the wall, then slowly slid down it until he was sitting on the floor, beside his throwing knife. He did not know how long he sat there, but he could hear the noise of horses in the courtyard, the rattle of the Silent Brothers' carriage pulling out of the drive. The clang of the gate as it shut. We are dust and shadows.
"Will?" He looked up; he had not noticed the slight figure in the doorway of the training room until she spoke. Charlotte took a step forward and smiled at him. There was kindness in her smile, as there always was, and he fought to not close his eyes against the memories-Charlotte in the doorway of this very room. Didn't you recall what I told you yesterday, that we were welcoming a new arrival to the Institute today? ... James Carstairs ...
"Will," she said, again, now. "You were correct."
He lifted his head, his hands dangling between his knees. "Correct about what?"
"About Jem and Tessa," she said. "Their engagement is ended. And Tessa is awake. She is awake, and well, and asking for you."
When I am in the darkness, I will think of it in the light, with you.
Tessa sat upright against the pillows Sophie had carefully arranged for her (the two girls had embraced, and Sophie had brushed the tangles from Tessa's hair and said "bless, bless" so many times that Tessa had had to ask her to stop before she made them both cry) and looked down at the jade pendant in her hands.