Cassandra Clare: Clockwork Princess

The boy behind Charlotte made a stifled noise. A laugh, she would have thought, but certainly he couldn’t be laughing? She had been warned the boy coming to the Institute from Shanghai was not well, but she had still been startled when he had stepped from the carriage, pale and swaying like a reed in the wind, his curling dark hair streaked with silver as if he were a man in his eighties, not a boy of twelve. His eyes were wide and silvery-black, strangely beautiful but haunting in such a delicate face. “Will, you shall be polite,” she said now, and drew the boy out from behind her, ushering him ahead into the room. “Don’t mind Will; he’s only moody. Will Herondale, may I introduce you to James Carstairs, of the Shanghai Institute.”

“Jem,” said the boy. “Everyone calls me Jem.” He took another step forward into the room, his gaze taking in Will with a friendly curiosity. He spoke without the trace of an accent, to Charlotte’s surprise, but then his father was—had been—British. “You can too.”

“Well, if everyone calls you that, it’s hardly any special favor to me, is it?” Will’s tone was acid; for someone so young, he was amazingly capable of unpleasantness. “I think you will find, James Carstairs, that if you keep to yourself and let me alone, it will be the best outcome for both of us.”

Charlotte sighed inwardly. She had so hoped that this boy, the same age as Will, would prove a tool to disarm Will of his anger and his viciousness, but it seemed clear that Will had been speaking the truth when he had told her he did not care if another Shadowhunter boy was coming to the Institute. He did not want friends, or want for them. She glanced at Jem, expecting to see him blinking in surprise or hurt, but he was only smiling a little, as if Will were a kitten that had tried to bite him. “I haven’t trained since I left Shanghai,” he said. “I could use a partner—someone to spar with.”

“So could I,” said Will. “But I need someone who can keep up with me, not some sickly creature that looks as if he’s doddering off to the grave. Although I suppose you might be useful for target practice.”

Charlotte, knowing what she did about James Carstairs—a fact she had not shared with Will—felt a sickly horror come over her. Doddering off to the grave, oh dear Lord. What was it her father had said? That Jem was dependent on a drug to live, some kind of medicine that would extend his life but not save it. Oh, Will.

She made as if to move in between the two boys, as if she could protect Jem from Will’s cruelty, more awfully accurate in this instance that even he knew—but then she paused.

Jem had not even changed expression. “If by ‘doddering off to the grave’ you mean dying, then I am,” he said. “I have about two years more to live, three if I am lucky, or so they tell me.”

Even Will could not hide his shock; his cheeks flushed red. “I . . .”

But Jem had set his steps toward the target painted on the wall; when he reached it, he yanked the knife free from the wood. Then he turned and walked directly up to Will. Delicate as he was, they were of the same height, and only inches from each other their eyes met and held. “You may use me for target practice if you wish,” said Jem, as casually as if he were talking about the weather. “It seems to me I have little to fear from such an exercise, as you are not a very good shot.” He turned, took aim, and let the knife fly. It stuck directly into the heart of the target, quivering slightly. “Or,” Jem went on, turning back to Will, “you could allow me to teach you . For I am a very good shot.”

Charlotte stared. For half a year she had watched Will push away everyone who’d tried to get near him—tutors; her father; her fiancé, Henry; both the Lightwood brothers—with a combination of hatefulness and precisely accurate cruelty. If it were not that she herself was the only person who had ever seen him cry, she imagined she would have given up hope as well, long ago, that he would ever be any good to anybody. And yet here he was, looking at Jem Carstairs, a boy so fragile-looking that he appeared to be made out of glass, with the hardness of his expression slowly dissolving into a tentative uncertainty. “You are not really dying,” he said, the oddest tone to his voice, “are you?”

Jem nodded. “So they tell me.”

“I am sorry,” Will said.

“No,” Jem said softly. He drew his jacket aside and took a knife from the belt at his waist. “Don’t be ordinary like that. Don’t say you’re sorry. Say you’ll train with me.”

He held out the knife to Will, hilt first. Charlotte held her breath, afraid to move. She felt as if she were watching something very important happen, though she could not have said what.

Will reached out and took the knife, his eyes never leaving Jem’s face. His fingers brushed the other boy’s as he took the weapon from him. It was the first time, Charlotte thought, that she had ever seen him touch any other person willingly.

“I’ll train with you,” he said.

“December is a fortuitous time for a marriage,” said the seamstress, speaking around her mouthful of pins with the ease of years of practice. “As they say, ‘When December snows fall fast, marry, and true love will last.’ ” She placed a final pin in the gown and took a step back. “There. What do you think? It is modeled after one of Worth’s own designs.”

Tessa looked at her reflection in the pier glass in her bedroom. The dress was a deep gold silk, as was the custom for Shadowhunters, who believed white to be the color of mourning, and would not marry in it, despite Queen Victoria herself having set the fashion for doing just that. Duchesse lace edged the tightly fitted bodice and dripped from the sleeves.

“It’s lovely!” Charlotte clapped her hands together and leaned forward. Her brown eyes shone with delight. “Tessa, the color looks so fine on you.”

Tessa turned and twisted in front of the mirror. The gold put some much-needed color into her cheeks. The hourglass corset shaped and curved her everywhere it was supposed to, and the clockwork angel around her throat comforted her with its ticking. Below it dangled the jade pendant that Jem had given her. She had lengthened the chain so she could wear them both at once, not being willing to part with either. “You don’t think, perhaps, that the lace is a trifle too much adornment?”

“Not at all!” Charlotte sat back, one hand resting protectively, unconsciously, over her belly. She had always been too slim—skinny, in truth—to really need a corset, and now that she was going to have a child, she had taken to wearing tea gowns, in which she looked like a little bird. “It is your wedding day, Tessa. If there is ever an excuse for excessive adornment, it is that. Just imagine it.”

Tessa had spent many nights doing just that. She was not yet sure where she and Jem would be married, for the Council was still deliberating their situation. But when she imagined the wedding, it was always in a church, with her being marched down the aisle, perhaps on Henry’s arm, looking neither to the left or right but straight ahead at her betrothed, as a proper bride should. Jem would be wearing gear—not the sort one fought in, but specially designed, in the manner of a military uniform, for the occasion: black with bands of gold at the wrists, and gold runes picked out along the collar and placket.