Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Princess

Gabriel rubbed the skin at his temples. He was so very tall—he seemed to tower above Cecily, for all that he was very slender. He had a sharply planed face, not quite pretty, but elegant, his lower lip shaped nearly exactly like a bow. “All right,” he said. “I will go in and send him out.”

“Why you? And not me?”

“If he is angry, if he is grief-stricken, it is better I see it, and that he be furious with me than with you,” Gabriel said matter-of-factly. “I am trusting you, Miss Herondale, that this is important. I hope you won’t disappoint me.”

Cecily said nothing, just watched as Gabriel pushed the door of the sickroom open and went in. She leaned against a wall, her heart pounding, as a murmur of voices came from within. She could hear Charlotte say something about blood replacement runes, which were apparently dangerous—and then the door opened and Gabriel came out.

She stood up straight. “Is Will—”

Gabriel’s eyes flashed at her, and a moment later Will appeared, on Gabriel’s heels, reaching around to shut the door firmly behind him. Gabriel nodded at Cecily and set off down the hall, leaving her alone with her brother.

She had always wondered how you could be alone with someone else, really. If you were with them, weren’t you by definition not alone? But she felt entirely alone now, for Will seemed to be somewhere else completely. He did not even seem to be angry. He leaned against the wall by the door, beside her, and yet he seemed as insubstantial as a ghost.

“Will,” she said.

He did not seem to hear her. He was trembling, his hands shaking with strain and tension.

“Gwilym Owain,” she said again, more softly.

He turned his head to look at her at least, though his eyes were as blue and cold as the water of Llyn Mwyngil in the lee of the mountains. “I first came here when I was twelve,” he said.

“I know,” Cecily said, bewildered. Did he think she could have forgotten? Losing Ella, and then her Will, her beloved older brother, in only a matter of days? But Will did not even seem to hear her.

“It was, to be precise, the tenth of November of that year. And every year after, on the anniversary of that day, I would fall into a black mood of despair. That was the day—that and my birthday—when I was most strongly reminded of Mam and Dad, and of you. I knew you were alive, that you were out there, that you wanted me back, and I could not go, could not even send you a letter. I wrote dozens, of course, and burned them. You had to hate me and blame me for Ella’s death.”

“We never blamed you—”

“After the first year, even though I still dreaded the day’s approach, I began to find that there was something Jem simply had to do every November tenth, some training exercise or some search that would take us to the far end of the city in the cold, wet winter weather. And I would abuse him bitterly for it, of course. Sometimes the damp chill made him ill, or he would forget his drugs and become ill on the day, coughing blood and confined to bed, and that would be a distraction too. And only after it had happened three times—for I am very stupid, Cecy, and think only of myself—did I realize that of course he was doing it for me. He had noticed the date and was doing all he could to draw me from my melancholy.”

Cecily stood stock-still, staring at him. Despite the words that pounded in her head to be spoken, she could say nothing, for it was as if the veil of years had fallen away and she was seeing her brother at last, as he had been as a child, petting her clumsily when she was hurt, falling asleep on the rug in front of the fire with a book open on his chest, climbing out of the pond laughing and shaking water out of his black hair. Will, with no wall between himself and the world outside.

He put his arms about himself as if he were cold. “I do not know who to be without him,” he said. “Tessa is gone, and every moment she is gone is a knife ripping me apart from the inside. She is gone, and they cannot track her, and I have no idea where to go or what to do next, and the only person I can imagine speaking my agony to is the one person who cannot know. Even if he were not dying.”

“Will. Will. ” She put her hand on his arm. “Please listen to me. This is about finding Tessa. I believe I know where Mortmain is.”

His eyes snapped wide at that. “How could you know?”

“I was close enough to you to hear what Jessamine said when she was dying,” Cecily said, feeling the blood pounding in him under his skin. His heart was hammering. “She said you were a terrible Welshman.”

“Jessamine?” He sounded bewildered, but she saw the slight narrowing of his eyes. Perhaps, unconsciously, he was beginning to follow the same line of thought that she had.

“She kept saying Mortmain was in Idris. But the Clave knows he is not,” said Cecily rapidly. “You did not know Mortmain when he lived in Wales, but I did. He knows it well. And once you did too. We grew up in the shadow of the mountain, Will. Think. ”

He stared at her. “You don’t imagine—Cadair Idris?”

“He knows those mountains, Will,” she said. “And he would find it all funny, a great joke on you and all the Nephilim. He has taken her exactly where you fled from. He has taken her to our home.”

“A posset?” said Gideon, taking the steaming mug from Sophie. “I feel like a child again.”

“It has spice and wine in it. It will do you good. Build up your blood.” Sophie fussed about, not looking at Gideon directly as she set the tray she had been carrying down on the nightstand beside his bed. He was sitting up, one of the legs of his trousers cut away below the knee and the leg itself wrapped in bandages. His hair was still disarrayed from the fight, and though he had been given clean clothes to wear, he still smelled slightly of blood and sweat.

“ These build up my blood,” he said, holding out an arm on which two blood-replacement runes, sangliers , had been inked.

“Is that supposed to mean that you don’t like possets, either?” she demanded, her hands on her hips. She could still recall how annoyed she’d been with him about the scones, but she had forgiven him completely the night before, while reading his letter to the Consul (which she had not had a chance to post yet—it was still in the pocket of her bloodstained apron). And today, when the automaton had sliced at his leg on the Institute steps and he’d fallen, blood pouring from the open wound, her heart had seized up with a terror that had surprised her.

“No one likes possets,” he said with a faint but charming smile.

“Do I have to stay and make sure you drink it, or are you going to throw it under the bed? Because then we’ll have mice.”

He had the grace to look sheepish; Sophie rather wished she had been there when Bridget had swept into his room and announced that she was there to clean the scones out from under the bed. “Sophie,” he said, and when she gave him a stern look, he took a hasty swig of the posset. “Miss Collins. I have not yet had a chance to properly apologize to you, so let me take it now. Please forgive me for the trick I played on you with the scones. I did not mean to show you disrespect. I hope you do not imagine I think any less of you for your position in the household, for you are one of the finest and bravest ladies I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

Sophie took her hands off her hips. “Well,” she said. It was not many gentlemen who would apologize to a servant. “That is a very pretty apology.”

“And I am sure the scones are very good,” he added hastily. “I just don’t like scones. I never have liked scones. It’s not your scones.”