Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

“She’s a mundane—an Ascendant,” Jem said quickly. “Soon to be my wife.” He took Tessa’s hand protectively, and turned it so that Gottshall could see the ring on her finger. “The Council thought it would be beneficial for her to see another Institute besides London’s.”

“Has Mr. Starkweather been told aught about this?” Gottshall asked, black eyes keen beneath the rim of his hat.

“It depends what Mrs. Branwell told him,” said Jem.

“Well, I hope she told him something, for yer sakes,” said the old servant, raising his eyebrows. “If there’s a man in t’ world who hates surprises more than Aloysius Starkweather, Ah’ve yet to meet the bast—beggar. Begging your pardon, miss.”

Tessa smiled and inclined her head, but inside, her stomach was churning. She looked from Jem to Will, but both boys were calm and smiling. They were used to this sort of subterfuge, she thought, and she was not. She had played parts before, but never as herself, never wearing her own face and not someone else’s. For some reason the thought of lying without a false image to hide behind terrified her. She could only hope that Gottshall was exaggerating, though something—the glint in his eye as he regarded her, perhaps—told her that he wasn’t.

Tessa barely noticed the interior of the station as they followed Starkweather’s servant through its crowded entry hall. Hustle and bustle, people bumping into her, the smell of coal smoke and cooking food, blurring signs for the Great Northern Railway company and the York and North Midland lines. Soon enough they were outside the station, under a graying sky that arched overhead, threatening rain. A grand hotel reared up against the twilit sky at one end of the station; Gottshall hurried them toward it, where a black carriage with the four C s of the Clave painted on the door waited near the entrance. After settling the luggage and clambering inside, they were off, the carriage surging into Tanner Row to join the flow of traffic.

Will was silent most of the way, drumming his slim fingers on his black-trousered knees, his blue eyes distant and thoughtful. It was Jem who did the talking, leaning across Tessa to draw the curtains back on her side of the carriage. He pointed out items of interest—the graveyard where the victims of a cholera epidemic had been interred, and the ancient gray walls of the city rising up in front of them, crenellated across the top like the pattern on his ring. Once they were through the walls, the streets narrowed. It was like London, Tessa thought, but on a reduced scale; even the stores they passed—a butcher’s, a draper’s—seemed smaller. The pedestrians, mostly men, who hurried by, chins dug into their collars to block the light rain that had begun to fall, were not as fashionably dressed; they looked “country,” like the farmers who came into Manhattan on occasion, recognizable by the redness of their big hands, the tough, sunburned skin of their faces.

The carriage swung out of a narrow street and into a huge square; Tessa drew in a breath. Before them rose a magnificent cathedral, its Gothic turrets piercing the gray sky like Saint Sebastian stuck through with arrows. A massive limestone tower surmounted the structure, and niches along the front of the building held sculpted statues, each one different. “Is that the Institute? Goodness, it’s so much grander than London’s—”

Will laughed. “Sometimes a church is only a church, Tess.”

“That’s York Minster,” said Jem. “Pride of the city. Not the Institute. The Institute’s in Goodramgate Street.” His words were confirmed as the carriage swung away from the cathedral, down Deangate, and onto the narrow, cobbled lane of Goodramgate, where they rattled beneath a small iron gate between two leaning Tudor buildings.

When they emerged on the other side of the gate, Tessa saw why Will had laughed. What rose before them was a pleasant-enough-looking church, surrounded by enclosing walls and smooth grass, but it had none of the grandeur of York Minster. When Gottshall came around to swing the door of the carriage open and help Tessa down to the ground, she saw that occasional headstones rose from the rain-dampened grass, as if someone had intended to begin a cemetery here and had lost interest halfway through the proceedings.

The sky was nearly black now, silvered here and there with clouds made near-transparent by starlight. Behind her, Jem’s and Will’s familiar voices murmured; before her, the doors of the church stood open, and through them she could see flickering candles. She felt suddenly bodiless, as if she were the ghost of Tessa, haunting this odd place so far from the life she had known in New York. She shivered, and not just from the cold.

She felt the brush of a hand against her arm, and warm breath stirred her hair. She knew who it was without turning. “Shall we go in, my betrothed?” Jem said softly in her ear. She could feel the laughter in him, vibrating through his bones, communicating itself to her. She almost smiled. “Let us beard the lion in his den together.”

She put her hand through his arm. They made their way up the steps of the church; she looked back at the top, and saw Will gazing up after them, apparently unheeding as Gottshall tapped him on the shoulder, saying something into his ear. Her eyes met his, but she looked quickly away; entangling gazes with Will was confusing at best, dizzying at worst.

The inside of the church was small and dark compared to the London Institute’s. Pews dark with age ran the length of the walls, and above them witchlight tapers burned in holders made of blackened iron. At the front of the church, in front of a veritable cascade of burning candles, stood an old man dressed all in Shadowhunter black. His hair and beard were thick and gray, standing out wildly around his head, his gray-black eyes half-hidden beneath massive eyebrows, his skin scored with the marks of age. Tessa knew him to be almost ninety, but his back was still straight, his chest as thick around as the trunk of a tree.

“Young Herondale, are you?” he barked as Will stepped forward to introduce himself. “Half-mundane, half-Welsh, and the worst traits of both, I’ve heard.”

Will smiled politely. “Diolch.”

Starkweather bristled. “Mongrel tongue,” he muttered, and turned his gaze to Jem. “James Carstairs,” he said. “Another Institute brat. I’ve half a mind to tell the lot of you to go to blazes. That upstart bit of a girl, that Charlotte Fairchild, foisting you all on me with nary a by-your-leave.” He had a little of the Yorkshire accent that his servant had, though much fainter; still, the way he pronounced “I” did sound a bit like “Ah.” “None of that family ever had a bit o’ manners. I could do without her father, and I can do without—”

His flashing eyes came to rest on Tessa then, and he stopped abruptly, his mouth open, as if he had been slapped in the face midsentence. Tessa glanced at Jem; he looked as startled as she did at Starkweather’s sudden silence. But there, in the breach, was Will.

“This is Tessa Gray, sir,” he said. “She is a mundane girl, but she is the betrothed of Carstairs here, and an Ascendant.”

“A mundane , you say?” demanded Starkweather, his eyes wide.