Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

Jem, seeing her shudder, gave a sideways smile. “City lass.”

Tessa laughed. “I was thinking how odd it would be to grow up in a place like this, so far from any people.”

“Where I grew up was not so different from this,” said Will unexpectedly, startling them both. “It’s not so lonely as you might think. Out in the countryside, you can be assured, people visit one another a great deal. They just have a greater distance to traverse than they might in London. And once they arrive, they often make a lengthy stay. After all, why make the trip just to stay a night or two? We’d often have house guests who’d remain for weeks.”

Tessa goggled at Will silently. It was so rare that he ever referred to anything regarding his early life that she sometimes thought of him as someone with no past at all. Jem seemed to be doing the same thing, though he recovered first.

“I share Tessa’s view. I have never lived in anything but a city. I don’t know how I could sleep at night, not knowing I was surrounded by a thousand other sleeping, dreaming souls.”

“And filth everywhere, and everyone breathing down one another’s necks,” countered Will. “When I first arrived in London, I so quickly tired of being surrounded by so many people that it was only with great difficulty that I refrained from seizing the next unfortunate who crossed my path and committing violent acts upon their person.”

“Some might say you retain that problem,” said Tessa, but Will just laughed—a short, nearly surprised sound of amusement—and then stopped, looking ahead of them to Ravenscar Manor.

Jem whistled as Tessa realized why she had been able to see only the tops of the chimneys before. The manor was built in the center of a deep declivity between three hills; their slanting sides rose about it, cradling it as if in the palm of a hand. Tessa, Jem, and Will were poised on the edge of one of the hills, looking down at the manor. The building itself was very grand, a great gray stone pile that gave the impression it had been there for centuries. A large circular drive curved in front of the enormous front doors. Nothing about the place hinted at abandonment or disrepair—no weeds grew over the drive or the paths that led to the stone outbuildings, and no glass was missing from the mullioned windows.

“ Someone’s living here,” said Jem, echoing Tessa’s thoughts. He began to start down the hill. The grass here was longer, waving almost waist-high. “Perhaps if—”

He broke off as the rattle of wheels became audible; for a moment Tessa thought the carriage driver had come after them, but no, this was quite a different carriage—a sturdy-looking coach that turned into the gate and began rolling toward the manor. Jem crouched down immediately in the grass, and Will and Tessa dropped beside him. They watched as the carriage came to a stop before the manor, and the driver leaped down to open the carriage door.

A young girl stepped out, fourteen or fifteen years old, Tessa guessed—not old enough to have put her hair up, for it blew around her in a curtain of black silk. She wore a blue dress, plain but fashionable. She nodded to the driver, and then, as she started up the manor steps, she paused—paused and looked toward where Jem, Will, and Tessa crouched, almost as if she could see them, though Tessa was sure that they were well hidden by the grass.

The distance was too great for Tessa to make out her features, really—just the pale oval of her face below the dark hair. She was about to ask Jem if he had a telescope with him, when Will made a noise—a noise she had never heard anyone make before, a sick, terrible gasp, as if the air had been punched out of him by a tremendous blow.

But it was not just a gasp, she realized. It was a word; and not just a word, a name; and not just a name, but one she had heard him say before.

“Cecily.”

The door of the great house swung open; the girl disappeared inside. The coach rattled off around the side of the manor to the coach house as Will staggered to his feet. He had gone a sickly gray color, like the ashes of a dead fire.

“Cecily,” he said again. His voice held wonderment, and horror.

“Who on earth is Cecily?” Tessa scrambled into a standing position, brushing grass and thistles from her dress. “Will—”

Jem was already beside Will, his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Will, you must speak to us. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Will dragged in a long breath. “Cecily—”

“Yes, you’ve said that already,” said Tessa. She heard the sharpness in her own voice, and softened it with an effort. It was unkind to speak so to someone so obviously distraught, even if he did insist on staring into space and muttering “Cecily” at intervals.

It hardly mattered; Will seemed not to have heard her. “My sister,” he said. “Cecily. She was—Christ, she was nine years old when I left.”

“Your sister,” said Jem, and Tessa felt a loosening of something tight around her heart, and cursed herself inwardly for it. What did it matter whether Cecily was Will’s sister or someone he was in love with? It had nothing to do with her.

Will started down the hill, not looking for a path, just tramping blindly among the heather and furze. After a moment Jem went after him, catching at his sleeve. “Will, don’t—”

Will tried to pull his arm away. “If Cecily’s there, then the rest of them—my family—they must be there as well.”

Tessa hurried to catch up with them, wincing as she nearly turned an ankle on a loose rock. “But it doesn’t make any sense that your family would be here, Will. This was Mortmain’s house. Starkweather said so. It was in the papers—”

“I know that,” Will half-shouted.

“Cecily could be visiting someone here—”

Will gave her an incredulous look. “In the middle of Yorkshire, by herself? And that was our carriage. I recognized it. There’s no other carriage in the carriage house. No, my family’s in this somehow. They’ve been dragged into this bloody business and I—I have to warn them.” He started down the hill again.

“Will!” Jem shouted, and went after him, catching at the back of his coat; Will swung around and shoved Jem, not very hard; Tessa heard Jem say something about Will having held back all these years and not wasting it now, and then it all blurred together—Will swearing, and Jem yanking him backward, and Will slipping on the wet ground, and the both of them going over together, a rolling tangle of arms and legs, until they fetched up against a large rock, Jem pinning Will to the ground, his elbow against the other boy’s throat.

“Get off me.” Will shoved at him. “You don’t understand. Your family’s dead—”

“Will.” Jem took his friend by the shirtfront and shook him. “I do understand. And unless you want your family dead too, you’ll listen to me.”

Will went very still. In a choked voice he said, “James, you can’t possibly—I’ve never—”

“Look.” Jem raised the hand that wasn’t gripping Will’s shirt, and pointed. “There. Look.”

Tessa looked where he was pointing—and felt her insides freeze. They were nearly halfway down the hill above the manor house, and there, above them, standing like a sort of sentry on the ridge at the hill’s top, was an automaton. She knew immediately what it was, though it did not look like the automatons that Mortmain had sent against them before. Those had made some surface pretense of being human. This was a tall, spindly metal creature, with long hinged legs, a twisted metallic torso, and sawlike arms.