Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

“Let me go,” she said, under her breath.

“This is part of your training,” said Gabriel in a bored voice. “Besides, look at my brother and Miss Collins. She isn’t complaining.”

She glanced across the room at Sophie, who seemed earnestly engaged in her lesson with Gideon. He was standing behind her, one arm around her from the back, showing her how to hold a needle-tipped throwing knife. His hand was gently cupped around hers, and he appeared to be speaking to the back of her neck, where her dark hair had escaped from its tight chignon and curled becomingly. When he saw Tessa looking at them, he flushed.

Tessa was amazed. Gideon Lightwood, blushing! Had he been admiring Sophie? Apart from her scar, which Tessa barely noticed anymore, she was lovely, but she was a mundane, and a servant, and the Lightwoods were awful snobs. Tessa’s insides felt suddenly tight. Sophie had been treated abominably by her previous employer. The last thing she needed was some pretty Shadowhunter boy taking advantage of her.

Tessa looked around, about to say something to the boy with his arms around her—and stopped. She had forgotten that it was Gabriel beside her, not Jem. She had grown so used to Jem’s presence, the ease with which she could converse with him, the comfort of his hand on her arm when they walked, the fact that he was the only person in the world now she felt she could say absolutely anything to. She realized with surprise that though she had just seen him at breakfast, she missed him, with what felt almost like an ache inside.

She was so caught up in this mixture of feelings—missing Jem, and a sense of passionate protectiveness over Sophie—that her next throw went wide by several feet, flying by Gideon’s head and bouncing off the windowsill.

Gideon looked calmly from the fallen knife to his brother. Nothing seemed to bother him, not even his own near decapitation. “Gabriel, what is the problem, exactly?”

Gabriel turned his gaze on Tessa. “She won’t listen to me,” he said spitefully. “I can’t instruct someone who won’t listen.”

“Maybe if you were a better instructor, she’d be a better listener.”

“And maybe you would have seen the knife coming,” said Gabriel, “if you paid more attention to what’s going on around you and less to the back of Miss Collins’s head.”

So even Gabriel had noticed, Tessa thought, as Sophie blushed. Gideon gave his brother a long, steady look—she sensed there would be words between the two of them at home—then turned to Sophie and said something in a low voice, too low for Tessa to hear.

“What’s happened to you?” she said under her breath to Gabriel, and felt him stiffen.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re usually patient,” she said. “You’re a good teacher, Gabriel, most of the time, but today you’re snappish and impatient and . . .” She looked down at his hand on her arm. “Improper.”

He had the good grace to release her, looking ashamed of himself. “A thousand pardons. I should not have touched you like that.”

“No, you shouldn’t. And after the way you criticize Will—”

He flushed along his high cheekbones. “I’ve apologized, Miss Gray. What more do you want of me?”

“A change in behavior, perhaps. An explanation of your dislike of Will—”

“I’ve told you! If you wish to know why I dislike him, you can ask him yourself!” Gabriel whirled and stalked out of the room.

Tessa looked at the knives stuck into the wall and sighed. “So ends my lesson.”

“Try not to be too put out,” said Gideon, approaching her with Sophie by his side. It was very odd, Tessa thought; Sophie usually seemed uneasy around men, any men, even gentle Henry. With Will she was like a scalded cat, and with Jem, blushing and watchful, but beside Gideon she seemed . . .

Well, it was hard to define. But it was most peculiar.

“It is not your fault he is like this today,” Gideon went on. His eyes on Tessa were steady. This close up she could see that they were not precisely the same color as his brother’s. They were more of a gray-green, like the ocean under a cloudy sky. “Things have been . . . difficult for us at home with Father, and Gabriel is taking it out on you, or, really, anyone who happens to be nearby.”

“I’m most sorry to hear that. I hope your father is well,” murmured Tessa, praying she would not be stricken down on the spot for this blatant falsehood.

“I suppose I had better go after my brother,” said Gideon without answering her question. “If I do not, he will take the carriage and leave me stranded. I hope to have him back to you at our next session in a better humor.” He bowed to Sophie, then Tessa. “Miss Collins, Miss Gray.”

And he was gone, leaving both girls looking after him in mingled confusion and surprise.

With the training session mercifully over, Tessa found herself hurrying to change back into her ordinary clothes, and then to lunch, eager to see if Will had returned. He hadn’t. His chair, between Jessamine and Henry, still sat empty—but there was someone new in the room, someone who made Tessa stop short at the doorway, trying not to stare. A tall man, he sat near the head of the table beside Charlotte, and was green. Not a very dark green—his skin had a faint greenish sheen to it, like light reflecting off the ocean, and his hair was snowy white. From his forehead curled two small elegant horns.

“Miss Tessa Gray,” said Charlotte, making the introductions, “this is the High Warlock of London, Ragnor Fell. Mr. Fell, Miss Gray.”

After murmuring that she was delighted to meet him, Tessa sat down at the table beside Jem, diagonally from Fell, and tried not to stare at him out of the corner of her eye. As Magnus’s cat’s eyes were his warlock’s mark, Fell’s would be his horns and tinted skin. She couldn’t help being fascinated by Downworlders still, warlocks in particular. Why were they marked and she wasn’t?

“What’s on the carpet, then, Charlotte?” Ragnor was saying. “Did you really call me out here to discuss dark doings on the Yorkshire moors? I was under the impression that nothing of great interest ever happened in Yorkshire. In fact, I was under the impression that there was nothing in Yorkshire except sheep and mining.”

“So you never knew the Shades?” Charlotte inquired. “The warlock population of Britain is not so large . . .”

“I knew them.” As Fell sawed into the ham on his plate, Tessa saw that he had an extra joint to each finger. She thought of Mrs. Black, with her elongated taloned hands, and repressed a shudder. “Shade was a little mad, with his obsession with clockwork and mechanisms. Their death was a shock to Downworld. The ripples of it went through the community, and there was even some discussion of vengeance, though none, I believe, was ever taken.”

Charlotte leaned forward. “Do you remember their son? Their adopted child?”

“I knew of him. A married warlock couple is rare. One who adopts a human child from an orphanage is rarer still. But I never saw the boy. Warlocks—we live forever. A gap of thirty, even fifty, years between meetings is not unusual. Of course now that I know what the boy grew up to be, I wish I had met him. Do you think there is value in attempting to discover who his true parents were?”

“Certainly, if it can be discovered. Whatever information we can glean about Mortmain could be useful.”

“I can tell you he gave himself that name,” said Fell. “It sounds like a Shadowhunter name. It is the sort of name someone with a grudge against Nephilim, and a dark sense of humor, would take. Mort main —”

“Hand of death,” supplied Jessamine, who was proud of her French.