Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

Whatever that might be. Let him at least not despise her. . . .

“Tessa is fearless,” said Will. “And there will be little danger to her. We will send him a note arranging a meeting in a place where we might fall upon him easily and immediately. The Silent Brothers can torture him until he gives up the information that we need.”

“Torture?” said Jem. “This is Tessa’s brother—”

“Torture him,” said Tessa. “If that is what is necessary. I give you my permission.”

Charlotte looked up at her, shocked. “You can’t mean that.”

“You said there was a way to dig through his mind for secrets,” Tessa said. “I asked you not to do that, and you didn’t. I thank you for that, but I will not hold you to that promise. Dig through his mind if you must. There is more to all of this for me than there is for you, you know. For you this is about the Institute and the safety of Shadowhunters. I care about those things too, Charlotte. But Nate—he is working with Mortmain. Mortmain, who wants to trap me and use me, and for what we still do not know. Mortmain, who may know what I am. Nate told Jessamine my father was a demon and my mother was a Shadowhunter—”

Will sat up straight. “That’s impossible,” he said. “Shadow-hunters and demons—they cannot procreate. They cannot produce living offspring.”

“Then maybe it was a lie, like the lie about Mortmain being in Idris,” said Tessa. “That doesn’t mean Mortmain doesn’t know the truth. I must know what I am. If nothing else, I believe it is the key to why he wants me.”

There was sadness in Jem’s eyes as he looked at her, and then away. “Very well,” he said. “Will, how do you propose we lure him to a meeting? Don’t you think he knows Jessamine’s handwriting? Isn’t it likely they have some secret signal between them?”

“Jessamine must be convinced,” said Will. “To help us.”

“Please don’t suggest we torture her,” said Jem irritably. “The Mortal Sword has already been used. She has told us all she can—”

“The Mortal Sword did not give us their meeting places or any codes or pet names they might have used,” said Will. “Don’t you understand? This is Jessamine’s last chance. Her last chance to cooperate. To get leniency from the Clave. To be forgiven. Even if Charlotte keeps the Institute, do you think they will leave Jessamine’s fate in our hands? No, it will be left to the Consul and the Inquisitor. And they will not be kind. If she does this for us, it could mean her life.”

“I am not sure she cares about her life,” said Tessa softly.

“Everyone cares,” said Will. “Everyone wants to live.”

Jem turned away from him abruptly, and stared into the fire.

“The question is, who can we send to persuade her?” said Charlotte. “I cannot go. She hates and blames me most of all.”

“I could go,” Henry said, his gentle face troubled. “I could perhaps reason with the poor girl, speak with her of the folly of young love, how swiftly it fades in the face of life’s harsh reality—”

“No.” Charlotte’s tone was final.

“Well, I highly doubt she wishes to see me ,” said Will. “It will have to be Jem. He’s impossible to hate. Even that devil cat likes him.”

Jem exhaled, still staring into the fire. “I will go to the Silent City,” he said. “But Tessa should come with me.”

Tessa looked up, startled. “Oh, no,” she said. “I do not think Jessamine likes me much. She feels I have betrayed her terribly by disguising myself as her, and I cannot say I blame her.”

“Yes,” said Jem. “But you are Nate’s sister. If she loves him as you say she does . . .” His eyes met hers across the room. “You know Nate. You can speak of him with authority. You may be able to make her believe what I cannot.”

“Very well,” Tessa said. “I will try.”

This seemed to signal the end of breakfast; Charlotte darted off to call for a carriage to come for them from the Silent City; it was how the Brothers liked to do things, she explained. Henry returned to his crypt and his inventions, and Jem, after a murmured word to Tessa, went to gather his hat and coat. Only Will remained, staring into the fire, and Tessa, seeing that he was not moving, waited until the door shut behind Jem and came around to stand between Will and the flames.

He raised his eyes to her slowly. He was still wearing the clothes he had been wearing the night before, though his white shirtfront was stained with blood and there was a long, jagged rent in his frock coat. There was a cut along his cheek, too, under his left eye. “Will,” she said.

“Aren’t you meant to be leaving with Jem?”

“And I shall,” she replied. “But I need a promise from you first.”

His eyes moved to the fire; she could see the dancing flames reflected in his pupils. “Then tell me what it is quickly. I have important business to get to. I plan to sulk all afternoon, followed, perhaps, by an evening of Byronic brooding and a nighttime of dissipation.”

“Dissipate all you like. I only want your assurance that you will tell no one what transpired between us last night on the balcony.”

“Oh, that was you ,” said Will, with the air of someone who has just recollected a surprising detail.

“Spare me,” she snapped, stung despite herself. “We were under the influence of warlock powders. It meant nothing. Even I do not blame you for what happened, however tedious you are being about it now. But there is no need for anyone else to know, and if you were a gentleman—”

“But I am not.”

“But you are a Shadowhunter,” she said venomously. “And there is no future for a Shadowhunter who dallies with warlocks.”

His eyes danced with fire. He said, “You have become boring to tease, Tess.”

“Then give me your word you will tell no one, not even Jem, and I will go away and cease to bore you.”

“You have my word on the Angel,” he said. “It was not something I had planned to brag of in the first place. Though why you are so keen that no one here suspect you of a lack of virtue, I do not know.”

Jem’s face flashed across her inner eye. “No,” she said. “You truly don’t.” And with that she turned on her heel and stalked from the room, leaving him staring after her in confusion.

Sophie hurried down Piccadilly, her head bent, her eyes on the pavement beneath her feet. She was used to hushed murmurs and the occasional stare when she went out and eyes fell upon her scar; she had perfected a way of walking that hid her face beneath the shadow of her hat. She was not ashamed of the scar, but she hated the pity in the eyes of those who saw it.

She was wearing one of Jessamine’s old dresses. It was not out of fashion yet, but Jessamine was one of those girls who dubbed any dress she had worn more than three times “historical” and either cast it off or had it made over. It was a striped watered silk in green and white, and there were waxy white flowers and green leaves on her hat. All together, she thought, she could pass for a girl of good breeding—if she were not out on her own, that was—especially with her work-roughened hands covered in a pair of white kid gloves.

She saw Gideon before he saw her. He was leaning against a lamppost outside the great pale-green porte cochere of Fortnum & Mason. Her heart skipped a little beat as she looked at him, so handsome in his dark clothes, checking the time on a gold watch affixed to his waistcoat pocket by a thin chain. She paused for a moment, watching the people stream around him, the busy life of London roaring around him, and Gideon as calm as a rock in the middle of a churning river. All Shadowhunters had something of that to them, she thought, that stillness, that dark aura of separateness that set them apart from the current of mundane life.