Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

Jem looked not just happier, but stronger, Will thought, with healthy color in his cheeks, his back straight. “I ought to apologize,” Jem said. “I was too severe regarding the ifrits’ den. I know you were merely seeking solace.”

“No, you were right to have—”

“I wasn’t.” Jem stood up. “If I was harsh with you, it was because I cannot bear to see you treat yourself as if you are worth nothing. Whatever part you might act to the contrary, I see you as you really are, my blood brother. Not just better than you pretend to be, but better than most people could hope to be.” He placed a hand on Will’s shoulder, gently. “You are worth everything, Will.”

Will closed his eyes. He saw the black basalt Council room, the two circles burning on the ground. Jem stepping from his circle to Will’s, so they inhabited the same space, circumscribed by fire. His eyes had still been black then, wide in his pale face. Will remembered the words of the parabatai oath. Whither thou goest, I will go; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Angel do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me. That same voice spoke again to him now. “Thank you for what you did for Tessa,” said Jem.

Will could not look at Jem; he looked instead toward the wall, where their shadows blended together in relief, so that one could not tell where one boy ended and the other began. “Thank you for watching Brother Enoch pull shards of metal out of my back afterward,” he said.

Jem laughed. “What else are parabatai for?”

The Council chamber was draped with red banners slashed with black runes; Jem whispered to Tessa that they were runes of decision and judgment.

They took their seats toward the front, in a row that also contained Henry, Gideon, Charlotte, and Will. Tessa had not spoken to Will since the day before; he had not been at breakfast, and had joined them in the courtyard late, still buttoning his coat as he ran down the stairs. His dark hair was disheveled, and he looked as if he had not slept. He seemed to be trying to avoid looking at Tessa, and she, in turn, avoided returning his gaze, though she could feel it flicking over her from time to time, like hot flecks of ash landing on her skin.

Jem was a perfect gentleman; their engagement was still secret, and other than smiling at her every time she looked at him, he behaved in no way out of the ordinary. As they settled themselves in their seats at the Council, she felt him brush her arm with the knuckles of his right hand, gently, before moving his hand away.

She could feel Will watching them, from the end of the row they sat in. She did not look toward him.

In seats on the raised platform at the chamber’s center sat Benedict Lightwood, his eagle profile turned away from the mass of the Council, his jaw set. Beside him sat Gabriel, who, like Will, looked exhausted and unshaven. He glanced once at his brother as Gideon entered the room, and then away as Gideon took his seat, deliberately, among the Shadowhunters of the Institute. Gabriel bit his lip and looked down at his shoes, but did not move from where he sat.

She recognized a few more faces in the audience. Charlotte’s aunt Callida was there, as was gaunt Aloysius Starkweather—despite, as he had complained, doubtless not being invited. His eyes narrowed as they fell on Tessa, and she turned back quickly to the front of the room.

“We are here,” said Consul Wayland when he had taken his place before the lectern with the Inquisitor seated to his left, “to determine to what extent Charlotte and Henry Branwell have been of assistance to the Clave during the past fortnight in the matter of Axel Mortmain, and whether, as Benedict Lightwood has put in a claim, the London Institute would be better off in other hands.”

The Inquisitor rose. He was holding something that gleamed silver and black in his hands. “Charlotte Branwell, please come up to the lectern.”

Charlotte got to her feet, and climbed up the stairs to the stage. The Inquisitor lowered the Mortal Sword, and Charlotte wrapped her hands around the blade. In a quiet voice she recounted the events of the past two weeks—searching for Mortmain in newspaper clippings and historical accounts, the visit to Yorkshire, the threat against the Herondales, discovering Jessie’s betrayal, the fight at the warehouse, Nate’s death. She never lied, though Tessa was conscious of when she left out a detail here or there. Apparently the Mortal Sword could be gotten around, if only slightly.

There were several moments during Charlotte’s speech when the Council members reacted audibly: breathing in sharply, shuffling their feet, most notably to the revelation of Jessamine’s role in the proceedings. “I knew her parents,” Tessa heard Charlotte’s aunt Callida saying from the back of the room. “Terrible business—terrible!”

“And the girl is where now?” the Inquisitor demanded.

“She is in the cells of the Silent City,” said Charlotte, “awaiting punishment for her crime. I informed the Consul of her whereabouts.”

The Inquisitor, who had been pacing up and down the platform, stopped and looked Charlotte keenly in the face. “You say this girl was like a daughter to you,” he said, “and yet you handed her over to the Brothers willingly? Why would you do something like that?”

“The Law is hard,” said Charlotte, “but it is the Law.”

Consul Wayland’s mouth flicked up at the corner. “And here you said she’d be too soft on wrongdoers, Benedict,” he said. “Any comment?”

Benedict rose to his feet; he had clearly decided to shoot his cuffs today, and they protruded, snowy white, from the sleeves of his tailored dark tweed jacket. “I do have a comment,” he said. “I wholeheartedly support Charlotte Branwell in her leadership of the Institute, and renounce my claim on a position there.”

A murmur of disbelief ran through the crowd.

Benedict smiled pleasantly.

The Inquisitor turned and looked at him in disbelief. “So you are saying,” he echoed, “that despite the fact that these Shadowhunters killed Nathaniel Gray—or were responsible for his death—our only link to Mortmain, despite the fact that once again they harbored a spy beneath their roof, despite the fact that they still don’t know where Mortmain is, you would recommend Charlotte and Henry Branwell to run this Institute?”

“They may not know where Mortmain is,” said Benedict, “but they know who he is. As the great mundane military strategist Sun Tzu said in The Art of War , ‘If you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.’ We know now who Mortmain really is—a mortal man, not a supernatural being; a man afraid of death; a man bent on revenge for what he considers the undeserved murder of his family. Nor does he have compassion for Downworlders. He utilized werewolves to help him build his clockwork army swiftly, feeding them drugs to keep them working around the clock, knowing the drugs would kill the wolves and ensure their silence. Judging by the size of the warehouse he used and the number of workers he employed, his clockwork army will be sizeable. And judging by his motivations and the years over which he has refined his strategies for revenge, he is a man who cannot be reasoned with, cannot be dissuaded, cannot be stopped. We must prepare for a war. And that we did not know before.”

The Inquisitor looked at Benedict, thin-lipped, as if he suspected that something untoward was going on but could not imagine what it might be. “Prepare for a war? And how do you suggest we do that—building, of course, on all this supposedly valuable information the Branwells have acquired?”