Clockwork Prince (12 page)

“Once we finish our training, at eighteen,” said Jem, as if Will hadn’t spoken, “we’re encouraged to travel, to spend time at other Institutes, to experience something of Shadowhunter culture in new places. There are always different techniques, local tricks to be learned. Gideon was away for only a few months. If Benedict called him back so soon, he must think that his acquisition of the Institute is assured.” Jem looked troubled.

“But he’s wrong,” Tessa said firmly, and when the troubled look didn’t leave Jem’s gray eyes, she cast about for something to change the subject. “Where is the Institute in New York?”

“We haven’t memorized all their addresses, Tessa.” There was something in Will’s voice, a dangerous undercurrent. Jem looked at him narrowly, and said:

“Is everything all right?”

Will took his hat off and laid it on the seat next to him. He looked at them both steadily for a moment, his gaze level. He was beautiful to look at as always, Tessa thought, but there seemed something
gray
about him, almost faded. For someone who so often seemed to burn very brightly, that light in him seemed exhausted now, as if he had been rolling a rock up a hill like Sisyphus. “Too much to drink last night,” he said finally.

Really, why do you bother, Will? Don’t you realize we both know you’re lying?
Tessa almost said, but one look at Jem stopped her. His gaze as he regarded Will was worried—very worried indeed, though Tessa knew he did not believe Will about the drinking, any more than she did. But, “Well,” was all he said, lightly, “if only there were a Rune of Sobriety.”

“Yes.” Will looked back at him, and the strain in his expression relaxed slightly. “If we might return to discussing your plan, James. It’s a good one, save one thing.” He leaned forward. “If she is meant to be affianced to you, Tessa will need a ring.”

“I had thought of that,” said Jem, startling Tessa, who had imagined he had come up with this Ascendant idea on the spot. He slipped his hand into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a silver ring, which he held out to Tessa on his palm. It was not unlike the silver ring Will often wore, though where Will’s had a design of birds in flight, this one had a careful etching of the crenellations of a castle tower around it. “The Carstairs family ring,” he said. “If you would . . .”

She took it from him and slipped it onto her left ring finger, where it seemed to magically fit itself. She felt as if she ought to say something like
It’s lovely
, or
Thank you
, but of course this wasn’t a proposal, or even a gift. It was simply an acting prop. “Charlotte doesn’t wear a wedding ring,” she said. “I hadn’t realized Shadowhunters did.”

“We don’t,” said Will. “It is customary to give a girl your family ring when you become engaged, but the actual wedding ceremony involves exchanging runes instead of rings. One on the arm, and one over the heart.”

“‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave,’” said Jem. “Song of Solomon.”

“‘Jealousy is cruel as the grave’?” Tessa raised her eyebrows. “That’s not . . . very romantic.”

“‘The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame,’” said Will, quirking his eyebrows up. “I always thought females found the idea of jealousy romantic. Men, fighting over you . . .”

“Well, there aren’t any
graves
in mundane wedding ceremonies,” said Tessa. “Though your ability to quote the Bible is impressive. Better than my aunt Harriet’s.”

“Did you hear that, James? She just compared us to her aunt Harriet.”

Jem, as always, was unruffled. “We must be on familiar terms with all religious texts,” he said. “To us they are instruction manuals.”

“So you memorize them all in school?” She realized she had seen neither Will nor Jem at their studies since she had been at the Institute. “Or rather, when you are tutored?”

“Yes, though Charlotte’s rather fallen off in tutoring us lately, as you might imagine,” said Will. “One either has a tutor or one is schooled in Idris—that is, until you attain your majority at eighteen. Which will be soon, thankfully, for the both of us.”

“Which one of you is older?”

“Jem,” said Will, and “I am,” said Jem, at the same time. They laughed in unison as well, and Will added, “Only by three months, though.”

“I knew you’d feel compelled to point that out,” said Jem with a grin.

Tessa looked from one of them to the other. There could not be two boys who looked more different, or who had more different dispositions. And yet. “Is that what it means to be
parabatai
?” she said. “Finishing each other’s sentences and the like? Because there isn’t much on it in the
Codex.
”

Will and Jem looked at each other. Will shrugged first, casually. “It is rather difficult to explain,” he said loftily. “If you haven’t experienced it—”

“I meant,” Tessa said, “you cannot—I don’t know—read each other’s minds, or the like?”

Jem made a spluttering noise. Will’s lambent blue eyes widened. “Read each other’s minds? Horrors, no.”

“Then, what’s the point? You swear to guard each other, I understand that, but aren’t all Shadowhunters meant to do that for each other?”

“It’s more than that,” said Jem, who had stopped spluttering and spoke somberly. “The idea of
parabatai
comes from an old tale, the story of Jonathan and David. ‘And it came to pass . . . that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. . . . Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.’ They were two warriors, and their souls were knit together by Heaven, and out of that Jonathan Shadowhunter took the idea of
parabatai
, and encoded the ceremony into the Law.”

“But it doesn’t just have to be two men. It can be a man and a woman, or two women?”

“Of course.” Jem nodded. “You have only eighteen years to find and choose a
parabatai.
Once you are older than that, the ritual is no longer open to you. And it is not merely a matter of promising to guard each other. You must stand before the Council and swear to lay down your life for your
parabatai.
To go where they go, to be buried where they are buried. If there were an arrow speeding toward Will, I would be bound by oath to step in front of it.”

“Handy, that,” said Will.

“And he, of course, is bound to do the same for me,” said Jem. “Whatever he may say to the contrary, Will does not break oaths, or the Law.” He looked hard at Will, who smiled faintly and stared out the window.

“Goodness,” said Tessa. “That’s all very touching, but I don’t see exactly how it confers any advantages.”

“Not everyone has a
parabatai
,” said Jem. “Very few of us, actually, find one in the allotted time. But those who do can draw on the strength of their
parabatai
in battle. A rune put on you by your
parabatai
is always more potent than one you put on yourself, or one put on by another. And there are some runes we can utilize that no other Shadowhunter can, because they draw on our doubled power.”

“But what if you decide that you don’t want to be
parabatai
anymore?” Tessa asked curiously. “Can the ritual be broken?”

“Dear God, woman,” said Will. “Are there any questions you
don’t
want to know the answer to?”

“I don’t see the harm in telling her.” Jem’s hands were folded atop his cane. “The more she knows, the better she will be able to pretend she plans to Ascend.” He turned to Tessa. “The ritual cannot be broken save in a few situations. If one of us were to become a Downworlder or a mundane, then the binding is cut. And of course, if one of us were to die, the other would be free. But not to choose another
parabatai.
A single Shadowhunter cannot take part in the ritual more than once.”

“It is like being married, isn’t it,” said Tessa placidly, “in the Catholic church. Like Henry the Eighth; he had to create a new religion just so he could escape from his vows.”

“Till death do us part,” said Will, his gaze still fixed on the countryside speeding past outside the window.

“Well, Will won’t need to create a new religion just to be rid of me,” said Jem. “He’ll be free soon enough.”

Will looked over sharply, but it was Tessa who spoke. “Don’t say that,” she admonished Jem. “A cure could still be found. I don’t see any reason to abandon all hope.”

She almost shrank back at the look Will bent on her: blue, blazing, and furious. Jem seemed not to notice as he replied, calmly and unaffectedly. “I haven’t abandoned hope,” he said. “I just hope for different things than you do, Tessa Gray.”

Hours went by after that, hours during which Tessa nodded off, her head propped against her hand, the dull sound of the train’s wheels winding its way into her dreams. She woke at last with Jem shaking her gently by the shoulders, the train whistle blowing, and the guard shouting out the name of York station. In a flurry of bags and hats and porters they descended to the platform. It was nowhere near as crowded as Kings Cross, and covered by a far more impressive arched glass and iron roof, through which could be glimpsed the gray-black sky.

Platforms stretched as far as the eye could see; Tessa, Jem, and Will stood on the one closest to the main body of the station, where great gold-faced railway clocks proclaimed the time to be six o’clock. They were farther north now, and the sky had already begun to darken to twilight.

They had only just gathered beneath one of the clocks when a man stepped out of the shadows. Tessa barely suppressed a start at the sight of him. He was heavily cloaked, wearing a black oilskin-looking hat, and boots like an old sailor. His beard was long and white, his eyes crested with thick white eyebrows. He reached out and laid a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Nephilim?” he said, his voice gruff and thickly accented. “Is it you?”

“Dear God,” said Will, putting his hand over his heart in a theatrical gesture. “It’s the Ancient Mariner who stoppeth one of three.”

“Ah’m ’ere at t’bequest of Aloysius Starkweather. Art t’lads he wants or not? Ah’ve not got all night to stand about.”

“Important appointment with an albatross?” Will inquired. “Don’t let us keep you.”

“What my mad friend means to say,” said Jem, “is that we are indeed Shadowhunters of the London Institute. Charlotte Branwell sent us. And you are . . . ?”

“Gottshall,” the man said gruffly. “Me family’s been serving the Shadowhunters of the York Institute for nigh on three centuries now. I can see through tha’ glamours, young ones. Save for this one,” he added, and turned his eyes on Tessa. “If there’s a glamour on the girl, it’s summat I’ve never seen before.”

“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.