Bitter of Tongue

by Cassandra Clare

  Mark lowered his bow. "I see nothing," he said, pronouncing the lie with a certain satisfaction. "And nothing should go--now."

  "Oh, boy, you will pay for this," hissed the rider on the roan.

  The horses and the riders shrieked like pterodactyls, circling him, but Mark Blackthorn of the Los Angeles Institute stood his ground.

  "Run!" he shouted. "Get home safe! Tell the Clave that I have saved more Shadowhunter lives, that I will be a Shadowhunter and be damned to them, that I will be a faerie and curse them! And tell my family that I love them, I love them, and I will never forget. One day I will go home."

  Simon and Isabelle ran.

  *

  George threw himself on Simon the instant he and Isabelle appeared in the grounds of the Academy, his arms strangling-tight. Beatriz and, to Simon's amazement, even Julie flew at him only a second behind George, and both of them mercilessly pummeled his arms.

  "Ow," said Simon.

  "We're so glad you're alive!" said Beatriz, punching him again.

  "Why must you hurt me with your love?" asked Simon. "Ow."

  He disentangled himself from their grip, touched but also mildly bruised, then looked around for another familiar face. He felt a cold touch of fear.

  "Is Marisol all right?" he demanded.

  Beatriz snorted. "Oh, she's better than all right. She's in the infirmary with Jon waiting on her hand and foot. Because you mundanes can't be healed with runes and she is milking that for all it's worth. I'm not sure which has Jon more terrified, the thought of how fragile mundanes are, or the fact that she keeps threatening to explain X-ray machines to him."

  Simon was very impressed that even elfshot could not slow down Marisol and all her evil.

  "We thought you might be dead," said Julie. "The Fair Folk will do anything to vent their spite against Shadowhunters, those evil, treacherous snakes. They could have done anything to you."

  "And it would have been my fault," George said, pale-faced. "You were trying to stop me."

  "It would have been the faeries' fault," said Julie. "But you were careless. You have to remember what they are, less human than sharks."

  George was nodding humbly. Beatriz looked as if she was in full agreement.

  "You know what?" said Simon. "I've had enough."

  They all stared at him in blank incredulity. But Isabelle glanced at him and smiled. He thought he finally understood the fire that burned in Magnus, what made him keep talking when the Clave would not listen.

  "I know you all think I'm always criticizing the Nephilim," Simon went on. "I know you believe I don't think enough of--the sacred traditions of the Angel, and the fact that you are ready to lay down your lives, any day, to protect humans. I know you think it doesn't matter to me, but it does matter. It means a lot. But I don't have the luxury of only seeing things from one perspective. You all notice when I put down Shadowhunters, but none of you check yourselves when you talk about Downworlders. I was a Downworlder. Today I was saved by someone the Clave decided to condemn as a Downworlder, even though he was brave as any Shadowhunter, even though he was loyal. It seems like you want me to just accept that the Nephilim are great and nothing needs to change, but I won't accept anything."

  He took a deep breath. He felt as if all the comfort of the morning had been stripped away. But maybe that was for the best. Maybe he'd been getting too comfortable.

  "I wouldn't want to be a Shadowhunter if I thought I was going to be a Shadowhunter like your father or your father's father before him. And I wouldn't like any of you as much as I do if I thought you were going to be Shadowhunters like all the Shadowhunters before you. I want all of us to be better. I haven't figured out how to change everything yet, but I want everything to change. And I'm sorry if it upsets you, but I'm going to keep complaining."

  "Later," said Isabelle. "He's going to keep complaining later, because we're going to a wedding right now."

  Everyone looked mildly stunned that their emotional reunion had turned into a speech on Downworlder rights. Simon thought Julie might beat him about the head and face, but instead she patted him on the back.

  "All right," she said. "We'll listen to your tedious whining later. Please try to keep it brief."

  She walked off with Beatriz. Simon squinted after her, and noticed that Isabelle was squinting after as well, a look of faint suspicion on her face.

  Simon had a moment of doubt. George had meant Beatriz when he was talking about a girl liking Simon, right?

  Surely not Julie. It couldn't be Julie.

  No, surely not. Simon was pretty certain he was just getting a pass on account of the narrow escape in Faerie.

  George hung back. "I really am so sorry, Si," he told Simon. "I lost my head. I--I maybe wasn't quite ready to lead a team. But I'm going to be ready one day. I'm going to do what you said. I'm going to become a better Shadowhunter than any Shadowhunters before us. You won't have to pay for my mistakes again."

  "George," Simon said. "It's fine."

  None of them was perfect. None of them could be.

  George's sunny face still looked under a cloud, unhappy as he almost never did. "I'm not going to fail again."

  "I believe in you," said Simon, and grinned at him, until finally George grinned back. "Because that's what bros do."

  *

  Once he arrived in Idris, Simon found himself plunged into a state of wedding chaos. Wedding chaos seemed to be very different from normal kinds of chaos. There were, in fact, many flowers. Simon had a sheaf of lilies shoved upon him and he stood holding it, afraid to move in case the flowers spilled and he was responsible for ruining the whole wedding.

  Many wedding guests were running about, but there was only one group that was all kids and no adults. Simon clutched his lilies and focused his attention on the Blackthorns.

  If he had not met Mark Blackthorn, he was pretty sure he would've thought of them as a riot of anonymous kids.

  Now, though, he knew they were someone's family: someone's heart's desire.

  Helen, Julian, Livia, Tiberius, Drusilla, Octavian. And Emma.

  Willow-slim, silver-fair Helen, Simon already knew. She was in one of the many rooms he was forbidden to go into, having mysterious bridal things done to her.

  Julian was the next oldest, and he was the calm center of a bustling Blackthorn crowd. He had a kid in his arms, who was a little big for Julian to carry but was clinging tenaciously to Julian's neck like an octopus in unfamiliar surroundings. The kid must be Tavvy.

  All the Blackthorns were dressed up for the wedding, but already a little grubby around the edges, in that mysterious way kids got. Simon wasn't sure how. They were all, aside from Tavvy, a little too old to be playing in the dirt.

  "I'll get Dru all cleaned up," volunteered Emma, who was tall for almost fourteen, with a crown of blond hair that made her stand out among the dark-haired Blackthorns like a daffodil in a bed of pansies.

  "No, don't bother," said Julian. "I know you want to spend some quality time with Clary. You've only been talking about it for, oh, fifteen thousand years, give or take."

  Emma shoved him playfully. She was taller than he was: Simon remembered being thirteen and shorter than all the girls too.

  All the girls except one, he recalled slowly, the real picture of his thirteenth year sliding over the false one, where the most important person in his life had been clumsily photoshopped out. Clary had always been tiny. No matter how short or awkward Simon had felt, he had always towered over her and felt it was his right to protect her.

  He wondered if Julian wished Emma were shorter than he was. From the look on Julian's face as he regarded Emma, there was not one thing about her he would change. His art and his Emma, Mark had said, as if they were the two essential facts about Julian. His love of beauty and his wish to create it, and his best friend in all the world. They were going to be parabatai, Simon was pretty sure. That was nice.

  Emma sped away on a quest to find Clary, with one last grin for J
ulian.

  Only, Mark had been wrong. Art and Emma were clearly not all that occupied Julian's thoughts. Simon watched as he held on to Tavvy and stooped over a small girl with a round beseeching face and a cloud of brown hair.

  "I lost my flower crown and I can't find it," whispered the girl.

  Julian smiled down at her. "That's what happens when you lose things, Dru."

  "But if I'm not wearing a flower crown like Livvy, Helen will think I'm careless and I don't mind my things and I don't like her as much as Livvy does. Livvy still has her flower crown."

  The other girl in the group, taller than Dru and in that coltish stage where her arms and legs were thin as sticks and too long for the rest of her body, was indeed wearing a flower crown on her light brown hair. She was sticking close to the side of a boy who had headphones on in the midst of the chaos of the wedding, and winter-gray eyes fixed on some distant private sight.

  Livvy would walk over hot coals and hissing serpents for Ty, Mark had said. Simon remembered the infinite tenderness with which Mark had said: my Ty.

  "Helen knows you better than that," Julian said.

  "Yes, but . . ." Drusilla tugged at his sleeve so he would bend down and she could say, in an agonized whisper: "She's been gone such a long time. Maybe she doesn't remember . . . everything about me."

  Julian turned his face away, so none of his siblings could see his expression. Only Simon saw the flash of pain, and he knew he wasn't meant to. He knew he wouldn't have seen it, if he hadn't seen Mark Blackthorn, if he hadn't been paying attention.

  "Dru, Helen has known you since you were born. She does remember everything."

  "But just in case," said Drusilla. "She's going away again really soon. I want her to think I'm good."

  "She knows you're good," Julian told her. "The best. But we'll find your flower crown, all right?"

  The younger kids did not know Helen in the same way Julian did, as a sibling who was there all the time. They could not rely on someone who was so far away.

  Julian was their father, Simon thought with a dawning of horror. There was nobody else.

  Even though the Blackthorns had family who wanted to be there for them, wanted it desperately. The Clave had ripped a family apart, and Simon did not know what effects that would have in the future or how the wounds the Clave had inflicted would heal.

  He thought, again, as if he were still speaking to his friends at the Academy: We have to be better than this. Shadowhunters have to be better than this. We have to figure out what kind of Shadowhunters we want to be, and show them.

  Maybe Mark had not known Julian as well as he thought. Or maybe Mark's little brother, with no choice, had changed quietly and profoundly.

  They all had to change. But Julian was so young.

  "Hey," said Simon. "Can I help?"

  The two brothers did not look much alike, but Julian flushed and lifted his chin in the same way Mark had: as if no matter what, he was too proud to admit he might be hurting.

  "No," he said, and gave Simon a bright warm smile that was actually very convincing. "I'm fine. I have this."

  It seemed true, until Julian Blackthorn had gone out of Simon's reach, and then Simon noticed again that Julian was carrying a kid who was too big for him to carry, with another kid holding on to his shirt. Simon could actually see how much there was on those thin young shoulders.

  *

  Simon did not fully understand the traditions of the Shadowhunter people.

  There was a lot in the Law about whom you could and could not marry: If you married a mundane who did not Ascend, you got your Marks stripped and were out on your ear. You could marry a Downworlder in a mundane or a Downworlder ceremony, and you wouldn't be out on your ear but everyone would be embarrassed, some people would act like your marriage did not count, and your terribly traditional Nephilim Great-Aunt Nerinda would start referring to you as the shame of the family. Plus with the Cold Peace functioning as it was, any Shadowhunter wanting to marry a faerie was probably out of luck.

  But Helen Blackthorn was a Shadowhunter, by their own Law, no matter how many people might despise or distrust her for her faerie blood. And Shadowhunters had not actually built it into their precious Law that Shadowhunters could not marry someone of the same sex. Possibly this was just because it hadn't occurred to anyone even as an option way back when.

  So Helen and Aline actually could be married, in a full Shadowhunter ceremony, in the eyes of both their families and their world. Even if they were exiled again right afterward, they got this much.

  In a Shadowhunter wedding, Simon had been told, you dressed in gold and placed the wedding rune over each other's hearts and arms. There was a tradition a little like giving away the bride, for both parties in a marriage. The bride and groom (or in this case, the bride and bride) would each choose the most significant person to them from their family--sometimes a father, but sometimes a mother, or a parabatai or a sibling or chosen friend, or their own child or an elder who symbolized the whole family--and the chosen one, or suggenes, would give the bride or groom to their beloved, and welcome the beloved to their own family.

  This was not always possible in Shadowhunter weddings, on account of sometimes your whole family and all your friends had been eaten by snake demons. You never knew with Shadowhunters. But Simon thought it was kind of beautiful that Jia Penhallow, Consul and most important member of the Clave, was standing as suggenes to give her daughter Aline to the tainted, scandalous Blackthorns, and to receive Helen into the bosom of her family.

  Aline'd had some nerve suggesting it. Jia'd had some nerve agreeing to it. But Simon supposed that the Clave had already effectively exiled Jia's daughter: What more could they do to her? And how better to politely spit in their eye than to say: Helen, the faerie girl you spat on and sent away, is now as good as the Consul's daughter.

  What is a Shadowhunter made of, if they desert their own, if they throw away a child's heart like rubbish left on the side of the road?

  Julian was the one standing to give Helen away. He stood in his gold-inscribed clothes, his sister on his arm, and his sea-in-the-sunlight eyes shone as if he was happy as any kid could be. As though he had not a care in the world.

  Helen and Aline were both dressed in golden gowns, golden thread glittering like starlight in Aline's black hair. They were both so happy, their faces outshone their gowns. They stood at the center of the ceremony, twin suns, and for a moment all the world seemed to spin and turn on them.

  Helen and Aline drew the marriage runes over each other's hearts with steady hands. When Aline drew Helen's bright head down to her own for a kiss, there was applause all throughout the hall.

  "Thank you for letting us come," whispered Helen after the ceremony was over, embracing her new mother-in-law.

  Jia Penhallow folded her daughter-in-law in her arms and said, in a voice considerably louder than a whisper: "I am sorry I must let you be sent away again."

  Simon did not tell Julian Blackthorn about meeting Mark, any more than he had told Mark that Helen was not there to care for the Blackthorn children. It seemed hideous cruelty, to load another burden on shoulders already burdened almost past bearing. It seemed better to lie, as faeries could not.

  But when he went to Helen and Aline to congratulate them, he stepped up and kissed Helen on the cheek, so he could whisper to her: "Your brother Mark sends you his love, and his happiness for your love."

  Helen stared at him, sudden tears in her eyes but her smile even more radiant than before.

  Everything is going to change for the Shadowhunters, Simon thought. For all of us. It has to.

  *

  Simon had special permission to stay the night in Idris, so he would not have to leave the wedding celebrations early.

  There was going to be dancing later, but for now people were standing about in groups talking. Helen and Aline were sitting on the floor, in the center of the Blackthorns, like two golden flowers who had sprung up from the ground and b
loomed. Tiberius was describing to Helen, in a serious voice, how he and Julian had prepared for the wedding.

  "We went through any potential scenario that might occur," he told her. "As if we were reconstructing a crime scene, but in reverse. So I know exactly what to do, no matter what happens."

  "That must have been a lot of work," Helen said. Tiberius nodded. "Thanks, Ty. I really appreciate it."

  Ty looked pleased. Dru, wearing her flower crown and beaming ear to ear, tugged at Helen's golden skirts for her attention. Simon thought he had rarely seen any group of people who all seemed so happy.

  He tried not to think of what Mark would have given to be here.

  "You want to go for a walk down the river with me and Izzy?" Clary asked, nudging him.

  "What, no Jace?"

  "Ah, I see him all the time," said Clary, with the comfort of familiar and trusted love. "Not like my best friend."

  Jace--who was sitting talking with Alec, Alec who once again had not addressed a single word to Simon--made an obscene gesture to Simon as he left with Isabelle and Clary on either arm. Simon was not actually fooled that Jace was angry. Jace had hugged him when he saw him, and more and more Simon was coming to believe that he and Jace had not had a relationship in which they hugged before.

  But apparently they were huggers now.

  Simon, Isabelle, and Clary went walking down by the river. The waters looked like black crystal in the moonlight, and in the distance the demon towers gleamed like columns of moonlight itself. Alicante was beautiful in the winter, a filigree city where ice complemented glass. Simon walked a little more slowly than the girls, not used as they were to the strangeness and magic of this city, a city most of the world did not know existed, the shining heart of a secret and hidden land.

  Simon was used to the Academy now. He would no doubt get used to all of Idris in time.

  So much had changed, and Simon had changed too. But in the end, he had not lost what was most precious to him. He had been given back the name of his heart.

  Isabelle and Clary looked back at him, walking so close that Isabelle's waterfall of raven hair mingled with Clary's fiery sunset of curls. Simon smiled and knew how lucky he was, lucky compared to Mark Blackthorn, who was locked away from what he loved best, lucky compared to a billion other people who did not know what it was they loved best of all.