Chain of Gold

by Cassandra Clare

  “Matthew and I occasionally attend an artistic salon in a building owned by the High Warlock of London,” said Anna. “Malcolm Fade.”

  “Malcolm Fade?” Cordelia had heard of him. High Warlocks of cities were sometimes elected. Sometimes they simply claimed the title. Malcolm Fade had appeared in London somewhere around the turn of the century and announced that he would be High Warlock as Ragnor Fell was stepping down and no one had seen Magnus Bane recently.

  Lucie had been electrified, especially when he came to pay a call on the Institute and chat with Will and Tessa. She said he had hair the color of salt and eyes the color of violets and she had been in love with him for almost a week, her letters full of nothing else.

  “Every Downworlder who is anyone will be there,” said Anna. “It is time for us to do what we do best.”

  “Drink?” said Matthew.

  “Be charming,” said Anna. “Ask questions. See what we can learn.” She held out a gloved hand. “Come, come. Get up. Is the carriage downstairs, Matthew?”

  “At your service,” said Matthew. “Are you quite sure you want to come, Cordelia? It will be scandalous.”

  Cordelia didn’t bother to reply, just retrieved Cortana as they left the flat. It was dark outside; the air was chilly and dank. A carriage with the Consul’s coat of arms painted across the door waited for them at the curb. Someone had left a pile of roses with the heads snipped off on the front steps. Evangeline, or a different girl?

  “So what kind of salon is this, exactly?” Cordelia inquired, as the carriage door swung open and Matthew helped her inside. One of the Consul’s servants, a middle-aged man with brown hair, sat impassively up front in the box seat.

  She had heard of salons, of course—gatherings where the great and the famous and the noble came together to appreciate art and poetry. It was rumored that more daring things happened at salons as well, in the shadows and the dark gardens, couples gathering to tryst where no one could see them.

  Anna and Matthew scrambled up after her, Anna disdaining Matthew’s helping hand. “An exclusive one,” said Anna, settling back on the velvet bench seat. “Some of the most famous Downworlders in the world attend.”

  The carriage set off at a clip.

  Anna said, “Some you may have heard of; some you may not. Some with reputations they don’t deserve—and some with reputations they more than do.”

  “I never thought of Downworlders as being interested in painting and poetry,” said Cordelia. “But I suppose there is no reason they shouldn’t be, is there? It’s just those aren’t things that Shadowhunters do. We don’t create like that.”

  “We can,” Matthew said. “We are simply told we shouldn’t. Do not confuse conditioning with a native inability.”

  “Do you create, Matthew?” asked Cordelia, looking at him sharply. “Do you draw, or paint, or pen poetry?”

  “Lucie writes,” said Matthew, his eyes like dark water. “I thought she wrote for you, sometimes.”

  “Lucie worries,” said Cordelia. “She doesn’t say so, but I know she worries, that all her writing will come to nothing, because she is a Shadowhunter and that must come first.” She hesitated. “What does it mean, ‘Hell Ruelle’?”

  Anna’s eyes gleamed. She said, “Official academic gatherings in Paris have always been controlled by men, but salons are a world ruled by women. One famous noble lady seated her artistic guests in her ruelle—the space between her bed, any lady’s bed, really, and the wall. A scandalous spot. Informally, an artistic gathering presided over by a woman came to be known as a ‘ruelle.’  ”

  “But you said Malcolm Fade ran this one, I thought.”

  “He owns the building,” said Anna. “As for who runs it, you will see soon enough.”

  Cordelia did not like having to wait to find things out. She sighed and glanced at the window. “Where are we going?”

  “Berwick Street,” said Anna, and dropped a wink. “In Soho.”

  Cordelia didn’t know much of London, but she did know that Soho was where bohemians roamed. Dissolute writers and starving artists, penniless socialists and aspiring musicians, rubbed shoulders with a mix of shopkeepers, tradesmen, aristocrats who had fallen down in the world, and ladies who were no better than they should be.

  It had always sounded wildly exciting, and exactly the sort of place her mother would never let her go.

  “Soho,” she breathed, as the carriage rattled down a narrow, dark street on whose pavement the stalls of a public market had been set up. Naphtha beacons illuminated the faces of stall owners chatting and haggling with customers over chipped china plates and mugs and secondhand clothes. Gentlemen—well, they weren’t gentlemen, most likely, Cordelia thought—tried on overcoats and jackets in the street, their wives fingering the material and exclaiming on the fit. Boswell’s butcher had thrown its doors open and was selling cuts of meat—“Whatever will spoil before tomorrow, darling,” Anna said, noting Cordelia’s curious stare—by gaslight, and there were bakers and grocers doing the same. They passed a tea shop and then the Blue Posts pub, its windows alive with light.

  “Here,” said Anna, and the carriage stopped. They scrambled out and found themselves at the corner of Berwick and a small alley called Tyler’s Court, leading away from the main thoroughfare. The air was full of the sound of people laughing and shouting, and the smell of roasting nuts.

  After a brief, whispered conference with Matthew, Anna disappeared down the alley, her tall, black-clad form melding almost immediately with the shadows. Cordelia was left alone with Matthew. He had his hat tipped down over one eye and was regarding her thoughtfully.

  Cordelia glanced about at the shop signs. She could see the silhouettes of women lounging in doorways. She thought of her mother’s voice saying, A fallen woman, you know. As if the girl in question had merely overbalanced. Cordelia tried to imagine it. Kissing men for money, doing more than just kissing.…

  “What are you thinking?” Matthew asked.

  Cordelia wrenched her gaze away from a woman with rouged cheeks smiling up at a man in ill-fitting laborer’s clothes. “What’s a lapidary?” she asked, not because she actually wanted to know, but because the sign opposite her said A. JONES, LAPIDARY and Matthew was making her nervous.

  “A lapidary phrase is one that is worth carving into stone,” said Matthew, “and preserving forever—a wise saying such as ‘we are dust and shadows,’ or alternately, any words that come out of my mouth.”

  Cordelia pointed at the sign. “They sell phrases there?”

  “They sell objects with phrases carved into them,” Matthew said. “For instance, if you wished words of love to be etched into your wedding band. Or words of regret and sorrow on your grave. For my own headstone, I was hoping for something a bit grand.”

  “You surprise me,” said Cordelia. “I am all astonishment.”

  Matthew threw his arms up in the air, his face glowing in the naphtha beacons. “Perhaps a simple ‘O grave, where is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?’ But does that truly capture the light I brought to the lives of friends and acquaintances, the sorrow they will feel when it is extinguished? Perhaps:

  ‘Shed not for him the bitter tear

  Nor give the heart to vain regret;

  ’Tis but the casket that lies here,

  The gem that filled it sparkles yet.’ ”

  Matthew’s voice had risen; applause rose from the crowd outside the Blue Posts when he was finished. He lowered his arms just as Anna emerged from the alley.

  “Do stop babbling rot, Matthew,” she said. “Now come along, the both of you, they’re expecting us.”

  It was deep night, the forest deep and dark. The beautiful Cordelia, astride her white palfrey, galloped along the twisting road that gleamed white in the moon’s graceful light. Her shining scarlet hair blew behind her, and her radiantly beautiful face was set with steely determination.

  Suddenly she cried out. A black stallion had appeared, blocking th
e road ahead of her. She pulled back on the reins, skidding to a halt with a gasp.

  It was him! The man from the inn! She recognized his handsome face, his radiant green eyes. Her head swam. What could he possibly be doing out here in the midst of the night, wearing very tight breeches?

  “My word,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “I was warned that the ladies in this neighborhood were fast, but I didn’t think that was meant to be taken literally.”

  Cordelia gasped. The nerve of him! “Pray, remove yourself from my path, sir! For I have an urgent errand this night, upon whose completion many lives depend!”

  Lucie reached the end of her sentence—and her typewriter ribbon—and clapped her hands together in delight. Pray, remove yourself from my path, sir! Cordelia had such spirit! And sparks were about to fly between her and the handsome highwayman, who was in reality a duke’s son, convicted of a crime he hadn’t committed and forced to make his living on the roads. It was all so romantic—

  “Miss Herondale?” said a soft voice behind her.

  Lucie, seated at her desk by the window, turned in surprise. She had forgotten to kindle the witchlight in her room as dusk had fallen, and for a moment all she could see was a male figure in dark clothes, standing smack in the center of her bedroom.

  She shrieked. When nothing happened, she shrieked again, lifted the neat stack of completed pages that she’d set aside, and hurled it at the figure in the middle of her room.

  He leaped aside nimbly, but not nimbly enough. The manuscript struck him and exploded into a white cloud of paper.

  Lucie reached toward the lamp on her desk. In the sudden illumination she saw him clearly: black hair, as pin-straight as her brother’s was wild and untidy. Green eyes looked out at her beneath dark lashes.

  “So this is what people mean when they say the pages just flew by,” said Jesse dryly, as the last of the papers settled to his feet. “Was that necessary?”

  “Was it necessary to invade my bedroom?” Lucie demanded, her hands on her hips. She could feel her heart pounding, and was a little surprised at herself. It wasn’t as if seeing ghosts was that rare an occurrence for her. Jessamine drifted in and out of Lucie’s bedroom frequently: she loved to look at Lucie’s clothes when she took them out of the wardrobe and to give her unwanted fashion advice. Lucie had been almost ten years old before she’d realized—when Rosamund and Piers Wentworth had laughed at her—that most girls didn’t have a pestering ghost friend.

  Jesse had picked up a page and was looking at it critically. “Too many uses of the word ‘radiant,’ ” he said. “At least three times on the same page. Also ‘golden’ and ‘shining.’ ”

  “I don’t recall asking your advice,” Lucie said, rising to her feet. Thank goodness she had changed for dinner and wasn’t still sitting about in her dressing gown. She did sometimes forget to get dressed when deep into a story, the words flying from her fingers. “What was the last book you read?”

  “Great Expectations,” he said promptly. “I told you, I read a great deal.”

  He sat down on the edge of Lucie’s bed—and immediately leaped back up, blushing. Lucie took her hands off her hips, amused.

  “A ghost with a sense of propriety. That is funny.”

  He looked at her darkly. He really did have a most arresting face, she thought. His black hair and green eyes made a wintry contrast against his pale skin. As a writer, one had to pay attention to these things. Descriptions were very important.

  “There is actually a purpose in my coming here,” he said.

  “Other than mocking and humiliating me? I’m so glad!”

  Jesse ignored this. “My sister and your brother have arranged a secret rendezvous tonight—”

  “Oh, by the Angel.” It was Lucie’s turn to sit down heavily on the edge of her bed. “That’s dreadfully awkward.”

  Before Jesse could say another word, the bedroom door jerked open and Lucie’s father stood on the threshold, looking alarmed.

  “Lucie?” he said. “Did you call out? I thought I heard you.”

  Lucie tensed, but the expression in her father’s blue eyes didn’t change—mild worry mixed with curious puzzlement. He really couldn’t see Jesse.

  Jesse looked at her and, very irritatingly, shrugged as if to say, I told you so.

  “No, Papa,” she said. “Everything is all right.”

  He looked at the manuscript pages scattered all over the rug. “Spot of writer’s block, Lulu?”

  Jesse raised an eyebrow. Lulu? he mouthed.

  Lucie considered whether it was possible to die of humiliation. She did not dare look at Jesse. She stared straight at her father instead. He still looked worried. “Is something wrong, Papa?”

  Will shook his head. Lucie could not remember when the white threads at his temples had appeared, salting the black of his hair. “Long ago,” he said, “I was the one warning the Clave that something terrible was coming. A threat we did not know how to face. Now I am the Clave, and I still cannot convince those around me that more steps should be taken than simply setting patrols in a park.”

  “Is that really all they are doing?”

  “Your mother believes the answer is to be found in the library,” Will said, running his fingers distractedly through his hair. The backs of her father’s hands were scarred from a demon attack that had happened years ago, when Lucie was a child. “Your uncle Jem believes the warlocks may have some useful knowledge hidden in their Spiral Labyrinth.”

  “And what do you believe?” said Lucie.

  “I believe there are always those who stay vigilant and seek the truth rather than easy answers,” he said, with a smile that Lucie could tell was more for her than for himself. “In the meantime, I shall be with your mother in the library. We are still under the A section of the Unusual Demons book. Who knew there was a wormlike creature called the Aaardshak common in Sri Lanka?”

  “Cordelia, perhaps,” said Lucie. “She has been everywhere.” She frowned. “Is it selfishly awful to worry that all this business will delay our becoming parabatai? I feel I will be a better Shadowhunter when it is done. Were you not one, after you became parabatai with Uncle Jem?”

  “A better Shadowhunter and a better man,” said Will. “All the best of me, I learned from Jem and your mother. All I want for you and Cordelia is to have what I had, a friendship that shall shape all your days. And never to be parted.”

  Lucie knew her parents had done great deeds that had become famous Nephilim stories, but they had suffered too much. Lucie had long ago decided that living in a story would be terribly uncomfortable. Far better to write them, and control the tale so it was never too sad or too scary, only just enough to be intriguing.

  Will sighed. “Get some sleep, fy nghariad bach. Hopefully our infirmary dwellers will be better tomorrow.”

  The door clicked shut behind her father, and Lucie gazed around her shadowed room. Where was her ghost?

  “Well, that was interesting,” said Jesse in a thoughtful voice.

  Lucie spun around and glared at Jesse, who was sitting on the windowsill, all pale skin and dark eyebrows like slashes in his face. He did not reflect against the glass panes. They were black and empty behind him.

  “You’re just lucky I didn’t tell him you were here,” she said. “He would have believed me. And if he thought there was a boy in his daughter’s room, he would have figured out how to tear him limb from limb, even if he couldn’t see him.”

  Jesse didn’t seem particularly concerned. “What did he call you? When he was leaving the room?”

  “Fy nghariad bach. It means ‘my darling’ in Welsh. ‘My little darling.’ ”

  She gazed at him challengingly, but he didn’t seem inclined to mock her. “My mother speaks often of your father,” he said. “I did not think he would be like that.”

  “Like what?”

  His gaze slid away from hers. “My own father died before I was born. I thought perhaps I would see him when I
died, but I have not. The dead go somewhere far away. I cannot follow them.”

  “Why not?” Lucie had once asked Jessamine what happened after one died: Jessamine had replied that she did not know, that the limbo ghosts inhabited was not the land of death.

  “I am held here,” said Jesse. “When the sun rises, I go into darkness. I am not conscious again until the night. If there is an afterlife, I have never seen it.”

  “But you can speak to your sister and mother,” said Lucie. “They must know how odd all this is. But they keep it a secret? Has Grace ever told James?”

  “She has not,” said Jesse. “The Blackthorns are used to keeping secrets. It is only by accident that I discovered Grace was meeting your brother tonight. I saw her writing to James, though she didn’t know I was there.”

  “Oh, yes—the secret rendezvous,” Lucie said. “Are you worried that Grace will be ruined?”

  It was distressingly easy for a young lady to be “ruined”—her reputation destroyed if she was found alone with a gentleman. The mother always hoped the gentleman would do the right thing and marry the lady rather than doom her to a life of a shame, even if he didn’t love her, but it was far from a sure thing. And if he didn’t, one could be sure no other man would go near her. She would never marry.

  Lucie thought of Eugenia.

  “Nothing so trivial,” said Jesse. “You know the stories of my grandfather, I am sure?”

  Lucie raised an eyebrow. “The one who turned into a great worm because of demon pox, and was slain by my father and uncles?”

  “I feared your parents would not have considered it the kind of tale suitable for a young lady’s ears,” said Jesse. “I see that was an idle concern.”

  “They tell it every Christmas,” said Lucie smugly.

  Jesse stood up. Lucie could not help but glance at the mirror over the vanity, where she could see the reflection of her own face, but not Jesse. A girl in an empty room, talking to herself. “Grandfather Benedict dabbled in a great deal of black magic,” he said. “And his relationship with demons—” He shuddered. “When he died, he left a Cerberus demon behind in the greenhouse. Its mandate is to protect our family.”