Chain of Gold

by Cassandra Clare

  “Jessamine,” Lucie said. “This is important! Do tell us, can ghosts lie? Not you, of course, my dear.”

  “Ghosts can lie,” Jessamine conceded. “But there are certain forms of necromancy that can compel them to tell the truth, and even to allow the living to control them.” She shuddered. “That is why necromancy is so dreadful and forbidden.”

  “That’s why?” Cordelia sounded doubtful. Turning to Lucie, she said, “Are you worried Gast’s ghost might have been lying?”

  Lucie hesitated. Part of her hoped he had been lying, since he had claimed the demon was only meant to kill Shadowhunters. It was a frightening thought. “I just don’t want us to go off on a wild-goose chase. Gast was insistent that someone extraordinarily powerful hired him to summon these demons. We need to find out who that was.”

  “We also need to know what kind of demons these are,” said Cordelia. “We cannot go to the Enclave just to report that Gast raised a bunch of poisonous demons: we already know these demons bear poison. We do not know why their poison is so deadly, or what Gast did so they can appear in daylight.”

  “This all seems very dull,” said Jessamine. “If you don’t need me, I’ll be going.” She vanished with a sigh of relief, no doubt at no longer having to keep herself in visible form.

  Lucie reached up to pull down one of her writing notebooks from the edge of the desk. Perhaps it was time to begin recording their thoughts. “There is another odd thing. We know Gast raised multiple demons, but he kept referring to one demon. He said he raised it, not them.”

  “Perhaps the demon had offspring,” James suggested. “Some demons have dozens of spawn, like spiders—”

  From outside Lucie’s window came the rattle of wheels and the neighing of horses. A moment later there was the sound of cries from the courtyard. James and Lucie both rushed to the window.

  A driverless carriage had drawn up before the Institute’s front steps. Lucie recognized the arms on the side instantly: the four Cs of the Consul. It was Charles Fairchild’s carriage.

  The carriage door flew open and Grace tumbled out, her hair streaming over her shoulders, her dress stained with blood. She was screaming.

  Beside Lucie, James’s body tensed like iron.

  The front doors of the Institute burst open and Brother Enoch came rushing down the steps. He reached into the carriage behind Grace and lifted out the twitching body of a woman, clad in a stained fuchsia dress. Her arm was bloody, wrapped in a makeshift bandage.

  Tatiana Blackthorn.

  Cordelia and Matthew had joined them at the window. Cordelia had her hand over her mouth. “By the Angel,” said Matthew. “Another attack.”

  Lucie turned to tell James to hurry to Grace, but there was no need to say it. He was already gone.

  * * *

  James burst into the infirmary to find a scene of horror. Screens had been put up between the beds along the west wall where the sick lay in their poisoned sleep. James could see only their silhouettes—dark shapes hunched under covers, still as corpses. At the far end of the room two beds had been pushed together: Tatiana had been carried across the room, and blood smeared the floor in a trail leading to where she lay sprawled crosswise upon them, her body jerking and twisting. Her shoulder had been torn, and her arm; her hat had come off, and the thin tufts of her graying hair were matted to her skull.

  Brother Enoch was bending over Tatiana, dripping dark blue fluid from a beaker into her open mouth as she gasped for air. James thought wildly of a baby bird being fed by its mother. Jem stood by, holding bandages soaked in antiseptic. Grace knelt in the shadows by the foot of her mother’s bed, her hands gripping each other tightly.

  James approached, passing the beds in which the other patients lay in their restless drugged states. Ariadne, Vespasia, and Gerald might have been only sleeping, had it not been for the dark maps of black veins beneath their skin. They seemed to grow more visible by the day.

  Hello, James.

  It was Jem’s voice, gentle in his mind. James wished he had something to tell his uncle, other than the frustrating threads of a mystery that refused to knit itself together. But Jem was already searching out the identity of James’s grandfather. He couldn’t burden Jem with more questions that might have no answers.

  Will she live? he asked silently, indicating Tatiana.

  Jem’s voice was unusually strained. If she dies, it will not be because of these injuries you see here.

  The poison. Death-dealer, poisoner of life, Gast had said. But what in the Angel’s name had he raised?

  “James.” A hand caught at his arm; he looked down to see Grace, her face ashen, her lips deadly white. She was gripping his arm with both hands. “Take me out of here.”

  He turned slightly to shield them both from view. “Where shall I take you? What do you need?”

  Her hands trembled, shaking his arm. “I need to talk to you, James. Take me somewhere we can be alone.”

  * * *

  “James has been gone for an absolute age,” Lucie said. She had been scribbling in her notebook, but had begun to look worried. “Would you go and look for him, Cordelia?”

  Cordelia did not want to go look for James. She’d seen the look on his face when Grace tumbled out of Charles’s carriage in the courtyard. The longing that had turned so quickly to fear for Grace; the quick unconscious way he’d touched the bracelet on his wrist. He hated Tatiana, she knew, and with good reason. But he would have done anything to protect her to spare Grace pain.

  She wondered what it would be like, to be loved like that. Even alongside her sadness, there was a strange admiration in her for the way that James loved Grace, the all-encompassingness of it.

  That didn’t mean she wanted to barge in on James and his lady love. But Lucie had asked, and Cordelia could see no reason to refuse. She smiled weakly. “I’m not sure I’m meant to leave you alone with a man,” she said. “Seems scandalous.”

  Lucie chuckled. “Matthew’s not a man. We used to hit each other with soup ladles as children.”

  Cordelia rather expected Matthew to laugh too, but instead he looked away, suddenly occupied with a spot of dirt on his sleeve. With a silent sigh, Cordelia ruffled Lucie’s hair and went out into the corridor.

  She was still learning her way around the Institute. The symbols for Shadowhunter families were everywhere and as Cordelia passed them, witchlight touched the shapes of wings and the curves of towers. Cordelia found a set of stone steps and headed down it, only to jump in surprise as Anna Lightwood stepped out from beneath a marble frieze of an angel poised over a green hill. The dragon of Wales was pictured in the background.

  Anna was in trousers and a jacket of sharp French tailoring. Her blue eyes were the exact color of Will’s, darker than Lucie’s: they matched her waistcoat, and the lapis head of her walking stick.

  “Have you seen James?” Cordelia demanded without preamble.

  “No,” said Anna shortly. “No clue as to his whereabouts, I’m afraid.”

  Cordelia frowned, not because of James, but because of Anna’s expression. “Anna? What’s wrong?”

  Anna scowled. “I had come here to horsewhip Charles, but it appears that he is elsewhere.”

  “Charles Fairchild?” Cordelia echoed blankly. “I believe he’s at home—he called a gathering at his house for high-ranking Enclave members. You could go horsewhip him there, but it would make for a very strange meeting.”

  “High-ranking Enclave members?” Anna rolled her eyes. “Well, no wonder I don’t know about it. So I suppose I’ll have to wait until later to puncture him like the pustulant boil he is.” Anna began to pace within the small confines of the stairwell. “Charles,” she said. “Bloody Charles, everything in service of his ambitions—” She whirled, slamming her walking stick against a stair. “He has done a dreadful, dreadful thing. I need to go to the infirmary. She shouldn’t be alone. I must see her.”

  “See who?” Cordelia was bewildered.

  “Aria
dne,” said Anna. “Cordelia—would you accompany me to the sickroom?”

  Cordelia looked at Anna in surprise. Elegant, composed Anna. Though at the moment her hair was mussed, her cheeks flushed. She looked younger than she usually did.

  “Of course,” Cordelia said.

  Fortunately, Anna knew the way to the infirmary: they did not speak as they climbed the stairs, both lost in thought. The infirmary itself was much quieter than it had been the last time Cordelia was there. She did not recognize most of those who lay still and feverish in the beds. At the back of the room, a large screen had been pulled out to shield the patient there: Tatiana Blackthorn, presumably. Cordelia could see the silhouettes of Brother Enoch and Jem cast against the screen as they moved around Tatiana’s bed.

  Anna’s attention was focused on a single patient. Ariadne Bridgestock lay quietly against the white pillows. Her eyes were shut, and her rich brown skin was ashen, stretching tightly over the branching black veins beneath her skin. Beside her bed was a small table on which lay a roll of bandages and several stoppered jars of different-colored potions.

  Anna slipped in between the screens surrounding Ariadne’s cot, and Cordelia followed, feeling slightly awkward. Was she intruding? But Anna looked up, as if to assure herself that Cordelia was there, before she knelt down at the side of Ariadne’s bed, laying her walking stick on the floor.

  Anna’s bowed shoulders looked strangely vulnerable. One of her hands dangled at her side: she reached out the other, fingers moving slowly across the white linen sheets, until she was almost touching Ariadne’s hand.

  She did not take it. At the last moment, Anna’s fingers curled and dropped to rest, beside Ariadne but not quite touching. In a low and steady voice, Anna said, “Ariadne. When you wake up—and you will wake up—I want you to remember this. It was never a sign of your worth that Charles Fairchild wanted to marry you. It is a measure of his lack of worth that he chose to break it off in such a manner.”

  “He broke it off?” Cordelia whispered. She was stunned. The breaking off of a promised engagement was a serious matter, undertaken usually only when one of the parties in question had committed some kind of serious crime or been caught in an affair. For Charles to break his promise to Ariadne while she lay unconscious was appalling. People would assume he had found out something dreadful about Ariadne. When she awoke, she might be ruined.

  Anna did not reply to Cordelia. She only raised her head and looked at Ariadne’s face, a long look like a touch.

  “Please don’t die,” she said, in a low voice, and rose to her feet. Catching up her walking stick, she strode from the infirmary, leaving Cordelia staring after her in surprise.

  * * *

  Lucie set her notebook aside. Matthew was drawing circles in the air with a forefinger and frowning lazily, as if he were a pasha looking over his court and finding them to be ill-mannered and unprepared for inspection.

  “How are you, Luce?” he said. He had moved to sit beside her on the settee. “Tell the truth.”

  “How are you, Matthew?” Lucie retorted. “Tell the truth.”

  “I am not the one who saw the ghost of Gast,” said Matthew, and grinned. “Sounds like an unfinished Dickens novel, doesn’t it? The Ghost of Gast.”

  “I am not the one who nearly tumbled off a rope I should easily have been able to climb,” said Lucie quietly.

  Matthew’s eyes narrowed. They were extraordinary eyes, so dark you could only tell they were green if you stood close to him. And Lucie had, many times. They were close now, close enough that she could see the slight scruff of golden hair along his jawline, and the shadows under his eyes.

  “That reminds me,” he said, and rolled up his sleeve. There was a long graze along his forearm. “I could use an iratze.” He aimed a winning smile at her. All Matthew’s smiles were winning. “Here,” he added, and held out his stele to her. “Use mine.”

  She reached to take it from him, and for a moment, his hand closed gently around hers. “Lucie,” he said softly, and she almost closed her eyes, remembering how he had put his coat around her in the street, the warmth of his touch, the faint scent of him, brandy and dry leaves.

  But mostly brandy.

  She looked down at their entwined hands, his more scarred than hers. The rings on his fingers. He began to turn her hand over in his, as if he meant to kiss her palm.

  “You are a Shadowhunter, Matthew,” she said. “You should be able to scale a wall.”

  He sat back. “And I am,” he said. “My new boots were slippery.”

  “It wasn’t your boots,” said Lucie. “You were drunk. You’re drunk now, too. Matthew, you’re drunk most of the time.”

  He released her hand as if she had struck him. There was confusion in his eyes, and visible hurt as well. “I am not—”

  “Yes, you are. You think I can’t recognize it?”

  Matthew’s mouth hardened into a narrow line. “Drink makes me amusing.”

  “It does not amuse me to watch you hurt yourself,” she said. “You are like a brother to me, Math—”

  He flinched. “Am I? No one else has such complaints about what I do, or my desire for fortification.”

  “Many are afraid to mention it,” said Lucie. “Others, like my brother and my parents, do not see what they do not want to see. But I see, and I am worried.”

  His lip curled at the corner. “Worried about me? I’m flattered.”

  “I am worried,” said Lucie, “that you will get my brother killed.”

  Matthew did not move. He remained as still as if he had been turned to stone by the Gorgon in the old stories. The Gorgon was a demon, Lucie’s father had told her, though in those days there were no Shadowhunters. Instead gods and demigods had walked on the earth, and miracles had showered down from the heavens like leaves from a tree in autumn. But there was no miracle here. Only the fact that she might as well have stabbed Matthew in the heart.

  “You are his parabatai,” said Lucie, her voice shaking slightly. “He trusts you—to be at his back in battle, to be his shield and sword, and if you are not yourself—”

  Matthew stood up, nearly upending the chair. His eyes were dark with fury. “If it were anyone else but you, Lucie, saying these things to me—”

  “Then what?” Lucie also rose to her feet. She barely reached Matthew’s shoulder, but she glared at him anyway. She had always given as good as she got in the soup ladle battles of their childhood. “What would you do?”

  He slammed his way out of her room without replying.

  * * *

  In the end, James brought Grace to the drawing room.

  It was quiet in there, and deserted: there was a fire on, and he helped her into a chair close to it, bending to draw off her gloves. He wanted to kiss her bare hands—so vulnerable, so familiar from their days and nights in the woods—but he stepped back and left her alone to warm herself by the flames. It was not a cold day, but shock could make one shiver down to one’s bones.

  The light from the flames danced over the William Morris wallpaper and the deep colors of the Axminster rugs that covered the wooden floor. At last Grace rose to her feet and began to pace up and down in front of the fire. She had pulled the last pins from her hair, and it streamed over her shoulders like icy water.

  “Grace?” Now, in this room, with only the sound of the ticking clock breaking the silence, James hesitated, as he had not had time or pause to do in the infirmary. “Can you speak of what happened? Where was the attack? How did you escape?”

  “Mama was attacked at the manor,” said Grace, her voice flat. “I do not know how it happened. I found her unconscious at the bottom of the front steps. The wounds in her shoulder and arm were the wounds of teeth.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “You don’t have to say that,” said Grace. She had begun to pace again. “There are things you don’t know, James. And things I must do, now that she is sick. Before she wakes.”

  “I am glad you think she w
ill recover,” said James, coming close to her. He was not sure if he should reach to touch her, even as she stopped pacing and raised her eyes to his. He did not think he had seen Grace like this before. “It is important to have hope.”

  “It is certainty. My mother will not die,” said Grace. “All these years she has lived on bitterness, and her bitterness will keep her alive now. It is stronger than death.” She reached to caress his face. He closed his eyes as her fingertips traced the contour of his cheekbone, light as the touch of a dragonfly’s wing.

  “James,” she said. “Oh, James. Open your eyes. Let me look at you while you still love me.”

  His eyes flew open. “I have loved you for years. I will always love you.”

  “No,” said Grace, dropping her hand. There was a great weariness on her face, in her movements. “You will hate me soon.”

  “I could never hate you,” James said.

  “I am getting married,” she said.

  It was the sort of shock so immense one hardly felt it. She’s made some kind of mistake, James thought. She’s confused. I will fix this.

  “I will be marrying Charles,” she went on. “Charles Fairchild. We have been spending quite a bit of time together since I came to London, though I know you have not noticed it.”

  A pulse had started to pound behind James’s eyes, in time with the ticking of the grandfather clock. “This is madness, Grace. You asked me to marry you last night.”

  “And you said no. You were very clear.” She gave a slight shrug. “Charles said yes.”

  “Charles is engaged to Ariadne Bridgestock.”

  “That engagement is broken. Charles told Inquisitor Bridgestock he was ending it this morning. Ariadne did not love Charles; she will not care whether they marry or not.”

  “Really? Did you ask her?” James demanded fiercely, and Grace flinched. “None of this makes sense, Grace. You’ve been in London less than a week—”