Chain of Gold

by Cassandra Clare

  “Believe me when I say it is a long story,” said James. “I promise you we are in no danger now—”

  “Did you really kill the Mandikhor?” asked Lucie.

  “Yes,” said James, “and Cordelia destroyed the one who raised it.” He held out a hand, scarred with cuts and filthy with dirt. “Daisy? Would you come here?” He smiled crookedly. “I would come to you, but I do not think I have the strength to walk.”

  Cordelia tried to rise, but a hot white pain shot up her leg. She bit down on a whimper. “My leg is broken, I think. Very vexing, but I’m quite all right.”

  “Oh! Daisy! Your leg!” Lucie leaped to her feet and raced over to Cordelia, dropping down and pressing her stele against Cordelia’s arm. She began to draw an iratze. “I am the worst,” she moaned. “The most dreadful would-be parabatai who ever lived. Please forgive me, Daisy.”

  As the healing rune took effect, Cordelia could feel the bone in her leg beginning to knit back together. It was not an entirely pleasant feeling. She gasped and said, “Lucie, it’s nothing—I would have done it myself, but I dropped my stele in—in that other place.”

  Lucie pushed Cordelia’s hair out of her eyes and smiled at her. “There is no need ever to do it yourself,” she said. “Runes given to you by your parabatai are best.”

  “Ghastly,” said Matthew. “Look at them, affirming their eternal bond of friendship. In public.”

  “I would question your definition of ‘public,’ ” said James. Lucie and Cordelia exchanged a smile: if James was capable of mocking Matthew, he was certainly on the mend. “This is a mostly deserted graveyard.”

  “Hmmm,” said Matthew, in a surprisingly serious tone, his eyes narrowed. He rose to his feet, helping James to sit up against a tree. As Matthew paced to the edge of the clearing, James said:

  “Luce. Let me talk to Cordelia for a moment.”

  Lucie exchanged a glance with Cordelia, who nodded and stood up—it still hurt to put weight on her leg, but Lucie’s iratzes had mostly done their job. Lucie went to join Matthew as Cordelia limped over to James and sank down beside him under the shadow of a cypress tree.

  For a moment, as James’s breaths had faded, Cordelia had seen life fork into two paths. One path in which James was dead—in which there was no meaning in the world, in which Lucie was heartbroken and Matthew destroyed, in which Thomas and Christopher were crushed and the Herondale family never smiled again. And a second path in which life continued as it was now—imperfect, confusing, but full of hope.

  They were on the second path. That was what mattered—that James was breathing, that his lips were no longer blue, that he was looking at her with steady gold eyes. Despite the fact that her whole body ached, she found herself smiling.

  “You saved my life,” he said. “Just as you saved my sister’s all those years ago. We should have given you a more warrior-like nickname. Not Daisy, but Artemis, or Boadicea.”

  She laughed softly. “I like Daisy.”

  “So do I,” he said, and reached up to lightly brush back a strand of her hair. She felt her heart nearly stop. In a low voice, he said, “ ‘And when her cheek the moon revealed, a thousand hearts were won: no pride, no shield, could check her power. Layla, she was called.’  ”

  “Layla and Majnun,” she whispered. “You—remember?”

  “You read to me,” he said. “Perhaps, now all this is over, we could read it again, together?”

  Reading together. Never had Cordelia heard of anything so romantic. She started to nod, just as Matthew called out sharply:

  “Someone’s coming! I see witchlight.”

  Cordelia turned to look. Lights had appeared between the trees: as they came nearer, she saw the glimmer of torchlight. She tried to rise, but the iratzes were already fading: her leg hurt too much. She sat back down.

  “Oh, dear,” said Lucie. “The Silent Brothers aren’t going to be at all pleased, are they? Nor the Enclave. We’re probably going to be in awful trouble.”

  “Maybe we could leg it,” suggested Matthew.

  “I am not going anywhere,” said James. “I will remain here and take whatever punishment is given out. The rack, the iron maiden, death by spiders. Anything but getting up.”

  “I don’t think I can stand up,” said Cordelia apologetically.

  “ ‘Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing Boy,’  ” Matthew intoned. “Coleridge.”

  “Wordsworth,” James corrected.

  The lights swung closer. A sharp voice cut through the clearing. A familiar voice. “What on earth is going on?”

  Cordelia twisted around, trying not to move her leg. Alastair strode into the clearing. He looked disarmingly normal in an old tweed coat of her father’s, as if he’d been out for a stroll. His unnaturally pale hair gleamed under the faint starlight. Beside him was Thomas, his hair mussed, carrying what looked like an apothecary’s case.

  “Why are you all on the ground?” said Thomas, and then waved his case in the air. “The antidote—it’s ready—what’s the quickest way to Christopher?”

  There was a babble of voices. Matthew got to his feet and hugged Thomas hard, being careful not to knock the case out of his hand. “Let’s go alert the Brothers,” he said, and began to pull his friend toward the path leading to the Silent City.

  “You needn’t come with me,” Thomas protested, amused.

  “Just in case there’s chanting,” Matthew said. “I don’t think there will be, mind, but you never know.”

  Alastair had been watching as Thomas and Matthew disappeared into the shadows between the trees. He shook his head, and turned his attention back to Cordelia. “Biyâ,” he said, bending down to swing her up in his arms. “Come along home.”

  In surprise, she looped an arm around his neck. “But, Alastair. I can’t leave my friends—”

  “Layla,” Alastair said, in an unusually gentle voice. “They’re not going to be alone. Thomas and I took care of sending a message to the Institute. Look.”

  She looked, and saw that the broad path behind the tombs was full of the glow of witchlight torches borne by a crowd of Shadowhunters. She recognized a dozen familiar faces: Will Herondale, his torch casting bright illumination over his black-and-silver hair. Tessa, a sword in her hand, her brown hair loose over her shoulders. Gabriel, Cecily, and Anna Lightwood, Anna smiling, her hair as black as the gear she wore.

  She heard Lucie give a short cry. “Papa!”

  Will broke into a run. He caught hold of his daughter and swept her into his arms. Tessa ran to James, dropping down to kneel beside him and fuss over his bruises and cuts. Gabriel and Cecily followed, and soon Lucie and James were surrounded, being embraced and scolded in equal measure.

  Cordelia closed her eyes in relief. James and Lucie were all right. Everywhere Cordelia could hear chatter: Gabriel and Cecily were asking after Thomas, and the others were saying that he was being taken to the Silent City now, where the antidote would be administered. Someone else—one of the Rosewains—was saying that there was still a present danger, that the demons might attack again, whether there was an antidote or not.

  “The Mandikhor has been defeated,” Cordelia said. “It will not return.”

  “And how do you know that, young lady?” said George Penhallow.

  “BECAUSE JAMES KILLED IT,” Cordelia said, as loudly as she could. “James killed the Mandikhor demon. I saw it die.”

  At that point, several people crowded toward her; it was Will who blocked their way, his hand out, protesting that they should not be bothering an injured girl. Alastair took the opportunity to slip from the clearing and into the shadows, still carrying Cordelia in his arms.

  “I beg you not to get involved, khahare azizam,” said Alastair. “It will all be sorted out soon enough, but there’s going to be a great deal of nonsense first. And you need to rest.”

  “But they need to know it was James,” Cordelia said. It was oddly comfortable to be carried like this,
with her head against her brother’s shoulder. The way her father had carried her once, when she was very small. “They need to know what he did, because—because they do.”

  Because Belial is his grandfather. Because when the Enclave finds that out, who knows what they will think. Because people can be foolish and cruel.

  “They will,” Alastair said, sounding utterly confident. “The truth is the truth. It will always come out.”

  She craned her head back to look up at him. “How do you know the antidote works?”

  Alastair grinned in the dark. “I have faith in Thomas.”

  “You do?” said Cordelia. “I didn’t think you even knew him that well.”

  Alastair hesitated. “I watched him make it,” he said finally. They had reached the Carstairs carriage now, with its design of castle towers on the door. Many more carriages lined the curb beside it. “Because he had such faith in Christopher, he had faith in himself. I never quite thought of friendship like that—as something that makes you more than you are.”

  “But, Alastair—”

  “No more questions,” said Alastair, placing Cordelia inside the carriage and swinging himself up after her. He smiled, that rare charming smile of his that was all the better for its rarity. “You were very brave, Layla, but you need healing, too. Time to go home.”

  DAYS PAST: CIRENWORTH HALL, 1898

  Cordelia often felt alone when it was just her and her parents, but never as much as when Alastair went away to the Academy. While he was gone, the rest of the Carstairs family traveled to India, to Paris, to Cape Town and Canada, but they were at Cirenworth for the holidays when he finally returned.

  She had waited months for his return, but when he stepped out of the carriage—taller, more angular, and sharper than ever—he seemed like a different person. He’d always been short-tempered and prickly, but now he would barely speak to her. When he did, it was mostly to tell her not to bother him.

  Her parents ignored the transformation. When Cordelia asked her father why Alastair wouldn’t spend time with her, he smiled at her and told her that teenage boys went through “times like this” and she would “understand when she was older.” “He’s been having fun with boys his own age all year and now he’s got to be back in the countryside with the likes of us,” Elias said with a chuckle. “He’ll get over it.”

  This was not a satisfying answer. Cordelia tried to put herself in Alastair’s path as much as she could, to force him to acknowledge her. Often, though, she couldn’t even find him. He spent hours locked in his bedroom, and when she knocked on the door, he didn’t even bother to tell her to go away. He just ignored her. The only way she knew he’d been in there was when he emerged to eat, or to announce he was going out for a long walk by himself.

  This went on for a few weeks. Cordelia’s feelings changed from disappointment, to sorrow, to blaming herself, to annoyance, and then to anger. At dinner one night she threw a spoon at him and shouted, “Why won’t you talk to me?” Alastair caught the spoon out of the air, put it down on the table, and glared at her in silence.

  “Don’t throw things, Cordelia,” her mother said.

  “Mâmân!” Cordelia protested in a tone of betrayal. Her father ignored the entire business and went on eating as though nothing had happened. Risa glided by and set a new spoon down at Cordelia’s place, which Cordelia found extremely irritating.

  Alastair’s refusal to engage with Cordelia was, she understood, meant to cause her to give up and stop trying. So she redoubled her efforts. “Well,” she would announce, if she found herself in the same room with him, “I’m going to collect wild blackberries down the lane.” (Alastair loved blackberries.) Or, “I think I’ll do some tumbling in the training room after lunch.” (Alastair was always on her to practice how to fall safely, and she’d need a partner for that.)

  One day when he went out for one of his walks, Cordelia waited a minute and then followed. It was good practice, she told herself—stealthy movement, awareness of her surroundings, honing her senses. She made it a game: How long could she track her brother before he noticed? Could she remain undetected long enough to find out where he went?

  It turned out Alastair didn’t go anywhere. He just walked and walked, knowing these woods well enough not to get lost. Cordelia began to get tired after a couple of hours. Then she began to get hungry.

  Then she got distracted, and hooked her foot into a protruding tree root, and fell in a thud on the hard-packed dirt. Ahead, Alastair turned at the noise and spotted her as she, annoyed, scrambled to her feet. She folded her arms and held up her chin, stubborn and determined to retain her pride in the face of whatever unpleasant reaction he was preparing: his contempt, his rage, his dismissal.

  Instead, he let out a sigh and walked over to her. Without preamble he said gruffly, “Are you hurt?”

  Cordelia lifted her foot and wiggled it experimentally. “I’ll be okay. Just bruised, I think.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  They walked in silence, Alastair a few steps ahead, not speaking. Eventually, driven mad by the silence, Cordelia burst out, “Don’t you want to know why I was following you?”

  He turned and considered her. “I assume you thought I was coming out here to do something exciting.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, growing—as always—more agitated in the face of Alastair’s imperturbable calm. “I’m sorry that since you went away to the Academy you’ve become all grown-up and mature and you have fancy new friends. I’m sorry I’m just your stupid little sister.”

  Alastair stared at her a moment, and then let out a bark of laughter. There was no humor in it. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m sorry you’re too good for your family now! I’m sorry you’re too good to train with me!”

  He shook his head, dismissive. “Don’t be daft, Cordelia.”

  “Just talk to me!” she said. “I don’t know why you’re so grumpy. You’re the lucky one who got to go away. Who got to have fun in Idris. You know how alone I’ve been all year?”

  For a moment, Alastair looked lost, hesitant. It had been a long time since Cordelia had seen an expression so open on his face. Then he slammed shut like an iron gate. “We’re all of us alone,” he said. “In the end.”

  “What does that mean?” she demanded, but he’d turned to walk away. After a moment, wiping the wetness from her face with her sleeve, she followed.

  When they got back to the house, she left him in the entryway while she retrieved the entire stock of throwing knives from the china cabinet that served as the house’s armory. She walked past her brother on the way from cabinet to training room, glaring at him, barely able to carry the pile. He watched her in silence.

  In the training room she set up and went through her paces. Thunk. Thunk. Throwing knives were not her strongest weapon, but she needed the sense of impact, of getting to hurt something, even just a target on a backstop. As usual, the rhythm of training soothed her. Her breathing became more calm and even. The repetition grounded her: five throws, then the walk to retrieve the knives from the target and the walk back to try again. Five throws. Walk. Retrieve. Walk. Five throws.

  After twenty minutes or so of this she realized that Alastair was standing in the doorway of the training room. She ignored him.

  Someone else might have said that she’d gotten better since he saw her last, or asked if he could take a turn. Alastair, though, eventually cleared his throat and said, “You’re turning your left foot on the release. That’s why you’re so inconsistent.”

  She glared and went back to throwing. But she paid more attention to her footwork.

  After a while Alastair said, “It’s stupid to say I’m lucky. I’m not lucky.”

  “You weren’t stuck here all year.”

  “Oh?” Alastair sneered. “How many people came here this year to mock you? How many asked what was wrong with you that you didn’t have a private tutor? Or sugg
ested your family was some kind of ne’er-do-wells because we’ve moved around a lot?”

  Cordelia looked over at him, expecting to see vulnerability and sadness there, but Alastair’s eyes were hard, his mouth a thin line. “They treated you badly?”

  Alastair let out another mirthless laugh. “For a while. I realized I had a choice. There were only two kinds of people at the Academy. The bullies and the bullied.”

  “And you…?”

  Alastair said tightly, “Which would you have chosen?”

  “If those were my only two choices,” Cordelia said, “I would have left and come home.”

  “Yes, well,” he said. “I chose the one where I wasn’t made to feel like a laughingstock.”

  Cordelia was very still and silent. Alastair’s face was impassive.

  “And how has that worked out?” she said, as mildly as she dared.

  “Awful,” he said. “It’s awful.”

  Cordelia did not know what to say or what to do. She wanted to go and throw her arms around her brother, to tell him that she loved him, but he stood rigid, with his arms crossed in front of him, and she didn’t dare. Finally she held out the knife in her hand. “Do you want to have a throw? You’re much better than I am.”

  When he looked suspicious, she said, “I could use some help, Alastair. You see how careless my form is.”

  Alastair came and took the knife from her. “Very careless,” he agreed. “I know swordplay comes naturally to you, but not everything will. You must slow down. Pay attention to your feet. Now, follow my gestures. That’s it, Layla. Stay with me.”

  And she would.

  21 BURN

  My heart is bound by beauty’s spell.

  My love is indestructible.

  Although I like a candle burn,

  And almost to a shadow turn,

  I envy not the heart that’s free: