Clockwork Princess(14)
Author: Cassandra Clare

Jem looked up, but before he could say anything, a great reverberation sounded through the Institute. Tessa was familiar enough with her London home now to know it as the sound of the doorbell. They all looked down the table at the same time at Charlotte, as if their heads were mounted on springs.

Charlotte, looking startled, put down her fork. "Oh, dear," she said. "There is something I had meant to tell you all, but-"

"Ma’am?" It was Sophie, drifting into the room with a salver in one hand. Tessa could not help but notice that though Gideon was staring at her, she seemed to be deliberately avoiding his gaze, her cheeks pinking slightly. "Consul Wayland is downstairs requesting to speak with you."

Charlotte took the folded paper off the salver, gazed at it, sighed, and said, "Very well. Send him up."

Sophie vanished in a swirl of skirts.

"Charlotte?" Henry sounded puzzled. "What is going on?"

"Indeed." Will let his cutlery clatter onto his plate. "The Consul? Breaking up our breakfast time? Whatever next? The Inquisitor over for tea? Picnics with the Silent Brothers?"

"Duck pies in the park," said Jem under his breath, and he and Will smiled at each other, just a flash, before the door opened and the Consul swept it.

Consul Wayland was a big man, broad-chested and thick-armed, and the robes of the Consul’s status always seemed to hang a bit awkwardly from his wide shoulders. He was blond bearded like a Viking, and at the moment his expression was stormy. "Charlotte," he said without preamble. "I am here to talk to you about Benedict Lightwood."

There was a faint rustling; Gabriel’s fingers had clenched on the tablecloth. Gideon put a hand lightly over his brother’s wrist, stilling him, but the Consul was already looking at them. "Gabriel," he said. "I had rather thought you might go to the Blackthorns’ with your sister."

Gabriel’s fingers tightened on the handle of his teacup. "They are quite overset in their grief for Rupert," he said. "I did not think now was the time to intrude."

"Well, you are grieving your father, are you not?" said the Consul. "Grief shared is grief lessened, they say."

"Consul-," Gideon began, shooting a worried look at his brother.

"Though perhaps it might be rather awkward to lodge with your sister, considering that she has brought a complaint against you for murder."

Gabriel made a noise as if someone had spilled boiling water over him. Gideon threw his napkin down and stood up.

"Tatiana did what?" he demanded.

"You heard me," the Consul said.

"It was not murder," said Jem.

"As you say," said the Consul. "I was informed that it was."

"Were you also informed that Benedict had turned into a gigantic worm?" Will inquired, and Gabriel looked at him in surprise, as if he had not expected to be defended by Will.

"Will, please," Charlotte said. "Consul, I notified you yesterday that Benedict Lightwood had been discovered to be in the last stages of astriola-"

"You told me there was a battle, and he was killed," the Consul replied. "But what I am hearing reported is that he was ill with the pox, and that as a result he was hunted down and killed despite offering no resistance."

Will, his eyes suspiciously bright, opened his mouth. Jem reached out and clapped a hand over it. "I cannot understand," Jem said, talking over Will’s muffled protests, "how you could know that Benedict Lightwood is dead but not the manner of his death. If there was no body to find, it was because he had become more demon than human, and had vanished when slain, as demons do. But the missing servants-the death of Tatiana’s own husband-"

The Consul looked weary. "Tatiana Blackthorn says that a group of Shadowhunters from the Institute murdered her father and that Rupert was killed in the brawl."

"Did she mention that her father had eaten her husband?" Henry inquired, finally looking up from his newspaper. "Oh, yes. Ate him. Left his bloody boot in the garden for us to find. There were teeth marks. Love to know how that could have been an accident."

"I would think that counted as offering resistance," Will said. "Eating one’s son-in-law, that is. Though I suppose everyone has their family altercations."

"You are not seriously suggesting," Charlotte said, "that the worm-that Benedict should have been subdued and restrained, are you, Josiah? He was in the last stages of the pox! He had gone mad and become a worm!"

"He could have become a worm and then gone mad," Will said diplomatically. "We cannot be entirely sure."

"Tatiana is greatly upset," the Consul said. "She is considering demanding reparations-"

"Then I will pay them." It was Gabriel, having pushed his chair back from the table and risen to his feet. "I will give my ridiculous sister my salary for the rest of my life if she desires it, but I will not admit to wrongdoing-not for myself, not for any of us. Yes, I put an arrow through his eye. Its eye. And I would do it again. Whatever that thing was, it was not my father anymore."

There was a silence. Even the Consul did not seem to have a ready word to hand. Cecily had put her book down and was looking intently from Gabriel to the Consul and back again.

"I beg your pardon, Consul, but whatever Tatiana is telling you, she does not know the truth of the situation," said Gabriel. "Only I was there in the house with my father as he sickened. I was alone with him as he was going mad for the past fortnight. Finally I came here; I begged for my brother’s help," Gabriel said. "Charlotte kindly lent me the assistance of her Shadowhunters. By the time we had arrived back at the house, the thing that had been my father had torn my sister’s husband apart. I assure you, Consul, there was no manner in which my father could have been saved. We were in a fight for our lives."

"Then why would Tatiana-"

"Because she is humiliated," Tessa said. It was the first words she had spoken since the Consul had entered the room. "She said as much to me. She believed it would be a blight on the family name if the demon pox was known of; I assume she is trying to present some kind of alternate narrative in the hopes you will repeat it to the Council. But she is not telling the truth."

"Really, Consul," said Gideon. "What makes more sense? That we all ran mad and killed my father, and his sons are covering it up, or that Tatiana is lying? She never thinks things through; you know that."

Gabriel stood with his hand on the back of his brother’s chair. "If you believe I would have so lightly committed patricide, feel free to bring me to the Silent City to be questioned."

"That would probably be the most sensible course of action," the Consul said.

Cecily set her teacup down with a sharp bang that made everyone at the table jump. "That is not fair," she said. "He is telling the truth. We all are. You must know that."

The Consul gave her a long, measuring look, then turned back to Charlotte. "You expect my trust?" he said. "And yet you conceal your actions from me. Actions have consequences, Charlotte."

"Josiah, I informed you about what happened at Lightwood House the moment everyone returned and I was assured they were all right-"

"You should have told me before," the Consul said flatly. "The moment Gabriel arrived. This was no routine mission. As it is, you have left yourself in a position in which I must defend you, despite the fact that you disobeyed protocol and set out upon this mission without Council approval."

"There wasn’t time-"

"Enough," said the Consul, in a voice that implied it was anything but enough. "Gideon and Gabriel, you will come with me to the Silent City to be questioned." Charlotte began to protest, but the Consul held up a hand. "To have Gabriel and Gideon cleared by the Brothers is expedient; it will avoid any mess and allow me to have Tatiana’s request for reparations dismissed swiftly. The two of you." Consul Wayland turned to the Lightwood brothers. "Go downstairs to my carriage and wait for me. We will all three adjourn to the Silent City; when the Brothers are done with you, if they find nothing of interest, we will return you here."

"If they find nothing," Gideon said in a disgusted tone. He took his brother by the shoulders and guided him out of the room. As Gideon closed the door behind them, Tessa noticed something spark on his hand. He was wearing his Lightwood ring again.

"All right," said the Consul, rounding on Charlotte. "Why did you not tell me the very moment your Shadowhunters returned and told you Benedict was dead?"

Charlotte fixed her eyes on her tea. Her mouth was pressed into a firm line. "I wanted to protect the boys," she said. "I wanted them to have some moments of peace and quiet. Some respite, after seeing their father die before their eyes, before you started asking questions, Josiah!"

"That is hardly all," the Consul went on, ignoring her expression. "Benedict’s books and papers. Tatiana told us of them. We searched his house, but his journals are gone, his desk is empty. This is not your investigation, Charlotte; those papers belong to the Clave."

"What are you searching for in them?" Henry asked, moving his newspaper off his plate. He sounded deceptively uninterested in the answer, but there was a hard glint in his eyes that belied his apparent disinterest.

"Information about his connection to Mortmain. Information about any other Clave members that might have had a connection to Mortmain. Clues as to Mortmain’s whereabouts-"

"And his devices?" Henry said.

The Consul paused midsentence. "His devices?"

"The Infernal Devices. His army of automatons. It is an army created for the purpose of destroying Shadowhunters, and he means to bend it against us," Charlotte, seemingly recovered, said as she set her napkin down. "In fact, if Benedict’s increasingly incomprehensible notes are believed, that time will come sooner rather than later."

"So you did take his notes and journals. The Inquisitor was convinced of it." The Consul rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.

"Of course I took them. And of course I will give them to you. I always planned to do so." Eminently composed, Charlotte picked up the small silver bell by her plate and rang it; when Sophie appeared, she whispered to the girl for a moment, and Sophie, with a curtsy to the Consul, slipped out of the room.

"You should have left the papers where they were, Charlotte. It is procedure," said the Consul.

"There was no reason for me not to look at them-"

"You must trust my judgment, and the Law’s. Protecting the Lightwood boys is not a higher priority than discovering Mortmain’s whereabouts, Charlotte. You are not running the Clave. You are part of the Enclave, and you will report to me. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Consul," Charlotte said as Sophie reentered the room with a packet of papers, which she silently offered to the Consul. "The next time one of our esteemed members turns into a worm and eats another esteemed member, we will inform you immediately."

The Consul’s jaw set. "Your father was my friend," he said. "I trusted him, and because of that I have trusted you. Do not make me sorry I appointed you, or supported you against Benedict Lightwood when he challenged your position."

"You went along with Benedict!" Charlotte cried. "When he suggested I be given a fortnight only to complete an impossible task, you agreed to it! You spoke not a word in my defense! If I were not a woman, you would not have behaved in such a way."

"If you were not a woman," said the Consul, "I would not have had to."

And with that, he was gone, in a swirl of dark robes and dully sparking runes. No sooner had the door closed behind him than Will hissed: "How could you give him those papers? We need those-"

Charlotte, who had sagged back in her chair, her eyes half-closed, said, "Will, I have already been up all night copying down the relevant parts. Much of it was-"

"Gibberish?" Jem suggested.

"Pornographic?" said Will at the same time.

"Could be both," said Will. "Haven’t you ever heard of pornographic gibberish before?"

Jem grinned, and Charlotte put her face in her hands. "It was more the former than the latter, if you must know," she said. "I copied down all I could, with Sophie’s invaluable assistance." She looked up then. "Will-you need to remember. This is no longer our charge. Mortmain is the Clave’s problem, or at least that is how they see it. There was a time when we were singularly responsible for Mortmain, but-"

"We are responsible for protecting Tessa!" Will said with a sharpness that startled even Tessa. Will paled slightly when he realized everyone had looked at him with surprise, but he went on anyway: "Mortmain wants Tessa, still. We cannot imagine he has given up. He may come with automatons, he may come with witchcraft and fire and betrayal, but he will come."

"Of course we will protect her," Charlotte said. "We need no reminders, Will. She is one of our own. And speaking of our own …" She glanced down at her plate. "Jessamine returns to us tomorrow."

"What?" Will upset his teacup, soaking the tablecloth with the dregs. There was a buzz around the table, though Cecily only stared in puzzlement, and Tessa, after a sharp intake of breath, stayed silent. She was remembering the last time she had seen Jessamine, in the Silent City, pale and red-eyed, weeping and terrified…. "She tried to betray us, Charlotte. And you are simply allowing her back?"

"She has no other family, her wealth has been confiscated by the Clave, and she is besides in no fit state to live on her own. Two months of questioning in the Bone City has left her nearly mad. I do not think she will be a danger to any of us."

"Neither did we think she would be a danger before," said Jem, in a harder voice than Tessa would have expected of him, "and yet the course of action she took nearly placed Tessa in Mortmain’s hands, and the rest of us in disgrace."