They went up the winding staircase, circling under the light until it was all around them and they were standing at the entrance to a long and narrow corridor. Torches blazed along the passage. Clary closed her hand over the witchlight, and it blinked out like a doused star.
There were doors set at intervals along the corridor, all of them closed tight. She wondered if they had been wards when this had once been a hospital, or perhaps private rooms. As they moved down the corridor, Clary saw the marks of boot-prints, muddy from the grass outside, crisscrossing the passage. Someone had walked here recently.
The first door they tried swung open easily, but the room beyond was empty: only polished wood floor and stone walls, lit to eeriness by the moonlight spilling through the window. The dim roar of the battle outside filled the room, as rhythmic as the sound of the ocean. The second room was full of weapons: swords, maces, and axes. Moonlight ran like silver water over row upon row of cold unsheathed steel. Luke whistled under his breath. "Quite a collection."
"You think Valentine uses all these?"
"Unlikely. I suspect they're for his army." Luke turned away.
The third room was a bedroom. The hangings around the four-poster bed were blue, the Persian carpet patterned in blue, black, and gray, and the furniture was painted white, like the furnishings in a child's room. A thin and ghostly layer of dust covered it all, glinting faintly in the moonlight.
In the bed lay Jocelyn, asleep.
She was on her back, one hand thrown carelessly across her chest, her hair spread across the pillow. She wore a sort of white nightdress Clary had never seen, and she was breathing regularly and quietly. In the piercing moonlight Clary could see the flutter of her mother's eyelids as she dreamed.
With a little scream Clary hurled herself forward—but Luke's outflung arm caught her across the chest like a bar of iron, holding her back. "Wait," he said, his own voice tense with effort. "We have to be careful."
Clary glared at him, but he was looking past her, his expression angry and pained. She followed the line of his gaze and saw what she had not wanted to see before. Silver manacles closed around Jocelyn's wrists and feet, the ends of their chains sunk deep into the stone floor on either side of the bed. The table beside the bed was covered in a weird array of tubes and bottles, glass jars and long, wickedly tipped instruments glinting with surgical steel. A rubberized tube ran from one of the glass jars to a vein in Jocelyn's left arm.
Clary jerked herself away from Luke's restraining hand and lunged toward the bed, wrapping her arms around her mother's unresponsive body. But it was like trying to hug a badly jointed doll. Jocelyn remained motionless and stiff, her slow breathing unaltered.
A week ago Clary would have cried as she had that first terrible night she had discovered her mother missing, cried and called out. But no tears came now, as she let her mother go and straightened up. There was no terror in her now, and no self-pity: only a bitter rage and a need to find the man who'd done this, the one responsible for all of it.
"Valentine," she said.
"Of course." Luke was beside her, touching her mother's face lightly, raising her eyelids. The eyes beneath were as blank as marbles. "She's not drugged," he said. "Some kind of spell, I expect."
Clary let her breath out in a tight half sob. "How do we get her out of here?"
"I can't touch the manacles," said Luke. "Silver. Do you have—"
"The weapons room," Clary said, standing up. "I saw an axe there. Several. We could cut the chains—"
"Those chains are unbreakable." The voice that spoke from the door was low, gritty, and familiar. Clary spun and saw Blackwell. He was grinning now, wearing the same clotted-blood-colored robes as before, the hood pushed back, muddy boots visible under the hem. "Graymark," he said. "What a nice surprise."
Luke stood up. "If you're surprised, you're an idiot," he said. "I didn't exactly arrive quietly."
Blackwell's cheeks flushed a darker purple, but he didn't move toward Luke. "Clan leader again, are you?" he said, and gave an unpleasant laugh. "Can't break yourself of the habit of getting Downworlders to do your dirty work? Valentine's troops are busy strewing pieces of them all over the lawn, and you're up here safe with your girlfriends." He sneered in Clary's direction. "That one looks a little young for you, Lucian."
Clary flushed angrily, her hands balling into fists, but Luke's voice, when he replied, was polite. "I wouldn't exactly call those troops, Blackwell," he said. "They're Forsaken. Tormented once-human beings. If I recall properly, the Clave looks pretty darkly on all that—torturing people, performing black magic. I can't imagine they'll be too pleased."
"Damn the Clave," growled Blackwell. "We don't need them and their half-breed-tolerating ways. Besides, the Forsaken won't be Forsaken much longer. Once Valentine uses the Cup on them, they'll be Shadowhunters as good as the rest of us— better than what the Clave is passing off as warriors these days. Downworlder-loving milksops." He bared his blunt teeth.
"If that is his plan for the Cup," said Luke, "why hasn't he done it already? What's he waiting for?"
Blackwell's eyebrows went up. "Didn't you know? He's got his—"
A silky laugh interrupted him. Pangborn had appeared at his elbow, all in black with a leather strap across his shoulder. "Enough, Blackwell," he said. "You talk too much, as usual." He flashed his pointed teeth at Luke. "Interesting move, Graymark. I didn't think you'd have the stomach for leading your newest clan on a suicide mission."
A muscle twitched in Luke's cheek. "Jocelyn," he said. "What has he done to her?"
Pangborn chuckled musically. "I thought you didn't care."
"I don't see what he wants with her now," Luke went on, ignoring the jibe. "He's got the Cup. She can't be of further use. Valentine was never one for pointless murder. Murder with a point. Now, that might be a different story."
Pangborn shrugged indifferently. "It makes no difference to us what he does with her," he said. "She was his wife. Perhaps he hates her. That's a point."
"Let her go," said Luke, "and we'll leave with her, call the clan off. I'll owe you one."
"No!" Clary's furious outburst made Pangborn and Blackwell swing their stares to her. Both looked faintly incredulous, as if she were a talking cockroach. She turned to Luke. "There's still Jace. He's here somewhere."
Blackwell was chuckling. "Jace? Never heard of a Jace," he said. "Now, I could ask Pangborn to let her out. But I'd rather not. She was always a bitch to me, Jocelyn was. Thought she was better than the rest of us, with her looks and her lineage. Just a pedigreed bitch, that's all. She only married him so she could turn it around on us all—"
"Disappointed you didn't get to marry him yourself, Blackwell?" was all Luke said in reply, though Clary could hear the cold rage in his voice.
Blackwell, his face purpling, took an angry step forward into the room.
And Luke, moving so swiftly that Clary almost did not see him do it, seized a scalpel from the bedside table and flung it. It flipped twice in the air and sank point-first into Blackwell's throat, cutting off his growling retort. He gagged, eyes rolling up to the whites, and fell to his knees, hands at his throat. Scarlet liquid pulsed between his spread fingers. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only a thin line of blood dribbled out. His hands slipped from his throat, and he crashed to the ground like a tree falling.
"Oh, dear," said Pangborn, gazing at the fallen body of his comrade with fastidious distaste. "How unpleasant."
Blood from Blackwell's cut throat was spreading across the floor in a viscous red pool. Luke, taking Clary's shoulder, whispered something in her ear. It meant nothing. Clary was aware only of a numb buzzing in her head. She remembered another poem from English class, something about how after the first death you saw, no other deaths mattered. That poet hadn't known what he was talking about.
Luke let her go. "The keys, Pangborn," he said.
Pangborn nudged Blackwell with a foot, and glanced up. He looked irritable. "Or w
hat? You'll throw a syringe at me? There was only one blade on that table. No," he added, reaching behind him and drawing from his shoulder a long and wicked-looking sword, "I'm afraid that if you want the keys, you'll have to come and get them. Not because I care about Jocelyn Morgenstern one way or the other, you understand, but only because I, for one, have been looking forward to killing you… for years."
He drew the last word out, savoring it with a delicious exultation as he moved forward into the room. His blade flashed, a spear of lightning in the moonlight. Clary saw Luke thrust a hand out toward her—a strangely elongated hand, tipped with nails like tiny daggers—and she realized two things: that he was about to Change, and that what he had whispered in her ear was a single word.
Run.
She ran. She zigzagged around Pangborn, who barely glanced at her, skirted Blackwell's body, and was out the door and in the corridor, heart pounding, before Luke's transformation was complete. She didn't glance back, but she heard a howl, long and piercing, the sound of metal on metal, and a shattering fall. Breaking glass, she thought. Perhaps they had knocked over the bedside table.
She dashed down the hall to the weapons room. Inside, she reached for a weathered steel-hafted axe. It stuck firmly to the wall, no matter how hard she yanked at it. She tried a sword, and then a featherstaff—even a small dagger—but not a single blade would come free in her hand. At last, nails torn and fingers bloodied with effort, she had to give up. There was magic in this room, and not runic magic either: something wild and strange, something dark.
She backed out of the room. There was nothing on this floor that could help her. She limped down the corridor—she was beginning to feel the ache of true exhaustion in her legs and arms—and found herself at the junction of the stairs. Up or down? Down, she recalled, had been lightless, empty. Of course, there was the witchlight in her pocket, but something in her quailed at the thought of entering those black spaces alone. Upstairs she saw the blaze of more lights, caught a flicker of something that might have been movement.
She went up. Her legs hurt, her feet hurt, everything hurt. Her cuts had been bandaged, but that didn't stop them from stinging. Her face ached where Hugo had slashed her cheek, and her mouth tasted metallic and bitter.
She reached the last landing. It was curved gently like the bow of a ship, as silent here as it had been downstairs; no sound of the fighting outside reached her ears. Another long corridor stretched out in front of her, with the same multiple doors, but here some were open, spilling even more light out into the hallway. She went forward, and some instinct drew her to the last door on her left. Cautiously she glanced inside.
At first the room reminded her of one of the period reconstruction displays in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was as if she had stepped into the past—the paneled walls gleamed as if recently polished, as did the endlessly long dining table set with delicate china. An ornate gold-framed mirror adorned the far wall, between two oil portraits in heavy frames. Everything glittered under the torchlight: the plates on the table, heaped with food, the fluted glasses shaped like calla lilies, the linens so white they were blinding. At the end of the room were two wide windows, draped with swags of heavy velvet. Jace stood at one of the windows, so still that for a moment she imagined he was a statue, until she realized she could see the light shining on his hair. His left hand held the curtain aside, and in the dark window she saw the reflection of the dozens of candles inside the room, trapped in the glass like fireflies.
"Jace," she said. She heard her own voice as if from a distance: astonishment, gratitude, longing so sharp it was painful. He turned, dropping the curtain, and she saw the wondering look on his face.
"Jace!" she said again, and ran toward him. He caught her as she flung herself at him. His arms wrapped tightly around her.
"Clary." His voice was almost unrecognizable. "Clary, what are you doing here?"
Her voice was muffled against his shirt. "I came for you."
"You shouldn't have." His grip on her loosened suddenly; he stepped back, holding her a little away from him. "My God," he said, touching her face. "You idiot, what a thing to do." His voice was angry, but the gaze that swept her face, the fingers that gently brushed her hair back, were tender. She had never seen him look like this; there was a sort of fragility about him, as if he might be not just touched but hurt, even. "Why don't you ever think?" he whispered.
"I was thinking," she said. "I was thinking about you."
He closed his eyes for a moment. "If anything had happened to you…" His hands traced the line of her arms gently, down to her wrists, as if to reassure himself that she was really there. "How did you find me?"
"Luke," she replied. "I came with Luke. To rescue you."
Still holding her, he glanced from her face to the window, a slight frown curling the edge of his mouth. "So those are—you came with the wolf clan?" he asked, an odd tone in his voice.
"Luke's," she said. "He's a werewolf, and—"
"I know." Jace cut her off. "I should have guessed—the manacles." He glanced toward the door. "Where is he?"
"Downstairs," said Clary slowly. "He killed Blackwell. I came up to look for you—"
"He's going to have to call them off," said Jace.
She looked at him uncomprehendingly. "What?"
"Luke," said Jace. "He's going to have to call off his pack. There's been a misunderstanding."
"What, you kidnapped yourself?" She'd meant to sound teasing, but her voice was too thin. "Come on, Jace."
She yanked at his wrist, but he resisted. He was looking at her intently, and she realized with a jolt what she had not noticed in her first rush of relief.
The last time she had seen him, he'd been cut and bruised, clothes stained with dirt and blood, his hair filthy with ichor and dust. Now he was dressed in a loose white shirt and dark pants, his scrubbed hair falling all around his face, pale gold and flyaway. He swept a few strands out of his eyes with a slim hand, and she saw that his heavy silver ring was back on his finger.
"Are those your clothes?" she asked, baffled. "And—you're all bandaged up …" Her voice trailed off. "Valentine seems to be taking awfully good care of you."
He smiled at her with a weary affection. "If I told you the truth, you'd say I was crazy," he said.
She felt her heart flutter hard against the inside of her chest, like a hummingbird's rapid wing beat. "No, I wouldn't."
"My father gave me these clothes," he said.
The flutter became a rapid pounding. "Jace," she said carefully, "your father is dead."
"No." He shook his head. She had the sense that he was holding back some enormous feeling, like horror or delight— or both. "I thought he was, but he isn't. It's all been a mistake."
She remembered what Hodge had said about Valentine and his ability to tell charming and convincing lies. "Is this something Valentine told you? Because he's a liar, Jace. Remember what Hodge said. If he's telling you your father is alive, it's a lie to get you to do what he wants."
"I've seen my father," said Jace. "I've talked to him. He gave me this." He tugged on the new, clean shirt, as if it were ineluctable proof. "My father isn't dead. Valentine didn't kill him. Hodge lied to me. All these years I thought he was dead, but he wasn't."
Clary glanced around wildly, at the room with its shining china and guttering torches and empty, glaring mirrors. "Well, if your father's really in this place, then where is he? Did Valentine kidnap him, too?"
Jace's eyes were shining. The neck of his shirt was open and she could see the thin white scars that covered his collarbone, like cracks in the smooth golden skin. "My father—"
The door of the room, which Clary had shut behind her, opened with a creak, and a man walked into the room.
It was Valentine. His silvery close-cropped hair gleamed like a polished steel helmet and his mouth was hard. He wore a waist sheath on his thick belt and the hilt of a long sword protruded from the top of it. "So," he said, resting a ha
nd on the hilt as he spoke, "have you gathered your things? Our Forsaken can hold off the wolf-men for only so—"
Seeing Clary, he broke off midsentence. He was not the sort of man who was ever really caught off guard, but she saw the flicker of astonishment in his eyes. "What is this?" he asked, turning his glance to Jace.
But Clary was already fumbling at her waist for the dagger. She seized it by the hilt, jerking it out of its scabbard, and drew her hand back. Rage pounded behind her eyes like a drumbeat. She could kill this man. She would kill him.
Jace caught at her wrist. "No."
She could not contain her disbelief. "But, Jace—"
"Clary," he said firmly. "This is my father."
23
Valentine
"I see I've interrupted something," said Valentine, his voice as dry as a desert afternoon. "Son, would you care to tell me who this is? One of the Lightwood children, perhaps?"
"No," said Jace. He sounded tired and unhappy, but the hand on her wrist didn't loosen. "This is Clary. Clarissa Fray. She's a friend of mine. She—"
Valentine's black eyes raked her slowly, from the top of her disheveled head to the toes of her scuffed sneakers. They fastened on the dagger still gripped in her hand.
An indefinable look passed over his face—part amusement, part irritation. "Where did you come by that blade, young lady?"
Clary answered coldly. "Jace gave it to me."
"Of course he did," said Valentine. His tone was mild. "May I see it?"
"No!" Clary took a step back, as if she thought he might lunge at her, and felt the blade plucked neatly out of her fingers. Jace, holding the dagger, looked at her with an apologetic expression. "Jace," she hissed, putting every ounce of the betrayal she felt into the single syllable of his name.
All he said was, "You still don't understand, Clary." With a sort of deferential care that made her feel sick to her stomach, he went to Valentine and handed him the dagger. "Here you go, Father."
Valentine took the dagger in his big, long-boned hand and examined it. "This is a kindjal, a Circassian dagger. This particular one used to be one of a matched pair. Here, see the star of the Morgensterns, carved into the blade." He turned it over, showing it to Jace. "I'm surprised the Lightwoods never noticed it."
City of Bones mi-1 Page 36
