“Awake, Miss Gray. Miss Gray!”
Tessa jerked upright. She had fallen asleep in the chair by the fireplace in her small prison; a coarse blue blanket was drawn over her, though she did not remember procuring it. The room burned with torchlight and the coals of the fire were low. It was impossible to tell if it was day or night.
Mortmain stood before her, and beside him was an automaton. It was one of the more humanoid that Tessa had seen. It was even clothed, as not many of them were, this one in a military tunic and trousers. The clothes made the head that rose above the stiff collar look even more uncanny, with its too-smooth features and bald metallic scalp. And its eyes—she knew they were glass and crystal, the irises red in the firelight, but the way they seemed to fix on her—
“You’re cold,” Mortmain said.
Tessa exhaled, and her breath came out in a white puff. “The warmth of your hospitality leaves something to be desired.”
He smiled, thin-lipped. “Very amusing.” He himself was wearing a heavy astrakhan coat over a gray suit, ever the businessman. “Miss Gray, I do not wake you lightly. I came because I wish you to see what your kind assistance with my father’s memories has allowed me to accomplish.” He gestured proudly at the automaton by his side.
“Another automaton?” Tessa said without interest.
“How rude of me.” Mortmain’s eyes flicked to the creature. “Introduce yourself.”
The creature’s mouth opened; Tessa caught a flash of brass. It spoke. “I am Armaros,” it said. “For a billion years I rode the winds of the great abysses between the worlds. I fought Jonathan Shadowhunter on the plains of Brocelind. For a thousand more years I lay trapped within the Pyxis. Now my master has freed me and I serve him.”
Tessa rose, the blanket sliding to her feet, unheeded. The automaton was watching her. Its eyes—its eyes were full of a dark intelligence, a consciousness that no automaton she had seen before had ever possessed.
“What is this?” she said in a whisper.
“An automaton body animated by a demon spirit. Downworlders already have their ways of capturing demon energies and using them. I used them myself to power the automatons you’ve seen before. But Armaros and his brothers are different. They are demons with the carapaces of automatons. They can think and reason. They are not easily outwitted. And they are very difficult to kill.”
Armaros reached across its body—Tessa could not help but note that it moved fluidly, smoothly, without the jerkiness of the automatons she had seen before. It moved like a person. It drew the sword that hung at its side and handed it to Mortmain. The blade was covered in the runes that Tessa had become so familiar with over the last months, the runes that decorated the blades of all Shadowhunter weapons. The runes that made them Shadowhunter weapons. The runes that were deadly to demons. Armaros should barely have been able to look upon the blade, much less hold it.
Her stomach clenched. The demon gave the sword to Mortmain, who handled it with the precision of a longtime naval officer. He spun the blade, swept it forward, and drove it into the demon’s chest.
There was a sound of tearing metal. Tessa was used to seeing automatons crumple when attacked, or spurt black fluid, or stagger. But the demon stood its ground, unblinking and unmoving, like a lizard in the sun. Mortmain twisted the hilt savagely, then jerked the weapon free.
Its blade crumbled to ash, like a log burned away in a fire.
“You see,” said Mortmain. “They are an army designed to destroy Shadowhunters.”
Armaros was the only automaton Tessa had ever seen smile; she did not even know their faces had been built to accomplish such a purpose. The demon said, “They have destroyed many of my kind. It will be a pleasure to kill them all.”
Tessa swallowed hard but tried not to let the Magister see it. His gaze was flicking back and forth from her to the demon automaton, and it was hard for her to say which he looked more delighted to lay eyes on. She wanted to scream, to throw herself at him and claw his face. But the invisible wall lay between them, shimmering slightly, and she knew she could not breach it.
Oh, you are to be more than his bride, Miss Gray, Mrs. Black had said. You are to be the ruin of the Nephilim. That is why you were created.
“The Shadowhunters will not be so easily destroyed,” she said. “I have seen them cut apart your automatons. Perhaps these cannot be felled by their runed weapons, but any blade can shear metal and cut wires.”
Mortmain shrugged. “Shadowhunters are not used to battling creatures against whom their runed weapons are useless. It will slow them. And there are countless of these automatons. It will be like trying to beat back the tide.” He cocked his head to the side. “You see, now, the genius of what I have invented? But I must thank you, Miss Gray, for that last piece of the puzzle. I thought perhaps even you might be . . . admiring . . . of what we have created together.”
Admiring? She looked in his eyes for mockery, but there was something of a sincere question there, curiosity mixed with the coldness. She thought of how long it must have been since he had had the praise of another human being, and took a deep breath.
“You are obviously a great inventor,” she said.
Mortmain smiled, pleased.
Tessa was aware of the gaze of the mechanical demon on her, its tension and readiness, but she was more aware of Mortmain. Her heart was beating hard inside her chest. She seemed, as she had in her dream, poised on the edge of a precipice. To speak to Mortmain like this was chancy, and she would either fall or fly. But she must take the chance. “I see why you have brought me here,” she said. “And it is not just because of your father’s secrets.”
There was anger in his eyes, but also a certain confusion. She was not behaving as he had expected her to behave. “What do you mean?”
“You are lonely,” she said. “You have surrounded yourself with creatures that are not real, that do not live. We see our own souls in the eyes of others. How long has it been since you have seen that you have a soul?”
Mortmain’s eyes narrowed. “I had a soul. It has been burned away by what I have dedicated my life to: the pursuit of justice and recompense.”
“Do not seek revenge and call it justice.”
The demon gave a low chuckle, though there was contempt in it, as if he were watching the antics of a kitten. “You would let her speak to you like that, Master?” he said. “I can cut out her tongue for you, silence her forever.”
“It would serve nothing to mutilate her. She has powers you know not of,” said Mortmain, his eyes still on Tessa. “There is an old saying in China—perhaps your beloved fiancé familiarized you with it—that states. ‘A man may not live under the same Heaven with the slayer of his father.’ I shall erase the Shadowhunters from under Heaven; they will not longer live upon the earth. Do not seek to appeal to my better nature, Tessa, for I have none.”
Tessa could not help herself—she thought of A Tale of Two Cities, of Lucie Manette’s appeals to Sydney Carton’s better nature. She had always thought of Will as Sydney, consumed by sin and despair against his own better knowledge, even against his own desire. But Will was a good man, a much better one than Carton had ever been. And Mortmain was barely a man at all. It was not his better nature she appealed to but his vanity: All men thought of themselves as good in the end, surely. No one believed themselves a villain. She took a breath. “Surely that is not so—surely you might again be worthy and good. You have done what you set out to do. You have brought life and intelligence to these—these Infernal Devices of yours. You have created that which might destroy the Shadowhunters. All your life you have pursued justice because you believed the Shadowhunters were corrupt and vicious. Now, if you stay your hand, you win the greatest victory. You show that you are better than they.”