She searched Mortmain’s face with her eyes. Surely there was some hesitation there—surely the thin lips were shaking slightly, surely there was the tension of doubt in his shoulders?
His mouth quirked into a smile. “You think, then, that I can be a better man? And if I were to do as you say, to stay my hand, you would have me believe that you would stay with me out of admiration, that you would not return to the Shadowhunters?”
“Why, yes, Mr. Mortmain. I swear it.” She swallowed against the bitterness in her throat. If she had to remain with Mortmain in order to save Will and Jem, to save Charlotte and Henry and Sophie, she would do it. “I believe you can find your better self; I believe we all can.”
His thin lips turned up at the corners. “It is afternoon already, Miss Gray,” he said. “I did not wish to wake you earlier. Come with me now, outside the mountain. Come and see this day’s work, for there is something that I wish to show you.”
A finger of ice touched her spine. She straightened. “And what is that?”
His smile spread across his face. “What I have been waiting for.”
To: Consul Josiah Wayland
From: Inquisitor Victor Whitelaw
Josiah: Forgive my informality, for I write in haste. I am certain that this will not be the only letter you will receive on this subject; in fact, it is likely not even the first. I myself have already received many. Each touches upon the same question that burns in my mind: Is Charlotte Branwell’s information correct? For if so, it seems to me that there is a more than likely chance that the Magister is indeed in Wales. I know of your doubts in the veracity of William Herondale, but we both knew his father. A hasty soul, and too greatly ruled by his passions, but a more honest man you could not find. I do not think the younger Herondale a liar.
Regardless, as a result of Charlotte’s message, the Clave is in chaos. I insist that we hold a dedicated Council meeting immediately. If we do not, the trust of the Shadowhunters in their Consul and their Inquisitor will be irrevocably eroded. I leave the announcement of the meeting in your hands, but this is not a request. Send out the call for the Council, or I shall resign my position and let it be known why.
Victor Whitelaw
Will was awoken by screams.
Years of training made themselves known instantly: He was on the floor in a crouch before he was even properly awake. Glancing around, he saw that the small room of the inn was empty save for himself, and the furniture—narrow bed and plain deal table, barely visible in the shadows—was undisturbed.
The screams came again, louder. They were emanating from outside the window. Will rose to his feet, crossed the room soundlessly, and twitched one of the curtains back to look out.
He barely remembered walking into town, leading Balios behind him, the horse clopping slowly in exhaustion. A small Welsh town, like other small Welsh towns, unremarkable in any particular way. He had found the local public house easily and turned Balios over to the ministrations of the stable-boy, ordering the house rubbed down and fed a hot bran mash to revive him. The fact that he spoke Welsh had seemed to relax the innkeeper, and he had been shown quickly to a private room, where he had collapsed almost immediately, fully clothed, onto the bed and fallen into dreamless sleep.
The moon was bright above, its position indicating that it was not yet late in the evening. A gray haze seemed to hang over the town. For a moment Will thought it was mist. Then, inhaling, he realized it was smoke. Patches of bright red leaped up among the houses in the town. He narrowed his eyes. Figures were darting back and forth within the shadows. More screams—a flash that could only be blades—
He was out the door with his boots half-laced in barely a moment, seraph blade in hand. He pounded down the steps and into the main room of the inn. It was dark and cold—there was no fire, and several of the windows had been smashed in, letting in the chill night air. Glass littered the floor like chunks of ice. The door hung open, and as Will slipped through it, he saw that the upper hinges were nearly torn out of their mooring, as if someone had tried to rip the door free. . . .
He slipped out the door and round the side of the inn, where the stables were. The smell of smoke hung thicker here, and he darted ahead—and nearly tripped over a humped figure on the ground. He dropped to his knees. It was the stable-boy, his throat cut, the ground under him a sodden mess of blood and dirt. His eyes were open, staring, his skin already cold. Will swallowed back bile and straightened up.
He moved toward the stables mechanically, his mind racing over the possibilities. A demon attack? Or had he stumbled into the middle of something non-supernatural, some feud between townsfolk, or God only knew what? No one seemed to be looking for him in particular, that much was clear.
He could hear Balios’s anxious whickering as he let himself into the stable. It appeared undisturbed, from the plaster ceiling to the cobbled floor crisscrossed with drainage ditches. No other horses were stabled there that night, which was lucky, for the moment he opened the stall door, Balios plunged forward, nearly knocking Will over. Will was only just able to dart out of the way as the horse hurtled past him and out the door.
“Balios!” Will swore and took off after his horse, pounding around the side of the inn and into the main road of the town.
He stopped dead. The street was in chaos. Bodies lay crumpled, discarded at the side of the road like so much rubbish. Homes stood with their doors ripped open, windows smashed in. People were running in and out of the shadows haphazardly, screaming and calling for one another. Several of the houses were burning. As Will stared in horror, he saw a family spill from the door of a burning house, the father in a nightshirt, coughing and choking, a woman behind him holding the hand of a small girl.
They had barely staggered into the street when shapes rose up out of the shadows. Moonlight sparked off metal.
Automatons.
They moved fluidly, without faltering or jerkiness. They wore clothes—a motley assortment of military uniforms, some recognizable to Will and some not. But their faces were bare metal, as were their hands, which gripped long-bladed swords. There were three of them; one, in a torn red army tunic, moved ahead, laughing—laughing?—as the father of the family tried to push his wife and daughter behind him, stumbling over the bloody cobblestones of the road.
It was all over in moments, too fast even for Will to move. Blades flashed, and three more bodies joined the heaps in the streets.
“That’s it,” said the automaton in the ragged tunic. “Burn their houses and smoke them out like rats. Kill them when they run—” It raised its head, and seemed to see Will. Even across the space that separated them, Will felt the force of that gaze.
Will raised his seraph blade. “Nakir.”
The shimmer of the blade blazed up, illuminating the street, a beam of white light amid the red of flames. Through blood and fire Will saw the automaton in the red tunic stride toward him. A longsword was gripped in its left hand. The hand was metal, jointed, articulate; it curved around the hilt of the blade like a human hand.
“Nephilim,” the creature said, stopping a mere foot from Will. “We did not expect your kind here.”
“Clearly,” Will said. He took a step forward and rammed the seraph blade into the automaton’s chest.
There was a faint sizzling sound, as of bacon frying in a pan. As the automaton gazed down in bemusement, Nakir crumbled away to ash, leaving Will’s hand clutched around a vanished hilt.