“Tessa,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”
Tessa looked at Will—for permission or guidance, she wasn’t sure, but he was staring straight ahead. Clearly he would be no help. Without another glance at him she hurried across the room and sank down in the chair by the side of Jem’s bed. “Jem,” she said in a low voice, “you shouldn’t be sorry, or be apologizing to me. I should be the one apologizing. You didn’t do anything wrong. I was the target of those clockwork things, not you.” She patted the coverlet gently; wanting to touch his hand but not daring to. “If it wasn’t for me, you never would have been hurt.”
“Hurt.” Jem spoke the word on an exhale of breath, almost with disgust. “I wasn’t hurt.”
“James.” Will’s tone held a warning note.
“She should know, William. Otherwise she’ll think this was all her fault.”
“You were ill,” Will said, not looking at Tessa as he spoke. “It’s nobody’s fault.” He paused. “I just think you should be careful. You’re not well still. Talking will just tire you out.”
“There are more important things than being careful.” Jem struggled to sit up, the cords in his neck straining as he lifted himself, propping his back against the pillows. When he spoke again, he was slightly breathless. “If you don’t like it, Will, you don’t have to stay.”
Tessa heard the door open and close behind her with a soft click. She knew without looking that Will had gone. She couldn’t help it—a slight pang went through her, the way it always seemed to do when he left a room.
Jem sighed. “He’s so stubborn.”
“He was right,” Tessa said. “At least, he was right that you don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to. I know none of it was your fault.”
“Fault has nothing to do with it,” Jem said. “I just think you might as well have the truth. Concealing it rarely helps anything.” He looked toward the door for a moment, as if his words were half-meant for the absent Will. Then he sighed again, raking his hands through his hair. “You know,” he said, “that for most of my life I lived in Shanghai with my parents? That I was raised in the Institute there?”
“Yes,” Tessa said, wondering if he was still a little dazed. “You told me, on the bridge. And you told me that a demon had killed your parents.”
“Yanluo,” said Jem. There was hatred in his voice. “The demon had a grudge against my mother. She’d been responsible for the death of a number of its demon offspring. They’d had a nest in a small town called Lijiang, where they’d been feeding on local children. She burned the nest out and escaped before the demon found her. Yanluo bided its time for years—Greater Demons live forever—but it never forgot. When I was eleven, Yanluo found a weak spot in the ward that protected the Institute, and tunneled inside. The demon killed the guards and took my family prisoner, binding us all to chairs in the great room of the house. Then it went to work.
“Yanluo tortured me in front of my parents,” Jem went on, his voice empty. “Over and over it injected me with a burning demon poison that scorched my veins and tore at my mind. For two days I went in and out of hallucinations and dreams. I saw the world drowned in rivers of blood, and I heard the screams of all the dead and dying throughout history. I saw London burning, and great metal creatures striding here and there like huge spiders—” He caught his breath. He was very pale, his nightshirt stuck to his chest with sweat, but he waved away Tessa’s expression of concern. “Every few hours I would come back to reality long enough to hear my parents screaming for me. Then on the second day, I came back and heard only my mother. My father had been silenced. My mother’s voice was raw and cracked, but she was still saying my name. Not my name in English, but the name she had given me when I was born: Jian. I can still hear her sometimes, calling out for me.”
His hands were tight on the pillow he held, tight enough that the fabric had begun to tear.
“Jem,” Tessa said softly. “You can stop. You needn’t tell me all of it now.”
“You remember when I said that Mortmain had probably made his money smuggling opium?” he asked. “The British bring opium into China by the ton. They have made a nation of addicts out of us. In Chinese we call it ‘foreign mud’ or ‘black smoke.’ In some ways Shanghai, my city, is built on opium. It wouldn’t exist as it does without it. The city is full of dens where hollow-eyed men starve to death because all they want is the drug, more of the drug. They’ll give anything for it. I used to despise men like that. I couldn’t understand how they were so weak.”
He took a deep breath.
“By the time the Shanghai Enclave became worried at the silence from the Institute and broke in to save us, both my parents were already dead. I don’t remember any of it. I was screaming and delirious. They took me to the Silent Brothers, who healed my body as well as they could. There was one thing they couldn’t fix, though. I had become addicted to the substance the demon had poisoned me with. My body was dependent on it the way an opium addict’s body is dependent on the drug. They tried to wean me off it, but going without it caused terrible pain. Even when they were able to block the pain with warlock spells, the lack of the drug pushed my body to the brink of death. After weeks of experimentation they decided that there was nothing to be done: I could not live without the drug. The drug itself meant a slow death, but to take me off it would mean a very quick one.”
“Weeks of experimentation?” Tessa echoed. “When you were only eleven years old? That seems cruel.”
“Goodness—real goodness—has its own sort of cruelty to it,” said Jem, looking past her. “There, beside you on the bedside table, is a box. Can you give it to me?”
Tessa lifted the box. It was made of silver, its lid inlaid with an enamel scene that depicted a slim woman in white robes, barefoot, pouring water out of a vase into a stream. “Who is she?” she asked, handing the box to Jem.
“Kwan Yin. The goddess of mercy and compassion. They say she hears every prayer and every cry of suffering and does what she can to answer it. I thought perhaps if I kept the cause of my suffering in a box with her image on it, it might make that suffering a little less.” He flicked open the clasp on the box, and the lid slid back. Inside was a thick layer of what Tessa thought at first was ash, but the color was too bright. It was a layer of thick silvery powder almost the same bright silver color as Jem’s eyes.
“This is the drug,” he said. “It comes from a warlock dealer we know in Limehouse. I take some of it every day. It’s why I look so—so ghostly; it’s what drains the color from my eyes and hair, even my skin. I wonder sometimes if my parents would even recognize me… .” His voice trailed off. “If I have to fight, I take more. Taking less weakens me. I had taken none today before we went out to the bridge. That’s why I collapsed. Not because of the clockwork creatures. Because of the drug. Without any in my system, the fighting, the running, was too much for me. My body started feeding on itself, and I collapsed.” He shut the box with a snap, and handed it back to Tessa. “Here. Put it back where it was.”