It proved, if an ill-timed arrival in other respects, at least an excellent distraction. There was a slight hubbub, and a deal of puzzlement on the part of Gabriel and Cecily, neither of whom really understood precisely who Jessamine was or the part she had played in the life of the Institute. They proceeded down the corridor in a disorderly fashion, Tessa hanging back slightly; she felt breathless, as if her corset had been laced too tightly. She thought of the night before, holding Jem in the music room as they kissed and whispered to each other for hours of the wedding they would have, the marriage that would follow—as if they had all the time in the world. As if getting married would grant him immortality, though she knew it would not.
As she started down the stairs toward the entryway, she stumbled, distracted. A hand on her arm steadied her. She looked up, and saw Will.
They stood there for a moment, frozen together like a statue. The others were already on their way down the stairs, their voices rising up like smoke. Will’s hand was gentle on Tessa’s arm, though his face was almost expressionless, seeming carved out of granite. “You do not agree with the rest of them, do you?” she said, with more of a sharp edge than she meant. “That I should not marry Jem today. You asked me if I loved him enough to marry him and make him happy, and I told you I did. I don’t know if I can make him happy entirely, but I can try.”
“If anyone can, you can,” he said, his eyes locking with hers.
“The others think I have illusions about his health.”
“Hope is not illusion.”
The words were encouraging, but there was something in his voice, something dead that frightened her.
“Will.” She caught at his wrist. “You would not abandon me now—not leave me the only one who still searches for a cure? I cannot do it without you.”
He took a deep breath, half-closing his shadowed blue eyes. “Of course not. I would not give up on him, on you. I will help. I will continue. It is only—”
He broke off, turning his face away. The light that came down through the window high above illuminated cheek and chin and the curve of his jaw.
“Only what?”
“You remember what else I said to you that day in the drawing room,” he said. “I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for either of yours. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that. It is unfair to tell you this, I know, when you can do nothing about it.” He took a shuddering breath. “How you must despise me.”
Tessa felt as if the ground had dropped out from beneath her. She remembered what she had told herself the night before: that surely Will’s feelings for her had faded. That over the term of years, his pain would be less than hers. She had believed it. But now— “I do not despise you, Will. You have been nothing but honorable—more honorable than ever I could have asked you to be—”
“No,” he said bitterly. “You expected nothing of me, I think.”
“I have expected everything of you, Will,” she whispered.
“More than you ever expected of yourself. But you have given even more than that.” Her voice faltered. “They say you cannot divide your heart, and yet—”
“Will! Tessa!” It was Charlotte’s voice, calling up to them from the entryway. “Do stop dawdling! And can one of you fetch Cyril? We may need help with the carriage if the Silent Brothers intend to stay at all.”
Tessa looked helplessly at Will, but the moment between them had snapped; his expression had closed; the desperation that had fueled him a moment before was gone. He was shut away as if a thousand locked doors stood between them. “You go on down. I will be there shortly.” He said it without inflection, turned, and sprinted up the steps.
Tessa put a hand against the wall as she made her way numbly down the stairs. What had she almost done? What had she nearly told Will?
And yet I love you.
But God in Heaven, what good would that do, what benefit would it be to anyone to say those words? Only the most awful burden on him, for he would know what she felt but not be able to act on it. And it would tie him to her, would not free him to seek out someone else to love—someone who was not engaged to his best friend.
Someone else to love. She stepped out onto the front stairs of the Institute, feeling the wind cut through her dress like a knife. The others were there, gathered on the steps a bit awkwardly, especially Gabriel and Cecily, who looked as if they were wondering what on earth they were doing there. Tessa barely noticed them. She felt sick at the heart and knew it was not the cold. It was the idea of Will in love with someone else.
But that was pure selfishness. If Will found someone else to love, she would suffer through it, biting her lips in silence, as he had suffered her engagement to Jem. She owed him that much, she thought, as a dark carriage driven by a man in the parchment robes of the Silent Brothers rattled through the open gates. She owed Will behavior that was as honorable as his own.
The carriage clattered up to the foot of the stairs and paused. Tessa felt Charlotte move uneasily behind her. “Another carriage?” she said, and Tessa followed her gaze to see that there was indeed a second carriage, all black with no crest, rolling silently in behind the first.
“An escort,” said Gabriel. “Perhaps the Silent Brothers are worried she will try to escape.”
“No,” said Charlotte, bewilderment shading her voice. “She wouldn’t—”
The Silent Brother driving the first carriage put away his reins and dismounted, moving to the carriage door. At that moment the second carriage pulled up behind him, and he turned. Tessa could not see his expression, as his face was hidden by his hood, but something in the cast of his body betokened surprise. She narrowed her eyes—there was something strange about the horses drawing the second carriage: their bodies gleamed not like the pelts of animals but like metal, and their movements were unnaturally swift.
The driver of the second carriage leaped down from his seat, landing with a jarring thud, and Tessa saw the gleam of metal as his hand went to the neck of his parchment robes—and pulled the robes away.
Beneath was a shimmering metal body with an ovoid head, eyeless, copper rivets holding together the joints of elbows, knees, and shoulders. Its right arm, if you could call it that, ended it a crude bronze crossbow. It raised that arm now and flexed it. A steel arrow, fletched with black metal, flew through the air and punched into the chest of the first Silent Brother, lifting him off his feet and sending him flying several feet across the courtyard, before he struck the earth, blood soaking the chest of the familiar robes.
9
GRAVEN IN METAL
The liquid ore he drained
Into fit moulds prepared; from which he formed
First his own tools; then, what might else be wrought
Fusil or graven in metal.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost