The Last Hours: Chain of Iron, page 42
“Dream-magic,” said Christopher, pleased. “I told you those oneiromancy books would be helpful.”
“You saw Edom once in a dream,” said Magnus. “You can see it again.”
“But what is the importance of seeing Edom?” said Cordelia. “What will it tell us?”
“Whether Belial is indeed there,” said Magnus. “Even what his plans are. Is he building an army? Hiding and licking his wounds? What demons follow him? What are his vulnerabilities? Think of it as spying on the camp of the enemy.”
James shook his head. “I have never done anything like that before, in practice with Jem or by accident,” he said. “I am not sure I would quite know how.”
“Fortunately, I am an expert at dream-magic,” said Magnus. “I will accompany you—I would do it myself, but I do not have your power. I can pass through with you, but I cannot open the door.”
Cordelia felt a prick of unease. Magnus spoke matter-of-factly, but he had not been with them in Belphegor’s realm, had not made the terrifying journey there and back. “If James is going to do this, I would like to remain in the room with him, with Cortana drawn,” she said. “In case we catch Belial’s attention somehow, or the attention of some other unpleasant individual.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Magnus. “One cannot be too careful, and Belial fears Cortana as he fears little else.” He swirled his port, watching it coat the sides of the glass. “The great powers, the archangels and the Princes of Hell, are playing their own game of chess. They have their own alliances and enmities. Azazel and Asmodeus have worked together, as have Belial and Leviathan, while Belphegor hates his brethren. But all that could change should a new power emerge.” He shrugged. “Mortals cannot see the greater movements of the game, the strategy or goals. But that does not mean one need be a pawn on the board.”
“Shah mat,” said Cordelia.
Magnus dropped a wink in her direction. “That is correct,” he said, rising to his feet. “Alas, I must leave you, or at least, encourage you to leave me. I must be here when Hypatia returns, and you lot must be absent. She won’t like it that I let you into the caravan.” He smiled. “It’s always better to respect a lady’s personal space. James, Cordelia, I’ll meet you at Curzon Street at midnight. Now off you all go—no more shopping, dallying, or skulking about. The Shadow Market’s a dangerous place, especially after moonrise.”
20
EQUAL TEMPER
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
By the time they reached the carriages waiting for them outside the Market, Matthew had produced his refilled flask from inside his coat and was drinking steadily. He stumbled getting up into the carriage and refused James’s offer of help, batting his hand away before collapsing onto the velvet seat and breaking into a rousing chorus of “I Could Love You in a Steam Heat Flat.”
Cordelia and Lucie exchanged a worried look before clambering into their own carriage. Balios started off through the thinly powdered snow, and they rattled away from the Market. Outside the windows, London had been transformed into a winter fantasia, fat flakes of snow settling prettily on bare tree branches and dancing in the light cast by the gas lamps. Candles flickered in the windows of St. Saviour’s Church, and the distant hum of trains was muffled and almost pleasant.
“I hate this,” Lucie burst out, wiggling her fingers inside their damp gloves. “I hate the idea of James going into the shadow realm. I know—if Magnus says it’s all right, I’m sure it will be, but I hate it.”
“I hate it too,” Cordelia said. “But Luce, I’ll be there with him—as much as I can be—”
“I know. But it seems dreadful, and I hate that—that Matthew is—”
“Miserable?” Cordelia said, trying hard not to think about the broken bottle in the snow.
Lucie glanced at her, biting her lip. “I know none of us talk about it. We can’t. I don’t even know how much Christopher and Thomas are aware of it. But he’s been like this for ages now. He must be awfully unhappy. But I don’t know why. We all love him, and James loves him so terribly much. When we were younger—James had this shirt, just an ordinary shirt, you know, and Mam threw it away because he’d outgrown it and he was so furious and went to fetch it from the rubbish. It was the shirt he was wearing when Matthew asked him to be parabatai. He wouldn’t get rid of it.”
Cordelia hesitated. “Sometimes,” she said, “it is not enough for others to love you. I do not think Matthew loves himself very well.”
Lucie’s eyes widened. “What is there about him he could possibly not love?” she said, with such sincerity it made Cordelia’s heart ache. She would try to convince Matthew to tell his friends his secret, she thought. They loved him so. They would never judge him as he feared.
The two carriages clattered noisily under a railway viaduct and down a narrow backstreet toward a courtyard surrounded by Georgian row houses. A peeling sign declared it to be Nelson Square. They were cutting along one corner, wheels crunching on gravel and ice, when Balios whinnied loudly, rearing up.
The girls’ carriage stopped so abruptly that Cordelia and Lucie nearly toppled out of their seats. The door was ripped open, and a taloned hand reached inside, snatching a screaming Lucie out into the night.
Cordelia whipped Cortana from its sheath and launched herself out into the darkness, her boots crunching on snow, her skirts swirling. Outside, the blank faces of the row houses surrounded a patchy and dilapidated garden, edged with a few leafless plane trees. A dozen small demons were scampering around it, frightening Balios, who stamped and snorted. Lucie, half-covered in snow where she had fallen, had already yanked herself free of them. Her hat was gone, and she stood bareheaded and furious, brandishing her axe.
Cordelia looked around, Cortana in her hand. The sword sat perfectly, any feeling of wrongness banished. It hummed with the rightness of being wielded, of being one with her. She saw that the boys had already spilled from their carriage some distance away; they were bright shadows in the darkness, Christopher with a glowing seraph blade, Matthew with gleaming chalikars in his hand. There were dozens of small, gray-skinned, trollish demons charging about Nelson Square like mad things, hopping on top of the carriages, hurling snowballs at each other.
“Hauras demons!” called James, who wore an expression that mingled annoyance and anger. Hauras demons were pests. Sometimes called scamp demons, they were fast and ugly—scaled and horned, with vicious talons—but only about the size of small wolves.
James let a blade go. Cordelia had seen him throw before but had nearly forgotten how good he was at it. The knife flew like silver death from his hand, severing a Hauras demon’s head from its body. Ichor splattered, and the two halves of the demon puffed into nothingness; the other scamp demons shrieked and laughed.
“Ooh! Pests!” Lucie cried in outrage as two of the creatures caught at her skirts, tearing at the velvet rosettes. With no room to swing her weapon, she began to club at them with the handle of her axe. Cordelia sliced out with Cortana, a bright golden line of fire against the night. She saw one demon puff into ash; the other, squealing, released Lucie’s skirts and darted into the center of the square, where it joined the rest of the scamps in trying to trip and unbalance the Shadowhunters—lunging and jabbing them with sharp little talons, laughing and cackling all the while.
One leaped at Matthew, who jammed a chalikar into its throat with both hands, not even bothering to throw it. The demon crumpled, gurgling, and disappeared. Another came from behind; Matthew turned—stumbled, and slipped. He went down, slamming hard into the icy ground.
Cordelia started toward him, but James was already there, hauling his parabatai to his feet. She caught a glimpse of Matthew’s white face before he drew a seraph blade from his belt: it blazed up, its brightness searing a line across Cordelia’s vision. She could see Christopher laying about with his blade, James with a long knife. The night was filled with shrieks and hissing, their feet churning the snowy ground into a stinking mess of ice and ichor.
It all seemed almost silly—the Hauras were ridiculous-looking creatures—until Lucie screamed. Cordelia whipped around and ran toward her, only to see the ground between them, all ice and dirt, erupt. Something long, slithering, and scaled burst from it, scattering clods of earth.
A Naga demon. Cordelia had seen illustrations of them in India. This one had a long snake’s body and a flat, arrow-shaped head, split by a wide mouth lined with yellow, spiky teeth. Its eyes were black saucers.
Cordelia heard James give a hoarse shout: she looked over to see the boys trapped behind a wall of Hauras demons. The Naga hissed, curled, and lunged toward Lucie, who leaped aside just in time, her hand axe going flying; she fumbled for a seraph blade—
A bolt of energy thrummed up Cordelia’s arm; she leaped forward as the whole world seemed to turn to molten gold. Everything had gone slow and still—only she was striking like lightning, like a rain of gold. Cortana described a fiery arc against the night; the Naga writhed as the blade stabbed into its side. Ichor flew but Cordelia felt no burn, no sting: she no longer even felt the cold of the air. She felt only a savage triumph as the Naga howled, dropping to the ground to slither behind her.
She spun as it rose above her, its flat head outspread like a cobra’s. It swayed back and forth, then plunged its head toward her, faster than sparks rising from a fire. But Cordelia was quicker still: she whirled as it opened its saw-toothed mouth, and plunged her blade upward, stabbing through the roof of its mouth. It reared back, spraying ichor: it turned to slide away through the snow, but Cordelia gave chase. She shot after the slithering demon, the ground blurring under her feet. She drew alongside it, lifted the ichor-soaked sword, and brought it down in a last clean sweep that cut through scale and bone, severing the Naga’s body in half.
A gush of steam rose from the body. The head and tail twitched before dissolving in a wet, stinking mess that soaked into the ground. Cordelia lowered the sword, gasping; she had crossed Nelson Square in what felt like only a few seconds, and she was quite a distance from the others. She could see them—shadows, pushing against the mass of Hauras demons. James broke away from the others, angling toward her just as a shrill scream split the air.
Cordelia stared. It was not a human noise, nor was a human making it. One of the larger Hauras demons stood a few feet away, goggling at her with its gray-white eyes.
“Paladin!” the Hauras demon wheezed. “Paladin! We dare not touch!”
Cordelia stared. How could the demon know she was a paladin of Wayland the Smith? Had he marked her in some invisible way?
A cry rose from the other Hauras demons. They began to scatter. Cordelia could hear her friends’ shouts of surprise; James vaulted a low hedge, heading straight for her.
“Paladin.” The Hauras demon held out its gnarled hands toward Cordelia. Its voice had taken on a whining quality. “Forgive. Tell your master. We did not know.”
With a quivering bow, the demon turned and ran, joining its fellows in slinking retreat. A few yards away, Matthew, Lucie, and Christopher were looking around in puzzlement as their attackers vanished. Cordelia barely had time to sheathe her blade before James was beside her. She started to open her mouth, to explain, but he was staring at her—at the terrible ichor burns up and down the front of her dress, on her sleeve. In a strangled voice, he said, “Cordelia—”
Her breath went out of her in a gasp as he caught her in a hard embrace. Despite the cold night, his shirt was damp with sweat. His arms around her were strong and solid; she could feel the swift hammering of his heart. He pressed his cheek against hers, chanting her name, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy.
“I’m all right,” she said quickly. “It got on my dress, is all, but I’m perfectly all right, James—”
He let her go, looking almost abashed. “I saw that Naga demon rear back to attack you,” he said, his voice low. “I thought—”
“What was that about?” said Christopher, who had just arrived with Lucie. “I saw that Hauras demon shout at Cordelia, and then they all raced off like the devil was after them.”
“I—I’ve no idea,” Cordelia said. “I suppose it was Cortana. The Hauras demon looked terrified of it.”
“Perhaps word has spread that Cortana dealt a wound to Belial,” Lucie said, her eyes sparkling like they did when she was working on The Beautiful Cordelia. “Your sword’s reputation precedes you!”
Only James said nothing as they made their way back across the square, seeming lost in thought. Matthew had returned to the carriages to soothe the horses’ nerves. As though he could feel Cordelia’s gaze on him, he turned and looked at her, his green eyes dark. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d seen more back at the barrow than he had let on, but no: surely he could not have seen Wayland, could not have heard the smith speak the word “paladin” as Cordelia knelt before him.
But it was all Cordelia could think about. Around the edges of her astonishment, a wild joy was beginning to fizz upward. You have the soul of a great warrior, Wayland the Smith had said. She was a paladin now, the champion of a legendary hero, and even demons were taking notice. Suddenly she hoped that these scamps were the gossipy sort. She hoped that word would travel through the ranks of demons all the way up to Belial himself, and that he would understand that Cordelia and her sword would stand between the Prince of Hell and all her friends, defending them to the death.
It had been decided that Christopher would ride home with Daisy and James, as the Consul’s house was only a few blocks from Curzon Street and Kit wished to use the lab there to study the pithos. Lucie would go with Matthew, which suited her excellently. James tended to ask questions. Matthew, however, did not.
Lucie settled herself in Matthew’s carriage as they rattled out of Nelson Square, Matthew complaining all the while that traffic in London was bad enough without demons leaping into perfectly decent people’s vehicles. Lucie knew he was merely venting his feelings and didn’t expect an answer, so she didn’t provide one, just looked at him affectionately. His blond hair was disheveled from the fight, his jacket torn. He was looking the part of a romantic hero, if a slightly dissipated one.
The carriage lurched as they turned a corner, and Lucie realized that while she’d been lost in thought, Matthew had dropped his face into his hands. That was troubling, and not within the usual range of his moods.
“Matthew, are you quite all right?” she asked.
“Right as rain,” Matthew said unconvincingly, his words muffled by his hands.
“What are you thinking about?” Lucie asked lightly, trying a different tack.
“What it is like,” Matthew said slowly, “to be entirely undeserving of the person you love most in the world.”
“What a very sort of novelish complaint,” Lucie said, after a moment. She had no idea what to make of this dramatic statement. Wasn’t James the person Matthew loved most? Why would he have suddenly decided he didn’t deserve James? “I don’t suppose you want to tell me about it.”
“Certainly not.”
“All right, then, I have to tell you something.”
Matthew looked up. His eyes were dry, if a little red-rimmed. “Oh, Raziel,” he said, “that never portends anything good.”
“I’m not going home,” Lucie informed him. “I’d planned to stop there and then leave again, but there’s no time now. I need to get to Limehouse, and you’re going to take me there.”
“Limehouse?” Matthew looked incredulous. He ran his fingers through his curls, making them stand out even more wildly than before. “Lucie, please tell me you aren’t going back to that sailcloth factory.”
“Fear not. I’m going to Hypatia Vex’s new magic shop. I’m meeting Anna and Ariadne there, so you needn’t trouble yourself that I’ll be unattended.”
“Limehouse isn’t in the least bit on the way to Marylebone,” Matthew said, but he was smiling a little. “By the Angel, you’re a schemer, Luce. When did you make this plan?”
“Oh, sometime.” Lucie gestured vaguely. The truth was that she hadn’t been sure when they were meant to meet Hypatia until earlier at the Devil Tavern when Anna, under the pretense of patting her hand, had slipped her a folded note with instructions. “I suppose you don’t have to drive me, Math, but if you let me walk to Limehouse on my own and I am murdered, James will be very annoyed with you.”
Lucie had meant it as a joke, but Matthew’s face fell. “James is already very annoyed with me.”
“Why is that?”
Matthew leaned his head back against the seat, eyeing her speculatively. “Are you going to tell me what this magic shop business is about?”
“No,” Lucie said pleasantly.
“Then I suppose we both have our secrets.” Matthew turned and opened the window to tell the driver to head toward Limehouse. By the time he popped back into the carriage proper, he had a curious gleam in his eye. “Don’t you think it’s odd, Luce, that James is constantly tormented by Belial, and yet Belial doesn’t seem to have any interest in you?”
“I do not believe that Belial has read and understood Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman. He is interested in James because James is a boy, and not interested in me because I am a girl. I suspect that Belial would rather possess a tortoise than a woman.”
“In that case, you should count yourself fortunate to be a member of the fairer sex.”
“But I am not fortunate,” Lucie said, her joking tone gone. “I would rather have Belial’s attention focused on me, for James always tends to blame himself for things, and I hate to see him in pain.”
Matthew smiled at her tiredly. “You and your brother are lucky, Lucie. I fear that if Charles had to choose between me or him for possession, I’d be a very well-dressed demon.”
