Gideon took the blade. “Esta es la idea más estúpida que nuestro padre ha tenido,” he said. “Nunca.”
Sophie and Tessa exchanged a look. Tessa wasn’t sure exactly what Gideon had said, but “estúpida” sounded familiar enough. It was going to be a long remainder of the day.
They spent the next few hours performing balancing and blocking exercises. Gabriel took it upon himself to oversee Tessa’s instruction, while Gideon was assigned to Sophie. Tessa couldn’t help but feel that Gabriel had chosen her to annoy Wil in some obscure way, whether Wil knew about it or not. He wasn’t a bad teacher, actual y—fairly patient, wil ing to pick up weapons again and again as she dropped them, until he could show her how to get the grip correct, even praising when she did something right. She was concentrating too fiercely to notice whether Gideon was as adept at training Sophie, though Tessa heard him muttering in Spanish from time to time.
By the time the training was over and Tessa had bathed and dressed for dinner, she was starving in a most unladylike manner. Fortunately, despite Wil ’s fears, Bridget could cook, and very wel . She served a hot roast with vegetables, and a jam tart with custard, to Henry, Wil , Tessa, and Jem for dinner. Jessamine was stil in her room with a headache, and Charlotte had gone to the Bone City to look directly through the Reparations archives herself.
It was odd, having Sophie and Cyril coming in and out of the dining room with platters of food, Cyril carving the roast just as Thomas would have, Sophie helping him silently. Tessa could hardly help but think how difficult it had to be for Sophie, whose closest companions in the Institute had been Agatha and Thomas, but every time Tessa tried to catch the other girl’s eye, Sophie looked away.
Tessa remembered the look on Sophie’s face the last time Jem had been il , the way she’d twisted her cap in her hands, begging for news of him. Tessa had ached to talk to Sophie about it afterward, but knew she never could. Romances between mundanes and Shadowhunters were forbidden; Wil ’s mother was a mundane, and his father had been forced to leave the Shadowhunters to be with her. He must have been terribly in love to be wil ing to do it—and Tessa had never had the sense that Jem was fond of Sophie in that way at al . And then there was the matter of his il ness. . . .
“Tessa,” Jem said in a low voice, “are you al right? You look a mil ion miles away.”
She smiled at him. “Just tired. The training—I’m not used to it.” It was the truth. Her arms were sore from holding the heavy practice sword, and though she and Sophie had done little beyond balancing and blocking exercises, her legs ached too.
“There’s a salve the Silent Brothers make, for sore muscles. Knock on the door of my room before you go to sleep, and I’l give you some.”
Tessa flushed slightly, then wondered why she had flushed. The Shadowhunters had their odd ways. She had been in Jem’s room before, even alone with him, even alone with him in her night attire, and no fuss had been made over it. Al he was doing now was offering her a bit of medicine, and yet she could feel the heat rise in her face—and he seemed to see it, and flushed himself, the color very visible against his pale skin. Tessa looked away hastily and caught Wil watching them both, his blue eyes level and dark. Only Henry, chasing mushy peas around his plate with a fork, seemed oblivious.
“Much obliged,” she said. “I wil —”
Charlotte burst into the room, her dark hair escaping from its pins in a whirl of curls, a long scrol of paper clutched in her hand. “I’ve found it!” she cried. She col apsed breathlessly into the seat beside Henry, her normal y pale face rosy with exertion. She smiled at Jem. “You were quite right— the Reparations archives—I found it after only a few hours of looking.”
“Let me see,” said Wil , setting down his fork. He had eaten only a very little of his food, Tessa couldn’t help noticing. The bird design ring flashed on his fingers as he reached for the scrol in Charlotte’s hand.
She swatted his hand away good-naturedly. “No. We shal al look at them at the same time. It was Jem’s idea, anyway, wasn’t it?”
Wil frowned, but said nothing; Charlotte spread the scrol out over the table, pushing aside teacups and empty plates to make room, and the others rose and crowded around her, gazing down at the document. The paper was real y more like thick parchment, with dark red ink, like the color of the runes on the Silent Brothers’ robes. The handwriting was in English, but cramped and ful of abbreviations; Tessa could make neither head nor tail of what she was looking at.
Jem leaned in close to her, his arm brushing hers, reading over her shoulder. His expression was thoughtful.