“I suppose.” Starkweather sounded unenthusiastic about the whole business. “Most of the Shades’ belongings were taken for spoils.”
“Spoils,” Tessa echoed faintly. She remembered the term from the Codex. Anything a Shadowhunter took from a Downworlder who had been caught breaking the Law belonged to him. Those were the spoils of war. She looked across the table at Jem and Wil ; Jem’s gentle eyes resting on her with concern, Wil ’s haunted blue ones holding al their secrets. Did she real y belong to a race of creatures that was at war with what Jem and Wil were?
“Spoils,” Starkweather rumbled. He had polished off his wine and started on Wil ’s untouched glass. “Do those interest you, girl? We’ve quite a col ection here in the Institute. Puts the London col ection to shame, or so I’m told.” He stood up, nearly knocking over his chair. “Come along. I’l show them to you, and tel you the rest of this sorry tale, though there’s not that much more to it.”
Tessa looked quickly to Wil and Jem for a cue, but they were already on their feet, fol owing the old man out of the room. Starkweather spoke as he walked, his voice drifting back over his shoulder, making the rest of them hurry to match his long strides.
“Never thought much of this Reparations business myself,” he said as they passed down another dimly lit, interminably long stone corridor.
“Makes Downworlders uppity, thinking they have a right to get something out of us. Al the work we do and no thanks, just hands held out for more, more, more. Don’t you think so, gentlemen?”
“Bastards, al of them,” said Wil , who seemed as if his mind were a thousand miles away. Jem looked at him sideways.
“Absolutely!” barked Starkweather, clearly pleased. “Not that one should use such language in front of a lady, of course. As I was saying, this Mortmain was protesting the death of Anne Shade, the male warlock’s wife—said she’d had nothing to do with her husband’s projects, hadn’t known about them, he claimed. Her death was undeserved. Wanted a trial of those guilty of what he cal ed her ‘murder,’ and his parents’ belongings back.”
“Was the Book of the White among what he asked for?” Jem inquired. “I know it’s a crime for a warlock to own such a volume . . .”
“It was. It was retrieved and placed in the London Institute library, where no doubt it remains stil . Certainly no one was going to give it to him.”
Tessa did a quick mental calculation in her head. If he was eighty-nine now, Starkweather would have been twenty-six at the time of the Shades’
deaths. “Were you there?”
His bloodshot eyes danced over her; she noticed that even now, a little drunk, he didn’t seem to want to look at her too directly. “Was I where?”
“You said an Enclave group was sent out to deal with the Shades. Were you among them?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Aye,” he said, his Yorkshire accent thickening for a moment. “Dinna take long to get the both of them. They weren’t prepared. Not a bit. I remember them lying there in their blood. The first time I saw dead warlocks, I was surprised they bled red. I could have sworn it’d be another color, blue or green or some such.” He shrugged. “We took the cloaks off them, like skins off a tiger. I was given the keeping of them, or more rightly, my father was. Glory, glory. Those were the days.” He grinned like a skul , and Tessa thought of Bluebeard’s chamber where he kept the remains of the wives he had kil ed. She felt both very hot and very cold al over.
“Mortmain never had a chance, did he,” she said quietly. “Filing his complaint like that. He was never going to get his reparations.”
“Of course not!” barked Starkweather. “Rubbish, al of it—claiming the wife wasn’t involved. What wife isn’t neck-deep in her husband’s business? Besides, he wasn’t even their blood son, couldn’t have been. Probably more of a pet to them than anything else. I’d wager the father’d have used him for spare parts if it came down to it. He was better off without them. He should have been thanking us, not asking for a trial—”
The old man broke off as he reached a heavy door at the end of the corridor and put his shoulder to it, grinning down at them from beneath beetling brows. “Ever been to the Crystal Palace? Wel , this is even better.”
He shouldered the door open, and light blazed up around them as they passed through into the room beyond. Clearly it was the only wel -lit room in the place.