Were I you, and I am not, I would reassure Master Will that his family is safe and I am watching them; avoid speaking to him of Mortmain until I can gather more information. A s far as I can glean from Cecily, the Herondales do not know where Mortmain is. She said that he was in Shanghai, and on occasion they receive correspondence from his company there, all stamped with peculiar stamps. It is my understanding, however, that the Shanghai Institute believes him not to be there.
I told Miss Herondale that her brother missed her; it seemed the least I could do. She appeared gratified. I shall remain in this area a good while longer, I think; I have become myself curious as to how the misfortunes of the Herondales are entwined with Mortmain’s plans. There are still secrets to be unearthed here beneath the peaceful green of the Yorkshire countryside, and I aim to discover them.
—Ragnor Fell
Charlotte read the letter over twice, to commit its details to memory, and then, having folded it smal , cast it into the drawing room fire. She stood wearily, leaning against the mantel, watching as the flame ate away the paper in lines of black and gold.
She was not sure if she was surprised, or disturbed, or simply made bone-weary by the contents of the letter. Trying to find Mortmain was like reaching to swat a spider, only to realize that you were helplessly entangled in the sticky strands of its web. And Wil —she hated to speak of this with him. She looked into the fire with unseeing eyes. Sometimes she thought Wil had been sent to her by the Angel specifical y to try her patience.
He was bitter, he had a tongue like the lash of a whip, and he met her every attempt to show him love and affection with venom or contempt. And stil , when she looked at him, she saw the boy he’d been at twelve, curled in the corner of his bedroom with his hands over his ears as his parents cal ed his name from the steps below, entreating him to come out, to come back to them.
She had knelt beside him after the Herondales had gone away. She remembered him lifting his face to her—smal and white and set, with those blue eyes and dark lashes; he’d been as pretty as a girl then, thin and delicate, before he had thrown himself into Shadowhunter training with such single-mindedness that within two years al that delicacy had been gone, covered over by muscle and scars and Marks. She’d taken his hand then, and he’d let it lie in hers like a dead thing. He’d bitten his lower lip, though he didn’t appear to have noticed, and blood covered his chin and dripped onto his shirt. Charlotte, you’ll tell me, won’t you? You’ll tell me if anything happens to them?
Will, I can’t—
I know the Law. I just want to know if they live. His eyes had pleaded with her. Charlotte, please . . .
“Charlotte?”
She looked up from the fire. Jem stood in the doorway of the drawing room. Charlotte, stil half-caught in the web of the past, blinked at him.
When he had first arrived from Shanghai, his hair and eyes had been as black as ink. Over time they had silvered, like copper oxidizing to verdigris, as the drugs had worked their way through his blood, changing him, kil ing him slowly.
“James,” she said. “It’s late, isn’t it?”
“Eleven o’clock.” He put his head to the side, studying her. “Are you al right? You look as if your peace of mind has been rather cut up.”
“No, I just—” She gestured vaguely. “It is al this business with Mortmain.”
“I have a question,” Jem said, moving farther into the drawing room and lowering his voice. “Not whol y unrelated. Gabriel said something today, during training—”
“You were there?”
He shook his head. “Sophie told it to me. She didn’t like to carry tales, but she was troubled, and I can’t blame her. Gabriel asserted that his uncle had committed suicide and that his mother had died of grief because—wel , because of your father.”
“My father?” Charlotte said blankly.
“Apparently Gabriel’s uncle, Silas, committed some infraction of the Law, and your father discovered it. Your father went to the Clave. The uncle kil ed himself out of shame, and Mrs. Lightwood died of grief. According to Gabriel, ‘The Fairchilds don’t care about anyone but themselves and the Law.’”
“And you are tel ing me this because . . . ?”
“I wondered if it was true,” said Jem. “And if it is, perhaps it might be useful to communicate to the Consul that Benedict’s motive for wanting the Institute is revenge, not selfless desire to see it run better.”
“It’s not true. It can’t be.” Charlotte shook her head. “Silas Lightwood did kil himself—because he was in love with his parabatai—but not because my father told the Clave about it. The first the Clave knew of it was from Silas’s suicide note. In fact, Silas’s father asked my father for help in writing Silas’s eulogy. Does that sound like a man who blamed my father for his son’s death?”
Jem’s eyes darkened. “That’s interesting.”
“Do you think Gabriel’s simply being nasty, or do you think his father lied to him to—”