Chain of Gold

“Hypatia wishes to see you, Anna,” said Malcolm. “She has a friend visiting from out of town who has requested to meet you.”

Anna gave a curling smile. “And this friend is visiting from where?”

“The seaside,” said Malcolm. “Do come, you know how Hypatia gets.”

Anna dropped a wink to Cordelia and Matthew and turned to follow Malcolm down a passageway papered with damask wallpaper. They were quickly out of view.

“She’s so beautiful,” said Cordelia. “Anna, I mean.”

“Anna has a quality.” Matthew raised a thoughtful eyebrow. “The French would call it jolie laide.”

Cordelia knew French well enough to frown. “Pretty-ugly? She’s not ugly!”

“It doesn’t mean that,” Matthew said. “It means unusually pretty. Oddly beautiful. It denotes having a face with character.” His gaze traveled from the top of her hair to the tips of her shoes. “Like you have.”

He reached out to snag a glass of champagne off a passing tray as the handsome werewolf from the string quartet went by with a smile. Somehow Matthew had drunk the one he had and discarded it with impressive speed and discretion. He took a swallow of the new one and met Cordelia’s eyes over the rim.

Cordelia was not entirely sure how she felt about being called “pretty-ugly,” but there were more important issues at hand. She didn’t know when she would again be alone with Matthew. She said, “Do you remember how I asked you about your mother at the ball?”

“I always enjoy thinking about my mother at these sorts of parties,” he said.

She took another swallow of champagne and tried to restrain a hiccup. “Your mother is the Consul,” she continued.

“I had noticed that, yes.”

“And she is currently in Idris, where they are preparing to try my father.”

His eyes narrowed. “I thought—” He shook his head. A group of vampire ballerinas glanced over at them and giggled. “Never mind. I think too much and I drink too much. That is always my problem.”

“There is something I don’t understand,” said Cordelia. “Why haven’t they tried my father with the Mortal Sword yet? Then they would have proof he’s innocent.”

Matthew looked faintly surprised. “Indeed. It makes little sense to possess a magical object that forces the holder to tell the truth if you aren’t going to use it in criminal trials.”

The word “criminal” still shook Cordelia to the bone. “We have very little information, but my brother does have school friends in Idris. He has heard they do not plan to use the Mortal Sword in the trial. Do you think you could convince your mother that they must?”

Matthew had procured another drink, possibly from a potted plant. He was watching her over the rim of the glass. Cordelia wondered how many people had seen Matthew grinning over a drink and failed to spot him watching them with those dark green eyes. “You are very upset about this, aren’t you?” he said.

“It is my family,” she said. “If my father is found guilty, we will not just lose him, we will be as the Lightwoods were after Benedict’s death. Everything we have will be stripped from us. Our name will be disgraced.”

“Do you care that much? About disgrace?”

“No,” said Cordelia. “But my mother and brother do, and I do not know if they would survive.”

Matthew set his glass down on a marquetry side table. “All right,” he said. “I will write to my mother in Idris.”

The relief was almost painful. “Thank you,” said Cordelia. “But have her write back to Lucie, please, at the Institute. I don’t want my mother to see the reply before I do, in case she says no.”

Matthew frowned. “My mother would not—” He broke off, looking past her to where Lily waved from the other end of the room. “That is Anna’s signal,” he said. “We must go.”

Cordelia felt a slight thrill of unease. “Go where?”

“Into the heart of it all,” said Matthew, gesturing toward the damask-papered corridor Anna had disappeared down before. “Brace yourself. Warlocks can be as tricky as faeries if they set their minds to it.”

Curious, Cordelia followed Matthew down the hall. Paper lanterns lit the way. At the very end of the passage was a cabinet of carved ebony, an array of curios spread out under glass. Matthew gave the glass a playful tap.

The cabinet swung inward.

Within was a golden grotto. The whole room gleamed, from the painted ceiling to the floor where the carpet shone as if it were flaxen tissue paper. There were giltwood tables holding all manner of treasures: clockwork birds inlaid with lapis and gold, gauntlets and blades of delicate faerie workmanship, a polished wooden box decorated with the symbol of an ourobouros—a serpent biting its own tail—and an apple carved from a single ruby. At the very end of the room was a four-poster bed the size of Cordelia’s whole bedroom at home, inlaid with copper and brass, covered in dozens of cloth-of-gold cushions. Seated upon the edge of the bed as if it were a throne was a woman, a sleek warlock who seemed artfully shaped from enchanted materials: her skin mahogany, her hair bronze, her dress a shimmering gold.

Cordelia hesitated upon the threshold. There were other people in the room besides the warlock woman: Malcolm Fade himself, and Anna Lightwood, lounging alone on a conversation settee of walnut wood and gilt velvet, her long legs hooked over the slender wooden arms.

Malcolm Fade smiled. “Welcome, little Shadowhunters. Few of your kind ever see the inner chambers of Hypatia Vex.”

“Is she welcome, I wonder?” asked Hypatia, with a catlike smile. “Let her approach.”

Cordelia and Matthew advanced together, Cordelia moving cautiously around the rococo chairs and tables, gleaming with gilt and pearls. Close up, the pupils of Hypatia Vex’s eyes were the shape of stars: her warlock mark. “I cannot say I care for the idea of so many Nephilim infesting my salon. Are you interesting, Cordelia Carstairs?”

Cordelia hesitated.

“If you have to think about it,” said Hypatia, “then you’re not.”

“That hardly makes sense,” said Cordelia. “Surely if you do not think, you cannot be interesting.”

Hypatia blinked, creating the effect of stars turning off and on like lamps. Then she smiled. “I suppose you may stay a moment.”

“Good work, Cordelia,” said Anna, swinging her legs off the edge of the settee. “Arabella, how are the drinks coming on?”

Cordelia turned to realize a faerie woman with tumbling blue and green hair was also in the room. She was standing in an alcove, partially hidden: before her was a sideboard where she was mixing drinks. Her hands waved in midair like fronds in water, unstoppering decanters and crystal vials full of red liquid, and busily pouring them into a variety of goblets and flutes.

Cordelia’s eyes narrowed.

“Just ready, darling!” Arabella said, and walked over to distribute drinks. Matthew accepted a drink with alacrity. Cordelia noticed that Arabella walked with a rocking, unsteady gait, as if she were a sailor unaccustomed to treading on the land.

When Arabella gave Anna her drink, Anna pulled Arabella into her lap. Arabella giggled, kicking up her French heels. Her legs were shockingly bare, and covered in a faint iridescent pattern of scales. They flashed in the golden light like a rainbow.

A mermaid. So this was Hypatia’s “friend from the seaside.” They were a type of faerie rarely seen out of water, since their human legs caused them pain to walk on.

Arabella noticed Cordelia’s gaze and shrugged, shoulders moving fluidly beneath her heavy masses of blue and green hair. “I have not been on land for many years. The last time I visited this ugly city, the Downworlders and Shadowhunters were trying to form the Accords. I was not much impressed with Nephilim then, and I have not been fond of Shadowhunters since. Still, exceptions can be made.”

Before the Accords were formed. This woman had not been on the land for more than thirty years.

Arabella leaned into Anna as she spoke, and Anna’s scarred fingers drifted nimbly through the waves of the mermaid’s hair. Tiny fish, small as sparks from a fire and bright blue, stirred when disturbed and leaped from strand to strand, chasing Anna’s movements.

“My lovely, your hair is like a beautiful stream,” murmured Anna. “Because there are fish in it.”

Apparently Anna could seduce multiple people in one evening. Arabella blushed and bounced up to gather more drinks from the sideboard.

“We know why Anna brought you, Matthew,” said Malcolm. “You are amusing. But is there a reason this young Carstairs girl is accompanying you tonight?”

“Because we need your help,” said Cordelia.

Everyone in the room laughed. Malcolm smiled and raised his empty glass to Cordelia as if she had made a particularly good joke; Arabella was still at the sideboard, sprinkling flowers into two flutes of wine and humming.

Anna and Matthew looked pained.

“Magnus Bane would help them,” said Hypatia, the stars in her eyes sparkling. “That is why they have come. Magnus has made them believe a warlock will always help them.”

“Magnus is not here,” said Malcolm. His gaze was distant. “I bear you no ill will, child, but I loved a Shadowhunter once and it brought me only sorrow.”

“She became an Iron Sister, and broke his heart,” said Hypatia.

“Oh,” said Cordelia, surprised. The Iron Sisters were even more secretive than the Silent Brothers. Stern and removed, they shaped adamas into runed weapons for the Nephilim from their hidden fortress. They had done so for a thousand years. Like the Silent Brothers, they did not marry, and held the responsibility of placing protective spells on Shadowhunter babies when they were born. No one not of their sisterhood was allowed in the Adamant Citadel. Only women could choose to be Iron Sisters, though it seemed as lonely to Cordelia as Silent Brotherhood. “That seems very sad.”