Chain of Gold

She took a step forward, her boot coming down in the shallow, dark water. She shivered as the icy liquid seeped through the leather. She took another step in, and froze.

The river was moving, surging, about ten feet from the bridge. The water had begun to churn, yellowish-gray foam sliding along its dark surface. A bitter smell wafted across the water: rotten fish and old blood and the age-old mud of the riverbed.

Lucie’s foot slipped on a loose pebble. She went to her knees as the waters of the Thames began to rise and part like the water of the Red Sea. A shine of white broke the black surface of the water. She stared for an uncomprehending instant until she realized what she was seeing. The shine was moonlight on river-washed bone.

Figures rose from the water, pallid as ash. A woman with long, streaming hair, her face bloated and black. A woman in a wide-skirted gown, her throat cut, her eyes black and empty. A massive man with the marks of a rope still dark around his neck, wearing the arrow-stamped uniform of a prisoner.

He was carrying Cordelia in his arms. Ghosts rose up on either side of him, a veritable army of the drowned and dead. In the center of them all, the ghost prisoner held Cordelia, her body limp, her bright hair soaked and streaming down over her shoulders. Her gear was dark with river water, all of it sluicing off her as the ghosts carried her inexorably forward to the riverbank and laid her down.

“Thank you,” Lucie whispered.

The ghost prisoner straightened up. For a long moment, all the ghosts simply stared at Lucie, their eyes empty hollows of darkness. Then they vanished.

“Cordelia?” Lucie tried to rise, to go to Cordelia, but her damp knees gave out under her. In the distance, she was aware that the fight on the bridge had stopped. She knew James and the others would come to her, but every second seemed stretched out to a year. Her energy seemed to have fled her body completely. Every breath was a chore.

“Cordelia,” she whispered again, and this time Cordelia stirred. With relief so overwhelming Lucie was almost sick, she saw her friend’s lashes flutter against her cheeks. Cordelia rolled to her side and began to cough, her body spasming as she choked up river water.

Lucie sagged back, half-delirious. The boys were coming down the steps of the bridge now, racing toward her and Cordelia, calling out their names. A distance behind them came Magnus, hurrying but looking exhausted. As he came closer, he slowed and gave Lucie a peculiar, searching look. Or maybe she was imagining it.… At least there were arms around her, Lucie thought, arms holding her up, wrapping her close.

Only then did it strike her as strange. She looked up and saw a face hovering above hers, white as salt, with jade-green eyes. Behind his dark head the sky seemed to be spinning. Around his neck, his golden locket burned like a star. As she watched, he touched it with two fingers, his lips tightening.

“Jesse Blackthorn,” Lucie whispered, as the world swam away and the dim light faded. He was the one, she realized. He had called up the ghosts. He had saved Cordelia. “Why did you do that?”

But the darkness drew her down before he could reply.

DAYS PAST: CIRENWORTH HALL, 1900

“It’s mine!”

“It certainly isn’t!” Outraged, Alastair made another grab for the sword. Cordelia stepped nimbly backward, holding Cortana over her head, but Alastair was taller. He stomped on her foot and snatched it away, his black hair falling into his eyes as he scowled.

“Tell her, Father,” he said. “Tell her it isn’t hers!”

“Kerm nariz, Alastair. Enough.” Tall and weathered, his blond hair just turning to silver, Elias Carstairs had a lazy voice that matched his lazy and economical gestures. He was in good health today, and Cordelia was glad. There were many days her father was absent from the training room, lying ill in a darkened room, a damp cloth over his eyes.

He peeled himself away from the pillar he’d been leaning against and regarded his offspring with a thoughtful indulgence. Elias had always been their weapons master, the one who had trained them in the physical arts of Shadowhunting since they had been small.

He was the one who had turned the ballroom at Cirenworth into a training area. He had bought the great house from mundanes and seemed to take pleasure in removing evidence of their mundanity. He tore out the parquet floors and put down softer wood from trees in Idris, better for cushioning falls. Chandeliers were replaced with hooks to hang weapons from, and the walls were painted saffron yellow, the color of victory.

Elias had lived in Beijing for many years and favored the weapons and fighting styles of Nephilim there, from the zhaˇn maˇ da¯o to the double-edged jiàn to the long-handled qia¯ng. He taught his children shua¯ngda¯o, the art of wielding two swords at the same time. He hung rope darts and chain whips from the rafters and built a lei tai, a raised fighting platform, at the west end of the room. Alastair and Cordelia stood on the lei tai now, glaring at each other.

“Cordelia,” said Elias, clasping his hands behind his back. “Why, exactly, do you want Cortana?”

Cordelia paused a moment. She was thirteen, and she rarely bothered to try to get in between Alastair and the things he wanted. There was no one in the world more stubborn or fussy than her brother, in her opinion. But Cortana was different. She’d been dreaming of wielding Cortana since she was a little girl—the heft of its golden hilt, the arc of its blade through the air.

And Alastair, she knew, had never dreamed about that: he was a good fighter, but largely disinterested. He preferred following Shadowhunter politics and scheming to actual demon chasing.

“Cortana was made by Wayland the Smith,” she said. “He made swords for all the greatest heroes. Excalibur for Arthur. Durendal for Roland and Hector. Sigurd, who slew the dragon Fafnir, bore a sword named Balmung made by Wayland—”

“Cordelia, we know all this,” said Alastair crossly. “No need for a history lesson.”

Cordelia glared.

“So you want to be a hero,” said Elias, with a gleam of interest.

Cordelia considered. “Cortana has one sharp edge and one dull one,” she said. “Because of that, it has often been called a sword of mercy. I want to be a merciful hero.”

Elias nodded and turned to his son. “And you?”

Alastair flushed. “It’s a Carstairs sword,” he said shortly. “I’m Alastair Carstairs and I always will be. When Cordelia gets married and has a passel of brats, one of them will end up with Cortana—and they won’t be a Carstairs.”

Cordelia made an indignant sound, but Elias held up a silencing hand. “He’s right,” he said. “Cordelia, let your brother keep the sword.”

Alastair smirked, twirled the sword in his hand, and headed for the edge of the lei tai. Cordelia stood where she was, rage and indignation prickling up her spine. She thought of all the times she’d come into the training room to gaze at Cortana in its crystal box, the words etched on its blade the first thing she’d learned to read: I am Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal. She thought of the way she’d always gently tapped the box, barely brushing it with her fingers, as if to reassure the sword that someday it would be taken out and wielded again. And when Elias had finally opened the box, declaring that today was the day he would choose Cortana’s owner, her heart had soared.

She couldn’t bear it. “But Cortana is mine!” she burst out as her brother reached the edge of the platform. “I know it is!”

Alastair opened his mouth to deliver a retort—but only gasped as the sword wrenched itself out of his grasp and flew across the room toward his sister. Cordelia held out a hand as if to ward it off, startled, and the hilt smacked into her palm. She closed her hand around it reflexively and felt a jolt go up her arm.

Cortana.

Alastair looked as if he wanted to sputter, but didn’t. He was too clever and too self-conscious to be a sputterer. “Father,” he said instead. “Is this some sort of trick?”

Elias only smiled as if he’d known what was going to happen. “Sometimes the sword chooses the bearer,” he said. “Cortana will be Cordelia’s. Now, Alastair—”

But Alastair had stalked from the room.

Elias turned to his daughter. “Cordelia,” he said. “A blade of Wayland the Smith is a great gift, but it is also a great responsibility. One that may one day cause you sorrow.”

Cordelia nodded. She was sure her father was right, in some distant way that adults were sometimes. Still, gazing down at Cortana’s golden blade, she couldn’t imagine ever being anything but happy with it in her hand.

17 THE HOLLOW SEA

“Oh whence do you come, my dear friend, to me,

With your golden hair all fallen below your knee,

And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea,

And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?”

“From the other world I come back to you:

My locks are uncurled with dripping drenching dew.

You know the old, whilst I know the new:

But to-morrow you shall know this too.”

—Christina Rossetti, “The Poor Ghost”

“So,” said Will Herondale, a dark edge to his voice, “for some reason, you thought it was a good idea to take on a Mandikhor demon all by yourselves?”

Lucie’s eyes fluttered open. For a moment she thought her father was talking to her, and considered flight. She discarded the idea immediately—her body was pinned down by heavy sheets and blankets. She blinked at her familiar surroundings; somehow she had been tucked into her own bed at home. The room smelled comfortingly of tea and of her father’s cologne. Not surprisingly, as he was seated in a chair next to the bed. Her mother had her hand on Will’s shoulder, and James leaned against a wall nearby. He clearly hadn’t changed clothes since the fight on the bridge, though his hands and face had been cleaned of blood and ichor and a new healing rune gleamed against his throat.

Someone had laid the golden blade of Cortana across Lucie’s vanity table. She supposed there had been no chance to return it to Cordelia after her recovery from the river.