Chain of Iron

Cordelia’s father roamed the room slowly, taking his time, squinting owlishly at the fine paintings. As James watched Elias knock over a small ceramic figurine—then try to right it, before giving up and turning away—his heart sank. If Elias was attempting to seem sober, he had chosen the wrong person for his performance. The past years with Matthew had taught James well: Elias was quite drunk, indeed.

After his little tour, Elias rested a hand on the piano lid and regarded James appraisingly. “So richly appointed, your new home. What wonderfully generous people your parents are! We must seem beggarly in comparison.”

“Not at all. I assure you—”

“No need to assure,” Elias said with a chuckle. “The Herondales are wealthy, that’s all! It’s hard for me to ignore, I suppose, after all I’ve recently been through.”

“A difficult time, indeed,” James said, casting about for the proper response. “Cordelia is so happy to have you back home.”

“Home,” Elias said, and there was a faintly ugly tone to his voice. Something almost mocking. “Home is the sailor, home from the sea, eh, James? Home, with a new brat on the way and no way to feed it. That’s home, for me.”

A new brat. James thought of Cordelia, so determined to save her father, her family. If it hadn’t been for her bravery, Elias would have gone to trial, not the Basilias. And yet nothing in his father-in-law’s behavior—at the wedding, at dinner, now—betrayed even the slightest sense that his daughter deserved his admiration. His gratitude.

“What do you want, Elias?” James said flatly.

“I am, if I may be frank, in debt. Cirenworth, you see, was an investment in my legacy. It was far too expensive, but I thought, quite reasonably at the time, that given my history I would soon be promoted within the Clave.” Elias leaned against the piano. “Alas, I have been passed over for promotion multiple times, and due to my recent troubles, I have no longer been drawing a salary at all. I do not wish to rob my children or my wife to pay down my debts. Surely you can see that.”

Surely you can see that. And James could, though he could see just as clearly that Elias wasn’t telling him the full truth. He made a noncommittal noise.

Elias cleared his throat. “Let me come to the point, James—we are family now, and I need your help.”

James inclined his head. “What kind of help?”

“Five thousand pounds,” Elias announced in a tone he might have used to call the winner of a horse race. “That is the sum that would set me right again. You can manage that much, surely—you’ll barely miss it.”

“Five thousand?” James couldn’t keep the shock from his voice. He knew no one who would not have struggled to produce such a sum. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Perhaps you don’t,” said Elias, though he didn’t sound as if he believed it. “Perhaps you might speak to your parents? Surely they could sell something, help me in my time of need.”

Elias was drunker than James had realized. Unlike Matthew, he did not hide his liquor well; it made him both more ebullient and more unreasonable. Maybe time, and the consequences of Elias’s poor decisions, had weakened him—a thought that worried James greatly, not on his father-in-law’s behalf, but on Matthew’s.

“I cannot help you, Elias,” James said, more forcefully than he intended.

“Ah,” Elias said, fixing his bleary gaze on James. “Can’t, or won’t?”

“Both. It’s wrong of you to come to me in this way. It will only poison your relationship with Daisy—”

“Do not use my daughter as an excuse, Herondale.” Elias slammed his hand down on the piano lid. “You have everything, I have nothing; surely you can give me this—” With a visible effort, he forced his voice to be steady. “There are those in the Enclave who do not believe your mother belongs among the Nephilim,” he said, and now there was a different look on his face—a sort of drunken cunning. “Or that you and your sister do either. I could put a word in the Inquisitor’s ear, you know—if I failed to give my approval, it’s unlikely they would allow your sister’s parabatai ceremony with my daughter to go forward—”

Rage drove through James like an arrow. “How dare you,” he said. “You would not just be hurting me and my sister, but the damage you would do to Daisy—”

“Her name is Cordelia,” snapped Elias. “I let you marry her, despite the rumors that swirl around your family, because I thought you would be generous. And this is how you repay me?”

James felt his mouth twist violently. “Repay you? You claim you do not want to rob your family, yet you speak of robbing Cordelia of the most precious hope in her life. And she above all people would be ashamed of you, trying threats where begging won’t do the job—”

“All I’ve told you is the truth,” Elias snapped, his face contorted. “There are many—many who don’t trust you. Many who would be glad to see you and your whole family burn.”

James caught his breath. In that moment, he hated Elias Carstairs, hated him so much he wished he could strike him dead where he stood.

“Get out of my house,” he snarled; it was all he trusted himself to say.

Elias turned and stormed out of the drawing room, nearly colliding with an astonished Cordelia in the hall. “Father?” she said in surprise.

“Your husband is a very selfish man,” Elias hissed. Before she could respond, he shoved roughly past her and let himself out, slamming the door behind him.

 

Lucie huddled in a sheltered doorway next to the Hell Ruelle, pulling her coat tightly around her, a shield against the icy air while she waited for Grace. It was a moonless night, the stars hidden behind thick clouds. The alley was a churned-up mess of mud and slush that stained Lucie’s kid boots.

Furtive figures slipped by her, heading for the Hell Ruelle. Lucie looked after them longingly. Whenever the nondescript door opened to a Downworlder’s knock, golden light flared from the darkness like a match being lit inside a cave.

“There you are,” said Grace, as if Lucie had been hiding. She stepped into view under the light spilling from the Ruelle’s upper windows. She wore a pale woolen cape trimmed with fur at the throat and carried a matching fur muff. Her hair was pinned up in an arrangement of tiny plaits threaded with silver ribbons. She looked like the Snow Queen in a book of fairy tales.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lucie said. “They just put the curfew into effect, and we’re already breaking it.”

Grace shrugged. “You’re the one who’s insisting we do this the ‘proper’ way. So, here we are.”

She had a point: breaking curfew was better than doing evil. The brief discussion of necromancy in James’s drawing room earlier that day had sent shivers up Lucie’s spine.

“Have you been here before?” Grace asked.

“Just once.” Still, Lucie was feeling a bit smug about her prior experience. She sauntered up to the door and knocked; when a faerie with purple hair, dressed in spangled pantaloons, answered the call, she gave her most charming smile.

“I’ve come by to see Anna Lightwood,” she said. “I’m her cousin.”