Chain of Iron
A train roared over the viaduct overhead, its lights illuminating the darkness, turning night to sunrise. Jesse let her go, his dark hair unruly, his eyes sleepy and stunned with desire.
“If I must fade,” he said, “I would like to fade remembering this as my last waking dream.”
“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Hold on, for me. We are so close.”
He touched her cheek. “Only promise me one thing,” he said. “If I do go, give us a happy ending, will you? In your book?”
“I don’t believe in endings,” she said, but he only smiled at her, and faded slowly from view.
19
THINE OWN PALACE
And seeing the snail which everywhere doth roam,
Carrying his own house still, still is at home,
Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail,
Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.
—John Donne, “To Sir Henry Wotton”
Thomas had no idea what time it was. There were no windows in the Sanctuary, for the comfort of vampire guests. The tapers in the candelabras burned on, their level never seeming to drop.
Charlotte hadn’t been untruthful when she’d said Thomas and Alastair would have whatever they needed. Warm bedding had been provided, and a stack of books (chosen by Eugenia), not to mention food. Thomas could tell that Bridget felt sorry for him, because she had brought some of his favorite things: besides a platter of cold chicken, there was bread still warm from the oven, a wedge of yellow sheep’s-milk cheese, sliced apples, and a salad with absolutely not one speck of celery. Thomas hated celery.
Bridget had set the tray down without a word, scowled at Alastair, and left.
Alastair had seemed unmoved. He hadn’t said a single word to Thomas since the door had closed and locked behind the Consul for the last time. He’d wandered over to one of the “beds” provided—a mattress with a pile of blankets and pillows, sat down with a book (Machiavelli’s The Prince, which he must have produced from a coat pocket—did he carry it around everywhere with him?), and stuck his nose in it. And there he still was, hours later, not even looking up when Thomas accidentally knocked over a candelabra while pacing the room.
Thomas eyed the “bed” Alastair wasn’t currently occupying, wishing he knew whether it was time to go to sleep yet. Although if their confinement were to continue, he supposed it didn’t matter; he and Alastair would become like stable cats, sleeping whenever they felt like it.
The notion of spending even another hour in this room made Thomas so despondent that he walked to the door and shook it, on the very remote chance that for some reason the lock and wards had failed.
Naturally, nothing happened. Alastair’s voice pierced the silence, nearly making Thomas jump. “A little menacing that the Sanctuary bolts shut from the outside, isn’t it? I never thought about it much before.”
Thomas turned around to look at him. Alastair had shrugged off his jacket, of course, and his shirt was rumpled.
“I, er, suppose one might have to keep an unexpectedly dangerous Downworlder out, or something,” Thomas said awkwardly.
“Maybe.” Alastair shrugged. “On the other hand, it does give the Institute a makeshift prison.”
Thomas wandered a little closer to Alastair, who was looking at his book again. It was unusual to see Alastair with a hair out of place—he was like Anna that way—but it was tousled now, and fell in soft, thick locks over his forehead. At least they looked soft; Thomas supposed he wasn’t sure. What he did know was that he liked Alastair’s hair much more now that he had dyed it back to its natural color.
Unfortunately, he reminded himself, he didn’t much like Alastair.
Despite what Alastair had done for him, just a few hours ago.
Which had been as impressive as it had been surprising.
“Why have you been following me around?” Thomas demanded.
Alastair’s breath seemed to hitch, though Thomas knew he might have been imagining it. “Someone had to,” he said, still staring at The Prince.
“What on earth does that mean?” Thomas said.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, Lightwood,” said Alastair, with a flash of the old arrogance he’d had at school.
Thomas sat down with a thump on Alastair’s mattress. Alastair looked at him in surprise. “I do want the answer,” Thomas said. “And I will not get up until you tell it to me.”
Slowly and decidedly, Alastair set his book aside. There was a pulse beating at the base of his throat, just at the notch above his collarbone. It was a location Thomas had stared at before—he thought of the time in Paris when it had been just him and Alastair, wandering the streets, going to a moving picture, laughing together. He thought of Alastair’s fingers on his wrist, though that was dangerous territory.
“I knew you were taking extra patrols,” Alastair said. “And more than that—going out by yourself with a murderer on the loose. You were going to get yourself killed. You’re meant to take someone with you.”
“No, thank you. All these people going out in pairs, announcing themselves every time they speak, unable to make a move without consulting each other—they might as well ring a bell to let the killer know they’re coming. And meanwhile, if you’re not on the schedule, you’re supposed to just sit around on your arse doing nothing. We’ll never catch the murderer if we avoid being out on the streets. That’s where the murderer is.”
Alastair looked amused. “Never before have I heard such a concise statement of the ludicrous philosophy with which you and your school friends go through the world, running toward danger,” he said, stretching. Raising his arms lifted his shirt free of his trousers, leaving a strip of stomach briefly visible. Thomas determinedly did not stare. “But that’s not why you were doing what you were doing,” Alastair added. “There’s a little truth to what you just said, but not the heart of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t save your sister. So you want to save other people. You want revenge, even if this isn’t the same evil that took Barbara—it’s still evil, isn’t it?” Alastair’s dark eyes seemed to see into Thomas and through him. “You want to behave recklessly, and you don’t want your reckless behavior to compromise a patrol partner’s safety. So you went alone.”
Thomas’s heart gave a slow, solid thump. It was unnerving in a way he could not quite get his mind around that Alastair Carstairs seemed to understand his motivations when no one else had been able to guess at them.
“Well, I don’t believe you really think that we’re stupid,” Thomas said, “or that we willingly court danger for danger’s sake. If you believed that, you would do more to stop Cordelia spending time with us.”
Alastair scoffed.
“My point,” Thomas went on, an edge to his voice, “is that I don’t think you believe the rude things you say. And I don’t understand why you say them. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s as if you want to drive everyone away.” He paused. “Why were you so awful to us in school? We never did anything to you.”