“It is hard to think of a downside,” Alastair said reluctantly. “And I have tried.”
“The downside,” said Ari with a frown, “is that even with this knowledge, a Watcher is a tough fight. One must find an opening to strike the back of the neck without being knocked down by strength or magic.”
Thomas nodded. “And there are a lot of them,” he said. “And only a few of us.”
“What we need is for Jesse and Grace to make the fire-messages work,” said Ari. “What we need is an army.”
“Still, we are one step closer to saving London,” Thomas said.
Alastair gave him a withering look. “I see the blow you have suffered to the head is worse than I had realized. We are nowhere near saving London.”
“Besides, it’s not quite London we’re saving, is it?” said Anna thoughtfully. “London will remain. Only its people will be gone. Its life.”
Alastair waved his hand. “Yes, yes. It has been Roman and Saxon and now it will be demon. It has survived plague and pestilence and fire—”
“Of course!” Anna shouted, causing everyone to jump. “The Great Fire!” With a wild look in her eye, she tore out of the infirmary.
The others looked at the open doorway where she had disappeared. “I don’t think any of us expected that,” Thomas said.
“I’ll go see what’s happened,” Ari said hesitantly.
“Right,” said Thomas. “We’ll fetch Grace and Jesse from wherever they’ve gotten to. They must be told that the Watchers can be beaten.”
He began to get up from the bed; Alastair gently pushed him back down on it. “I will fetch Grace and Jesse,” he said. “You will rest.”
Thomas looked over at Ari with a plaintive look.
“I’m sorry, Thomas, but he’s right,” Ari said. “You must allow yourself some time to recover, or you won’t keep your strength up.”
“But I’m fine—”
Leaving Thomas and Alastair to argue, Ari went and found Anna in the library, standing over one of the study tables. As Ari got closer she could see that Anna had a tattered map, deeply yellowed with age, spread out before her. When she looked up at Ari, there was—for the first time since Christopher’s death—actual excitement in her eyes.
“Have you ever noticed,” she said, “that the entrance to the Silent City is quite far from central London, all the way up in Highgate?”
“I have noticed,” Ari said slowly. “I never thought much about it. I suppose it is a bit far from the Institute.”
“Well, it wasn’t always,” said Anna, jabbing her finger down at the parchment. “They moved it after the Great Fire of London. This map here is from 1654, and this is the old entrance to the Silent City.”
Ari looked. “That is much closer,” she said. “It’s just on the other side of St. Paul’s from us.”
“At the church of St. Peter Westcheap,” Anna said. “Which burned in the Fire, in 1666.” She tapped the map with her finger. “Don’t you see? If we can get into the Silent City through an unguarded entrance, we can find the Path of the Dead. Retrace the route that the Watchers took from the Iron Tombs.”
“You mean if we can make it to the Iron Tombs, then we will have escaped Belial’s sphere of influence. We will be able to contact Alicante.” Ari clasped her hands together. “Or if by some miracle the Blackthorns get fire-messages working, we could have reinforcements meet us at the Tombs—”
“And,” said Anna, “we could then lead those reinforcements into the Silent City, and from there, right back to London.”
Sparked by a sudden rush of hope, Ari leaned across the table and kissed Anna full on the mouth. She pulled back a little, enjoying the look of surprise on Anna’s face. “You are the most devilishly clever schemer.”
Anna smiled. “It’s because you bring out the best in me, darling.”
* * *
Later, James would guess that telling him the story was the hardest thing Matthew had ever done, his greatest act of grit and endurance.
At the time, he only listened. Matthew told the story simply and directly: Alastair’s taunts about his mother, his own visit to the Shadow Market, his purchase of the faerie potion to give to an unknowing Charlotte. His mother’s violent illness, her miscarriage.
“I remember,” James breathed. A wind had come up; he could hear it howling over the plains beyond the courtyard walls. “When your mother lost the baby. Jem treated her—”
“Jem knew,” Matthew said. “He saw it in my mind, I think, though I refused to speak about it with him. Still, I remember what he said then. ‘I will not tell anybody. But you should. A secret kept too long can kill a soul by inches.’ Advice,” Matthew added, “that I, being a fool, did not take.”
“I understand,” James said. “You dreaded to tell it. To tell what happened was to live it again.”
“That is true for you,” Matthew observed. “I saw your face when you spoke of the bracelet, of Grace. It was as if a wound had reopened for you. But for me—I am not the one who suffered, James. My mother suffered. My family suffered. I caused it. I am not the victim.” He sucked in a breath. “I think I might be sick again.”
James ruffled Matthew’s hair gently. “Try to keep the water down,” he said. “Math—What I hear is a story of someone making a terrible mistake. You were young, and it was a mistake. It had no evil in it, no volition to harm your mother or anyone. You were rash and trusted wrongly. There was no malice.”
“I’ve made many bad decisions. None of them have ever had consequences like this.”
“Because,” said James, “you ensure that the worst results of your decisions always fall upon yourself.”
Matthew was silent for a moment. “I suppose that’s true,” he said.
“Your bad decision did have terrible, unforeseeable consequences,” James went on. “But you are not the devil incarnate, or Cain condemned to wander.” His voice softened. “Imagine me a few years ago. Imagine I came to you and told you this story, that I was the one who made the mistake. What would you say to me?”
“I would tell you to forgive yourself,” said Matthew. “And to tell the truth to your family.”
“You have brutalized yourself for years over this,” said James. “Try now to be as kind to yourself as you would have been to me. Remember that your sin is your silence, not what you did. All this time you have pushed Charlotte and Henry away, and I know what it has cost you. What it has cost them. Matthew, you are also their child. Let them forgive you.”
“That first night,” Matthew said, “after it happened, I took a bottle of whiskey from my parents’ cupboard and drank it. I was vilely sick afterward, but for the first few moments, when it dulled the sharpness of my thoughts and senses, the pain faded. Went away. I felt a lightness of heart, and it is that I have been seeking again and again. That surcease.”
“Your heart will always want that oblivion,” said James. “You will always have to fight it.” He laced his fingers through Matthew’s. “I will always help you.”