“Everyone who wants to come—and there is no shame in remaining here—arm yourselves,” James said. “Your preferred weapon might not be available,” he added, looking at Thomas, “but we have no time to gather those. Take something you think you’ll be able to use, and whatever gear you need. Do it quickly. We have little time to lose.”
* * *
“So you think that she would go to Bedford Square?” Anna said, as they set off through the darkened streets. James had brought them out of the Institute through a back way and looped around the narrow streets carefully so as to minimize the chance of running into an Enclave patrol. They could not afford to be immediately sent back. “To my parents’ house?”
The note of fear in her voice made Ari’s heart ache. Not that Anna would show her fear. She usually lounged like a purring cat, but she was stalking along the streets now like a tiger in the Odisha forests, elegant and deadly.
“Yes,” said Jesse. He had armed himself with the Blackthorn sword. It was strapped to his back in a tooled leather sheath and made him look as if he had been a practicing Shadowhunter for years, rather than days. “I can’t be absolutely certain, but it is my instinct, after years of knowing her, of listening to her.”
“How can you not know—” Anna began, but Ari caught her hand and squeezed it.
“He is being honest, Anna,” she said. “That is better than false hope.”
But Anna did not squeeze back. Ari could not blame her; she could only imagine the terror that was in Anna now, the terror that she was only barely holding back. She wished she could take some of it into her own heart, that she could bear that fear for Anna, share it with her that the burden might be lessened, even a little bit.
* * *
“But why?” said Thomas. He shifted his shoulders; the gear jacket he wore was too small, but there had not been one in the weapons room to fit him. “Why Uncle Gabriel’s house? Wouldn’t she expect to be caught there?”
“Not before—” Jesse broke off, but Thomas could guess at what he had almost said. Not before she kills Alexander. “Not immediately,” Jesse said. “I doubt anyone is going to look there first, other than us.”
They were on High Holborn; it was quiet at this hour, though no street in London was ever entirely deserted, no matter how late it became. At night, the damp patches on the pavement froze, and their boots crunched on ice as they walked. Hansom cabs rolled by, spraying them with filthy gutter-ice; they tried to stay well back from the curbs, since they were invisible to drivers.
Jesse said, “My mother will want to inflict the most hurt possible. She’ll want her revenge symbolic and visible.”
“So she’s going to bring Alexander to his own house?” Lucie said.
“Everything that happened to me when I was a child,” said Jesse, “happened in my own house. That was where my mother gave me to Belial. Where the rune ceremony almost killed me. She spoke often to me of how she had been violated in her own home, my father and grandfather killed on the grounds of the house she grew up in. It will seem, to her, to have a certain awful kind of balance.”
Thomas’s grip on the Zweih?nder he held had grown damp. He felt sick to his stomach. I am so sorry, he wanted to say. I am sorry for anything my family, or any of our families, may have done to cause this.
But he did not say it; nearly all of them there came from families that Tatiana believed had authored her misery, and while he could assume guilt on his own part, he could not assume it on theirs. He knew, logically, that James—walking ahead of them all, bareheaded, determined—could not be blamed for this, nor Anna, nor Matthew or Cordelia or—
“It is not your fault,” said Alastair. He was walking beside Thomas; Thomas wondered how long he had been there. Alastair had not bothered to change into gear, though he wore gauntlets on his hands, and his favorite spears were secured inside his coat. “None of this is your fault. Benedict Lightwood brought down vileness upon his own family, and Tatiana could not accept either his culpability or her own.”
“You sound very wise,” Thomas said. For a moment, it was as if he and Alastair were alone on the street, surrounded by the icy sheen of London in winter, the cold itself a sort of protective circle around the two of them.
“Guilt is one of the most sickening feelings there is,” Alastair said. “Most people will do anything to avoid feeling it. I know I—” He took a deep breath. “One can either refuse to accept it, push it away and blame others, or one can take responsibility. One can bear the unbearable weight.”
He sounded exhausted.
“I have always wanted to bear it with you,” said Thomas quietly.
“Yes,” Alastair said. His eyes were bright with cold. “Raziel knows, perhaps that is the reason I have not become like Tatiana myself. You keep me human, Tom.”
* * *
“Matthew,” James said, softly. “Math. Come here.”
They were nearing the Lightwoods’ house, passing darkened mundane homes whose doors were brightened with wreaths of holly and yew. James could see Bedford Square up ahead; most of the houses had curtains pulled across the windows, and the small park in the center, its winter greenery surrounded by an iron fence, was dark and unlit.
Matthew had been walking on his own, silent. He had shucked off his brocade coat and put on a gear jacket and leather fighting gloves. A half-dozen chalikars were looped over his forearm like bracelets, gleaming in the icy moonlight.
Still. As they had all prepared in the weapons room, James had watched his parabatai. Had watched as he stumbled against the table, holding himself there by gripping its edge, breathing hard as if he were trying not to be sick or to faint.
And he had watched Matthew as they left the Institute. He had kept himself a little away from the group, even from Lucie and Thomas. James could not help but feel that this was because he did not want anyone to see that he was walking too carefully, every step deliberate to the point of exaggeration.
Matthew drew close to him. And James knew—knew from his own observations, and also simply from the feeling in his chest. It was as if a tiny barometer had been inserted there during their parabatai ceremony, one that measured Matthew’s state of being.
“James,” Matthew said, a little warily.
“You’re drunk,” James said. He said it without accusation or blame; Matthew started to protest, but James only shook his head. “I am not going to be angry at you, or blame you, Matthew.”
“You could if you wanted,” Matthew said bitterly. “You thought I’d have trouble with the party, and I waved it away.”
James did not, could not, say what he was thinking. I did not know what would happen with Cordelia. I know you were sober when you spoke to her. But if she had said to me what she said to you, and I had afterward found myself thrust into a party surrounded by alcoholic merriment, I doubt I could have held back either.
“If I’d known I’d have to fight,” Matthew said, “I would never—”
“I know. Math, it’s not a question of being perfect. What you are trying to do is incredibly difficult. You may falter at times. But I do not believe a moment of weakness is failure. Not as long as you keep trying. In the meantime—let me help you.”