“Indeed,” said Gideon, in a tone that indicated that he very much didn’t. He smiled at Thomas, who was still looking dazed. “But it’s ridiculous just leaving them here—they need blankets, food—they’re not being tortured, Charlotte.”
Charlotte looked indignant. “Indeed not. They’ll have everything they need. Now, Gideon, Christopher, Matthew, James—and you, too, Cordelia—you must go.”
Reluctantly, the Merry Thieves began filing out of the Sanctuary, each of them stopping to lay a hand on Thomas’s shoulder and murmur an encouraging word. As Cordelia released her brother reluctantly, joining her friends, she murmured—loud enough for James to hear, “If they don’t have the Mortal Sword here by tomorrow morning, I’ll break you out with Cortana.”
“I heard that!” Charlotte scolded. She held herself very straight, as befitted a Consul, but James could have sworn her face wore the faintest trace of a smile as she closed the iron doors of the Sanctuary behind them, locking Thomas in with Alastair Carstairs.
18 GOBLIN MARKET
One set his basket down,
One rear’d his plate;
One began to weave a crown
Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown
（Men sell not such in any town）;
One heav’d the golden weight
Of dish and fruit to offer her:
“Come buy, come buy,” was still their cry.
—Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”
“So what is this contraption?” Christopher wondered aloud, prodding gingerly at the adamas object Thomas had retrieved from Golden Square. It sat squatly in the middle of the round table in the upstairs room of the Devil Tavern; around the table were ranged James, Matthew, Christopher, Lucie, and Cordelia. Anna sat on her own in a wing-backed chair with stuffing sprouting from its arms. Several bottles of whiskey stood half-empty on a windowsill.
Anna had arrived at the Devil sometime in the afternoon, only waving away the question when the others asked her whether she had learned anything. “I warned him,” she’d said, sinking down into the armchair and declining offers of tea or sherry. “I knew Thomas was going out on his own last night, and I warned him not to do it. I must not have been convincing enough.”
Anna so rarely expressed self-doubt that the others, including Cordelia, stared in amazement for a moment. It was Matthew who broke the silence. “We all warned him, Anna, but Thomas is a bloody-minded stubborn bastard. Though quite tiny when he was young, and really,” he added, “rather adorable, like a guinea pig or a mouse.”
James thwacked Matthew gently on the back of the head. “I believe what he means to say is that it cannot be the responsibility of one’s friends to prevent one from doing something one believes is right,” he said. “It is, however, the job of one’s friends to rescue one from the consequences of one’s actions when it all goes skew-whiff.”
Lucie clapped and called out, “Hear, hear!” With a half smile, Anna patted Lucie absently on the hand. Anna looked tired, though still perfectly coiffed, her hair a careful cap of finger-combed waves, her boots gleaming with fresh polish.
“All right,” she said. “I did learn a few things, though not as much as I’d have liked. One fact that might prove of interest, though: Lilian Highsmith’s body was missing a Precision rune.”
“So that settles it,” said Matthew. “Someone’s murdering Shadowhunters to steal their runes. And we know for certain that James isn’t the murderer,” he added. “Or Thomas, either.”
“No,” said James, “but Belial is involved somehow. That sigil on my windowsill—I think I drew it myself, without realizing I was doing it, just as I opened my window. I think there was a part of my mind, a hidden part, that knew, and was trying to warn the conscious part of me. Belial has certainly been sending me these dreams, these visions. I cannot for the life of me guess why.”
“Do you think he wanted Thomas arrested?” Christopher asked.
“No,” James said slowly, “though I cannot be sure, but it seems—small, for Belial. Most human beings are beneath his notice, unless they get in his way. And I cannot see how Thomas was in his way.”
Maybe just to hurt you, Cordelia thought, but she did not say it; it would not help for James to think Thomas’s arrest was his fault. “Perhaps he simply wanted the Enclave’s attention averted,” she said, “from whoever is really doing this, and their connection to Belial.”