Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(151)

Their oldest child, James, had spoken laughingly about Will’s unrelenting fear of ducks and his continual battle to keep them out of the pond at the family home in Yorkshire.

Their grandchildren had reminded him of the song about demon pox he had taught them—when they were much too young, Tessa had always thought—and that they had all memorized. They sang it all together and out of tune, scandalizing Sophie.

With tears running down her face, Cecily had reminded him of the moment at her wedding to Gabriel when he had delivered a beautiful speech praising the groom, at the end of which he had announced, “Dear God, I thought she was marrying Gideon. I take it all back,” thus vexing not only Cecily and Gabriel but Sophie as well—and Will, though too tired to laugh, had smiled at his sister and squeezed her hand.

They had all laughed about his habit of taking Tessa on romantic “holidays” to places from Gothic novels, including the hideous moor where someone had died, a drafty castle with a ghost in it, and of course the square in Paris in which he had decided Sydney Carton had been guillotined, where Will had horrified passersby by shouting “I can see the blood on the cobblestones!” in French.

At the end of the day, as the sky had darkened, the family had come around Will’s bed and kissed him each in turn and left one by one, until Will and Tessa were alone together. Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest, listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they’d whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of a clockwork angel. Of holy water and blood.

Near midnight the door had opened and Jem had come in. Tessa supposed she should have thought of him as Brother Zachariah by then, but neither Will nor Tessa had ever called him that. He had come in like a shadow in his white robes, and Tessa had taken a deep breath when she had seen him, for she had known that this was what Will had been waiting for, and that the hour was now.

He did not come to Will at once, but crossed the room to a rosewood box that sat upon the top of the dresser. They had always kept Jem’s violin for him, as Will had promised. It was kept clean and in order, and the hinges of the box did not creak as Jem opened it and lifted the instrument out. They watched as he rosined the bow with his familiar slim fingers, his pale wrists disappearing down into the paler material of the Brothers’ parchment robes.

He lifted the violin to his shoulder then, and raised the bow. And he played.

Zhi yin. Jem had told her once that it meant understanding music, and also a bond that went deeper than friendship. Jem played, and he played the years of Will’s life as he had seen them. He played two little boys in a training room, one showing the other how to throw knives, and he played the ritual of parabatai: the fire and the vows and the burning runes. He played two young men running through the streets of London in the dark, stopping to lean up against a wall and laugh together. He played the day in the library when he and Will had jested with Tessa about ducks, and he played the train to Yorkshire on which Jem had said that parabatai were meant to love each other as they loved their own souls. He played that love, and he played their love for Tessa, and hers for them, and he played Will saying, In your eyes I have always found grace. He played the too few times he had seen them since he had joined the Brotherhood—the brief meetings at the Institute; the time when Will had been bitten by a Shax demon and nearly died, and Jem had come from the Silent City and sat with him all night, risking discovery and punishment. And he played the birth of their first son, and the protection ceremony that had been carried out on the child in the Silent City. Will would have no other Silent Brother but Jem perform it. And Jem played the way he had covered his scarred face with his hands and turned away when he’d found out the child’s name was James.

He played of love and loss and years of silence, words unsaid and vows unspoken, and all the spaces between his heart and theirs; and when he was done, and he’d set the violin back in its box, Will’s eyes were closed, but Tessa’s were full of tears. Jem set down his bow, and came toward the bed, drawing back his hood, so she could see his closed eyes and his scarred face. And he had sat down beside them on the bed, and taken Will’s hand, the one that Tessa was not holding, and both Will and Tessa had heard Jem’s voice in their minds.

I take your hand, brother, so that you may go in peace.

Will had opened the blue eyes that had never lost their color over all the passing years, and looked at Jem and then Tessa, and smiled, and died, with Tessa’s head on his shoulder and his hand in Jem’s.

It never had stopped hurting, remembering when Will had died. After he was gone, Tessa had fled. Her children were grown, had children of their own; she told herself they did not need her and hid in the back of her mind the thought that haunted her: She could not bear to remain and watch them grow older than she was. It had been one thing to survive the death of her husband. To survive the death of her children—she could not sit by and watch it. It would happen, must happen, but she would not be there.

And besides, there was something Will had asked her to do.

The road that led from Shrewsbury to Welshpool was no longer as it had been when Will had ridden across it in a mad, heedless dash to save her from Mortmain. Will had left instructions, details, descriptions of towns, of a certain spreading oak tree. She had puttered up and down the road several times in her Morris Minor before she’d found it: the tree, just as he had drawn it in the journal he had given her, his hand shaking a little but his memory clear.