Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(57)

The Institute gates were open, and through them was pounding a second black carriage, hurtling away from the Institute at top speed. But Will barely spared it a thought, for at the foot of the stairs was Jem. As pale as paper but upright, he was backing away as another automaton advanced on him. It was staggering, almost drunkenly, half its side and an arm sheared away, but Jem was unarmed.

The cold sharpness of battle came over Will, and everything seemed to slow down around him. He was aware that Sophie and Bridget, both armed, had fanned out on either side of him—that Sophie had run to Cecily’s side, and that Bridget, a whirl of red hair and slashing blades, was busy reducing a surprisingly enormous automaton to scrap metal with a ferocity that would in other cases have astonished him. But his world had narrowed, narrowed to the automatons and to Jem, who, looking up, saw him and reached out a hand.

Leaping down four steps and skidding sideways, Will seized up Jem’s sword-cane and threw it. Jem caught it out of the air just as the automaton lunged for him, and Jem carved it cleanly in two. The top half fell away, though the legs and lower torso, now pumping an excess of disgusting black and greenish fluids, continued lurching toward him. Jem whirled to the side and swung his sword again, cutting the thing off at the knees. It fell finally, its disparate bits still twitching.

Jem turned his head and looked up at Will. Their eyes met for a moment, and Will offered a smile—but Jem did not smile back; he was as white as salt, and Will could not read his eyes. Was he injured? He was covered in so much oil and fluid that Will could not tell if he was bleeding. Anxiety spearing through him, Will began to move down the stairs toward Jem—but before he could go more than a few steps, Jem had whirled around and run for the gates. As Will stared, Jem disappeared through them, vanishing into the streets of London beyond.

Will broke into a run—and was brought up short at the foot of the steps when an automaton slid in front of him, moving as quickly and gracefully as water, to block his pathway. Its arms ended in long scissors; Will ducked as one slashed at his face, and Will drove his seraph blade into its chest.

There was the spitting noise of melting metal, but the creature only staggered back a foot and then lunged again. Will ducked under its bladed arms, seizing a dagger from his belt. He whirled back, slashing out with the blade—only to see the automaton suddenly come apart in ribbons before him, great slices of metal peeling back like the skin of an orange. Black fluid boiled up and splashed across his face as the thing went down in crumpled pieces.

He stared. Bridget looked at him serenely across its ruined body. Her hair was standing out around her head in a frizz of red curls, and her white apron was covered in black blood, but she was expressionless. “You ought to be more careful,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

Will was speechless; fortunately, Bridget did not seem to be waiting for an answer. She tossed her hair and walked away toward Henry, who was battling a particularly fearsome-looking automaton, at least fourteen feet high. Henry had deprived it of one of its arms, but the other, a long, multi-jointed monstrosity ending in a curved blade like a kindjal, was still stabbing at him. Bridget walked up behind it calmly and stuck it through the jointure of the torso with her blade. Sparks flew, and the creature began to totter forward. Jessamine, still crouched against the wheel of the carriage, gave a scream and began to crawl out of its way on her hands and knees, toward Will.

Will watched her in stunned surprise for a moment as she bloodied her hands and knees on the glass shards of the broken carriage window but kept crawling. Then, as if slapped into action, he moved forward, darting around Bridget until he reached Jessie, and slid his arms under her, deadlifting her from the ground. She gave a little gasp—his name, he thought—and then went limp against him, only her hands tautly gripping his lapels.

He carried her away from the brougham, his eyes on what was happening in the courtyard. Charlotte had dispatched her automaton, and Bridget and Henry were in the middle of slicing another into bits. Sophie, Gideon, Gabriel, and Cecily had two automatons on the ground among them, and were carving them up like a Christmas roast. Jem had not returned.

“Will,” Jessie said, her voice a weak thread. “Will, please set me down.”

“I need to get you inside, Jessamine.”

“No.” She coughed, and Will saw to his horror that blood was running from the corners of her mouth. “I won’t survive that long. Will—if ever you cared about me at all, even a bit, put me down.”

Will sank to the foot of the stairs with Jessie in his arms, trying his best to cradle her head against his shoulder. Blood freely stained her throat and the front of her white dress, pasting the material to her body. She was terribly thin, her collarbone sticking out like the wings of a bird, her cheeks sunk into hollows. She resembled a patient staggering out of Bedlam more than the pretty girl who had left them only eight weeks ago.

“Jess,” he said softly. “Jessie. Where are you hurt?”

She gave a ghastly sort of smile. Red rimmed the edges of her teeth. “One of the creature’s talons went through my back,” she whispered, and indeed, as Will looked down, he saw that the back of her dress was soaked through with blood. Blood stained his hands, his trousers, his shirt, filling his throat with its choking coppery smell. “It pierced my heart. I can feel it.”

“An iratze—” Will began to fumble at his belt for his stele.