Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(94)

“Look well on this, my son,” said the green-skinned man, “for one day I shall rule a clockwork kingdom of such beings, and you shall be its prince.”

“I know your adoptive parents were warlocks,” she said. “I know that they cared for you. I know that your father invented the clockwork creatures with which you are so enamored.”

“And you know what happened to them.”

—a room torn apart, cogs and cams and gears and ripped metal everywhere, fluid leaking as black as blood, and the green-skinned man and blue-haired woman lying dead among the ruins—

Tessa looked away.

“Let me tell you about my childhood,” Mortmain said. “Adoptive parents, you call them, but they were as much my parents as any amount of blood could make them. They raised me up with care and love, just as yours did you.” He gestured toward the fireplace, and Tessa realized with a dull shock that the portraits that hung on either side were portraits of her own parents: her fair-haired mother, and her thoughtful-looking father with his brown eyes and tie askew. “And then they were killed by Shadowhunters. My father wanted to create these beautiful automatons, these clockwork creatures, as you call them. They would be the greatest machines ever invented, he dreamed, and they would protect Downworlders against the Shadowhunters who routinely murdered and stole from them. You saw the spoils in Starkweather’s Institute.” He spat the last words. “You saw pieces of my parents. He kept my mother’s blood in a jar.”

And the remains of warlocks. Mummified taloned hands, like Mrs. Black’s. A stripped skull, utterly de-fleshed, human-looking save that it had tusks instead of teeth. Vials of sludgy-looking blood.

Tessa swallowed. My mother’s blood in a jar. She could not say she did not understand his rage. And yet—she thought of Jem, his parents dying in front of him, his own life destroyed, and yet he had never sought revenge. “Yes, that was horrible,” Tessa said. “But it does not excuse the things you’ve done.”

A flicker of something deep in his eyes: rage, quickly tamped down. “Let me tell you what I’ve done,” he said. “I have created an army. An army that, once the final piece of the puzzle is in place, will be invincible.”

“And the final piece of the puzzle—”

“Is you,” said Mortmain.

“You say that over and over, and yet you refuse to explain it,” Tessa said. “You demand my cooperation and yet you tell me nothing. You have me imprisoned here, sir, but you cannot force my speech with you, or my willingness if I choose not to give it—”

“You are half-Shadowhunter, half-demon,” Mortmain said. “That is the first thing you should know.”

Tessa, already half-turned away from him, froze. “That is not possible. The offspring of Shadowhunters and demons are stillborn.”

“Yes, they are,” he said. “They are. The blood of a Shadowhunter, the runes on the body of a Shadowhunter, are death to a warlock child in the womb. But your mother was not Marked.”

“My mother was not a Shadowhunter!” Tessa looked wildly to the portrait of Elizabeth Gray over the fireplace. “Or are you saying she lied to my father, lied to everyone all her life—”

“She did not know,” said Mortmain. “The Shadowhunters did not know it. There was no one to tell her. My father built your clockwork angel, you know. It was meant to be a gift for my mother. It contains within it a bit of the spirit of an angel, a rare thing, something he had carried with him since the Crusades. The mechanism itself was meant to be tuned to her life, so that every time her life was threatened the angel would intervene to protect her. However, my father never had a chance to finish it. He was murdered first.” Mortmain began to pace. “My parents were not singled out for murder, of course. Starkweather and his kind delighted in slaughtering Downworlders—they grew rich off the spoils—and would take the slightest excuse to bring violence against them. For that he was hated by the Downworlder community. It was the faeries of the countryside who helped me escape when my parents were killed, and who hid me until the Shadowhunters stopped looking for me.” He took a shuddering breath. “Years later, when they decided to have their revenge, I helped them. Institutes are protected against the ingress of Downworlders, but not against mundanes, and not, of course, against automatons.”

He smiled a terrible smile.

“It was I, with the help of one of my father’s inventions, who crept into the York Institute and switched the baby in the crib there for one of mundane descent. Starkweather’s granddaughter, Adele.”

“Adele,” Tessa whispered. “I saw a portrait of her.” A very young girl with long, fair hair, dressed in an old-fashioned child’s dress, a great ribbon surmounting her small head. Her face was thin and pale and sickly, but her eyes were bright.

“She died when the first runes were put on her,” said Mortmain with relish. “Died screaming, as so many Downworlders had before at the hands of Shadowhunters. Now they had killed one they had come to love. A fitting retribution.”

Tessa stared at him in horror. How could anyone think that to die in agony was fitting retribution for an innocent child? She thought of Jem again, his hands gentle on his violin.

“Elizabeth, your mother, grew up not knowing she was a Shadowhunter. No runes were given to her. I followed her progress, of course, and when she married Richard Gray, I made sure I employed him. I believed that the lack of runes on your mother meant that she could conceive a child who was half-demon, half-Shadowhunter, and to test that theory I sent a demon to her in the shape of your father. She never knew the difference.”