The Usurper
The Gard, Alicante, late November 1543
Jonathan crossed the floor to his sister slowly, his slow growing relief tempered with suspicion.
She was here, in the flesh, for that was her. No one else would look at him like that. Clary stared at him with the fiercest disdain, but Jonathan could smell her frustration mingling with fear. No. Whatever this was, it was no feint. His sister had no desire to be here, far from it.
Yet here she was. Where Jonathan could touch her, push her, wring her neck even, should he wish to. His hands would so easily fit around her neck.
Broceland had blundered, and it cost him dearly.
Jonathan snapped his head to Sebastian, seeking further explanation. Verlac was exceptionally pleased with himself, "She was all by herself. Sleeping rough in a tavern, would you believe."
"Alone?" Jonathan voiced his disbelief.
"Yes, Majesty."
Jonathan's jaw clenched. What the devil was this? Clary didn't baulk, fury on her face. Below that cutting hatred in her eyes, a reddened mark was darkening to violet over her cheekbone. "What is this?" Jonathan pointed.
The thickset loon of Sebastian's merely shrugged, "She struggled."
Jonathan rotated back to his sister. Her chin didn't wobble in the slightest. He traced out the outline of the mark with his forefinger in the air in front of her. "Who did this to you?"
Clary's eyes slid to the side, "That one." She confirmed.
The imbecile puffed out his chest, anticipating he'd be elevated to a knighthood. Jonathan moved over louchely, his heels clicking, "That's your handiwork?"
He nodded, "Yes, Majesty."
Jonathan backhanded him across the face with all his might, hard enough to bruise his own knuckles. The strength of the blow and the shock of it sent the man almost to his arse.
Sebastian made a keening noise of shocked protest.
"She," He gestured back to his sister, "Is a Princess of the Blood, you stupid cunt. You are lucky that I don't order your head off. Nay, consider it a mark of gratitude for your service I let you live." The man, a tower of brawn, looked like he might piss himself. The sight brought satisfaction aplenty. Just not enough to distract Jonathan from what was truly of import here. "Get out," He flicked his wrist at the Verlacs too, "All of you. My sister and I have much to discuss."
They took their leave, the two men with haste, Verlac's wife with clearer reluctance. Once they were gone, Jonathan returned to his sister.
"Where is he?"
Clary rubbed at her bruise, "Dispensing with the pleasantries and defence of my honour, are we?"
"Are we, Your Majesty." Jonathan corrected sharply, "I am your King. If you're going to ask impertinent questions, Clary, at least recall who they are addressed to."
Clary pushed her chin higher and dropped her hand, her eyes dousing him in pure loathing, "Yes, Your Majesty." It always amazed Jonathan; just how much spite so small a body could house. He stalked away to pour another helping of wine. Deciding at the last minute to try catch some bees with honey, he splashed out a glass for his sister too.
She took it from his hands gingerly, like the glass was aflame.
"It's not poisoned," Jonathan declared wearily, taking a long draught of his own to prove the point. "It'd serve me little to kill you while I still have so many questions to ask you."
Clary took the smallest of sips, her body still locked with tension.
Jonathan tried again, "Where is he?" He repeated, his patience simmering low.
"He?" Clary wasn't done being a nuisance for the night, "Who is 'he?' God the Father, God the son? God the Holy Spirit?" No, his sister wasn't done being pert at all. It was a shame Verlac allowed her to be roughed up. It'd made her angry. Worse, sarcastic. Like a wasp, they Morgensterns stung when they felt fear.
Jonathan felt a twang of admiration, even still. It was something he would have said, were he ever stupid enough to warrant their roles reversed.
"Blasphemy is most unbecoming on you sister. Obviously, I mean Jace."
Clary's lips pursed. She set her wine aside. "If I knew that, do you think I'd be standing here?"
There it was. A chink. Jonathan scratched his chin. "Interesting," He mused aloud, "That is perhaps the most interesting thing I've heard in days." And perhaps the most troubling. If Jace wasn't with Clary and if he wasn't at Chatton or Havenfoile, where the hell was he? If he wasn't where Clary or any of Jonathan's spies in Broceland or Alicante could get eyes on him, what the devil was he doing? The only thing more disconcerting than Jace and Clary locked together in cahoots was the prospect of Jace rolling loose on his own, less a penny in the gutter and more a metal ball swathed in gunpowder.
Jonathan wasn't a fool. He knew that was what everyone here was holding their breath and waiting for. Until the Duke of Broceland, King Valentine's other son, was before Jonathan's throne and kissing his ring nothing was certain. They'd feuded enough down through the years, but surely even Jace in his brute headed stubbornness could see there was naught to be gained in challenging the way of the world. Jonathan was Valentine's rightful heir; nothing could change that. Nobody could deny that. This was his, unquestionably. Why then did it seem like everyone was prepared to question it?
"What's he playing at, Clary?" Jonathan demanded crisply, unveiling some of his unease, "The longer Jace hides and skulks, the more treasonous it seems." Jonathan braced his hands on the table, Clary stood with hers by her sides. "It's over." Jonathan declared firmly, "I won." He stared her down, his slip of a sister, the constant thorn in his side. Bold and defiant, even unto the last. She had no cause for defiance, no alternative but to supplicate herself to him. And yet, Clary hesitated still. He scoffed, then stooped to remind her "You have no choice." Jonathan's eyes skited over her face, "Your little would-be treasons all these years bore no fruit. I am King of Idris now, and you may mislike it all you wish, it remains truth. Alas," He clicked his tongue, "You have none to dispossess me with."
Clary maintained her pressed silence, her eyes following his every move and her tongue never stirring. He pushed up straight, "You would say naught even if you did know Jace's mind." Though Jonathan maintained convinced she did not- it was there in the wiry tension to Clary's stance, her open recognition that this was not how anything was supposed to play out from her side of the board. Their mother wore the same expression when Jonathan strode in upon her at Chapeltoute.
"If you believe me to still hold secrets, why not put me upon the rack?"
Jonathan sniffed, "Oh, I know you to have secrets Clary. And I will worm them out, make no mistake of it. But not upon the rack. You are, however regrettably, my kin. Valentine's blood is in your veins as assuredly as in mine. I will not demean it so far as to have you treated as a common villain." It would only compromise him, to tarnish the impunity of Morgenstern blood.
She spread her weight, a fighter's stance, "So none may bruise my face, but it is fair to throw our mother in the Black Tower?" She shook her head, "Your men boast of it openly."
"Mine own mother plots treason!" Jonathan hissed. "Since when has the just punishment become the crime? You cry out is in unnatural to imprison one's mother, but where is the censure for her? Surely there is naught more unnatural than plotting to rob your own son of his birthright?" So great was Jonathan's anger that he bit his tongue, and the pain of it winced across his face as a lightening bolt. "I saw it with my own eyes, Clary. All her little scribblings. All the letters she would have dispatched to Jace, to Aconite, to Adamant, to anyone who would undermine me! All while she propped up our father's rotting remains and had food and drink brought to his chambers thrice a day!" He gave a gust of disgust, "It was quite the web of deceit and misadventure our mother would weave. Anyone else I'd had dragged up the scaffold for it. Alas, you are right. Having one's mother's head removed is seldom seen an auspicious start to one's reign. Even if she does warrant the Agrippina treatment."
For the first time, Clary seemed to quail. Even now, she retained an attachment to Jocelyn Jonathan would never comprehend. "Let me see her." Clary managed to make even a plea in her position sound a demand. She was Valentine's daughter indeed. "Let me speak with our mother, Jonathan, and resolve this."
Jonathan looked at her, plucky and prideful. It was in times like these, when Jonathan saw the most of their shared blood in her, that he almost wished they could be allies. Together, united, he and Clary may prove quite the force.
As things stood, they never had been. She'd positioned herself against him, as Jonathan's rival, over and over. She knowingly plotted to unseat him from this his God-given and lawful position as their father's successor. Just because her schemes saw no fruition did not delude Jonathan for a moment into anticipating her loyalty hereafter.
It would appear, after God sent the frogs, boils and locusts, he sent the women of Jonathan's family to act a plague.
He would not let Clary from his sight again. Until Jonathan knew where Jace was and what he was doing, Clary was the greatest surety he possessed. No, as long as Clary was here and utterly at Jonathan's mercy, Jace would do nothing. He could do nothing. It was from Clary all Jace's influence through Valentine came. Without her, Jace and no claim to power at this court. The sight of Clary sitting at Jonathan's side would mark him out as the King of Idris as surely as a crown on his head might. Here they were, the last Morgensterns together. The common people were stupid and the lords of the realm fickle. The appearance of King Valentine's natural heirs as a united front would be more than sufficient to quell whatever discontent may linger in the distant provinces.
Jonathan looked into Clary's sullen, marked face and for the first time, he could have kissed her.
Her being here would do one of two things, each equally beneficial to Jonathan.
In the first instance, the sight of her would make Jace quail. He was so devoted to her that he'd do nothing to challenge or undermine Jonathan, not for fear retribution would be visited on his wife. He'd come to the Gard with his tail between his legs and Jonathan's rule was secure.
Alternatively, even more appealing, was the prospect that Jace would come charging in here all pride and concern to save her. Either way, he'd still end up behind the thick walls of the Gard, which none escaped from except by death. Either way, Jace would be off the board of power in Idris finally, where he belonged. In obscurity.
Chortling with low satisfaction, Jonathan reached out to shake his sister's shoulder.
"Of course you shall see Mother, dearest chuck. You shall be enormous comfort to one another in these dark days, I am sure. You shall have all the time you need to grieve together, somewhere where you are both unquestionably safe."
-000000000000000-
Jonathan's lackeys permitted Clary to bathe and dress before she was brought to her mother in the Black Tower. Another well placed strike to the face came as Clary was laced up into one of the gowns she'd left at Havenfoile. The eyes of all her attendants were intense and not all of them unfamiliar. It'd been years since Kaelie Whitewillow dressed Clary, not since she'd left court a young widow during the early days of Clary's marriage. She'd never sent for her to come back, Clary recalled, because she'd despised the way Kaelie looked at Jace and she'd been jealous even of their stale flirtation.
Accordingly, their delayed reunion was not sweet. Clary knew perfectly well that she spied for Jonathan. They all did, Clary was sure of that, but Kaelie was most open about it, her eyes tracking every twitch of Clary's muscles in the glass. When her attempts to recapture Jace's attention failed over the years, it would seem Kaelie turned her attentions to the Prince.
That said, not everyone here was unwelcome. Emma returned just as Clary was clambering into the bath. She'd chased another maid out of the way and knelt beside the tub, taking the nailbrush and Clary's hand for herself. "Be careful of that one," She whispered to Clary as she scrubbed, tilting her head toward Kaelie, "She warms his bed."
Emma said nothing more, but also silently insisted on accompanying Clary on the climb to the tower.
Despite Jonathan's claims he'd afforded Jocelyn some of the rights of her station, Clary was still petrified as to what state she'd find her mother in. Of them all, Jonathan hated Jocelyn more than anyone, perhaps even more than he did Jace. Jace was under no obligation to love or nurture Jonathan, not as Jocelyn was. Their mother's abandonment still stung Jonathan as the deepest and most irreversible of betrayals. Since her return to court, Jocelyn's blatant intimacies with Clary only fermented Jonathan's rage.
Besides, Clary knew there were many types of torture. Not all of them required broken bones and physical agony. She'd be horrified but not surprised to discover rats, flees and filth accompanying her mother in her containment.
As the key in the lock turned, Emma's hand slipped back into Clary's; seeking comfort this time rather than offering any. Clary had never been a prisoner in the Gard before; Emma had. Grateful and steadying, Clary squeezed her fingers.
And Emma did not need to be here. Her husband was Jonathan's right hand. There was naught to be gained for her by standing with Clary, by volunteering to follow her into this. Clary gripped the Countess's hand tight as they stepped over the threshold.
Jocelyn's quarters weren't the cleanest or most comfortable by any means, but it was nowhere near as bad as Clary feared. It was without difficulty or visible signs of pain that Jocelyn shot to her feet. Her face was unmarked, her clothes clean, the aghast expression on her face was the only true symbol of discomfort.
"Clary?" he sounded stunned and appalled, "What in God's name are you doing here?" Her mother's stricken face warred with relief. Clary understood the conflict, given she herself was in the thick of it; warring against gladness to find her mother whole and anger and fear that this was to be their situation.
"What happened?" Jocelyn cupped her daughter's face.
The lock in the closed door turned again. Emma stepped out of touching range but certainly not out of earshot- something she would not achieve in these cramped quarters even if she tried.
"I must ask you the same, Mother."
"What have they done to you?" And then, her voice crackling with real terror, "What have they done to Jace?"
"Nothing." Clary shook her head, catching at her wrists to halt herself from wringing her hands. It was a bad habit her mother despised. "Nobody can find him."
"He's free?"
Clary tucked her hands inside her hanging sleeves and stepped back towards the fire, "He's not here, if that offers answer." Her mind skipped over a half dozen more troubling possibilities: Jace trampled in a ditch, languishing in some other cell, tossing and turning in a plague house, floating face down in a river… She cast them away, forcing the stone of her fears to sink rather than skip onwards. If Jace was with a foe they would know about it. Jonathan had all but called for a price on his head. He must be among friends. Knowing and hearing nothing boded better than having him here, little ease though it granted her.
She puffed out a breath, watching it fog before her. There was a fire lit, but it did little to warm the stone of the walls or floor. The sparsity of the room left plenty of space for draughts. In fact, there was nothing in here beyond Jocelyn's bed, a table and stool for eating and a small bible. There were no companions or ladies in waiting upon the Queen- Dowager Queen, Clary amended internally.
If they were to start puzzling this out, there was only one place to begin. "Mother, start at the beginning. What… what happened with my father?" Clary almost said 'the King' before recalling that title applied to Jonathan now.
Jocelyn stiffened. She looked pointedly over Clary's shoulder.
"Lady Emma has long been my friend," Clary defended her.
"Now she is the Earl of Burchetten's bride."
"And Countess of Chene in her own right." Emma corrected firmly, stepping between the Clary and Jocelyn like a knight into a jousting list, insisting her voice be submitted into proceedings.
"I should think you have the least cause to tempt our new King to question your loyalties." Jocelyn bit back flatly, "You alone here are made fortunate by what has come to pass. Besides which, I doubt you should like to tarry in this side of the keep after what happened to your father."
Jocelyn, when she sharpened her tongue and played the chastising mistress, had been known to quail much older and better established women than this youthful Countess. Emma was not so easily daunted. "And my mother," She reminded them all. Then it was Clary she addressed, "If you wish for me to withdraw I will, Your Grace. I am loyal to my King, as is commanded." Emma's eyes dipped as did the volume of her voice, "But I bear no love for the men who ordered off my father's head and the sale of my hand."
Clary did not need to press any further. She never had cause to doubt Emma's loyalties. And she found herself in circumstances now in which she would be glad of any friend. Clary had no intention of forgetting who Emma's husband was, on the contrary. Not while her husband's company may bring Emma into Jonathan's privy chambers. Clary may not be sleeping in this room, but she was under no illusion that she would not be free to come and go as she pleased about the Gard. Emma would. What Clary need most now, besides understanding of what had happened, was eyes and ears where things were now happening.
"Emma stays," She proclaimed. "Now tell me, Mother, what brought us here."
Jocelyn dropped down onto her bed, defeated. "I tried my best, Clary. I tried to buy us some time. Yes, it's true, I did attempt to conceal the King's passing." Clary swallowed that with difficulty. Perhaps any outrage she carried was beyond her reach because to her mind Valentine could not possibly be dead. Surely, he would step in to correct it all any moment now, to unseat Jonathan as Lord of Misrule and restore order? As he had done before? But no, in her heart of hearts Clary knew it was impossible. Valentine was gone.
"I knew it was not a ruse that would hold for long," Jocelyn persisted furiously, "I thought it would be enough to buy us enough time- I thought it would take longer for news to reach Jonathan at Estoncurt than it would you."
"He was not at Estoncurt," Emma interjected, a line poking between her brows, "He was at Hendonne. He has been since the summer."
Jocelyn pinched her hands together, "As I now know. I also now know how swift Pangborn's spies were at waylaying all my messengers. I hadn't realised just how firmly he'd already sworn himself; he gave me cause to believe he'd help me. Pangborn was playing both sides." She clicked her tongue, "But I might have foreseen that. I did, in a way. The one who surprised me was Starkweather, of all people. Of all moments for him to grow a backbone!" She poked her tongue into her cheek, a scornful snub, "He'd sent word to Jonathan before I even put pen to paper. While I was busy trying to purchase more time by keeping the servants out of Valentine's bedchamber and the King's routine undisrupted, Starkweather put a man in the saddle."
For all of Clary's life, Jocelyn was an unstoppable force. Even these past few years back at Valentine's side, there'd remained an air of quiet defiance to her, a hard glint in the side of her eye which suggested that though she may bite her tongue, Jocelyn was still standing on her own feet.
Today, in the wavering, retreating light from a shuttered window, Clary saw that the hair unspooling from underneath her mother's coif was grey.
She'd lost one parent of late, and suddenly Clary was smacked with the realisation her mother was getting old too.
Her shoulders sank. Jocelyn was holding herself up, still, but barely.
Clary tried to settle the sums. She was here and Jocelyn was here, each of them scuppered by Jonathan in turn, neither of them able to press whatever shred of an advantage they might have had to secure their positions under this new King.
Jocelyn had just filled in the hours Clary was struggling to account for, apart from those after she parted from Jace. That was when the real reversal of fortune occurred, it must be so. Otherwise Jace would be under lock and key in the Gard too. Or worse.
The Duchess brushed the trimming of her laces with her thumb. She hadn't worn this gown for some months, and it sat stiffly at her shoulders and wrists. It was a sombre one of darkest blue intended to communicate her mourning for her father, splitting over a black kirtle. No, Clary wouldn't have donned the colour of royal mourning... not since the funeral of Jonathan's baby son.
Something flickered in the pit of Clary's stomach as she fought to focus on the present. It was universally agreed Jace hadn't made it as far as Adamant. Stood it not then to reason he might flee to his other sibling? To his sister, in distant Edom, to fling himself on the mercy of a woman who was now a queen?
Clary didn't know. It remained a risk. Isabelle may be mistress of Estoncurt, but the castle and its domains were still manned by Jonathan's people. Even if Jace made it that far north without being apprehended, there was no guarantee Isabelle would possess the influence there to keep the castellans or chamberlains from handing Jace over to their master.
One had only to look at Jocelyn to see being queen and being powerful were not the same.
The sound of a firmly cleared throat startled both mother and daughter. They turned to the third party, loitering all in black with her back to the fire. The skittery log behind Emma spat out a spark. Under the curve of the dark fabric of her hood and the small slice of a white coif underneath, the few inches of golden hair on display shone very bright. They matched the weaker flames in the grate; burning in cold air on little fuel. While Jace and Jeanne's locks held a darker brassiness, Emma's hair was lightened by years having flown free in the sun of the southern Lakelands.
"I did it."
"You did what, Emma?"
Dark eyes flickered to the door, then darted from toppled Queen to chafing Duchess in turn. Emma stepped forward purposefully, to complete their triangle where she could lower her voice and still be heard. "I sent word."
"To-?" Clary dared not confirm it aloud, even as her heart thumped.
Emma nodded once.
"But how?" Jocelyn challenged, the frame of her tight bed creaking.
Emma's lips curved, "I'm the Earl of Burchetten's bride."
Clary gasped an astonished laugh. "And you succeeded?"
"You must have," Jocelyn regarded Emma with fresh eyes, "If you failed, we'd know."
Emma shrugged, "I sent Ashdown; a man whose loyalty I could be sure of. He is sworn to me, not Sebastian, because his family long served my father. I told him only to return to me if he failed. He did not."
Jocelyn retained her pessimism, "So either he succeeded, or he too is in a cell below us."
"I don't think so," Clary thought back to Jonathan's pressing, "For we know for certain whom is not in a cell below us."
Jocelyn scoffed, "I don't know if that was madness or genius, Emma." She re-evaluated the third party, the one of they three with most freedom and influence just now. The only one whose quick thinking and calculations appeared to have paid off in the chaos, "But it appears to have paid dividends in this singular instance."
-000000000000000-
The Gard, Alicante, early December 1543
Receiving an emissary from a piss hole in the wall like Adamant did not warrant a throne room reception. For this case alone, Jonathan opted to make an exception.
After all, his wife hailed from Adamant, though Jonathan himself had never been and never cared to. From all accounts, it was the sort of place you sent afflicted cattle to die in peace where they wouldn't sicken the rest of the herd.
Jonathan took up his position on the throne. The excitement of taking this seat and sitting elevated, several inches above the rest of the Plebeian masses, had yet to wear off for him.
However, at the last moment he looked to the smaller chair to his left. It was the sort of seat you'd put a kingly spouse on. Jonathan's blood boiled and his gut twisted. No, a pox on Isabelle. She'd stay and rot in Estoncurt for all he cared. He was King. He'd have none of her company foisted upon him. He'd see only who he wished to, go to bed only with whom he wished to. He wouldn't have her here scrambling his mind and his senses.
He couldn't look at Isabelle and not see all they should have had together.
She should be his queen, radiant at his side, a beauteous consort the envy of all Europe. Their son should be named Crown Prince and gushed over by the court. Instead, the chair beside him was empty and their son a tiny pile of bones under the Chapel Royal gradually fading to dust. Of all the injustices life dealt him and of all the things snatched from him- that one was the most excruciating. And the most incensing.
The side door opened, and Clary stepped in. As he'd commanded, she dressed well, though her face was very white. Jonathan hadn't summoned her so unexpectedly and ordered her to make well since her arrival. She looked at him with a startled dread, and Jonathan lifted his chin out of the cradle of his palm. He motioned for her to step onto the space left for her on the dais.
She hesitated, shooting a final look over her shoulder to where a man at arms and Lady Verlac lingered. One stayed stoically unresponsive, the latter gave a quick rallying nod.
Clary climbed onto the platform like it were a scaffold. She probably had anticipated to climb one, Jonathan realised, given how tight she gripped the small prayer book in her hands.
"Sit, Clary."
She stared into his face like she could decipher it.
"Sit. It is you our friends from Adamant wish to see. So sit down and shut up. If you behave yourself, I might be inclined to let you out more often."
Her expression as mutinous as it was curious, Clary sat.
Jonathan beckoned for the audience to begin with a flick of his wrist.
The Earl of Adamant's dispatched emissary still had his riding cape over one shoulder. He stopped a suitable distance away and offered a curt bow.
Alexander Lightwood's younger brother shared the unfortunate trait of having a mouth that naturally curved downwards. It gave the impression he was perpetually glum, which in Jonathan's experience was generally the case with Alec. Isabelle shared the familial peculiarity, though hers was far less pronounced. Like everything else with Isabelle, she'd learned to smooth it over and divert attention from that which was less desirable about her.
Jonathan halted there. He would not wander further into any thoughts of Isabelle's lips- not their shape, their feel nor their taste.
She was dead to him. As dead as her son.
While Jonathan's thoughts were yanked from the Earl of Adamant's sister. Max Lightwood, erstwhile squire to the man who was now King of Idris, looked almost immediately to Jonathan's sister.
Max hadn't spent long with them at Estoncurt. Isabelle dispatched him home a little under a year after he arrived, following her father's demise. She'd sensed Max would need to learn the inner workings of estate management, after the farce of Alec's marriage was settled and it was clear that union was never going to produce any heirs.
Jonathan didn't think he'd taught the boy much anyway. He could remember him being irritatingly serious all the time. Yes, that was Max's defining quality from what Jonathan recalled. The boy wanted to sit indoors reading all day and couldn't take a joke.
That was unfortunate, given his presence here was one.
"We take it you are come in your master's stead to pledge himself to our throne?" Jonathan posed his question that was not a question with all the imperiousness that befit his station, laying emphasis heavily on the inclusive royal pronoun. Adamant was still French territory, nominally, though Valentine had spent much of his last years trying to reach a negotiation with the French crown that would change this. Jonathan didn't know the finer details, he'd been long gone from his father's court by then, but he understood Valentine tried to sweeten the deal by offering Clary's eldest whelp, Jonathan's goddaughter, for a betrothal to the King of France's third and favoured son- not that any formal agreement was reached.
It left Adamant a limbo of land, not particularly wanted by the French King but affiliated through family ties to the Idrisian Crown. Alec was still fresh and green as its Earl, he would do well to remember where his obligations here lay.
Max, a not quite-seventeen-year-old, drew himself to the full of his lanky, knobbly kneed height. "I am here to ascertain the truth of the Duchess of Broceland's whereabouts and wellbeing, Your Majesty."
Jonathan rubbed his forefinger and thumb together, trying to measure whether or not that reply was a snub, and if so how great a one.
"See for yourself man, you have eyes."
Max's eyes, a much paler blue than his brother's, shifted back to Clary. Jonathan could feel the depth of feeling beside him, though he did not deign to look to where Clary sat like a trapped hummingbird, wings frantically aflutter yet going nowhere.
"Your Grace-"
"Ah!" Jonathan lifted a finger, the smiling schoolmaster who was a quick with the rod as he was his praise, "You were told to look, Lightwood. You were not given leave to speak."
The indignant stutter to Max's frame and the flames that rose behind his eyes were suddenly familiar. He was more his sister than Jonathan realised.
"Very well. Your Majesty must forgive me while I direct my questions to him, then. I wonder, Sire, why the Duchess is here and not with her children. Or in her own house."
"This is her house," Jonathan declared, looking around the cavernous, stately throne room of his forefathers; the high ceiling, the gaping, polished wooden floors, the canopy of state above his head, the crown and star forever intertwined above his head. "Where else should my sister be?"
Impudently, Max kept looking at Clary, "Surely, Madam, you would be happier back at Havenfoile with your daughters. If you wish to return there, I would be only too happy to escort you on my return journey."
"Let us not be foolish," Jonathan snapped, "Testing times as these make it best for Clary to remain as and where she is. She wishes to mourn our blessed father with our mother, as she looks also to the protection of her King. A King to whom you remain vassal."
Max bobbed another bow, the smallest tilt of his spine he could get away with. Yes, too much time at home with his mother had made this boy spoiled and rude.
"Clary is here in our safekeeping, where she will remain."
"Yet, Your Majesty's safekeeping seems to be wanting." Max raised his index finger to swab at his upper cheek. The same place where Clary's bruise was mottling down and fading to grey, but discernible nevertheless. A small mark that would cast a long shadow. "And last I recall; the Duchess had a tongue of her own, which you also appear to have misplaced."
All around the throne room, breaths shot to the back of throats. Clary's hands tightened on the arms of her chair, bracing herself to leap down and in front of that upstart boy, Jonathan reckoned.
The rage that the challenge stoked up was riled into something more barbed. Jonathan's fingers settled on the sapphire his father once wore, a small signet of the far greater thing Valentine bequeathed him- a kingdom and the estate of kingship. These days, whenever things bothered him, his fingers reached out for it. To remind him it was still there, that this was not all a murky dream. He finally had it- the crown he'd always longed for, that he'd been born for, the reward he'd endured it all for. And yet, Jonathan seemed to have largely exchanged one cage for another. Half his Council chamber sat empty, and those who did sit and advise Jonathan would not have him leave the Gard. The commons were restless, they said, and these were the early days of his reign. Jonathan could not but thrash at these new bars which enclosed him.
He had difficulty enough impressing his wishes on his ministers. As for the wilful, treacherous women of his family- the less said the better. What Jonathan would not sit still and tolerate was the pomposity of this boy, heir to a backwater only by way of his brother's perversions.
There was a hierarchy to this world and if Jonathan had to squash the overmighty down into their place in that order with his heel then so be it.
"The Earl of Adamant has little right to question the Crown. Certainly, he has no reason to enquire as to the Duchess of Broceland at all."
"No," Max's throat bobbed but his voice rang clear, "But the Duke of Broceland does."
A murmur swept around the chamber at the announcement. For weeks, none dared speak that name in Jonathan's presence, not unless it was to scorn or spit on. Here Max stood, barely out of short clothes, proclaiming not only the Duke was alive, but proclaiming himself here on the Duke's behalf. The Earl of Adamant was only a cover. Jace sent a brazen spy into the heart of Jonathan's fortress.
The next thing Jonathan knew he was on his feet, "The Duke of Broceland," His booming voice commanded silence all around, "Should be here on his fucking knees!"
Eyes flitted to feet, no one moved, no one seemed to breathe.
Compose yourself.
There it was again, ringing in his head, Isabelle's voice. Just as clearly, Jonathan could feel the coolness of her hands in his and hear the ripple of her skirts as she knelt down beside him to murmur in his ear.
"I am the King," Jonathan's voice wavered unforgivably as he said it. "If the Duke had any sense he'd be here, pledging his fealty and taking whatever patchwork following he has with him. Then, I might be inclined to clemency for his tardiness." His voice evened, but Jonathan's body was still atremble.
He cut his eyes toward Clary who'd also silently risen to her feet, the woman who was supposed to be his guarantee of Jace's good behaviour. He looked anew at that damned, blasted mark upon her face and at the weight of her silence. She damns you with her silence. The other voice Jonathan couldn't silence, try as he might murmured on,
No, locking Clary up in the tower and quietening her was not enough, Jonathan realised too late.
Signalling the acceptance of a conclusion he'd already reached before he walked into this room, Max Lightwood bowed again, this time most evidently to Clary. Jonathan's stomach rolled. For a moment, through the descending mist of his rage he longed to grab the stupid little bastard by his collar and dash his brains out upon the door frame.
He grappled himself back from the cliff edge, barely. A King couldn't bloody his hands. Nevertheless, there were plenty of men in this keep Jonathan could order to do it for him. Everything within him screamed not to let Max just walk away after snubbing him so plainly and after challenging him so implicitly. Jonathan craned forward, instinctively desperate not to let Max carry back word of that small bruise to Adamant or to Jace.
"He's here as a diplomat," Clary materialised at Jonathan's shoulder, guessing his thoughts. She gripped Jonathan by the arm, "And he's only a boy."
Still, the order crested on Jonathan's tongue. A shout, a syllable, and the gates would close, a bolt on a door in the Black Tower scraped shut to match. Or something more subtle, a broken neck from riding mishap, a knife in the gut from a robbery on the road gone wrong.
Don't you dare touch him.
Behind the sight of Max's shuffled backward retreat was a vibrant strain of other sights. Such as the way Isabelle tackled her youngest brother in a laughing embrace the second he got off his horse from Adamant, the walls of Estoncurt ringing with her laughter for the first time since they'd wed, Isabelle tugging Max's wrist towards her to fix the ties of his sleeves, her musing that she remembered holding him as a newborn and now he was so tall. How she couldn't believe her baby brother was almost a man grown.
Jonathan's hands flexed but his tongue stilled. The shaking didn't stop even after Max was gone.
-00000000000000-
The sound of Clary's breathing was still loud in her ears as she was led back to her quarters. Contrary to her expectations, Clary was not locked up in a bare turret as their mother had been, but led back to the rooms she'd occupied during the brief times she'd stayed in the Gard before. The only difference was that she was no longer free to go where she pleased.
All Clary's meals were taken in private in these chambers. All day and night she was guided and watched, accompanied to and from the chapel and from the gardens on a rare fair day from some exercise. No other outings were permitted. She wasn't even released to see her father interred in the crypt at St Mark's.
No, she had no company save that which Jonathan allowed. That meant Kaelie, mostly, who sewed and read with Clary, who helped dress and undress her, then went to Jonathan at night. The only person Clary was ever glad to see these days was Emma. Emma, who managed all this with a swift, bleak sense of humour and her pride intact. Once, she'd looked up to Clary. Now Clary looked to her spirits to emulate.
"I would speak with my mother." Clary addressed this to her guard. She and Jocelyn were strictly kept apart, not that they could do much but talk to one another these days, and Jonathan disliked even that. Clary stopped short of her apartments. She waited to see if he would push her on physically. It would seem Jonathan's insistence the King's sister's body be treated as sacrosanct paid off. Apart from her women, no one touched her. "
"The King gave no mention of it."
"You can go back and ask him, if you will." Clary suggested sweetly and slyly.
When she'd left Jonathan's chambers, it was to the sound of smashing furniture. Learning that Jace was very much still alive, and very much still primed to act- though where and how remained a mystery- had not improved Jonathan's mood. It would take a brave man indeed to inflict further questions upon Jonathan this evening.
A brave man, this one was not.
"Make it quick."
Emma was permitted to accompany her too. She fed her husband innocuous half-truths about the things Clary and Jocelyn thought and felt, and it appeared to be enough to appease the Earl and Jonathan by association. It was enough for them to feel Emma was of value walking a half-step behind Clary on their ascent to where Jocelyn shivered by her meagre fire.
She looked up with alarm at the appearance of Clary so late. Jocelyn threw aside the sewing she was squinting at and jumped up.
Alas, their guide lingered, his unease at permitting this coven to consort having risen as they climbed the Black Tower. Now he sought to recoup some control and become more diligent in his duties.
Emma stepped forward with a theatrical groan, eyes screwed shut and a hand tight against her embroidered stomacher "Lady, my blood arrived this month with such splitting pain again. I can scarce move with the agony of it." She doubled over for good measure and screwed up her face, "Whatever was that remedy you spoke of to me before?"
There was a bobbing hesitation during which the guard did not move. Emma cracked one eye open, "Woe! It's congealing."
The man couldn't flee quick enough.
Clary suppressed a smile as Emma threw herself onto the stool and kicked out her legs, rubbing her heels against the stone floor with satisfaction.
"Where do you think of these things, Emma?"
Emma shrugged, knotting her hands together in her lap. "Inspiration oft comes in the moment."
The adult Emma Carstairs was taking some getting used to. She was Emma Verlac now, properly, but that was never the name that came to mind when Clary thought of her. Perhaps it was because Clary still saw the last Countess of Chene's kindness flashing through in Emma's smile, or the late Earl's glimmering wit in her quick thinking. She was not a little girl anymore, she was a wife and a lady. Clary could still remember her as a delightfully wild young girl, during the short time she'd been their ward; getting under her waiting women's feet and incessantly asking Jace if she could sit in on a Privy Council meeting.
There was little sign of that girl now. Emma long ago grew out of it. She was a courtly lady now, dressed up in a seed pearls on a low cut square neckline, the most daring French kind Isabelle confirmed as fashionable at this court. And yet, there were moments Clary got glimpses at how young Emma still was. Her hair was covered in a black net coif just now and yet, whispers of girlishness remained. Under the caul, Emma still took the care to weave blue silk ribbons into her coiled braids. Clary couldn't say why the observation pained her. Valentine had married her off much too young, caring not a whit for the young woman and thinking only of the fortune.
Clary was regarded much the same way when Valentine brought her back to Alicante, a bit younger than Emma was now. Perhaps that was the root of her sadness. Perhaps Clary was mourning for the young, silly girls they'd never been allowed to be.
"What is it?" Jocelyn demanded crisply, "What brought you all the way up here so late?"
Clary barely knew where to begin. "Jonathan just had an audience with Max Lightwood, sent as a representative for the Earl of Adamant." She moved to the window, shut and sealed. It was too dark to see much in the way of city sights anyway. "Though really it was me he came to look upon." She swivelled back to her mother, "Jace sent him."
Jocelyn clapped her hands together. "He did it. He got away. God is good, girls! It's still to play for."
Except they were not playing, anymore. Jonathan's taunt was true, Clary had no son to exercise a counter claim to her brother's. Clary clenched her fists, her suspicions confirmed at Jocelyn's sudden animation, the excitement so plainly rattling through her. "You never said what was in those letters you never sent, Mother." Clary began slowly as she looked at where the shutters thumped in their frame, stiffened by age and lack of use, perpetually bolted.
"I panicked in the hours following my father's death, mistakes were always doomed to be made. Because that was all I had, hours. You had days." That wasn't sufficient to communicate the breadth of her suspicions either. Clary thought of the emphasis put on her education, her marriage, her heirs- and not just by Valentine. "You have had years to consider this. What did you mean to do, Mother, if Jonathan hadn't interrupted you?"
Jocelyn crossed the narrow space between them. Clary thought of another sparse room, in which Jocelyn first spoke to her of destiny many years ago. Her mother took her hands. "Your brother is unfit to rule in more than temperament. In a few sentences I could undo his claim entirely. The one I'd commence with is this; it's true, Valentine and I did not wait until we married, he lied to protect me. Or, more specifically, to protect our child. When we told the world our firstborn came early, we lied. Jonathan was conceived outside of wedlock. That makes him a bastard and bastard cannot inherit." Her mother's voice and chest swelled, "And once that becomes known, only one is left. The only lawfully born child of Valentine II is you, Clary. You're your father's heir. You should be Queen."
Clary couldn't move, she couldn't speak. Jocelyn awaited her grand reaction of this proclamation. In her mother's face shone such wild conviction, such excitement. It was not a hundred miles from the way Valentine looked at his daughter when he told her he'd make her son King.
God. Jocelyn truly resented it that greatly, how Valentine cast her out and aside. She truly despised it that much, how Valentine took Jonathan from her. She'd hated Valentine enough that she'd concocted some hare-brained scheme out of envy and spite to craft an heir of her own. She thought to strike at Valentine in his grave by supplanting his son with her daughter. Jocelyn would turn her power struggle against her husband, this long war of their marriage onto the country, into a real one. One with real bloodshed, and a high cost.
They were delusional. Both of her parents.
Such a thing would never be done in Clary's name.
Clary snatched her hands away, "That is a fine thing to say to ensure both our heads land on spikes."
"Clary!"
"Are you mad? Never say anything of the sort again."
"It is-"
"Suicide, Mother!"
They may as well stand here and cast gold pennies down a well with wishes as entertain this nonsense. Jocelyn had a quarter of a century to plan this, her master plan, and that was the best she had? As Jesus wept in the garden, if ever a straw was clutched at, it was this. This silliness was on a level with something Isabella or Jeanne would concoct as part of their play pretends. Like their game where the beautiful princess bested the dragon with an Angel blessed sword, the one which Clary always had to intervene in to ensure they took it in turns to play the dragon.
"I'm his prisoner!"
Jocelyn tapped her fingernails together agitatedly, "Well, you getting locked here was not part of the plan." She admitted, "We were supposed to march here with Luke's men to hold the throne and the city while Jace and Alec raised an army for you."
A swoop of harsh laughter left Clary; her mother's face tightened. "There is more than that which disqualifies Jonathan. He has this affliction-"
"Mother, it would not matter if he had a forked tail and horns." Clary cut through her, the last of her patience drained, "Not while he has one crucial body part that I do not. He's a man. And the armies of this land are also commanded by men. None of them would raise an army for a woman, not when there is a male alternative." And the bastardy Jocelyn was trying to sell was tenuous at best. In the eyes of most of the men who governed the world, marrying a woman after you got her pregnant was sufficient to make the relationship and its issue honourable.
Jocelyn would neither retract nor relent, "Much of his support rests upon the Cardinal, who would never hold with one born in sin."
"He would if the alternative is a woman." Both Clary and Jocelyn jumped. They'd forgotten about Emma. "The Cardinal despises everyone born in the shape of Eve. Unanimously."
"That she is wed to a Herondale will buttress her claim." Jocelyn had been blinded by this for so long she refused to wash her eyes and see sense, "Luke and I have been sewing the seeds for years."
"This is preposterous!" Emma threw her hands up, the torchlight striking off the ruby on her left hand, giving her the impression of punching sparks. "It will never truck and it will never work. It is a waste of time and breath to entertain it. Clary is correct. Women do not inherit while their brothers breathe. Bastard or no, tyrant or no."
Jocelyn set her jaw, "It is a long game. If we took our time, and played our cards right we could do it. Jace at liberty is a great asset to us now! He can press Clary's claim and soon the people-"
Emma snapped her fingers, "With all due respect, Madam, we are thoroughly in the endgame now. If the Duchess is proclaimed Queen in a single province, King Jonathan will order her head off and that will be that."
No, her mother had nothing to offer her except lunacy and wild revenge on a man already dead and cold. Clary was on her own.
Emma persisted, "There is only one person in this kingdom who can mount a challenge to the throne, and he is not in this tower." Clary swung about, astonished at the depth and potency of the rage Emma so carefully adorned and disguised with glibness and droll humour.
Clary's breath caught. Her head was spinning and she felt nauseous. "There are few things he desires less than to be King."
Emma shrugged, her eyes alight with a much more concentrated and calculated fire than Jocelyn's narrow frenzy, "Perhaps. But you must see what Max saw today Clary, what he will ferry back to his brothers. Come, you know your husband better than I do."
Clary's heart turned over again. Yes. Yes, she did. She did know her hot blooded, honourably devoted, ever loyal protector of a husband.
It would seem Clary was to be the striking flint, after all. Just not in the way Jocelyn expected.
Clary truly thought that hearing Jonathan had her here would work in the way her brother meant for it to. Concerns for her safety would trump whatever reservations or resentment Jace still carried toward Valentine's son. He would come to Alicante and bow.
She never dared to contemplate the alternative.
Through the covered windows, Clary knew torchlight would bob in the windows and in the streets of her city below them. An oblivious Troy on the brink. Too easily, she could imagine it burning; could see uncontrolled flames clawing through one thatched roof after the other and hear the weeping of women and the wailing of children.
She and Isabelle had given so much and suffered so much to try prevent it coming to this. Now, the men would march over all their hard work and sacrifice, thinking it all done for their sake, thinking it the right thing to do. Clary failed. In more than her duty to provide a son, she'd failed her people. She'd failed to stop this, unwittingly in her impatience not to be discounted she'd even spurred it on.
Yes, Clary had ample reason to fear. Wars had started over women before.
-0000000000000-
Garrotway Hall, Aconite, Western Idris, December 1543
Around the table, the arguments circled again.
The choice, in itself, was a simple one. Jace would go to Alicante, that was inevitable. The only question was how.
Dare he humble himself and throw himself on the mercy of King Jonathan? Mercy was a quality he'd never known Jonathan to possess. Jace would lose his head, that was almost assured, but Clary might be spared through his sacrifice. With his great rival removed, Jonathan might be content to let her be, he could let her return to Chatton a widow to live out her days in peace, raising their daughters in solitude.
Except Jace would never trust Jonathan to do it. He wouldn't abandon Clary to live on her brother's charity or good will.
That left Jace regarding the other option; going to Alicante with an army at his heels. There, the table and the bickering came in.
Jace didn't require Luke's permission to act, but he was not about to charge off without Luke's leave, all the same. Men who came to your door in the dead of night on an exhausted horse seeking shelter and protection were the epitome of beggars who could ill afford to be choosers.
Besides, Jace owed Luke. The Lord of Aconite took him in at great personal risk. He ran counter to the wishes of the crown by casting his lot so thoroughly with the Duke of Broceland.
Those who'd followed did not wholly inspire confidence. They were not Jace's men. They were the Queen's.
Opposite the grey bearded Lord Graymark was Jocelyn's kin, cousins of Clary's Jace never took much account of but now wished he had. The family patriarch, William Fairchild, was a slight, white-haired man accompanied by his two sons. His firstborn, Cecil, shared much of Clary's delicate bone structure and her russet hair. Jace was decidedly more partial to Lionel Fairchild, the younger son. He'd proved himself handy with a sword in the tilt yard, but he was also a talented harpist and a writer of sound sonnets. Jace wasn't sure what good poetry may be to him now, but he liked Lionel's spirit nevertheless.
A few of the old Broceland gentry who looked to Jace as their lord before they did their Morgenstern rulers had mustered to his side too; the senior Henry Greenmantle and a wiry Michael Wayland. Alec wasn't here at present, he'd gone to muster the Penhallows' men. Never before had the young Earl so blatantly exercised his authority over his wife's people. Jace couldn't be sure of his success nor of the speed of it. He'd been momentarily glad of Alec's absence, for he would never have permitted Jace to dispatch Max to Alicante.
Max wasn't a child anymore, and Jace and Alec both saw worse on the fields outside Florence when they were younger than him. Besides, Max had been chomping at the bed and Jace needed someone to go and see the truth of the matter, someone Jace could trust not to exaggerate. And as one who carried the same blood as Jonathan's queen, Max was among those Jace could spare who was most likely to walk back out of the Gard.
Try as he might, Jace could not swallow Max's report. Clary was cooped up under Jonathan's thumb. She needed him, badly, and all Jace could do was sit here and squabble with a few country gentlemen who'd struggle to muster more than 5,000 men between them.
Well Jonathan may gloat. This force was not about to take the Gard, nor any other fortress.
Still Max, young and impatient, persisted, "Taking your wife hostage cannot be construed as other than an act of war, Jace!" This was easy for Max to say. He'd never seen so much as a pig slaughtered.
"Easy, Max. War is not a matter to speak of lightly." Jace cautioned, though they could talk of nothing else, and had done for hours.
"It's not just any woman the tyrant has seized!" Cecil Fairchild wheezed indignantly, "But our Queen!"
Luke mopped at his brow. The reaction to that, even within Jocelyn's stronghold of allies, was ever tepid.
Clary would make a much better sovereign than Jonathan, that much even Wayfarer could see, but the people needed more convincing.
The attempts to proclaim Clary queen in carefully selected western country parishes, as per Jocelyn's instructions, hadn't been met with much more than confusion. Farmers and their wives blinked at the Fairchild heralds in perplexed indifference, then went back to their daily business, plodding on to market. No pitchforks were raised and no onslaught of eager swords flocked to Garrotway.
Even the commons knew what Jace knew, this was a pointless plan and argument for as long as Clary was Jonathan's captive.
Jace could not liberate her without an army, and an army would not rise to her claim so long as she was prisoner. A conundrum to which this conversation was a smaller Sisyphean boulder.
"Christ, man, enough." Jace hands surged to his face, rubbing at his eyes furiously.
"If we would deploy but a little further patience, scout a little further afield, I am sure more of our countrymen shall warm to the idea." William Fairchild kept banging on his empty drum.
"I for one am short on patience." Jace answered grimly, "And none shall warm to the idea of being ruled by Clary while Jonathan sits in the capital, in the Gard, surrounded by all the historic trappings of kingship, including the mortal instruments. You can argue Jonathan's bastardy, his cruelties and even his mysterious demonic illness all you want. No one is coming." No one was coming for Clary. And while he stood here on the edge of Broceland Forest alone, Jace could not come for her either.
Luke was supposed to be the lynchpin in this grand scheme, Jocelyn's sword arm. Even he looked beaten and disillusioned. Too much had gone wrong for him to stand tall over this either.
It was a farce and a travesty. If mummers brought this tale to his hall, Jace would cast them out without supper or payment. If it wasn't so perilous, it might be pitiful. Even funny.
"No one is coming for Queen Clarissa." Luke admitted. "Yet, there is more than one way of making her queen. She is not the only one in Idris of the bloodline of King Ithuriel. Specifically, by way of Tobias III."
Tobias, a King who'd ended his reign face down in the slag heap with a broom up his backside while those who'd deposed him crowed, were some of the histories to be believed. All eyes in the room rested on Jace. He would not countenance it.
"I only seek to stop Jonathan. You sheltered me here, and for that I am grateful, Lord Aconite. I seek only to defend my wife. This plot to name her Queen was yours, not mine."
Henry Greenmantle began to speak, Jace threw his hand up to ward off the words. It was too stuffy to think in this room, or in this damned house he couldn't go more than a mile from.
He needed air. He needed away from their cloistering and indecision. Worse, their insipid goading.
Jace strode out, his hand fisted in his hair.
He clattered down a corridor and a flight of stairs, scarcely hearing Luke's noises of excuse and suggestion they take a brief reprieve.
Outside, the moon was very bright. Frost glittered on the grass and hedgerows, in places seeming ghostly veils of spider webs. Under Jace's heels, the frozen earth crinkled like cracking glass.
The cold struck him as a shock, but a welcome one. It wakened him, sinking into his bones and sharpening his senses.
Jace didn't stop. It was bright enough to easily find his footing down the garden path. The Aconite ancestral home wasn't somewhere Jace was especially well acquainted with, before he'd ended up stranded here. It was a distance from Chatton that made Jace and Clary reluctant to travel simply to dine. They'd only drawn on Luke's hospital a select few times before, almost always as part of Valentine's seasonal progress.
Jace did not know how to begin comprehending that Valentine was dead. He hadn't had a single moment to sit with the loss since he'd learned of it. Everything since had been such a scramble.
At what he deemed an appropriate distance from the house, Jace stopped, his chest heaving far more than the exertion of his walk would warrant. He stood there, very still, in the glistening frozen garden, in the grip of history.
Most profoundly, he was caught between two fathers.
He didn't know what Valentine would want him to do. Valentine never named anyone other than Jonathan his heir. In the end, he'd valued his name and his dynasty above all other legacies. Even if Jonathan sullied the Morgenstern name, at least he would carry it onward. Valentine must have trusted his grandsons and great grandsons would clean up his son's mess, in time.
Oddly, though he'd never had a conversation with him, Jace felt he knew better what Stephen Herondale would urge him to do. He'd urge his son to succeed in his daring where he'd failed. Had Stephen succeeded in his bid, Clary would never have been born and Jace raised a prince. Except, Stephen was foolhardy and impatient. He'd acted where he should have thought, hastened where he should have hesitated. He'd decided to try for a throne on an impulse and overextended himself. He'd failed, shamefully, leaving his own wife to testify against him at his trial as she scrambled to preserve something by way of an inheritance for their unborn child. Then Stephen lost his life on a scaffold and Valentine had his cousin all but scourged from history. People said Jace had his father's face and fair looks, but Jace had never seen a portrait of him. They'd all been burned or hidden away.
Jace tilted his head back to look at the stars, or what few of them appeared through gaps in the clouds. He couldn't tell a guiding star from any other. Nor his arse from his elbow, in the present moment. At Garrotway there was no Clary to guide him. There was no Alec, no Isabelle. Which left Jace to make this decision wholly alone.
A lone Herondale was a terrible thing. It was also a dangerous one.
A shuffle of fabric on stone startled Jace. He was not as alone in the garden as he'd presumed. Magnus Bane was slouching against a wall and watching the moon. He scuffled around in the small pouch he kept at his belt, tending to the pipe he now smoked. He'd paid a merchant from the Americas a small fortune for the blasted implement, which Alec despised. He misliked the cloying smell of the burning tobacco and he thought it made Magnus look ridiculous. Magnus felt otherwise. It did lend him a manner of smoky grandeur, Jace supposed, though he too could do without the thick, damp smell of the smouldering leaves. "Still no resolution, then?"
"Do I not seem like a man resolved?"
Magnus smirked, but it was a smaller, sadder version of the one he wore so well, "Not in the least, Jace."
Magnus stayed behind while Alec went to Edgehunt to rally the Penhallow troops. He felt his presence would only ruffle the sensibilities of Aline's family and vassals. Though Alec and Aline were openly fond of one another, it took scant observation to detect the rumours held weight, and that they each had preferences and promises they could not declare placed elsewhere. The Adamants were not couple, but a quartet, nigh on everywhere they went. Alec and Aline even went through long spells apart with ease, when Alec was at court or in Adamant and Aline preferred to stay with her mother or in the city. Even since the passing of Aline's father, Alec did little to exert his lordship over her people, not when Lady Penhallow had the running of the estates so deftly in hand and he and Aline would rather be in Alicante or Adamant.
But Magnus, a low born man of mysterious monetary means would hardly be welcomed at that table of lordlings inside. Jace paused to pity him. It cannot ever be pleasant, being shoved to the periphery of Alec's life. Alec's devotion never waned and he'd afforded Magnus every affection and sign of respect he could, as had Jace and Clary, but the rest of the world would not be so kind.
A lover was not a spouse. Though Aline herself made no protest and wasn't perturbed by Magnus's place in Alec's life, the tenants Alec now called upon to fight could easily take umbrage on their mistress's behalf.
Jace joined Magnus with his back the wall. He folded his arms and watched whispering clouds blot the sky, "Clary needs me. More than ever before she needs me now, and I am caught here, wrangling."
"Clary can look after herself, Jace. She's smart enough and strong enough to."
"She can survive on her own, of that I have no doubt, but Jonathan has her stranded and confined. I dread to think what he might do to her to hurt me."
Magnus's eyes were shadowed, the slivering moonlight turning the tips of his hair silver and making him seem a much sager, older man than he was. "All of Idris is watching, now. That was the real purpose of sending young Max, was it not? To demand Jonathan bring her out if he had her? Jonathan has declared responsibility for all that befalls her now. Under the scrutiny of his people, he daren't harm a hair on her head. To do so only adds legitimacy to whatever you should do next. The more eyes on her, the safer Clary is."
None of them were safe.
Jace thought back to Max's description, flooding both hot and cold, "Jonathan already has harmed her. Someone struck her. Either he hit her himself, or he allowed someone else to." And if Jace should discover whom had laid a hand upon Clary, he was a dead man. Jace did not care if it was regicide.
"I think he will not be so careless again."
Jace sank back into the icy brickwork, further depleted, "Is this a fraction of how it feels for you, Magnus? Knowing where Alec is, but not being able to see him or touch him? Hearing the whole world say he belongs to somebody else?"
Magnus made no reply. The heavy melancholy that often clung to Magnus but was usually carefully covered with his mirth settled more palpably between them. "In faith, it hurts most when Alec is right before me but I cannot reach for him because of who is looking."
"Christ, how do you bear it?"
"The cases are not that similar. I know Alec will be back with me in a few more days at most. But, most of the time Jace, to be truthful, I bear it with extreme difficulty. Then I think back to some of what I have already endured in this life, and I am reminded that we humans are much more durable than we think. The worst consistently happens to us, yet we take it and then we keep going. Alec loves me. He is good to me in every way he can be, in ways I never thought to look for. Everything that matters of his, I possess. I try not to be greedy."
Another silence descended, the garden, the estate and the kingdom locked in moonlight and mist. Wasn't that the question now; greed or greatness? A huge gamble, no doubt, but the only gauntlet Jace had left to throw down.
Magnus was not Jace's advisor. He had skin in the game, certainly, but he wasn't like those overmighty, fretful men indoors. Magnus was tougher, smarter, braver.
"I need an army," Jace declared softly. "No one is raising their banners for Clary, or as few would do so that it may as well be none. It's not enough to challenge him. It's not enough to cow Jonathan, nor to free her."
"Well then," Magnus turned over the gold links in his chain between his fingers, "I think you know what you must do, Jonathan Herondale. If history does not serve you, change it."
-0000000000000000-
The Gard, Alicante, December 1543- January 1544.
After Christmas, during the last days of the year and the first of Jonathan VIII's reign, the burnings recommenced.
They'd cooled, these past few years, as Valentine weakened.
The new King ordered sinners to the stakes with gusto, in numbers they never had been in Idris before. Jonathan insisted he would scorch out every Lutheran and every sodomite he could find. Clary knew who it was he was truly meant, who it was he was trying to intimidate. Jonathan was not a subtle man. he could not hurt those he most wished to, so he made every secret Protestant he could find a proxy.
He burned them on the green in the Gard at first, forcing his sister to watch; to sit beside him through it all and lend her complicity to the act with her proximity.
After the first week, Jonathan ordered the burnings removed to the outskirts of the city because of the smell. Even the Cardinal lacked the appetite for it on his doorstep.
They weren't set to leave the Gard anytime soon, then.
Clary heard little of the world beyond it. There were murmurings of food shortages in the city and malcontents in Alicante and further afield, but Clary received no petitioners to learn more of it.
No, she was kept to her rooms, until a fortnight into the New Year, when Jonathan sent for her late one evening. The summons came so abruptly that Clary's hand shot into Emma's, a small weakness. She knew, in her soul, what had changed. Jace.
"I fear I die tonight," She whispered to Emma.
"No," Emma insisted firmly. Clary wished she shared her faith. She was wrenched from the Countess. Whatever Jonathan had in store for her, Clary would face it alone.
However, she was not led to join her mother in the Black Tower. Instead, Clary was hastened before Jonathan in the King's privy chamber.
He was melting wax as she entered, great unsightly wine-coloured droplets drumming down into the parchment. Jonathan stamped his seal down into the smudge with a squelch and dispatched it with his page before he finally swung his long legs to Clary.
"Sister."
Clary's knees shook, but she curtseyed steadily, "Your Majesty." Even after weeks it was strange for the words to leave her lips and Valentine's voice not sound in her ears afterward.
"I have news you will be interested in." Jonathan's eyes were as dark as the wax, "Given it pertains to your traitor spawn husband."
"We are not all our fathers, Sire."
He snorted, "I have no time to parry with you tonight, Clary. I shall be brief. There have been stirrings in the western counties. Troublesome little birdies tweeting in hedges." He kicked out at the legs of the chair opposite him, pushing it an inch backward. He made a sharp gesture for Clary to sit. Only, when she made to approach the chair, he hooked his ankles around it and tugged the chair away from her again, huffing his amusement as she stumbled.
"Oh I think you do not really want this chair. No, sister. It seems you would have mine."
Clary stopped, stilling and straightening up. She was not going to respond to such undignified, juvenile taunting. Her heart thundered. Jonathan's voice froze. "There is another claimant to my throne." He inhaled loudly through his nose, his chin propped up on the back of his knuckles, a pose of ease which fooled no one. "Someone slipped out of the madhouse, it would seem. Someone who would press your claim, little sister, by babbling incoherence about my illegitimacy and slanderous lies about my health."
Clary made her face as cold as her brother's voice, to give nothing away. She was sure he heard her heart flip, just the same, sure he smelled the sweat breaking under her arms and at the back of her neck.
Damn Jocelyn. Damn her to hell. She'd killed them both with her ill-considered, prideful, vengeful lunacy.
"Do you know what happened then, poppet?"
Clary shook her head rapidly, "I know nothing of-"
"Spare me!" Jonathan laughed, most unkindly, the backs of his fingers skimming his jawline. "It doesn't matter anyway, Clary, what you knew or did not know. It matters even less than what you did or did not ask your followers do to. For nothing happened, as you were proclaimed Queen of Idris in Aconite. Not a damn thing. Not an 'Amen' sounded, not a sword unsheathed." He ticked these nothings off on his fingers.
Clary, still perspiring, loosed a shaky breath. "Hardly worth ordering my head off, then."
"No." Jonathan crossed his legs, "These villains libel me and mock you. I shall have their tongues, then their entrails and then their heads. You can keep yours, for the time being. It's of much better use to me where it is. You see, when none supported your claim, guess who finally came out of the woodwork?"
All of the blood in Clary's body swooped downward, making the edges of the world fuzzy. She took a staggering half step and grabbed at the back of the chair to steady herself. Nothing, not even gentleness and a cup of warm ale, might have braced her for what Jonathan told her next.
"Oh yes, Clary. In the moment when he might have helped you most, the traitor's blood in your husband bred true. Jace has betrayed you. He pressed a counter claim to the throne of Idris alright, but it wasn't yours. No. He would usurp us both." The mocking in Jonathan's eyes died. "Jonathan Herondale has proclaimed himself Ithuriel's heir, and thus the rightful King of Idris."
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