Clockwork Princess

Charlotte’s dark eyes could see through him, as if he were made of glass. His eyes flicked toward the paper on her desk. “What is that?”
    She hesitated. “A letter from the Consul.” Her mouth was twisted into a tight, unhappy line. She glanced down again and sighed. “All I ever wanted was to run this Institute as my father had. I never thought it would be quite so hard. I shall write to him again, but—” She broke off then, with a tight, false smile. “But I did not ask you here to talk about myself,” she said. “Gabriel, you have looked tired these past few days, and tense. I know we are all distressed, and I fear that in that distress your—situation—may have been forgotten.”
    “My situation?”
    “Your father,” she clarified, rising from her chair and approaching him. “You must be grieving him.”
    “What of Gideon?” he said. “He was his father too.”
    “Gideon grieved your father some time ago,” she said, and to his surprise she was standing at his elbow. “For you it must be new and raw. I did not want you to think I had forgotten.”
    “After everything that’s happened,” he said, his throat starting to close with bewilderment—and something else, something he did not want to identify too closely—“after Jem, and Will, and Jessamine, and Tessa, after your household has been very nearly cut in
half
, you do not wish me to believe that you have forgotten
me
?”
    She laid a hand on his arm. “Those losses do not make your loss nothing—”
    “That cannot be it,” he said. “You cannot want to comfort me. You asked me to find out if my loyalty is still to my father, or to the Institute—”
    “Gabriel, no. Nothing like that.”
    “I can’t give you the answer you want,” Gabriel said. “I cannot forget that he stayed with me. My mother died—and Gideon left—and Tatiana is a useless fool—and there was never anyone else, never anyone else to bring me up, and I had
nothing
, just my father, just the two of us, and now you, you and Gideon, you expect me to despise him, but I can’t. He was my father, and I—” His voice broke.
    “Loved him,” she said gently. “You know, I remember you when you were just a little boy, and I remember your mother. And I remember your brother, always standing next to you. And your father’s hand on your shoulder. If it matters, I do believe he loved you, too.”
    “It doesn’t matter. Because I killed my father,” Gabriel said in a shaking voice. “I put an arrow through his eye—I spilled his blood. Patricide—”
    “It was not patricide. He wasn’t your father anymore.”
    “If that was not my father, if I did not end my father’s life, then
where is he
?” Gabriel whispered “Where is my father?” and felt Charlotte reach up to draw him down, to embrace him as a mother would, holding him as he choked dryly against her shoulder, tasting tears in his throat but unable to shed them. “Where is my father?” he said again, and when she tightened her hold on him, he felt the iron in her grip, the strength of her holding him up, and wondered how he had ever thought this small woman was weak.
    To: Charlotte Branwell
    From: Consul Josiah Wayland
    My Dear Mrs. Branwell
,
    An informant whose name you cannot at this time disclose? I would venture a guess that there is no informant, and that this is all your own invention, a ploy to convince me of your rightness
.
    Pray cease your impression of a parrot witlessly repeating “March upon Cadair Idris at once” at all the hours of the day, and show me instead that you are performing your duties as leader of the London Institute. Otherwise I fear I must suppose that you are unfit to do so, and will be forced to relieve you of them at once
.
    As a token of your compliance, I must ask that you cease speaking of this matter entirely, and implore no members of the Enclave to join you in your fruitless quest. If I hear that you have brought this matter before any other Nephilim, I shall consider it the gravest disobedience and act accordingly
.
    Josiah Wayland, Consul of the Clave
    Sophie had brought Charlotte the letter at the breakfast table. Charlotte pried it open with her butter knife, breaking through the Wayland seal (a horseshoe with the
C
of the Consul below it), and fairly tore it open in her eagerness to read.
    The rest of them watched her, Henry with concern on his bright, open face as two dark red spots bloomed slowly over Charlotte’s cheekbones while her