Clockwork Princess

Shadowhunters was mandatory by Law.”
    Henry’s breath hissed out through his teeth. “That ba—bad man,” he finished, with a quick glance at Cecily, who rolled her eyes. “What’s the Council meeting about?”
    “Replacing us as heads of the Institute,” Charlotte said. “He still believes Mortmain’s attack will come against London, and that a strong leader here is needed to stand against the clockwork army.”
    “Mrs. Branwell!” Sophie, in the act of handing to Magnus the bag she had been carrying, nearly dropped it. “They can’t do that!”
    “Oh, they very well can,” said Charlotte. She looked around at all their faces, and raised her chin. In that moment, despite her small size, Gabriel thought, she seemed taller than the Consul. “We all knew this would come,” she said. “It does not matter. We are Shadowhunters, and our duty is to each other and to what we think is right. We believe Will, and we believe in Will. Faith has brought us this far; it will bring us a little farther. The Angel watches over us, and we shall win out.”
    Everyone was silent. Gabriel looked around at their faces—determined, every one—and even Magnus seemed, if not moved or convinced, considering and respectful. “Mrs. Branwell,” he said at last. “If Consul Wayland does not consider you a leader, he is a fool.”
    Charlotte inclined her head toward him. “Thank you,” she said. “But we should waste no more time—we must go, and quickly, for this matter can wait on us no longer.”
    Henry looked for a long moment at his wife, and then toward Cecily. “Are you ready?”
    Will’s sister nodded, and moved forward to stand before the Portal. Its gleaming light cast the shadow of unfamiliar runes across her small, determined face.
    “Visualize,” said Magnus. “Imagine as hard as you can that you are looking at the top of Cadair Idris.”
    Cecily’s hands clenched at her sides. As she stared, the Portal began to move, the runes to ripple and change. The darkness within the archway lightened. Suddenly Gabriel was no longer looking at shadow. He was gazing at a portrait of a landscape that could have been painted within the Portal—the green curve of the top of a mountain, a lake as blue and deep as the sky.
    Cecily gave a little gasp—and then, unprompted, stepped forward, and vanished through the archway. It was like watching a sketch being erased. First her hands vanished into the Portal, and then her arms, outstretched, and then her body.
    And she was gone.
    Charlotte gave a little shriek. “Henry!”
    There was a buzzing in Gabriel’s ears. He could hear Henry reassuring Charlotte that this was the way the Portal was meant to function, that nothing untoward had happened, but it was like a song half-heard from another room, the words a rhythm without meaning. All he knew was that Cecily, braver than all of them, had stepped through the unknown doorway and was gone. And he could not let her go alone.
    He moved forward. He heard his brother call his name, but he ignored him; pushing past Gideon, he reached the Portal, and stepped through it.
    For a moment there was nothing but blackness. Then a great hand seemed to reach out of the darkness and snatch hold of him, and he was pulled into the whirling inky maelstrom.
    The great Council room was full of people shouting.
    On the raised platform at the center stood Consul Wayland, staring out at the shouting throng with a look of furious impatience on his face. His dark eyes raked the Shadowhunters congregated in front of him: George Penhallow was locked in a screaming match with Sora Kaidou of the Tokyo Institute; Vijay Malhotra was jabbing a thin finger into the chest of Japheth Pangborn, who rarely left his manor house in the Idris countryside these days, and who had turned as red as a tomato at the indignity of it all. Two of the Blackwells had cornered Amalia Morgenstern, who was snapping at them in German. Aloysius Starkweather, all in black, stood beside one of the wooden benches, his wiry limbs nearly bent up around his ears as he glared up at the podium with sharp old eyes.
    The Inquisitor, standing beside Consul Wayland, slammed his wooden staff down against the floor hard enough to nearly shatter the floorboards. “That is
ENOUGH
!” he roared. “All of you will be silent, and you will be silent now. SIT DOWN.”
    A ripple of shock went through the room—and, to the Consul’s evident surprise, they sat. Not quietly, but they