Clockwork Princess

now—” He kissed her temple, and released her, his eyes searching her face. “I need to know you believe me when I say I love you. That is all.”
    “I believe everything you say,” Tessa said with a smile, her hands creeping down from his waist to his weapons belt. Her fingers closed on the hilt of a dagger, and she yanked it from the belt, smiling as he looked down at her in surprise. She kissed his cheek and stepped back. “After all,” she said, “you weren’t lying about that tattoo of the dragon of Wales, were you?”
    The room reminded Cecily of the inside of Saint Paul’s dome, which Will had taken her to see on one of his less disagreeable days, after she had first come to London. It was the grandest building she had ever been inside. They had tested the echo of their voices in the interior Whispering Gallery and read the inscription left by Christopher Wren:
Si monumentum requiris, circumspice
. “If you seek his monument, look about you.”
    Will had explained to her what it meant, that Wren preferred to be remembered by the works he had built rather than any tombstone. The whole of the cathedral was a monument to his craft—as, in a way, the whole of this labyrinth beneath the mountain, and this room especially, was a monument to Mortmain’s.
    There was a domed ceiling here, too, though there were no windows, only an upward-reaching hollow in the stone. A circular gallery ran around the upper part of the dome, and there was a platform on it, from which, presumably, one could stand and look down at the floor, which was smooth stone.
    There was an inscription on the wall here, too. Four sentences, cut into the wall in glittering quartz.
    THE INFERNAL DEVICES ARE WITHOUT PITY.
THE INFERNAL DEVICES ARE WITHOUT REGRET.
THE INFERNAL DEVICES ARE WITHOUT NUMBER.
THE INFERNAL DEVICES WILL NEVER STOP COMING.
    On the stone floor, lined up in rows, were hundreds of automatons. They wore a motley assortment of military uniforms and were deadly still, their metal eyes closed. Tin soldiers, Cecy thought, grown to human size. The Infernal Devices. Mortmain’s great creation—an army bred to be unstoppable, to slaughter Shadowhunters and to move onward without remorse.
    Sophie had been the first to discover the room; she had screamed, and the others had all rushed to find out why. They had found Sophie standing, shaking, amid the unmoving mass of clockwork creatures. One of them lay at her feet; she had cut its legs out from under it with a sweep of her blade, and it had crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The others had not moved or awakened despite the fate of their associate, which had given the Shadowhunters the boldness to go forward among them.
    Henry was on his knees now, beside the carapace of one of the still unmoving automatons; he had slit open its uniform and opened its metal chest and was studying what was within. The Silent Brothers stood about him, as did Charlotte, Sophie, and Bridget. Gideon and Gabriel had returned as well, their explorations having proved fruitless. Only Magnus and Cyril had not yet returned. Cecily could not fight down her mounting unease—not at the presence of the automatons but at the absence of her brother. No one had found him yet. Could it be that he was not here to
be
found? She said nothing, however. She had promised herself that as a Shadowhunter she would not fuss, or scream, whatever happened.
    “Look at this,” Henry murmured in a low voice. Inside the chest of the clockwork creature was a mess of wires and what looked to Cecily like a metal box, the kind that might hold tobacco. Carved onto the outside of the box was the symbol of a serpent swallowing its own tail. “The
ourobouros
. The symbol of the containment of demon energies.”
    “As on the Pyxis.” Charlotte nodded.
    “Which Mortmain stole from us,” Henry confirmed. “It had concerned me that this was what Mortmain was attempting.”
    “That
what
was what he was attempting?” Gabriel demanded. He was flushed, his green eyes bright. Bless Gabriel, Cecily thought, for always asking exactly the question that was on his mind.
    “Animating the automatons,” Henry said absently, reaching for the box. “Giving them consciousness, even will—”
    He broke off as his fingers touched the box and it flared suddenly into light. Light, like the illumination of a witchlight rune-stone, poured from the box and through the
ourobouros
. Henry jerked back with a cry, but it was already