Clockwork Princess

were already forming on the skin, and patched black with soot. His breath was hitching and harsh in Cecily’s ear—gasps of pain, the way he had sounded when he’d fallen off the roof of their house when he was nine and had shattered the bones in his left arm.
“Byddwch yn iawn, Will,”
she said as Jem put the stele to her brother’s forearm and drew quickly. “You’ll be all right.”
    “Will,” Jem said, half under his breath. “Will, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Will—”
    Will’s hitching breaths were slowing as the
iratze
took effect, his skin paling back to its normal color. “There’s still some
yin fen
that can be preserved,” Will said, slumping back against Cecily. He smelled like smoke and iron. She could feel his heart pounding through his back. “It had better be gathered up before anything else—”
    “Here.” It was Tessa, kneeling down; Cecily was dimly aware that all the others were standing, Charlotte with one hand over her mouth in shock. In Tessa’s right hand was a handkerchief, in which was perhaps half a handful of
yin fen
, all that Will had saved from the fire. “Take this,” she said, and put it in Jem’s free hand, the one that did not hold the stele. He looked as if he were about to speak to her, but she had already straightened up. Looking utterly shattered, Jem watched as she walked from the room.
    “Oh, Will. Whatever are we going to do with you?”
    Will sat, feeling rather incongruous in the flowered armchair in the drawing room, letting Charlotte, perched on a small stool before him, smear salve on his hands. They no longer hurt much, after three
iratzes
, and they had returned to their normal color, but Charlotte insisted on treating them anyway.
    The others had gone, save for Cecily and Jem; Cecily sat beside him, perched on the arm of his chair, and Jem knelt on the burned rug, his stele still in his hands, not touching Will but close. They had refused to leave, even after the others had drifted away and Charlotte had sent Henry back to the cellar to work. There was nothing more to be done, after all. The instructions on how to contact Mortmain were gone, burned to ash, and there was no more decision to be made.
    Charlotte had insisted that Will stay and have his hands salved, and Cecily and Jem had refused to leave him. And Will had to admit he liked it, liked having his sister there on the arm of his chair, liked the fiercely protective glares she shot at anyone who came near him, even Charlotte, sweet and harmless with her salve and her motherly clucking. And Jem, at his feet, leaning a bit against his chair, as he had so many times when Will was being bandaged up from fights or
iratzed
because of wounds he’d gotten in battle.
    “Do you remember the time Meliorn tried to knock your teeth out for calling him a pointy-eared layabout?” Jem said. He had taken some of the
yin fen
Mortmain had sent, and there was color in his cheeks again.
    Will smiled, despite everything; he couldn’t help it. It had been the one thing in the past few years that had made him feel fortunate: that he had someone in his life who knew him, knew what he was thinking before he said it out loud. “I would have knocked his teeth out in return,” he said, “but when I went to find him again, he had emigrated to America. To avoid my wrath, no doubt.”
    “Hmph,” said Charlotte, the way she always did when she thought Will was getting above himself. “He had many enemies in London, to my understanding.”
    “Dydw I ddim yn gwybod pwy yw unrhyw un o’r bobl yr ydych yn siarad amdano,”
said Cecily plaintively.
    “You may not know who we are talking about, but no one else knows what you are
saying
,” said Will, though his tone held no real reproof. He could hear the exhaustion in his own voice. The lack of sleep of the night before was taking its toll. “Speak English, Cecy.”
    Charlotte rose, returned to her desk, and set the jar of salve down. Cecily tugged on a lock of Will’s hair. “Let me see your hands.”
    He held them up. He remembered the fire, the white-hot agony of it, and more than anything else Tessa’s shocked face. He knew she would understand why he had done what he had done, why he had not thought twice about it, but the look in her eyes—as if her heart had broken for him.
    He only wished that she were still here. It was good to be here with Jem and Cecily and Charlotte, to be surrounded by their affection, but without her there would always