Clockwork Princess

brought up short at the foot of the steps when an automaton slid in front of him, moving as quickly and gracefully as water, to block his pathway. Its arms ended in long scissors; Will ducked as one slashed at his face, and Will drove his seraph blade into its chest.
    There was the spitting noise of melting metal, but the creature only staggered back a foot and then lunged again. Will ducked under its bladed arms, seizing a dagger from his belt. He whirled back, slashing out with the blade—only to see the automaton suddenly come apart in ribbons before him, great slices of metal peeling back like the skin of an orange. Black fluid boiled up and splashed across his face as the thing went down in crumpled pieces.
    He stared. Bridget looked at him serenely across its ruined body. Her hair was standing out around her head in a frizz of red curls, and her white apron was covered in black blood, but she was expressionless. “You ought to be more careful,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
    Will was speechless; fortunately, Bridget did not seem to be waiting for an answer. She tossed her hair and walked away toward Henry, who was battling a particularly fearsome-looking automaton, at least fourteen feet high. Henry had deprived it of one of its arms, but the other, a long, multi-jointed monstrosity ending in a curved blade like a
kindjal
, was still stabbing at him. Bridget walked up behind it calmly and stuck it through the jointure of the torso with her blade. Sparks flew, and the creature began to totter forward. Jessamine, still crouched against the wheel of the carriage, gave a scream and began to crawl out of its way on her hands and knees, toward Will.
    Will watched her in stunned surprise for a moment as she bloodied her hands and knees on the glass shards of the broken carriage window but kept crawling. Then, as if slapped into action, he moved forward, darting around Bridget until he reached Jessie, and slid his arms under her, deadlifting her from the ground. She gave a little gasp—his name, he thought—and then went limp against him, only her hands tautly gripping his lapels.
    He carried her away from the brougham, his eyes on what was happening in the courtyard. Charlotte had dispatched her automaton, and Bridget and Henry were in the middle of slicing another into bits. Sophie, Gideon, Gabriel, and Cecily had two automatons on the ground among them, and were carving them up like a Christmas roast. Jem had not returned.
    “Will,” Jessie said, her voice a weak thread. “Will, please set me down.”
    “I need to get you inside, Jessamine.”
    “No.” She coughed, and Will saw to his horror that blood was running from the corners of her mouth. “I won’t survive that long. Will—if ever you cared about me at all, even a bit, put me down.”
    Will sank to the foot of the stairs with Jessie in his arms, trying his best to cradle her head against his shoulder. Blood freely stained her throat and the front of her white dress, pasting the material to her body. She was terribly thin, her collarbone sticking out like the wings of a bird, her cheeks sunk into hollows. She resembled a patient staggering out of Bedlam more than the pretty girl who had left them only eight weeks ago.
    “Jess,” he said softly. “Jessie. Where are you hurt?”
    She gave a ghastly sort of smile. Red rimmed the edges of her teeth. “One of the creature’s talons went through my back,” she whispered, and indeed, as Will looked down, he saw that the back of her dress was soaked through with blood. Blood stained his hands, his trousers, his shirt, filling his throat with its choking coppery smell. “It pierced my heart. I can feel it.”
    “An
iratze
—” Will began to fumble at his belt for his stele.
    “No
iratze
will help me now.” Her voice was sure.
    “Then the Silent Brothers—”
    “Even their power cannot save me. Besides, I cannot bear to have them touch me again. I would rather die. I
am
dying, and I am glad of it.”
    Will looked down at her, stunned. He could remember when Jessie had come to the Institute, fourteen years old and as wicked as an angry cat with all her claws out. He had never been kind to her, nor she to him—he had never been kind to anyone save Jem—but Jessie had saved him the trouble of regretting it. Still, he had admired her in an odd way, admired the strength of her hatred and the force of her will.
    “Jessie.” He put his hand on her cheek, awkwardly smearing the