Clockwork Princess
irritated if anything. “Someone really ought to dust in here,” she announced, and swept toward the back of the shop, the small flowers on her hat bouncing. Gabriel shook his head.
He caught up to Cecily just as she brought her gloved hand down on the brass bell on the counter, setting it to an impatient ringing. “Hello?” she called. “Is anyone here?”
“Directly in front of you, miss,” said an irritable voice, downward and to the left. Both Cecily and Gabriel leaned over the counter. Just below the edge of it was the top of the head of a small man. No, not quite a man, thought Gabriel as the glamour peeled away—a satyr. He wore a waistcoat and trousers, though no shirt, and had the cloven feet and neatly curling horns of a goat. He also had a trimmed beard, a pointed jaw, and the rectangular-pupilled yellow eyes of a goat, half-hidden behind spectacles.
“Gracious,” said Cecily. “You must be Mr. Sallows.”
“Nephilim,” observed the shop owner gloomily. “I detest Nephilim.”
“Hmph,” said Cecily. “Charmed, I’m sure.”
Gabriel felt it was about time to intervene. “How did you know we were Shadowhunters?” he snapped.
Sallows raised his eyebrows. “Your Marks, sir, are clearly visible on your hands and throat,” he said, as if talking to a child, “and as for the girl, she looks just like her brother.”
“How would you know my brother?” Cecily demanded, her voice rising.
“We don’t get many of your kind in here,” said Sallows. “It’s notable when we do. Your brother Will was in and out quite a bit about two months ago, running errands for that warlock Magnus Bane. He was down the Cross Bones too, bothering Old Mol. Will Herondale’s well-known in Downworld, though he mostly keeps himself out of trouble.”
“That
is
astonishing news,” said Gabriel.
Cecily gave Gabriel a dark look. “We are here on the authority of Charlotte Branwell,” she said. “Head of the London Institute.”
The satyr waved a hand. “I don’t care much for your Shadowhunter hierarchies, you know; none of the Fair Folk do. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give you a fair price for it.”
Gabriel unrolled the paper Magnus had given him. “Thieves’ vinegar, bat’s head root, belladonna, angelica, damiana leaf, powdered mermaid scales, and six nails from a virgin’s coffin.”
“Well,”
said Sallows. “We don’t get much call for that sort of thing around here. I’ll have to look in the back.”
“Well, if you don’t get much call for this sort of thing, what
do
you get call for?” asked Gabriel, losing his patience. “You’re hardly a florist’s shop.”
“Mr. Lightwood,” chided Cecily under her breath—but not quite enough under her breath, for Sallows heard her, and his spectacles bounced on his nose.
“Mr.
Lightwood
?” he said. “Benedict Lightwood’s son?”
Gabriel could feel the blood heating his cheeks. He had spoken to almost no one about his father since Benedict’s death—if one could even count the thing that had died in the Italian garden as his father. Once it had been he and his family against the world, the Lightwoods above all else, but now—now there was shame in the name of Lightwood as much as there had ever been pride, and Gabriel did not know how to speak of it.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I am Benedict Lightwood’s son.”
“Wonderful. I have some of your father’s orders here. I was beginning to wonder if he would ever come and pick them up.” The satyr bustled into the back, and Gideon busied himself studying the wall. There were landscape sketches hung on it, and maps on it, but as he looked more closely, not sketches or maps of any place he knew. There was Idris, of course, with Brocelind Forest and Alicante on its hill, but another map showed continents he had never seen before—and what was the Silver Sea? The Thorn Mountains? What sort of country had a
purple
sky?
“Gabriel,” said Cecily beside him, in a low voice. It was the first time she had used his Christian name in addressing him, and he began to turn toward her, just as Sallows emerged from the back of the shop. In one hand he carried a tied parcel, which he handed over to Gabriel. It was quite lumpy—clearly the bottles of Magnus’s ingredients. In the other hand Sallows clutched a stack of papers, which he set down on the counter.
“Your father’s order,” he said with a smirk.
Gabriel lowered his eyes to the papers—and his jaw
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