"Your mother was a mundane?" said a girl, coming over and sitting at his table. "Esme Philpott," she added, shaking hands briskly. "I shan't keep it when I Ascend. I'm thinking of changing the Esme too."
James did not know what to say. He did not wish to insult a lady's name by agreeing with her or insult a lady by arguing with her. He was not prepared to be approached by a strange girl. Very few girls were sent to the Academy: of course girls could be just as fine warriors as boys, but not everybody thought that way, and many Shadowhunter families wanted to keep their girls close. Some people thought the Academy had far too many rules, and some far too few. Thomas's sisters, who were very proper, had not come to the Academy. Family legend reported that his cousin Anna Lightwood, who was the least proper person imaginable, had said if they sent her to the Academy, she would run away and become a mundane bullfighter.
"Mmm," said James, a silver-tongued devil with the ladies.
"Did your mother Ascend with no trouble?" Mike asked eagerly.
James bit his lip. He was accustomed to everyone knowing the history of his mother: the child of a stolen Shadowhunter and a demon. Any child of a Shadowhunter was a Shadowhunter. Mother belonged to the Shadowhunter world as much as any of the Nephilim. Only, her skin could not bear Marks, and there had never before been anyone like her in the world. James did not quite know how to explain to people who did not know already. He was afraid he would explain wrong, and the explanation would reflect badly on Mother.
"I know a lot of people who Ascended with no trouble," James said at last. "My aunt Sophie--Sophie Lightwood now--she was a mundane. Father says there never was anyone so brave, before or after Ascension."
"What a relief!" said Esme. "Tell me, I think I've heard of Sophie Lightwood--"
"What a fearful comedown," said one of the boys James had seen with Alastair Carstairs earlier. "Goatface Herondale is actually reduced to sitting with the dregs."
Alastair and his other friend laughed. They went to sit at a table with other, older Shadowhunters, and James was certain he heard the word "Goatface" whispered more than once. He felt he was boiling from the inside out with shame.
As for Matthew Fairchild, James looked over at him only once or twice. After James had left him standing in the middle of the dining hall, Matthew had tossed his stupid blond head and chosen a very large table to sit at. He clearly had not meant a word about being so select. He sat with Thomas and Christopher on either side of him like a prince holding court, calling out jokes and summoning people to his side, and soon his table was crowded. He charmed several of the Shadowhunter students away from their tables. Even some of the older students came over to listen to one of Matthew's apparently terribly amusing stories. Even Alastair Carstairs came over for a few minutes. Obviously he and Matthew were great friends now.
James caught Mike Smith looking over at Matthew's table longingly, his face that of an outsider barred from all the fun, doomed to always be at the less exciting table with the less interesting people.
James had wanted friends, but he had not wanted to be the kind of friend who people settled for, because they could not get any better. Except he was, as he had always secretly feared, tedious and poor company. He did not know why books had not taught him how to talk so other people wanted to listen.
*
James eventually approached the teachers for help finding his bedroom. He found Dean Ashdown and Ragnor Fell in deep conversation.
"I am so terribly sorry," said Dean Ashdown. "This is the first time we have ever had a warlock teacher--and we are delighted to have you! We should have thoroughly cleaned out the Academy and made sure there were no remnants of a less peaceful time."
"Thank you, Dean Ashdown," Ragnor said. "The removal of the mounted warlock's head from my bedroom will be sufficient."
"I am so terribly sorry!" said Dean Ashdown again. She lowered her voice. "Were you acquainted with the--er, deceased gentleman?"
Ragnor eyed her with disfavor. Though that might just be the way Mr. Fell looked. "If you were to happen upon the grotesquely severed head of one of the Nephilim, would you have to be acquainted with him to feel you might perhaps not fancy sleeping in the room where his desecrated corpse remained?"
James coughed in the middle of the dean's third frantic apology. "I do apologize," he said. "Could someone direct me to my room? I--got lost and missed all that."
"Oh, young Mr. Herondale." The dean looked quite happy to be interrupted. "Of course, let me show you the way. Your father entrusted me with a message for you that I can relay as we go."
She left Ragnor Fell scowling after them. James hoped he had not made another enemy.
"Your father said--what a charming language Welsh is, isn't it? So romantic!--Pob lwc, caraid. What does it mean?"
James blushed, because he was much too old for his father to be calling him by pet names. "It just means--it means good luck."
He could not help smiling as he trailed the dean down the halls. He was sure nobody else's father had charmed the dean into giving a student a secret message. He felt warm, and watched over.
Until Dean Ashdown opened the door of his new room, bid him a cheerful good-bye, and left him to his horrible fate.
It was a very nice room, airy, with walnut bedposts and white linen canopies. There was a carved wardrobe and even a bookcase.
There was also a distressing amount of Matthew Fairchild.
He was standing in front of a table that had about fifteen hairbrushes on it, several mysterious bottles, and a strange hoard of combs.
"Hullo, Jamie," he said. "Isn't it splendid that we are sharing a room? I am certain we will get along swimmingly."
"James," James said. "What are all those hairbrushes for?"
Matthew looked at him pityingly. "You don't think all this"--he indicated his head with a sweeping gesture--"happens on its own?"
"I only use one hairbrush."
"Yes," Matthew observed. "I can tell."
James dragged his trunk over to the foot of his bed, took out The Count of Monte Cristo, and made his way back to the door.
"Jamie?" Matthew asked.
"James!" James snapped.
Matthew laughed. "All right, all right. James, where are you going?"
"Somewhere else," said James, and slammed the door behind him.
He could not believe the bad luck that had randomly assigned him to share a room with Matthew. He found another staircase and read in it until he judged that it was late enough that Matthew would certainly be asleep, and he crept back, lit a candle, and resumed reading in bed.
James might have read a little too long into the night. When he woke up, Matthew was clearly long gone--on top of everything else, he was an early riser--and James was late for his first day of class.
"What else can you expect from Goatface Herondale," said a boy James had never seen before in his life, and several more people sniggered. James grimly took his seat next to Mike Smith.
*
The classes in which the elites were separated from the dregs were the worst. James had nobody to sit with then.
Or perhaps the first class of every day was the worst, because James always stayed up late into the night reading to forget his troubles, and was late every day. No matter what time he rose, Matthew was always gone. James assumed Matthew did this to mock him, since he could not imagine Matthew doing anything useful early in the morning.
Or perhaps the training courses were the worst, because Matthew was at his most annoying during the training courses.
"I must regretfully decline to participate," he told their teacher once. "Consider me on strike like the coal miners. Except far more stylish."
The next day, he said: "I abstain on the grounds that beauty is sacred, and there is nothing beautiful about these exercises."
The day after that, he merely said: "I object on aesthetic principles."
He kept saying ridiculous things, until a couple of weeks in, when he said: "I won't do
it, because Shadowhunters are idiots and I do not want to be at this idiot school. Why does an accident of birth mean you have to either get ripped away from your family, or you have to spend a short, horrible life brawling with demons?"
"Do you want to be expelled, Mr. Fairchild?" thundered one teacher.
"Do what you feel you must," said Matthew, folding his hands and smiling like a cherub.
Matthew did not get expelled. Nobody seemed quite sure what to do with him. His teachers began calling in sick out of despair.
He did only half the work and insulted everyone in the Academy on a daily basis, and he remained absurdly popular. Thomas and Christopher could not be pried away from him. He wandered the halls surrounded by adoring throngs who wanted to hear another amusing anecdote. His and James's room was always completely crowded.
James spent a good deal of time in the stairwells. He spent even more time being called Goatface Herondale.
"You know," Thomas said shyly once, when James had not managed to escape his own room fast enough, "you could pal around with us a little more."
"I could?" James asked, and tried not to sound too hopeful. "I'd . . . like to see more of you and Christopher."
"And Matthew," Thomas said.
James shook his head silently.
"Matthew's one of my best friends," Thomas said, almost pleadingly. "If you spent some time with him, I am sure you would come to like him."
James looked over at Matthew, who was sitting on his bed telling a story to eight people who were sitting on the floor and gazing up at him worshipfully. He met Matthew's eyes, trained in his and Thomas's direction, and looked away.
"I feel I have to decline any more of Matthew's company."
"It makes you stand out, you know," Thomas said. "Spending your time with the mundanes. I think it's why the--the nickname for you has stuck. People are afraid of anybody who is different: It makes them worry everyone else is different too, and just pretending to be all the same."
James stared at him. "Are you saying I should avoid the mundanes? Because they are not as good as we are?"
"No, that's not--" Thomas began, but James was too angry to let him finish.
"The mundanes can be heroes too," James said. "You should know that better than I. Your mother was a mundane! My father told me about all she did before she Ascended. Everyone here knows people who were mundanes. Why should we isolate people who are brave enough to try to become like us--who want to help people? Why should we treat them as if they're less than us, until they prove their worthiness or die? I won't do it."
Aunt Sophie was just as good as any Shadowhunter, and she had been brave long before she Ascended. Aunt Sophie was Thomas's mother. They should know this better than James did.
"I didn't mean it that way," said Thomas. "I didn't think of it that way."
It was as if people didn't think at all, living in Idris.
"Maybe your fathers don't tell you stories like mine does," James said.
"Maybe not everyone listens to stories like you do," Matthew said from across the room. "Not everyone learns."
James glanced at him. It was an unexpectedly nice thing for Matthew, of all people, to say.
"I know a story," Matthew went on. "Who wants to hear it?"
"Me!" said the chorus from the floor.
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Not me," said James, and left the room.
It was another reminder that Matthew had what James would have given anything for, that Matthew had friends and belonged here at the Academy, and Matthew did not care at all.
Eventually there were so many teachers calling in with an acute overdose of Matthew Fairchild that Ragnor Fell was left to supervise the training courses. James wondered why he was the only one who could see this was absurd, and Matthew was ruining classes for everyone. Ragnor could do magic, and was not at all interested in war.
Ragnor let Esme braid ribbons in her horse's mane so it would look like a noble steed. He agreed to let Christopher build a battering ram to knock down trees, because it would be good practice in case they ever had to lay siege to a castle. He watched Mike Smith hit himself over the head with his own longbow.
"Concussions are nothing to be worried about," said Ragnor placidly. "Unless there is severe bleeding of the brain, in which case he may die. Mr. Fairchild, why are you not participating?"
"I think that violence is repulsive," Matthew said firmly. "I am here against my will and I refuse to participate."
"Would you like me to magically strip you and put you in gear?" Mr. Fell asked. "In front of everybody?"
"That would be a thrill for everybody, I'm sure," said Matthew. Ragnor Fell wiggled his fingers, and green sparks spat from his fingertips. James was pleased to see Matthew actually take a step back. "Might be too thrilling for a Wednesday," Matthew said. "I'll go put on my gear then, shall I?"
"Do," said Ragnor.
He had set up a deck chair and was reading a book. James envied him very much.
He also admired his teacher very much. Here was someone who could control Matthew, at last. After all Matthew's lofty talk about abstaining for the sake of art and beauty, James was looking forward to seeing Matthew make an absolute fool of himself on the practice grounds.
"Anyone volunteer to catch Matthew up on what you have all been learning?" Ragnor asked. "As I have not the faintest idea what that might be."
Just then Christopher's team of students actually hit a tree with their battering ram. The crash and the chaos meant there was not the rush of volunteers to spend time with Matthew that there would otherwise have been.
"I'd be happy to teach Matthew a lesson," said James.
He was quite good with the staff. He had beat Mike ten times out of ten, and Esme nine times out of ten, and he had been holding back with them. It was possible he would also have to hold back with Matthew.
Except that Matthew came out wearing gear, and looking--for a change--actually like a real Shadowhunter. More like a real Shadowhunter than James did, truth be told, since James was . . . not as short as Thomas, but not tall yet, and what his mother described as wiry. Which was a kind way to say "no real evidence of muscles in view." Several girls, in fact, turned to look at Matthew in gear.
"Mr. Herondale has volunteered to teach you how to staff fight," Ragnor Fell said. "If you plan to murder each other, go farther down the field where I cannot see you and won't have to answer awkward questions."
"James," said Matthew, in the voice that everyone else liked to listen to so much and that struck James as constantly mocking. "This is so kind of you. I think I do remember a few moves with the staff from training with my mama and my brother. Please be patient with me. I may be a little rusty."
Matthew strolled down the field, the sun brilliant on green grass and his gold hair alike, and weighed the staff in one hand. He turned to James, and James had the sudden impression of narrowed eyes: a look of real and serious intent.
Then Matthew's face and the trees both went sailing by, as Matthew's staff scythed James's legs out from under him and James went tumbling to the ground. James lay there dazed.
"You know," said Matthew thoughtfully. "I may not be so terribly rusty after all."
James scrambled to his feet, clutching at both his staff and his dignity. Matthew moved into position to fight him, the staff as light and easily balanced in his hand as if he were a conductor gesturing with his baton. He moved with easy grace, like any Shadowhunter would, but somehow as if he was playing, as if at any moment he might be dancing.
James realized, to his overwhelming disgust, that this was yet another thing Matthew was good at.
"Best of three," he suggested.
Matthew's staff was a blur between his hands, suddenly. James did not have time to shift position before a jarring blow landed on the arm that was holding his staff, then his left shoulder so he could not defend. James blocked the staff when it came toward his midsection, but that turned out to be a feint. Mat
thew scythed him off at the knees again and James wound up flat on his back in the grass. Again.
Matthew's face came into view. He was laughing, as usual. "Why stop at three?" he asked. "I can stand around and beat you all day."
James hooked his staff behind Matthew's ankles and tripped him up. He knew it was wrong, but in the moment he did not care.
Matthew landed on the grass with a surprised "Oof!" which James found briefly satisfying. Once there, he seemed happy enough to lie in the grass. James found himself being regarded by one brown eye amid the greenery.
"You know," Matthew said slowly, "most people like me."
"Well . . . congratulations!" James snapped, and scrambled to his feet.
It was the exact wrong moment to stand up.
It should have been the last moment of James's life. Perhaps because he thought it would be the last, it seemed to stretch out, giving James time to see it all: how the battering ram had flown through the hands of Christopher's team in the wrong direction. He saw the horrified faces of the whole team, even Christopher paying attention for once. He saw the great wooden log, sailing directly at him, and heard Matthew scream a warning much too late. He saw Ragnor Fell jump up, his deck chair flying, and lift his hand.
The world transformed into sliding grayness, everything still moving slower than James was. Everything was sliding and insubstantial: the battering ram came at him and through him, unable to hurt him; it was like being splashed with water. James lifted a hand and saw the gray air full of stars.
It was Ragnor who had saved him, James thought as the world tipped from bright, strange grayness into black. This was warlock magic.
He did not know until later that the Academy class had all watched, expecting to see a scene of carnage and death, and instead seen a black-haired boy dissolve and change from one of their own into a shadow cast by nothing, a wicked cutout into the abyss behind the world, dark and unmistakable in the afternoon sun. What had been inevitable death, something the Shadowhunters were used to, became something strange and more terrible.
He did not know until later how right he was. It was warlock magic.
*
When James woke up, it was night, and Uncle Jem was there.
James reared up from his bed and threw himself into Uncle Jem's arms. He had heard some people found the Silent Brothers frightening, with their silent speech and their stitched eyes, but to him the sight of a Silent Brother's robe always meant Uncle Jem, always meant steadfast love.