“Alastair,” Cordelia said in a low voice, “could I talk to you in private?”
Alastair raised his eyebrows but stood up, brushing the crumbs off his trousers, and allowed himself to be led out of the library. It seemed almost silly to seek privacy in the vast emptiness of the Institute, but Cordelia led him to the drawing room anyway. She closed the door behind them and turned to him; he was watching her, his arms crossed over his chest, a frown darkening his expression. Without preamble, he said, “You want Cortana back.”
The Alastair of a year ago would not have known her well enough to guess that, Cordelia thought. It was a downside of their improved relationship that he did now. “How did you know?”
“The look in your eye,” Alastair said. “I know that look. You have a plan, and if I don’t miss my guess, it is both a very big plan and a very bad plan. So I assume it has something to do with Belial. And killing him. Which can only be accomplished with Cortana.”
“You don’t know that it’s a bad plan,” Cordelia protested.
“I know that we’re desperate,” Alastair said, in a quieter voice. “We’ve assigned ourselves these projects, and perhaps they’ll help—but I know that they may not accomplish anything. We may have stayed behind in London only to die here.”
“Alastair…”
“And I know that when it comes down to it, you and Cortana are our single best hope. It’s just…”
“What is it?” Cordelia said.
“If you plan to face Belial somehow, let me come with you,” he said, to Cordelia’s surprise. “I know Belial would be likely to step on me as though I were an ant. But I would stand with you, for as long as I am able.”
“Oh, Alastair,” Cordelia said softly. “I wish I could have you with me. But where I’m going, you cannot follow. Besides,” she added, seeing him start to scowl rebelliously, “I have no choice but to face this fight, this battle with Belial. You do. Think of Mâmân. Think of the little brother or sister we have not yet met. One of us must stay safe, for their sakes.”
“Neither of us will be safe, Cordelia. There is no safety in London now.”
“I know. But this is a Prince of Hell we are speaking of; the only thing that protects me from him at all is Cortana. It would be foolish and—and even selfish—for us both to face him at once.”
Alastair gazed at her for a long time. Finally, he nodded. “All right. Come with me.”
He led her back out into the hall; it wasn’t long before Cordelia realized where they were going. “The weapons room?” she demanded, as they approached its metal doors. “You hid a sword in a room full of weapons?”
Alastair smiled crookedly. “Have you never read Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’?” He pushed the doors open and led her inside. “Sometimes ‘in plain sight’ is the best place to hide something.”
At the far end of the room was a small wooden door, half-hidden behind a display of hand axes. Alastair rolled them aside and threw the door open, beckoning for Cordelia to follow him into a room that turned out to be the size of a large closet. Sagging shelves held battered weapons—a sword with a bent blade, a rusty iron mace, a pile of simple longbows with no strings. Across from the door was a workbench of some kind, with wrought-iron legs and a heavily pitted wooden surface. On it were a number of short wooden rods that she realized after a moment were axe handles, denuded of their blades.
“The repairs room,” he said. “This is where broken weapons go—bows that need restringing, blades that need sharpening. It was Thomas’s idea,” he added, with a slight flush, and knelt down to look under the workbench. “He pointed out that this is the most heavily warded area of the Institute, and hardly anyone ever comes in here. They wouldn’t notice—” He grunted. “Give me a hand with this, will you?”
He was reaching for a large oilskin cloth that had been wrapped around a bundle and tucked under the workbench. She grabbed one end of it and he the other, and with some difficulty they dragged it out. Alastair folded back the oilcloth, revealing a pile of swords in scabbards, most of their blades wrapped in cheap, protective leather pouches. Their hilts rattled as Alastair fanned them out, and a dark gold gleam shone from the oilcloth.
Cortana.
There it was, as beautiful and golden as ever, sheathed within the exquisite scabbard that had been a wedding gift from her father. The intricate pattern of leaves and runes carved into its hilt seemed to glow. Cordelia yearned to reach out and snatch it up, but she turned to Alastair instead.
“Thank you,” she said, her throat tight. “When I asked you to look after it for me—I knew how much I was asking. But there was no one else I trusted. That Cortana trusted. I knew you’d keep it safe.”
Alastair, still kneeling, regarded her with thoughtful dark eyes. “You know,” he said, “when Cortana chose you as its bearer instead of me, everyone thought I was upset because I had wanted to be the one. The bearer. But—it wasn’t that. It was never that.” He rose to his feet, laying Cortana atop the workbench. “When you first picked up the sword… I realized, in that instant, that being its wielder would mean you were always the one in danger. You would be the one to take the bigger risks, to fight the harder fights. And I would be the one who would watch you, again and again, walk into danger. And I hated that thought.”
“Alastair…”
He held up his hand. “I should have told you that. A long time ago.” His voice carried the weight of a thousand emotions: resignation, loss, anger—and hope. “I know I cannot fight beside you, Layla. I only make one request. Be careful with your life. Not only for your own sake, but for mine.”
James didn’t know how much time had passed since they’d come to Edom. Matthew had fallen asleep after his small dose of sedative; James had lain down beside him and tried to rest, but the glaring orange-red of the daytime sky, and his own racing thoughts, had kept him awake.
Eventually he’d given up and circled the courtyard a few more times, searching for anything that might be a means of attack or escape. He found neither.
He had discovered, to his surprise, that while his seraph blades and other weapons had been taken away before he’d woken up in Edom, he still had his pistol on him, stuck through his belt. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to fire in this dimension, which was no doubt why Belial had let him keep it.
Eventually, he’d used the barrel of the gun to try digging into the ground beneath the walls, but the soil crumbled into powder to fill in any hole he started.
He’d returned to the stone bowl to drink more water and found that at some point a second bowl had appeared, this one full of hard green apples and stale rolls of bread. James wondered if the apples were meant to be an ironic nod to Lilith, or whether Belial was simply thinking about how to feed James and Matthew without giving them anything they’d actually enjoy eating.