Son of the Dawn (Ghosts of the Shadow Market #1)(10)

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Robert said.

“Yes,” said Jonathan.

“You don’t look much like Michael,” Robert added awkwardly.

“No,” said Jonathan. “I always wished I did.”

The boy’s thin back was braced to be a disappointment.

Robert said: “I am sure you’re a good boy.”

Jonathan did not look sure. Robert saved himself from awkwardness by conspicuously examining the controls.

The boy left the bridge, graceful despite the lurch of the boat and how weary he must be. Zachariah was startled when young Jonathan advanced across the deck to where Zachariah himself sat.

Brother Zachariah pulled his hood close around his face. Some Shadowhunters were disquieted by a Silent Brother who did not appear exactly as the rest did, though the Silent Brothers looked fearsome enough. He did not want to distress the boy, either way.

Jonathan carried Brother Zachariah’s staff back to him, balanced flat as a tightrope along his palms, and laid the staff with a respectful bow on Zachariah’s knees. The boy moved with military discipline unusual in one so young, even among Shadowhunters. Brother Zachariah had not known Michael Wayland, but he guessed he must have been a harsh man.

“Brother Enoch?” the boy guessed.

No, said Brother Zachariah. He knew Enoch’s memories as his own. Enoch had examined the boy, though his memories were gray with lack of interest. Brother Zachariah briefly wished he could have been the Silent Brother at hand for this child.

“No,” the boy repeated slowly. “I should’ve known. You moved differently. I just thought it might be, since you gave me the staff.”

He bowed his head. It struck Zachariah as a sorry thing, that the child would not have expected even the smallest mercy from a stranger.

“Thank you for letting me use it,” Jonathan added.

I am glad it was useful, returned Brother Zachariah.

The boy’s glance up at his face was shocking, the flare of twin suns in what was still almost night. They were not the eyes of a soldier, but a warrior. Brother Zachariah had known both, and he knew the difference.

The boy took a step back, nervous and agile, but stopped with his chin high. Apparently he had a question.

Zachariah was not expecting the one he asked.

“What do the initials mean? On your staff. Do all Silent Brothers have them?”

They looked together at the staff. The letters were worn by time and Zachariah’s own flesh, but they had been struck deep into the wood in the precise places where Zachariah would put his hands on them when he fought. So, in a way, they would always be fighting together.

The letters were W and H.

No, said Brother Zachariah. I am the only one. I carved them into the staff on my first night in the City of Bones.

“Were they your initials?” the boy asked, his voice low and a little timid. “Back when you were a Shadowhunter, like me?”

Brother Zachariah still considered himself a Shadowhunter, but Jonathan clearly did not mean any offense.

No, said Jem, because he was always James Carstairs when he spoke of what was dearest to him. Not mine. My parabatai’s.

W and H. William Herondale. Will.

The boy looked struck yet wary at the same time. There was a certain guardedness about him, as if he was suspicious of whatever Zachariah might say before he even had the chance to say it.

“My father says—said—a parabatai can be a great weakness.”

Jonathan said the word weakness with horror. Zachariah wondered what a man who had drilled a boy to fight like that might have considered weakness.

Brother Zachariah did not choose to insult an orphan boy’s dead father, so he arranged his thoughts carefully. This boy was so alone. He remembered how precious that new link could be, especially when you had no other. It could be the last bridge that connected you to a lost life.

He remembered traveling across the sea, having lost his family, not knowing that he was going to his best friend.

I suppose they can be a weakness, he answered. It depends on who your parabatai is. I carved his initials here because I always fought best with him.

Jonathan Wayland, the child who fought like a warrior angel, looked intrigued.

“I think—my father was sorry he had a parabatai,” he said. “Now I have to go and live with the man my father was sorry about. I don’t want to be weak, and I don’t want to be sorry. I want to be the best.”

If you pretend to feel nothing, the pretense may become true, said Jem. That would be a pity.

His parabatai had tried to feel nothing, for a time. Except what he felt for Jem. It had almost destroyed him. And every day, Jem pretended to feel something, to be kind, to fix what was broken, to remember names and voices almost forgotten, and hoped that would become truth.

The boy frowned. “Why would it be a pity?”

We battle hardest when that which is dearer to us than our own lives is at stake, said Jem. A parabatai is both blade and shield. You belong together and to each other not because you are the same but because your different shapes fit together to be a greater whole, a greater warrior for a higher purpose. I always believed we were not merely at our best together, but beyond the best either of us could be apart.

A slow smile broke across the boy’s face, like sunrise bursting as a bright surprise upon the water.