Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 118
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Jace glanced up. “We never left,” he said. Clary was still staring at the paper she held, her face white and stunned.
“Was a there a problem?” Emma asked anxiously.
“You might say that.” Jace’s tone was light, but his golden eyes were stormy. He tapped the paper. “It’s a message from the Clave. According to this, Clary and I are dead.”
* * *
Zara always chose the same chair in the Inquisitor’s office. Manuel suspected it was because she liked to sit beneath the portrait of herself, so that people would be forced to gaze at two Zaras, and not just one.
“Reports have been coming in all day,” said Zara, twirling one of her braids. “Institutes are responding with outrage to the news of Jace and Clary’s death at Faerie hands.”
“As we expected,” said Horace, shifting in his chair with a grunt of pain. It annoyed Manuel that Horace was still complaining about his arm, a mass of white bandages below the stump of his elbow. Surely the iratzes would have healed the cut, and Horace had only himself to blame for letting the Wrayburn bitch get the better of him.
Manuel detested Horace. But then, Manuel detested true believers in general. He couldn’t have given less of a damn whether there were Downworlders in Alicante or faeries in Brocelind Forest or werewolves in his bathtub. Prejudice against Downworlders struck him as boring and unnecessary. The only thing it was useful for was making people afraid.
When people were afraid, they would do anything you wanted if they thought it would make them safe again. When Horace spoke of reclaiming the past glory of the Nephilim, and the crowds cheered, Manuel knew what they were truly cheering for, and it was not glory. It was a cessation of fear. The fear they had felt since the Dark War had made them understand that they were not invincible.
Once, they believed, they had been invincible. They had stood with their boots on the necks of Downworlders and demons, and they had straddled the world. Now they recalled the burning bodies in Angel Square, and they were afraid.
And fear was useful. Fear could be manipulated into more power. And power was all Manuel cared about, in the end.
“Have we heard anything from the Los Angeles Institute?” Horace asked, lounging behind his large desk. “We know from Faerie that the Blackthorns and their companions returned home. But what do they know?”
What do they know? Horace and Zara had wondered the same when Dane’s body had come back to them, nearly dismembered. Dane had been a fool, creeping away from Oban’s camp in the middle of the night to seek the glory of retrieving the Black Volume on his own. (And he’d taken their time slippage medallion with him, which had meant that Manuel had discovered he’d lost a day or two when he’d returned to Idris.) Manuel suspected there was a longsword wound under those kelpie bites, but he didn’t mention it to the Dearborns. They saw what they wanted to see, and if Emma and Julian knew that Horace had set an assassin on their trail, it wouldn’t matter for much longer.
“About Clary and Jace?” Manuel said. “I’m sure they know that they disappeared through the Portal into Thule. It would be impossible to get them back, though. Time has passed, the Portal has closed, and Oban assured me Thule is a deadly place. By now they will be bones bleaching in the sand of another world.”
“The Blackthorns and that Emma wouldn’t dare say anything against us anyway,” said Zara. “We still hold their secret in the palms of our hands.” She touched Cortana’s hilt. “Besides, nothing of theirs will be theirs for much longer, not even the Institute. A few others may stand against us: Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Mumbai. But we will deal with them all.”
Zara was also a true believer, Manuel thought with some distaste. She was a stick and a bore and he had never believed Diego Rocio Rosales actually saw anything in her; on balance, he seemed to have turned out to be right. He suspected Diego was languishing in jail as much for rejecting Zara as for helping some idiot faerie run away from the Scholomance.
Horace turned to Manuel. “What about your phase of the plan, Villalobos?”
“Everything is in order. The Unseelie forces are massing under King Oban. When they arrive at the walls of Alicante, we will ride out to show our willingness to parley with them on the Imperishable Fields. We will make sure all Shadowhunters in Alicante see us. After this charade, we will return to the Council and tell them that the fey have surrendered. The Cold Peace will be over, and in return for their willingness to help us, all entrances to Faerie will be sealed off with wards. It will be made off-limits to Shadowhunters.”
“Very good,” said Horace. “But with the Portal to Thule closing, where does that leave us with the blight?”
“Exactly where we want to be,” Manuel said. He was pleased—pretending they wished to destroy the blight with fire had been his idea. He’d known it wouldn’t work, and the failure would leave the Nephilim more frightened than before. “The poison has spread far enough for our purposes. The Clave all know of the blight now, and fear what it will do.”
“And fear will make them agreeable,” said Horace. “Zara?”
“The warlocks are growing sicker,” Zara said with relish. “No reported transformations yet, but many Institutes have taken in warlocks in an effort to heal them. Once they turn into demons, you can imagine the bloody chaos that will ensue.”
“Which should make it easy to enact martial law and rid ourselves of the rest of the warlocks,” said Horace.
The fact that the blight would serve not just to frighten Shadowhunters but also to harm warlocks had always been seen as a plus by Horace, though Manuel saw little point in an exercise that would seriously limit the Shadowhunters’ ability to do things like open Portals and heal unusual illnesses. That was the problem with true believers. They were never practical. Ah well. Some warlocks would probably survive, he reasoned. Once all the Cohort’s demands were met, they could afford to be generous and destroy the blight for good. It wasn’t as if Horace was fond of the blight, or its propensity to deaden angelic magic. It was simply a useful tool, as the Larkspears had been.
“Are you not worried that the transformed warlocks will get out of control and slaughter Shadowhunters? Even mundanes?”
“I am not,” said Horace. “A properly trained Shadowhunter should be able to handle a warlock turned demon. If they cannot, then we have done our society a favor in culling them.”
“My question is whether Oban can be trusted,” said Zara, curling her lip. “He is a faerie, after all.”
“He can,” said Manuel. “He is far more malleable than his father was. He wants his kingdom, and we want ours. And if we bring him Prince Kieran’s head as promised, he will be very pleased indeed.”
Horace sighed. “If only these arrangements did not have to be secret. The whole of the Clave should glory in the rightness of our plan.”
“But they don’t like faeries, Papa,” said Zara, who was, as always, incredibly literal. “They wouldn’t like making deals with them or encouraging them to bring the blight into Idris, even if it was for a worthy cause. It is illegal to work with demonic magic—though I know it’s necessary,” she added hastily. “I wish Samantha and Dane were still around. Then we could talk to them.”
Manuel thought with little interest of Dane, undone by his own stupidity, and of Samantha, currently raving her head off in the Basilias. He doubted either of them would have been much help even in their former states.
“It is a lonely burden, daughter, to be the ones tasked with doing the right thing,” said Horace pompously.
Zara got up from her chair and patted his shoulder. “Poor Papa. Do you want to look into the scrying mirror one more time? It always cheers you up.”
Manuel sat up in his chair. The scrying mirror was one of the few things he didn’t find boring. Oban had magicked it to reflect the fields before the Unseelie Tower.
Zara held the mirror up so that the light from the demon towers sparked off its silver handle. She gave a little squeal as the glass turned clear, and through it they saw the green fields of Unseelie and the anthracite tower. Lined up in front of the tower were row upon row of Unseelie warriors, so many that the view of them filled the scene even as the rows diminished into the distance: an army without limit, without end. Their swords shone in the sunlight like a vast field planted with razor-sharp blades.
“Was a there a problem?” Emma asked anxiously.
“You might say that.” Jace’s tone was light, but his golden eyes were stormy. He tapped the paper. “It’s a message from the Clave. According to this, Clary and I are dead.”
* * *
Zara always chose the same chair in the Inquisitor’s office. Manuel suspected it was because she liked to sit beneath the portrait of herself, so that people would be forced to gaze at two Zaras, and not just one.
“Reports have been coming in all day,” said Zara, twirling one of her braids. “Institutes are responding with outrage to the news of Jace and Clary’s death at Faerie hands.”
“As we expected,” said Horace, shifting in his chair with a grunt of pain. It annoyed Manuel that Horace was still complaining about his arm, a mass of white bandages below the stump of his elbow. Surely the iratzes would have healed the cut, and Horace had only himself to blame for letting the Wrayburn bitch get the better of him.
Manuel detested Horace. But then, Manuel detested true believers in general. He couldn’t have given less of a damn whether there were Downworlders in Alicante or faeries in Brocelind Forest or werewolves in his bathtub. Prejudice against Downworlders struck him as boring and unnecessary. The only thing it was useful for was making people afraid.
When people were afraid, they would do anything you wanted if they thought it would make them safe again. When Horace spoke of reclaiming the past glory of the Nephilim, and the crowds cheered, Manuel knew what they were truly cheering for, and it was not glory. It was a cessation of fear. The fear they had felt since the Dark War had made them understand that they were not invincible.
Once, they believed, they had been invincible. They had stood with their boots on the necks of Downworlders and demons, and they had straddled the world. Now they recalled the burning bodies in Angel Square, and they were afraid.
And fear was useful. Fear could be manipulated into more power. And power was all Manuel cared about, in the end.
“Have we heard anything from the Los Angeles Institute?” Horace asked, lounging behind his large desk. “We know from Faerie that the Blackthorns and their companions returned home. But what do they know?”
What do they know? Horace and Zara had wondered the same when Dane’s body had come back to them, nearly dismembered. Dane had been a fool, creeping away from Oban’s camp in the middle of the night to seek the glory of retrieving the Black Volume on his own. (And he’d taken their time slippage medallion with him, which had meant that Manuel had discovered he’d lost a day or two when he’d returned to Idris.) Manuel suspected there was a longsword wound under those kelpie bites, but he didn’t mention it to the Dearborns. They saw what they wanted to see, and if Emma and Julian knew that Horace had set an assassin on their trail, it wouldn’t matter for much longer.
“About Clary and Jace?” Manuel said. “I’m sure they know that they disappeared through the Portal into Thule. It would be impossible to get them back, though. Time has passed, the Portal has closed, and Oban assured me Thule is a deadly place. By now they will be bones bleaching in the sand of another world.”
“The Blackthorns and that Emma wouldn’t dare say anything against us anyway,” said Zara. “We still hold their secret in the palms of our hands.” She touched Cortana’s hilt. “Besides, nothing of theirs will be theirs for much longer, not even the Institute. A few others may stand against us: Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Mumbai. But we will deal with them all.”
Zara was also a true believer, Manuel thought with some distaste. She was a stick and a bore and he had never believed Diego Rocio Rosales actually saw anything in her; on balance, he seemed to have turned out to be right. He suspected Diego was languishing in jail as much for rejecting Zara as for helping some idiot faerie run away from the Scholomance.
Horace turned to Manuel. “What about your phase of the plan, Villalobos?”
“Everything is in order. The Unseelie forces are massing under King Oban. When they arrive at the walls of Alicante, we will ride out to show our willingness to parley with them on the Imperishable Fields. We will make sure all Shadowhunters in Alicante see us. After this charade, we will return to the Council and tell them that the fey have surrendered. The Cold Peace will be over, and in return for their willingness to help us, all entrances to Faerie will be sealed off with wards. It will be made off-limits to Shadowhunters.”
“Very good,” said Horace. “But with the Portal to Thule closing, where does that leave us with the blight?”
“Exactly where we want to be,” Manuel said. He was pleased—pretending they wished to destroy the blight with fire had been his idea. He’d known it wouldn’t work, and the failure would leave the Nephilim more frightened than before. “The poison has spread far enough for our purposes. The Clave all know of the blight now, and fear what it will do.”
“And fear will make them agreeable,” said Horace. “Zara?”
“The warlocks are growing sicker,” Zara said with relish. “No reported transformations yet, but many Institutes have taken in warlocks in an effort to heal them. Once they turn into demons, you can imagine the bloody chaos that will ensue.”
“Which should make it easy to enact martial law and rid ourselves of the rest of the warlocks,” said Horace.
The fact that the blight would serve not just to frighten Shadowhunters but also to harm warlocks had always been seen as a plus by Horace, though Manuel saw little point in an exercise that would seriously limit the Shadowhunters’ ability to do things like open Portals and heal unusual illnesses. That was the problem with true believers. They were never practical. Ah well. Some warlocks would probably survive, he reasoned. Once all the Cohort’s demands were met, they could afford to be generous and destroy the blight for good. It wasn’t as if Horace was fond of the blight, or its propensity to deaden angelic magic. It was simply a useful tool, as the Larkspears had been.
“Are you not worried that the transformed warlocks will get out of control and slaughter Shadowhunters? Even mundanes?”
“I am not,” said Horace. “A properly trained Shadowhunter should be able to handle a warlock turned demon. If they cannot, then we have done our society a favor in culling them.”
“My question is whether Oban can be trusted,” said Zara, curling her lip. “He is a faerie, after all.”
“He can,” said Manuel. “He is far more malleable than his father was. He wants his kingdom, and we want ours. And if we bring him Prince Kieran’s head as promised, he will be very pleased indeed.”
Horace sighed. “If only these arrangements did not have to be secret. The whole of the Clave should glory in the rightness of our plan.”
“But they don’t like faeries, Papa,” said Zara, who was, as always, incredibly literal. “They wouldn’t like making deals with them or encouraging them to bring the blight into Idris, even if it was for a worthy cause. It is illegal to work with demonic magic—though I know it’s necessary,” she added hastily. “I wish Samantha and Dane were still around. Then we could talk to them.”
Manuel thought with little interest of Dane, undone by his own stupidity, and of Samantha, currently raving her head off in the Basilias. He doubted either of them would have been much help even in their former states.
“It is a lonely burden, daughter, to be the ones tasked with doing the right thing,” said Horace pompously.
Zara got up from her chair and patted his shoulder. “Poor Papa. Do you want to look into the scrying mirror one more time? It always cheers you up.”
Manuel sat up in his chair. The scrying mirror was one of the few things he didn’t find boring. Oban had magicked it to reflect the fields before the Unseelie Tower.
Zara held the mirror up so that the light from the demon towers sparked off its silver handle. She gave a little squeal as the glass turned clear, and through it they saw the green fields of Unseelie and the anthracite tower. Lined up in front of the tower were row upon row of Unseelie warriors, so many that the view of them filled the scene even as the rows diminished into the distance: an army without limit, without end. Their swords shone in the sunlight like a vast field planted with razor-sharp blades.
