Lady Midnight (56 page)

Ty was in the weapons room with them now. It was a cavernous space with no windows. Every spare inch of the walls was hung with swords, axes, and maces. Gear, belts, and boots were stacked in piles. There was a ceramic tile bowl full of steles, and a table covered with a long cloth held seraph blades.

Julian could sense them all around him, his friends and family. He knew Mark was at his side, toeing off his shoes and kicking his feet into boots. He knew Emma was at the counter, lining up seraph blades that had already been named and prepared, sliding some into her belt and distributing the rest. His awareness of her swung as she moved around the room like the needle on a compass.

Above all, though, he was aware of Tavvy, out there somewhere, needing him. There was a cold terror in him that threatened to pull the determination out of his bones and sap his concentration. Pushing it away to focus on what was happening here and now was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He bitterly wished that things were different, that they had the cooperation of the Clave, that they could have gotten to Magnus and asked for a Portal.

But it was no use wishing.

“Talk,” he snapped at Kieran, pulling down a weapons belt from
a shelf. “That black light, you said it was ‘faerie magic.’ Did you mean dark magic?”

Now that Mark was no longer looking directly at him, Kieran seemed bored and annoyed. He leaned against the central table, taking care not to come in contact with any of the weapons—not, his expression made clear, because they were sharp or frightening but because they were Nephilim weapons and therefore repellent.

“The question is whether it will show up on the Clave’s map,” said Ty, buckling on protective gauntlets. He was already in his gear, and the slight outline of the bandage on his calf was barely visible under the thick fabric. “The one Magnus uses to track dark magic use. Or is that blocked like the cell phones?”

“It was Unseelie magic, but not dark in nature,” said Kieran. “It will not show itself on the map. They were very sure of that.”

Julian frowned. “Who is
they
? In fact, how do you know so much about Malcolm?”

“Because of Iarlath,” said Kieran.

Mark turned to stare. “Iarlath? What has he to do with this?”

“I thought you knew that at least,” Kieran muttered. “Iarlath and Malcolm have been in this together since the attack on the Institute five years ago.”

“They’re allies?” Mark demanded. “How long have you known?”

“Only a short time,” said Kieran. “I became suspicious when Iarlath so strongly refused to allow you to come back to Faerie. He wished you to stay here, so much so that he staged that charade of punishment with the whipping so that you would not return with us. After that I realized there was more to the plan of having you here at the Institute than finding the murderer who had taken faerie lives. It was about preventing anyone in your family from being able to go to the Clave until it was too late.”

Emma had a seraph blade in each hand and Cortana on her back; she had paused, her face stiff with shock. “Iarlath said
something to me when he was—when he was whipping me,” she said. “That Shadowhunters don’t know who to trust. He meant Malcolm, didn’t he?”

“Most likely,” said Kieran. “Malcolm’s is the shadow hand that has guided the Followers, and Malcolm killed your parents five years ago.”

“Why?” Emma was rigid. Julian wanted to go to her so badly it hurt.
“Why did he kill my parents?”

“As I understand it?” Kieran said, and there was a tinge of pity to his voice. “It was an experiment. To see if the spell worked.”

Emma stood speechless. Julian asked it for her, the question she couldn’t voice. “What do you mean, an experiment?”

“Years ago, Iarlath was one of the Fair Folk who allied themselves with Sebastian Morgenstern,” said Kieran. “He was also a friend to Malcolm. As you probably know, there are certain books warlocks are forbidden to own, but which can be found in some Shadowhunter libraries. Necromantic tomes and the like. One of those is the Black Volume of the Dead.”

“The one that the poem talked about,” said Dru. Though her face was still tearstained, she had put on her gear and was braiding her hair carefully back from her face. It hurt Julian’s heart, to see her like that. “‘Find the black book at any cost.’”

“There are many black books,” said Kieran. “But this was one Malcolm specifically wanted. Once the Institute was cleared of Shadowhunters and Sebastian departed, Malcolm took the opportunity to slip in and steal the book from the library. After all, when else was the Institute going to be unguarded, the door open? He took it, and he found the spell he wanted, and he saw that it required the sacrifice of Shadowhunter life. That was when your parents returned to the Institute, Emma.”

“So he killed them,” Emma said. “For a spell.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Did it at least work?”

“It didn’t,” said Kieran. “It failed, and so he left their bodies in the ocean, knowing that the murders would be taken to be Sebastian’s work.”

“Iarlath told you all this?” There was suspicion on Mark’s face.

“I followed Iarlath to the Unseelie Court and listened to what he said there.” Kieran tried to meet Mark’s gaze. Mark looked away. “The rest is what I demanded he tell me at knifepoint. Malcolm was to misdirect and confuse you so that you would not realize what he was doing—he used Johnny Rook for some of that. He wanted you to engage yourself in an investigation that would prove fruitless. Mark’s presence here would deter you from asking the Clave or the Silent Brothers to help you, thus protecting Malcolm’s work with the Followers, his attempts to raise his old love from the dead. When Malcolm had done what he needed to do, he would take a Blackthorn, for the death of a Blackthorn would be the last key to the enchantment.”

“But Iarlath hasn’t got the power to authorize a faerie convoy to do something on this scale,” said Mark. “He’s just a courtier, not someone who can order Gwyn around. Who gave the permission for this to happen?”

Kieran shook his dark head. “I don’t know. Iarlath did not say. It could have been the King, my father, or it could have been Gwyn—”

“Gwyn would not do that,” said Mark. “Gwyn has honor, and he is not cruel.”

“What about Malcolm?” Livvy demanded. “I thought he had honor. I thought he was our friend! He loves Tavvy—he’s played with him for hours, brought him toys. He couldn’t kill him. He couldn’t.”

“He’s responsible for the killing of a dozen people, Livvy,” said Julian. “Maybe more.”

“People are more than one thing,” said Mark, and his eyes brushed over Kieran as he spoke. “Warlocks too.”

Emma stood with her hands still on the seraph blades. Julian
could feel what she felt, as he always had, as if his own heart mirrored hers—the hot curl of anger rising over a choking sense of despair and loss. More than anything he wanted to reach out to her, but he didn’t trust himself to do it in front of everyone else.

They’d be able to see right through him the moment he touched her, see his real feelings. And there was no way he could risk that now, not when his heart was being eaten alive with fear over his little brother, fear he couldn’t show in case it demoralized the rest of his siblings.

“Everyone is more than one thing,” said Kieran. “We are more than single actions we undertake, whether they be good or evil.” His eyes gleamed, silver and black, as he looked at Mark. Even in this room full of Shadowhunter things, the wildness of the Hunt and Faerie clung to Kieran like the scent of rain or leaves. It was the wildness that Julian sometimes sensed in Mark, that had faded since he’d come back to them, but showed itself still in brief flares like gunfire seen from a distance. For a moment they seemed to him two feral things, incongruous in their surroundings.

“The poem that was written on the bodies,” Cristina said. “The one that mentioned the black book. The story said it was given to Malcolm in the Unseelie Court.”

“So goes the faerie story as well,” said Kieran. “At first Malcolm was told that his love had become an Iron Sister. Later he found out that she had been murdered by her family. Walled up alive in a tomb. The knowledge drove him to seek out the King of the Unseelie Court and ask him if there was a way to raise the dead. The King gave him that rhyme. It was instructions—it is only that it took him almost a century to learn how to follow them, and to find the black book.”

“That’s why the library was destroyed in the attack,” said Emma. “So no one would notice the book was missing, if they ever looked for it. So many books were lost.”

“But why did Iarlath tell Malcolm that the Followers could kill faeries as well as humans?” said Emma. “If he was really in league with Malcolm—”

“That was something Iarlath wanted. He has many enemies in the Seelie Court. It was an expedient way for him to rid himself of some of them—Malcolm had his Followers slay them, and the murders could not be traced back to Iarlath. For a faerie to kill another of the gentry, that is a dark crime indeed.”

“Where is Annabel’s body?” asked Livvy. “Wouldn’t she be buried in Cornwall? Wouldn’t she have been walled up there—in a ‘tomb by the sounding sea’?”

“Convergences are places out of space and time,” said Kieran. “The convergence itself is neither here nor in Cornwall nor in any real space. It is a between place, like Faerie itself.”

“It can probably be entered through Cornwall as well—that would be why those plants grow outside the entrance,” said Mark.

“And what is the connection to the poem ‘Annabel Lee’?” asked Ty. “The name Annabel, the similarities of the stories—it seems more than coincidence.”

The dark-haired faerie prince only shook his head. “I only know what Iarlath told me, and what is part of faerie lore. I did not even know the name Annabel or the mundane poem.”

Mark whirled on Kieran. “Where is Iarlath now?”

Kieran’s eyes seemed to shimmer when he looked back. “We are wasting time here. We should be getting to the convergence.”

“He isn’t wrong.” Diego was completely kitted out: gear, several swords, an ax, throwing knives at his belt. He wore a black cloak over his gear, pinned at the shoulder with the pin of the Centurions—it bore the pattern of a leafless stick, and the words
Primi Ordines.
He made Julian feel underdressed. “We must get to the ley line convergence and stop Fade—”

Julian looked around the room, at Emma and Mark, and then
at Ty and Livvy, and lastly at Dru. “I know that we have known Malcolm all our lives. But he is a murderer and liar. Warlocks are immortal, but not invulnerable. When you see him, put your blade in his heart.”

There was a silence. Emma broke it. “He killed my parents,” she said. “I’ll be the one to cut out his heart.”

Kieran’s eyebrows went up, but he said nothing.

“Jules.” It was Mark, having moved to stand at Julian’s shoulder. His hair, that Cristina had cut, was tangled; there were shadows under his eyes. But there was strength in the hand he laid on Julian’s shoulder. “Would you place a rune upon me, brother? For I fear that without them, I will be at a disadvantage in the battle.”

Julian’s hand went automatically to his stele. Then he paused. “Are you sure?”

Mark nodded. “It is time to let the nightmares go.” He pulled the neck of his shirt aside and down, baring his shoulder. “Courage,” he said, naming a rune. “And Agility.”

The others were discussing the fastest way to get to the convergence, but Julian was aware of both Emma’s and Kieran’s eyes on him as he put one hand on Mark’s back and used the other to draw two careful runes. At the first bite of the stele, Mark tensed, but relaxed immediately, letting out his breath in a soft exhale.

When Julian was done, he lowered his hands. Mark straightened up and turned to him. Though he had shed no tears, his two-colored eyes were brilliant. For a moment there was no one in the world but Julian and his brother.

“Why?” Julian said.

“For Tavvy,” Mark said, and suddenly, in the set of his mouth, in the curve of the determined line of his jaw, Julian could see his own self. “And,” Mark added, “because I am a Shadowhunter.” He looked toward Kieran, who was gazing at them as if the stele had seared his own skin. Love and hate had their own secret languages,
Julian thought, and Mark and Kieran were speaking in them now. “Because I am a Shadowhunter,” he said again, his eyes full of a private challenge. “Because
I am a Shadowhunter.
”

Kieran pushed himself away from the table almost violently. “I have told you everything I know,” he said. “There are no other secrets.”

“So I suppose you’re leaving,” Mark said. “Thank you for your aid, Kieran. If you are returning to the Hunt, tell Gwyn that I will not be coming back. Not ever, no matter what rules they decree. I swear that I—”

“
Don’t
swear it,” Kieran said. “You do not know how things will change.”

“Enough.” Mark began to turn away.

“I have brought my steed with me,” said Kieran. He was speaking to Mark, but everyone else was listening. “A faerie steed of the Hunt can take to the air. Roads do not slow our travel. I will ride ahead and delay what is happening at the convergence until the rest of you arrive.”

“I’ll go with him,” Mark said sharply.

Everyone looked at him in surprise. “Um,” said Emma. “You can’t knife him on the way, Mark. We may need him.”

“Pleasant as that sounds, I wasn’t planning to,” said Mark. “Two warriors are better than one.”

“Good thinking,” said Cristina. She slid her two butterfly knives into her belt. Emma had finished fastening on the last of her seraph blades.

Julian felt the familiar chill of battle’s expectation rising in his veins. “Let’s go.”

As they headed downstairs, Julian found himself beside Kieran. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. Kieran felt like strangeness, wild magic, the murderous abandonment of the Hunt. He couldn’t imagine what Mark had found to love about him.

“Your brother was wrong about you,” Kieran said as they descended the steps to the entryway.

Julian glanced around, but no one seemed to be listening to them. Emma was beside Cristina, the twins were together, and Dru was talking shyly to Diego.