“We answered it,” Alec said. His gaze moved anxiously over the gathered crowd. Clary could hardly blame him for his nerves. This was the largest crowd of adult Shadowhunters—of Shadowhunters in general—that she herself had ever seen. She kept looking from face to face, marking the differences between them—they varied widely in age and race and overall appearance, and yet they all gave the same impression of immense, contained power. She could sense their subtle gazes on her, examining her, evaluating. One of them, a woman with rippling silver hair, was staring at her so fiercely that there was nothing subtle about it. Clary blinked and looked away as Alec continued, “You weren’t at the Institute—and we couldn’t raise anyone—so we came ourselves.”
“Alec—”
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Alec said. “They’re dead. The Silent Brothers. They’re all dead. They’ve been murdered.”
This time there was no sound from the assembled crowd. Instead they seemed to go still, the way a pride of lions might go still when it spotted a gazelle.
“Dead?” Maryse repeated. “What do you mean, they’re dead?”
“I think it’s quite clear what he means.” A woman in a long gray coat had appeared suddenly at Maryse’s side. In the flickering light she looked to Clary like a sort of Edward Gorey caricature, all sharp angles and pulled-back hair and eyes like black pits scraped out of her face. She held a glimmering chunk of witchlight on a long silver chain, looped through the skinniest fingers Clary had ever seen. “They are all dead?” she asked, addressing herself to Alec. “You found no one alive in the City?”
Alec shook his head. “Not that we saw, Inquisitor.”
So that was the Inquisitor, Clary realized. She certainly looked like someone capable of tossing teenage boys into dungeon cells for no reason other than that she didn’t like their attitude.
“That you saw,” repeated the Inquisitor, her eyes like hard, glittering beads. She turned to Maryse. “There may yet be survivors. I would send your people into the City for a thorough check.”
Maryse’s lips tightened. From what very little Clary had learned about Maryse, she knew that Jace’s adoptive mother didn’t like being told what to do. “Very well.”
She turned to the rest of the Shadowhunters—there were not as many, Clary was coming to realize, as she had initially thought, closer to twenty than thirty, though the shock of their appearance had made them seem like a teeming crowd.
Maryse spoke to Malik in a low voice. He nodded. Taking the arm of the silver-haired woman, he led the Shadowhunters toward the entrance to the Bone City. As one after another descended the stairs, taking their witchlight with them, the glow in the courtyard began to fade. The last one in line was the woman with the silver hair. Halfway down the stairs she paused, turned, and looked back—directly at Clary. Her eyes were full of a terrible yearning, as if she longed desperately to tell Clary something. After a moment she drew her hood back up over her face and vanished into the shadows.
Maryse broke the silence. “Why would anyone murder the Silent Brothers? They’re not warriors, they don’t carry battle Marks—”
“Don’t be naive, Maryse,” said the Inquisitor. “This was no random attack. The Silent Brothers may not be warriors, but they are primarily guardians, and very good at their jobs. Not to mention hard to kill. Someone wanted something from the Bone City and was willing to kill the Silent Brothers to get it. This was premeditated.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“That wild goose chase that called us all out to Central Park? The dead fey child?”
“I wouldn’t call that a wild goose chase. The fey child was drained of blood, like the warlock. These killings could cause serious trouble between the Night Children and other Downworlders—”
“Distractions,” said the Inquisitor dismissively. “He wanted us gone from the Institute so that no one would respond to the Brothers when they called for aid. Ingenious, really. But then he always was ingenious.”
“He?” It was Isabelle who spoke, her face very pale between the black wings of her hair. “You mean—”
Jace’s next words sent a shock through Clary, as if she’d touched a live current. “Valentine,” he said. “Valentine took the Mortal Sword. That’s why he killed the Silent Brothers.”
A thin, sudden smile curved on the Inquisitor’s face, as if Jace had said something that pleased her very much.
Alec started and turned to stare at Jace. “Valentine? But you didn’t say he was here.”
“Nobody asked.”
“He couldn’t have killed the Brothers. They were torn apart. No one person could have done all that.”
“He probably had demonic help,” said the Inquisitor. “He’s used demons to aid him before. And with the protection of the Cup on him, he could summon some very dangerous creatures. More dangerous than Raveners,” she added with a curl of her lip, and though she didn’t look at Clary when she said it, the words felt somehow like a verbal slap. Clary’s faint hope that the Inquisitor hadn’t noticed or recognized her vanished. “Or the pathetic Forsaken.”
“I don’t know about that.” Jace was very pale, with hectic spots like fever on his cheekbones. “But it was Valentine. I saw him. In fact, he had the Sword with him when he came down to the cells and taunted me through the bars. It was like a bad movie, except he didn’t actually twirl his mustache.”
Clary looked at him worriedly. He was talking too fast, she thought, and looked unsteady on his feet.
The Inquisitor didn’t seem to notice. “So you’re saying that Valentine told you all this? He told you he killed the Silent Brothers because he wanted the Angel’s Sword?”
“What else did he tell you? Did he tell you where he was going? What he plans to do with the two Mortal Instruments?” Maryse asked quickly.
Jace shook his head.
The Inquisitor moved toward him, her coat swirling around her like drifting smoke. Her gray eyes and gray mouth were drawn into tight horizontal lines. “I don’t believe you.”
Jace just looked at her. “I didn’t think you would.”
“I doubt the Clave will believe you either.”
Alec said hotly, “Jace isn’t a liar—”
“Use your brain, Alexander,” said the Inquisitor, not taking her eyes off Jace. “Leave aside your loyalty to your friend for a moment. What’s the likelihood that Valentine stopped by his son’s cell for a paternal chat about the Soul-Sword, and didn’t mention what he planned to do with it, or even where he was going?”
“S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse,” Jace said in a language Clary didn’t know, “a persona che mai tornasse al mondo…”