Cassandra Clare - City of Heavenly Fire

“Clary!” Isabelle called as Clary, Jace, and Simon pulled free of the staring onlookers and nearly fell into the Lightwood siblings, who had managed to clear a small space for themselves in the middle of the crowd. Isabelle shot an irritated glance at Simon before reaching out to hug Jace and Clary. As soon as she released Jace, Alec pulled him over by the sleeve and hung on, his knuckles whitening around the fabric. Jace looked surprised, but said nothing.

“Is it true?” Isabelle said to Clary. “Sebastian was at your house last night?”

“At Amatis’s, yes—how did you know?” Clary demanded.

“Our father’s the Inquisitor; of course we know,” said Alec. “Rumors about Sebastian being in the city were all everyone was talking about before they opened up the Council room and we saw—this.”

“It’s true,” Simon added. “The Consul asked me about it when she woke me up—like I’d know anything. I slept through it,” he added as Isabelle shot him an inquiring look.

“Did the Consul say anything to you about this ?” Alec demanded, sweeping an arm toward the grim scene below. “Did Sebastian?”

“No,” Clary said. “Sebastian doesn’t exactly share his plans.”

“He shouldn’t have been able to get to the Downworld representatives. Not only is Alicante guarded, but each of their safe houses is warded,” said Alec. There was a pulse going in his throat like a hammer; his hand, where it rested on Jace’s sleeve, was shaking with a fine tremor. “They were at dinner. They should have been safe .” He let go of Jace and jammed his hands into his pockets. “And Magnus—Magnus wasn’t even supposed to be here. Catarina was coming instead of him.” He looked at Simon. “I saw you with him in Angel Square on the night of the battle,” he said. “Did he say why he was in Alicante?” Simon shook his head. “He just shooed me away. He was healing Clary.”

“Maybe this is a bluff,” Alec said. “Maybe Sebastian is trying to make us think he’s done something to the Downworld representatives to throw us off—”

“We don’t know that he’s done anything to them. But—they are missing,” Jace said quietly, and Alec looked away, as if he couldn’t bear to meet their gazes.

“ Veni ,” Isabelle whispered, looking at the dais. “Why . . . ?”

“He’s telling us he has power,” Clary said. “Power none of us even begin to understand.” She thought of the way he’d appeared in her room and then disappeared. Of the way the ground had opened under his feet at the Citadel, as if the earth were welcoming him in, hiding him from the threat of the world above.

A sharp report rang out through the room, the bell that called the Council to order. Jia had moved to the lectern, an armed Clave guard in hooded robes on either side of her.

“Shadowhunters,” she said, and the word echoed as clearly through the room as if she’d used a microphone. “Please be silent.”

The room subsided gradually into quiet, though from the rebellious looks on quite a few faces, it was an uncooperative quiet. “Consul Penhallow!” called out Kadir. “What answers do you have for us? What is the meaning of this—this desecration?”

“We’re not sure,” said Jia. “It happened in the night, in between one watch of guards and another.”

“This is vengeance,” said a thin, dark-haired Shadowhunter whom Clary recognized as the head of the Budapest Institute. Lazlo Balogh, she thought his name was. “Vengeance for our victories in London and at the Citadel.”

“We didn’t have victories in London and at the Citadel, Lazlo,” said Jia. “The London Institute turned out to be protected by a force even we were unaware of, one we cannot replicate. The Shadowhunters there were warned and led to safety. Even then, a few were injured: None of Sebastian’s forces were harmed. At best it could be called a successful retreat.”

“But the attack on the Citadel,” Lazlo protested. “He did not enter the Citadel. He did not reach the armory there—”

“But neither did he lose. We sent through sixty warriors, and he killed thirty and injured ten. He had forty warriors, and he lost perhaps fifteen. If it hadn’t been for what happened when he wounded Jace Lightwood, his forty would have slaughtered our sixty.”

“We’re Shadowhunters,” said Nasreen Choudhury. “We are used to defending that which we must defend with our last breaths, our last drops of blood.”

“A noble idea,” said Josiane Pontmercy, from the Marseilles Conclave, “but perhaps not entirely practical.”

“We were too conservative in the number we sent to face him at the Citadel,” said Robert Lightwood, his booming voice carrying through the room. “We have estimated since the attacks that Sebastian has four hundred Endarkened warriors on his side. Simply given the numbers, a head-to-head battle now between his forces and all Shadowhunters would mean that he would lose.”

“So what we need to do is fight him as soon as possible, before he Turns any other Shadowhunters,” said Diana Wrayburn.

“You can’t fight what you can’t find,” said the Consul. “Our attempts to track him continue to prove fruitless.” She raised her voice. “Sebastian Morgenstern’s best plan now is to lure us out in small numbers. He needs us to send out scouting parties to hunt demons, or to hunt him. We must stay together, here, in Idris, where he cannot confront us. If we split up, if we leave our homeland, then we will lose.”

“He’ll wait us out,” said a blond Shadowhunter from the Copenhagen Conclave.

“We have to believe he doesn’t have the patience for that,” said Jia. “We have to assume he will attack, and when he does, our superior numbers will defeat him.”

“There’s more than patience to be considered,” said Balogh. “We left our Institutes, we came here, with the understanding that we would be returning once we had held a Council with the Downworld representatives. Without us out in the world, who will protect it? We have a mandate , a mandate from Heaven, to protect the world, to hold back the demons. We cannot do that from Idris.”

“All the wards are at full strength,” said Robert. “Wrangel Island is working overtime.

And given our new cooperation with Downworlders, we will have to rely on them to keep the Accords. That was part of what we were going to discuss at the Council today—”

“Well, good luck to you with that,” said Josiane Pontmercy, “considering that the representatives of Downworld are missing.”

Missing. The word fell into the silence like a pebble into water, sending out ripples through the room. Clary felt Alec stiffen, minutely, at her side. She hadn’t been letting herself think about it, hadn’t been letting herself believe that they could really be gone. It was a trick Sebastian was playing on them, she kept telling herself. A cruel trick, but nothing more.

“We don’t know that!” Jia protested. “Guards are out searching now—”

“Sebastian wrote on the floor in front of their very seats!” shouted a man with a bandaged arm. He was the head of the Mexico City Institute and had been at the Citadel battle. Clary thought his last name was Rosales. “ Veni. ‘I am come.’ Just as he sent us a message with the death of the angel in New York, now he strikes at us in the heart of the Gard—”

“But he didn’t strike at us,” Diana interrupted. “He struck at the representatives of Downworld.”

“To strike at our allies is to strike at us,” called Maryse. “They are members of the Council, with all the attendant rights that represents.”

“We don’t even know what happened to them!” snapped someone in the crowd. “They could be perfectly all right—”