Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3)

“You’re here,” she said.

Livvy had stopped in her tracks; she held out a hand indicating Julian and Emma should stop as well. She flicked off her flashlight as several dozen figures emerged from the mist. Emma tensed, then relaxed as she recognized them—Diana. Bat. Cameron. Raphael. Maia. And dozens more rebels, clad in black and green.

They stood in silence in two long rows. Military formation. None of them moved.

Tessa looked at Livvy wonderingly. “Are all of these people your people?”

“Yes,” Livvy said. She was regarding Tessa with a mix of distrust and hope. “These are my people.”

Tessa smiled, a sudden and wonderful smile. “You’ve done well, Livia Blackthorn. You’ve honored your family name.”

Livvy seemed taken aback. “My family?”

“Long have there been Blackthorns,” said Tessa, “and long have they lived with honor. I see much honor here.” She glanced in the direction of the rebels, and then turned—seeming unconcerned with the show of force at her back—and raised her hands in front of her.

There was indrawn breath from the rebels as Tessa’s fingers sparked with yellow fire. A door—two doors—evolved under her hands, filling the archway. Each was a massive slab of stone. Across them both had been crudely carved a phrase in Latin. Nescis quid serus vesper vehat.

“Who knows what nightfall brings?” Julian translated, and a shiver went up Emma’s spine.

Tessa brushed the yellow flames of her fingers across the doors, and a loud grinding sound cut through the muffling fog. The doors shuddered and began to slide apart, dust showering down from years of disuse.

A hollow, booming cry echoed from the darkness as the doors slid open completely. Deep blackness was all that was visible beyond the entrance: Emma could not see the stairs she knew led down into the Silent City. She could see only shadow.

Emma and Julian stepped forward, Emma peering into the blackness of the Silent City’s entrance, just as Tessa sank to the ground.

They darted to her side. She pushed herself upright against a pillar, her face as white as the mist. “I’m all right, I’m all right,” she said, though up close, the sides of her mouth and eyes were threaded with scarlet, as if the small blood vessels there had burst with strain. “We should hurry. It isn’t wise to leave the Silent City open—”

She tried to struggle to her feet and sank back down again with a gasp.

Livvy handed her flashlight to Emma and knelt down beside Tessa. “Cameron! Diana! Go with Emma and Jules into the Bone City. Maia, I need a medic.”

There was a flurry of activity. As Cameron and Diana came to join them, Emma tried to argue that she should be the one to stay with Tessa, but Livvy was adamant. “You did the parabatai ceremony,” she said. “You know the Silent City. There’s no reason its architecture here should be any different.”

“Hurry,” Tessa said again as Maia bent down beside her with a first-aid kit. “The Instruments are in the Star Chamber.” She coughed. “Go!”

Emma flipped Livvy’s flashlight on and darted through the entrance of the City, Julian beside her, Cameron and Diana taking the rear. The noise of the street above vanished almost immediately, muffled by the fog and the heavy stone walls. The Silent City was more silent than it had ever been, she thought. The beam of the flashlight bounced off the walls, illuminating chipped stone, and, as they made their way deeper underground, polished white and yellow bone.

Livvy had been right. The architecture of the Silent City was the same here. Julian walked alongside Emma, reminding her of the last time they’d been to this place together, at their parabatai ceremony. The city had smelled old then, like bones and dust and stone, but it had been a living and inhabited place. Now it smelled of stale air, disuse, and death.

It was not her City of Bones, of course. But she had been taught from childhood that all Cities were one City; there were different entrances but only one stronghold. As they passed through the arched rooms of mausoleums, Emma could not help but think: Never will more warriors be added to this army; never will more ashes help to build the City of Bones.

They ducked through a tunnel that opened into a square pavilion. Spires of carved bone occupied each corner. Squares of marble like a checkerboard, bronze and red, made up the floor; in the center was the mosaic that gave the room its name, a parabolic design of silver stars.

A black basalt table ran along one wall. Laid out atop it were two objects: a cup and a sword. The Cup was gold, with a ruby-studded rim; the sword was a heavy dark silver, with a hilt in the shape of angel wings.

Emma knew them both. Every Shadowhunter did, from a thousand paintings and tapestries and illustrations in history books. She noticed, with a strange detached surprise, that neither the Cup nor the Sword had gathered any dust.

Cameron inhaled sharply. “I never thought I’d actually see them again. Not after the War.”

“Give me the flashlight,” Diana said, reaching out her hand to Emma. “Go on, you two.”

Emma handed over the light, and she and Julian approached the table. Julian picked up the Cup and tucked it through the strap of the Sam Browne belt across his chest, then zipped his jacket up over it. It took Emma a moment longer to steel herself to pick up the sword. Her last sight of it had been in Annabel’s hand as Annabel had cut down Robert Lightwood and plunged the shards of the sword into Livvy’s chest.

But this was another sword: unbloodied, unbroken. She took hold of the grip and switched it with the longsword on her back; the Mortal Sword was a heavy weight against her spine, and she remembered what the Queen had said: that the Nephilim had once been giants on the earth, with the strength of a thousand men.

“We’d better go,” Diana said. “Like the warlock said, better not to leave this place open too long.”

Cameron looked around with a shiver of distaste. “Can’t get out of here too soon for me.”

As they passed through the City, the beam of the flashlight danced off the semiprecious stones embedded in the archways of bone. They gleamed in a way that made Emma sad: What was the point of beauty nobody saw? They reached a tunnel and she realized with relief they must be getting close to the stairs and the surface: She could hear the wind, the sound of a car backfiring—

She stiffened. Nobody drives in the fog.

“What’s that noise?” she said.

They all jerked to attention. The sound came again, and this time Cameron paled.

“Gunshots,” Diana said, sliding a gun out of the holster on her hip.

“Livvy.” Cameron began to run; he’d gone a few feet when figures loomed up out of the shadows, figures of smoke and scarlet. A silver blade slashed out of the darkness.

“Endarkened!” Julian shouted.

Emma’s longsword was already in her left hand; she raced forward, seizing a bo-shuriken out of her belt and hurling it toward one of the figures in red. They staggered back, a spray of blood painting the wall behind them.

An Endarkened woman with long brown hair lunged toward her. Cameron was struggling with one at the foot of a set of stairs. A shot rang out, echoing in Emma’s ears; the Endarkened fell like a rock. Emma glanced back to see Julian lowering a pistol, his expression stony. Smoke still curled from the muzzle.

“Go!” Diana dropped the flashlight, shoved Emma from behind, and took aim. “Get to Livvy! Get to the others!”

The implication was clear: Get the Cup and Sword away from the Endarkened. Emma took off, longsword in hand, laying about her in double arcs of slashing blows; she saw Cameron struggling with an Endarkened she recognized as Dane Larkspear. Rotten in one world, rotten in another, she thought, as Cameron kicked Dane’s legs out from under him.