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

“There are others in jail, as well,” said Cristina’s mother. Cristina, sitting beside her, turned bright red. “Diego Rocio Rosales has been jailed! For nothing!”

Kieran glanced at her, a small smile at the corner of his mouth.

“As has my cousin Divya,” said Anush Joshi, a young man with a jagged black haircut and an anxious face. “What do you plan to do about it? Intercede with the Council?”

Julian glanced briefly down at his hands, as if gathering himself. “Everyone—all of us here—have always accepted a certain amount of prejudice from the Clave as normal, through choice or necessity.”

The room was quiet. No one disagreed, but there were many eyes cast down, as if in shame.

“Now the Cohort has changed what we thought of as normal,” Julian said. “Never before have Downworlders been driven from Idris. Never before have Shadowhunters jailed other Shadowhunters without even the pretense of a trial.”

“Why do we care what Shadowhunters do to each other?” demanded the phouka in the Kaelie T-shirt.

“Because that’s step one, and what they do to Downworlders will be worse,” Emma said, surprising herself; she hadn’t meant to speak, only to stand by Julian. “They’ve already registered many of you.”

“So you’re saying we need to fight them?” said Gwyn in his rumbling voice. “This is a call to arms?”

Julie Beauvale rose to her feet. “They may not be a good Clave, but they are still Shadowhunters. There are a lot of people who follow the Cohort who are scared. I don’t want to hurt those people, and their fear is real, especially now that Jace and Clary are dead. They were our heroes, and I knew them—”

“Julie,” Beatriz hissed. “Sit down.”

“Jace and I were personally very close,” Julie went on. “I wouldn’t hesitate to call him my best friend, and I—”

“Julie.” Beatriz took Julie by the tail of her shirt and hauled her back into her seat. She cleared her throat. “I think that what Julie meant is that you’re saying the Cohort wants to destroy the government, but I’m guessing, given all the secrecy, that you also want to destroy the government, and I . . . don’t know how we do that without hurting innocent people.”

There was a hum of conversation. In the shadows, Emma saw them—she didn’t know when they’d come in, but a single Iron Sister and a single Silent Brother stood motionless against the far wall, their faces in shadow.

A slight chill went through her. She knew the Iron Sisters were against the Cohort. She didn’t know about the Silent Brothers. They both seemed like emissaries of the Law, standing there in their silence.

“We’re not suggesting destroying the government,” Julian said. “We’re saying it’s being destroyed right now, already, from within. The Clave was built to give all Shadowhunters a voice. If we are all voiceless, then it is not our government. The Law was enacted to protect us and to allow us to protect others. When Laws are bent and broken to put the innocent in danger, then it is not our Law. Valentine wanted to rule the Clave. Sebastian wanted to burn it down. We only want to return our rightful Consul to power, and to allow the government of Shadowhunters to be what it should be—not a tyranny, but a representation of who we are and what we want.”

“Those are some pretty words,” said the French werewolf who’d been talking to Alec earlier. “But Jace and Clary were beloved of your people. They will want a war against those who harmed them.”

“Yes,” said Julian. “I’m counting on that.”

There was no gesture, no signal that Emma could see, but the doors of the Sanctuary opened and Jace and Clary walked in, as if on cue.

At first there was no reaction from the crowd. The light from the torches was bright, and neither of the two were in gear: Jace wore jeans and Clary a plain blue dress. As they passed through the crowd, people blinked at them until finally Lily Chen, looking annoyed, stood up and said, in a loud, bored voice, “I cannot believe my own eyes. Isn’t that Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild, back from THE DEAD?”

The reaction that ripped through the crowd was electric. Clary looked over with some alarm as the roar grew; Jace just smirked as the two of them joined Emma and the others behind the long table. Lily had resumed her seat and was examining her nails.

Julian was calling for people to be quiet, but his voice was drowned out by the noise. Feeling that this was an area in which she could excel, Emma jumped up onto the table and shouted. “EVERYONE,” she yelled. “EVERYONE SHUT UP.”

The decibel level fell immediately. Emma could see Cristina giggling, her hand over her mouth. Beside her, Jace shot finger guns at Julie Beauvale, who had turned bright pink.

“Good to see you, bestie,” he said.

Simon’s shoulders were shaking. Isabelle, who had been watching with a half smile, patted his back.

Clary scrunched her nose at Jace and then turned to the crowd. “Thank you,” she said, her voice low but carrying. “We’re glad to be here.”

The room fell pin-drop silent.

Emma jumped down from the table. Julian was surveying the assembly, hands looped behind his back, as if wondering what he thought of the situation he’d architected. People were staring, rapt and silent, at Clary and Jace. So this is what it’s like to be heroes, Emma thought, looking at the expressions on the faces of the crowd. To be the ones with angel blood, the ones who’ve literally saved the world. People look at you as if . . . almost as if you’re not real.

“Inquisitor Lightwood sent us to Faerie,” Clary said. “To seek a weapon in the possession of the Unseelie King, one that would be deadly to Shadowhunters. We discovered that the Unseelie King had opened a Portal to another world, one without angelic magic. He was using the earth from that other world to create the blight you have heard of—the one eating through Brocelind Forest.”

“That blight was eradicated the night before last,” said Jace. “By a team of Nephilim and Fair Folk, working together.”

Now the silence broke: There was a buzz of confused voices.

“But we are not the only Nephilim working with faeries,” said Clary. “The current King of Unseelie, Oban, and the Cohort have been working together. It was the Cohort who arranged for him to be put on the throne.”

“How do we know that’s true?” shouted Joaquin Acosta Romero, of the Buenos Aires Institute. He was sitting beside the French werewolf girl, his arm around her shoulders.

“Because they have done nothing but lie to you,” said Mark. “They told you Jace and Clary were dead. They told you faeries slaughtered them. Here they stand, alive.”

“Why would the Unseelie Court agree to be part of a scheme in which they were blamed for murder?” said Vivianne Penhallow.

Everyone looked expectantly at Julian.

“Because the Cohort and the Unseelie King have already agreed on exactly what both of them will get from this parley,” he said. “The parley is a performance. That is why Horace is Projecting it so every Shadowhunter can see it. Because the performance is more important than the outcome. If he is seen to get what he wants from the Fair Folk, then confidence in the Cohort will grow so strong that we will never have a chance to unseat them.”

Emma tried to hide a smile. You’re really back, Julian, she thought.

“This is a government that will murder its own to control its own,” said Jace. The smirk was gone from his face, and any pretense at amusement: His expression was stony and cold. “This time, it was us. By luck, we survived and are standing here to tell you our story. The Inquisitor is meant to uphold the Law. Not to hide behind it as an alibi for murdering their own.”

“What about murdering those who aren’t Shadowhunters?” called a naga sitting near some of the Keo family.