City of Heavenly Fire

“Do you know what it says?”


“?‘Only the Worthy,’?” said Diana. “My father used to say you could tell a great weapon if it had either a name or an inscription.”

“I saw one yesterday,” Clary recalled. “It said something like ‘I am of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal.’?”

“Cortana!” Diana’s eyes lit up. “The blade of Ogier. That is impressive. Like owning Excalibur, or Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi. Cortana is a Carstairs blade, I think. Is Emma Carstairs, the girl who was at the Council meeting yesterday, the one who owns it now?”

Clary nodded.

Diana pursed her lips. “Poor child,” she said. “And the Blackthorns, too. To have lost so many in a single sweeping blow—I wish there was something I could do for them.”

“Me too,” Clary said.

Diana gave her a measured look and ducked down behind the counter. She came up a moment later with a sword about the length of Clary’s forearm. “What do you think of this?”

Clary stared at the sword. It was undoubtedly beautiful. The cross-guard, grip, and pommel were gold chased with obsidian, the blade a silver so dark it was nearly black. Clary’s mind ran quickly through the types of weapons she had been memorizing in her lessons—falchions, sabres, backswords, longswords. “Is it a cinquedea?” she guessed.

“It’s a shortsword. You might want to look at the other side,” said Diana, and she flipped the sword over. On the opposite side of the blade, down the center ridge, ran a pattern of black stars.

“Oh.” Clary’s heart thumped painfully; she took a step back and nearly bumped into Jace, who had come up behind her, frowning. “That’s a Morgenstern sword.”

“Yes, it is.” Diana’s eyes were shrewd. “Long ago the Morgensterns commissioned two blades from Wayland the Smith—a matched set. A larger and a smaller, for a father and his son. Because Morgenstern means Morning Star, they were each named for a different aspect of the star itself—the smaller, this one here, is called Heosphoros, which means dawn-bringer, while the larger is called Phaesphoros, or light-bringer. You have doubtless seen Phaesphoros already, for Valentine Morgenstern carried it, and now his son carries it after him.”

“You know who we are,” Jace said. It wasn’t a question. “Who Clary is.”

“The Shadowhunter world is small,” said Diana, and she looked from one of them to the other. “I’m on the Council. I’ve seen you give testimony, Valentine’s daughter.”

Clary looked doubtfully at the blade. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Valentine would never have given up a Morgenstern sword. How do you have it?”

“His wife sold it,” Diana said. “To my father, who owned this shop in the days before the Uprising. It was hers. It should be yours now.”

Clary shuddered. “I’ve seen two men bear the larger version of that sword, and I hated them both. There are no Morgensterns in this world now who are dedicated to anything but evil.”

Jace said, “There’s you.”

She glanced over at him, but his expression was unreadable.

“I couldn’t afford it, anyway,” Clary said. “That’s gold, and black gold, and adamas. I don’t have the money for that kind of weapon.”

“I’ll give it to you,” said Diana. “You’re right that people hate the Morgensterns; they tell stories of how the swords were created to contain deadly magic, to slay thousands at once. They’re just stories, of course, no truth to them, but still—it’s not the sort of item I could sell elsewhere. Or would necessarily want to. It should go to good hands.”

“I don’t want it,” Clary whispered.

“If you flinch from it, you give it power over you,” said Diana. “Take it, and cut your brother’s throat with it, and take back the honor of your blood.”

She slid the sword across the counter to Clary. Wordlessly Clary picked it up, her hand curling around the pommel, finding that it fit her grip—fit it exactly, as if it had been made for her. Despite the steel and precious metals in the sword’s construction, it felt as light as a feather in her hand. She raised it up, the black stars along the blade winking at her, a light like fire running, sparking along the steel.

She looked up to see Diana catch something out of the air: a glimmer of light that resolved itself into a piece of paper. She read down it, her eyebrows knitting together in concern. “By the Angel,” she said. “The London Institute’s been attacked.”