They thought they knew it all, and they knew so little.
“I am Lucian Graymark,” said the young man with the thin clever face at the front of the group. Magnus had heard the name before—Valentine’s parabatai, his second-in-command, dearer than a brother. Magnus disliked him as soon as he spoke. “Who are you to come here and interfere with us in the pursuit of our sworn duty?”
Graymark held his head high and spoke in a clear, authoritative voice that belied his years. He looked every inch the perfect child of the Angel, stern and merciless. Magnus looked back over his shoulder at the werewolves, huddled at the very back of the room.
Magnus lifted a hand and painted a line of magic, a shimmering barrier of blue and gold. He made the light blaze as fiercely as any angel’s sword might have, and barred the Shadowhunters’ way.
“I am Magnus Bane. And you are trespassing in my city.”
That got a little laugh. “Your city?” said Lucian.
“You need to let these people go.”
“Those creatures,” said Lucian, “are part of a wolf pack that killed my parabatai’s parents. We tracked them down here. We can now exact Shadowhunter justice, as is our right.”
“We didn’t kill any Shadowhunters!” the only woman among the werewolves said. “And my children are innocent. Killing my children would be murder. Bane, you have to make him let my children go. He has my—”
“I would hear no more of your whining like a mongrel dog,” said the young man with the hawklike face, the one standing beside the black-haired woman. They looked like a matched set, and the expressions on their faces were identically ferocious.
Valentine was not famed for his mercy, and Magnus did not have any confidence in his Circle’s sparing the children.
The werewolves might have been partially shifted from human to wolf form, but they did not look ready to fight, and Magnus did not know why. There were too many Shadowhunters for Magnus to be sure he could fight them off successfully on his own. The best he could hope for was to stall them with conversation, and hope that he could inspire doubt in some of the Circle, or that Catarina would come or that the Whitelaws would come, and that they might stand with Downworlders and not their own kind.
It seemed a very slim hope, but it was all he had.
Magnus could not help but look again toward the golden-haired youth at the front of the group. There was something terribly familiar about him, as well as a suggestion of tenderness about his mouth, and hurt in the deep blue wells of his eyes. There was something that made Magnus look toward him as the one chance to get the Circle to turn from their purpose.
“What’s your name?” Magnus asked.
Those blue eyes narrowed. “Stephen Herondale.”
“I used to know the Herondales very well, once upon a time,” said Magnus, and he saw it was a mistake by the way Stephen Herondale flinched. The Shadowhunter knew something, had heard some dark whisper about his family tree, then, and was desperate to prove it was not true. Magnus did not know how desperate Stephen Herondale might be, and he had no wish to find out. Magnus went on, genially addressing them all: “I have always been a friend to Shadowhunters. I know many of your families, going back for hundreds of years.”
“There is nothing we can do to correct the questionable judgments of our ancestors,” Lucian said.
Magnus hated this guy.
“Also,” Magnus went on, pointedly ignoring Lucian Graymark, “I find your story suspect. Valentine is ready to hunt down any Downworlder on any vague pretext. What had the vampires he killed in Harlem done to him?”
Stephen Herondale frowned, and glanced at Lucian, who looked troubled in turn, but said, “Valentine told me he went hunting some vampires who broke the Accords there.”
“Oh, the Downworlders are all so guilty. And that is so very convenient for you, isn’t it? What about their children? The boy who came to collect me was about nine. Has he been dining on Shadowhunter flesh?”
“The pups gnaw on whatever bones their elders drag in,” muttered the black-haired woman, and the man beside her nodded.
“Maryse, Robert, please. Valentine is a noble man!” Lucian said, his voice rising as he turned to address Magnus. “He would not hurt a child. Valentine is my parabatai, my best beloved swordbrother. His fight is mine. His family has been destroyed, the Accords have been broken, and he deserves and will have his vengeance. Stand aside, warlock.”