“I can fight,” Mark said. He didn’t add anything about the night before, the fact that he’d held off Mantid demons on his own, without new runes. “The Wild Hunt are warriors.”
“Yes, but they fight differently than Shadowhunters,” Diana said, gesturing around the training room, at the runed blades, the adamas swords. “These are the weapons of your people.” She turned back to the others. “Each of you must choose one.”
Mark’s expression flattened at that, but he said nothing. Nor did he move as the rest of them scattered—Emma went for Cortana, Cristina for her butterfly knives, Livvy for her saber, and Dru for a long, thin misericord. Julian chose a pair of chakhrams, circular razored throwing stars.
Ty hung back. Emma couldn’t help but wonder if Diana noticed that it was Livvy who picked up a dagger for Ty and pressed it into his palm. Emma had seen Ty throw knives before: He was good at it, sometimes excellent, but only when he felt like it. When he didn’t, there was no moving him.
“Julian,” Diana said, turning the music back up. “You first.”
Julian stepped back and threw, the chakhrams spinning from his hands like circles of light. One sheared off the training dummy’s right arm, the other its left, before they buried themselves in the wall.
“Your target isn’t dead,” Diana pointed out. “Just armless.”
“Exactly,” said Julian. “So I can question him. Or it, you know, if it’s a demon.”
“Very strategic.” Diana tried to hide a smile as she made a note in her book. She picked up the dummy’s arms and fastened them back on. “Livvy?”
Livvy dispatched the dummy with a swing of her saber without passing the ash barrier. Dru acquitted herself decently with a thrown misericord, and Cristina flipped open her balisongs and hurled them so that one point of each blade stuck into the dummy’s head exactly where its eyes would have been.
“Gross,” said Livvy admiringly. “I like it.”
Cristina retrieved her knives and winked at Emma, who had climbed partway up the rope ladder, Cortana in her free hand.
“Emma?” Diana said, craning her head up. “What are you doing?”
Emma flung herself from the ladder. It wasn’t the cold fury of battle, but there was a moment of falling freedom that was pure pleasure, that drove the annoyance of Cameron’s warning out of her mind. She landed on the dummy, feet planted on its shoulders, and slashed down, driving Cortana’s hilt deep into its trunk. Then she flipped herself backward, over and down, landing on her feet inches outside the circle of ash.
“That was showing off,” Diana said, but she was smiling as she made another note. She glanced up. “Tiberius? It’s your turn.”
Ty took a step toward the circle. The white band of his headphones was stark against his black hair. He was as tall as the dummy, Emma realized with a jolt. She often thought of Ty as the child he had been. But he wasn’t—he was fifteen years old, older than she’d been when she and Julian had undergone the parabatai ceremony. His face wasn’t a little boy’s face anymore. Sharpness had replaced the softness.
Ty lifted his knife.
“Tiberius,” said a voice from the doorway. “Take the headphones off.”
It was Uncle Arthur. They all looked up in surprise: Arthur rarely ventured downstairs, and when he did, he avoided conversation, meals—all contact. It was strange to see him hovering in the doorway like a gray ghost: gray robe, gray stubble, worn gray pants.
“The pollution of mundane technology is everywhere,” said Arthur. “In those phones you carry. Cars—at the London Institute we didn’t own them. That computer you think I don’t know about.”An odd anger flashed across his face. “You’re not going to be able to go into battle wearing headphones.”
He said the word as if it were poisonous.
Diana closed her eyes.
“Ty,” she said. “Take them off.”
Ty slid the headphones down so that they hung around the back of his neck. He winced as the chatter of noise and voices from the radio struck his ears. “I won’t be able to do it, then.”
“Then you’ll fail,” said Arthur. “This has to be fair.”
“If you don’t let him use them, it won’t be fair,” said Emma.
“This is the test. Everyone has to do it,” Diana said. “Battle doesn’t always happen under optimum conditions. There’s noise, blood, distractions—”
“I won’t be in battle,” Ty said. “I don’t want to be that kind of Shadowhunter.”
“Tiberius,” Arthur said sharply. “Do as you’re asked.”
Ty’s face set. He lifted the knife and threw it, with deliberate awkwardness but great force. It slammed into the black plastic radio, which shattered into a hundred pieces.
There was silence.
Ty looked down at his right hand; it was bleeding. A piece of the shattered radio had gone wide and nicked his skin. Scowling, he went to stand by one of the pillars. Livvy watched him with miserable eyes; Julian made as if to start after him, when Emma caught him by the wrist.