Queen of Air and Darkness Page 32

  “Watch over Tiberius,” said Shade. There was something in his voice, an inflection, that made it sound as if he had learned English a long time ago. “There are many ways to be endangered by magic.”

  Kit glanced up in surprise. “What do you mean? We don’t have to kill anybody, or create any death magic energy. Isn’t that what makes necromancy wrong?”

  Shade sighed. “Magic is like thermodynamics,” he said. “You’re always taking something from somewhere. Every act has repercussions, and this one may have repercussions you do not expect and cannot guard against. I see you think of yourself as Ty’s protector.” His voice gentled. “Sometimes you need to guard people against the things they want, as well as the things they fear.”

  Kit’s heart clenched.

  Out on the beach, Ty straightened up. The wind blew his hair, and he reached up his hands, unhesitating and unselfconscious, to touch the wind and the night air. His face shone like a star. In all the world, Kit had never met anyone he believed to be so incapable of evil.

  “I would never let anything hurt Ty,” he said. “You see, I—”

  He turned to tell Shade, to explain to him how it was, how it would always be. But the warlock had disappeared.

  * * *

  Mark’s skin burned softly where the pure iron manacles had been chained around his wrists.

  Oban and his guard rode ahead on their horses; Manuel was in among them, as if it were natural for a Shadowhunter to ride among Unseelie hosts. He turned occasionally to smirk at Mark and Kieran, who walked behind the group. Manacles circled both their wrists, connected to a thick iron chain that clipped to the pommel of Oban’s saddle.

  It was a punishment Mark had seen before. He kept an anxious eye on Kieran in case he stumbled. A prisoner who fell would be dragged along behind Unseelie horses while the guards laughed.

  Kieran was already pale with pain. The cold iron affected him much more than it did Mark; his wrists were bleeding and chafed where the iron touched them.

  “They spoke of hostages,” he said finally, as they reached the crest of a low hill. “Whose death are we being exchanged for?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” said Mark.

  “I am afraid,” said Kieran, naked honesty in his voice. “Manuel Villalobos was at the Scholomance when I was hiding there. He is a terrible person. There is nothing he would not do. Most of the Cohort strike me as followers rather than leaders, even Zara. She does as her father tells her, as she has been taught, though they are teachings of hatred and cruelty. But Manuel is different. He does what he does because he wishes to cause people pain.”

  “Yes,” said Mark. “It’s what makes him dangerous. He isn’t a true believer.” He glanced around them; they were passing near to a patch of blight. He had started to get used to the sight of them, annihilated landscapes of ashy grass and dead trees, as if acid had been poured onto the earth from the sky. “We can trust in Cristina,” he said in a near whisper. “She will be looking for help for us, even now.”

  “Did you notice something curious?” said Kieran. “Oban did not ask us about her. Where she might have vanished to, or who she might have sought out.”

  “Perhaps he was aware we did not know.”

  Kieran snorted. “No. Manuel did not tell him Cristina was ever there, mark my words. He would prefer Oban not be angry he had let a Shadowhunter escape.”

  “What is Manuel doing with Oban? No offense, but Oban doesn’t seem like the brightest of your siblings.”

  Kieran’s eyes narrowed. “He is a drunkard and a turnip.”

  “But an ambitious turnip.”

  Kieran chuckled reluctantly. “It seems to me that Manuel has stoked Oban’s ambition. It is true that the Cohort cannot influence my father, but perhaps they hope to influence who the next Unseelie King might be. A weak one, that they can influence easily. Oban would be perfect for that.”

  They crested another hill. Mark could see the tower rise in the distance, a black thorn piercing the blue sky. He had flown over the Unseelie Tower with the Wild Hunt, but he had never been inside. He had never wanted to go. “Why would Manuel think that there would be a new Unseelie King anytime soon? Your father has been King for so long no one can remember what King Bram looked like.”

  Kieran glanced at the tower. A fresh burst of laughter came from Oban and the others ahead. “Perhaps it is because the people are angry with my father. I hear things from Adaon. There are whispers of discontent. That the King has brought this blight down upon our land. That his obsession with Shadowhunters has left his people divided and impoverished. The elder faeries of Unseelie have mistrusted him since the disappearance of the First Heir. They feel that the King did not try hard enough to find her.”

  Mark was startled. “The First Heir was a girl? I thought that the King murdered all his female children.”

  Kieran didn’t say anything. Mark recalled the last time they had faced the King in Faerie, when Mark had come with Emma and Julian and Cristina to save Kieran from the Lord of Shadows. Things were different now. He flashed back suddenly to the clearing, awakening to see Cristina and Kieran in each other’s arms, just before the guards had come.

  “Why did you kiss Cristina?” Mark said quietly. “If you did it to upset me or make me jealous, that was a terrible thing to do to her.”

  Kieran turned to him with surprise. “It was not to upset you or make you jealous, Mark.”

  “She likes you,” Mark said. He had known it for some time but had never spoken the words aloud before.

  Kieran flushed. “That is very strange to me. I do not deserve it.”

  “I am not sure I deserve her fondness either,” said Mark. “Perhaps she does not bestow her heart with the care she should.” He glanced down at his bleeding wrists. “Do not hurt her.”

  “I could not,” said Kieran. “I would not. And I am sorry, Mark, if you were jealous. I had not intended that.”

  “It is all right,” Mark said with a kind of puzzlement, as if he were surprised at the truth. “I wasn’t jealous.” Not of either of you. How is that possible?

  The shadow of the tower fell over them, darkening the ground where they stood. The air seemed suddenly colder.

  In front of them, the massive thorned hedge that ringed the tower rose up like a wall of spikes. White bones hung from the thorny spikes, as they had hung for hundreds of years. It had been a long, long time since a warrior had challenged the wall. And Mark could not remember ever having heard of one who had done so and lived.

  “Mark,” Kieran whispered.

  Mark took a step forward and nearly stumbled; the chain connecting them to the horses lay limp on the ground. Oban and the others had paused in the archway of the enormous gates that were the only way through the thorn hedge.

  Kieran reached for Mark and caught at his shoulder with his manacled hands. His lips were cracked and bleeding. He stared into Mark’s eyes with a look of terrible pleading. Mark forgot their strange discussion about Cristina, forgot everything but Kieran’s pain and his own desire to protect him.

  “Mark,” Kieran breathed. “I have to warn you. We will walk the path of punishment to the tower. I have seen this happen to others. It is—I cannot—”

  “Kieran. It will be all right.”

  “No.” Kieran shook his head wildly enough to make his dark-blue hair fly around his head. “My father will have lined the path to the tower with the gentry. They will scream at us. They will throw rocks and stones. It’s how my father wants it. He threatened me with it after Iarlath’s death. Now I am responsible for Erec’s death as well. There will be no mercy for me.” He choked on his words. “I am sorry you have to be here for this.”

  Feeling strangely calm, Mark said, “Isn’t it better to have me with you?”

  “No,” Kieran said, and in his eyes Mark thought he saw the ocean, black and silver under the moon. Distant and untouchable. Beautiful and everlasting. “Because I love you.”

  The world seemed to
rush away into silence. “But I thought—you said we would be done with each other.”

  “I am not done with you,” said Kieran. “I could never be done with you, Mark Blackthorn.”

  Mark’s whole body hummed with surprise. He barely registered it when they began to move forward again, until Kieran’s grip slid from his shoulder. Reality came rushing back in, a smacking wave: He heard Kieran suck in his breath, steeling himself for the worst as they passed through the gates after Oban and the others.

  Their chains rattled over the cobblestones of the path that led from the gates to the doors of the tower, an obscenely loud noise. The courtyard on either side was packed with Unseelie faeries. Some carried stones, while some held whips made of thorny vines.

  Fumbling slightly, twisting his wrist against the manacles, Mark managed to take Kieran’s hand in his. “We will go forward without fear,” he said in a low voice. “For I am a Shadowhunter, and you are the son of a King.”

  Kieran threw him a grateful look. A moment later they were moving along the path, and the crowd, bearing their whips and stones, had flanked them on either side.

  Mark raised his head. They would not see a Shadowhunter cringe in fear or pain. Beside him, Kieran had straightened his back; his expression was haughty, his body braced.

  Braced—for blows that did not come. As Mark and Kieran walked between the rows of faeries, they stood as still as statues, their rocks unthrown, their whips unmoving.

  The only sound came from Oban and his guards, their muttering rising in the silent air. Oban twisted to the side, his angry gaze raking the crowd. “Bestir yourselves, imbeciles!” he shouted. “Don’t you know what you’re supposed to be doing? These are murderers! They killed Iarlath! They murdered Prince Erec!”

  A murmur went through the crowd, but it wasn’t an angry murmur. Mark thought he heard Erec’s name spoken in anger, and Kieran’s with much more gentleness; Kieran himself was looking around in great surprise.

  And still the crowd did not move. Instead, as Kieran and Mark moved through and among them, voices began to rise. Mark listened incredulously as each told a story. He gave me bread when I was starving by the side of the road. He intervened when the King’s redcaps had taken my farm. He saved my husband from execution. He took responsibility for a crime my child committed. He tried to save my mother from the Riders of Mannan. And for his kindness, the King sent him to the Wild Hunt.

  Oban whipped around, his face twisted in rage. Manuel laid his hand on Oban’s shoulder; he leaned in and whispered in the prince’s ear. Oban subsided, looking furious.

  Kieran looked at Mark in astonishment, his lips half-parted. “I do not understand,” he whispered.

  “They hate your father,” said Mark. “But I do not think they hate you.”

  They had reached the steps of the tower. They paused as Oban and the others dismounted. There was a flash of movement in the crowd. A small faerie child, a girl with her hair in ribbons and bare feet, slipped from among the other fey folk and darted up to Kieran. She pressed something shyly into his hand. “For your kindness, Prince Kieran.”

  “What was that?” Mark asked as Kieran closed his hand around the object. But the guards had already surrounded them and were pushing them toward the doors of the tower, and Kieran did not answer.

  * * *

  As Diana flew with Gwyn over Brocelind, smoke furled up from the forest below like gray-and-black fingers unclosing against the sky.

  The Cohort had burned the blighted areas, but haphazardly—Diana could see the smoking stumps of trees, but the gray-black ashy land stretched out even farther than it had before, and some patches seemed untouched by fire. Diana looked on in dismay. What did the Cohort think they were doing?

  They landed and Gwyn helped Diana down from Orion’s back. Jia was waiting for them anxiously.

  Diana ran to her. “I heard you had news about Emma and Julian. Are they all right? Have they been sent back to L.A.?”

  Jia hesitated. She was looking thin and drawn, her skin papery and gray. “They have not. No.”

  Relief flowed through Diana: So Emma and Julian were still in Alicante. “I was so worried at the meeting,” she said. “What Horace is doing to Diego and the others is unthinkable. Blaming them for crimes and sealing their mouths shut so they can’t speak for themselves. It made me almost glad Emma and Julian are sequestered in that house—”

  “Diana. No,” Jia said. She laid a thin hand on Diana’s wrist; Gwyn had come up and was listening quietly, his grizzled head tipped to one side. “A Clave member, someone loyal to me, overheard Zara talking to Manuel. She says that Horace sent Emma and Julian to Faerie on a suicide mission. I had my people check the house, and it’s empty. They aren’t here, Diana. They were sent to Faerie.”

  It was a soft explosion inside her head: rage, fury, anger at herself—she’d known something was wrong, had felt it. Why hadn’t she trusted her instincts?

  “Gwyn,” she said, her voice barely recognizable in her own ears. “Take me to Faerie. Now.”

  Jia gripped Diana’s wrist. “Diana, think. Faerie is a huge land—we don’t know where they might be—”

  “Gwyn and his people are hunters,” said Diana. “We will find them. Gwyn—”

  She turned to him, but he had stiffened all over, like a fox scenting hounds. “ ’Ware!” he cried, and whipped an ax from the scabbard on his back.

  The trees rustled; Jia and Diana barely had time to draw their own weapons when the Cohort burst into the clearing, led by Zara Dearborn, brandishing a glittering sword.

  A glittering sword that Diana knew. With a feeling as if she had swallowed a lump of ice, Diana recognized Cortana.

  Jessica Beausejours was with Zara, along with Anush Joshi, Timothy Rockford, and Amelia Overbeck. Zara, in her Centurion uniform, grinned in triumph. “I knew it! I knew we would catch you conspiring with Downworlders!”

  Gwyn raised an eyebrow. “There is only one Downworlder here.”

  Zara ignored him. “I expected no better of you, Diana Wrayburn, but Consul Penhallow? Violating the Cold Peace in your own homeland? How could you?”

  Jia held her curved dao across her chest. “Spare me the dramatics, Zara,” she said in clipped tones. “You don’t understand what’s happening, and your tantrums cause nothing but trouble.”

  “We’re not conspiring with faeries, Zara,” Diana said.

  Zara spat on the ground. It was a startling gesture in its savage contempt. “How dare you deny that you are conspiring when we’ve caught you red-handed?”

  “Zara—”

  “Don’t bother,” Jia said to Diana. “She and the Cohort won’t listen to you. They only hear what they want to hear. They accept nothing that contradicts the beliefs they already hold.”

  Zara turned to her followers. “Take them into custody,” she said. “We will bring them to the Gard.”

  Gwyn threw his ax. It was a gesture so sudden that Diana leaped back in surprise; the ax sailed over the heads of the Cohort and slammed into the trunk of an oak tree. Several members of the Cohort screamed as the tree crashed over with the deafening roar of snapping branches and shattering earth.

  Gwyn extended his hand, and the ax flew back into his grip. He bared his teeth at the cowering Shadowhunters. “Stay back, or I shall cut you to pieces!”

  “See!” Zara had fallen to her knees when the tree had collapsed; she struggled up now, clutching Cortana tightly. “See? A conspiracy! We must fight—Anush!”

  But Anush had fled into the bushes. The others, visibly shaken, reluctantly grouped around Zara as she took several determined steps toward Gwyn.

  “What will he do?” Jia said in a quiet voice.

  “He will kill them all. He’s the Wild Hunt’s leader, they are nothing to him.”

  “They are children,” Jia said. “Poor Anush fled. He is only sixteen.”

  Diana hesitated. They were only children—hateful children, but Gwyn could not strike them down. It was no solut
ion.

  She ran to him, heedless of what the Cohort would think, and spoke in his ear. “Leave us,” she whispered. “Please. They will take us to the Gard, but it will not be for long. You must go after Emma and Julian.”

  Gwyn turned to her, concern plain on his face. “But you—”

  “Find them for me,” Diana said. “I will be safe!” She whistled. “Orion!”

  Orion cantered into the clearing, cutting between the Cohort and Gwyn. Gwyn clambered onto his horse’s back and leaned down to kiss Diana, holding her face in his hands for a long moment.

  “Be safe,” he said, and Orion lifted into the sky. The Cohort were all shouting: Most had never seen anything like a steed of the Wild Hunt before. They really were children, Diana thought wearily: They still had wonder in them, mixed with their ignorance and hate.

  And she could not hurt children. She stood quietly beside Jia as Zara and Timothy relieved them of their weapons and chained their hands behind their backs.

  * * *

  With their invisibility potions gone, Emma and Julian had to rely on staying in the shadows, hoods up, as they crept along the corridors of the tower. Luckily, it seemed as if everyone had been summoned to some kind of event—the crowds had thinned out, and there were fewer Unseelie fey hurrying to and fro along the corridors. The guards seemed distracted as well, and no one questioned them as they slipped around the turn of a corridor and found themselves in front of the hanging tapestry with its pattern of stars.

  Emma glanced around, concerned. “The guards are gone.”

  The corridor was, in fact, empty. Emma’s nerves tingled. Something wasn’t right.

  “Good,” Julian said. “Maybe they took a break or something.”

  “I don’t like it,” Emma said. “They wouldn’t leave Ash unguarded.”

  “The guards might be inside the room.”

  “This doesn’t feel right—”

  “Someone’s coming.” Indeed, there were footsteps in the distance. Julian’s face was tight with tension. “Emma, we have to move.”

  Against her better judgment, Emma drew a shortsword from her belt and slipped past the tapestry after Julian.