City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6)(23)

“Will the Council please come to attention,” she said.

Silence fell quickly; many of the Shadowhunters were straining forward. Rumors had been flying around like panicked birds, and there was an electricity in the room, the crackling current of people desperate for information.

“Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Oslo, Berlin, Moscow, Los Angeles,” said Jia. “Attacked in quick succession, before the attacks could be reported. Before warnings could be given. Every Conclave in these cities has had its Shadowhunters captured and Turned. A few—pitifully few, the very old or very young—were simply killed, their bodies left for us to burn, to add to the voices of lost Shadowhunters in the Silent City.”

A voice spoke from one of the front rows. A woman with black hair, the tattooed silver design of a koi fish standing out on the dark skin of her cheek. Clary rarely saw Shadowhunters with tattoos that weren’t Marks, but it wasn’t unheard of. “You say ‘Turned,’?” she said. “But do you not mean ‘slain’?”

Jia’s mouth tightened. “I do not mean ‘slain,’?” she said. “I mean ‘Turned.’ We speak of the Endarkened, the ones Jonathan Morgenstern—or as he prefers to be known, Sebastian—Turned from their purpose as Nephilim using the Infernal Cup. Every Institute was issued reports of what happened at the Burren. The existence of the Endarkened is something we have known of now for some time, even if there were perhaps those who did not want to believe it.”

A murmur went around the room. Clary barely heard it. She was aware that Jace’s hand was around hers, but she was hearing the wind on the Burren, and seeing Shadowhunters rising from the Infernal Cup to face Sebastian, the Marks of the Gray Book already fading from their skin. . . .

“Shadowhunters don’t fight Shadowhunters,” said an older man in one of the front rows. Jace murmured into her ear that he was the head of the Reykjavík Institute. “It is blasphemy.”

“It is blasphemy,” Jia agreed. “Blasphemy is Sebastian Morgenstern’s creed. His father wanted to cleanse the world of Downworlders. Sebastian wants something very different. He wants Nephilim reduced to ashes, and he wants to use Nephilim to do it.”

“Surely if he was able to turn Nephilim into—into monsters, we ought to be able to find a way to turn them back,” said Nasreen Choudhury, the head of the Mumbai Institute, regal in her rune-decorated white sari. “Surely we should not give up so easily on our own.”

“The body of one of the Endarkened was found at the Berlin site,” said Robert. “He was injured, probably left for dead. The Silent Brothers are examining him right now to see if they can glean any information that might lead to a cure.”

“Which Endarkened?” demanded the woman with the koi tattoo. “He had a name before he was Turned. A Shadowhunter name.”

“Amalric Kriegsmesser,” said Robert after a moment’s hesitation. “His family has already been told.”

The warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth are also working on a cure. The whispered omnidirectional voice of a Silent Brother echoed in the room. Clary recognized Brother Zachariah standing with his hands folded near the dais. Beside him was Helen Blackthorn, dressed in white mourning clothes, looking anxious.

“They’re warlocks,” said someone else in a dismissive tone. “Surely they won’t do any better than our own Silent Brothers.”

“Can’t Kriegsmesser be interrogated?” interrupted a tall woman with white hair. “Perhaps he knows Sebastian’s next move, or even a manner of curing his condition—”

Amalric Kriegsmesser is barely conscious, and besides, he is a servant of the Infernal Cup, said Brother Zachariah. The Infernal Cup controls him completely. He has no will of his own and therefore no will to break.

The woman with the koi tattoo spoke out again: “Is it true that Sebastian Morgenstern is invulnerable now? That he can’t be killed?”

There was a murmur in the room. Jia spoke, raising her voice, “As I said, there were no Nephilim survivors from the first of the attacks. But the last attack was on the Institute in Los Angeles, and six survived. Six children.” She turned. “Helen Blackthorn, if you please, bring the witnesses out.”

Clary saw Helen nod, and disappear through a side door. A moment later she returned; she was walking slowly now, and carefully, her hand on the back of a thin boy with a mop of wavy brown hair. He couldn’t have been older than twelve. Clary recognized him immediately. She had seen him in the nave of the Institute the first time she had met Helen, his wrist clamped in his older sister’s grip, his hands covered in wax where he had been playing with the tapers that decorated the interior of the cathedral. He had had an impish grin and the same blue-green eyes as his sister.

Julian, Helen had called him. Her little brother.

The impish grin was gone now. He looked tired and dirty and frightened. Skinny wrists stuck out of the cuffs of a white mourning jacket, the sleeves of which were too short for him. In his arms he was carrying a little boy, probably not more than three years old, with tangled brown curls; it seemed to be a family trait. The rest of the children wore similar borrowed mourning clothes. Following Julian was a girl of about ten, her hand firmly clasped in the hold of a boy the same age. The girl’s hair was dark brown, but the boy had tangled black curls that nearly obscured his face. Fraternal twins, Clary guessed. After them came a girl who might have been eight or nine, her face round and very pale between brown braids. All of the Blackthorns—for the family resemblance was striking—looked bewildered and terrified, except perhaps Helen, whose expression was a mixture of fury and grief.