The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,100
he said, wiggling his fingers.
Tian’s eyebrows went up. “Xujiahui? I wondered if you’d get there.”
Magnus nodded and, with a wave of his hands, opened a Portal. It glimmered blackly, with the same uncanny light as the one Sammael himself had opened earlier. Magnus exchanged a look with Alec.
“That doesn’t look right,” said Clary, and Simon looked hesitant. But they could all see the interior of the cathedral through the Portal’s aperture, and none of them wanted to stay in the cave. There was nothing for it but to step through, and hope that Diyu and its masters would give them a moment’s rest. They all, Magnus could see, desperately needed it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Phoenix Feather
THEY FOUND THE CATHEDRAL UNTOUCHED, and they set up camp in the apse, where the altar would have been in the real building. Here, of course, there was no altar, just an expanse of cracked white marble. Simon, Isabelle, Clary, and Jace perched on the marble steps that led down toward the pews, while Tian sat in the first row and Magnus leaned casually against a pillar.
Alec paced back and forth across the apse, restless and worried. Magnus had summoned some nourishment for them, which he had promised was safe—plain bowls of rice in broth, and capped thermoses of water. They didn’t taste like much, but everyone had wolfed them down anyway.
Though Alec would have liked it if Magnus could have been convinced to take more than a few bites. Instead, he was gazing at Tian, a shimmer of concentration in his gold-green eyes. “So, Ke Yi Tian,” he said. “What’s the story? With you and Sammael?”
With a sigh, Tian put aside his empty bowl, nodded once, and told his tale.
* * *
I WAS FIRST APPROACHED BY Jung Shinyun and Ragnor Fell in the Sunlit Market, months ago. Already there had been mutterings in the Downworlder Concession about these two warlocks, neither of them locals, who had come from nowhere and instantly became regulars. The Shanghai Conclave took an interest, and since I knew the concession well, I began keeping an eye on them. What vendors were they visiting? What were they buying? Did they meet with anyone?
In retrospect, I think that they were surveying the Market itself, learning how well and in what ways it was surveilled and defended. So all my careful recordings of their purchases of bird entrails and quartz crystals were probably irrelevant. But at the time, they were only persons of interest, newcomers to keep an eye on.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, Jung and Fell were keeping an eye on me. And I’ve grown… incautious about my relationship with Jinfeng. I’m lucky enough to live in a place where Downworlders and Shadowhunters are on good terms, and Jinfeng and I are lucky enough that both our families approve of us. So where I should have been vigilant, I was unguarded. Vulnerable.
One day in the Market they found me in a dark corner. They told me they knew about Jinfeng and me, and that they could get me in trouble. I told them my family knew, that the Shanghai Conclave supported me. But then they spoke of the Cohort.
* * *
ALEC KNEW OF THE COHORT. Scattered among the Clave were a small number of Shadowhunters who not only thought the Cold Peace was a good policy, but believed that it was the first step toward the return of the ultimate supremacy of the Nephilim over all of Downworld. Where Valentine Morgenstern and his Circle had argued that only by making war on Downworlders could the Shadowhunters be “purified,” the Cohort took a more subtle approach, proposing new rules to restrict the rights of Downworlders, often in small, localized ways. The danger of the Cohort, as far as Alec was concerned, was not that they would start a new Mortal War, but that the rest of the Clave would allow them to make these small changes, not noticing the larger dangers until it was too late. As yet they were still a small faction, but Alec’s father kept a close eye on them, and there was a growing worry that their numbers were increasing, however slowly.
Tian and Jinfeng’s relationship was illegal, under the Cold Peace, and Alec knew that its discovery and exposure to the larger Clave could well bring down not just Tian himself but his family’s control of the Shanghai Institute, and destroy the careful balance that had been achieved in the city.