Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices 2)

And he remembered what Kieran had said to him before the battle with Malcolm. You are not gentle. You have a ruthless heart.

If he could have saved Kieran by risking his own safety, he would have. But he would not risk his brother. If that made him ruthless, so be it. If Mark was right, Kieran would be fine anyway.

"Diana," said Emma. Their tutor was leaning against the closed front door, looking down at her palm. "What did Gwyn throw at you?"

Diana held out her hand; glimmering on her brown skin was a small golden acorn.

Mark looked surprised. "That is a fair gift," he said. "Should you crack open that acorn, Gwyn would be summoned to aid you."

"Why would he give Diana something like that?" asked Emma.

The ghost of a smile touched Mark's mouth as he began to mount the stairs. "He admired her," he said. "It is rare I have seen Gwyn admire a woman before. I had thought perhaps his heart was closed to that sort of thing."

"Gwyn has a crush on Diana?" Emma inquired, her dark eyes brightening. "I mean, not that you're not very attractive, Diana, it just seems sudden."

"Faeries are like that," said Julian. He almost felt for Diana--he had never seen her look so rattled. She was worrying at her lower lip with her teeth, and Julian remembered that Diana really wasn't very old--only twenty-eight or so. Not that much older than Jace and Clary.

"It doesn't mean anything," she said. "And besides, we have more important things to think about!"

She dropped the acorn into Mark's hand just as the front door flew open and the Centurions poured in. They looked wind-tossed and soaking wet, every one of them drenched. Diana, seeming relieved to no longer be talking about her love life, went off to find blankets and towels (drying runes notoriously worked well to dry your skin, but didn't do much for your clothes).

"Did you find anything?" Emma asked.

"I think we've located the likely spot where the body sank," said Manuel. "But the sea was too rough for us to dive for it. We'll have to try again tomorrow."

"Manuel," Zara said warningly, as if he'd revealed the secret passcode that would open the gates to Hell under their feet.

Manuel and Rayan rolled their eyes. "It's not like they don't know what we're looking for, Zara."

"The Scholomance's methods are secret." Zara thrust her damp jacket into Diego's arms and turned back to Emma and Julian. "Right," she said. "What's for dinner?"

*

"I can't tell any of them apart," said Kit. "It's the uniforms. It makes them all look the same to me. Like ants."

"Ants don't all look the same," said Ty.

They were sitting at the edge of the second-floor gallery overlooking the main Institute entryway below. Wet Centurions scurried to and fro; Kit saw Julian and Emma, along with Diana, trying to make conversation with the ones who hadn't wandered off to the dining room, and the fireplace there, to get warm.

"Who is everyone again?" said Kit. "And where are they from?'

"Dane and Samantha Larkspear," said Livvy, indicating two dark-haired Centurions. "Atlanta."

"Twins," said Ty.

"How dare they," said Livvy, with a grin. Kit had been worried she wouldn't be thrilled with Ty's plan to absorb Kit into his detecting plans, but she'd just given a wry smile when they'd come over to her in the training room and said, "Welcome to the club."

Livvy pointed. "Manuel Casales Villalobos. From Madrid. Rayan Maduabuchi, Lagos Institute. Divya Joshi, Mumbai Institute. Not everyone's connected with an Institute, though. Diego's not, Zara isn't, or her friend Jessica, who's French, I think. And there's Jon Cartwright and Gen Whitelaw, and Thomas Aldertree, all Academy graduates." She tilted her head. "And not one of them has the sense to come in out of the rain."

"Tell me again why you think they're up to something?" said Kit.

"All right," said Ty. Kit had noticed already that Ty responded directly to what you said to him, and much less so to tone or intonation. Not that he couldn't use a refresher on why they were halfway up a building, staring at a bunch of jerks. "I was sitting in front of your room this morning when I saw Zara go into Diana's office. When I followed her, I saw that she was going through papers there."

"She could have had a reason," said Kit.

"To be sneaking through Diana's papers? What reason?" said Livvy, so firmly that Kit had to admit that if it looked scurrilous, it probably was scurrilous.

"I texted Simon Lewis about Cartwright, Whitelaw, and Aldertree," said Livvy, resting her chin on the lower crossbar of the railing. "He says Gen and Thomas are solid, and Cartwright is kind of a lunk, but basically harmless."

"They might not all be involved," said Ty. "We have to figure out which of them are, and what they want."

"What's a lunk?" said Kit.

"Sort of a combination of hunk and lump, I think. As in, large but not that smart." Livvy grinned her quick grin as a shadow rose up over them--Cristina, her hands on her hips, her eyebrows quirked.

"What are you three doing?" she asked. Kit had a healthy respect for Cristina Rosales. Sweet as she looked, he'd seen her throw a balisong fifty feet and hit her target exactly.

"Nothing," said Kit.

"Making rude comments about the Centurions," said Livvy.

For a moment, Kit thought Cristina was going to scold them. Instead she sat down next to Livvy, her mouth curling up into a smile. "Count me in," she said.

Ty was resting his forearms on the crossbar. He flicked his storm-cloud-gray eyes in Kit's direction. "Tomorrow," he said quietly, "we follow them to see where they go."

Kit was surprised to find he was looking forward to it.

*

It was an uncomfortable evening--the Centurions, even after drying off, were exhausted and reluctant to talk about what they'd done that day. Instead they descended on the dining room and the food laid out there like ravenous wolves.

Kit, Ty, and Livvy were nowhere to be seen. Emma didn't blame them. Meals with the Centurions were an increasingly uncomfortable affair. Though Divya, Rayan, and Jon Cartwright tried their best to hold up a friendly conversation about where everyone planned to spend their travel year, Zara soon interrupted them with a long description of what she'd been doing in Hungary before she'd arrived at the Institute.

"Bunch of Shadowhunters complaining that their steles and seraph blades stopped working during a fight with some faeries," she said, rolling her eyes. "We told them it was just an

illusion--faeries fight dirty, and they should be teaching that at the Academy."

"Faeries don't fight dirty, actually," said Mark. "They fight remarkably cleanly. They have a strict code of honor."

"Honor?" Samantha and Dane laughed at the same time. "I doubt you know what that means, ha--"

They paused. It had been Dane who was speaking, but it was Samantha who flushed. The word unspoken hung in the air. Half-breed.

Mark shoved his chair back and walked out of the room.

"Sorry," Zara said into the silence that followed his departure. "But he shouldn't be sensitive. He's going to hear a lot worse if he goes to Alicante, especially at a Council meeting."

Emma stared at her incredulously. "That doesn't make it all right," she said. "Just because he's going to hear something ugly from the bigots on the Council doesn't mean he should hear it first at home."

"Or ever at home," said Cristina, whose cheeks had turned dark red.

"Stop trying to make us feel guilty," Samantha snapped. "We're the ones who've been out all day trying to clean up the mess you made, trusting Malcolm Fade, like you could trust a Downworlder. Didn't you people learn anything from the Dark War? The faeries stabbed us in the back. That's what Downworlders do, and Mark and Helen will do it to you, too, if you're not careful."

"You don't know anything about my brother or my sister," said Julian. "Please refrain from saying their names."

Diego had been sitting beside Zara in stony silence. He spoke finally, his lips barely moving. "Such blind hatred does no credit to the office or the uniform of Centurions," he said.

Zara lifted her glass, her fingers curled tightly around the slender stem. "I don't hate Downworlders," she said, and there was cool conviction in her voice. It was more chilling, somehow, than passion would have been. "The Accords haven't worked. The Cold Peace doesn't work. Downworlders don't follow our rules, or any rules that aren't in their interest to follow. They break the Cold Peace when they feel like it. We are warriors. Demons should fear us. And Downworlders should fear us. Once we were great: We were feared, and we ruled. We're a shadow now of what we were then. All I'm saying is that when the systems aren't working, when they've brought us down to the level we're at now, then we need a new system. A better one."

Zara smiled, tucked a stray bit of hair back into her immaculate bun, and took a sip of water. They finished dinner in silence.