4
"If I may say, Consul, you look like you need to get some sleep," Diego Rosales commented via Projection in the Consul's office from his own desk in the Scholomance. "You're pushing yourself too hard."
"I push myself exactly as hard as I need to, Executor," Alec answered with a sigh as he tried to lean back in the unfamiliar chair, a poor substitute for the one that Rayce had smashed during his confrontation with Everett. He winced inwardly, remembering the broken pieces. It had been a gift from Magnus when he had taken office ten years ago. Maybe it was a metaphor for the changes that were coming. He had enjoyed a relatively comfortable term, recent events not withstanding, but if he succeeded in pushing through what he was dreaming of, he was in for a much rougher ride.
Or maybe it was just a goddamn chair.
Diego gave him a sceptical look, despite his missing eye, and nodded, unconvinced. "As you say."
"What have you got on the missing Hunters?" Alec asked to change the subject. The plastic sheeting that covered the smashed glass doors leading to the balcony snapped taunt and then went slack again in the wind, rippling the clouded darkness outside for a moment.
"Still nothing, Consul. A few leads that went nowhere and a whole lot of silence in places where it should be noisy. It's a bit frustrating, really." Shadows danced across the sharp planes of Diego's face from the witchlight on his desk as he frowned for a moment and then let a faint smile lift the corner of his mouth. "But I was quite fortunate when I asked for a volunteer to lead the team; I don't believe the Scholomance has ever had such a die-hard detective in its ranks, either now or back in the 1800s. And he has such a personal connection to-"
The office door opened and Alec looked away from Diego's projection to find Cinder paused on the threshold as she tried to decide if she was going to get in trouble or not for interrupting them. He waved her in and nodded back at the Centurion commander.
"I know. Keep me updated. I want to hear about anything you find the minute you have something."
"Understood, Consul." Diego's Projection flickered and then went out as he ended the communication, cutting off the view of the rough, dark stone wall behind him. Even after nearly a quarter of a century of being operational once more, the Scholomance remained a very grim and dark castle.
Situated high in the Carpathian Mountains, it was a forbidding place to outsiders. Jace had referred to it as Castle Dracula on more than one occasion during the semesters when he was trapped behind its high walls and got caught up dramatically pretending that he was Jonathan Harker. He had written fire messages in Bram Stoker's style like, "30 June, morning — These may be the last words I ever write in this diary. I slept till just before the dawn, and when I woke threw myself on my knees, for I determined that if leg day with the first-years came, it should find me defiant til the last."
Alec was pretty sure all of that had stopped after some sort of incident involving Diego, but his parabatai flatly refused to elaborate on the subject and had had to find new ways to amuse himself until the next time he managed to push the Headmaster too far and be sent on another sabbatical.
Still hesitating in the doorway of the Consul's office, Cinder smiled awkwardly and unconsciously scratched at the bandages that covered the claw marks from the fight on Wrangel Island that ran from her right ear all the way down to her collarbone. The wounds were mending slowly; whatever type of poison those demons had had on their claws was proving to be a challenge for the Silent Brothers. Once healed, the new scars would seem oddly complimentary to the three old slashes that marred her left cheek.
"Sorry, I'm still not really sure how this works now."
"Don't apologize, Inquisitor Whitescar." Alec winked and motioned for her to come in. She had foregone the dressier clothing that usually came with working in the Gard and stuck with her favourite leather pants and tough gear jacket. She had at least conceded to polish her black boots for the occasion, though, so Alec took that as a start.
"Ugh, do you have to say it like that?" She gave him a pained look and then dropped her eyes to small stack of reports in her hands. "I still can't believe they actually voted me into this – I was born the year before the Dark War. Half of them probably still think I should be playing with dolls."
Alec snorted. "I don't think any of them would ever think that, and if they did, I doubt they'd ever have the nerve to say it to your face. Besides," he added, trying to lean back again and then making a mental note to accidentally swap chairs with someone else later, "I was only a few years older than you are now when they made me Consul. Judge yourself by Nephilim standards; at 27, you're practically over the hill."
"I guess I should start looking at retirement homes," she snickered, relaxing a bit.
"Not before I do," he threatened. He remembered what it had felt like to think that he was too young to have so much responsibility, to have people he would have jumped to obey the day before his first election suddenly asking him for his recommendations. Not that they had listened to those recommendations in the beginning... but still. He felt honour-bound to protect Cinder from her own self-doubt during the early stages of her service as the newly-elected Inquisitor. "What brings you to my door?"
"I thought you might want to take a look at this," she said seriously, handing him the top page off her stack. He took it from her curiously and skimmed the quick report from... the New York Institute. His eyebrows drew together as he read.
Routine patrol near Central Park reported contact with two pack-aligned werewolves in the area who had smelled something 'terrible' coming from within the boundaries of the old Faerie territory.
Wary of possible demonic presence, responding unit investigated the edges of the cursed area and agreed with their findings. Requesting Centurion support to further explore the zone. Patrols will continue to monitor the surrounding area, vampire clans and werewolf packs alerted.
-New York Institute
If he had been Jace, Alec probably would have at least crumpled the report at least a tiny bit in frustration, but he commanded his hands to resist the urge.
This is exactly what the problem is, he reminded himself again.
Following the signing of the Cold Peace, the Fey had been forced to abandon nearly all of their territories, but Jia Penhallow had learned a few unpleasant lessons about dealing with Faeries after the terms had been sent to the Courts. The Faeries had left... but not before laying down powerful curses on most of their old territories to prevent any of the other Downworlders or the Nephilim from seizing control of them. Mundanes were unaffected by the magic, likely because the Seelie Queen had understood exactly how far she could push her limits without inciting outright war, but the fact remained that no one from the Shadow World had yet managed to spend any decent amount of time in the cursed territories without suffering unpleasant consequences.
With the injunction against anyone dealing with the Fey except through the proper channels with the Scholomance, it had become exponentially more complicated to assess threats that were entangled with the Fair Folk. The Cold Peace had to be repealed for the Clave to ever move forward and bury old grievances.
"Did you know that you have a muscle in your jaw that twitches when you're annoyed?" Cinder asked playfully, bringing him back to the present once more.
"You'll get one, too, I promise," he answered dryly. "Now tell me what I'm looking at."
"Trouble." She handed over the rest of the stack that she had been carrying.
Alec fanned the pages and saw at least two dozen different styles of handwriting in four languages, and even just a quick skim was enough to see that they were all reporting similar phenomena.
"I took the liberty of digging through the international reports that have been coming in over the last week or so when the New York one caught my eye," Cinder explained, watching for his reaction. "They don't all specifically state that the… whatever spots… are in old Faerie territories, but I cross-checked the areas with some maps from before the War and it all matches up. Twenty-six pockets so far of something happening, all behind the cursed borders of Fey lands in the Mundane world."
Alec lifted his eyes from the pages in his hands and just stared at her with his lips slightly parted, at a loss for words. She shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny and a faint blush rose in her cheeks as she looked away.
"I don't really know what I'm doing," she admitted quietly. "I got an office and a title, but I didn't get a job description or anything, so I just sort of…" She waved her hands at the reports vaguely and then shrugged apologetically. "Scholomance training."
"You know what?"
"What?"
"We might actually have to give the Clave some points for voting you in. Maybe they aren't a lost cause after all. This is extraordinary. You do realize that you're kind of good at this, right?"
Cinder flashed him a wide smile, her uncertainty banished by his praise. "Must be my inquisitive mind."
Alec laughed out loud and covered his face with one hand while shaking his head. "Brutal."
"Should I just go for broke and give you the whole thing?"
"Lay it on me," he answered gamely.
"I'm worried that it has something to do with what happened on Wrangel Island," she said seriously. "I don't know, like, if the magic is… backfiring, or something? Or," she dropped her voice and peered through the plastic sheets behind him as if checking for spies, "if this is the first sign of some kind of attack." She saw Alec's eyes darken with concern and she tilted her head sideways to finish, "Fool me once…"
"I hear you," he agreed, already following her line of reasoning to see if it might lead to the missing Hunters. It was too much of a coincidence that the disturbances were happening in Fey territory. He started making a mental list of the people he would need to contact, starting with Helen and Aline on Wrangel Island to see if they could find any damage on their end. Once he had them on the case, he would need to get Diego back on the line and dispatch Centurions to delve deeper into the places that had been affected. After that, a general missive to the Institute Heads to... a dull ache started to form in his temples. Sleep was going to have to wait.
He flicked the Projector back on and twisted the old brass dials to zero in on the old, beat-up, portable unit he had sent back to Wrangel Island with Helen and Aline when they had left with their tiny team. Brother Josiah and Brother Ishmael had joined them from the Silent City, and Oscar Bell had volunteered to go from the Spiral Labyrinth. There had been a great deal of interest in the assignment when it had gone to the council, but Aline had flatly refused to take anyone else unless someone was going to volunteer to foot the bill for an addition on the cabin.
The Silent Brothers, in particular, had seemed elated to hear the news that the world's wards had been mended and there was a very real possibility that the peaceful end to the Shadowhunters' millennium-long war might finally be at hand. The original ideal upon which their order had been founded had seemed like an impossible dream for centuries, and learning that hope for it had been rekindled in the wake of what Seraphine had done had set the City of Bones abuzz with activity.
The Projector hummed to life as the live connection was accepted on the other end, then two flickering silhouettes appeared and resolved into Helen and Aline, apparently in their pajamas and sipping their morning coffee with the time difference.
"What's up, Consul?" Aline greeted him, speaking around a mouthful of croissant. Helen looked fleetingly horrified and set down her mug in a hurry.
Alec let it slide and motioned for Cinder to come around the back of his chair so that they could see her, too. "We might have a problem, and I'm hoping you can tell us that we're jumping at shadows."
Aline swallowed and then rolled her eyes. "We're Shadowhunters, wouldn't that be bad for business?"
"Please continue, Consul," Helen cut in. "We will try to assist you in any way we can."
It didn't take long to share Cinder's findings with the two women, and both of them looked stumped when he finished explaining the concerns about possible backlash from the wards.
"I mean, it doesn't make sense," Aline protested. "They just don't work like that." She drained what was left of her coffee and then wrapped her hands around the mug for the last of the fading warmth.
Helen looked doubtful as well, but her blue-green eyes were thoughtful as she mulled over the problem. "It would be difficult to say right away, Consul. The ley magic that fuels the world's wards is vast and complex, and there's certainly no precedent for anything like what happened here with Seraphine, Rayce, and Sera. We've really only just scratched the surface of seeing how the system works now that it might not be suffering the slow leak caused by the demonic ellipse."
"Might not be?" Cinder prompted.
"It's going to take time to verify that everything was sealed up properly, and then from there, to determine how that affects the ley line network as a whole. It's further complicated by the sudden drought of power caused by the attack on Alicante..." Helen trailed off and then shrugged, at a loss to explain how much they didn't know yet.
"What's she's saying," Aline added while helping herself to a second croissant, "is that we've still got a lot of work to do up here, but we'll see what we can find out. Considering that all of us have to learn this stuff second-hand, I think we're doing a pretty awesome job. Hey!" Aline snapped at someone out of the frame. "Do not touch that!" She shot a ferocious look at either Oscar or one of the Brothers and then reluctantly turned her eyes back to Alec. "Just send us the coordinates that are coming up as suspicious and we'll check our end to see if there's a pattern of damage up here, okay? If not, then the problem's on your end." She jumped up from her chair and leaped out of view.
"Fair enough." Alec said goodbye to Helen before he had to potentially witness the murder of one of their house-guests, then clicked off the Projector with a sigh.
His eyes strayed down to the neat piles of work on his desk, including the meticulously-written documents that he was due to present to the Council tomorrow. Some of them were only half-finished, and they still needed hours more work before they could be ready. He briefly wondered if he would be removed from office on the spot when he brought the motion forward, and who would have had the shorter term in office between himself and Everett. Although, he wasn't really elected, so would he still count...?
"You know," Cinder interrupted his fretting, tapping her lips pensively, "something she said made me think."
"About?"
"She complained that they have to learn everything second-hand and teach themselves whatever they can. Wouldn't their job get a lot easier if they could get some help from the Fey? Like, someone who understands all that stuff?"
He laced his fingers behind his neck and cracked it once on each side. Too soon. "Don't think that it hasn't crossed my mind."
"I don't suppose you know any friendly Faeries?" She sniggered at the absurdity of the idea, but Alec stayed quiet.
Cassius' face flashed in his mind, and all of the frustration of trying to get straight answers from the cagey Faerie during their last meeting in Brocelind Forest still grated on him. He wasn't entirely certain what the Seelie's knowledge of magic might include, but he was hesitant to open that line of communication again. He was already toeing a very grey line by speaking to Cassius, and certainly by concealing the Faerie's temporary residency in the Forest from the Council. Still... it might be worth the risk.
"That would be a challenge, with the Treaty," he answered, his distaste for outright lying forcing him to get a bit creative. "The Cold Peace drives me nuts sometimes."
She looked at him shrewdly and arched an eyebrow. "Have you ever thought about getting rid of it?"
Maybe she's too good. But she could be a strong ally if she's sympathetic...
Alec looked down and prayed that his instincts were right about this. "Every day," he admitted quietly.
Cinder exhaled. "You're going to do it," she whispered wonderingly.
"I'm going to try to do it," he corrected.
He felt an overwhelming sense of relief as he confided in her. He had known for years that Inquisitor Everdale would never have supported his plans, so he had stayed quiet. He had only really been able to share his dreams with Magnus in the slow hours of the night when they were alone in bed and no one was listening. He hadn't even told their sons his whole plan, worried about getting their hopes up and then not being able to deliver. He knew Jace would support him when the time came, but he hadn't wanted even a whisper of it escaping before he was ready. Dissolving the Cold Peace was just the first step.
The new Inquisitor seemed to be able to read every tell in his expression, and a slow smile crept up the scarred side of her face as she lifted a finger to her lips to show that she would keep his secret.
"If there's anything I can do to help you, Consul..." she offered.
What he really needed was more time. If he didn't make his case to the Council perfectly, they would seize on anything to start tearing holes in the idea. Twenty years just wasn't long enough for some of the old hatreds to die down, and beyond that... well, he was going to be trying to shift a thousand years of prejudice.
But balanced against needing more time was the need to strike now, while he still had the foundation for what he wanted to build laid open by the Unseelie attack. The restoration efforts for the city were already getting underway as families returned to homes that had been abandoned in the fires of that terrible night.
What he needed was some sort of indication from the Seelie Court that they would be willing to take the first steps with him, work with him to right the wrongs of the past.
What he needed was... His blue eyes lit up and he let himself laugh. Cinder looked confused as he gave her his most dazzling smile.
"What kind of chair did your office come with?"
"Stupid, inconsiderate Faerie," Jace grumbled under his breath as he shoved his way through another tangled mess of undergrowth in Brocelind Forest. Thin branches whipped at him as he pushed deeper into the thicket, and it felt like rather a lot of them were of the thorny variety. He sucked in a breath as one spiky shoot lashed across his cheek, drawing blood. He snarled. "No! Not the face!"
Alec had asked him to go tramping back out into the woods to try to track down Cassius again, and Jace was kind of wishing that he had told his parabatai to go looking for the Faerie himself this time. But he had seen the dark circles under his brother's eyes and decided that this wasn't the time to play; whatever he was working on was already putting a big strain on him, and he was dealing with it alone now that Magnus had gone with Seraphine.
He should be dealing with it with me, Jace thought to himself as he savagely slashed downward at a particularly stubborn knot of vegetation. He was worried about Alec, but the last forty years had taught him that his best friend would talk to him when he was ready, and not a minute sooner. The best thing to do until then was to keep doing whatever small things he could to take some of the pressure off the idiot.
"Okay, but this is quickly becoming a not small thing," he hissed into the darkness as he knelt down to check the trail again. It would have been easier to Portal out to at least the edge of the woods, but Alec had insisted that he leave no trace of the visit, lest any more wannabe-Everetts track his movements again with the map.
He studied the ground intently. The same bare foot prints padded through the Forest with ease, seemingly unaffected by the hindering growth and obstacles. "Unbelievable," he swore.
"I agree," Cassius' voice called from above him. "It is difficult to believe that you followed that trail so far without thinking to look up. You should consider yourself fortunate that it was not a Faerie with ill-intent leading you around for the past two hours."
Jace swivelled around and jabbed an accusatory finger in the general direction of the voice. "You. Get down here. I'm gonna show you some ill-intent right in the-" He felt the faintest breath on the back of his neck and then the voice was right in his ear.
"Yes?"
The Shadowhunter lurched forward, reeling away from the teleporting Faerie. "Don't do that," he gasped, tempted to clutch his chest for a moment until he came to his senses.
"Do what?" Cassius taunted from behind him once more.
Jace whirled again and glared at him furiously. "Remind me again why Zeke hasn't killed you yet?"
Cassius smiled broadly, his even, white teeth gleaming in the moonlight where it penetrated the canopy. "Because he loves me."
"Well, I don't," Jace huffed. "Is there any particular reason you've been leading me around by the nose, or are you just choosing to use your immortal lifespan wisely?"
The Faerie feigned surprise. "Do you not enjoy wild goose chases, Jace Herondale?"
"No," he answered through clenched teeth. "I don't like geese, or ducks, or any water fowl in particular. And I would appreciate it if we could just not play this game the next time that Alec wants to speak with you."
"Then I shall have to devise another."
Jace briefly wondered how much trouble he be in if he brought Cassius back to Alec in slightly less than mint-condition. Then he caught sight of the coiled torahk-na slung low on the Faerie's hips and decided to reconsider. From what he had read about those weapons, you had to be good to use them, and he was in no mood to receive a first-hand demonstration of the requisite skill level.
"Look, can you just see what he wants? You're a real pain in the ass to find."
"I am very easy to find if you know where to look," Cassius responded lightly, much to Jace's chagrin.
"Yeah," he snorted, "everything is easy to find if you know where to look. Stop trying to pull the mysterious-Faerie crap. I'm tired and I really just want to go back to my tiny borrowed bedroom and brood about why my parabatai doesn't want to talk about whatever's troubling him, okay?"
Cassius cocked his head to one side. "Very well." He disappeared.
"Oh, that's just great!" Jace yelled in frustration, turning slowly to survey the now-empty Forest around him. "You could have at least given me a lift back!"
"You said you didn't want to play games the next time the Consul wanted to speak with me," the Faerie sang playfully, unseen. "I see no reason not to finish the one we had already started."
With no way of telling whether Cassius was still lurking around in the canopy or if he had teleported away, Jace decided to err on the side of caution and let out a raging torrent of the most insulting Faerie slurs he knew, inventing a few in the process, and waited for a response. Only the silence of the Forest followed.
He directed a sharp kick at the nearest tree trunk and then swore. It would take him hours to get back to the city, and he probably wouldn't make it until after sunrise. Honestly, it would be closer to go to... Jace grinned to himself, his mind made up. Yep. He comforted himself with happy thoughts of pay-back as he shuffled back the way he had come.
It was still going to be a long walk.
With a limp.