Chapter 17
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“I was trying to save him some pain. Isabelle will cut out
his heart and walk all over it in high-heeled boots. That’s
what she does to boys like that.”
“Is that what she did to you?” ry said, but Jace only
shook his head before turning to Church.
“Hodge,” he said. “And really Hodge this time. Bring us
anywhere else, and I’ll make you into a tennis racket.”
The Persian snorted and slunk down the hall ahead of
them. ry, trailing a little behind Jace, could see the
stress and tiredness in the line of Jace’s shoulders. She
wondered if the tension ever really left him. “Jace.”
He looked at her. “What?”
“I’m sorry. For snapping at you.”
He chuckled. “Which time?”
“You snap at me, too, you know.”
“I know,” he said, surprising her. “There’s something
about you that’s so—”
“Irritating?”
“Unsettling.”
She wanted to ask if he meant that in a good or a bad
way, but didn’t. She was too afraid he’d make a joke out
of the answer. She cast about for something else to say.
“Does Isabelle always make dinner for you?” she asked.
“No, thank God. Most of the time the Lightwoods are
here and Maryse—that’s Isabelle’s mother—she cooks
for us. She’s an amazing cook.” He looked dreamy, the
way Simon had looked gazing at Isabelle over the soup.
“Then howe she never taught Isabelle?” They were
passing through the music room now, where she’d
found Jace ying the piano that morning. Shadows
had gathered thickly in the corners.
“Because,” Jace said slowly, “it’s only been recently that
women have been Shadowhunters along with men. I
mean, there have always been women in the ve—
mastering the runes, creating weaponry, teaching the
Killing Arts—but only a few were warriors, ones with
exceptional abilities. They had to fight to be trained.
Maryse was a part of the first generation of ve
women who were trained as a matter of course—and I
think she never taught Isabelle how to cook because
she was afraid that if she did, Isabelle would be
relegated to the kitchen permanently.”
“Would she have been?” ry asked curiously. She
thought of Isabelle in Pandemonium, how confident
she’d been and how assuredly she’d used her blood-
spattering whip.
Jaceughed softly. “Not Isabelle. She’s one of the best
Shadowhunters I’ve ever known.”
“Better than Alec?”
Church, streaking soundlessly ahead of them through
the gloom, came to a sudden halt and meowed. He was
crouched at the foot of a metal spiral staircase that spun
up into a hazy half-light overhead. “So he’s in the
greenhouse,” Jace said. It took ry a moment before
she realized he was speaking to the cat. “No surprise
there.”
“The greenhouse?” ry said.
Jace swung himself onto the first step. “Hodge likes it up
there. He grows medicinal nts, things we can use.
Most of them only grow in Idris. I think it reminds him of
home.”
ry followed him. Her shoes ttered on the metal
steps; Jace’s didn’t. “Is he better than Isabelle?” she
asked again. “Alec, I mean.”
He paused and looked down at her, leaning down from
the steps as if he were poised to fall. She remembered
her dream: angels, falling and burning. “Better?” he
said. “At demon-ying? No, not really. He’s never killed
a demon.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know why not. Maybe because he’s always
protecting Izzy and me.” They had reached the top of
the stairs. A set of double doors greeted them, carved
with patterns of leaves and vines. Jace shouldered them
open.
The smell struck ry the moment she passed through
the doors: a green, sharp smell, the smell of living and
growing things, of dirt and the roots that grew in dirt.
She had been expecting something much smaller,
something the size of the little greenhouse out behind
St. Xavier’s, where the AP biology students cloned pea
pods, or whatever it was they did. This was a huge
ss-walled enclosure, lined with trees whose thickly
leaved branches breathed out cool green-scented air.
There were bushes hung with glossy berries, red and
purple and ck, and small trees hung with oddly
shaped fruits she’d never seen before.
ry exhaled. “It smells like …” Springtime, she
thought, before the heates and crushes the leaves
into pulp and withers the petals off the flowers.
“Home,” said Jace, “to me.” He pushed aside a hanging
frond and ducked past it. ry followed.
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The greenhouse wasid out in what seemed to ry’s
untrained eye no particr pattern, but everywhere she
looked was a riot of color: blue-purple blossoms spilling
down the side of a shining green hedge, a trailing vine
studded with jewel-toned orange buds. They emerged
into a cleared space where a low granite bench rested
against the bole of a drooping tree with silvery-green
leaves. Water glimmered in a stone-bound rock pool.
Hodge sat on the bench, his ck bird perched on his
shoulder. He had been staring thoughtfully down at the
water, but looked skyward at their approach. ry
followed his gaze upward and saw the ss roof of the
greenhouse shining above them like the surface of an
invertedke.
“You look like you’re waiting for something,” Jace
observed, breaking a leaf off a nearby bough and
twirling it between his fingers. For someone who
seemed so contained, he had a lot of nervous habits.
Perhaps he just liked to be constantly in motion.
“I was lost in thought.” Hodge rose from the bench,
stretching out his arm for Hugo. The smile faded from
his face as he looked at them. “What happened? You
look as if—”
“We were attacked,” Jace said shortly. “Forsaken.”
“Forsaken warriors? Here?”
“Warrior,” said Jace. “We only saw one.”
“But Dorothea said there were more,” ry added.
“Dorothea?” Hodge held a hand up. “This might be
easier if you took events in order.”
“Right.” Jace gave ry a warning look, cutting her off
before she could start talking. Then heunched into a
recital of the afternoon’s events, leaving out only one
detail—that the men in Luke’s apartment had been the
same men who’d killed his father seven years ago.
“ry’s mother’s friend—or whatever he is, really—
goes by the name Luke Garroway,” Jace finished finally.
“But while we were at his house, the two men who
imed they were emissaries of Valentine referred to
him as Lucian Graymark.”
“And their names were …”
“Pangborn,” said Jace. “And ckwell.”
Hodge had gone very pale. Against his gray skin the
scar along his cheek stood out like a twist of red wire. “It
is as I feared,” he said, half to himself. “The Circle is
rising again.”
ry looked at Jace for rification, but he seemed as
puzzled as she was. “The Circle?” he said.
Hodge was shaking his head as if trying to clear
cobwebs from his brain. “Come with me,” he said. “It’s
time I showed you something.”
The gasmps were lit in the library, and the polished
oak surfaces of the furniture seemed to smolder like
somber jewels. Streaked with shadows, the stark faces
of the angels holding up the enormous desk looked
even more suffused with pain. ry sat on the red sofa,
legs drawn up, Jace leaning restlessly against the sofa
arm beside her. “Hodge, if you need help looking—”
“Not at all.” Hodge emerged from behind the desk,
brushing dust from the knees of his trousers. “I’ve found
it.”
He was carrying arge book bound in brown leather.
He paged through it with an anxious finger, blinking owl-
like behind his sses and muttering: “Where … where
… ah, here it is!” He cleared his throat before he read
aloud: “‘I hereby render unconditional obedience to the
Circle and its principles …. I will be ready to risk my life
at any time for the Circle, in order to preserve the purity
of the bloodlines of Idris, and for the mortal world with
whose safety we are charged.’”
Jace made a face. “What was that from?”
“It was the loyalty oath of the Circle of Raziel, twenty
years ago,” said Hodge, sounding strangely tired.
“It sounds creepy,” said ry. “Like a fascist
organization or something.”
Hodge set the book down. He looked as pained and
grave as the statuary angels beneath the desk. “They
were a group,” he said slowly, “of Shadowhunters, led
by Valentine, dedicated to wiping out all Downworlders
and returning the world to a ‘purer’ state. Their n was
to wait for the Downworlders to arrive in Idris to sign the
ords. They must be signed again each fifteen years,
to keep their magic potent,” he added, for ry’s
benefit. “Then, they nned to ughter them all,
unarmed and defenseless. This terrible act, they
thought, would spark off a war between humans and
Downworlders—one they intended to win.”
“That was the Uprising,” said Jace, finally recognizing in
Hodge’s story one that was already familiar to him. “I
didn’t know Valentine and his followers had a name.”
“The name isn’t spoken often nowadays,” said Hodge.
“Their existence remains an embarrassment to the
ve. Most documents pertaining to them have been
destroyed.”
“Then why do you have a copy of that oath?” Jace
asked.
Hodge hesitated—only for a moment, but ry saw it,
and felt a small and inexplicable shiver of apprehension
run up her spine. “Because,” he said, finally, “I helped
write it.”
Jace looked up at that. “You were in the Circle.”
“I was. Many of us were.” Hodge was looking straight
ahead. “ry’s mother as well.”
ry jerked back as if he’d pped her. “What?”
“I said—”
“I know what you said! My mother would never have
belonged to something like that. Some kind of—some
kind of hate group.”
“It wasn’t—” Jace began, but Hodge cut him off.
“I doubt,” he said slowly, as if the words pained him,
“that she had much choice.”
ry stared. “What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t
she have had a choice?”
“Because,” said Hodge, “she was Valentine’s wife.”
II
EASY IS THE DESCENT
Facilis descensus Averno:
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hicbor est.
—Virgil, The Aeneid
10
CITY OF BONES
THERE WAS A MOMENT OF ASTONISHED SILENCE
BEFORE BOTH ry and Jace began speaking at
once.
“Valentine had a wife? He was married? I thought—”
“That’s impossible! My mother would never—she was
only ever married to my father! She didn’t have an ex-
husband!”
Hodge raised his hands wearily. “Children—”
“I’m not a child.” ry spun away from the desk. “And I
don’t want to hear any more.”
“ry,” said Hodge. The kindness in his voice hurt; she
turned slowly, and looked at him across the room. She
thought how odd it was that, with his gray hair and
scarred face, he looked so much older than her mother.
And yet they had been “young people” together, had
joined the Circle together, had known Valentine together.
“My mother wouldn’t …” she began, and trailed off. She
was no longer sure how well she knew Jocelyn. Her
mother had be a stranger to her, a liar, a hider of
secrets. What wouldn’t she have done?
“Your mother left the Circle,” said Hodge. He didn’t
move toward her but watched her across the room with
a bird’s bright-eyed stillness. “Once we realized how
extreme Valentine’s views had be—once we knew
what he was prepared to do—many of us left. Lucian
was the first to leave. That was a blow to Valentine.
They had been very close.” Hodge shook his head.
“Then Michael Wand. Your father, Jace.”
Jace raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
“There were those who stayed loyal. Pangborn.
ckwell. The Lightwoods—”
“The Lightwoods? You mean Robert and Maryse?” Jace
looked thunderstruck. “What about you? When did you
leave?”
“I didn’t,” said Hodge softly. “Neither did they …. We
were afraid, too afraid of what he might do. After the
Uprising the loyalists like ckwell and Pangborn fled.
We stayed and cooperated with the ve. Gave them
names. Helped them track down the ones who had run
away. For that we received clemency.”
“Clemency?” Jace’s look was quick, but Hodge saw it.
He said, “You are thinking of the curse that binds me
here, aren’t you? You always assumed it was a
vengeance spell cast by an angry demon or warlock. I
let you think it. But it is not the truth. The curse that
binds me was cast by the ve.”
“For being in the Circle?” Jace asked, his face a mask of
astonishment.
“For not leaving it before the Uprising.”
“But the Lightwoods weren’t punished,” ry said. “Why
not? They’d done the same thing you’d done.”
“There were extenuating circumstances in their case—
they were married; they had a child. Although it is not as
if they reside in this outpost, far from home, by their own
choice. We were banished here, the three of us—the
four of us, I should say; Alec was a squalling baby when
we left the ss City. They can return to Idris on official
business only, and then only for short times. I can never
return. I will never see the ss City again.”
Jace stared. It was as if he were looking at his tutor with
new eyes, ry thought, though it wasn’t Jace who had
changed. He said, “‘The Law is hard, but it is the Law.’”
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