Tian said, “You never know.” He looked out on the open space of the cathedral stretching behind them. “We should get some rest. This may be our only chance for it before we have to go back to the fight.”
“There aren’t going to be a lot of comfortable places here for shut-eye,” said Magnus.
Tian said scornfully, “We’re Shadowhunters. We can manage to rest even in the depths of Hell.”
He made his way down the steps and disappeared deeper into the church. Alec turned to Magnus and said, “Shall we find a place to sleep too?”
“Let’s,” said Magnus, a small gleam in his eye.
* * *
THE OTHERS HAD GONE TO the far ends of the cathedral’s main floor, it seemed, so Magnus directed Alec downstairs, into the vaults. Magnus lit a globe of light to guide them down the stone steps and into a small room off the hallway that extended the length of the building. The globe of light was bright and scarlet, and washed the color from Alec’s face as he walked next to Magnus, quiet and seemingly lost in thought.
The room was probably an office, in the real cathedral, but here in Diyu it was just another empty box, with a marble floor and whitewashed stone walls.
“Cozy,” said Alec. “Do you think you could summon some comfy blankets?”
Magnus cocked an eyebrow. “From where, exactly? I got the rice and water from offerings to the dead, but the pickings are slim down here for luxury items.”
Alec shrugged. “The… Hell of Comfy Blankets?”
Magnus thought. “I could… summon one of those nine-headed birds and we could try to pull off its feathers? No, they probably wouldn’t smell very good. Wait.”
“What?”
Magnus giggled to himself and summoned himself a blanket from the one place in Diyu whose occupant he knew would prioritize a pleasant sleep experience.
A red brocade duvet popped into the room, in a puff of crimson smoke. It was lined with gold tassels.
“Is it a coincidence,” said Alec, “that the duvet is the same color as your magic?”
“I… don’t know,” said Magnus.
He summoned a couple of pillows as well. Alec looked pleased.
They settled themselves down on the ground and placed themselves in their usual sleeping positions. Strange things, sleeping positions, Magnus thought. They get set at the beginning of a relationship, when nobody is thinking about it, and then they are set forever. But now it was true: if Magnus was in bed, as long as Alec was lying directly to his right, there was something of home, wherever he was.
“Before you put out the light,” Alec said.
Magnus waited for the rest, but when it didn’t come, he said, “Yes?” Alec looked hesitant. “What is it?” He was beginning to be a little alarmed.
“Before you go tomorrow… to be bait.”
Magnus blinked a few times. “Are you having trouble finishing your thoughts?”
“No,” said Alec, sounding put out. “I think we should use the Alliance rune.”
“What Alliance rune?”
“The Alliance rune,” Alec said. “Clary’s Alliance rune. That allows a paired Shadowhunter and Downworlder to share power.”
Clary had invented the Alliance rune three years ago, in the Mortal War, to give Shadowhunters and Downworlders the ability to fight as a pair, sharing their skills and their strengths. Magnus vividly remembered the eve of battle years ago. He’d been jangling with nerves, the prospect of death on the battlefield before him, and he’d felt heavy with sorrow. He’d told this young Shadowhunter he loved him, but he didn’t know how that Shadowhunter truly felt about him, whether their relationship could endure or whether it was as impossible as he feared.
He’d watched the rune forming on his own skin, the intricate lines and curves of an angelic rune something he never would have thought he would bear.
But now—now it was Magnus’s turn to say, “No.”
“You don’t have to do this alone,” insisted Alec. “You should take some of my strength. I should take some of the burden of the thorn.”
“We have no idea what it would do,” said Magnus. “What it would mean for you to take some of this weird magic. It’s connected to Sammael somehow, and you’re full of, you know, angel magic. You might explode.”
Alec blinked. “I probably wouldn’t explode.”
“Who knows what could happen? Neither of us is exactly an expert on this particular magical artifact.”
“Still,” said Alec mulishly. “I think we should do it.” When Magnus didn’t say anything, he added, “If I’m going to let you go out there and demand to be attacked, at least let me share some of the burden with you.”
Magnus looked into Alec’s eyes. “If something happens to me,” he said very quietly, “Max will need you.”
“If we put the rune on and something’s going wrong,” said Alec, “we’ll scratch it out. It’ll be fine.”
Magnus sighed. “I have to give in on this,” he said, “because I said ‘it’ll be fine’ about the bait thing and you agreed, right?”
“There are some who would consider that a valid argument, yes,” said Alec.
Magnus stretched out his arm. “Okay. Why not one more totally irresponsible thing before we close out the day?”
Alec drew the strokes of the rune with attentive care, and Magnus felt the same wonder as he had years ago, the same calming of fear. On the eve of battle, amid the darkened spin of a strange infernal city: it made no difference where they were. They would fight and live and die together.
As Alec finished the last loop of the rune on his own skin, Magnus watched him carefully. After a moment he said, “How do you feel?”
Alec looked uncertain. He lifted his arm up and held it out for Magnus to see. The Angelic Power rune on the inside of his forearm was glowing, a dark but definite red color.
“That’s new,” he said.
“Other than that?”
Alec waited. “Nothing,” he said. “I feel fine.” Experimentally, he drew a quick Awareness rune on the same arm, just a simple loop and line. They both watched it for a long moment, but it just seemed to be a regular rune, behaving normally.
“It seems to be okay,” said Magnus.
“It does,” murmured Alec. Then he leaned forward to kiss Magnus.
Magnus kissed him back, expecting a simple good-night kiss, but instead Alec reached out and tangled his hands in Magnus’s wild hair, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss into something much stronger, something wild, almost ferocious.
Alec’s arm slipped down and wrapped around Magnus’s waist, pulling his boyfriend on top of him. Magnus growled low in his throat: the feel of Alec’s body stretched along his always made him wild. He kissed Alec deeply, reveling in the scrape of his stubble, the softness of his lips; Alec gasped and clutched at Magnus’s back, pulling him closer, as close as they could be.
Magnus paused. “How do you feel?” he said, his lips moving against Alec’s.
Alec thought. “Worried about you.”
“No,” said Magnus, rolling them both over, so Alec was on top of him. “I mean, how do you feel about this?”
He slid his hand down and did a thing he knew Alec liked.
“Ohhh,” said Alec. “Oh! Uh, I’m definitely interested in this. But still worried about you,” he added. His beautiful eyes looked directly into Magnus’s. “Just keep it in mind. You’re my heart, Magnus Bane. Stay unbroken, for me.”
“Noted,” said Magnus, doing the thing he knew Alec liked again, and put out the light.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Heibai Wuchang
IT WASN’T A BETRAYAL, MAGNUS told himself; not really. But he knew that he would never get a chance to do what he wanted to do, with the Shadowhunters along with him. He could probably have convinced them to let him and Alec go together, but… as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Alec would be a liability in this situation too, for what he had in mind.
And Alec would never let him go on his own.
<
br /> Alec would be right, probably.
But Magnus knew what he was doing. At least, he thought he knew what he was doing.
Alec slept on in the pitch-black of the cathedral office. It had been perhaps five hours since they had fallen asleep, but when Magnus woke up, he had done so feeling energized, rested, ready to go.
He would go and come back before Alec even noticed, he told himself.
Magnus had always been good at seeing in the dark, and in the last few days his vision had become even keener. He needed no illumination to guide him as he dressed in the lightless room, careful to remain quiet as he strapped his shoulder harness on.
With a gesture, a darkened surface appeared before him, a shimmering mirror. In that dark glass, Magnus saw his own face. He saw the darkness writhing at his throat and in his eyes. The worst was the razor gleam of his teeth, the way they seemed to pull his face into an entirely new shape.
Magnus knew a mundane story about a witch’s mirror that had broken into pieces: when a piece lodged in a child’s heart, that heart would turn to ice. He could feel the magic of the thorn twisting in his chest, as if it were a key opening a door he’d tried to keep shut. He didn’t need to glance down at his hands to see the veins standing out in red and black, or the marks of chains growing stronger. He could feel the subtle, terrible alteration of his being as his blood itself changed.
He had to do something. This was something.
Before he left, he held out a hand and gestured toward himself. Slowly, without a sound, Black Impermanence rose into the air from where Alec had carefully laid it down next to him. Careful not to disturb Alec or even the blankets, Magnus turned the sword in the air and floated it toward him. He held his breath, but in a moment Fan Wujiu was in his hand. He waited to see if he would explode; the smiths hadn’t said anything about being worthy to wield both swords at once.
Nothing happened. Maybe the Alliance rune, he thought, made him able to wield Alec’s sword. Maybe the rules were slipperier than some faeries had let on. Maybe both. He started breathing again and carefully placed the Black Impermanence on his back, next to its twin.
At the door he turned and looked back at Alec. And at the top of the stairs to the nave, he looked for a long time at the breathing quiet of Xujiahui. They were in the depths of Hell, and this cathedral was only the shadow of something real. Nevertheless Magnus felt the hush of holiness, of faith like a light in the darkness. It pervaded the cavern of the church, even here a sanctuary. Perhaps their last sanctuary.
* * *
FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO, MAGNUS had had only one friend in the world: Ragnor Fell. Ragnor had taught him what it was to be a warlock: power, yes, the ability to twist space and time to your own ends, yes, but also loneliness, constant danger, a life of wandering. A warlock would never find a warm welcome, Ragnor told him. Even other Downworlders would not trust him. Shadowhunters could capture him, torture him, kill him with impunity. Vampires had clans and werewolves had packs and faeries had courts, but a warlock stood always alone.
There was a time when Magnus found himself in the city of Leonberg. Magnus did not like Leonberg. He had seen very little of the Holy Roman Empire, but based on his experience here, he was prepared to call it grossly overrated: the weather cold and damp, the food heavy and dull, the people suspicious and parochial. He had come at the request of a minor landholder who wanted Magnus to improve his crop yields and the fecundity of his pigs, for much more coin than such magic deserved. Magnus had executed the task in a matter of about fifteen minutes, and now sat drinking insipid beer in the garden of an insipid bar. This bar had a lovely view of Leonberg’s prison tower, which squatted like an angry troll under a gunmetal sky. He sighed, he drank, he dreamed of magic as yet unmade that would allow him to disappear from this place and reappear in a warm, cozy place, perhaps Paris, or somewhere in southern Italy.
His reverie was disrupted by a commotion from the direction of the prison. A group of men in local livery were dragging a disheveled woman out. They hustled her around the side of the prison and vanished from sight. As they did, Magnus noted that the woman was glamoured, and that under the glamour she had blue skin.
He sipped his beer. His hand shook. In his mind, Ragnor’s voice told him sternly that he should look out for himself, that he had nothing to gain from risking his own well-being for a stranger.
He sipped his beer again.
With an abrupt decisive movement, he slammed his glass down on the table, stood up, cursed loudly in Malay, French, and Arabic, and strode purposefully in the direction of the prison and the blue warlock.
Centuries later, he could still remember her screams as her hair caught fire. He broke into a run as he heard a man’s voice sternly proclaim that by the order of the Leonberg judiciary, the woman was guilty of witchcraft and cavorting with devils, and was therefore sentenced to be put to death by the flame.
There were a few locals there to gawk, but witch burning was no longer much of a novelty in these parts, and the day was unpleasant. Nobody got in Magnus’s way as he charged toward the bonfire, now spreading orange gouts of flame well above the blue warlock’s head. Nobody stopped him as he spoke words of magical protection, unsure whether they would even work, or as he braced a boot on the stacked crackling wood and vaulted up into the pyre.
His flesh may have been protected, but his clothes immediately caught fire. He shrugged off the discomfort and grasped hold of the ropes binding the woman, dissolving them with sparks of blue magic. The woman wheeled her gaze toward him and caught sight of his cat’s eyes. She had a look of terror mingled with surprise as he wrapped his arms around her and made to leap off the pyre.
“Hello,” he murmured in her ear. “When we hit the ground, please roll back and forth to put the flames out.”
Without waiting for her reply, he jumped, taking her with him. They thudded into the cold mud next to the bonfire. While it did put out the flames, by the time they stood up their clothes were blackened and falling off, a development Magnus had not anticipated. He could, of course, summon up new clothing, but these didn’t seem the sort of people in front of whom it was wise to do magic.
The soldiers overseeing the execution had been frozen in bewilderment so far, but now were recovering themselves and drawing their swords.
Magnus looked at the woman. “Now what?” he shouted over the roar of the fire and the exclamations of the crowd.
The woman goggled at him. “Now what?” she yelled. “This is your rescue!”
“I’ve never done this before!” he yelled back.
“How about we run?” the woman suggested. Magnus stared at her stupidly for a moment, and she shook her head. “Good God, I’ve been rescued by an idiot!” She turned toward the crowd and held out her hands, and billows of blue smoke emerged from her palms, spreading in thick clouds quickly. The soldiers’ yelling became more confused.
“Yes! Good idea!” Magnus said. The woman rolled her eyes and ran. Magnus followed, wondering how fast they could find shelter and whether that tailor in Venice would have enough of that brocade material to make him a replacement for his coat.
Ragnor caught up with them many hours later, at a tavern on the road to Tübingen. By that point they had found new clothes and Magnus had learned some things about the woman he’d rescued. Her name was Catarina Loss; she had come to Leonberg to treat an outbreak of plague; she had been caught laying glowing hands on a patient and had been immediately arrested as a witch. Leonberg, she explained, was just mad for witch burning.
“Everywhere in Europe is mad for witch burning,” Ragnor said, ill-tempered. He was angry at Magnus, but equally obviously liked Catarina, and the two of them had quickly fallen into as pleasant a rapport as Magnus had with either of them. Unfortunately, their favorite topic so far was how stupid Magnus had been for attempting the rescue.
“I saved your life!” he protested.
“And a very careful, understated saving it was,” Ragnor said. “How do yo
u think I found you? Within minutes the whole area was buzzing with rumors of a vile magician swooping through the sky over Leonberg on a black cloud, flying through flame and carrying a foul witch out of the fire meant to sanctify her.”
“So we stay out of the Holy Roman Empire for a while.” Magnus shrugged, grinning. “I won’t miss it.”
“It takes up half of Europe, Magnus.”
“Very overrated, Europe.”
Catarina interrupted this to put a hand on Magnus’s arm. “Thank you, though, truly,” she said. “It is terrible to be a warlock in these times.”
“I am fairly new to the experience myself,” said Magnus. “But Ragnor here says we must go our own ways.”
“We can rescue one another, though,” said Catarina. “Since no one else will rescue us. Not other Downworlders, not mundanes, and certainly not Shadowhunters.”
“May they all rot in hell,” put in Ragnor. But his expression softened. “I’ll go fetch us a great deal more to drink. And I’m not against traveling together, for safety. For now. I don’t generally hold with making friends.”
“And yet,” said Magnus, “you were my first friend.”
Catarina gave him a small smile. “Perhaps I will be your friend too. Someone has to stop you from making a complete fool of yourself.”
“Hear, hear,” said Ragnor, draining his glass. “You’re an idiot.”
“I like him,” Catarina told Ragnor. “There is something righteous about someone who doesn’t turn away from danger, even when he should. Someone who sees suffering and will always choose to plunge into the flames.”
By morning, they were all friends. The whole world had changed since then, but that hadn’t changed.
* * *
MAGNUS’S KNOWLEDGE OF SHANGHAI GEOGRAPHY was a little rusty, and he was turned around in the starless emptiness of Diyu, but since he could apparently fly now, he let himself drift over the reversed city until he found what he was looking for.
The temple was small and, like everything else in Diyu, ruined. It had been a humble building to begin with, a simple one-room structure of ochre-stained brick walls, its roof plain and undecorated. Back in actual Shanghai, it had probably been built for a single family.
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