And maybe the storm could wash her clean, could wash what felt like both their hearts' blood off her hands.
She moved down the side of the cliff. The rock grew slipperier, and she paused to apply a new Balance rune. The stele slid on her wet skin. From the lower point, she could see where the caves and tide pools were covered by curling white water. Lightning cracked against the horizon; she lifted her face to taste the salt rain and heard the distant, winding sound of a horn.
Her head jerked up. She'd heard a sound like that before, once, when the convoy of the Wild Hunt had come to the Institute. It was no human horn. It sounded again, deep and cold and lonely, and she started to her feet, scrambling back up the path toward the top of the cliff.
She saw clouds like massive gray boulders colliding in the sky; where they parted, weak golden light shafted down, illuminating the churning surface of the ocean. There were black dots out over the harbor-birds? No, they were too big to be seabirds, and none would be out in this weather anyway.
The black dots were coming toward her. They were closer now, resolving, no longer dots. She could see them for what they were: riders. Four riders, cloaked in glimmering bronze. They hurtled through the sky like comets.
They were not the Wild Hunt. Emma knew that immediately, without knowing how she knew it. There were too few of them, and they were too silent. The Wild Hunt rode with a fierce clamor. The bronze riders glided silently toward Emma, as if they had been formed out of the clouds.
She could run back toward the cottage, she thought. But that would draw them toward Julian, and besides, they had angled themselves to cut her off from the path back toward Malcolm's house. They were moving with incredible speed. In seconds, they would be on the cliff.
Her right hand closed on the hilt of Cortana. She drew it almost without conscious thought. The feel of it in her hand grounded her, slowed her heartbeat.
They soared overhead, circling. For a moment Emma was struck by their odd beauty-up close, the horses seemed barely real, as transparent as glass, formed out of wisps of cloud and moisture. They spun in the air and dove like gulls after their prey. As their hooves struck the solid earth of the cliff, they exploded into ocean whitecaps, each horse a spray of vanishing water, leaving the four riders behind.
And between Emma and the path. She was cut off, from everything but the sea and the small piece of cliff behind her.
The four Riders faced her. She braced her feet. The very top of the ridge was so narrow that her boots sank in on either side of the cliff's spine. She raised Cortana. It flashed in the storm light, rain sliding off its blade. "Who's there?" she called.
The four figures moved as one, reaching to push back the hoods of their bronze cloaks. Beneath was more shining stuff-they were three tall men and a woman, each of them wearing bronze half masks, with hair that looked like metallic thread wound into thick braids that hung halfway down their backs.
Their armor was metal: breastplates and gauntlets etched all over with the designs of waves and the sea. The eyes they fixed on her were gray and piercing.
"Emma Cordelia Carstairs," said one of them. He spoke as if Emma's name were in a foreign language, one his tongue had a hard time wrapping itself around. "Well met."
"In your opinion," Emma muttered. She kept a tight grip on Cortana-each of the faeries (for she knew they were faeries) that she was facing was armed with a longsword, hilts visible over their shoulders. She raised her voice. "What does a convoy from the Faerie Courts want from me?"
The faerie raised an eyebrow. "Tell her, Fal," said one of the others, in the same accented voice. Something about the accent raised the hairs on Emma's arms, though she couldn't have said what it was.
"We are the Riders of Mannan," said Fal. "You will have heard of us."
It wasn't a question. Emma desperately wished Cristina were with her. Cristina was the one with vast knowledge of faerie culture. If the words "Riders of Mannan" were supposed to mean something to Shadowhunters, Cristina would know it.
"Are you part of the Wild Hunt?" she asked.
Consternation. A low mutter vibrated among the four of them, and Fal leaned to the side and spat. A faerie with a sharply chiseled jaw and an expression of disdain replied for him.
"I am Airmed, son of Mannan," he said. "We are the children of a god, you see. We are much older than the Wild Hunt, and much more powerful."
Emma realized then what it was that she'd heard in their accents. It wasn't distance or foreignness; it was age, a terrifying age that stretched back to the beginning of the world.