The door of the Institute had stopped shaking. Good, Emma thought. The others should stay safely inside; it was the wise thing to do, the smart thing.
"Your friends have abandoned you," sneered one of the Riders blocking her way. His bronze hair was short and curling, giving him the look of a Greek kouros. He was lovely. Emma hated his guts. "Give yourself up now and we will make your death quick."
"I could give myself a quick death, if that was what I wanted," Emma said, her sword outstretched to hold off the other three faeries. "As it happens."
Ethna was glaring at her. The other Riders-she recognized Airmed, if not the others-were whispering; she caught the last few words of a sentence. "-is the sword, as I told you."
"But runed work cannot harm us," said Airmed. "Nor seraph blades."
Emma dove for Ethna. The faerie woman spun, bringing her blades across in a whip-fast slashing gesture.
Emma leaped. It was a move she had practiced over and over with Julian in the training room, using a bar that they raised just a little bit every day. The blades whipped by beneath her feet, and in her mind's eye she saw Julian, his arms raised to catch her.
Julian. She landed on the other side of Ethna, whirled, and drove her blade into the faerie woman's back.
Or tried, at least. Ethna spun at the last moment, and the blade sliced open her bronze armor, opening a gash in her side. She shrieked and staggered back and Emma jerked Cortana free, blood spattering from the blade onto the flagstones.
Emma raised the sword. "This is Cortana," she gasped, her chest heaving. "Of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal. There is nothing Cortana cannot cut."
"A blade of Wayland the Smith," cried the Rider with the bronze curls, and to Emma's amazement, there was fear in his voice.
"Silence, Karn," snapped one of the others. "It is yet only one blade. Kill her."
Karn's beautiful face contracted. He lifted his weapon-a massive battle-ax-and started for Emma; she raised Cortana-
And the front door of the Institute burst open, disgorging Shadowhunters.
Julian. Emma saw him first, a blur of gear and sword and dark hair. Then Mark, Cristina. Kieran, Ty, Livvy. And Kit, who must have come from the infirmary, since he seemed to have thrown gear on over his pajamas. At least he was wearing boots.
They drove back the Riders on the steps, Julian and Mark first, their swords flashing in their hands. Neither of them carried seraph blades, Emma saw-they had taken only plain-bladed weapons, unruned, meant for slaying Downworlders. Even Kieran carried one, a sword whose pommel and grip gleamed with gold and silver instead of steel.
One of the Riders let out a roar of rage when he saw Kieran. "Traitor!" he snarled.
Kieran dropped a courtly little bow. "Eochaid," he said, by way of greeting. "And Etarlam." He winked at the sixth Rider, who made a sour face. "Well met."
Eochaid lunged for him. Kieran dropped into a half crouch, swinging his sword with a lightness and skill that surprised Emma.
The clash of their blades seemed to signal the beginning of a much larger battle. Julian and Mark had forced the Riders from the steps in the first surprise of their appearance. Now the others poured after them, hounding and worrying at them with blades. Mark, carrying a double-edged straight sword, went for Delan; the twins harried Airmed while Cristina, looking beyond furious, engaged Etarlam.
Julian began to move through the blur of battle, slashing to either side of him, cutting his way toward Emma. His eyes suddenly widened. Behind you!
She spun. It was Ethna, her face twisted into a mask of hatred. Her blades made a scissoring motion-Emma raised Cortana just in time, and Ethna's double blades closed on it with savage force.
And shattered.
The faerie woman gasped in surprise. A second later she was scrambling back, her hands moving in the air. Julian changed course and leaped after her, but another weapon was taking shape in her grasp, this one with a curved blade like a Persian shamshir.
Julian's sword slammed against Ethna's. Emma felt the collision between their weapons. It forked through her like lightning. Suddenly everything was happening very fast: Julian twisted gracefully away from the blade, but the edge of it caught him across the top of the arm. Emma felt the pain of it, her parabatai's pain, just as she had felt his blade strike Ethna's. She launched herself at the two of them, but Eochaid rose up in front of her and the point of a sword hurtled toward her face, a silver blur cutting the air.
It fell away to the side. Eochaid howled, a brutal, angry sound, and whirled from her to strike savagely at the figure who had come up behind him, whose blade had pierced his shoulder. Blood stained Eochaid's bronze armor.