“THE LAW IS HARD,
BUT IT IS THE LAW.”
You have been immersed, quickly, in a whole world that is still beyond your reckoning. You’ve learned not just that there are intelligent magical creatures on Earth who are not purely human, but that there are many of them, and many who wear a human face. These people wield powerful magic and engage in powerful, sometimes violent feuds. You know of the Shadow World and what you will find there. Now we take up the question of how you should act there. In the most pompous way possible.
We Nephilim are, primarily in the Shadow World, the keepers of peace, and thus the keepers of the Law. The Law—our Covenant with Raziel—tells us what does and does not fall under our jurisdiction, how we may punish violations of the Law, and what rules we ourselves must obey in our interactions with mundanes, with Downworlders, and with one another.
The Law of the Nephilim is not a full code of conduct for Shadowhunters in all realms of their lives. First and foremost comes the injunction attributed to Jonathan Shadowhunter himself: “You are Man; serve Man; live among Man.” Though Idris may come with its own body of general laws, the Shadowhunters assigned all over the world are expected to live among the basic moral codes of their civilization. Our own Law is foremost in importance, but mundane law must be observed as well. Really? The Covenant says that? Note: Ask Jace.
Yes we are supposed to follow mundane laws.
. . . Really?
Some of us are more careful than others.
HOW THE LAW AFFECTS: YOU
• You must investigate any known instances of Covenant Law being violated. In fact, you are required to consider even rumors, urban legends, and folktales, to assess their credibility.
• You cannot reveal the Shadow World to mundanes. In fact, Raziel’s guidance is that as we protect and save mundanes they must not know they are being saved.
What about mundane governments?
Mundanes who already know are ok
but . . . ?
• Whenever possible, you must obey the mundane laws in the place where you live. “Whenever possible,” nudge nudge.
• You must never commit a crime against another Shadowhunter. These violations are punished much more harshly by the Clave than crimes against mundanes or Downworlders. This is not because of moral superiority, or because a Shadowhunter is a more valuable person than a non-Shadowhunter, but rather because we Nephilim are few and our lives short. To cause another Shadowhunter to come to harm is to benefit the demons who seek to destroy us.
I am shocked! Shocked!
Oh, stop.
See?!
Okay okay fine.
• Collaboration or collusion with the demons who seek to destroy us is considered treason and is usually a capital crime. Colluding with demons to bring direct harm to Shadowhunters would bring down the Clave’s harshest possible punishment, the end of that family’s existence among the Nephilim. The perpetrator’s Marks would be stripped and he would be made Forsaken, left to go insane and die. The rest of his family would merely have their Marks removed and be made mundane, removed from our ranks entirely.
Do a lot of new Shadowhunters need to be warned not to collude with demons and not to kill each other?
I guess the Clave wants you to know they mean business.
HOW THE LAW AFFECTS: DOWNWORLDERS
Since the Accords, Downworlders have been subject to the Law of the Covenant, with their consent. Downworlders are meant to police themselves, with Shadowhunters interfering only in cases where problems are too severe, or where issues affect other parts of Downworld or the mundane world. Downworlders also have the right to conduct their internal business privately, without the interference or oversight of the Nephilim. For instance, we allow werewolves to fight to the death for control of their packs. We cannot protect these werewolves from possible interference from mundane law enforcement, but we also don’t consider these deaths to be murder under the Law.
A special exception here is the case of dark magic (see the Grimoire, Chapter 6). The practice of dark magic—necromancy, demon-summoning, magical torture, and so on—is strictly forbidden, and neither warlocks nor faeries are permitted to practice it. Exceptions are sometimes made for specific rituals done as part of a Shadowhunter investigation, but they are very rare.
REPARATIONS
Downworlders have the right under the Law to appeal to the Clave if they believe they have been mistreated by Shadowhunters, or believe that Shadowhunters have broken the Law in their dealings with them. They may request Reparations, monetary compensation for the harm brought to them. They may also call a trial, which will be administered by representatives of the Clave, and Reparations will be paid if the Downworlder can prove their case.
Mundanes also have the right to petition for Reparations, but obviously this comes up infrequently; only a few cases have been seen of mundane Reparations in the entire history of the Nephilim.
The Accords greatly improved the rights of Downworlders under the Law, and so the nature of Reparations changed significantly. Prior to the Accords, Downworlders had essentially no recourse or specific protection under Shadowhunter law; a Shadowhunter could kill a Downworlder under only the suspicion of wrongdoing, and all that could be done would be for a next of kin to file for Reparations. In the last hundred years claims for Reparations have decreased, now that Nephilim can be held legally responsible for abusing Downworlders whether or not someone comes forth to demand Reparations.
SPOILS
The term “spoils” refers to the taking of the possessions and wealth of a Downworlder as part of the punishment for a crime. Typically these spoils are forfeited to the Shadowhunter who has been wronged by the Downworlder. Or the spoils are forfeited to the Clave’s treasury if no specific Shadowhunter seems the proper recipient. In practice, however, Downworlders’ spoils have almost always ended up in the hands of individual Shadowhunter families. In fact, for many old wealthy Shadowhunter families, a goodly portion of their prosperity originates in spoils granted by the Clave.
The practice of taking spoils probably began very early in Nephilim history, but in isolated and informal ways. Spoils are first mentioned in official Clave Law around 1400, but records indicate that the Clave had been officially granting spoils in trials for years already. The awarding of spoils was no more or less popular than other forms of punishment, until the Hunts and the Schism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made the awarding of spoils the most common punishment doled out by the Clave. There were two reasons for this. The first was to legitimize and place some limits on the pillaging of Downworlder property that was happening regardless of Clave involvement; the second, which may seem counterintuitive, was to save Downworlders’ lives. In the existing frenzy of Downworlder persecution, which could easily have involved widespread murder, it was hoped that the promise of spoils would stay the Shadowhunters’ weapons in favor of the larger benefit to them of spoils. See, we had to steal their stuff to help them.
The practice of granting spoils lost some of its popularity with the end of the Hunts, but it was still the most common punishment for Downworlder offenses until the First Accords. For all of the language of philosophy and Law thrown about, much of the Shadowhunter opposition to the First Accords came down to economics. Those families strongly dependent on spoils for their wealth stood to lose quite a lot. They argued that the rules restricting spoils would harm the Clave directly. Although spoils were not technically taxed, it was considered virtuous for Shadowhunters, especially the wealthier families, to tithe a percentage of them to the Clave. The First Accords created the beginnings of complex legal language that did not eliminate spoils but strongly restricted the severity of the punishment, and also provided that the punishment of taking spoils from Downworlders could be executed only as part of an official sentence at a trial performed by the Clave. Many spoils have been returned in the past hundred years. Although, in cases where the family of the original owner could not be located, many other spoils have been placed on display in various Institutes, as historical curiosities.
Nice motorcycle, by the way, Jace.
That’s not spoils. That was illegal. I was impounding it.
HOW THE LAW AFFECTS: MUNDANES
Mom suggested that I talk to Luke about spoils. I did. He went off on a lecture again. Here are the notes.
Mundanes are not subject to Covenant Law. They are not signers of the Accords, and only a few in the world know of the existence of Shadowhunters or the Shadow World. Even mundane members of demonic cults cannot be prosecuted under the Law, since they are meddling with forces beyond their ken. (Tip! Demonic cults can be most easily neutralized by going after the demon being worshipped, who can be prosecuted and indeed killed under the Law.) Well, thank goodness.
Luke says:
• No limits on spoils during werewolf hunts. All that in the Codex ridiculous; just made pillaging nice and legal.
• Returned some spoils after Accords, but not much—couldn’t find families.
• Didn’t even try to return money taken. That would be impossible.
• Apparently in Germany there’s an Institute that was taken as a spoil from some vampires. They’re still fighting about it.
This is one of the most controversial parts of the Law. Every Accords proceeding has featured strident demands from both Shadowhunters and Downworlders that mundanes be held accountable for their behavior. These demands are always declined, for the simple reason that our charge to keep our world hidden from mundanes must be paramount.
THE INQUISITOR
The Inquisitor is the Shadowhunter responsible for investigating breaches of the Law by Nephilim. Not even the Consul can refuse to cooperate with her investigations. When Nephilim are put on trial before the Council, the Inquisitor typically serves as the prosecuting attorney, and recommends or requests specific sentences for guilty parties. (These recommendations must then be ratified by the Council.)
The Inquisitor stands outside the rest of Shadowhunter government of Clave and Council. She is typically disliked by the Nephilim at large, because of the authority she wields. It is an infamously thankless job. But our history is full of the stories of heroic Inquisitors who have kept our society from falling into corruption, by rooting out Lawbreakers and seeing that they are punished.
2002 ADDENDUM
The Inquisitor’s most recent high-profile task was the investigation of the Circle, Valentine Morgenstern’s band of dissident Shadowhunters, after the failure of his Uprising against the Clave. The Inquisitor had to perform a complex task of separating out those who had been made to follow Morgenstern, those who had done so of their own free will, those who had recanted his beliefs but had been unable to leave out of fear for their lives, those who still believed in his apocalyptic vision, and so on. Most Circle members’ lives were spared, and the punishments of the guilty varied widely, from compulsory tithes, to incarceration, to the loss of administrative duties, to exile from Idris. Thus is the Inquisitor’s job a difficult one, and her role in meting out justice complex and imperfect.
THE LIFE OF A SHADOWHUNTER
Though Shadowhunters come from all corners of our world, we are Shadowhunters first, and citizens of our own ancestral homelands second. In the thousand years that we have existed, we have lived apart from mundanes, and the life of a Shadowhunter includes many features unique to us and our history. These are outlined here so that they may be recognized, and so that you may behave appropriately at times of celebration, struggle, and grief. I had a book like this section for Judaism when I was little.
BIRTH
The birth of a new Shadowhunter is an occasion for great celebration. We are not a numerous people, and we tend to die young; therefore any new young Shadowhunter is a cause for joy and delight. Births are normally presided over by Silent Brothers, who are able to use both their Marks and their knowledge of medicine to keep mother and child safe and healthy. As a result, we have always enjoyed a much higher rate of survival and healthiness in births than the mundane population.
When a Shadowhunter is born, it is traditional for a number of protective spells to be placed on the infant by an Iron Sister and a Silent Brother, representatives of their orders. (Usually the Silent Brother is the same person to have presided over the birth.) These are meant to strengthen the child, both physically and spiritually, in preparation for her first Marks later in life, and also to protect her from demonic influence and possession.
Note: ask Mom about this, me?!
TRAINING
Most new Shadowhunters want to know where they, or their children, will go to school. There is no such thing as a Shadowhunter school in the way mundanes use the term. Instead young Nephilim are tutored, either in their family homes or in small groups at their local Institutes. The training of new Shadowhunters is one of the responsibilities of all adult Shadowhunters, who are meant to share teaching duties, each from his own expertise. Parents are meant to lead the project of training their own children; orphaned Shadowhunters under the age of eighteen are the responsibility of the Clave, and will usually be sent to be raised and trained in their local Institute.
Shadowhunters (other than Silent Brothers) do not typically do scholarly work when young. What mundanes would think of as “higher education” is the kind of learning that we do in our older years, when we are no longer able to fight effectively or safely and we turn our minds to intensive, focused research and study.
MEN AND WOMEN IN TRAINING
Male and female Shadowhunter children receive identical training today, and are expected to reach the same standard of achievement in their educations. It has always been true that the Nephilim have included both men and women, but it is only recently that all women have been given full training as warriors. There have always been women warriors among us, but prior to 150 years ago or so, they were quite rare. Women were mostly, prior to that, keepers of Institutes, teachers, healers, and the like. Although the Laws officially preventing most women from becoming full Shadowhunter fighters were revoked in the mid-nineteenth century, it wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that Clave women were given combat training as a matter of course from childhood, as Clave men always had been.
The women warriors of Nephilim past took Boadicea, the great warrior who led her people in revolt against imperial Rome, as their patron and model, and that tradition has continued to this day. Wooooo ladies rule
YOUR FIRST MARK
Most Shadowhunters get their first Marks at twelve years of age. Since you, the reader, are likely to have entered the Nephilim from the mundane world, rather than being born into a Nephilim family, you may well be significantly older. This carries with it some inherent risks. It is usually considered ideal to get your first Marks when you are no younger than twelve, and no older than twenty, though there are exceptions. The older the person receiving the Mark, the greater the chance of a bad reaction.
Some things to keep in mind when receiving your first Mark:
• If there is going to be a problem, it is not going to happen immediately. If you react poorly to the influx of angelic power, Shadowhunters will be standing by ready to cut the skin, which will disrupt the Mark and stop the effect short. You’ll then receive full medical and magical attention.
• The act of inscribing Marks on skin creates a sensation that most describe as like an “icy burn.” This sensation will fade with time as your body grows accustomed to being Marked. The inscription of Marks also creates a scent in the air of something faintly burned. This scent will not fade with time. Do not be alarmed.
• Sometimes the newly Marked go into shock. The good news is, if this happens to you, you are unlikely to notice, because you will be in shock. Shadowhunters are trained to recognize shock along with other bad reactions to Marks and will treat you accordingly.
• In the next few days, especially if you are at high risk for side effects, you may experience such symptoms as screaming nightmares, night terrors, fear-driven bed-wetting, stark perceptions of the bottomless abyss of existence, restless arm syndrome, apocalyptic visions, acute illusory stigmata, and/or the ability to temporarily speak with animals. These reactions are normal and only temporary. “acute illusory stigmata?” Barely ever happens. I think.
• If you are not absolutely sure that you are not a warlock, we implore you to be tested before being Marked. Families with the vagaries of faerie blood, or even with known werewolves in the lineage, should be fine, since the Nephilim power will overwhelm these.
So this is more a “do as the Codex says, not as Jace does” situation, I guess. Since he just Marks any girl he likes, apparently.
When she is dying, yes!
AFTER YOUR FIRST MARK
Congratulations! You have survived your first Mark. We can promise that each successive Mark is easier than the previous. Your eagerness to learn by returning to the Codex is commendable, but before you return to your studies, you should make sure that the Shadowhunter inscribing you confirms you are capable of work. You may find a need to sleep extensively; this too is normal.
The Codex sure does congratulate you a lot.
Congratulations! Don’t second-guess this decision!
GAINING THE SIGHT
Unless you are among those rare mundanes born with the Sight (see the Grimoire for details), you will need to learn to see through glamours. You may have started this process already. Usually, new adult Shadowhunters first receive a Voyance Mark, and several other temporary Marks that enhance magical vision. (We do not keep these Marks, because in the long term they impair normal vision.) You will then be shown glamours of various kinds and will be trained in seeing through them.
“BLIND” NEPHILIM
Most Shadowhunters have the Sight from birth, and those who do not mostly gain it in the first two or three years of life. Some, however, are born “blind” and must be trained to see. Usually it is sufficient to deliberately show children glamours and their revealed true shapes; this produces full Sight in almost all Shadowhunter children by the time they are beginning their training in earnest, at five or six years of age. It is only as humans grow older that we need the assistance of Marks to initially develop the skill. How could I possibly have already known this, Codex?
Did you know?
Before it was made illegal, it was traditional in some parts of the world to “jump-start” a Nephilim child’s Sight by inscribing a deliberately weak Voyance Mark on the child, at a much younger age than we would today consider safe. (In some cultures the Mark was inscribed and then the skin under it was purposefully wounded to disrupt its effectiveness.) When the Marking was successful, some haphazard level of Sight occurred at times for the child, and at least sometimes this successfully caused the child to have the Sight permanently even after the Mark was removed. Unfortunately, this process also occasionally caused children to die of shock, from the simultaneous effect of a too-early Mark and the abrupt appearance of Sight. The practice is still done in a few places, but thankfully it has mostly disappeared in the modern age.
MARRIAGE
If you are already married, your spouse is very likely also becoming a Shadowhunter alongside you. If you are not married, when you someday do marry, you will do so as a Shadowhunter. Marriage is considered one of the sacred tasks of the Nephilim, both because the union strengthens the community and because it brings about more Nephilim.
Many hundreds of years ago aristocratic Shadowhunter families typically arranged marriages for their children in order to strengthen and mix family lines; in the modern age this practice is mostly extinct, and Shadowhunters choose their partners based on their own feelings of love and affection, as most mundane cultures today do.
Shadowhunters have always exchanged trinkets and tokens to mark marriages, to signify love and connection between the bride and the groom, mostly borrowing these customs from their cultures of origin or their current cultures. Among Nephilim, marriage is consecrated officially by the exchange of Marks. On each participant a Mark is placed on the arm, and another over the heart. This tradition is believed to come from the Hebrew Bible, whose Song of Solomon reads:
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.
INTERMARRIAGE
Shadowhunters are permitted to marry other Shadowhunters and, in most cases, Downworlders. (Since the Clave’s primary concern is the ability to birth more Shadowhunters, it is somewhat frowned upon to marry a warlock or a vampire, since they will have no children, but it is allowed.) Shadowhunters are not permitted to marry mundanes. They are, however, allowed to petition the Clave and ask that the mundane they wish to marry be allowed to become a Shadowhunter, in a process known as Ascension. (You may even be reading this Codex because you are yourself an Ascender!)
The Shadowhunter who wishes to marry a mundane applies for Ascension on behalf of his partner. For three months the Clave considers the petition, examining the history of the Shadowhunter who has applied, and his family, in addition to the background and nature of the possible Ascender. Of necessity this is all done without the knowledge of the Ascender; prior to the Clave’s decision in the affirmative, it remains illegal to tell the mundane applicant any details of the ways of the Nephilim. Once the Clave has granted the petition, the Ascender is told about her situation, and she embarks on three months’ study of Shadowhunter Law and culture. At the end of these three months, the Ascender is given to drink from the Mortal Cup and made a Nephilim; provided she survives this process, she is rendered a full Shadowhunter, with all the protections and rights of the Law that any Shadowhunter would have. “provided she survives”?!
ASCENSION OF CHILDREN
Though it is very rare, Shadowhunters in the position of adopting a mundane child may petition the Clave for the Ascension of that child. In almost all cases this Ascension is granted, especially inasmuch as the child is entering an existing Shadowhunter family and will take an existing Shadowhunter family name. The three-month waiting period still applies, but after Ascension the child is typically brought up and educated in the way of any other young Shadowhunter.
What about same-sex marriage?
Okay, I went and asked Jace about same-sex marriage, and he made it a little project for me to research in the Library, because he is cruel and heartless. Actually, I think he didn’t know the answer and was covering it up.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SHADOWHUNTER INTERMARRIAGE
In the earliest days of the Nephilim, our highest priority was recruitment. Marrying mundanes was not only legal, it was encouraged. Shadowhunters were taught to view their search for a spouse as a kind of recruitment, and Shadowhunter families boasted about the quality of mundanes they had brought into the Nephilim by their children’s marriages.
The practice grew much less common as the population of Shadowhunters became fairly stable and recruitment became a lower priority. In the 1400s the Council officially revoked Institute heads’ ability to create new Shadowhunters without Clave approval. The Clave representatives in Idris had no mechanism for evaluating a possible marriage, and began refusing almost all requests for intermarriages with mundanes. In 1599 the Council outlawed all Shadowhunter-mundane intermarriages of any kind.
One would expect outrage from Shadowhunter families, but in fact the new Law appeared during the height of the Schism and the Hunts (see Appendix A). These events made the Shadowhunters a much more isolated, militaristic, and monastic organization for a time. Nephilim stopped living among mundanes, as they had done in European villages for hundreds of years, and reorganized their Institutes as barracks. Even after the end of the Schism, this isolationism remained for many generations. To some extent the principles of isolation established in the Schism still guide the relationship of the Nephilim with mundanes today.
The fact of the modern world, however, is that Nephilim, especially in large cities and other populous areas, cannot help but encounter mundanes in their day-to-day lives, and no one today would consider it reasonable to forbid Shadowhunters to interact with mundanes at all. Thus in 1804 the Law prohibiting intermarriage was revoked and the method of Ascension developed. Ascension has always been, and remains, rare, but it is a crucial tool for keeping Shadowhunter populations thriving, happy, and dynamic.
This sidebar is very long and is full of dates. It can be safely ignored. Your service as a Shadowhunter will never depend on knowing how intermarriage worked five hundred years ago. I promise.
Answer: Same-sex marriage recognized in Idris, legal for Shadowhunters in countries where it is allowed. There has never been an Ascension of same-sex partners, but Ascension very rare now so could happen in future anytime.
BATTLE
There are many seasons of a Shadowhunter’s life, and many turns that life may take, but the core occupation of the Shadowhunter is, so to speak, the hunting of shadows. We are warriors, holy soldiers in a ceaseless battle, and while our adult lives include the same joys and sorrows as any mundane’s, the defining characteristic of our lives is that of fighting, of seeking demons invading our world and sending them, broken, back to theirs. It is the greatest honor for a Nephilim to die in combat with demons. Thus we say: Do not shirk from battle. Have faith, seek courage. A Shadowhunter who does not fight is not a complete Shadowhunter. (Unless that Shadowhunter is a Silent Brother or Iron Sister, of course.)
It is true, however, that many Shadowhunters put aside their weapons as they grow older, and seek a quieter life of study or research. But we do not do this until we have lived a full warrior’s life and are ready to put it aside with a feeling of completion.
Did You Know?
It is considered bad luck to say “good-bye” or “good luck” to a Shadowhunter who is going off to battle. One must behave with confidence, as though victory is assured and return is certain, not a matter of chance. I actually did know that!
Even I knew that. Come on, Codex. Everyone knows that.
Why do I keep letting you write in this thing?
THOSE WHO LEAVE
Rarely, a Shadowhunter will choose to leave the Clave and enter the mundane world. There may be many reasons for this, but the Nephilim do not often look kindly on those who choose this path, whatever their reason. We are too few as it is, and we are meant to regard our status as Nephilim as a gift from Heaven and a divine calling, not as an accident of birth or a career path to be chosen or declined.
As such the Law is clear on the responsibilities of those who leave the Clave:
• They must sever all contact with Shadowhunters, even those of their own family who remain in the Clave. They must never so much as speak to Nephilim or be spoken to by them.
• In renouncing the Clave they also renounce the Clave’s obligation to offer them assistance in case of danger. They are not even afforded the protections given by Law to mundanes.
• Their children, even future children, remain Shadowhunters by blood and may be claimed by the Clave. Shadowhunter blood breeds true, and the children of Shadowhunters will be Shadowhunters, even if their parents have left, even if their Marks have been stripped.
• Every six years a representative of the Clave is sent to ask those children of ex-Shadowhunters if the children would like to leave their family and be raised among Shadowhunters in an Institute, as if they were orphans. Only when the child has turned eighteen does this practice end. (Those who reject the Nephilim into adulthood are not treated with the stigma of ex-Shadowhunters but have the same rights of protection as any mundane. The Clave has no wish to punish children for the crimes of their parents.)
• A Shadowhunter who has been turned into a Downworlder can no longer be Nephilim but should not be punished in the manner of those who chose to leave. In these cases the person gives up the protection owed him by the Clave for being a Shadowhunter but becomes newly entitled to the protection granted to Downworlders.
DEATH
Most Shadowhunters die as Shadowhunters. And most die in battle with demons. Major buzzkill, Codex.
We Nephilim burn our dead, discarding the fragile physical body that has trapped us and restricted us for our short human lives. Our remains are then interred. Those who die in Idris are traditionally entombed in its necropolis, outside Alicante’s walls. Those who die outside Idris are entombed in the Silent City. The Silent Brothers have responsibility over the dead in both locations. Most Shadowhunter families are old families and as a result have not merely grave plots but large family tombs and mausoleums, often one in each of the two necropolises.
Before being set on the funeral pyre, the Shadowhunter’s body is presented so that words of mourning can be spoken and those left behind can pay their last respects. Those in mourning traditionally wear white, and Mark themselves in red. The eyes of the dead Shadowhunter are bound with white silk, and he is laid to rest with his arms crossed over his chest, a seraph blade clutched in the right hand and resting over his heart. Funeral rites vary depending on the part of the world the Shadowhunter is from but traditionally conclude with a sentence from The Odes of Horace: Pulvis et umbra sumus. “We are dust and shadows.”
Hoo boy, I can’t read this right now. No no no. Too much.
Yeah, for me too. We’ve had a little too much dust and shadows lately.
SILENT BROTHERS AND IRON SISTERS
THE SILENT BROTHERS
Our Unnerving Allies
And Jonathan took his stele, the first stele, and slowly he drew a V, then another, then another, in a continuous line, VVVVV, from David’s upper lip to his bottom lip and back again. The stele was warm in his hand and left a fine indentation of crosshatch that remained even after the stele’s point was withdrawn.
Jonathan drew back, finished, and cocked his head at David, not sure if the Mark had taken.
David began to open his mouth to speak, and as he did, the lines on his mouth burned gold, and his lips caught just slightly open, held together by black threads, thin but strong. Jonathan stepped back and lifted the stele without thought, unsure. But the corners of David’s mouth turned up slightly in what he was now able to produce in lieu of a smile.
“Sir?” Jonathan said, his voice wavering.
It is good, Shadowhunter, David said abruptly in Jonathan’s mind. His voice was strong and calm and echoed in Jonathan’s head much more loudly than Jonathan would have expected. Now, David went on, lifting two fingers to his own face like a gesture of blessing. Now the eyes.
—From Jonathan and David in Idris, by Arnold Featherstone, 1970
The Silent Brothers are indeed our brothers—brothers to all Nephilim. Do not be frightened of them. Their appearance may be disconcerting, or even sickening, to you on first glance, but they are Nephilim, like you, and you fight on the same side, toward the same goals. (Most Shadowhunters get over their fear of Silent Brothers the first time they are injured in battle and the Brothers nurse them back to health.) It is worth noting that many Silent Brothers enjoy unsettling their fellow Nephilim, and deliberately play up their spookier features. This is a kind of hazing and should be taken as the good fun it is intended to be.
No sudden moves, though.
It is easy for new Nephilim to look upon the Silent Brothers as somehow more holy or angelic or powerful than the rest of us, but this is not in fact the case. The Silent Brothers rarely fight and lack any of the many combat runes that you will likely receive to enhance your physical and mental abilities. Instead they have taken Marks upon themselves that grant them access to the more esoteric corners of the Gray Book. They are our doctors, our scholars, our archivists. To them is given jurisdiction over the Nephilim dead. This of course includes those who rest in the Silent City, but the cemetery of Idris, too, is the Silent Brothers’ domain.
The Marks that the Silent Brothers use in their work are not so much forbidden to other Nephilim as hidden from our sight. In essence, parts of the Gray Book are locked and invisible to us, and the Marks the Brothers are inscribed with are the key. The Silent Brothers therefore have access to strange magic that you will not see performed by other Nephilim. In exchange for their special abilities, they have given up some of their humanity, moving farther from the Earth and closer to Heaven than the rest of us. They are still human, but their extraordinary nature makes them often disconcerting to us: They leave no footprints, do not cast shadows, do not move their mouths to speak, and do not sleep. Their bodies are tugged upward by Heaven, just as vampires’ bodies are tugged downward by Hell.
Befitting their seraphic alliance, the Silent Brothers are sometimes called the Grigori. The term refers to the Watchers, one of the higher orders of angels (the Watchers are the angels who are present in the trial of Nebuchadnezzar in the Hebrew Bible, for example), and is applied to the Silent Brothers not to claim their status as more heavenly than other Nephilim, but rather as a reference to their role among the Shadowhunters: watchers rather than fighters. The term has gone out of fashion and is considered archaic but can be found in many older Nephilim writings.
The official habit of the Silent Brothers is a parchment-colored, hooded robe, belted at the waist. Novice Silent Brothers will usually have plain robes, while those who have advanced to full Brotherhood will have decorative Marks circling the cuffs and hems of their robes, in bloodred ink. High-ranking Brothers are sometimes known to carry scepters; these scepters are usually pure silver and are also decorated with Marks, with the head carved in a figurative symbolic shape, such as an angel with outstretched wings, a chalice, or the hilt of a sword. Silent Brothers cast no shadows on the rare occasions they are found in the sun; this is widely believed to be an affectation, like the robe, rather than having some actual purpose.
The Silent Brothers must, by Law, have both their eyes and mouths shut with Marks. There are several different Marks that accomplish this, and the different processes vary, from magically stitching the eyes and mouth shut; to merely keeping the eyes and mouth permanently closed with the Mark of Fettering; to cleanly removing the eyes and/or mouth entirely, leaving blank spaces of flesh where they once were. The latter is, obviously, the most permanent and irreversible of these and is considered the most devout means of Marking oneself as a Silent Brother.
THE IRON SISTERS
The Iron Sisters are a monastic order, like the Silent Brothers, the members of which have taken Marks upon themselves for a specific purpose that requires them to become more than merely human. In the case of the Sisters, however, they have taken upon themselves the ability to work the angelic stone adamas, and craft it and whatever other mundane materials are needed into the arms, armor, and tools that keep the Nephilim alive and protected. The Sisters are the only Nephilim permitted to handle adamas pur, unworked adamas.
Like the Brothers, the Iron Sisters must join the order by taking Marks upon themselves that act as keys to unlocking normally hidden sections of the Gray Book. These Marks also serve to distance them from the rest of humanity. (The Marks are different between the two orders, and being Marked as a Silent Brother does not give you access to the Iron Sisters’ Marks, nor vice versa.) Also like the Silent Brothers, the Iron Sisters are not fighters, do not marry, and do not normally attend Council meetings or venture outside of their usual domain.
Iron Sisters are rarely encountered by most Nephilim, but when they are, they are significantly less unsettling in appearance than the Silent Brothers. Their eyes and mouths are not magically closed, and they can neither read minds nor speak telepathically. They wear simple clothes, long white gowns bound tightly at the wrists and waist by demon-wire, to protect their clothes from the holy fires in which their materials are worked. Apart from an appearance of agelessness, their only odd physical feature is their eyes, which typically glow with the colors of flames. It is said that the fires of their great forges burn behind their eyes.
Despite their somewhat more familiar mien, the Iron Sisters are even more private and removed from Nephilim society than the Silent Brothers. They live in solitude in their great Adamant Citadel—whose location on the Earth is unknown to any other Nephilim—and rarely venture outside their fortress. They do not like to be bothered and prefer to work in isolation. A Shadowhunter may live many years without seeing even one Iron Sister in the flesh.
The first Iron Sister, Abigail Shadowhunter, was concerned that despite the gender neutrality of the Shadowhunters, the Sisters would need to be protected from unwanted interference from male Shadowhunters, and so the Adamant Citadel was built to be, and has always been, open only to female Shadowhunters. Indeed, only women are permitted to speak to Iron Sisters.