Inside his head, Brother Enoch said, It will be hard. But you will be able to bear it. We will help you bear it.
I will endure it because I must, Brother Zachariah said.
Sister Emilia had stopped, and he caught up with her. She was taking in the carnival, her hands on her hips. “What a thing!” she said. “Did you ever read Pinocchio?”
“I don’t believe so,” Brother Zachariah told her. Though he thought that once, when he’d been in the London Institute, he might have heard Tessa reading it to a young James.
“A wooden puppet yearns to be a real boy,” Sister Emilia said. “And so a fairy gives him his wish, more or less, and he gets into all sorts of trouble at a place that I always thought would look rather like this.”
Brother Zachariah said, almost against his will, And does he?
“Does he what?” Sister Emilia said.
Does he become real?
“Well, of course,” Sister Emilia said. Then, saucily, “What kind of story would it be if he only ever got to be a puppet? His father loves him, and that’s how he starts to become real, I guess. I always liked those stories the best, the ones where people could make things or carve things and make them come to life. Like Pygmalion.”
In his head, Brother Enoch said, She’s quite lively, for an Iron Sister. He didn’t sound exactly disapproving, but neither was it a compliment.
“Of course,” Sister Emilia said, “you’re something of a story yourself, Brother Zachariah.”
What do you know of me? Brother Zachariah said.
She said pertly, “That you fought Mortmain. That you once had a parabatai and he became the head of the London Institute. That his wife, the warlock Tessa Herondale, wears a pendant that you gave her. But I know something of you that perhaps you do not know yourself.”
That seems unlikely, Brother Zachariah said. But go on. Tell me what I do not know about myself.
“Give me your staff,” Sister Emilia said.
He gave it to her, and she examined it carefully. “Yes,” she said. “I thought so. This was made by Sister Dayo, whose weapons were so exquisitely wrought that it was rumored an angel had touched her forge. Look. Her mark.”
It has served me well enough, Brother Zachariah said. Perhaps one day you too will find renown for the things that you make.
“One day,” said Sister Emilia. She handed him back the staff. “Perhaps.” There was a formidable glint in her eyes. Brother Zachariah thought it made her look very young. The world was its own sort of crucible, and in it all dreams were tempered and tested. Many crumbled away entirely, and then you went on without them. In his head his Brothers murmured in agreement. After nearly sixty years, Brother Zachariah was almost used to this. Instead of music, he had this stern brotherly chorus. Once upon a time, he had imagined each of the Silent Brothers as a musical instrument. Brother Enoch, he’d thought, would be a bassoon heard through the high-up window of a desolate lighthouse, the waves crashing down at the base. Yes, yes, Brother Enoch had said. Very poetic. And what are you, Brother Zachariah?
Brother Zachariah had tried not to think of his violin. But you couldn’t keep secrets from your Brothers. And that violin had lain silent and neglected for a very long time.
He said, attempting to think of other things as they walked, Can you tell me if you know anything of an Annabel Blackthorn? An Iron Sister? She and a friend of mine, the warlock Malcom Fade, fell in love and made plans to run away together, but when her family discovered this, they forced her to join the Iron Sisterhood. It would ease his mind to know something of what her life had been in the Adamant Citadel.
Sister Emilia said, “It’s clear that you know very little about the Iron Sisters! No one is ever forced to join against their will. Indeed, it is a great honor, and many who attempt the path are turned away. If this Annabel became an Iron Sister, she chose that for herself. I know nothing of her, although it’s true that most of us change our names when we are consecrated.”
Brother Zachariah said, If you come to know anything of her, my friend would be most grateful. He does not speak of her much, but I believe that she is always in his thoughts.
* * *
When Brother Zachariah and Sister Emilia passed through the gates of the carnival, the first strange thing they saw was a werewolf eating cotton candy out of a paper cone. Sticky pink strands were caught in his beard.
“Full moon tonight,” Sister Emilia said. “The Praetor Lupus has sent down some of their people, but it’s said the werewolves here are a law to themselves. They run moonshine and ride roughshod in the mountains. These boys should be steering clear of mundanes this time of the month, not eating cotton candy and peddling rotgut.”
The werewolf stuck out its tongue at them and sauntered away. “Sauce!” Sister Emilia said, and would have pursued the werewolf.
Brother Zachariah said, Hold. There are worse things here than Downworlders with terrible manners and a sweet tooth. Can you smell that?
Sister Emilia wrinkled her nose. “Demon,” she said.
They followed the smell through the winding alleys of the carnival, through the strangest iteration of the Shadow Market that Brother Zachariah had ever seen. The Market was, of course, much bigger than you would have expected a carnival, even one of this size, to encompass. Some of the vendors he recognized. Some watched warily as he and Sister Emilia passed. One or two, with looks of resignation, began to pack up their wares. The rules by which Shadow Markets existed were more the rules of long custom than those written down and codified, but everything about this Shadow Market felt wrong to Brother Zachariah, and the Silent Brothers in his head were all debating how it might have come to be. Even if a Shadow Market had been right and proper in this place, there should not have been mundanes browsing and exclaiming over the strange goods on offer. Here went a man, looking pale and dreamy-eyed, blood still trickling from two neat punctures in his neck.
“I’ve never actually been to a Shadow Market,” Sister Emilia said, slowing down. “My mother always said it was no place for Shadowhunters and insisted that my brothers and I stay away from it.” She seemed particularly interested in a booth that sold knives and weapons.
Souvenirs later, Brother Zachariah said, pushing on. Business first.
They were suddenly out of the Shadow Market and in front of a stage where a magician was telling jokes as he turned a small shaggy dog into a green melon and then cut the melon in half with a playing card. Inside was a fiery sphere that rose up and hung in the air like a miniature sun. The magician (the sign above his head proclaimed him to be Roland the Astonishing) poured water out of his hat onto it, and the sphere became a mouse and ran off the stage into an audience that gasped and shrieked and then applauded.
Sister Emilia had stopped to watch, and Brother Zachariah stopped too.
She said, “Real magic?”
Real illusions at least, Brother Zachariah said. He gestured at the woman who stood at the side of the stage watching the magician perform his tricks.
The magician looked to be in his sixties, but his companion could have been any age at all. She was clearly of high fey lineage, and there was a baby in her arms. The way that she watched the magician on the stage made Brother Zachariah’s chest grow tight. He had seen Tessa look at Will the same way, with that rapt attention and love mingled with the knowledge of future sorrow that must, one day, be endured.
Brother Enoch said, again, When the day comes, we will bear it with you.
A thought came to Brother Zachariah like an arrow, that when that day came and Will left the world, he did not wish to share his grief with his Brothers. That others would be there with him when Will was not. And, too, there was Tessa. Who would stay to help her endure when Brother Zachariah took the body that Will had left behind back to the Silent City?
The faerie woman looked out over the crowd and then drew back suddenly behind a velvet curtain. When Brother Zachariah tried to see what she had seen, he saw a goblin perched on a flag above the top of a nearby tent. It appeared to be sniffing the wind as if it smelled something particularly delicious. Mostly what Brother Zachariah smelled now was demon.
Sister Emilia craned her neck to see where Brother Zachariah was looking and said, “Another faerie! It’s nice to be out in the world again. I’ll have such a lot to write about in my diary when I’m back in the Adamant Citadel.”
Do Iron Sisters keep diaries? Brother Zachariah asked politely.
“That was a joke,” Sister Emilia said. She actually looked disappointed in him. “Do Silent Brothers have any kind of a sense of humor, or do they stitch that up too?”
We collect knock-knock jokes, Brother Zachariah said.
She perked up. “Really? Do you have any favorites?”
No, Brother Zachariah said. That was a joke. He smiled. Sister Emilia was so very human that he found it was waking up some of the humanity he’d put aside so long ago. That too must have been why he was thinking of Will and Tessa and the person he’d been before. His heart would ache slightly less, he was sure, once he and Sister Emilia had completed their mission and been dispatched back to the places where they belonged. She had some of the same spark that Will had had, back when he and Jem had chosen to be parabatai. Jem had been drawn to that fire in Will, and Brother Zachariah thought that he and Sister Emilia could have been friends too, under other circumstances.
He was thinking this when a small boy tugged at his sleeve. “Are you part of the carnival?” the boy said. “Is that why you’re dressed like that? Is that why your face looks like that?”
Brother Zachariah looked down at the boy and then at the runes on his arms to make sure they hadn’t somehow rubbed off.
“You can see us?” Sister Emilia said to the boy.
“ ’Course I can,” the boy said. “Nothing wrong with my eyes. Although I think there must have been something wrong with them before. Because now I see all sorts of things that I never used to see.”
How? Brother Zachariah said, bending over to peer into the boy’s eyes. What’s your name? When did you start seeing things that you never used to see?