The real Brother Zachariah’s eyes stayed closed. His face remained serene.
At last he said, The Carstairs owe a life debt to the Herondales. That is my choice.
Belial said, “Then here is what I will tell you about these lost Herondales. There is power in their blood, and there is great danger, too. They are in hiding from an enemy who is neither mortal nor demon. These pursuers are resourceful, and close on their heels, and they will kill them if they find them.”
“But where are they?” Sister Emilia said.
Belial said, “The debt is not that great, my dear. And now it is paid.”
Sister Emilia looked at Brother Zachariah, who shook his head. Belial is what he is, he said. A fornicator, a miser, and a polluter of sanctuaries. A creator of illusions. If I had made the other choice, do you really think I would be better off?
“How well we know each other!” Belial said. “We all play a role, and it would astonish you, I think, to know how helpful I am being. You think I have offered you only tricks and sleights, but truly I have extended the hand of friendship. Or do you think that I can simply draw these Herondales out of a hat like so many rabbits? As for you, Sister Emilia, I owe you no debt, but would do you a good turn. Unlike our acquaintance here, you have chosen the path that you are set on.”
“I have,” Sister Emilia said. All she had ever wanted was to make things. To shape seraph blades and be known as a master of the forge. Shadowhunters, it seemed to her, gloried in destruction. What she longed for was to be permitted to create.
“I could make it so that you were the greatest adamas worker the Adamant Citadel has ever seen. Your name would be spoken for generations.”
In the mirrors, Sister Emilia saw the blades she could make. She saw how they were used in battle, how the ones who wielded them thanked the one who had made them. They blessed the name of Sister Emilia, and acolytes came to study with her, and they, too, blessed her name.
“No!” Sister Emilia said to her reflections. “I will be the greatest adamas worker the Adamant Citadel has ever seen, but it will not be because I accepted aid from you. It will be because of the work that I do with the aid of my sisters.”
“Nuts!” Belial said. “I don’t even know why I bother.”
Brother Zachariah said, Roland the Astonishing!
And before Sister Emilia could ask him what he meant by that, he was running out of the maze. She could hear him knocking over mirror after mirror with his staff, in too much of a hurry to find his way out as they had found their way in. Or maybe he knew that all the magic was bound up to make the center hard to find, and that smashing things on the way out would work just fine.
“A little slow on the draw, that one,” Belial said to Sister Emilia. “Anyhow, I ought to make tracks. See you around, girlie.”
“Wait!” Sister Emilia said. “I have an offer to make you.”
Because she could not stop thinking of what she had seen in Brother Zachariah’s mirrors. How much he longed to be with his parabatai and with the girl who must have been the warlock Tessa Herondale.
“Go on,” Belial said. “I’m listening.”
“I know that the things you offer us aren’t real,” Sister Emilia said. “But perhaps the illusion of a thing that we can’t have is better than nothing at all. I want you to give Brother Zachariah a vision. A few hours with the one he misses most.”
“He loves the warlock girl,” Belial said. “I could give her to him.”
“No!” Sister Emilia said. “Warlocks endure. I believe one day he will have his hours with Tessa Herondale even if he does not dare to hope for it. But his parabatai, Will Herondale, is old and frail and drawing near the end of his life. I want you to give them both a span of time. Both of them in a time and place where they can be young and happy and together.”
“And what will you give me in return?” Belial said.
“If I had agreed to your previous offer,” Sister Emilia said, “I think that my name would have lived on in infamy. And even if I was one day celebrated for my work, still every blade that I made would have been tainted by the idea that you had had some part in my successes. Every victory would have been poisoned.”
“You’re not as stupid as most Shadowhunters,” Belial said.
“Oh, stop trying to flatter me!” Sister Emilia said. “You’re wearing a suit made of human skin. No one of any sense should care what you have to say. But you should care very much about what I say to you. And that is this. I promise you if you do not give Brother Zachariah and Will Herondale the thing that I am asking for them, my life’s work will be to forge a blade that is capable of killing you. And I will go on making blades until one day I accomplish my goal. And I warn you, I am not only talented, I am single-minded. Feel free to ask my mother if you don’t believe me.”
Belial met her gaze. He blinked twice and then looked away. Sister Emilia could see, now, the way he saw her reflected in the remaining mirrors, and she quite liked, for once, how she looked.
“You are interesting,” he said. “As Brother Zachariah said. But perhaps you are also dangerous. You’re too small to make a suit. But a hat. You would make a fine trilby. And perhaps a pair of spats. Why shouldn’t I kill you now?”
Sister Emilia stuck her chin out. She said, “Because you are bored. You are curious whether or not I will be good at my work. And if my swords fail those who wield them, you will find it good entertainment.”
Belial said, “True. I will.”
Emilia said, “Then our deal?”
“Done,” Belial said. And was gone, leaving Sister Emilia in a room walled in mirrors, holding an adamas mask in one hand and in her other a sword that was quite remarkable and yet in no way the equal of the blades that she would make one day.
When she emerged onto the carnival thoroughfare, already many of the tents were gone or else simply abandoned. There were few people about, and those she saw looked dazed and dreamy, as if they had just woken up. The Mysterious Merchants’ Bazaar was gone entirely, and there was not a single werewolf to be seen, although the cotton-candy machine was still spinning slowly, filaments of sugar floating in the air.
Brother Zachariah was standing in front of the empty stage where they had seen the magician and his faerie wife. “We all play a role, and it would astonish you, I think, to know how helpful I am being,” he said.
She realized he was quoting Belial. “I have no idea what that means,” she said.
He waved his hand at the sign above the stage. ROLAND THE ASTONISHING.
“Role and,” she said slowly. “It would astonish you.”
Tricks and sleights. He offered me the hand of friendship. Sleight of hand. Magic tricks. I should have known sooner. I thought the magician had the look of my friend Will. But he and his wife have fled.
“You’ll find them again,” Sister Emilia said. “I feel quite sure.”
They are Herondales, and they are in trouble, said Brother Zachariah. So I will find them, because I must. And Belial did say something that has proved of some interest to my Brothers.
“Go on,” Sister Emilia said.
I am as I am, Brother Zachariah said. A Silent Brother but not entirely of the Brotherhood, because for so long I was unwillingly dependent on yin fen. And now I am, not entirely wholeheartedly, a Silent Brother, so that I might remain alive in spite of the yin fen in my blood that should have killed me years ago. Brother Enoch and the others have long searched for a cure and found nothing. We had begun to think perhaps there was no cure. But Brother Enoch was extremely interested in the choice Belial offered me. He said he’s already researching demonic cures associated with Belial.
“Then if you were cured,” Sister Emilia said, “you would choose not to be what you are?”
Brother Zachariah said, Without hesitation. Though not without gratitude for what my Brothers in the Silent City have done for me. And you? Will you regret choosing a life in the Adamant Citadel?
Sister Emilia said, “How can I know that? But no. I am being given an opportunity to become what I have always known I was meant to be. Come on. We’ve done what we were sent to do.”
Not quite, Brother Zachariah said. Tonight is a full moon, and we don’t know whether or not the werewolves have gone back into the mountains. As long as there are mundanes here, we must wait and watch. The Praetor Lupus take a hard-line Prohibitionist stance, not to mention they crack down hard on eating mundanes, but they may still need assistance.
“Seems a little harsh,” Sister Emilia said. “The Prohibitionist stance. I get that eating people is wrong, generally.”
Werewolves live by a harsh code, Brother Zachariah said. She could not tell, by looking at his face, whether or not he was joking. But she was fairly sure that he was.
He said, Though now that you have passed your test, I know you must be anxious to return to the Adamant Citadel. I’m sorry to keep you here.
He wasn’t wrong. She longed with all her heart to go to the only place that had ever truly felt like home to her. And she knew, too, that some part of Brother Zachariah must dread returning to the Silent City. She had seen enough in the mirrors to know where his home and his heart was.
She said, “I’m not sorry to tarry here a little longer with you, Brother Zachariah. And I’m not sorry that I met you. If we never meet again, I will hope that one day a weapon made by my hand may yet prove useful to you in some way.” Then she yawned. Iron Sisters, unlike Silent Brothers, required things like sleep and food.
Brother Zachariah hoisted himself up onto the edge of the stage and then patted the space beside him. I’ll keep watch. If you grow weary, sleep. No harm will come while I keep vigil.
Sister Emilia said, “Brother Zachariah? If something strange happens tonight, if you should see something that you thought you would not see again, don’t be alarmed. No harm will come of it.”
What do you mean? Brother Zachariah said. What did you and Belial discuss when I had gone?