Learn about Loss (Ghosts of the Shadow Market #4)(10)

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 Bazaar of the Bizarre 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 that 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 slights. 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 whole-heartedly, 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 Iron 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 Silent Brothers have sent messages to the Praetor Lupus. They take a hardline Prohibitionist stance, not to mention they crack down hard on eating mundanes.

“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 Iron Citadel. I’m sorry to keep you here.

He wasn’t wrong. She longed with all of 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?

In the back of his mind, his brothers murmured: be careful, be careful, be careful. Oh, be careful.

Sister Emilia said, “Nothing of any great importance. But I think he is a little afraid of me now, and he should be. He offered me something so that I would not become his nemesis.”

Tell me what you mean, Brother Zachariah said.

“I’ll tell you later,” Sister Emilia said firmly. “Right now I’m so tired I can barely talk at all.”

Sister Emilia was hungry as well as tired, but she was so very tired she couldn’t be bothered to eat. She would sleep first. She climbed up on the stage beside Brother Zachariah and took off her cloak and made it into a pillow. The evening was still warm, and if she grew cold, well, then she would wake up, and she and Brother Zachariah could keep watch together companionably.

She hoped that her brothers, now grown men all, were as kind and stout-hearted as this man was. She fell asleep remembering how she and they had played at fighting before they were old enough to train, laughing and tumbling and vowing to be great heroes. Her dreams were very sweet, though she did not remember them in the morning when she woke.





Silent Brothers do not sleep as mortals do, but nevertheless Brother Zachariah, as he sat and watched and listened in the deserted carnival, felt as the night drew on that he was in a dream. Silent Brothers do not dream, and yet slowly the voices of Brother Enoch and the others in his head dissipated and blew away and were replaced by music. Not carnival music, but the sound of a qinqin. There should not have been a qinqin anywhere on the mountain above Chattanooga, and yet he heard it. Listening to the sound of it, he discovered that he was no longer Brother Zachariah at all. He was only Jem. He did not sit upon a stage. Instead, he was perched on a tiled roof, and the sounds and smells and sights around him were all familiar ones. Not the Silent City. Not London. He was Jem again, and he was in the city where he had been born. Shanghai. Someone said, “Jem? Am I dreaming?”