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"Absolutely!" Belial said. "Only, about that favor. It pains me so to be in debt to you when I might be of some service. I wonder if there isn't a thing that I could offer you. For example, the yin fen in your blood. Do the Silent Brothers still not know what the cure might be?"
Brother Zachariah said nothing, but Sister Emilia could see how his knuckles grew white where his fist was clenched. At last he said, Go on.
"I might know a cure," Belial said. "Yes, I think I know a sure cure. You could be who you once were. You could be Jem again. Or."
Brother Zachariah said, Or?
Belial's long tongue flicked out, as if he was tasting the air and found it delicious. "Or I could tell you a thing you don't know. There are Herondales, not the ones you know, but of the same bloodline as your parabatai. They are in great danger, their lives hang by a thread, and they are closer to us as we stand here than you can imagine. I can tell you something of them and set you on the path to find them if that is what you choose. But you must choose. To aid them or else to be who you once were. To once more be the one who left behind those who loved him best. The one they still yearn for. You could be him again if that is what you choose. Choose, Brother Zachariah."
Brother Zachariah hesitated for a long moment.
In the mirrors around them, Emilia saw visions of what Belial was promising, of all that his cure would mean. The woman Brother Zachariah adored would not be alone. He would be with her, able to share her pain and to love her wholly once more. He could rush to the side of the friend he loved, see his friend's blue eyes shine like stars on a midsummer night as he beheld Brother Zachariah transformed. They could clasp hands with no shadow of grief or pain upon them, just once. They had been waiting all their lives for that moment, and feared it would never come.
In a hundred reflections, Brother Zachariah's eyes flew open, blind and silver with agony. His face twisted as if he were being forced to endure the most terrible pain, or worse, forced to turn from the most perfect bliss.
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 only offered you tricks and slights, 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 that Iron Citadel has ever seen. Your name would be spoken for generations."
In the mirrors, Sister Emilia saw the blades that 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 that the Iron 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 Gray.
"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 Gray 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 that 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 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.
