Alastair had come into the Curzon Street house after Sona and explained with surprising calm that Elias’s body had been discovered by a morning patrol and already brought to the Silent City. If the family wished to see him before the autopsy began, they would need to hurry to the Ossuarium.

Cordelia recalled what happened next only in bits and pieces. She had gone to get dressed, feeling as numb as if she had fallen through Arctic ice into a black and frozen sea. When she emerged from the house to join her mother and brother in the carriage, she had been distantly surprised to find that James was beside her. He had been absolutely insistent on coming to the Silent City, though she had told him it wasn’t necessary. “Only family need go,” she told him, and he had said, “Daisy, I am family.”

In the carriage, he had murmured words of condolence in Persian: Ghame akharetoon basheh.

May this be your last sorrow.

Sona had wept steadily and silently all the way to Highgate Cemetery. Cordelia had half expected Alastair to react to Elias’s death with the blazing rage he often showed when he was hurt. Instead he seemed stiff and hollow, as if he were being propped up inside by wires. She could hear him, as if from a distance, saying all the correct things as they met Brother Enoch, who was waiting for them at the entrance to the Silent City.

Cordelia had felt a pang inside for Jem. If only he were not in the Spiral Labyrinth. If only he could be here for them: he was family, and Enoch was not. Did Jem even know? How long would it be before he was told that his uncle, the man who had slain his parents’ murderer, was dead?

There would be a funeral eventually, she supposed now, her eyes fixed on Brother Enoch’s witchlight torch, bobbing ahead of them. It would have to wait. Elias’s body would be studied and then preserved until the murderer had been caught: they would not burn it and destroy potential clues. Jem could be with them then, but she found she could not imagine the scene—the fields of Alicante, her father’s body on a pyre, the Consul speaking soothing words. It seemed like a horrific dream.

She felt James take her hand as they came into a stone square, the iron entrance of the Ossuarium rising up before them. Words were inscribed above the doors:

TACEANT COLLOQUIA. EFFUGIAT RISUS.

HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE.

Let conversation stop. Let laughter cease. Here is the place where the dead delight to teach the living.

The doors opened before them, the ancient iron hinges groaning. Sona walked ahead, seemingly oblivious of everything but what was waiting inside the large, windowless room.