“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.