Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“It hurt?” Jesse asked gently. Lucie could hear the pain in his voice. And the fear. A sense of dread was growing in him, as it was in her, Lucie guessed. As it was in all of them.

Grace nodded. “She was laughing. She said I didn’t matter anymore. That I was nothing now. An empty shell. She turned her back on me, so—I ran. I ran through the Silent City—it was full of those creatures.” Her voice rose, her words tripping over each other. “They looked like Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters, but they weren’t. They had weapons, and those awful eyes. They were attacking the real Brothers. I saw Brother Enoch stab one of them with a longsword, but it didn’t fall down. It didn’t die. It should have died. Even a Silent Brother would have died from that. They’re not immortal.” She clutched her bare, frost-reddened hands together, and Lucie could not help remembering how glamorous she had once found Grace, how perfectly elegant. Her pale hair hung in wet snarls, and her feet, Lucie suddenly realized, were bare—bare and filthy and crusted with dried blood.

“The real Silent Brothers began to move up the stairs. Brother Enoch saw me, and he pulled me along with them. It was like being caught up in a flood. It carried me along. Enoch was trying to shield me. He kept saying I had to tell the Institute something—”

“What was it?” James said. “What did we need to know?”

Grace cringed back. She was afraid of James, Lucie realized suddenly. Because he had been angry at her, because he had sent her to the prisons of the Bone City? Lucie knew he would never have laid a hand on Grace. She recalled her father telling her once, There is no one on earth we recoil from more than those we have wronged. Perhaps that was what it was. Perhaps Grace had it within her to feel guilt.

“Grace,” Ari said. She spoke gently but firmly, like a nanny to a child. “What did Brother Enoch say?”

“He said that my mother must have found the key,” Grace whispered. “And taken it from the Citadel.” She swallowed. “He said they had come from the Path of the Dead. Then he pushed me through a door, and I fell out into the night. I was alone. I was in London, and I was alone in the graveyard.”

“What of the other Silent Brothers?” said Matthew. “Jem is in Idris, but Enoch, Shadrach—”

Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t get back into the City, couldn’t even see the door. I ran until I found the road. A hansom cab pulled over, asked if I was all right. He felt sorry for me, the driver. He brought me here—”

She was cut off by the sound of the Institute gate slamming open, a harsh, metallic thud. Lucie turned to the window, peering out through the half-frosted pane. “It’s Charles,” she said in relief, seeing the redheaded figure on horseback gallop through the gates. “He’s riding Balios out to Highgate.”

The gate closed behind him. The air was full of flying bits of small debris, snatched up by the wind: twigs and dead leaves and bits of old birds’ nests. Above, the clouds seemed to be heaving and surging like the surface of the sea.

“The key,” Anna said, frowning. “What does that mean, that Tatiana took the key from the Adamant Citadel?”

“My mother was looking for a key,” Jesse said grimly. “She and Belial. It was in her notes.”

Matthew said, “A key to the prisons of the Silent City, perhaps? Tatiana must have let herself out of her cell. And let these—these things in. These false Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters.”

“We know from what James saw in the mirror that Belial was trying to possess someone,” said Jesse. “That he was using Chimera demons. They must have possessed the Silent Brothers, and be acting on Belial’s orders—”

“Silent Brothers cannot be possessed,” said Cordelia. “They have the same protections we all do. If anything, theirs would be stronger.”

Still holding Grace’s wrist, Christopher said, “It sounds as if they were fighting with each other, isn’t that right, Grace? As if some of them were defending you and the City?”

Grace nodded. “Enoch was still himself. And the others that I recognized. The dark ones, the glowing ones—they were strangers. I’d never seen them before.”

“Really,” said James. “Were they dressed differently, as well? Try to remember, Grace. It’s important.”

Lucie gave him a hard look—James had clearly thought of something, but his look was inward. He was caught up in the net of his own thoughts, working through the problem before him as if he were unknotting a ball of string.

Grace looked at her feet. “Yes. Their robes were white, instead of parchment, and they had different runes on them.”

“White robes.” Lucie exchanged a look with James; she could feel her face growing hot with anxiety. “Burial garments.”

“The Iron Tombs,” said James. “That’s how Belial managed it. Most Silent Brothers would be protected from possession, but not the ones in the tombs. Their souls have left their bodies, and those bodies have been taken to rest under the volcanic plains, near the Adamant Citadel. They’re empty vessels.”

Anna cursed floridly. Ari said, “There is a key to the Tombs. I’ve seen drawings of it. It’s kept—oh, it’s kept in the Adamant Citadel—” She covered her mouth with her hand.

Jesse said numbly, “My mother must have stolen it. She would have unlocked the tombs for Belial, let him in. He would have brought the Chimeras there. Possessed the bodies of the Iron Sisters and Silent Brothers who were lying there, undefended. And once that was done, marched them to the Silent City to attack.”

“?‘They wake,’?” Cordelia whispered. “?‘They rise.’ ‘They march.’ All those messages, they were telling us what step Belial was at in his plan. But we didn’t realize.”

“We’ve been outplayed,” James said quietly. “That business of Tatiana’s, appearing at the Christmas party, throwing out those accusations, even kidnapping Alexander—”

“It was too easy, capturing her,” Cordelia said. “She wanted to be arrested. She wanted to be thrown into the Silent City so she could do—whatever this is.”

“I don’t know if it’s what she wants, precisely,” said Jesse. “All of this is what Belial wants. He used her, as a pawn in his chess game. A piece he could move into the Silent City, a sort of Trojan horse, filled with his evil, his will—”

A massive thunderclap sounded. It shook the Institute: several lamps fell over, and the burning logs tumbled in the grate. Lucie gripped the windowsill as the others gasped—and saw, through the glass, that the Institute gate was open.

But it was far too soon for Charles to have returned from Highgate. She rose up on her tiptoes to look down.

And froze.