The Alchemy of Stone (6 page)

“I don’t sleep,” Mattie said. “And I don’t wonder about other places.”

Niobe rounded her eyes at Mattie in mock horror, and laughed. “Maybe you didn’t have to. You live in the City of Gargoyles, and maybe in the heart of wonder there is no more wonder left. But I . . . I so wanted to come here. I’ve been in this city a month now, and I’ve yet to see a single gargoyle.” She pouted in disappointment.

They came to the Grackle Pond, and Mattie gestured to one of the wrought iron benches decorating the embankment. It was shaded by a slender cascade of willow branches, furry with pale young leaves, and Mattie judged that here they could sit in peace, enjoying the view and attracting little attention. “Let’s rest a bit,” she said, even though she was not tired, and drank in the thick smell of green stagnant water and silt. She trusted Niobe—she seemed so much like Mattie, and even though she was large and broad of shoulder, her flesh looked hard, as if carved of wood, so unlike Iolanda’s.

Niobe plopped down on the bench and stretched her legs, sighing comfortably. “Come on,” she said to Mattie. “Tell me about the gargoyles. You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Mattie said. She was unsure of how much she should divulge. “Only once. They hide during the day, and you can see them at night, if you want to, from a distance. Or you could at one time, anyway. They slept on the roof of the Duke’s palace.”

“Yes, I saw that,” Niobe said. “But . . . none of them move, and you can’t tell which ones are real.”

“All of them are,” Mattie said. “Most are stone, some few are still moving . . . but they all turn to stone eventually.”

“We will all become one with what we were born from,” Niobe said.

Mattie stared.

“Just a saying we have,” said Niobe, and laughed and pointed at a flock of ducks and ducklings that paddled to the shore, their black, beady eyes somehow managing an expectant expression. “Oh, they are cute.”

“Yes,” Mattie said, without looking. “What did you mean, becoming one with what we were born from?”

Niobe shrugged. “People came from the earth and return to it once they die, and become dirt. The gargoyles are born from stone. So they become it.” She laughed again. “Or something like that.”

“What about the automatons?” Mattie asked.

Niobe stared at the ducks that shyly wobbled ever closer. “I don’t know. We don’t have anything . . . anyone like you back home.”

Mattie nodded. She didn’t have to ask, really—she came from Loharri’s laboratory, born of metal and coils and spare parts and boredom; this is where she would find herself in the end, likely enough.

Mattie was fascinated with the change in Niobe—once they left the presence of the alchemists, Niobe seemed a whole new woman, laughing and moving freely. This is how Mattie felt away from judging eyes; the problem was, it only happened when she was alone, or with the gargoyles. Or Ilmarekh.

Her thoughts turned to the Soul-Smoker and the secrets of the souls that inhabited his weak, ravaged body. She felt selfish that she hadn’t thought of him in so long. Him or Beresta. Or her work. She groaned a little.

“Don’t be so glum,” Niobe said, and immediately clamped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I know the palace was important to you and your people.”

Mattie nodded. “And the gargoyles. I wonder if they will raise the palace again or if there are too few of them left. Where will they go if they can’t rebuild? Where will the Duke and his court go?”

“I’m sure it’ll work out.” Niobe patted Mattie’s shoulder, and the clinking of her rings sounded muffled by the cloth covering Mattie’s metal flesh. “I’m sorry to see you sad, and yet I’m happy that this misfortune allowed me to meet you. I haven’t made a friend here yet.”

“It can be difficult here,” Mattie said. “Alchemists are not too bad—they won’t be rude to you; at least, not to your face. But the mechanics . . . they’re a conceited lot, and if you aren’t one of them they’ll spit on you. The man who made me isn’t like that, but he too has his faults.”

“I often wonder what it would be like to know your creator,” Niobe said.

Mattie inclined her head. “It is aggravating,” she said. “And humbling at times. Loharri . . . he can be difficult. Possessive.”

Niobe laughed. “Of course he is. You’re . . . ” She paused, as if looking for the right word. “You’re precious, Mattie. There’s no one in the world like you. If I had made you, I wouldn’t let you out of the house.”

“I suppose I should be flattered,” Mattie said and stood. “It is nice to meet, you, really, but I should be going.”

“Oh no.” Niobe grabbed Mattie’s hand and peered into her blue porcelain face. “I’ve offended you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mattie said. “It will pass.”

Niobe stood too. “Listen. Come visit me the next holiday, all right? I live by the market, the one on the other side of Merchant Square. There’s a jewelry shop downstairs.”

“I know the place,” she said. “It’s owned by other . . . easterners? Like you?”

Niobe smiled. “That’s right. Will you come?”

As much as Mattie resented being treated like a thing that could be kept indoors at one’s whim, she thought that Niobe deserved another chance. After all, where else would she find someone as alone and mistrusted as herself? “Yes,” she said. “I will visit you. Maybe you can tell me about the alchemy you practice.”

Niobe’s face brightened with a smile. “Yes! And promise you’ll do the same for me. The alchemists here seem awfully protective of their secrets.”

“They don’t like outsiders.”

Niobe raised her eyebrows. “Really? I haven’t noticed.”

Mattie shrugged. “They did let you in, like they let me in. Believe me, this is the best either of us will be treated.”

“Unless we change that,” Niobe said. “I’ll see you the next holiday.”

Mattie headed down the embankment, unsure whether to go home or to visit Ilmarekh. She decided on the latter; it wasn’t just Beresta’s secrets or her elusive son, but Mattie worried about Ilmarekh, of how he withstood the assault of the ghosts inside him. She headed west, for the city gates.

We mourn today as we will have mourned
tomorrow, and we hide in the rain gutters and the attics, we smell dust and people’s cooking. At night, we huddle on the roofs, the shingles rough under our feet, our folded wings chafing against the bricks of the chimneys. Sometimes, the wind blows and brings with it the sound of quiet laughter and the smell of lilacs, the humid breath of the water lilies in the Grackle Pond and the stench of bleach from the factory.

We are sad that we cannot smell cool stone, the dark moss pockmarking its surface, the rain and snow whipping its inert bulk and slowly, imperceptibly eroding it. And as we think of stone, we think of the things we haven’t thought about in ages—of how stone heaved and buckled and split, releasing us into the world; of how it followed us, like the night ocean follows the moon, how it bounded toward our hands, like a loyal dog to the beckoning of its master. When we were many, we could breathe a barest whisper, and it heard and obeyed, it listened. And now our voices are few and weak, and we cannot rebuild what has been ruined.

Chapter 6

Mattie found Ilmarekh in his house on top of Ram’s Head Hill, and immediately saw that he was unwell. She cursed herself for not thinking to bring a tonic or a strengthening elixir.

“What’s wrong?” she asked Ilmarekh who sat, wrapped in a blanket, by the roaring fire despite a warm, balmy day outside.

He shivered in response. His teeth clattered so loudly that no words could come out.

Mattie moved closer, stepping carefully around dirty dishes on the floor and an occasional bowl of ash. She touched his forehead, and her sensitive fingers registered no fever, just a film of clammy sweat covering his brow.

It didn’t take Mattie long to recognize the symptoms of opium withdrawal—the alternating sweats and chills, the body aches, nausea, uncontrollable sneezing and watering eyes—she catalogued them in her mind and hurried back to her shop.

There was little to be done about that but wait it out, but Mattie looked to diminishing the pain before cures. She thought of buying more opium but instead decided to use what few dried poppy flowers she had left—they would be enough to ease Ilmarekh’s suffering and let him sleep.

She ran up the stairs, the light metal of her lower legs swinging over two steps at a time, and started her brewing. To opium, she added lemongrass against nausea, chamomile for a general calming, and vanilla to relax his knotted shoulders and let him sleep.

She flew through her shop, mixing and grinding, measuring and distilling, filtering and decanting.
A plain bottle would suffice
, she said to herself.
What does he care
? She rummaged through the jars and bottles and decanters crowding the shelf over the bench, and picked up an old apothecary vial shrouded with dust and cobwebs. She wiped the grime away and discovered on its side an image of a gargoyle in low relief on a flat medallion filigreed with gold.

When she was still living with Loharri, he sometimes took her eyes away as a punishment for disobedience, and she had to feel her way around for as much as a week. She still remembered her delight when her fingers stumbled upon a familiar shape and recognized it—a full, round surprise that made her heart bubble with joy. She remembered finding the vial with the gargoyle in it and secreting it in the folds of her dress, so she could trace the gargoyle wings in her room, in secret, and thus defy her blindness.

She cleaned the vial and poured her mixture into it. Surely the man who was blind for all his life was not immune to the joy of tactile recognition, she thought, and hurried back to the gates, the vial wrapped in the tight coils of her fingers. The elixir would make him better; she chased away the selfish thoughts of the questions she would ask him once he was coherent again. She needed to fix him, and did not dare to think beyond that.

Back in his shack, Ilmarekh had moved away from the fire; it still smoldered, ashes wet from a carelessly dumped bucket of water. He was now curled up on the bed, little more than a mere straw-filled mattress.

Mattie shook her head and poked at the wet ashes with the tip of her foot. “What are you going to do if you want fire later?”

He shrugged, sullen at the nagging note that crept into her voice.

“I brought you something,” Mattie said, softer now. “Please drink it.”

“Does it have opium in it?” Ilmarekh said.

“Very little—just to make you feel better. Why?”

He either shivered or shrugged, she wasn’t sure. “When I don’t smoke and my head is clear, the souls stop talking. I want them to stop talking.”

“Just drink this,” Mattie said, “and sleep—I promise they won’t bother you.”

“You won’t . . . you won’t do anything to hurt me, will you?”

From previous experience, Mattie knew that people didn’t trust her just because she mentioned her good will or kind nature. Nowadays, she relied entirely on mercenary arguments. “Why would I do that? I still have questions to ask you.”

Her words seemed to reassure him, and he propped himself up on one elbow, pulling a ragged woolen blanket around him. He grasped the bottle and drank, his long white fingers twitching on the glass, pulsating with every gulp as if they were the tentacles of an octopus testing the strength of its suckers. He was almost finished when his fingertips brushed across the glass medallion with the emblazoned gargoyle, and his blind white eyes widened in surprise.

Mattie was relieved to see a ghost of a smile touch his lips.

“Mattie,” he said. “This is a truly lovely engraving. Thank you.” He fell back on his mattress, still clasping the vial, and was asleep before he remembered to stop smiling.

Mattie guarded his sleep, which gave her plenty of time to look around. She knew the Soul-Smoker was poor, she just hadn’t realized how much so. The house—the hut, if one wanted to be honest—lacked even the most basic necessities. There was no running water, and the fireplace seemed to be the only way to cook meals and heat water for a bath. There was just one room, one corner of it sagging perilously and threatening to bring down the entire house. The wooden floors, drafty and not covered by anything but sparse trickles of sawdust, were worn to a soft shine by the feet of many generations of Soul-Smokers; their daily paths were clearly visible—one led from the fireplace to the table, rickety on its thin, deformed legs; another shot from the table to the bed and the deep ceramic tub in the corner next to it; the third led from the bed to the fireplace. A simple triangle enclosing a life of privation.

Mattie did not have to ask to learn Ilmarekh’s story—the Soul-Smokers were always the same, recruited from those who had no other choice. Usually orphans, usually crippled, those who had nowhere else to go and no one to turn for help to; those who had no chance surviving on their own, without the Stone Monks’ dubious charity.

The orphanage run by the Stone Monks was the northernmost building in the city, its wall just a hair’s breadth from the city wall by the northern gates. Mattie remembered coming there with Loharri—he seemed fond of coming there, with no other apparent purpose but to stand in front of the solid front wall, his hands in his pockets and his disfigured face twisted in an even more unpleasant grimace than usual. Mattie would stand next to him and occasionally ask questions to stave off boredom.

“Why did they put it all the way here?” she asked him once. “Their temple and the gargoyle feeders are all by the palace.”

“Noise,” Loharri said in a strained voice. “There’d be too much noise. They don’t want anyone hearing.”

Mattie cocked her head to listen then, but could not catch any sounds coming through the thick blind walls, just one door and no windows. The stone was too thick, too solid—the building looked like the ones in the ducal district, but the thin lines between blocks of masonry told her that it was man-made. “Why aren’t there any windows?” she asked then.

Loharri turned around sharply and headed away. As she hurried to catch up, her skirts flapping in the rising wind, she caught the sharp sound of grinding teeth. “The windows give one hope, Mattie,” he said. “This is not what this place is for.”

Now, she tried to guess what sorts of horrors happened inside, and just could not think of anything that would push Ilmarekh and his predecessors to choose living in a tiny hut with hundreds of ghosts haunting his every moment, never leaving him alone; he only had time to be alone in his skin during opium withdrawal. She realized that her own experiences had been rather benign and limited in scope, yet it made her fear more. If they could do this to a man, what about a girl automaton whose position in the society was tenuous at best?

She rose from her seat on the floor with a jerking movement, eager to do anything so as not to think the awful thoughts that threatened to overwhelm her. She regretted spending the money on books; she needed to hoard it, to save it, because there could be a day when she would need to bribe people to save her life . . .

Mattie collected every dirty, crusted plate strewn on the floor and on the table, and dumped them all into the tub. Irritated, she ran outside into the nascent rain, and found a small, primitive well behind the house, halfway down the slope. She filled the bucket she found by the well with water and she brought it back, dumped it into the tub, and went back for more. She used to be a house automaton, after all, and she scrubbed the dishes and rinsed them in cold water, she swept the floors with a fury of a tornado, she whirled like a broken mechanized dancer. The familiarity of the movement comforted her momentarily, but soon was supplanted by other memories.

She remembered Loharri’s house, as a house servant sees it—straight planes of the desks and benches and shelves that gathered dust, her habitual irritation at the piled up parts and flywheels and counterweight mechanisms that cluttered everywhere, and Loharri’s insistence that she mustn’t touch them and yet keep the place clean; the desolate expanses of wooden floors that needed to be waxed. Like him or not, but he did let her go—partially, at least.

She fetched another bucket of water and scrubbed the floors with unnecessary force and vigor, her metal bones creaking with the effort. The more she tried to understand what moved those around her, the more she failed—especially with Loharri. She remembered the women who came and went like the seasons; she remembered his long spells of ennui and seclusion, and then visits to the temple and the orphanage, the night stalking of the sleeping gargoyles, immobile and light like birds. And how he always brought her with him.

She soothed him; oh, how she soothed him. She remembered the cool lips on her porcelain cheek, the slight trembling of hands as they touched the metal and the whalebone inlays of her chest, the breath fogging the window behind which her heart whirred and ticked. The almost hungry caress of the fingertips as they traced the outline of the keyhole on her chest, and made her heart tick faster. The taste of human skin on her lip sensors, salty and precipitous, and the feeling in her abdomen that some great misfortune was about to befall her mixed with light-headed giddiness. The smell of leather and tobacco trapped in her hair afterwards.

And then he recovered and worked in his shop, and she cleaned, and the procession of dark-lidded women with heavy thick hair and small, secretive smiles resumed. Women like Iolanda who asked Mattie worrying questions. Mattie was a woman because of the corset stays and whalebone, because of the heave of her metal chest, because of the bone hoops fastened to her hips that held her skirts wide—but also because Loharri told her she was one. She thought then that he loved her; and yet, as soon as she was emancipated she forbade him to touch her.

She dried the dishes and stacked them neatly in the rack by the fireplace. She scrubbed the fireplace free of wet ash and brought in a fresh armload of logs, stacked outside under a sailcloth canopy protecting them from the rain.

Ilmarekh stirred in his sleep and sighed. Mattie settled on the floor by the fireplace and waited for him to wake up. She tried to keep her thoughts on a single track, from Sebastian to gargoyles, from the Alchemists to the Mechanics. The machinery in her head made small insect clicks, a familiar and comforting sound, and if she listened closely, she could hear the whisper of the undulating membrane, which, as Loharri had told her, imprinted her thoughts in her memory.

Ilmarekh sat up and smelled the air, his narrow nostrils flaring. “Who’s here?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

“It’s Mattie. I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

He wrapped himself in the blanket but did not shiver. “Thank you,” he said. “You did not have to do that. And thank you for your medicine—it is wonderful.”

“Are the souls bothering you now?” she asked.

He cocked his head, listening. “I hear naught but whispers,” he said. “Thank you. I can rarely afford such a break.”

“Why not?”

He grimaced. “It is painful. Besides, the souls need a link to the world. If I sever this link and refuse to open my mind to them with opium, they will go insane. And insane souls are not a pretty sight.”

Mattie thought a bit. “How long do they stay with you?”

“Until I die,” he said. “Every blessed one of them. When I die, my original soul leads them to their rest, and we all are free.” He smiled a little. “My predecessor died old, very old, but the one before him was quite young. They say, he went mad from being unable to contain the multitudes. They killed him then; I only hope that I manage longer than he.”

“I’m sorry.” Mattie couldn’t think of anything else to say.

He reached out and she moved closer, to let his spatulate fingers touch hers. “Don’t be. You’ve been kind to me. Kinder than anyone else. I’d like to help you.”

“Just ask Beresta of the whereabouts of her son,” she said. “I mean, when they . . . the souls are talking to you again.”

“I know where he is,” Ilmarekh said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I didn’t think it was my place.”

Mattie squeezed his hand. “Where is he?”

“Where you wouldn’t look for an exile,” he answered with a smile. “In the heart of the city. I saw him at the temple—Beresta recognized him. She didn’t tell me but I felt it.”