The Alchemy of Stone (9 page)

Niobe laughed. “Who would’ve thought?”

“But it’s true,” Mattie said. “Why, just today . . . ” She broke off, suddenly remembering Iolanda’s whispered promise.

“What?” Niobe prompted.

Mattie shook her head. “Nothing. I just remembered something. I have to go.”

“It’s getting late anyway.” Niobe yawned. “Stop by soon, all right? I like working with you.”

“I will,” Mattie promised. “Thank you for teaching me—I’ll teach you next time.”

She clattered down the stairs and into the sweet-smelling night streets. The eastern district was vast, and she had a long way home before her. She decided to run.

She picked up her skirts, her bag of offal and the jar of blood tucked under her arm, and she ran like the wind. Loharri discouraged her from running—her joints were delicate, and he did not want them to wear out too soon. Mattie decided that one time would not hurt her; besides, she enjoyed running.

Her feet struck the cobbles with an alarmingly loud noise, but Mattie did not care. The cool breeze washed over her porcelain face, and thick locks of her hair streamed behind her, like the wings of a night bird. Her skirts, awkward and bulky, hitched by her knees, rustled as she ran. She needed no air, and she felt no fatigue, but the rhythmic motion helped her think.

She felt closer to Niobe than anyone else. She loved Ogdela, but the old woman had never forgotten about the gulf between her and Mattie. Niobe was less polite than Ogdela, and occasionally her comments made Mattie self-conscious; yet, there was less of a chasm between them. Mattie resolved to teach Niobe her favorite formulae, even the ones she discovered herself and guarded as jealously as any other alchemist would.

She slowed only once she saw her house and the apothecary sign in its downstairs windows. She straightened her skirts and walked up with calm steps, expecting to find an angry note from Iolanda or a bored messenger.

Instead, she discovered Iolanda her own self. The joviality of the morning had disappeared, and she frowned at Mattie and rose from the steps where she sat like a commoner. “Where have you been?”

Mattie held up her parcel and the jar of blood.

Iolanda’s nose wrinkled. “That’s disgusting. And it smells like a dead sheep.”

“Would you like to come in?” Mattie asked, and led the way up the stairs.

Once inside, Iolanda marched straight to the kitchen. “Can I trouble you for some liquor?” she asked, a shade more politely than before.

Mattie poured her a glass of currant brandy she kept for especially distraught visitors.

Iolanda tossed it back with one swift motion and grimaced. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ve been getting quite a chill.”

“My apologies,” Mattie said mildly. “You didn’t give me an exact time, and I had errands to run.”

“I understand,” Iolanda said. “In any case, I have a request for you. Just give me a second to collect my thoughts.”

Mattie poured her another glass and waited, patient, as the fireflies outside lit up, one by one, yellow in the blue and thick darkness. Mattie wondered where they came from.

Mattie’s memories had shapes—some were oblong and soft, like the end of a thick blanket tucked under a sleeping man’s cheek; others had sharp edges, and one had to think about them carefully in order not to get hurt. Still others took on the shapes of cones and cubes, of metal joints and peacock feathers, and her mind felt cluttered and grew more so by the day, as she accumulated more awkward shapes, just like Loharri collecting more and more garbage in his workshop.

To remember things, she had to let them come to her, as the sounds and the sights around prompted and jostled some of the shapes loose; otherwise, she had to pick among the clutter, despairing of ever finding the pertinent piece of her past in the chaos.

Seeing Iolanda sitting in her kitchen, absentmindedly rolling the empty glass—back and forth, back and forth—between her soft palms reminded Mattie of another night in this kitchen, a year or two ago.

Loharri had showed up unexpectedly then; it was raining, and his black wool suit was soaked through, and the overcoat hung in heavy folds impregnated with water, like the broken wings of a gargoyle. Water pooled in the brim of his hat as in a rain gutter. “Do you have anything to drink?” he asked.

Mattie always kept a bottle for her clients—most of them needed it before they could speak freely of their troubles and ailments, of their need to make the garden grow or to fix the crooked spine of a spiteful child, of their misery. Back then, business was better than today—people would still rather buy a potion to make a servant sleep less and work harder in preference to buying an automaton, they still trusted alchemists more than mechanics. She had many clients, and bought a bottle of fruit brandy a week.

Loharri sat down heavily, not bothering to remove his rain-soaked overcoat; she had to free his listless arms from the sleeves and carefully lift the hat off his head, trying not to spill more water than was unavoidable. She hung the overcoat on the back of a chair by the burning stove and poured him a glass.

Loharri drank and then he talked. Mattie had not seen him like this before, even though she was familiar with his mood swings and proclivity to ennui. The words poured out of his mouth in a constant stream, and Mattie understood little of it. He spoke of people she had never met, of places she had never visited.

“Why are they afraid of us?” he said, plaintively. “We are just trying to help; we’re making things better. Without us, they wouldn’t even have running water, and yet . . . ”

His voice trailed off, and Mattie considered if it would be impolite to ask who ‘they’ were; she guessed that ‘we’ referred to the Mechanics.

“You are my only hope, Mattie,” he muttered, alcohol blurring his voice. “You are the only worthwhile thing I’ve ever done.”

“I’m not a thing,” Mattie said.

“It’s not the point,” he answered. “The point is that I have nothing besides you.”

She comforted him the only way she knew how—she let him stroke her hair with his trembling fingers, the bone-white cuff of his shirt brushing against her cheek. She tolerated his searching, restless hands, let them entangle in her locks; she let him pull her close and touch her face with his lips.

He let her go. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and poured himself another drink.

Then he talked again, about the oppressive walls and the dark skies that thundered and spewed lightning, of the stone closing in, of the strange malaise of the mind that made one reluctant to think, to break away from the tyranny of the gargoyles’ city. No matter how the Mechanics modified and rebuilt it, the ancient unease remained, threatening to wake up at any moment and to engulf them all, pull them back into the stone the city was born from; then he talked about the new road the Mechanics were blasting through the hills, the road that would reach the sea and bring in prosperity and reason.

“Shh,” Mattie said and stroked his shoulder. “Have another drink.”

He obeyed, then fell silent and brooded awhile, and Mattie kept stroking his shoulder, unsure whether she was still responsible for giving him comfort, or if she were free enough to tell him harshly to go home.

She could never quite bring herself to hate him—she teetered on the brink often, never crossing over. She had learned resentment and annoyance while being with him, and cold gloating joy; but there was also contentment and sympathy, and pity and gratitude.

“This city watches you, always,” he murmured. He pulled Mattie closer, his arms wrapping about her waist and his face buried in her skirts. Mattie thought then that it was rather sad that he sought comfort by embracing a machine—the construct that was not built to give it. But she tried, and the trying threatened to rend her heart in half.

This memory was so vivid that she could not help but clasp her hands together.

Iolanda looked up from her glass, and smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was lost in thought there.”

“Me too,” Mattie said.

“What were you thinking about?” Iolanda asked.

“Loharri,” Mattie answered. “He seems so vulnerable sometimes.”

Iolanda raised her eyebrows and took another sip from her glass. “Really? I did not see it in him.”

“Maybe not.” Mattie sat on the stool by the kitchen table—she was not tired, but she knew people appreciated being on the same eye level as their interlocutors. “What were you thinking about?”

“My order for you,” she said. “It’s not easy for me to ask it . . . but can you make something that would compel a person to listen to me?”

“To listen or to obey?” Mattie asked.

Iolanda shrugged. “Either would be fine. I need someone’s attention to persuade them, but if you can help that persuasion I will not say no.”

Mattie watched the fireflies flickering outside. She knew about compulsion; she understood coercion—like only an automaton with the key in somebody else’s hands could understand. True enough, Loharri was good—he never threatened her with the key, but the very fact that he could if his heart turned that way was enough.

And yet, if she was coerced, was it wrong of her to do it to others? “Who is it for?” Mattie asked.

“Your master,” Iolanda answered, not looking away. “I promise I won’t harm him.”

“No,” Mattie said slowly. “It’s all right. I don’t really mind if you do.”

Iolanda arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

Fireflies crowded by the window; the lone lamp in her kitchen must’ve looked like one of their brethren to them, trapped inside an incomprehensible, impenetrable barrier, alone like an air bubble trapped in amber. The poor sods strained to get through, not realizing that any semblance of kinship or recognition was just an illusion, and there was nothing hidden from sight; there was nothing but the surface, and the surface lied.

“Yes,” Mattie said. “Do as you will. You want him to love you? To tell you secrets?” She tapped her metal fingers on the jar lid, sending waves through the red sticky liquid inside. “I’m learning some new tricks, and I will bind him to you by blood, I will twist him to your liking.”

“Something tells me you would want more than money for this service,” Iolanda said. Her high cheekbones flushed with color, alcohol or excitement, joy or fear, and who could tell them apart anyway. “What do you want?”

“My key,” Mattie answered. “All I ever wanted was my key and he has it. You can’t steal it, it is bound to him. But he can give it to you, and he won’t give it to me.”

Iolanda touched Mattie’s hand. “You poor thing,” she whispered. “I had no idea.”

“Do you understand then?”

Iolanda nodded. “Show me a woman who wouldn’t. I promise I’ll try to get you your key back.”

“Don’t promise,” Mattie said. “Just try. As for the rest, it is not my concern.”

Iolanda rose from her seat. “Bind him well,” she said. “And I will see you soon.”

Chapter 9

Mattie went to the eastern gates to see the Duke and his court depart from the city. Despite the public telegraphs reassuring the populace that the measure was temporary, an uneasy air hung over the mostly silent crowd, occasionally punctuated by the crying of infants, which did little to lighten the mood.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” said a woman in a dress grown murky-gray from too many washes.

The man standing next to her nodded, but his eyes kept glancing away from her at Mattie. “Oh, it’s happening all right.” He spat on the ground, undeterred by the dense crowd. “His father must be trying to crawl out of his grave by now. The Stone Monks should be denouncing his treason from every roof, and it’s about time they did something useful. Disgrace, that’s what it is.”

The first buggies carrying the courtiers and the servants, flanked by shambling columns of automatons, passed the crowd. There were a few boos and a few restrained curses, but most of the people remained silent. Apparently, Mattie was not the only one who took the Duke’s leave at its symbolic value.

She looked over the crowd, moving her eyes separately to focus on different parts of the gathering; she saw a few familiar alchemists, but did not feel compelled to greet any of them. She looked for Iolanda or Niobe, and hoped not to see Loharri. Whatever happened between them, she did not feel eager to face the man she had betrayed. She did not go to the mechanics’ lodge the day before; she did not retrieve the information about the missing medallions.
I’ll do it tomorrow,
she thought,
or the day after, or perhaps the day after that.
Whenever she could bear the look of his slanted heavy hazel eyes that always seemed to see right to her heart and always forgiving her—even when she had done nothing that needed to be forgiven. Now at least he would have a reason.

The crowd shifted, breathing, sniffling, like a large animal. A small girl held high above the crowd on her mother’s shoulder sang in a small shy voice, and people whispered. Mattie’s sensitive ears picked up bits of conversation nearby and farther away. The Duke’s leave did not sit well with anyone.

“The gargoyles didn’t leave,” a male voice behind Mattie said. “The Stone Monks are still with us. Why is he so special that his hide needs to be saved before the city?”

“What’s he gonna do?” someone else asked.

“Nothing, like he done nothing for years. The Parliament will decide, and the Parliament will run things like they always have. Nothing’s gonna change.”

“He was only here to sit pretty in the palace,” the man who spoke first said. “If he ain’t gonna do that, why does he think he can tax us?”

The murmur hushed when the sound of screeching metal and heavy pounding reached down the street. Mattie stretched her eyes as far as they would go, and she glimpsed the rest of the procession, up the hill—the giant lizards resplendent in their brown and gold scales, their claws tipped with mercury and silver, dragged open carriages behind them. As they pulled closer, Mattie saw a number of well-dressed people swathed in yards of silk and brocade stiff with gems and rich thread as they smiled and waved at the crowd from the carriage. The Duke himself, a middle-aged clean-shaven man with kind and tired eyes, held hands with his wife; their daughters, all pretty and haughty in their youth, looked straight ahead of them, pointedly ignoring the rabble catcalling to them. A few more men and women crowded together; normally, the Duke’s favor conferred certain advantages to them, but now they looked fearful, realizing that the favor of a powerful man often had a downside.

The enforcers in full armor drove in small buggies, surrounding the carriages with a protective shield; but those who had foresightedly brought vegetables in regrettable condition were not deterred from throwing them. The enforcers made a move toward the crowd, and the vegetables ceased.

Mattie looked up the street, at the approaching caravan of mechanical caterpillars that hissed with steam and carried the courtiers, dressed somewhat less extravagantly than the ducal family and their favorites. They were less protected by the enforcers, and whatever produce remained in the hands of the displeased populace was thrown at them with guilty alacrity and a few constrained verbal outbursts.

Mattie was ready to turn away as the first carriages of the procession approached the eastern gates, leaving the city with a leaden finality, telegraph’s reassurances notwithstanding. It was almost as though a part of the city was detaching itself, leaving the place incomplete somehow, although not necessarily worse. There was a sense of freedom in having a piece missing, in having a void that could be filled with something new.

A man jostled past her; he was garbed in the habit of the Stone Monks, but did not move with the usual humility of the clergy—he strode through the crowd, parting it with his heavy shoulder. Mattie stepped aside, giving way, and so did a few of her neighbors.

The man walked past, and only then Mattie noticed that his right hand was deep in the pocket of his robe. Just as she thought that he was about to hurl a spoiled apple or a turnip at the courtiers and judged such behavior inappropriate for a monk, the man pushed into the street, steps away from the ducal carriage.

The object he extracted from his robe was neither a fruit nor a vegetable, but a large clear bottle filled with thick transparent fluid.

The enforcers turned the buggies toward him, screaming warnings. Some of them drew muskets and leveled them at the man, still imploring him to step back.

The man swung and threw the bottle at the carriage and ducked into the crowd just as the first shots rang out. And then all was chaos—Mattie was pushed and almost knocked off her feet as the people around her screamed and ran, as several people from the first row of the crowd fell under the musket shots. Mattie could not look away.

The bottle burst loudly with a flare of hungry fire that engulfed the side of the ducal carriage. The lizards thrashed, trying to escape the inferno, and got tangled in their tack. Their tails whipped madly, knocking over the carriage. The lizards of the carriages that followed reared up and turned away, some dragging the carriages into the crowd, others upsetting theirs.

The fire spread, engulfing two other carriages. Their passengers wrestled from under the wreckage, even as their clothes and their hair caught fire.

The crowd pushed Mattie away from the sight of the explosion, and she only saw snatches of the raging fire, of a bleeding woman, her face smashed on the cobbles into a smoldering ruin. A giant lizard, its scales glistening red, lay on its side, its broken leg a mess of red twitching meat and fragments of sharp, pink bone. It shrieked in a strange voice, like a child crying. Mattie had never heard the lizards utter anything but an occasional hiss before.

Mattie strained to see over the jostling bobbing heads of the fleeing crowd. She saw the slow mindless automatons snap to action—they did as they were told, and they started to clean up. They moved among the wreckage, picking up the bloody fragments of the bodies torn by the initial explosion. There was nowhere to put them, so they stacked them all in the middle of the street—bloodied limbs, charred corpses, lizard bones, the shattered wood of the carriages and torn pieces of tack. No one paid any mind to them—the street cleared, and before Mattie was swept along with the panicked crowd, she saw the gruesome pile built by the automatons growing higher, as they labored, slow and creaky and not at all perturbed. As far as Mattie was concerned, they were the most horrible thing she had ever seen.

Mattie was shaken enough by the day’s events to go see Loharri. On her way, she stopped by the telegraph, which was thronged as she expected. There were fewer casualties reported than she expected; two of the Duke’s daughters were dead. The Duke himself, along with his wife and the surviving daughter, were badly burned. The Stone Monks were caring for them, with their vast pharmacopoeia and the favor of the gargoyles. People whispered that this momentous event had even brought the gargoyles out of hiding, and that they watched over the injured, perched on the temple’s roof.

Loharri was not home, and she headed for the ducal district, expecting to find him in the Mechanics’ chambers of the Parliament. She realized the folly of her intentions as soon as she approached the Parliament, abuzz in movement, swarming with automatons and people, alchemists and mechanics both. A mechanical caterpillar stripped of its seats stood in the street, chuffing idle steam. Eight lizards harnessed double-file waited patiently in front of a low sled. Mattie guessed that the mechanics were evacuating valuables from the Parliament, afraid of another attack, and that Loharri would likely find no time for her.

She passed the open doors of the ossuary, and couldn’t resist peeking inside. The sealed sepulchers embedded in the floor offered no sight of interest, but the piles of bones stacked along the walls, the skulls in neat piles in the corners, never failed to fascinate Mattie. Loharri had told her that the bones were those of previous dukes and their wives, their courtiers and favorites, their children and servants. The skulls shone softly when the sunrays from the open doors, filled with dense clouds of motes, struck their suture-seamed yellow surfaces, the domes of the foreheads high and round, the eye sockets mysteriously dark, dripping with untold sadness and wisdom.

“In much wisdom there’s much sorrow,” Loharri used to say. Mattie thought that she agreed as she watched the skulls, their sockets seemingly following her every move from their corners. They smelled of old parchment and dry earth crumbling into dust.

Listen.
A faint whisper caught her attention, and at first she thought that it was just the wind trapped inside, rattling the old bones.

Listen,
again.

She stepped inside, looking through the dusk filled with remains. There were just bones, but then she caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of an eye. And then—like in an optical trick the traveling performers entertained their customers with, where one was supposed to look at the jumble of leaves to spot a deer, a lizard, and a giant bird, and once one saw them they would not go away—she saw the folded wings and the gray skin blending with stone, she saw the heavy horned heads and slit eyes, the folded hands, the bent knees. And the mouths opening like fissures in the age-old stone to whisper to her urgent words.

Listen
, they spoke in one voice, the voice of the stone the city was carved from.
We will tell you a story.

There is a notion of time as an enemy, but we couldn’t
tell you how fast it was passing until we heard the human heartbeats, counting the seconds as they fell into the eternity. So many million heartbeats ago, when you were not yet here and the eastern woman, the stranger, the daughter of red earth was young, there were two boys.

Three boys, maybe. We can’t remember, and we sometimes confuse death and sleep, sleep and oblivion. But in any case, there they were—feral children living off scraps and rotten fruit left in the market square after the market was over. They had forgotten how to speak and only snarled at pigeons and stray dogs if they went after the scraps the boys had their eyes on, and they spat and hissed at the passing of the Stone Monks, who were the greatest fear of all children, parented or not.

We weep often, for the Monks carry our name and everything that they do is attributed to us. But what can we do? We are weak and dying, and they fill our feeders, so we keep our thoughts to ourselves; we shove the gravel into our mouths hastily, rent with guilt, and we do not speak.

But the boys, the boys . . . one is raven-haired, narrow-eyed, and so beautiful, dirt and grime and lice notwithstanding; another is white-haired like an old man, and he moves on all fours, feeling his way like a crab. Yet another is quiet and small, and he cries often. He has no words, and his anguish wails and sobs through the night alleys, and we watch over them, like we watch over everyone who is marked for destruction by the grindstones of the world. There is nothing we can do but watch over them.

Mattie startled at the slamming of the door behind her, and the gargoyles fell silent, blending back into the surrounding walls.

“Anyone in here?”

“Just me,” Mattie answered. “Sorry, Master Bergen.”

The old mechanic shuffled closer, his limp more prominent now, accompanied by the tapping of a cane. “Mattie? What are you doing here?”

“The door was open,” she said. “I was looking for Loharri.”

“Of course you were.” His voice was paternal, soothing, and the look of his rheumy eyes kind. “We’re a tad busy here, but he’s around. I’ll help you look if you want.”

Mattie followed him to the exit. “What’s happening?”

“You’ve heard about the Duke, of course.”

“Of course,” Mattie echoed. She decided not to tell him that she was there—she was indisposed to answer questions, to relive the fear and the disgust she felt watching other automatons, purposefully excluded from the context, gathering limbs. “Terrible, isn’t it?”