The Alchemy of Stone (3 page)

“Most venerable Mistress Ogdela,” she addressed the old woman. “With my master’s permission, I would ask to be your apprentice.” It was a shrewd choice, to ask in Loharri’s presence—he would not deny her without a good reason while others were watching, and he would not betray his fear outwardly.

He shot Mattie a searing gaze. “I do not see why not,” he said after a short pause. “As long is it doesn’t interfere with your other duties.”

“I’ve never taught an automaton,” Ogdela said to Loharri. “Is she up to the task?”

Loharri sighed and handed Mattie the flask. “Sadly, yes,” he said.

Mattie remained with Ogdela until the old woman decided that she was fit to go and open her own shop. Mattie had found a place just like Ogdela’s—“To be more like her,” she explained to Ilmarekh.

Ilmarekh listened to her story, his face drained of color, calm and placid like the surface of the Grackle Pond outside. The opium smoke had dissipated, and Mattie imagined that the consumed soul was done with flailing inside its flesh jail and had started to settle in its new place.

“So there it is,” Mattie said. “I studied with Ogdela . . . I wanted to be an alchemist because of the power they hold over others. I hadn’t realized then that not everyone is afraid of them, but I never regretted it, so it doesn’t matter.”

“The ghost . . . Beresta, she says she also studied with Ogdela. She will answer your questions.” Ilmarekh stammered and stopped. Large drops of sweat swelled on his forehead, and he swallowed a few times.

Mattie guessed that the opium was getting the best of him; as the darkness descended outside, she remembered the family, still waiting by the porch, too fearful to enter their own house. “Perhaps I should take you home,” she said. “You look like you need to rest.”

Ilmarekh sat upright, the empty bowl at his elbow clanging with the sudden movement. “You’d do that?”

“Of course,” Mattie said. “Why wouldn’t I?” She regretted saying it as soon as the words touched the darkened air. Of course she knew why no one ever went to the Soul-Smoker’s house, and Ilmarekh knew that she knew. To him, her feigned ignorance could only be interpreted as condescension, a feeble attempt to pretend that she did not know his disadvantage, the way people saw him. “I’d like to take you anyway,” she said.

He nodded, slowly, and rose, leaning on his cane heavily. She hooked her arm under his, and he jolted at her touch—any touch, she guessed, would be a novelty to him. “Can you see in the dark?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He seemed relieved at not having to worry about finding his way and being able to use his cane for support only. His weight, small as it was, pressed on Mattie’s arm, and she wondered at the birdlike thinness of his bones, at the feverish warm coating of flesh that knotted over them.

We watch from the secret places of the city—the rooftops and rain-gutters, the awnings of bakeries and the scaffoldings rising around new buildings—as the girl and the man walk through the dark streets. She doesn’t bother finding the lit streets and cuts along pitch-black alleys and around dark ponds that reflect no stars; it is cloudy tonight. It is too dark to fear thugs or thieves, but we keep watch nonetheless.

We watch as she almost carries the frail man who seems unsure on his feet all the way through the narrowing streets, through labyrinths of dirt paths of the shantytowns fringing the city, to the gate, to the wall. There, we do not follow, but we keep watch—we watch over her as the two of them exit the gate on the distal side and walk up the hill. The rain starts, slicking the path, and her mechanical parts creak louder as water gets trapped in her joints and delicate wheel-bearings. They are just a blur now, a double shape through the gray curtain of the rain and the night. The ground is still warm from the sun, and silvery mist rises and snakes along the path, clinging low over the wet grass.

There is a house on the top of the hill—no man’s land, no-place, too steep for agriculture and too rocky for pasture, out-of-the-way and inconvenient for city dwellers and farmers both. This hill, the Ram’s Skull, the bald forehead of the once-mountain worn to a nub by time (slipping, slipping, faster and faster) is nothing but bedrock and loose stones. The house on the top sits lopsided already, its northern corner sinking with the decay of the slope under its supports.

The mechanical girl and the Soul-Smoker enter the house—we hear the long squeal of a door as it opens and a slam as it closes behind them. We do not know what is happening inside, but we can guess—there is light in the fireplace and the gurgling of a kettle, and low, guilty voices. And we think of the souls and we count them—we had known every ghost in the city, and we can recall their names. We marvel at the cruelty of their fate without having the capacity to truly comprehend it—no more than to merely recognize it as grotesque. But, like the mechanical girl, we have no souls, and we are not afraid of the Soul-Smoker, we have no reason to worry that the souls inside him will somehow lure ours away and we will fall dead on the spot, abandoned by our animating essence. We think about the nature of souls and listen to the small domestic noises reaching us from the little house on top of the hill.

We sit all along the wall like giant gray pigeons, our hands clenched under our sharp chins, our wings folded primly, our eyes narrowed, and our ears pricked up. If someone were to wander by at this wet, ungodly hour, they would believe us turned into stone, inanimate like the wall we grip with our clawed toes. Or they would wonder what the gargoyles are doing out of their caves and hiding places, why are we out and about. But there is nobody here to pry or to wonder, and we watch and we listen and we wait, and we do not know what they are talking about.

Chapter 3

The next morning, Mattie remembered that she still had to finish Iolanda’s perfume. Fortunately, the night spent talking to the Soul-Smoker taught her more about regret than, she suspected, the entire city could. She found dried wormwood in her extensive apothecary, and prepared to sublimate its essential oil—she lit the burner and cleaned the aludel, and assembled it so that the smaller vessel sitting on top of the larger one was tilted at enough of an angle for the condensing vapor to slide down the concave walls into the waiting receptacle. As the wormwood heated, she crushed the brittle spiny leaves of rosemary, downy-gray, and mixed them with extractants and solvents to pry away its properties of memory.

One did not regret what one did not remember; Ilmarekh, who remembered every moment, every twinge of hundreds of former inhabitants of the city, told her that. The opium made him talkative last night, and the souls in his possession crowded and pressed, trying so desperately to look out of his blind eyes, struggling so valiantly to move his reluctant, cottony tongue. He spoke in a hundred voices; only one of them was Beresta, but Mattie felt that it would be impolite to ignore the rest of them, and she listened to their laments and reminiscences, to their complaints about children who grew up and never visited, about the sorrow of dark alleys and the cold, wet slither of a robber’s knife.

Mattie listened, waiting for the small voice of the alchemist woman who could tell her about the gargoyles. But it was so crowded that she only had a chance to utter the name of her son—Sebastian, and the street he lived on. She didn’t say anything else, but it was enough for now. Mattie thought that she would visit Ilmarekh again, perhaps visit him often. He knew so much, and yet no one dared to ask him questions for fear of losing their own souls. He was all Mattie’s, and she was not a woman to miss her chances.

The warm smell of wormwood filled her laboratory, and she collected the few transparent, pale yellow drops that waited for her in the aludel. She blended them with rosemary and with the sage-and-myrrh concoction she had prepared last night. The musk of ambergris enveloped the rest of the ingredients in its sensual embrace, forcing them all together, the bark of the cypress and the sharp, bitter camphor softened by the gentle herbal scents.

Satisfied with her work, Mattie nodded to herself and let the mixture settle and blend. She was about to go out for a walk, and maybe pick up a few chemicals she had fancied for a while but had no means to buy until now, when a sharp rapping on the door announced a visitor.

She opened the door to see Loharri—dressed in a formal frock coat, he seemed especially thin and sharp-edged. “Busy?” he said.

“No.” She stood in the doorway preventing him from entering. The smell of Iolanda’s perfume saturated the air, and she could not risk him recognizing it later and guessing at Mattie’s connection to Iolanda. “Going out?”

“Just an informal gathering,” he said, although his clothes clearly begged to differ. “Lunch with some friends and colleagues. Would you like to come?”

“Of course,” Mattie said. He rarely asked for favors nowadays, and she saw no reason to deny him. Besides, gatherings such as this always offered opportunities for eavesdropping. After her emancipation, she at first resented Loharri’s friends who treated her as before—that is, as his automaton, a part of him that deserved neither recognition nor acknowledgment as an independent entity. Later, she saw the advantage of being invisible—she walked into a room where mechanics talked about their secret business and they never missed a beat, never remembering or caring enough to notice that she was an alchemist and therefore a political enemy. She just didn’t know why Loharri kept giving her such opportunities.

“Hurry up then,” he said. “You might even learn something about your new friends.”

“Wait outside,” Mattie said. “I need to change.”

As she did—striped stockings, white and black, and a black dress with open neckline fringed with foamy white lace—Mattie puzzled over Loharri’s words. Why were the Mechanics suddenly interested in gargoyles? They affected the politics of the city very little—figureheads, outwardly respected but inconsequential. They remained outside of the daily life of the city, subject more to lore and superstitions than laws and elections. Their patronage of the Duke’s family and his court was symbolic—just like their predecessors who had undergone the inevitable transformation and now decorated the palace . . . they were even less important than the court, which persisted only, as Loharri often said, due to inertia and habit. Only the elected parties could pass laws, only they could command new construction and regulate commerce. But the Duke remained in his palace, useless and, as Mattie imagined, lonely.

Mattie descended the stairs and nodded at Loharri. He grimaced, pale and uncomfortable in his stern clothes. “Ready to go?”

She threaded her arm under his, and felt his tense sinews relax under the copper springs of her fingers. She hated admitting it to herself, but she stayed close to him because of the influence she had—she had the power to make him less concerned and more at ease, to make him smile even though it pained his broken face. She wondered at herself, at whether she would ever be able to forgive him for being her creator, for having such absolute control over her internal workings. For his love.

They headed uphill, toward the palace and the heavy gray architecture of the old buildings. Mattie suspected that the stone of which large rough blocks of the palace were hewn was the same as the stone gargoyles became, and wondered if there was a promising venue of investigation there; she made a mental note to take a mineral sample once they got to the old city.

“It’s too hot to walk,” Loharri said, even though the sun, still low over the rooftops, barely kissed the pavement and the air still retained the pleasant coolness of the night. His gaze cast about for a cab or a sedan.

“It’s fine,” Mattie said. “I enjoy walking, and you could use a constitutional. You spend too much time indoors.”

Loharri scoffed. “I should’ve made you without a voice-box. Being lectured by my own automaton—why, that’s an indignity no man should be forced to tolerate.”

Mattie was used to his querulous tone, and simply changed the subject. “Did you know that Beresta had a son?”

“I heard,” he replied, smiling. “I see you spoke to the Soul-Smoker.”

Mattie inclined her head with a slow, ratcheted creaking of the neck joints. “I have. You should meet him.”

“No thanks,” Loharri said. “I prefer to keep a hold of my soul, thank you.” He almost stumbled as a large puddle suddenly opened before them on the pavement, but circumvented it.

Mattie, whose legs were agile but not nearly as long as Loharri’s, stepped into it, wetting the hem of her dress and soaking her slippers—she wore them for the occasion’s sake, even though she had no need of footwear.

Loharri grabbed her elbow, pulling her out of the mess. “Look at that,” he said. “I swear, the condition of these streets is just shameful.”

“Why don’t you do something about it?” Mattie shook out her skirt, spilling the murky drops onto the pavement. “You’re in charge of the city—you and your friends, I mean.”

“Priorities, dear.” Loharri still held on to her elbow and dragged her along. The fresh air apparently energized him, since he was now moving in long, confident strides. “And besides, this is the Duke’s territory, and he wants to keep it ancient and quaint. And it is only right to abide by his wishes—as long as they don’t interfere with our plans.”

Mattie was getting a distinct feeling that Loharri’s willingness to discuss political and urban matters with her had a hidden purpose—perhaps he wanted her to talk . . . but to whom? Mattie was not a full member of the Alchemists’ party, and as such she saw little interest in politics—why worry about something she would never have an impact on? She shook her head. Loharri was rubbing off on her, scheming and trying to guess people’s motives and question everything—that was him, not her. Mattie only wanted to do her craft, and worry little about civic planning.

“What are the main priorities then?” she asked.

“Governance.” He gave her a long look. “So, what did you hear about Beresta’s son?”

“Nothing.” Mattie shook her arm free and threaded it under his, as was proper. “Just that she had one. Why, is he famous?”

“Not in a way you’d want to be,” Loharri said. “So, nothing about his current whereabouts?”

Mattie moved her head side to side, in a slow gesture of negation. “I just told you. I only learned that she had a son . . . she was not communicative.”

“Hm,” Loharri said. “I suppose you’ll try and look for him then? To see if he knows of his mother’s work?”

“Maybe,” Mattie said. “Why?”

“Just curious. He’s been missing for some time now. You’ll tell me if you find him, won’t you.” Loharri did not wait for her answer—he turned under an arch of crumbling stone encrusted with pallid circles of lichenous growth, into a shaded courtyard. The wall of the building, gray like the rest of the district, was half-hidden under the living green carpet of toad flax, which already sent forth its tiny white flowers. Mattie recognized the building because of it—this seemed a side entrance into a little-used wing of the ossuary adjacent to the Parliament building. This wing contained no bones yet, and its echoey empty halls were occasionally used for parties and large-but-clandestine gatherings.

Loharri knocked on the small door half-hidden under the curtain of vegetation, and they were admitted inside. Lamps on the walls created warm semicircles of yellow light, and they overlapped, creating a scalloped edge on the walls and the floor made of large oblong slabs, destined to one day become the coffin lids of the notable citizens. The floor resounded hollow under the feet, always reminding of its ultimate purpose.

The mechanics were apparently throwing a party, but surreptitious business was the usual side effect of such events. These men, fastidious and solemn, did not seem to be able to remain in the same room with another human being without trying to figure out exactly how the fellow could be useful, harmful, or neither. They paid Mattie little mind, and no wonder—regular humans were mere clockworks to them, to be examined and figured out and, if necessary, taken apart; the automatons passed beneath notice.

Several serious fellows greeted Loharri with nods and reserved smiles—Mattie suspected that he was too lively for them, too moody, too unpredictable. His position of influence was assured by his proficiency and his many inventions—the most recent one already belched fire in every foundry, increasing their efficiency by some subtle but important percentage—but his demeanor and his disordered personal life earned him a few disapproving looks.

Loharri acted as if he didn’t notice—he shook hands and chatted, and even came to say hello to several women sitting around the long tables, away from the men. They came as a decoration, and no one else seemed to pay much attention to them. Mattie wondered if she should join them and keep away from trouble, but her feet already led her after Loharri, the role of an obedient automaton as familiar to her as the sight of her own face.

She caught snatches of conversations—some talked about the Alchemists rallying for the next election; there were rumors that they were holding their most potent medicines in reserve, to be unveiled before the election, to wow and stun the populace. Imagine that, curing typhoid! Would there be anything but gratitude? Others mentioned that the Alchemists had been getting cozy with a few of the Duke’s courtiers, seeking influence by the route of tradition rather than popularity.

And yet others talked about the gargoyles. Mattie stopped shadowing Loharri for a moment and listened, not moving, looking fixedly at her creator’s back. The speaker—a small, rotund man of middle age whom she had met many times but whose name she could not remember, talked to Bergen—a man who looked as though pickled by many years that passed over his balding head. His dark clothes hung loosely on his desiccated body, and yet his mind was sharp; he was perhaps the only one in this gathering whom Loharri would call a friend.

“Think about it,” said the rotund man, his face filling with alarming red color. “Without the gargoyles, what will the Duke be?”

“The Duke,” Bergen replied. “Sure, the gargoyles and their sanctions might seem irrelevant, and perhaps they are. But without the third leg, this government will not be stable—we do need the court, you know. Otherwise, it’ll be nothing but our squabbling with the alchemists.”

“And that would be a bad thing?”

“Of course,” Bergen said. “I for one do not think a civil war is such a good idea, and without the Duke we might have just that. Not that we don’t have enough trouble already.”

“But the gargoyles . . . ”

“Are our history. This city is proud of its gargoyles, and there isn’t much you can do about it,” Bergen concluded and turned away from his interlocutor. “Spiritual guidance, be it superstition or tradition, is not always a bad thing. Some people need an external compass.” His watery old eyes stopped on Mattie, and he smiled.