The Alchemy of Stone (11 page)

Mattie nodded. “That is its signature, yes. Every plant has one. The plants with red sap are used to purify blood, the ones with yellow sap—clear out urinary infections, and so on. See, it’s easy. It’s getting to the potent chemicals inside them that is hard.”

“I see,” Niobe agreed. “Every plant has medicine, as long as you can figure out how to get to it.”

“That’s the tricky part,” Mattie agreed. “This is why it is essential to keep a journal and record every transformation, so if you find something you can recreate it and share it with the rest of the society.”

“If I want to.”

“If you want to.”

“Are you going to buy anything?” the woman who owned the booth asked. There was no open hostility in her voice, and her face expressed carefully cultivated indifference.

“Just a bunch of maiden’s hair and two of bladderwort,” Mattie said. She paid for her purchases. “Thank you, Marta.”

Marta muttered an acknowledgment under her breath, and Mattie and Niobe traded looks.

“Let’s go home,” Niobe said as soon as she picked up a loaf of bread and some olives. “I’m getting tired of all the hostility.”

Mattie nodded that she agreed. She hadn’t realized how rigidly she had held her back, how taut the springs of her muscles were. Just being outside was tiring to her; she could not imagine how Niobe was able to hold up, with her weak flesh body. And she had been enduring it far longer than Mattie.

Mattie took Niobe’s hand in a gesture of support.

“Don’t,” Niobe whispered. “You don’t want to associate with me like this. It’s dangerous.” But she didn’t take her hand away.

“I don’t care,” Mattie whispered and twined her fingers with Niobe’s, metal against flesh, springs against bone.

The night falls, and we hear the girl calling us, and
we
leap over the chasms that open below our feet at the precipitous drop-offs of the roofs. We hurry, and we rehearse our story in our minds, and yet there’s hope swelling up in our hearts, subterranean. A secret hope that the girl will throw the window open, her blue porcelain face as expressionless as ours, and tell us that we don’t have to fear time any more. We suppress the hope, and we mutter out loud,
no no, it’s not going to happen
. She just wants to hear our story, and we will tell it to her.
Listen
.

We run up the fire escapes and slither across the walls, we leap, we run, we crawl and finally we reach the high window, warm yellow light spilling from it swarming with fluttering of white moths; fireflies flicker on and off above the roof. A nightingale is starting his song in the trees nearby, and we pause for just a moment to listen to the sweet trilling.

Listen
, we whisper to the girl framed in the window. Her skirt floats wide, her waist cinched by the belt glistening with bronze rivets. It’s so small, we could circle it with one hand, and we wonder if there’s anything in her middle besides a metal joint that holds her lower and upper body together. She seems so fragile.

There’s another shadow in the room, and we smell ripe grapes and generous red earth. The second woman gasps at the sight of us but remains quiet otherwise.

“Listen,” the girl says before we can utter a word. “The man who fills your feeders is in danger.”

“He is gone,” we whisper back. “He left the day you met him, and the monks are neglecting our feeders.” We feel pathetic, complaining like this, and we bite off the rest of our words.

“Where did he go?” the girl asks, panicked.

“He is hiding,” we say. “He’s hiding in the rafters of warehouses, in the roofs and in the gutters. The city is his cradle.”

“The next time you see him, tell him to be careful. Tell him to come and see me when it is dark.”

We eye the other woman, and we don’t want to talk in the presence of strangers—we feel shy and recede away from the window.

“What about the story you started to tell me?” she asks.

We take a deep breath and move closer again. “There were three boys.”

The three boys who did not expect their lives to change, until the monks took them. We could not see them in the orphanage, for it has no windows, and only if we pressed our ears against the cold stone—dead now, cut up by human hands, dismembered and dumb—could we hear the ghosts of their voices.

We saw them when the monks took them out for walks in the courtyard, at night, when there was no one around to see their gaunt faces and their fingers raw from hard work, the skin of their hands stripped away, oozing a clear liquid we have no name for.

We saw the alchemists and the mechanics coming to the night courtyard, illuminated only by the blue and distant moon, and pick among the children, selecting the agile and the clever. The rest, the ones who stayed behind, were trained for other jobs. All cursed us, because we only watched—but what else could we do?

We saw some of the smaller children—the boy who cried often among them—stuffed into small cages that would restrict their growth, keeping their bodies small and squat, bowing their legs; their arms seemed simian and long in contrast, thin enough to fit between the bars of their cages and grow free. Those children were destined for the mineshafts, for picking out precious stones from rubble with their thin, flexible fingers.

Of course, not all could bear such treatment, and many died. The boy who cried often wilted in his cage, and every night as they wheeled him out he seemed smaller and paler, shrinking away from the bars, not growing into them. He curled up on the floor and cried, and called for help in his animal tongue. The blind boy sat next to him, whispering unarticulated comfort.

The beautiful boy with long hazel eyes was quick to learn the language, and both the alchemists and the mechanics who came to trade eyed him with interest. The monks asked a high price, and they came back to haggle. Once, a mechanic remarked that the boy was too beautiful to be smart; the next night he came out to the yard with his face bandaged.

The small boy who cried often died the day before they took the no-longer-beautiful boy away. The blind boy held his hand as the small boy drew his last breath; the blind boy sensed the presence of the disembodied soul, watery and shapeless, and he cradled it to his heart until the dead boy’s soul nestled into his, like a child’s face into a pillow, like stone into our hands.

The monks let the no-longer-beautiful boy cut off the dead boy’s hair, and when he left, his hand held firmly by a stern mechanic with a slight limp, long tangled locks slithered under his threadbare shirt.

The gargoyles’ story stuck with Mattie, and she kept turning it over in her mind, over and over. The fact that Ilmarekh was an orphan did not particularly surprise her, but the fact that he had chosen this profession, that for him it was an act of kindness and not desperation, touched her in a way she couldn’t fully explain even to Niobe.

She was also puzzled by the role Loharri played in it; especially the part about the dead boy’s hair—she did not think of him as a sentimental man. Even on his frequent visits to the orphanage he seemed angry and bitter rather than pensive or distraught. She resolved to ask him at the first opportunity, but for now, there were plenty of other things to worry about, and they won over other concerns due to their urgency.

She went to the public telegraph to check on the news and to see if Bokker had replied to her missive sent a week ago, containing the list of the missing mechanic medallions. To her shock, she found only warnings to stay at home, and reports of unrest.

It seemed that the Mechanics increased the pace of building and introduction of caterpillars; their request for additional buggies for the enforcers and their work on the machine that Loharri had been so enthused about taxed the coal and metal mines to capacity. The Parliament, led by Bergen and his mechanics, drafted many peasants for mine work—it was fraught with danger and required more thinking capacity and mobility than most automatons could provide. Instead, the automatons were sent to the fields to replace the peasants whose labor was repetitive and simple, and where they were not likely to need to be replaced.

Mattie shared the news with Niobe over breakfast—that is, Niobe was eating breakfast, and Mattie was sitting at the table in solidarity.

Niobe shook her head. “They will rebel, especially with the Duke so gravely ill.”

“How do you know?” Mattie asked.

Niobe shrugged. “There’s only so far you can shove a person until they shove back. I’ve seen it happen before.”

“What will happen?” Mattie whispered.

“Riots, probably. If the mechanics are smart, they’ll send enforcers right away to quell them before they even start. Give people money, double the miners’ wages. If not . . . if the miners rebel and quit, the city will grind to a halt without coal.”

Mattie was about to answer when someone knocked on the door. Only Loharri knocked with such arrogant insistence, and Mattie went to open. To her surprise, it was Sebastian.

“The gargoyles told me you were looking for me,” he said.

Chapter 11

Mattie clicked along with a greater sense of determination than ever. Iolanda’s request receded on her mental landscape, its bothersome shape pushed deep and wedged between other concerns she did not want to think about just yet; it fit right next to her uneasy curiosity about Loharri and the dead boy’s hair, two thoughts caught together like the teeth of two interlocking spur gears.

Instead, she worried about the gargoyles and Sebastian, who had become, unofficially, her ward along with Niobe. There was no reason for Mattie to protect Sebastian and to tell him that the mechanics were interested in his whereabouts and that the enforcers were eager to arrest any easterner and hand him over to the Soul-Smoker. But still she felt compelled—for the vague but persistent feeling of kinship she felt for his mother. When Beresta had broken through the chorus of voices shouting through Ilmarekh’s mouth, it was only to say, “Find my son. He lives in the eastern district.” At the time, Mattie assumed that Beresta’s tortured whisper was for Mattie’s benefit, to help her sort out the gargoyles’ business; now she was not so sure. She felt as if Beresta had entrusted her son to Mattie’s care from beyond the grave, and she couldn’t very well ignore the request.

But her place was getting crowded. Between Niobe and her bed by the fireplace and Sebastian’s large frame curled up in the corner of the laboratory, by the waste drain, there was barely enough place for Mattie to stay upright, let alone pace, and she spent her days working at the bench, pulverizing and sublimating stone, and running outside to buy food for her visitors. Something had to change soon; and she needed advice.

She avoided Iolanda for now, and Loharri was the last person she wanted to alert to the nature of her hesitation and Sebastian’s presence. When she closed her eyes—rather, retracted them into her head to give them a rest from constant stimulation—the visions of hair plagued her. She saw the dead boy’s hair, curled up like a sleeping snake against the naked smooth skin of Loharri’s stomach, and Loharri’s and Iolanda’s strands, twined together in a deadly betrayal masquerading as love. Mattie shivered.

She put her shoes on and headed for the door.

Sebastian woke up. “Where are you going?” he said in a voice rough with sleep.

“Out,” Mattie said.

Sebastian sat up, his face gathered in a suspicious frown. Mattie had learned most of his expressions, and this one was as familiar as his smile. The blueprints of his face wedged deep into her memory, like the alchemical recipes she never forgot because she mustn’t. “Out where?”

“To talk to your mother,” Mattie said, softly. “Keep quiet—you’ll wake up Niobe.”

“Can I come too?”

“You know you can’t. But I will give her your regards. Any questions I should ask her?”

Sebastian shook his head, his face relaxing, pensive. “That wouldn’t be right. The dead are dead. Aren’t they?”

“Not until the Soul-Smoker is dead.” Mattie headed for the door.

The night city embraced and buoyed her, the air sweet and blue and dense like water sloshing in the Grackle Pond, mysterious and forbidden. The streets seemed different, the buildings twisting and leaning dangerously into the streets, their shuttered windows distorted in an inaudible moan. A few times Mattie worried that she had lost her way somehow—even the familiar landmarks acquired a menacing air. It was a while before Mattie noticed that the streetlamps had remained unlit—no doubt, the mechanics had braced for the shortage of coal.

It was windy outside the gates—the open blasted earth afforded no cover for the lashings of the gale, and Mattie had to wrap her skirts around her legs as tightly as she could, afraid that they would catch the wind like sails and carry her away, into the dark sky salted with the rough crystals of the stars. Loharri had told her that there was no air between the stars and this is why people couldn’t live there, but Mattie did not need to breathe, and she imagined herself floating in the black void, only her puzzled memories for company.

She hurried up the hill, toward the shining beacon of the lit window and the sweet smell of opium smoke the wind brought to her.

Ilmarekh was not surprised at her visit—as soon as she knocked on the door, he called out, “Come in, Mattie.”

She entered. “How did you know it was me?”

“Who else would visit me in the middle of the night?” he answered.

“The enforcers.”

He pointed to the previously vacant corner of the room, where a small portable telegraph gleamed with its brass knobs and copper rods. “They need me so often, they installed the machine. I hear it go off, I just head for the jail.” He heaved a sigh. “I don’t like this, Mattie—every time I tell them the soul was hiding no secrets, they just laugh and tell me that they’ll keep looking.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mattie said. She meant the souls of the innocents and Ilmarekh himself. “Can’t you refuse?”

“They will kill them anyway,” he answered. “Or the jail will. This way, they’re safe with me. And they never lack for company. I listen to the stories they tell, Mattie—what stories! I didn’t know how different the world was, and how beautiful—they show me cities of white stone and golden roofs, they show me gardens so fragrant, my head swims. And the sea, Mattie, the sea! Have you ever seen it?”

“No,” she answered. “I want to.”

“You should. You’d think it’s just like the Grackle Pond but bigger, but it’s nothing like that at all. It has waves—so big!—they rise like solid walls of green glass, heavy with threat and exhilaration. It changes color—from blue to green to black—in seconds, and it is the most beautiful thing one can imagine, especially when the waves are breaking on the shore, topped with white foam.” Ilmarekh clasped his birdlike hands to his chest, overcome with feeling.

Mattie looked away. “I’m glad you’re getting something out of it.”

Ilmarekh’s smile faded. “I’m not the only one.”

Mattie felt immediately sorry—she thought that for a soul sentenced to death even a temporary home shared with hundreds of other inhabitants, even a small delay was of benefit. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Ilmarekh shrugged, and sat down on his mattress. “Of course you did. I don’t suppose I blame you.”

There was no point in blaming him for carrying out the decisions others had made, and Mattie sat next to him. “Can I talk to Beresta?”

“She hasn’t been talking at all lately,” Ilmarekh said. “It happens sometimes—the souls who have heard too much cocoon themselves off, build a wall around themselves, and I cannot reach them.”

“Can she hear us?”

“I think so,” Ilmarekh said.

“Beresta,” Mattie called. “Your son is safe. He sends his regards.”

They both waited for her answer, and finally Ilmarekh’s cheeks and eyes bulged as if he were about to vomit. Instead, a quiet whisper came. “Tell him that I miss him,” Beresta said. “Did you find the cure for the gargoyles?”

“Not yet,” Mattie said. “Sebastian told me to break the bond with stone, and I’ve been trying to—”

“Does he eat well?” Beresta interrupted, a bit louder this time. “Does he look well?”

“Yes, very much so,” Mattie replied, suppressing a wistful sigh. “He is a strong man now.” She decided not to mention the details of Sebastian’s exile and the hiding.

“It makes me so happy,” Beresta whispered. “Now, about the bond . . . you cannot break a thing free of its foundation—it withers like an uprooted plant or floats away, like a boat off its moorings. Before you break them away from stone, find something you can bind them to, something that is alive.”

“Thank you,” Mattie said.

Beresta fell silent, and Ilmarekh sighed. “I guess she’s still around then. Did you come to talk to her, or do you have other souls you wanted to talk to?”

The dead boy, Mattie wanted to answer but bit her lip. Not yet, she told herself. She had more pressing concerns than to decipher Loharri’s hidden history. “I have some people—easterners—hiding from the enforcers,” she said. “In my apartment.”

“What have they done?” Ilmarekh asked.

“Nothing, just like the ones you have engulfed.”

Ilmarekh’s pale cheeks pinkened, with shame or anger Mattie was not sure. “I see your point. What do you want from me?”

“I can’t risk them being discovered. Can you tell me where they can hide without being found?”

“Here,” Ilmarekh said. “Although being in my vicinity would rather defeat your purpose.” His face distorted, and his lips quivered, as if holding back a moan. And then the spirits talked.

“Take them to the farms,” one advised. “There’s nothing but automatons there since they herded us all into the mines, haunted, cursed.”

“Take them to the eastern district, where they can blend in,” another shouted.

“No, what are you, stupid? The enforcers practically live there, dragging out every soul and exiling all they can.”

“Leave the cursed city, go back home,” yet another voice shouted. Ilmarekh’s lips contorted as hundreds of spirits fought over control, and his small body shook in great spasms. “Underground!” “No, the farms!”

Just as the assault of the opinionated spirits started to subside, another voice, smooth as silk, persuasive, spoke. “There’re other people like them,” it said. “Like you. There’s a resistance, a rebellion growing. It started off with just a few, but now . . . ”

“How do you know it?” Mattie asked, suspicious. “And if you know it, wouldn’t the enforcers know it too?”

“No,” Ilmarekh said in his normal voice. “I don’t tell them what I know. I’m an executioner, not a snitch . . . unless it is a confession of a real crime.”

“So you know about the resistance?” Mattie asked, still skeptical.

Ilmarekh nodded. “Do you have friends in high places?”

Mattie returned home in the morning, when the gargoyles on the temple roof were outlined against the pink sky with streaks of golden clouds. On the way, she considered whether she trusted Iolanda enough to ask such questions, and every time she thought about it she recalled her obvious joy at the Duke’s leaving, and her desire to stay behind to see what marvelous changes would take place.

Then again, her joy was too obvious. If she were indeed involved with anything illegal, wouldn’t she hide it better? Mattie felt the beveled gears in her head speed up and heat with friction as they manufactured one febrile thought after the next. Loharri, she thought. Maybe she should talk to him.

She chased the thought away, and momentarily worried that he had built it into her, this need to run to him for help or advice every time she needed it. Would he be this calculating?
Sadly
, she thought,
he could be
. This is exactly the sort of thing he would’ve done—but did it invalidate his willingness to help?

She reached her building fevered and distraught. Mattie stumbled up the stairs, her head on fire. There was a smell of burning hair, and as she touched her face she discovered that below the cool surface of the porcelain, the metal sizzled, and that the roots of her hair smoldered.

Sebastian was up. He took one look at Mattie and forcibly sat her by the bench. He grabbed a piece of cloth she used to dry her glassware with, wet it in the sink, and wrapped Mattie’s head in it. Steam rose from her brow, and she felt her eyes retract deep into her head against her will. Her thoughts bubbled to the surface, the steam escaped with a slow hiss through her eye sockets, and her heart fluttered in an irregular beat.

It’s the spirits,
she thought
. It’s Loharri and Iolanda and Sebastian and the gargoyles and too many things to care about, and too many dangers to avoid.
That’s what broke her.

Blind now, she heard Niobe’s worried voice. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know,” Sebastian answered. “She’s overheating.”

“Can you fix her?”

Mattie felt Sebastian’s rough fingers search under her jaw line and on the sides. “Don’t,” she wanted to say, but her voice box must’ve gone out too. Sebastian popped off her face, exposing her, helpless and naked, to the world.

“Oh,” Niobe whispered. “She is . . . so intricate.”

Sebastian sighed. “Yes, she is. The man who built her . . . I don’t even know what to call this. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“So you can’t fix her,” Niobe said.

Sebastian’s fingers probed something sensitive inside. “I could try . . . I don’t know what else to do.”

“Call Loharri,” Niobe said. “There’s nothing else you can do.”

Mattie wanted to call out that no, it wasn’t a good idea. Through a great effort, she managed to loll her head to her shoulder, and more steam escaped through some malfunctioning gasket.

“I’m calling Loharri,” Niobe said. “You better find a place to hide.”

“You can’t go out,” Sebastian answered. “It’s not safe.”

“I’ll find someone to take the message.”

Mattie’s ears rang with persistent piping, but even through the ruckus she could hear the window being opened, and Niobe’s strong voice calling over the rooftops and the city below, “Hey, gargoyles! Your friend is in danger.”

Then the ringing grew louder and ceased suddenly, and all sensation left Mattie’s limp frame.