The Alchemy of Stone (17 page)

The homunculus labored by her side, its quiet boiling and hissing always present. She imagined the mess they were making—strewn-about parts, some smeared with pungent sheep’s blood, and she felt a small pang of dark satisfaction. Let him clean up after her, for once. When he gets back, she would be gone, hidden, on her way to find Iolanda and to beg her to speed up Loharri’s binding. And to warn Sebastian, of course.

“Is this it?” the homunculus whispered and put something in her hands. She was used enough to him to not recoil at the touch of his hands, wet like a kiss.

She wrapped her fingers around a small heavy cylinder. “Yes, this is it. Thank you. Is there another one?”

“No,” the homunculus answered.

Mattie fitted the cylinder into its socket. It was an old eye, discarded years ago, and Mattie tried to accept the dullness of her vision, the gray shroud of dust that seemed to cling to everything. “No matter,” she said. “One is fine for now, but we better get moving.”

She gathered the creature into her skirt and smoothed the white petticoat underneath—she wanted to look at least somewhat presentable, not as a crazed one-eyed automaton smeared in sheep’s blood with her skirts bundled about her waist, exposing her long, metal legs.

“Go easssst,” the homunculus said, and nestled deeper into the hammock of Mattie’s skirt. “He won’t look for you there.”

“No,” Mattie said. “North. We have to see the Soul-Smoker and warn Sebastian.”

The homunculus gave no other advice and asked no more questions, and seemed to have fallen asleep, lulled by the sound of her steps.

We walk in small numbers; we can count ourselves
now
with what fingers a creature has on two hands and two feet. We don’t bother, unwilling (afraid) to dwell on our diminishment. Instead, we watch the city crumble. There is fighting, and it feels like it has been going on forever—or at least long enough for us to forget what the city used to look like, before the smoke and fire, before the growing ruins and gutted buildings, before the Grackle Pond was cluttered with scorched, mutilated metal and bits of steam engines and the gears of an automaton brain large enough to make decisions but too small to predict their consequences. We forget so quickly now, our memory so dependent on our numbers; the more of us do the remembering the better the memories are.

The lizards do not drag carts behind them anymore; a few of them have broken loose and stomp the streets in blind panic. Automatons are few and far in between, most of them smashed to pieces or sent away to the farms. The paper factory, as well as all other ones, has stopped, soon after the caravans of coal stopped coming through the city gates. The air has a different quality to it—woodsmoke and clay and stone instead of metal and burning coal; we are trying to decide whether it is an improvement.

We watch the enforcers, their buggies abandoned, their armor nowhere to be seen (too heavy to walk in) head toward the city gates. They cannot possibly hope to retake the farms or the mines; they lead a prisoner among them, and we realize that they want the Soul-Smoker—one always brings a decoy, a sacrifice on such outings. Or perhaps they want to bargain with the rebels and the man walking with his head low, his clothes soaked with the rain, is their bargaining chip. We cannot be sure, but we worry about the blind boy, all alone in his cabin.

The telegraphs all over the city chatter and thrash and spew forth endless ribbons of paper covered in messages no one reads—no one has to anymore. Soon they will run out of paper, and we imagine them straining and chittering, and punching the empty air with their beaks that will have run out of ink too. We wonder how long the water will keep flowing.

The markets are quiet now, and there is little left to buy besides last year’s corn and turnips. We see hollow-eyed women cowering—how fast they learned to move in quick dashes between the buildings!—and keeping close to the corners and houses. The merchants leave the centers of the markets free too, their stands leaning sparsely against the protective walls.

The children are gone, as if they had all disappeared overnight—we know it is not true, we know that some are locked inside and others were taken by their parents out of the city; yet others were sent away to relatives in other cities, where they could be children and carefree, while the adults wait out the awfulness that befell them. But it feels to us that they ran away, abandoning the city that disappointed them, and we try and imagine what it would be like, to run away forever, turning our ridged, winged backs on this city. We imagine the sounds of the sea and the smell of red, kind earth, the smells of different spices and the taste of unfamiliar rocks, made of limestone born by the sea and not the cruel hot compressions of the earth underneath. We contemplate joining the circus, like we imagine everyone does—idly, not seriously, but wistfully. There is such temptation, such forbidden joy in abandonment.

And then the rain starts falling, black rain tainted with soot; it weeps from the ledges and mourns in the gutters, it roars as it runs through the streets, like organ pipes, like a song. We look into each other’s faces and wipe away the black rain that weeps from our hardened eyes, leaving black tracks down our cheeks. And we are suddenly not sure whether it is the sky or us who is crying.

We look around us, and we mourn ourselves, we mourn the fact that even after the city and we are gone, the rock will remain. We mourn the ruined city, the unfinished construction, the demolished palace, the gutted houses. Even if it is right for it to be ruined, we can still feel sadness at its passing, can’t we? Can’t we? And the rain falls.

We watch a lone figure stagger through the streets, holding a parcel to its chest. We recognize our metal girl, our friend, and we creep closer. She does not look good with her one eye and her blood homunculus, which she cradles to her chest, protecting it from rain. The homunculus wails as if water hurts it. The girl lurches onward, determined and half-blind, but heading steadily north. We imagine her walking like that, broken but unbreakable, forever, the homunculus at her chest crying in its gurgling incessant whine.

We eye it with suspicion—we are not of blood and bone, we are not of plant magic, and yet we feel a strange kinship to the pathetic creature, so soft it is almost liquid. And yet somehow it smells of stone, of the gray-limned stone that bore us—when we close our eyes, we see its layers and hair-thin ridges, the minuscule inclusions of black granite and crystal-bright quartz. Somehow, the creature is related to us, and we don’t know if it is good or bad, but we try to like it, as one would an obnoxious relative.

And the girl herself is not well—we can see it in her staggering, lurching step, in the dull green (where is the iridescent blue of a dragonfly’s wings?) glow of her single eye that reflects only the rain back at us.

She sees us only when descend into the street and stand like a wall in front of her, a wall of sour gray bodies streaked with black.

“I know how to help you,” she whispers.

“Shhh,” we answer. “It can wait.” (It cannot.) “Let us take care of you first. Where are you going?”

“The Soul-Smoker,” she answers.

We tell her about the soldiers.

Her fingers tighten on the soaked fabric of her skirt, and she cradles the bundle with the homunculus—a monstrous child—closer to her metal bosom. “We have to hurry then. Do you know a quick way there?”

We nod, and we pick her and her bundle up, we gather her into a protective embrace and cradle her close. She falls silent, so tired now.

And then we fly.

Chapter 17

Mattie was tired for the first time in her life. She was not built to feel fatigue, to experience exhaustion—the whalebone and metal and the springs that held them together were tireless, for as long as she was wound up properly. But now, lying in the supporting net of the intertwined gargoyle arms, she felt her sole eye retracting into her head, and her mind screaming for permission to just rest, to shut down and not have to whir along anymore. Her heart beat with an irregular tick-tock, and after every click, Mattie feared that the next one would not come.

Loharri’s digging around in her head, wrenching out the hidden device and her eyes, damaged something—something important, she feared. Even after the homunculus threw the switch, her extremities felt wrong and awkward, as if wrapped in wool. Her thoughts turned around and around, sluggish and blind, running like trapped animals in the same compulsive circle.

She was broken, she thought; and the time had come when Loharri would not fix her, no matter how she pleaded and folded her hands, how she tilted her head to look up at him shyly. He was the one who broke her, with intentional carelessness.
Iolanda
, she thought. Iolanda would make him do what she wants—she would make him fix Mattie and give her the key, she would make him be nice to her and forgive her betrayal. It mattered that he would.

But before she could tell Iolanda all that, she needed to make sure that the Soul-Smoker was all right. Why it felt so important, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps because he housed the spirit of Beresta, Sebastian’s mother, or perhaps because she felt responsible because it was her—no matter how inadvertently—who gave away the treasonous spirits that he housed, told the mechanics that the telegraph they gave him was used to intercept their messages, that he kept secrets from them.

The enforcers would do away with him—from a distance, so as not to endanger their own spirits, using the decoy they brought with them—and they would continue on, to the mouth of the shaft by the slope of the Ram’s Head, down into the passage that burrowed under the city . . . Mattie did not want to continue this thought, for the truth was too bitter for even her diminished capacity. “It’s all my fault,” she whispered, like a spell, without letting the meaning of the words reach her mind.

The gargoyles heard, and their arms swayed, calming, lulling. “Shhh,” they whispered as if to a child. “Shhh.”

Mattie did not dare to look down, at the streets below, and watched the low tendrils of the clouds streaking across the sky. It was so gray now, yet clear—the transparent bluish gray of a dove’s underside, the blue shine of well-polished metal. She had never seen a sky like this, unobscured by smoke and everyday city emanations.

“It is always like this,” the gargoyles whispered, barely audible above the whistling of the wind. “Up here, it is always clear and beautiful. This is why we rarely fly anymore.”

It made sense to Mattie—sometimes, one was better off not seeing, not knowing. The wind tore at her hair, the hair that used to belong to someone else, and her eye watched the clear skies above.

The gargoyles had landed downslope, and Mattie felt wobbly on her feet. She held the homunculus tighter as it grew agitated and babbled and gurgled, and pointed toward the Soul-Smoker’s shack; Mattie doubted they would be able to approach it undetected. Even the elusive gargoyles were exposed on this slope, out of their element and somehow smaller.

The enforcers surrounded Ilmarekh’s shack, their decoy still between them. His crestfallen look indicated that he was well aware of his impending fate, and did not relish it. The enforcers looked strangely vulnerable relieved of the bulk of their armor, and Mattie found it hard to believe that she used to feel kinship with them at the sight of their metal carapaces.

The homunculus in her arms struggled and heaved, straining against the confines of her binding skirt. She unwrapped the terrible bloody bundle. “What?” she whispered.

“Let me go,” it said. “I can help you, help you.”

Mattie considered. The homunculus was perhaps small enough to sneak by the enforcers undetected, if only it would cease its burbling. “What will you do?” she asked it.

“What I was made to do,” the homunculus answered, and struggled free of her arms.

The gargoyles huddled close to the ground, their wings fanned low, and they seemed like stones on the hillside. Mattie crouched close to them, watching the homunculus’ progress up the hill.

The enforcers shouted, and one of them discharged his musket. The wind carried away their words, but Mattie surmised that they were calling for Ilmarekh to step outside. Then they left the prisoner by the door and retreated a few steps away, their muskets trained on the door.

“We must help him,” Mattie told to the gargoyles. “You can do something—they won’t shoot at you. Save him like you saved me.”

“What can we do?” the gargoyles whispered mournfully, but straightened and fanned their wings.

“Stop!” Mattie shouted at the enforcers.

A few of them turned and lowered their weapons in awe as they saw the flock of gargoyles bounding up the hill, a mechanical girl stumbling at their heels. They never saw the homunculus.

The door swung open, and Ilmarekh, dressed as if he were going out, stood on the threshold, his cane tapping a slow rhythm. He was dressed in his usual black coat with a very white shirt underneath, his face and hands only a shade darker than his white hair.

Mattie’s legs buckled under her, as if the joints went loose, and she hobbled after the gargoyles, aware of the growing distance between them and her, unable to look away from Ilmarekh—a black-and-white drawing framed by the doorway, with just a splash of color as the homunculus clambered up the step and to his feet.

“Stay away!” one of the enforcers shouted at the approaching gargoyles. “This does not concern you!”

The gargoyles hesitated, falling easily into the habit of meekness. The enforcers lifted their muskets, mistaking, as people usually did, mild spirit for surrender. The prisoner, the dark-skinned and forgotten man, gasped and heaved, and Mattie realized that his soul was straining to join its brethren. With her inferior new eye, she could not see the shape of the soul, and she regretted it—she wanted to see it detach from the man’s lips, transparent yet iridescent like a soap bubble, and bound toward Ilmarekh, joyfully shedding its fears as its former owner buckled and fell to his knees and then to his stomach and lay still.

The enforcers could wait no longer, and they turned the muskets away from the gargoyles. There was no time for the gargoyles to do anything, as several shots rang out. Ilmarekh, still reeling from the absorption of a new soul, sputtered forth a mouthful of blood. It spilled over Mattie’s homunculus, and the homunculus absorbed the new offering of blood eagerly, greedily, and only then did the enforcers notice it.

Mattie watched too—the souls, the wisps of smoke, poured out of Ilmarekh’s prostrate body sprawled in the rapidly spreading puddle of blood. Judging by their gasps and muttered curses, the enforcers could see them too. The tendrils of souls reached out, and everyone, including Mattie, took an involuntary step back, away from the hissing and writhing wisps. Only the homunculus stood its ground.

The souls found it and reached into it; for a moment, the homunculus looked like a skinned sheep carcass—red, shot through with white strands of marbling; it bubbled and hissed, boiling, yet remaining standing. The air erupted through its sides and face, sending forth small clouds of red mist. Gradually, the violent eruptions subsided, and the homunculus stopped seething and bubbling—it seemed bigger now, as big as a three-year-old child, and more solid, as if the souls had given it a semblance of flesh and independent life.

Mattie watched the unfolding of the strange event, forgetting about her pain and fatigue, unable to look away. Understanding took a while to take hold, but when it did, it bloomed forth with radiant certainty, and Mattie laughed—a sudden, too-screeching sound that broke the enforcers out of their reverie.

They all spoke at once, asking each other questions and pointing at the homunculus—the silent, calm center of the violent events. They discussed destroying it and wondered where it came from; they asked each other what had just happened, unable to comprehend the transition.

It is stone, Mattie wanted to say. The homunculus is the essence of the stone, now infused with the spirits of the dead. Now, every stone in the city, every old building was alive with countless spirits, all whispering their tedious and mournful tales.

And now, it was time to fulfill her promise to the gargoyles. She turned toward them. “Now,” she said. “Now it is yours. The essence of the stone and the spirits of the dead are alive within this creature, and it will break the bond that ties you to your fate. Take it, and accept the spirits of the dead people, and carry them with you. The stone cannot touch you now.”

The enforcers must have realized that they were witnesses to a momentous event. They lowered their weapons and let the gargoyles pass between them, they let the gargoyles pick up the homunculus, which stained their hands and visibly diminished with every touch. The gargoyles passed it from one to the next, and as the homunculus grew smaller and their hands stained a deeper red, a change came over them.

Their hides changed their color from gray to the faintest blue, like clay on the riverbanks, and a slight color infused their faces with a glow the likes of which Mattie had never seen. Their features softened, and they no longer seemed carved of stone, but mere creatures of flesh. Flesh that did not last, but Mattie decided not to think about it now. They asked her for freedom, not immortality, and this is what she gave them.

She wished she could talk to Beresta just one more time, a quiet shy ghost of the woman who was the first alchemist to walk down this road. Mattie imagined that Beresta would be proud that her work was concluded, would be happy with Mattie’s achievement. She wished Ilmarekh had not needed to die to release the souls he had consumed; she wondered what he would be like if he were not so haunted. She missed the friend she did not even know—the friend she could’ve had.

We lack the words to describe what is happening to
us. We know that we are supposed to do something, to help the girl who has helped us, but we feel dazed, awash in the new experience of being separate from the stone. We feel floating, uprooted, like the clouds. Weightless. The city looms behind us, and for the first time we feel separate from it; we float, disembodied, while it remains substantial and stationary and alien.

We look around us with new eyes—like the girl who is now sitting on the ground for some reason; we do not think we have ever seen her sitting down. The enforcers do not know what to do with us, and we feel sorry for them because we understand what it was like, to shed one’s hard protective carapace and to stand on the hillside, exposed, with two dead men lying on the ground, mere objects, just like the city and the hill. We smell the salty marine smell of blood on our hands and in the air, we inhale with full chest absorbing the stench of burning—the Soul-Smoker’s shack is starting to smoke; did he leave a flame inside unattended? But it is salt we smell most of all, and it stirs memories within us, memories we have no right to possess.

We remember the voyage across the sea, smooth as glass, the ship becalmed for days on this green surface; we remember it wrinkling like silk under the first breath of wind; we remember the waves and the terrible precipitous valleys that open between them; we remember the sensation of our stomach leaping to our throat as the ship poses on the crest of a wave, hesitant, and then plummets downwards, accompanied by cries of terror and exhilaration.

We remember the cities we have never visited, the lives we have not lived—children and grandchildren, and the inevitable aging of the parents; we remember smells of cardamom and moist tropical heat; we remember the soft, red earth which gave so generously when it was not compelled to do so, and was so barren when farmed. We remember the dances in the city squares—open squares fringed with low buildings, which were much more about air than they were about stone; we remember the bright paints children use to decorate themselves and to throw at each other, laughing.

And then our vision doubles as we see our city but through the eyes of the outsiders—the imposing edifice, carved of stone; we see ourselves as others used to see us—perched on the steepled roofs, our wings a sharp silhouette against the fading sky. We see the gray severity and the stern beauty, which does not invite appreciation but rather demands it. We grow dizzy, and we shake our heads, bedazzled and entranced.

And then the other voices awaken inside us, the souls of the people who were ripped away from the dead man who is cooling on the ground before us. We hear a multitude of voices whispering to us, insistent. “Listen,” they say. “Just listen.”

Mattie forced herself to stand on her wobbling legs. The right knee joint kept alternately locking up and buckling under her, but she paid it no mind.