The Alchemy of Stone

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.

She felt no satisfaction from her accomplishment but rather an emptiness she did not know how to fill—there was nothing left to do. The thoughts shifted sluggishly in her mind, as the gears turned and clicked with unusual hesitation. There was Sebastian and Iolanda and Niobe, none of whom wanted her. There was Loharri, who did not want her anymore either. Then there was the key—her key, the key that would spark her back to life. When she would be her own mistress, she would find a mechanic to fix whatever was wrong with her. And yet none of this seemed important next to the gargoyles, transformed by her alchemy.

They nudged her, gentle, still in awe of their new hands. “Shouldn’t we go after them?”

She looked after the pointing fingers, flushed gloriously golden, a real life pulsing within them. “Go after who?”

“Them.”

Then she forced her eye to move from the gargoyles to the object of their attention—the enforcers trudging dutifully toward the mouth of the mine. There were enough of them to open the hidden entrance, Mattie thought. There were too many of them to follow. “No,” she said. “They have muskets. They will kill us—even you. You are not what you used to be, remember that. You are mortal now. You can be killed.”

The gargoyle faces turned fearful, and she hurried to reassure them. “They won’t do anything unless you provoke them. And following them now would be provoking. Come on, you must know of other ways to get underground.”

The gargoyles nodded, all together, like they always did. “There is a secret place inside the city, near the district that burned first.”

“Can you take me there?”

They did not answer but swept her up again, holding her securely aloft, and flew.

The time of inactivity let Mattie think in ways she wasn’t able to while walking—she could force her thoughts into an organized pattern, to stack them against each other, to decide on priorities. Ilmarekh was dead, and she was done looking after the others. She needed her key so that she could take care of herself, not needing anyone’s condescending help or grudging friendship. And to get her key, she needed Iolanda. But not just as a friend; Mattie could call on a promised favor. And after that, the sting of their indifference would be tempered by Mattie’s knowledge that she did not need them. Perhaps then Sebastian would love her back.

The gargoyles landed just inside the northern gates. Mattie’s legs still felt wobbly, but she steadied herself, and bent them a few times, making sure that sensation and flexibility were still present. “Where to?” Mattie asked. The ruins of the orphanage towered above her.

The gargoyles pointed at what appeared as a small hollow in the ground—overgrown with sun-scorched grass, and quite unremarkable in itself. When she looked closer, she discovered an uneven patch of ground, with only a thin gap outlining its irregular shape.

The gargoyles gathered around it and fitted their fingers into the gap. They lifted the thin slab of stone, with grass still clinging to it, and Mattie felt the wet, dark exhale of the shaft mouth, with its familiar scent of stale air and deep underground wet and warm stone.

“Will you come?” she asked the gargoyles.

They shook their heads in unison. “We must go now, but we will see you again.”

Mattie descended underground, not looking back. There was no point in watching the luminous, winged figures soar over the still-beautiful city when one was about to descend into a dark place.

Her new eye could not see in the darkness, and she kept one hand on the wall of the tunnel, feeling her way with one foot. Her progress was slow and laborious, and Mattie worried that she had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was now heading down an abandoned dead end, where she would never be discovered, and would be unable to find her way back. She took mental notes of the bumps on the wall, of any distinguishing features she felt on the ground—an abandoned axe handle, a bundle of rags.

When Mattie saw a weak glint on the walls of the tunnel, she did not dare to believe that she was nearing the end of her journey. It could be the faulty eye or some underground fluorescent life; it could be anything. She did not let the hope take hold until the glint became a steady glimmer, an inviting white dot of light with thin rays radiating from it, and the stale, warm breath of the tunnel brought with it smells of burning lamp oil and sounds of human voices.

She emerged into the light and space with the walls receding at a distance, so suddenly large and free, and she cried out in relief and anguish. Her eye took a long time adjusting to light in the cave, and people around her appeared as blurs. They asked her questions, but their words all buzzed together, like the sound of flies that now swarmed in the streets, and instead she spoke. She told them about the enforcers who went down the other tunnel. She told them that the mechanics knew.

She felt arms wrapping around her, and for a moment she thought that they belonged to the gargoyles, that somehow the transformed creatures had found her in the darkest underground. She squinted and recognized Niobe’s face close to her, with Iolanda just behind. Both women looked changed—their features had grown gaunter, sharper, and their eyes seemed more knowing than before.

“Loharri,” Mattie said to Iolanda. “He knows about the tunnels, and he knows about you and the other courtiers. Don’t let him get to you, don’t let him take your spell away.”

Iolanda shook her head. “Don’t worry about that now, Mattie. What happened to you?”

Mattie’s legs wobbled.

“We need a mechanic here,” Niobe shouted into the interior of the cave. “This woman is ill.”

It was nice to be attended to, Mattie thought. Niobe and Iolanda made a fuss, insisting that she sit down by the wall, on a stack of empty crates. Everything in the cave seemed scavenged from the surface, and the smell of mold and rotten fruit clung to the crates as Mattie sank into them.

“What happened to you?” Niobe asked. And added, in a small whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Mattie told her—she told her about how worried she was, wandering through the burning district; she told her about the assault and Loharri’s betrayal, about the death of the Soul-Smoker and the gargoyles’ transformation.

“That was very clever of you,” Niobe interrupted her story. “I’m glad that you’ve succeeded.”

“Thank you for your aid,” Mattie said. “The things you taught me were beneficial.”

Niobe nodded. “I have to say the same to you. I’ve been caring for the wounded, and I couldn’t have done it without the knowledge of plants. Thank you for teaching me.”

“I hope we will be able to teach each other again soon,” Mattie said. She felt vulnerable now, and clung to the warmth in Niobe’s voice despite her earlier resolutions. “It is so much nicer than . . . this.” Her arm traced an arc in the air.

Niobe smiled at her vague gesture. “Indeed,” she said. “I think everyone is eager for the fighting to end. But I suppose it will be different.”

“They will always need alchemists,” Mattie said. “As long as people get hurt they’ll need us.”

Iolanda listened to their conversation with the impatient expression which she seemed to acquire whenever she was not talking. “This is all well and good,” she said. “But I can’t believe what this bastard had done to you.”

Mattie nodded and cringed at the clicking sound in her neck and the difficulty of such a simple movement. “I’m sure he feels the same way about me. I’ve betrayed him.”

Iolanda shrugged. “You had a better reason.”

Mattie did not feel certain that reasons mattered more than deeds themselves, but felt too exhausted to argue. After her initial burst of verbosity she seemed to have run out of words, and so she listened mutely as Niobe and Iolanda called for a mechanic again and busied themselves with rearranging the crates. Mattie’s heart groaned in laborious beats that seemed to fall farther and farther away from each other. And what did it matter? she thought. If her heart stopped, no one but Loharri would be able to revive her. And maybe as time went on he would forgive her. She could last like this, immobile, awaiting the gentle scraping of the key as it entered the keyhole, a slow turn and a click that would bring her back. Perhaps it would be better to wait until she was forgiven and things had sorted themselves out, so she could awake to a semblance of normalcy. It would be nice just to sleep the chaos away, and wake up in the world where Loharri did not hate her. Even in her pitiful state Mattie realized that it was not likely.

“Iolanda,” she said. “Please use the homunculus soon.”

“It’s not my decision . . . ” Iolanda started.

Mattie held up her hand. “I know. You want to wait until you have control of the city. But I cannot wait that long. Get my key for me, please. Even if my heart stops. You can wind me again. Just get my key, I beg of you.”

Iolanda nodded. “I will, I promise. Don’t worry about a thing.” She looked over her shoulder and threw her hands into the air. “Finally!” she said. “About time a mechanic showed up.”

As Mattie had hoped, it was Sebastian. He nudged Mattie to her feet. “Come on,” he said gently. “Come to my workshop, and we will get you fixed up.”

“My key,” Mattie whispered.

“Shhh,” Sebastian said. “Don’t worry about a thing—we’ll get you back on your feet yet.”

Mattie nodded and tried not to worry as she followed him through a wide, short corridor to another cave that smelled of metal, machine oil, and explosives.