The Alchemy of Stone

Chapter 18




We look at everything with our new eyes, eyes attuned to noticing flesh before stone. No longer are we paying attention to the buildings, but rather to the buzzing of the slow, overfed flies that seem to be everywhere. They smell our sweat and land on our lips and eyes, their buzzing loud and somehow unclean. We wince and wave them off our faces, but we still feel the greasy touch of their tiny claws.

And the smell . . . the mindless automatons are clearing the streets, but too few of them had survived the riots. Even those that did are in a poor shape—they stumble about, and some of their limbs are missing. And they collect the bodies of the dead miners the enforcers do not bother to pick up anymore. They still carry off their own after skirmishes, but we see the fatigue in their eyes, and we guess that soon they will abandon their bodies too.

There is a smell of rotting garbage everywhere, and it takes us a while to realize that it is coming from the dead bodies, stripped of their poor clothing and crude weapons by the scavengers. We recognize the scavengers too, hiding in the shadows—the light-eyed feral children let loose after the Stone Monks left the city.

We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone—crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try.

We move toward the building of the Parliament—the windows are yellow with light, even though it is morning, and we know that they have been in there all night, too preoccupied to remember to conserve oil, which is going to run out soon, just like everything else in the city.

We climb up the walls and crouch on the windowsills. They don’t see us, too preoccupied with peering inward and at each other. They seem worn now, ragged—their eyes are red and swollen, and their soft cheeks are peppered with steel-gray and dark stubble. And as we cling to the narrow windowsills, we feel the taut muscles in our legs cramping, we feel our fingers relax their grip on the window frames, fatigued, and suddenly we understand—in our bones!—how tired these people are, how vulnerable and hurt. Just like the ones fighting in the streets below, just like the ones waiting in the tunnels, just like the merchants in the market square and their skittish customers.

An explosion rocks the air, and a blast of warm and almost solid wind knocks us off our perch. We recover mid-air and spread our wings to buffet the fall, to let us land softly, with dignity and grace.

We look around, to locate the source of the explosion, but we cannot see if any buildings are missing: we would need to be higher, away from the ground. We hear a soft tinkling, and we look up, to see the shards of glass raining down from the destroyed windows of the Parliament, falling like jagged ice crystals; it is a miracle that we are not harmed.

We climb up the wall, pressing closely against it, so that the men who are now looking out of the windows—the unshaven and red-eyed alchemists and mechanics—can’t see us, but they are not even looking in our direction. They are pointing west, to the districts where the destruction has been the greatest.

We run through the layout of the city in our minds—there are houses there mostly, and the barracks of the enforcers not far from the western gate; there are telegraphs and the markets, there are factories. All of them seem like equally likely targets, and none of them matter.

It was the second time that Mattie found herself naked in Sebastian’s presence, and from his pretend lightheartedness and joking manner she surmised that he was thinking about it too. She wanted to ask him now, why did he go along with it? Why did he make love to her—was it a fetish of a mechanic enamored with intricate devices and easily prompted to express his affection the moment a device resembled a girl, or was it something else? She did not know how to ask, and her sluggish mind refused to do any more work than was strictly necessary—another self-preservation mode Loharri built into her, undoubtedly passing along the ridiculous desire to live despite one’s inevitable mortality.

Sebastian checked her joints, oiling and adjusting fiddly little parts in her knees. It hurt only a little.

“Pity,” Sebastian said. “I wish you didn’t feel it, like other automatons.” He still regretted their encounter, he still wished she hadn’t shown up to remind him.

“There’s a module in my head that disconnects the sensation,” Mattie said. “Only I don’t really know where it is exactly. And I didn’t like the last time it was used—I think this is why I’m so poorly now.”

“I won’t touch it,” Sebastian promised. “But I’ll have to check inside your head, to make sure there’s nothing broken there.”

“Last time you said you didn’t know how I worked,” Mattie said.

“I don’t. But I can still see if the gears are misaligned or if the connectors are missing or detached. Now that I’ve seen how it’s supposed to look.”

“I think I will need winding soon,” Mattie whispered, her voice giving out and then coming back again. “I need my key—make sure Iolanda gets it for me.”

“I will,” Sebastian said. His voice sounded so earnest that Mattie believed him. “I promise you I will.” He thought a bit, his hand clasping his chin absent-mindedly. “Maybe I could take a cast of the keyhole and machine you a new one. I have the equipment here.”

Of course, Mattie thought. They machined keys—Iolanda and the rest had access to every important keyhole in the city. That was why they could place the explosives wherever they wanted. In her muddled state, the walls of the cave—dimly lit, just bare hints of solid matter under the gauze of shadows—reminded her of the dark paneling of Loharri’s workshop. It smelled the same, and was just as cluttered, and Sebastian became Loharri in her mind and then himself again. Perhaps that was why the thought of a second key in another mechanic’s hands scared her.

“No,” she whispered. “Just let Iolanda or Niobe get my only key—I do not want more than one, I do not want anyone but me to have it. And I don’t want anyone but them touching it.”

Sebastian smiled. “Not even me?”

“Especially not you,” Mattie said. “No offense meant.”

“None taken,” he replied. “Maybe just a temporary one? I’ll give it to you right away.”

The vexing survival module let itself known again. “Yes,” Mattie whispered, and the shadows grew darker around her. “Just a temporary one then.”

“I will need to take a print,” Sebastian said.

Mattie nodded her consent and watched him take the glass bubble off the lamp, and heat a metal tin over the flames. When it started crackling and smelling of hot metal, he dropped a lump of wax into the tin, letting it soften but not melt. He tossed the tin down and blew on his fingers. The lump of wax had grown transparent around the edges, and Sebastian rolled in his hands, letting it cool a bit, stretching it between his fingers.

When the warm, fragrant wax touched her skin, Mattie gasped. This touch felt so alive, so gentle. The pliable wax pushed into the opening of the keyhole, and Mattie tensed, waiting for the turn of a key. None came, of course—it was silly to expect one, and yet she was so attuned to being wound that she could not completely extinguish her anticipation and excitement.

“Stay still,” Sebastian whispered. He pressed on the wax lump with his hand, and Mattie looked away. Not because she felt awkward (although she did), but because he was so mechanic-like now—his lips pursed in concentration, his eyes narrowed, he thought only about the task at hand, forgetting everything about Mattie. It struck her, in the slow, grating way her thoughts had acquired, how much like Loharri he was. She found it neither comforting nor disturbing, just odd.

Sebastian extracted the wax and squinted at it. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“What?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Look.”

The wax looked like a simple narrow cylinder, devoid of any marks. “It doesn’t look like my key,” Mattie said.

“Of course it doesn’t. It’s protected, see—the outer opening is more narrow than the internal mechanism.”

“I think he told me once that it’s a complex key.”

“That’s an understatement,” Sebastian agreed. “It opens up once it’s inside and fits into the grooves. But I can’t make a print of it.”

Mattie lowered her eyes. “He didn’t want me to be able to get a copy. Even if I had thought of it earlier, I couldn’t have done it.”

Sebastian stared. “You never thought of it before?”

Mattie shook her head, and the joints in her neck whined. “I always thought of it as the only key. If there were more, it would be . . . disconcerting.” She thought a while, straining after some thought that kept flickering at the edges of her mind. Finally, she remembered. “Did Iolanda tell you about the thing in my head?” she murmured.

“No,” he said. “What thing in your head?”

She told him about Loharri and about her unwilling betrayal.

He listened, his hands clasped behind his back, his face carefully composed. But she could tell that he was upset: from the tendons in his neck, from the way they stood out under his skin. “You sure he took it out?” he said.

Mattie nodded.

“No matter,” Sebastian said, and reached for her face. “I’m going to take a look inside anyway. Let’s see what’s in there, hm?”

Mattie did not protest—it was just another punishment, she thought, her punishment for having done something wrong. She submitted to Sebastian’s hands taking off her face and popping out her eye, to his strong fingers digging with such cool nonchalance in her head. She felt him flipping switches and adjusting gears, and sometimes she blacked out, just for a moment, but she always came to. He found the switch that rendered her immobile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to turn you off for a little while. I promise you will feel better.”

When Mattie came to, the quality of light in the cave remained the same—why would it change, after all, underground so deep that time did not dare to penetrate it. But it felt like time had passed—the oil in the lamps seemed lower, and Sebastian looked older, a dark shadow of stubble appearing on his face.

Mattie was relieved to have woken up, and to be able to see. She felt better too—her neck turned without grinding, and her thoughts flowed quicker and smoother, without the annoying snags of forgotten words or memories. He had managed to fix her, at least partially. “Thank you,” Mattie said. “I feel much better.”

He nodded. “Don’t mention it.”

Mattie hesitated. “What do I do now?”

He shrugged. “Whatever you want. I don’t advise going to the surface, though—there’s still fighting there.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what they are hoping for—we are right under them! And still they build fortifications. They have a machine that detects vibrations now, so every one of the last raids to the surface was anticipated. Explosives seem to be the way to go, but . . . ” He stopped talking abruptly, and waved his hand in the air. “Go, Mattie. Find your friends. I have things to do.”

Her heart still whined occasionally, and the beats remained irregular. But there was no point in sulking or wishing that he didn’t treat her as an inconvenience. Mattie found one of the lamps that people underground wore on their heads, and she went exploring. The underground tunnels branched and multiplied and widened into caves, the intricate network rife with startling surprises—Mattie wandered through the labyrinth, occasionally finding hidden caches of explosives or food or clothes or equipment; sometimes she found secret groups of people; a few of them were spiders, and they watched Mattie silently out of their dark, sunken eyes. In the dusk, their eyes glistened deep within their sockets like the gems which the spiders often carried in their long hands—as reminders, Mattie guessed, or mementos. Or perhaps they were just entranced with their soft glow. The spiders rarely talked—Mattie supposed it was difficult for them, with their wheezing, whistling breaths. They made Mattie feel uneasy.

When she passed people in the tunnels, she tried not to look at the crates they carried, and she did not ask what part of the city they were going to. She did not ask about what happened to the enforcers who had gone underground before her eyes, and whether they found anything but the abandoned tunnels.

Other times, she helped Niobe to care for the wounded—there were few of them, and the two alchemists had no trouble mixing enough potions and unguents. They talked only of alchemy—Mattie shared her little secrets and contrivances about the use of aloe leaves or chamomile flowers; she taught Niobe to make a strong, tart-smelling brew of green blackberry branches and to apply it to the bandages for stopping bleeding. She talked about her concoctions with a sense of urgency; she never said it out loud, but with a fear that her heart might give out at any moment, she wanted to pass on as much of her knowledge as she could. Niobe did not talk about it either, but she remained alert and attentive.

Mattie grew anxious—there was no sign of changes, and she worried that her body, although ably patched up by Sebastian, would run out before she could see the homunculus work its dark bloody alchemy on Loharri. She needed her key, and she began to feel its absence as a dull ache in her chest.

Mattie did not know whether it was morning or night. She left Niobe to care for the sick and went to wander through the tunnels, but her heart was not in it. Instead, she went to Sebastian’s workshop. He was gone, but she found the smell of metal and oil reassuring in its familiarity. She sat on a crate and waited for the time when she would be able to go to the surface and see the gargoyles again.

There was a rustling of cloth, and Iolanda entered the workshop. Mattie smiled, and Iolanda sat next to her and rubbed her shoulder gently. She seemed so subdued now, her countenance sad, her flesh not galling anymore but merely soft and tired. Mattie wondered where her glee went, her bouncing joyfulness; she wondered if Iolanda had grown disappointed.

Iolanda smiled and sighed, and pulled Mattie’s head into her lap. Mattie resisted at first, but Iolanda took a brush with short dense bristles and a long handle out of her sleeve. “Let me brush your hair,” she said. “You will feel better.”

Mattie carefully rested her head on the soft flesh of Iolanda’s thigh and closed her eye. The brush whispered through the strands of Mattie’s hair—not really hers; she thought of the dead boy the gargoyles had told her about. She thought about Loharri, and what possessed him to save these locks for such a long time, what made him painstakingly attach them to Mattie’s metal scalp. The same thing, she supposed, that compelled the Soul-Smoker to engulf the dead boy’s soul—compassion and desire to remember. Could they really be so similar?

Soon, the repetitive strokes of the brush lulled her and she stopped wondering. Instead, she imagined the things she would say to Loharri if she saw him again—when she saw him again, she corrected herself. If nothing else, she had to see him subjected to another’s will—maybe then he would finally understand what it was like, and would stop being angry with her.

“By all rights he should be down here, with us,” Iolanda said.

“You mean Loharri?”

Iolanda put the brush away and stroked Mattie’s hair. “Yes. He has as many reasons to hate this city as any of us.”

“I don’t hate it,” Mattie said. “I’m here by accident.”

Iolanda did not seem to hear her. “I just don’t understand him. He told me he had been in the orphanage; he should be happy to see it blown up. But instead, he goes and converts the caterpillars into barricades and mounts weapons on them.”

“Is this why we’re still here?” Mattie asked. “There’s still fighting?”

“There’s fighting,” Iolanda answered. “And he, of all people, is acting like resisting the natural course of progress is the right thing to do. What do you make of that, Mattie?”

Disappointment stirred weakly—every time she thought Iolanda was growing interested in her, it was just a pretext for asking Mattie questions of interest to Iolanda. She just shrugged, her metal shoulder butting against Iolanda’s thigh. But in her mind, she thought that Loharri’s behavior was only reasonable. She knew how hard it was to achieve something, to reach a position of some influence; to give it all away would be unbearable. And unlike her, Loharri could not possibly hope to retain his power—the mechanics were the enemy, and he was too prominent to escape notice. He was not defending the city, he was defending himself. She felt close to him now that she knew what the desire to survive just a little bit longer made one do. After all, she had agreed to a duplicate key, and she was disappointed that she could not have it.

Iolanda’s fingers played with Mattie’s hair absent-mindedly. “I wonder sometimes, Mattie,” she said. “I wonder at the things we do—I wonder at myself. Have you ever done things that you didn’t expect to? Things that just . . . happened?”

“Yes,” Mattie said. “Lately, I’ve been feeling that I’ve been doing nothing but.”

Iolanda laughed.

Mattie sat upright. “Don’t forget about my key,” she pleaded.

“I won’t. I know it’s important to you.”

Mattie grasped her hand. “It’s not just important. It is everything to me, and I hate leaving it in someone else’s hands, even yours. Please try and understand.”

Iolanda shook her head. “I understand. I think maybe this is what we have in common, the desire to take one’s life into one’s own hands, even if it doesn’t work out and one is worse off in the end.”

Mattie nodded in agreement. She would be better off if she stayed with Loharri and never angered him.

Iolanda rose from her seat, smoothing her skirts. “In any case,” she said, “I cannot wait to see the sun. I hope we will get to the surface soon.”

Mattie agreed that it would be not a moment too soon.

And soon it was time to go. Iolanda was both excited and fearful, and Niobe only frowned, her lips pressed together in an expression of determination.

“We’re going to the surface,” Iolanda informed Mattie.

She did not need to bother—Mattie already had guessed it from the feverish movement that started in the morning and the endless chain of the miners and the spiders dragging out the crates with explosives and the few muskets that they possessed along with boxes of bullets. She was not sure whether the resistance of the city had been subdued, or if the miners were getting ready for their last assault.

“Did you see it yet?” Iolanda asked.

“See what?”

“If you need to ask then you haven’t,” Niobe said, smiling. “Come on, I’ll show you. Sebastian is getting it ready.”

Mattie followed Niobe through the tunnels, marveling at the ease with which Niobe navigated the maze. The beam of her lantern snatched the sparkling veins of ore on the rough surface of the walls from the darkness.

Mattie had never been this far in the tunnels—it felt different. The air grew cold and sharp, and condensation trickled down the walls. The supporting scaffolding was scarce, and Mattie guessed that these were little-used tunnels.

“Can you smell the river?” Niobe asked.

“Yes,” Mattie answered. “We’re under the city, aren’t we?”

“Not far from the paper factory,” Niobe confirmed. “The mines come close to the sewers here—this is why they were abandoned. They couldn’t dig farther without the risk of damaging the sewers or flooding the mines if they got too close to the river.”

“Can we get to the city from here?”

Niobe shrugged. “It’s possible. But first, look at this.”

She led Mattie to a large cavern where water stood ankle-deep and dripped down along the walls, through tiny channels shaped over many years. There were human voices there too, and clanging of metal, and the acrid smell of smoke. As they moved carefully, their feet uncertain on the silty slippery floor, something big started to take shape in the darkness, and Mattie gasped the moment she discerned the true dimensions of the contraption.

It was as tall as two men, broad and squat, furnished with a multitude of jointed legs, like a giant crab. The rivets of the creature’s carapace were mismatched, some dull and gray, others shining copper. In the center of the machine there was a small tower, and through its glass Mattie saw a man within. The contraption groaned and shuddered, and the gears ground heavily within it.

“What is it?” Mattie said.

“A weapon,” Niobe answered. “Sebastian built it—others helped, of course. I suspect that this is why miners tolerated our presence. They don’t like the mechanics or the machines, but if any can be used to their advantage . . . ”

Mattie circumvented the machine and found herself staring down the barrel of a short and broad cannon. She had no doubt that the contraption would be a fitting match for the mechanics’ barricades on the surface as well as the enforcers’ muskets.

“Impressed?” Niobe asked.

Mattie nodded wordlessly. She was impressed although perhaps not in the way her friend meant. Along with her fear at the machine’s formidable proportions and its obvious destructive capabilities, Mattie felt relief—there was a finality about the thing, sitting so calmly and yet boiling and shuddering with the hidden workings of its mechanism. It would be capable of ending the fighting, and it would be capable of overcoming the city’s resistance. Mattie was ashamed to realize that she did not truly care who won—all she wanted was for this to end, so she could go home and resume the making of her unguents, not before getting her key of course, but otherwise she wanted things to go back to the way they were. And it didn’t really matter who was governing the city—as long as they kept building such machines, people would bleed, and there would be work for an alchemist. Mattie proudly thought that she was a good one—after all, she was the one to free the gargoyles from their bondage, the only one to accomplish such a difficult task among those who had tried. And that had to count for something.