The Alchemy of Stone

Chapter 8




The streets in the city run like veins in a leaf, like paths in our very own labyrinth. We keep our hand on the wall at all times as we follow, unseen, gray on gray stone. We flatten ourselves against the stones, and we crawl in small and swift movements, like monstrous geckos. We follow the two women—one mechanical, the other alien to us, foreign—a child of shifting sand dunes and red earth, not of stone. Both smell of blood and hidden excitement, both carry jars filled with dark and viscous redness; it sloshes as they walk, laps at the walls of the jar with quiet hissing, and it reminds us of the ocean we’ve never seen but often imagined.

We think it amusing that lately we cannot love our children—children of stone, children that came from those who first settled in our creation; they do not seem to love us either. They have destroyed what we have built, and they think of us no longer. Our feeders are not refilled today, and we go hungry. It seems fitting somehow.

We remember another woman born of red earth on the other side of the sea. We remember her thin arms, fingers like bird claws. Her face covered in a cobweb of wrinkles, her dark-hooded fatigued eyes. Her soft, accented voice, always warmed by the elusive promise of salvation.

“Why did you turn to me?” she asked us, at a time when her hands were too tired to move and her heart was ready to give out. Why me, a plaintive cry of every lone soul in this city, alone as the day they were born.

We cannot explain this feeling, this stirring, wistful like the smell of linden blooms in the blue moonlit night. We only feel, we feel the absence of love from the stone, from the city, we feel uprooted from our soil. And we seek salvation from all the unloved children of the world.

On the way, Niobe relented under Mattie’s pitiful stare (she extended her eyestalks for that very purpose), and confided that blood alchemy had many uses—love spells and divinations, as well as darker purposes. She told Mattie that in her homeland the blood homunculi were used to temporarily trap restless spirits, forcing them to divulge their secrets and use their incorporeal nature to peek into the time yet unwashed over the world but accessible to spirits, unmoored as they were from their physical confines.

“How far into the future can they see?” Mattie asked, fascinated.

Niobe smiled. “It’s unpredictable. Sometimes they confuse future and past, or even present—it is all the same to them. Know where we could catch a few spirits?”

“Yes,” Mattie said. “The Soul-Smoker has them all. But I doubt he’d give any of them up.”

“Soul-Smoker?” Niobe asked, frowning. “What’s that?”

Mattie explained what Soul-Smokers did for a living, and told Niobe about Ilmarekh and his sad state.

“Isn’t anyone happy in this place?” Niobe said.

Mattie considered her answer. “Some are. All are, at one time or another. I’ll bet even Ilmarekh is happy occasionally.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Niobe said but did not elaborate further. Instead, she quickened her step and sang a tune Mattie was not familiar with, swinging the blood-filled jar in rhythm with her song.

Mattie hurried after, intensely curious about the blood alchemy now. “I wonder if Ilmarekh would agree to let us trap a soul or two before he gets to them. Or maybe he’d think it’s cruel.”

Niobe laughed. “Patience, Mattie. Let me show you some simple stuff today. Besides, if I go to see the Soul-Smoker with you, won’t he steal my soul too?”

“He doesn’t steal them.” Mattie felt protective of Ilmarekh. “It’s just your soul might decide to join the rest; believe me, he doesn’t need another voice whispering to him.”

“He must be crazier than a fighting fish,” Niobe said. “You have strange friends.”

“Only strange people want to be friends with a machine,” Mattie said.

Niobe laughed. “I suppose so.”

Mattie caught up to Niobe, and looked around. They were in the part of the district she rarely visited, and she realized that there were many dark faces among the passersby. It made sense to her, she supposed, that foreigners settled close to each other—people seemed to like company of their own kind.

Niobe seemed to know many people—she constantly smiled and waved, and people smiled and waved back. The smells that wafted from the doors and windows, open on account of warm weather, set Mattie’s sensors afire with their strangeness—she recognized sandalwood and incense of some sort, fermenting bread, fresh berries, and unfamiliar cooking.

“There seem to be a lot more of your people here since I last visited,” Mattie said.

Niobe shrugged. “People move, they bring their families. They help each other too—when I first came, I had nothing with me but my bag and an address. And these people were strangers to me back home, but here they treated me like family, took me in, helped me find a place. Without them, I would never have figured out how to join the society and apply for an alchemist’s license. We have to stick together—I bet you stick together with your own kind too.”

Mattie shook her head. The vision of the automata at the mechanics’ gathering moving along the walls in a blind, shambling procession, deaf and dumb and as unaware of the world as the tables around them, flashed in her mind. She wanted nothing to do with them.

“Why not?” Niobe persisted, simultaneously making a pretend scary face at a gaggle of small barelegged children that ran through the streets with an air of great joyful purpose.

“I’m not like them,” Mattie said, “Well, most of them. There are a few intelligent automatons around; a few of them are even emancipated. But you know, nobody likes making them. And they . . . we don’t even like ourselves.”

“I’m surprised to hear that.” Niobe turned into a street too narrow for proper traffic, animated by just a few pedestrians. There was a low buzz in the air, a suppressed droning of a multitude of voices at a distance, and Mattie guessed that they were getting closer to the market. “I would think that intelligent automatons would be valuable.”

“They are expensive,” Mattie said, “but not valuable at all. We make poor servants—one advantage automatons have is that they don’t talk back or complain. Very few tasks need an actively engaged mind.”

“And the mechanics and the alchemists have it covered,” Niobe said. “I understand.”

The market had become larger too, and Mattie regretted not visiting it more often. There were quite a few booths that sold herbs and minerals and bits of rare wildlife. She couldn’t help but stop every few steps, craning her neck at a lovely display of boars’ hooves or bottles with golden oil of uncertain origin.

Niobe followed her, asking occasional questions about the use of plants. She seemed curiously ignorant of their properties, and Mattie quite enjoyed explaining that two piles of small dried blue flowers were, in fact, quite different—one was lavender, the other veronica, and each had its own properties.

Niobe sniffed at the flowers and laughed, and told Mattie that where she came from, all plants were subdivided into blood plants and water plants, plants with yellow sap, and plants that cured nausea. She scoffed at dried salamanders and insisted that only live ones were suitable for harnessing elemental powers, she lingered over large shapeless chunks of rock, her long fingers tracing the silvery veins of precious metals and her soft voice reciting their affinities to sulfur or volcanic fire. Mattie could not remember the last time she had been able to lose herself in conversation so completely.

She lost track of time as well, and the sun was starting to tilt west when they finally emerged from the battleground of the markets, both loaded with precious ingredients and professing mutual surprise at how little they managed to spend in the face of overwhelming temptation.

They entered one of the side streets, and Mattie recognized the jewelry store—the only one in the city that carried lapis lazuli, mother-of-pearl, and large chunks of amber. Mattie used to come there with Loharri—he picked through the precious stones for his projects, while she browsed through the piles of amber, looking for pieces with entrapped insects or bubbles of air from long ago.

As if answering her thoughts, Loharri emerged from the doorway of the jewelry shop. His sharp eyes slid over Mattie to her companion and lingered a bit, before meeting Mattie’s gaze. “Slumming?” he said. “Don’t worry, I am too. Who’s your friend?”

“I’m Niobe,” Niobe said. “Forgive me for not shaking your hand.” She shrugged apologetically at her many parcels.

“Forgiven,” Loharri said. “What’s in the jar?”

“Sheep’s blood,” Niobe said. “What’s your name?”

Loharri frowned a bit. “Loharri’s my name. I am a member of the order of Mechanics. Surely you’ve heard of us?”

Niobe nodded. If she felt out of place or intimidated, she didn’t show it, and Mattie marveled at the difference in her demeanor compared to the latest alchemists’ meeting. “I’ve heard of you. You’re the ones who build all those factories that make it impossible to take a stroll by the river.”

Mattie cringed—Loharri didn’t like being challenged, or addressed in such a familiar manner.

Loharri produced the coldest smile in his repertoire. “Everything has its price. Yet, we managed to do some good—I’m the maker of your friend,” he said, pointing at Mattie. “I’m sure she mentioned me.”

“In passing,” Mattie said. She found it easier being rude to him while Niobe was nearby. “Niobe’s an alchemist, too.”

“I noticed.” Loharri gave a cursory nod of his head. “You will excuse me, but I have a business meeting to attend. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mattie.”

Niobe turned and watched him disappear behind the corner. She then smiled at Mattie. “Quite a character.”

“Yes,” Mattie said, undecided on whether she should feel proud of Loharri or embarrassed by him.

“What happened to his face?”

“I don’t know,” Mattie said. “He rarely tells me anything about himself.”

Niobe sighed and started up the stairs. “They never do,” she remarked in a low voice, apparently addressing herself more than Mattie.

Niobe’s craft proved to be as difficult as it was fascinating. In her cramped laboratory, smaller than Mattie’s and twice as cluttered, Mattie learned to burn blood and refine it through a long, sinuous alembic; Niobe showed her how to mix the blood essence—black powder that smelled of burned horn and rust, and crumbled in Mattie’s fingers—with the viscous resin of rare trees, how to shape the resulting sticky mass into tiny figure and imbue the lifeless homunculus with powers curative or destructive—it didn’t seem to matter to the homunculus, who absorbed poison or antidote with equal ease.

Niobe spoke at length about the properties of blood—its affinity with metals and earth, its ability to transform any element to its most basic and potent character. Its love of human flesh, the command it held over human mind, the raw power of both healing and ruin.

“Would your potions work on automatons?” Mattie asked.

Niobe shrugged. “I never tried it, but I think so. You are made of metal . . . ”

“And bone,” Mattie interjected. “Whalebone.”

“And human hair,” Niobe said, looking over Mattie’s short dark locks that barely reached her shoulders. “That’s unusual.”

“Yes,” Mattie agreed. “I don’t know of any other automatons who are made this way—I don’t even know why Loharri made me like this.”

“Do you know where he got the hair?”

Mattie shook her head.

Niobe smiled, stretched, and stepped away from the bench. She had to light the lamp as the darkness gathered outside, and the high, tense voices of the children fell silent and were soon displaced by those of adults, coming from the people carrying leisurely conversations, sitting on their porches or standing by their windows, chatting with the neighbors across the street—a street so narrow that people on opposite sides could almost touch hands if they wished to do so.

Mattie stood by the window, listening to the night voices—more resonant, it seemed, than during the day, and kinder, more sedate, lulled by the evening meal and impending sleep. Many spoke in a language Mattie did not understand, but the sound soothed her all the same.

The house across the street from Niobe’s workshop had its windows open, and the second floor apartment had a window box, brimming with blooming lavender and small irises, blue like the night, bright white arrows on their lower lips shining in the darkness. Mattie smelled the sweet and bitter aroma of the flowers.

Niobe stood by her side. “This is my favorite time of day,” she said. “I feel that I will grow to love this city.”

“I like it too,” Mattie said. “I feel . . . invisible and yet a part of it.”

“Invisible is good,” Niobe said.

“Loharri doesn’t understand that,” Mattie said. “He always wanted to show me off, even when I thought I’d rather die than go out.”

“Of course he doesn’t understand.” Now that they were alone Niobe did not bother to hide her contempt. “Even that scar of his . . . How do you expect him to know shame if he never had to hide in his life?”

Mattie shrugged, the metal bones in her shoulders grating together with a long dry whisper. “Maybe he has. I know so little about him. He has many lovers, and other mechanics hate him—that’s it, really.”

Niobe laughed. “Who would’ve thought?”

“But it’s true,” Mattie said. “Why, just today . . . ” She broke off, suddenly remembering Iolanda’s whispered promise.

“What?” Niobe prompted.

Mattie shook her head. “Nothing. I just remembered something. I have to go.”

“It’s getting late anyway.” Niobe yawned. “Stop by soon, all right? I like working with you.”

“I will,” Mattie promised. “Thank you for teaching me—I’ll teach you next time.”

She clattered down the stairs and into the sweet-smelling night streets. The eastern district was vast, and she had a long way home before her. She decided to run.

She picked up her skirts, her bag of offal and the jar of blood tucked under her arm, and she ran like the wind. Loharri discouraged her from running—her joints were delicate, and he did not want them to wear out too soon. Mattie decided that one time would not hurt her; besides, she enjoyed running.

Her feet struck the cobbles with an alarmingly loud noise, but Mattie did not care. The cool breeze washed over her porcelain face, and thick locks of her hair streamed behind her, like the wings of a night bird. Her skirts, awkward and bulky, hitched by her knees, rustled as she ran. She needed no air, and she felt no fatigue, but the rhythmic motion helped her think.

She felt closer to Niobe than anyone else. She loved Ogdela, but the old woman had never forgotten about the gulf between her and Mattie. Niobe was less polite than Ogdela, and occasionally her comments made Mattie self-conscious; yet, there was less of a chasm between them. Mattie resolved to teach Niobe her favorite formulae, even the ones she discovered herself and guarded as jealously as any other alchemist would.

She slowed only once she saw her house and the apothecary sign in its downstairs windows. She straightened her skirts and walked up with calm steps, expecting to find an angry note from Iolanda or a bored messenger.

Instead, she discovered Iolanda her own self. The joviality of the morning had disappeared, and she frowned at Mattie and rose from the steps where she sat like a commoner. “Where have you been?”

Mattie held up her parcel and the jar of blood.

Iolanda’s nose wrinkled. “That’s disgusting. And it smells like a dead sheep.”

“Would you like to come in?” Mattie asked, and led the way up the stairs.

Once inside, Iolanda marched straight to the kitchen. “Can I trouble you for some liquor?” she asked, a shade more politely than before.

Mattie poured her a glass of currant brandy she kept for especially distraught visitors.

Iolanda tossed it back with one swift motion and grimaced. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ve been getting quite a chill.”

“My apologies,” Mattie said mildly. “You didn’t give me an exact time, and I had errands to run.”

“I understand,” Iolanda said. “In any case, I have a request for you. Just give me a second to collect my thoughts.”

Mattie poured her another glass and waited, patient, as the fireflies outside lit up, one by one, yellow in the blue and thick darkness. Mattie wondered where they came from.

Mattie’s memories had shapes—some were oblong and soft, like the end of a thick blanket tucked under a sleeping man’s cheek; others had sharp edges, and one had to think about them carefully in order not to get hurt. Still others took on the shapes of cones and cubes, of metal joints and peacock feathers, and her mind felt cluttered and grew more so by the day, as she accumulated more awkward shapes, just like Loharri collecting more and more garbage in his workshop.

To remember things, she had to let them come to her, as the sounds and the sights around prompted and jostled some of the shapes loose; otherwise, she had to pick among the clutter, despairing of ever finding the pertinent piece of her past in the chaos.

Seeing Iolanda sitting in her kitchen, absentmindedly rolling the empty glass—back and forth, back and forth—between her soft palms reminded Mattie of another night in this kitchen, a year or two ago.

Loharri had showed up unexpectedly then; it was raining, and his black wool suit was soaked through, and the overcoat hung in heavy folds impregnated with water, like the broken wings of a gargoyle. Water pooled in the brim of his hat as in a rain gutter. “Do you have anything to drink?” he asked.

Mattie always kept a bottle for her clients—most of them needed it before they could speak freely of their troubles and ailments, of their need to make the garden grow or to fix the crooked spine of a spiteful child, of their misery. Back then, business was better than today—people would still rather buy a potion to make a servant sleep less and work harder in preference to buying an automaton, they still trusted alchemists more than mechanics. She had many clients, and bought a bottle of fruit brandy a week.

Loharri sat down heavily, not bothering to remove his rain-soaked overcoat; she had to free his listless arms from the sleeves and carefully lift the hat off his head, trying not to spill more water than was unavoidable. She hung the overcoat on the back of a chair by the burning stove and poured him a glass.

Loharri drank and then he talked. Mattie had not seen him like this before, even though she was familiar with his mood swings and proclivity to ennui. The words poured out of his mouth in a constant stream, and Mattie understood little of it. He spoke of people she had never met, of places she had never visited.

“Why are they afraid of us?” he said, plaintively. “We are just trying to help; we’re making things better. Without us, they wouldn’t even have running water, and yet . . . ”

His voice trailed off, and Mattie considered if it would be impolite to ask who ‘they’ were; she guessed that ‘we’ referred to the Mechanics.

“You are my only hope, Mattie,” he muttered, alcohol blurring his voice. “You are the only worthwhile thing I’ve ever done.”

“I’m not a thing,” Mattie said.

“It’s not the point,” he answered. “The point is that I have nothing besides you.”

She comforted him the only way she knew how—she let him stroke her hair with his trembling fingers, the bone-white cuff of his shirt brushing against her cheek. She tolerated his searching, restless hands, let them entangle in her locks; she let him pull her close and touch her face with his lips.

He let her go. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and poured himself another drink.

Then he talked again, about the oppressive walls and the dark skies that thundered and spewed lightning, of the stone closing in, of the strange malaise of the mind that made one reluctant to think, to break away from the tyranny of the gargoyles’ city. No matter how the Mechanics modified and rebuilt it, the ancient unease remained, threatening to wake up at any moment and to engulf them all, pull them back into the stone the city was born from; then he talked about the new road the Mechanics were blasting through the hills, the road that would reach the sea and bring in prosperity and reason.

“Shh,” Mattie said and stroked his shoulder. “Have another drink.”

He obeyed, then fell silent and brooded awhile, and Mattie kept stroking his shoulder, unsure whether she was still responsible for giving him comfort, or if she were free enough to tell him harshly to go home.

She could never quite bring herself to hate him—she teetered on the brink often, never crossing over. She had learned resentment and annoyance while being with him, and cold gloating joy; but there was also contentment and sympathy, and pity and gratitude.

“This city watches you, always,” he murmured. He pulled Mattie closer, his arms wrapping about her waist and his face buried in her skirts. Mattie thought then that it was rather sad that he sought comfort by embracing a machine—the construct that was not built to give it. But she tried, and the trying threatened to rend her heart in half.

This memory was so vivid that she could not help but clasp her hands together.

Iolanda looked up from her glass, and smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was lost in thought there.”

“Me too,” Mattie said.

“What were you thinking about?” Iolanda asked.

“Loharri,” Mattie answered. “He seems so vulnerable sometimes.”

Iolanda raised her eyebrows and took another sip from her glass. “Really? I did not see it in him.”

“Maybe not.” Mattie sat on the stool by the kitchen table—she was not tired, but she knew people appreciated being on the same eye level as their interlocutors. “What were you thinking about?”

“My order for you,” she said. “It’s not easy for me to ask it . . . but can you make something that would compel a person to listen to me?”

“To listen or to obey?” Mattie asked.

Iolanda shrugged. “Either would be fine. I need someone’s attention to persuade them, but if you can help that persuasion I will not say no.”

Mattie watched the fireflies flickering outside. She knew about compulsion; she understood coercion—like only an automaton with the key in somebody else’s hands could understand. True enough, Loharri was good—he never threatened her with the key, but the very fact that he could if his heart turned that way was enough.

And yet, if she was coerced, was it wrong of her to do it to others? “Who is it for?” Mattie asked.

“Your master,” Iolanda answered, not looking away. “I promise I won’t harm him.”

“No,” Mattie said slowly. “It’s all right. I don’t really mind if you do.”

Iolanda arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

Fireflies crowded by the window; the lone lamp in her kitchen must’ve looked like one of their brethren to them, trapped inside an incomprehensible, impenetrable barrier, alone like an air bubble trapped in amber. The poor sods strained to get through, not realizing that any semblance of kinship or recognition was just an illusion, and there was nothing hidden from sight; there was nothing but the surface, and the surface lied.

“Yes,” Mattie said. “Do as you will. You want him to love you? To tell you secrets?” She tapped her metal fingers on the jar lid, sending waves through the red sticky liquid inside. “I’m learning some new tricks, and I will bind him to you by blood, I will twist him to your liking.”

“Something tells me you would want more than money for this service,” Iolanda said. Her high cheekbones flushed with color, alcohol or excitement, joy or fear, and who could tell them apart anyway. “What do you want?”

“My key,” Mattie answered. “All I ever wanted was my key and he has it. You can’t steal it, it is bound to him. But he can give it to you, and he won’t give it to me.”

Iolanda touched Mattie’s hand. “You poor thing,” she whispered. “I had no idea.”

“Do you understand then?”

Iolanda nodded. “Show me a woman who wouldn’t. I promise I’ll try to get you your key back.”

“Don’t promise,” Mattie said. “Just try. As for the rest, it is not my concern.”

Iolanda rose from her seat. “Bind him well,” she said. “And I will see you soon.”