Ekaterina Sedia - The Alchemy of Stone

“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.

We hear the call, and we run, all the while wondering whether we should be more dignified than to run errands. But the girl is ill—we saw her, her face torn off and the rest of her so broken we would’ve wept if we could. So we do the next best thing, and we rush. People in the streets crane their necks to see us bounding across the rooftops, in the clear light of the day, with no time to hide, and they point and shout. We think dimly that they must think that it was the recent events at the palace and the eastern gates that disturbed us so greatly.

The house where the girl was made, where she used to live is almost invisible for the solid wall of weeds and rose bushes— there’s a narrow path leading through the vegetation to the door. The house stands apart from the rest, and we have no choice but to descend and run across the ground, like fast gray dogs, running on all fours through the fragrant hedge. It lashes out at us, and the branches whip and slide off our hard gray skin, and we wonder if it is growing harder, if small fissures are starting to appear, and if last night another one of us has gone, to leave us fewer and weaker. We knock on the door politely.