Ekaterina Sedia - The Alchemy of Stone

“What are you thinking about?” Loharri asked.

“Nothing,” Mattie said. “Everything. The Soul-Smoker, for once—did you know that he had been in the orphanage?”

“Yes.” Loharri scowled. “I have to go back—the Calculator is malfunctioning.”

“What’s the problem?” Mattie asked.

Loharri shrugged. “We ask it how to increase the coal supply, and it tells us to send everyone in the city to dig for it.”

Mattie laughed. “It’s not just ugly, it’s also dumb.”

“You may be right. But we know what the problem is, we can fix it now.” Loharri turned away.

Mattie waved after his long, narrow back, clad in black wool despite the warmth and the sun. “That’s what you always say,” she whispered when she was certain that he could not hear her.

With Mattie, it was like this—her first weeks of life were spent on the bench in mostly- or half-assembled state. She retained snatches of those memories, even though they scared her with the sight of her own disembodied legs standing on the floor all by themselves, and several porcelain faces staring at her with empty sockets while she cried out, naked and alone. Loharri called it ‘growing pains’, and she agreed at least with the second part. He kept finding new problems and new solutions that in turn caused more problems, until Mattie was quite sure that she would never walk, would never be made whole. And then, as if by a miracle, she worked, complete and functional. In his weaker moments, Loharri called it a celestial intervention. Whatever the cause was, here she was now, Loharri’s voice still ringing in her ears. I now know what the problem is; I can fix it.

She returned home to find Sebastian preoccupied with one of her books—the one about gargoyle history. She watched his profile for a while, his crinkled forehead, his lowered thoughtful eyes. Perhaps Iolanda was correct—perhaps Mattie was in love. Or perhaps it was just desperation to break free of Loharri’s hold.

Sebastian looked up over his shoulder and smiled. “Mattie,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about what I said earlier. I didn’t mean to dismiss you; I didn’t mean to imply that…” His large palm stroked his short hair absent-mindedly. “How do I put this?”

“You can’t love a machine,” she said. “I understand.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I just don’t know… how.”

His skin, soft and smooth, beckoned her hand, and she touched his cheek, and felt the pulsing of blood under her fingers and saw the blooming of a dark blush a moment later.

“What are you doing?” Sebastian asked, but did not move away.

She remembered the words, even though she had never uttered them before. “Making love,” she whispered.

Sebastian remained seated, his black eye looking at her askance, as if unsure what to do.

Mattie was rather at a loss for ideas herself, and she bent down and wrapped her arms around him; her fingers touched on his chest, her cheek pressed against the back of his neck.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her in front of him. “Let’s take a look at you,” he murmured. “You know, I have no idea what you look like under this dress.”

Her fingers picked up the fabric of her skirt, lifting it demurely just above her ankles.

He studied the double bones, shining and slender, meeting at the metal joint that held the front and the back parts of her foot together—metal toes and wooden heel. He reached under her skirt, his warm fingers stroking past the roundness of her knee joint, brushing against the polished inner surface of her thigh, long and curved, and came to rest against the smooth metal plate between her legs.

“Not like this,” Mattie whispered, and touched his hand to her chest, pressing his palm against the tiny glass window.

He finally understood and pulled her into his lap. He yanked at the fabric concealing her breast, and his mouth found the keyhole as if by instinct. She froze—a troubling mix of fear and lightheaded pleasure—as his tongue circled the circumference of the keyhole. He forced the tip in, once, twice, and she felt the vibrant life flood her. He wasn’t winding her, but her whole body responded, rocking in rhythm with her heartbeat, she squirmed in his lap and his kisses and caressing fingers grew hungrier, more urgent. He pulled her dress off her shoulders, touched her inlays like piano keys, tangled his fingers in her hair. His mouth pressed against her lips and then her breasts, and then her lips again.

Mattie fled to the Soul-Smoker—it seemed like he and his many ghosts were the only ones she could still talk to. Confusion overwhelmed Mattie as she ran through the streets, so alive and yet so different from what she remembered. In search of any distraction to prevent her mind from latching onto the single thought— I have let him touch me. I made him touch me —she stopped by the public telegraph. The small foyer that hosted the apparatus and the long yards of tape it spewed incessantly, recording the news, passing messages, mounded in front of it, like some grotesque tapeworm tangled beyond any hope. The clerks let it be, sitting in their little niche, protected from the ravages of the public by thick bars.

“Anything for the alchemists?” Mattie asked.

The clerk, a young redheaded man named Janus, yawned. “Not since three days ago.”

Mattie felt a guilty pang from not having checked in so long. “May I see it?”

The clerk dug through the large metal case divided into hundreds of private enclosures, where the important messages went to sit for a week before being disposed off.

“It’s very quiet today. You were mobbed last week.”

The clerk, his shoulders and bony elbows moving energetically as if he were kneading dough, laughed. “Yeah, and two days ago everyone just decided, screw this. There’s so much bad news you can absorb before wanting to close your eyes and curl up in a corner, yes?”

“What happened two days ago?” Mattie asked the young man’s back.

“The Duke died,” he said. “His wife and daughter recovered enough to join the rest of the court.”

“Thank you.” Mattie’s mind tried to figure out what it meant for the city, and as chaotic as her thoughts were, she felt that the changes she considered were already in motion, the great blocks of stone that tumbled slowly into place, locking things in like the slab of the jail door slamming into its doorway, sealing off all sunlight and hope.

“Here’s your message,” the red-haired clerk said. “It’s encoded.”

Mattie took the ring out of her pocket and quickly read the message. She had to read it several times, since her eyes slid off the words, refusing to absorb their meaning.

The message was from Bokker, who had looked through the alchemical records. One of the names in the missing mechanics’ medallions showed up—Sebastian’s. The medallion was presented by a man who had ordered some quantity of explosives. Moreover, Bokker advised that the man who had used the medallion was tall but wore a hood obscuring his face; but by the color of his hands the alchemist thought that the man was an easterner—Bokker was especially insistent on mentioning this detail, as well as the fact that there were very few easterners admitted to the Lyceum, let alone to the society itself.

Mattie left the telegraph building, feeling a freezing cold starting at her heart and spreading outwards, freezing every emotion out of her. She tried to think of it logically— perhaps Sebastian’s medallion was listed because it was lost or stolen from him, perhaps someone else was using it. And yet, she knew that the medallion was on the list because he failed to return it after he was banished. Maybe he lost it afterwards, maybe he didn’t have anything to do with it. And yet, it fitted with his disappearances and his closeness to the palace, it fitted the overall pattern and his insistence that he could not leave the city. No matter how Mattie tried, there was no way of fitting it any other way without invoking a complex conspiracy—and as she knew, those were almost never true.