Ekaterina Sedia - The Alchemy of Stone

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 absentmindedly. “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 be 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.