Ekaterina Sedia - The Alchemy of Stone

We follow them through the streets that were recently abandoned by the fighters, where bodies can still be found, lying face down or face up; we prefer the former as do the spiders—they always roll the dead on their stomachs before going through their pockets and collecting things the dead don’t really need. Then they drag them to the heaps that will become bonfires soon.

The surface of the Grackle Pond is sleek and gray, just like the sky above it, just like the fortifications erected on its distal shore. It is quiet now, and it looks deserted—-we almost believe the illusion, even though we know there are people crouching behind the barricades, some looking for the enemy through slits carved in metal, their hands tight on musket barrels, while others crawl away for supplies and come back with food or bullets. We know too that there are men hiding in the buildings, in every doorway along the street, waiting for an opportunity to take aim.

We notice a strange creature—similar to the one that had turned us, and yet different, for it does not smell of stone— toddle around the pond. We take positions to watch its progress, and we feel protective of it. We wonder if the mechanical girl is nearby then, if she’s among those hidden, waiting to storm the barricades. We wonder if the creature is carrying an important message, and we decide to guard it.

But it is only little, and men at the barricades do not see or pay attention to it. It climbs and flows over the barricades, and we follow. Here in the open, it is hard to hide but we slide through the shadows and the sparse bushes fringing the pond, we hover hidden by the low veil of smoke. We see behind the barricades, into a maze of fortifications and crates, people and automatons. We hover in the ash-filled fog and watch—we are not afraid that we will be seen; everyone is looking into the streets, not to the sky.

The homunculus is heading for the man lying on the ground, sleeping or resting or dead. No, not dead—he raises his head and he sees the creature. He sits up, slowly, sluggishly, and we recognize him by his twisted face. He holds his right arm to his chest with his left hand, and we see the dark right sleeve grown darker with blood. He looks at the homunculus as if he recognizes it, and he smiles.

“Come here, little fellow,” he says, and extends his injured arm. “Come here, I’ll feed you.”

The homunculus totters closer and drinks fat lazy drops falling from the man’s fingertips.

“There you go,” the man says, and he smiles with one side of his mouth. His motions are languid, as if he had just awakened—even when his eyes flicker upward to meet ours, he does not look startled or hurried. He doesn’t look away from us, hut speaks to the creature. “You’ll be my friend now, yes?”

The thing burbles in the affirmative, and laps at the pool of blood collected on the ground, and it swells up, up, like a rising loaf of bread.

The homunculus swells almost to bursting as it sops up the wounded man’s blood—not beautiful anymore, we whisper to ourselves. Never again, because there is just no going back with those things.

The wounded man rises to his knees, then to his feet, pushing himself off the ground with his good arm. The injured one only gets in the way and bleeds more. The people by the barricades look up—their faces so similar now, all hollow-cheeked and half-hidden in the thatches of ungroomed beards.

“Where are you going, Loharri?” one of them says, an older man with a generous sprinkling of gray in his beard and long hair. “The alchemists are coming to take care of the wounded, they will have something to stem the bleeding.”

“Look around you,” he says. “No one is coming.”

“You’re not going to forget your mechanic’s oath, are you?” the older man says.

Loharri shakes his head. “I’m not forgetting anything. But I will go, and I will talk to them, and if you want to shoot me in the back then help yourself.”

“You have no authority to negotiate,” the older man says.

Loharri smiles and looks down at the homunculus, which is pooling around his feet, just a fat blood smear. “I have as much authority as you do,” he says. “That is, not much. But enough to see what can be saved.” He looks at the pile of metal with sadness in his eyes, the same sadness we feel when we look down at all the children of our city whom we cannot help.

And then he walks between the twisted metal bars as tall as a man, and climbs over the corrugated sheets piled on top of each other. Once he reaches the top, he stops and thinks, crouching down for stability, but we can see that it takes him a lot of effort to remain upright.

He searches through his pockets and extracts a handkerchief—it used to be white at some point of its existence, but now it is crusted with blood and dirt. He waves it in the air; his opponents are invisible, but he and we know that they have him in the sights of their muskets.

He waves the handkerchief, stiff as a board, in the air to signal his peaceful intentions, and starts his slow descent onto the embankment of the pond below.

Mattie watched Iolanda biting her lips and pacing back and forth. They made a post of sorts in one of the abandoned houses, and judging by the smell of urine and burned rags, they were not the first ones to have done so. It had once been a nice dwelling—the wallpaper, white with delicate blue flowers, spoke of taste and wealth, and the remnants of the wooden floors, now wrenched free and dragged away somewhere to build fires, were well-polished and clean. There was no furniture remaining, and the small party camped out on the floors, apparently just happy to be anywhere but an underground mineshaft. There were maybe twenty people here, mostly courtiers and a few miners armed with axes and a couple of muskets. The crates with explosives were stacked in the kitchen, well out of sight. The men with weapons guarded the entrance, even though no danger was apparent. Mattie felt quite sure that the men at the barricade by the pond were not going to launch an offensive raid.

She listened to the distant sounds of carnage wrought by Sebastian’s war machine, and wondered if the Parliament building survived. Everyone talked excitedly about how all but a few pockets of resistance had been extinguished, and that soon they could start rebuilding. They talked about returning the land to the peasants, and improving conditions in the mines. She overheard a few of Iolanda’s friends arguing in fierce whispers whether the miners and the peasants would be fit to govern, and whether they should establish a temporary council consisting of the courtiers who had abandoned their position, and what to do about the enforcers—after all, they’ve been just following orders, and once the power changes hands, they would have no qualms about serving the new government, would they? And a new Soul-Smoker would have to be appointed—too bad the monks had left, but surely they could find one. Maybe among the spiders who really couldn’t hope for anything better.

For some reason, the conversation made Mattie feel sad—she thought that things always happened around her, but without letting her touch them directly. Life flowed around her, like a stream flows around a solitary rock, which, no matter how much it wanted to, was unable to see anything upstream or downstream from it.

Mattie shook her head. After all, she wouldn’t want it any other way—she was happy to retire into a quiet corner, where she did not have to look at Sebastian’s machine attacking the barricades, crushing metal and flesh with its massive legs and shooting fire from its cannon.