“What was that?” I asked, unable to suppress a shiver.
“Mostly just concrete,” he said.
I looked at the broken length of the twisted creature. “That vial didn’t hold that much concrete.”
Caleb slipped the empty vial inside his coat and shook his head in disappointment at me. When he spoke, there was anger in his words. “See? It’s just that kind of linear, literal thinking just like upstairs with the stone that is holding you back,” he said. “Sure, I get it. You carve things. They’re finite, tangible . . . but alchemy isn’t about size or proportion all the time. You see a single vial of concrete. You know what I see as an alchemist? A bit of concrete mixed with some quick-spreading Kimiya that accelerates growth.” He shook his head, then slapped me on the shoulder as he walked past me. “You need to get that kind of thinking out of your head.”
Despite what I had just accomplished, I felt tremendously stupid. I stared at the stone-still creature a moment longer as the sounds of Caleb’s splashing away down the tunnel rose behind me. Turning, I ran to catch up, careful not to fall.
“I’m still learning,” I protested. “Caleb, you have to understand. So much of what I can do is literally textbook—notes from Alexander—but there’s no school for this. You’re the only other practitioner I know!”
“Lucky me,” he said, softening a bit. “And look at all this quality time we’re getting to spend together reeking of sewage.”
“Maybe this Witch and Bitch club can help us with making another gargoyle,” I suggested, trying to ignore the smells all around us. “They’re freelancers, after all. They did some work for Desmond Locke. Why not us?”
Caleb stopped and spun around to face me. “No!” he shouted.
“Well, why not?”
Caleb looked like he was biting his tongue as he composed himself, and I waited, with more patience than I expected to have considering I was knee deep in a river of filth.
“First of all,” he said, “I’m the freelancer you need to be working with. Do you really want to work with some group whose security system you just defeated?”
“That was more you than me,” I said.
Caleb sighed, running his fingers through his hair before he realized how gross it was and gave up. “It was both of us,” he said. “We work well together. I don’t want to bring in outsiders when I know we can do this ourselves. You’ll learn quickly that the fewer people you get involved in something, the less chance of other people’s messing it up.”
All this talk of us working together, it was almost romantic. Again, if not for where we were standing.
“Okay,” I said, holding up my newfound secret book of Alexander’s. “We have this to work from and a bunch of test gargoyle subjects to animate and all that, so no witches for now.”
I started sloshing my way toward him. “But I would like to know more about this Witch and Bitch club,” I added. “We might have defeated their sentry, but we didn’t have an easy time of it.”
Caleb looked down at his clothes in disgust and turned away, heading off down the sewer tunnel.
“Oh, I plan on seeing them again,” he said. “And when I do? I’m going to really give them something to bitch about.”
“Tough words for a guy covered in shit,” I said, hoping this tunnel actually led the hell out of the sewer system before I found myself having to fight mutant turtles of the teenage variety.
Caleb did not seem amused by my comment. “If we succeed in animating another gargoyle, I may have to borrow it for a bit,” he said. “Call it a vengeance loaner.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said. I couldn’t muster the strength for vengeance just then. I wasn’t even sure if I could muster it to shower before collapsing from exhaustion.
I just hoped I didn’t collapse while I was still down here.
Twenty
Stanis
Time had not always been kind to the copper of the large female statue that stood towering over what the humans called Liberty Island. Now, standing atop it, it was clear that at some point the humans had intervened to preserve her form, which gave me immense satisfaction, even amid my own current turmoil. I found her constant vigil over the city I had come to love soothing, her presence helpful in centering my thoughts.
I always gave thanks for her presence, even during the years of her restoration, when she was inaccessible and surrounded by scaffolding. At the moment it was most especially welcome as I attempted to sort out the mix of sensations that overwhelmed my mind. I always found a sadness in its face that matched my own. If only it, too, could come to life, I would gladly have welcomed discourse with it.
My newfound freedom had come at a price. Alexandra now worked with the very man who had tortured me at Kejetan’s command. I wasn’t sure what to do now that I was free, but I reasoned that my presence would be missed by my father if I should not return from the work he had tasked me with.
Worse, I imagined that Alexandra might then become a more specific target of Kejetan. In order to ensure her safety, I knew what I had to do and leapt into the night sky, heading out to sea.
It always took some navigation to find the freighter, but the farther out I flew, the higher I went, the sense of perspective making it easier to spy the ship in the darkness of the sea. I spiraled down toward its deck, alive with a handful of stone men and human Servants of Ruthenia, but it was not their activity that caught my eye. A familiar face lurked among the shadows of the shipping containers stacked on the deck of the ship.
Correcting my course, I aimed for the figure, and, before he could notice my approach, I had the alchemist’s head in one of my hands, lifting. Doubling the speed of my wings, I rose into the air as Caleb wrapped both his arms around the one holding his head, clinging on for his fragile human life. I came down on one of the more deserted upper decks of the ship, throwing open the door that led into one of the empty storage compartments there, then closing it behind us once we were inside.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, still holding him. “And where is Alexandra? She was with you when last I saw her.”
“Ow, ow, ow,” he said, pounding his fists against arm and clawed hand. “Let go of my head, and I’ll tell you.”
I unclenched my fist from around his skull and lowered my arm.
“Alexandra’s fine,” he said.
Now that we were no longer moving, a noxious odor filled the air around us and I stepped back from him. “What is that smell?”
“That would be me,” he said, raising his hand. “The oh-so-pleasant and hard-to-get-out scent of raw sewage.”
I leaned over him, my voice a growl. “You took Alexandra to the sewers?”
The alchemist raised his hands between the two of us and backed away.
“Technically, she took me,” he said. “But long story short, we found the spells we needed. She went home to sleep and study up on them, so that maybe we can build you a girlfriend or whatever, but she’s fine.”
“I am not in need of a girlfriend,” I said. “I am in need of allies.”
“I’m an ally,” he said.
“Are you?” I asked, unsure. “Back to my question, Caleb. Why exactly did you come back here?”
The alchemist shifted in place, full of nerves behind the bravado he was trying to convince me he had.
“I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends,” he said, rubbing the sides of his face where my claws had been digging in. “I’ve got unfinished business here that needs some discussion with the big man. I planned to cover my ass. What are you doing here?”