We sit all along the wall like giant gray pigeons, our hands clenched under our sharp chins, our wings folded primly, our eyes narrowed, and our ears pricked up. If someone were to wander by at this wet, ungodly hour, they would believe us turned into stone, inanimate like the wall we grip with our clawed toes. Or they would wonder what the gargoyles are doing out of their caves and hiding places, why are we out and about. But there is nobody here to pry or to wonder, and we watch and we listen and we wait, and we do not know what they are talking about.
Chapter 3
The next morning, Mattie remembered that she still had to finish Iolanda’s perfume. Fortunately, the night spent talking to the Soul-Smoker taught her more about regret than, she suspected, the entire city could. She found dried wormwood in her extensive apothecary, and prepared to sublimate its essential oil—she lit the burner and cleaned the aludel, and assembled it so that the smaller vessel sitting on top of the larger one was tilted at enough of an angle for the condensing vapor to slide down the concave walls into the waiting receptacle. As the wormwood heated, she crushed the brittle spiny leaves of rosemary, downy-gray, and mixed them with extractants and solvents to pry away its properties of memory.
One did not regret what one did not remember; Ilmarekh, who remembered every moment, every twinge of hundreds of former inhabitants of the city, told her that. The opium made him talkative last night, and the souls in his possession crowded and pressed, trying so desperately to look out of his blind eyes, struggling so valiantly to move his reluctant, cottony tongue. He spoke in a hundred voices; only one of them was Beresta, but Mattie felt that it would be impolite to ignore the rest of them, and she listened to their laments and reminiscences, to their complaints about children who grew up and never visited, about the sorrow of dark alleys and the cold, wet slither of a robber’s knife.
Mattie listened, waiting for the small voice of the alchemist woman who could tell her about the gargoyles. But it was so crowded that she only had a chance to utter the name of her son—Sebastian, and the street he lived on. She didn’t say anything else, but it was enough for now. Mattie thought that she would visit Ilmarekh again, perhaps visit him often. He knew so much, and yet no one dared to ask him questions for fear of losing their own souls. He was all Mattie’s, and she was not a woman to miss her chances.
The warm smell of wormwood filled her laboratory, and she collected the few transparent, pale yellow drops that waited for her in the aludel. She blended them with rosemary and with the sage-and-myrrh concoction she had prepared last night. The musk of ambergris enveloped the rest of the ingredients in its sensual embrace, forcing them all together, the bark of the cypress and the sharp, bitter camphor softened by the gentle herbal scents.
Satisfied with her work, Mattie nodded to herself and let the mixture settle and blend. She was about to go out for a walk, and maybe pick up a few chemicals she had fancied for a while but had no means to buy until now, when a sharp rapping on the door announced a visitor.
She opened the door to see Loharri—dressed in a formal frock coat, he seemed especially thin and sharp-edged. “Busy?” he said.
“No.” She stood in the doorway preventing him from entering. The smell of Iolanda’s perfume saturated the air, and she could not risk him recognizing it later and guessing at Mattie’s connection to Iolanda. “Going out?”
“Just an informal gathering,” he said, although his clothes clearly begged to differ. “Lunch with some friends and colleagues. Would you like to come?”
“Of course,” Mattie said. He rarely asked for favors nowadays, and she saw no reason to deny him. Besides, gatherings such as this always offered opportunities for eavesdropping. After her emancipation, she at first resented Loharri’s friends who treated her as before—that is, as his automaton, a part of him that deserved neither recognition nor acknowledgment as an independent entity. Later, she saw the advantage of being invisible—she walked into a room where mechanics talked about their secret business and they never missed a beat, never remembering or caring enough to notice that she was an alchemist and therefore a political enemy. She just didn’t know why Loharri kept giving her such opportunities.
“Hurry up then,” he said. “You might even learn something about your new friends.”
“Wait outside,” Mattie said. “I need to change.”
As she did—striped stockings, white and black, and a black dress with open neckline fringed with foamy white lace—Mattie puzzled over Loharri’s words. Why were the Mechanics suddenly interested in gargoyles? They affected the politics of the city very little—figureheads, outwardly respected but inconsequential. They remained outside of the daily life of the city, subject more to lore and superstitions than laws and elections. Their patronage of the Duke’s family and his court was symbolic—just like their predecessors who had undergone the inevitable transformation and now decorated the palace… they were even less important than the court, which persisted only, as Loharri often said, due to inertia and habit. Only the elected parties could pass laws, only they could command new construction and regulate commerce. But the Duke remained in his palace, useless and, as Mattie imagined, lonely.
Mattie descended the stairs and nodded at Loharri. He grimaced, pale and uncomfortable in his stern clothes. “Ready to go?”
She threaded her arm under his, and felt his tense sinews relax under the copper springs of her fingers. She hated admitting it to herself, but she stayed close to him because of the influence she had—she had the power to make him less concerned and more at ease, to make him smile even though it pained his broken face. She wondered at herself, at whether she would ever be able to forgive him for being her creator, for having such absolute control over her internal workings. For his love.
They headed uphill, toward the palace and the heavy gray architecture of the old buildings. Mattie suspected that the stone of which large rough blocks of the palace were hewn was the same as the stone gargoyles became, and wondered if there was a promising venue of investigation there; she made a mental note to take a mineral sample once they got to the old city.
“It’s too hot to walk,” Loharri said, even though the sun, still low over the rooftops, barely kissed the pavement and the air still retained the pleasant coolness of the night. His gaze cast about for a cab or a sedan.
“It’s fine,” Mattie said. “I enjoy walking, and you could use a constitutional. You spend too much time indoors.”
Loharri scoffed. “I should’ve made you without a voice-box. Being lectured by my own automaton—why, that’s an indignity no man should be forced to tolerate.”
Mattie was used to his querulous tone, and simply changed the subject. “Did you know that Beresta had a son?”
“I heard,” he replied, smiling. “I see you spoke to the Soul-Smoker.”
Mattie inclined her head with a slow, ratcheted creaking of the neck joints. “I have. You should meet him.”
“No thanks,” Loharri said. “I prefer to keep a hold of my soul, thank you.” He almost stumbled as a large puddle suddenly opened before them on the pavement, but circumvented it.