among the Mechanics was that explosives had been placed inside of the palace. The first explosion destroyed the outside walls and wings, and the second destroyed the palace itself.
Loharri was home. Like most mechanics, he had his own sources of information.
“What do you make of that?” Loharri said when Mattie, trembling with shock and unarticulated animal hurt, showed up on his doorstep.
“I don’t know,” she groaned. “I have to sit down.”
Loharri wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and she was grateful for support and the gentle warmth of his breath. He almost dragged her to his living room that had grown even more cluttered since she last visited, and sat her on the chaise that wore a slight but unmistakable imprint of Loharri’s angular form.
He examined her damaged hand, tisking to himself, and brought out the soldering iron. “I’ll disconnect your sensors while I work,” he said. “You’ll lose all sensation in this arm—don’t be alarmed.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I bought you a book.”
He glanced at the proffered tome and smiled. “Thank you, Mattie. You didn’t have to.”
“I was at the book shop when the explosions happened,” she said. “I don’t understand who would do that. Unless…” She faltered and bit her tongue, but Loharri was too engrossed in his own thoughts and speculations.
“There’s a pattern,” he said. The iron in his hand hissed and exhaled thin streams of smoke that smelled of amber. “Today was the day when most of the court were visiting the countryside. Everyone knows that, so whoever staged it wanted no casualties.”
“Or was looking for easy access without fear of being caught or interrogated.”
Loharri nodded. “Good point, darling. That would indicate an outsider; I was thinking more of an inside job, but you just may be right. Also, note how the explosives were rigged.”
“It collapsed on itself,” Mattie said. “They didn’t want to destroy other buildings.”
“Yes, but those explosives… the whole city shook. I wonder who could make something like that.”
Mattie did not have to answer—they both knew that the Alchemists were the ones with the capacity for making such things; Loharri was still sore since the time when the Mechanics had to go to the Alchemists with their heads uncovered and bowed to ask for their help in blasting a passageway through the mountains.
“Of course, the gargoyles can also command stone,” Loharri said. He flipped through the book Mattie brought him. “Look, it says here that they rebuilt the palace after the earthquake five hundred years ago. They could collapse it if they wanted to.”
He put the iron away and reconnected the sensors in Mattie’s shoulder. She wiggled her fingers tentatively. There was some stiffness, but little pain. She hoped it would go away with some practice.
She cocked her head. “Why would the gargoyles do that? They’ve been
Loharri gave her a long look. “Have been brushing up on our history, have we? Be careful there, dear love— history leads to politics more often than you could imagine.”
“I’m not interested in that,” Mattie said. “Unless more buildings were to blow up.”
Loharri paced the room, his long legs loping like a camel’s. “I wonder if there will be. By the way, earlier… you said something, like you had some suspicions?”
“It’s probably nothing,” she said. “But at your gathering last night, I heard some mechanics talking about getting rid of the Duke.”
“They always blab about that,” Loharri scoffed. “It’s just talk, understand.”
“As far as you know.” Mattie could not resist this barb.
Loharri bit. “Are you implying that my brethren might have secrets from me?”
Mattie shrugged. “Talk to Bergen if you’re in doubt.”
Loharri laughed—the same soft, almost soundless laugh she learned preceded his more extreme temper tantrums. “And yet you dare to fool yourself that politics is of no interest to you.”
Mattie rose from her seat. “Your well-being is of interest to me. Talk to your friends. I’ll talk to mine. Come by when you feel like you can talk without being angry.”
Loharri seemed taken aback. “As you say, Mattie. Somehow, I missed the shift here—you talk to me like you are my master.”
Mattie shrugged and craned her neck in pretend pensiveness. “Or perhaps you just think that someone who doesn’t want to be your slave is aiming to be your master.”
She didn’t turn when she headed for the door, but all the way she felt Loharri’s burning gaze on the back of her neck.
The society of the Alchemists never held regular meetings. The news spread through the grapevine, and occasionally, when circumstances called for their special attention, they made use of the public telegraph. That afternoon Mattie decided to stop by the telegraph to see if a meeting was called—after all, the collapse of the ducal palace seemed reason enough to have one. Besides, Mattie thought, the other alchemists could not have missed the implications of large quantities of explosives that were apparently responsible for the disaster. It was only a matter of time before the Duke and his courtiers returned from their trip and started questioning the alchemists. There was also a concern about the gargoyles—always elusive, they never got involved in human disputes, but no one had ever destroyed their creations before; at least, according to Mattie’s book.
In the carefully worded telegram marked “alchemists only” and protected by encoding, Bokker, the elected chairman of the Alchemists’ Society, expressed his concern that the gargoyles might direct their displeasure at the Society’s members, and invited the meeting in his shed—it was a rather spare construction, holding decades’ worth of obsolete equipment, but large enough to fit all of the alchemists who would be concerned enough to attend the meeting. Mattie guessed that a hundred or so of them would show up—the same hundred that always stuck their noses into politics. This time, Mattie decided that she would attend as well.
After reading the missive, Mattie tucked her Alchemist Scrying Ring into her pocket, and her neck clicked pensively. She worried that the event would affect her relationship with the strange creatures she had grown quite fascinated with. She thought that she would not forgive her society if it indeed were their doing. Fuming and taken with dark thoughts, she headed for the meeting.
The Alchemists were not the majority party, and as such the society did not have the use of the palatial grounds. Mattie regretted it—she would’ve liked to see the devastation close up, but it was cordoned off by the courtiers and their enforcers.
She ventured as close to the palace as she could on her way, and was sternly stopped and turned around by a menacing, faceless figure in ornate armor, mounted on top of a mechanical buggy. Mattie could’ve sworn that with every day these ugly conveyances—clanking metal wheels wrapped in wooden frames, hissing and spitting steam engines perched on the bronze hulls, perilously close to their armored passengers— grew more numerous.
“Restricted area,” the man in armor said. “Only mechanics and construction automatons are allowed through.”
“Were there many casualties?” Mattie asked.
He shook his metal-encased head, and for a brief moment Mattie imagined him as another automaton, intelligent like her, and felt kinship.
“Be careful with that engine,” Mattie said before turning around. “It looks hot… and dangerous.”
“Mind your own business, clunker,” the metal rider replied.
Mattie hurried away, her heart ticking louder and faster than her steps with suppressed fury. No one had ever dared to call her a clunker to her face, and the slur caught her off guard—like a sudden failure of her sensors, when everything tingled and then went numb. She almost fled the district, hurrying away from the glimpses of splintered stone and fine chalky dust over everything.
Mattie realized that she was running late. On her detour she wandered far away from the eastern district and the Grackle Pond, and she had to hurry through the streets, tracing a wide arc around the pond and emerging not too far away from the house on the embankment where she first met the Soul-Smoker. A concern flared, and a
