“I won’t.”
The meeting was dismissed soon after, and Bokker and a few others stayed behind to work on the list. Niobe and Mattie left Bokker’s house together.
“Where are you from?” Mattie asked. Niobe kept walking in step with her, and Mattie was starting to feel awkward about the silence.
Niobe gestured vaguely east, indicating the wide world outside of the city walls. “Big city,” she said. “Beyond the sea.”
“Oh,” Mattie said. “You were not happy there?”
Niobe sighed. “Happy enough,” she said. “Only… how can you sleep when the night is so dark it suffocates, how can you smell the incense in the air and wonder if there are different places, places your heart yearns to see? Didn’t you ever wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if there are places where the alchemists use metals and not plants? Fire and not oil? How can you stay in one place and not want to leave?”
“I don’t sleep,” Mattie said. “And I don’t wonder about other places.”
Niobe rounded her eyes at Mattie in mock horror, and laughed. “Maybe you didn’t have to. You live in the City of Gargoyles, and maybe in the heart of wonder there is no more wonder left. But I… I so wanted to come here. I’ve been in this city a month now, and I’ve yet to see a single gargoyle.” She pouted in disappointment.
They came to the Grackle Pond, and Mattie gestured to one of the wrought iron benches decorating the embankment. It was shaded by a slender cascade of willow branches, furry with pale young leaves, and Mattie judged that here they could sit in peace, enjoying the view and attracting little attention. “Let’s rest a bit,” she said, even though she was not tired, and drank in the thick smell of green stagnant water and silt. She trusted Niobe— she seemed so much like Mattie, and even though she was large and broad of shoulder, her flesh looked hard, as if carved of wood, so unlike Iolanda’s.
Niobe plopped down on the bench and stretched her legs, sighing comfortably. “Come on,” she said to Mattie. “Tell me about the gargoyles. You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Mattie said. She was unsure of how much she should divulge. “Only once. They hide during the day, and you can see them at night, if you want to, from a distance. Or you could at one time, anyway. They slept on the roof of the Duke’s palace.”
“Yes, I saw that,” Niobe said. “But… none of them move, and you can’t tell which ones are real.”
“All of them are,” Mattie said. “Most are stone, some few are still moving… but they all turn to stone eventually.”
“We will all become one with what we were born from,” Niobe said,
Mattie stared.
“Just a saying we have,” said Niobe, and laughed and pointed at a flock of ducks and ducklings that paddled to the shore, their black, beady eyes somehow managing an expectant expression. “Oh, they are cute.”
“Yes,” Mattie said, without looking. “What did you mean, becoming one with what we were born from?”
Niobe shrugged. “People came from the earth and return to it once they die, and become dirt. The gargoyles are born from stone. So they become it.” She laughed again. “Or something like that.”
“What about the automatons?” Mattie asked.
Niobe stared at the ducks that shyly wobbled ever closer. “I don’t know. We don’t have anything… anyone like you back home.”
Mattie nodded. She didn’t have to ask, really—she came from Loharri’s laboratory, born of metal and coils and spare parts and boredom; this is where she would find herself in the end, likely enough.
Mattie was fascinated with the change in Niobe—once they left the presence of the alchemists, Niobe seemed a whole new woman, laughing and moving freely. This is how Mattie felt away from judging eyes; the problem was, it only happened when she was alone, or with the gargoyles. Or Ilmarekh.
Her thoughts turned to the Soul-Smoker and the secrets of the souls that inhabited his weak, ravaged body. She felt selfish that she hadn’t thought of him in so long. Him or Beresta. Or her work. She groaned a little.
“Don’t be so glum,” Niobe said, and immediately clamped her hand over-her mouth. “I’m sorry. I know the palace was important to you and your people.”
Mattie nodded. “And the gargoyles. I wonder if they will raise the palace again or if there are too few of them left. Where will they go if they can’t rebuild? Where will the Duke and his court go?”
“I’m sure it’ll work out.” Niobe patted Mattie’s shoulder, and the clinking of her rings sounded muffled by the cloth covering Mattie’s metal flesh. “I’m sorry to see you sad, and yet I’m happy that this misfortune allowed me to meet you. I haven’t made a friend here yet.”
“It can be difficult here,” Mattie said. “Alchemists are not too bad—they won’t be rude to you; at least, not to your face. But the mechanics… they’re a conceited lot, and if you aren’t one of them they’ll spit on you. The man who made me isn’t like that, but he too has his faults.”
“I often wonder what it would be like to know your creator,” Niobe said.
Mattie inclined her head. “It is aggravating,” she said. “And humbling at times. Loharri… he can be difficult. Possessive.”
Niobe laughed. “Of course he is. You’re…” She paused, as if looking for the right word. “You’re precious, Mattie. There’s no one in the world like you. If I had made you, I wouldn’t let you out of the house.”
“I suppose I should be flattered,” Mattie said and stood. “It is nice to meet, you, really, but I should be going.”
“Oh no.” Niobe grabbed Mattie’s hand and peered into her blue porcelain face. “I’ve offended you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mattie said. “It will pass.”
Niobe stood too. “Listen. Come visit me the next holiday, all right? I live by the market, the one on the other side of Merchant Square. There’s a jewelry shop downstairs.”
“I know the place,” she said. “It’s owned by other… easterners? Like you?”
Niobe smiled. “That’s right. Will you come?”
As much as Mattie resented being treated like a thing that could be kept indoors at one’s whim, she thought that Niobe deserved another chance. After all, where else would she find someone as alone and mistrusted as herself? “Yes,” she said. “I will visit you. Maybe you can tell me about the alchemy you practice.”
Niobe’s face brightened with a smile. “Yes! And promise you’ll do the same for me. The alchemists here seem awfully protective of their secrets.”
“They don’t like outsiders.”
Niobe raised her eyebrows. “Really? 1 haven’t noticed.”
Mattie shrugged. “They did let you in, like they let me in. Believe me, this is the best either of us will be treated.”
“Unless we change that,” Niobe said. “I’ll see you the next holiday.”
Mattie headed down the embankment, unsure whether to go home or to visit Ilmarekh. She decided on the latter; it wasn’t just Beresta’s secrets or her elusive son, but Mattie worried about Ilmarekh, of how he withstood the assault of the ghosts inside him. She headed west, for the city gates.
