clean; the desolate expanses of wooden floors that needed to be waxed. Like him or not, but he did let her go— partially, at least.
She fetched another bucket of water and scrubbed the floors with unnecessary force and vigor, her metal bones creaking with the effort. The more she tried to understand what moved those around her, the more she failed—especially with Loharri. She remembered the women who came and went like the seasons; she remembered his long spells of ennui and seclusion, and then visits to the temple and the orphanage, the night stalking of the sleeping gargoyles, immobile and light like birds. And how he always brought her with him.
She soothed him; oh, how she soothed him. She remembered the cool lips on her porcelain cheek, the slight trembling of hands as they touched the metal and the whalebone inlays of her chest, the breath fogging the window behind which her heart whirred and ticked. The almost hungry caress of the fingertips as they traced the outline of the keyhole on her chest, and made her heart tick faster. The taste of human skin on her lip sensors, salty and precipitous, and the feeling in her abdomen that some great misfortune was about to befall her mixed with light- headed giddiness. The smell of leather and tobacco trapped in her hair afterwards.
And then he recovered and worked in his shop, and she cleaned, and the procession of dark-lidded women with heavy thick hair and small, secretive smiles resumed. Women like Iolanda who asked Mattie worrying questions. Mattie was a woman because of the corset stays and whalebone, because of the heave of her metal chest, because of the bone hoops fastened to her hips that held her skirts wide—but also because Loharri told her she was one. She thought then that he loved her; and yet, as soon as she was emancipated she forbade him to touch her.
She dried the dishes and stacked them neatly in the rack by the fireplace. She scrubbed the fireplace free of wet ash and brought in a fresh armload of logs, stacked outside under a sailcloth canopy protecting them from the rain.
Ilmarekh stirred in his sleep and sighed. Mattie settled on the floor by the fireplace and waited for him to wake up. She tried to keep her thoughts on a single track, from Sebastian to gargoyles, from the Alchemists to the Mechanics. The machinery in her head made small insect clicks, a familiar and comforting sound, and if she listened closely, she could hear the whisper of the undulating membrane, which, as Loharri had told her, imprinted her thoughts in her memory.
Ilmarekh sat up and smelled the air, his narrow nostrils flaring. “Who’s here?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
“It’s Mattie. I didn’t want to leave you alone.”
He wrapped himself in the blanket but did not shiver. “Thank you,” he said. “You did not have to do that. And thank you for your medicine—it is wonderful.”
“Are the souls bothering you now?” she asked.
He cocked his head, listening. “I hear naught but whispers,” he said. “Thank you. I can rarely afford such a break.”
“Why not?”
He grimaced. “It is painful. Besides, the souls need a link to the world. If I sever this link and refuse to open my mind to them with opium, they will go insane. And insane souls are not a pretty sight.”
Mattie thought a bit. “How long do they stay with you?”
“Until I die,” he said. “Every blessed one of them. When I die, my original soul leads them to their rest, and we all are free.” He smiled a little. “My predecessor died old, very old, but the one before him was quite young. They say, he went mad from being unable to contain the multitudes. They killed him then; I only hope that I manage longer than he.”
“I’m sorry.” Mattie couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He reached out and she moved closer, to let his spatulate fingers touch hers. “Don’t be. You’ve been kind to me. Kinder than anyone else. I’d like to help you.”
“Just ask Beresta of the whereabouts of her son,” she said. “I mean, when they… the souls are talking to you again.”
“I know where he is,” Ilmarekh said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I didn’t think it was my place.”
Mattie squeezed his hand. “Where is he?”
“Where you wouldn’t look for an exile,” he answered with a smile. “In the heart of the city. I saw him at the temple— Beresta recognized him. She didn’t tell me but I felt it.”
Mattie shook her head. “The Temple? But… why didn’t anyone recognize him?”
“Because people don’t pay attention to those who are covered with mud and carry buckets with gravel for the gargoyles’ feeders,” Ilmarekh said, and sneezed forcefully.
“Thank you,” Mattie said and stood. “I have cleaned the house, and now you can just rest. If you wish, I can bring you food from the market tomorrow morning.”
He shook his head. “No, dear girl. Leave me be—food does not agree with me in this state. But rest assured, I welcome your visits.”
“There has to be something else I could do,” Mattie said.
He shook his head, mournful. “There’s nothing to be done. Just go, leave me to my silence.”
Mattie walked out of the door, feeling no joy that the object of her search was so near. She tried to imagine what it was like for the Soul-Smoker, to be finally free of the torments of the multitude of whispering residual lives and yet to be too ill to enjoy the silence. If his one true happiness was just to lie on a ratty, straw-filled mattress, his eyes open, drinking in the silence like a desert wanderer drinks in water, what was it to her?
And yet, she couldn’t shake her anger as she walked downhill. Not at Ilmarekh but at those who chose that life for him —just like the anger she felt when the soldier on the metal mount called her a clunker. There were these people—she wasn’t sure exactly who they were—who kept telling them what they could and could not be. And Mattie was quite certain that she did not request her emancipation just so she could obey others besides Loharri. She prayed for Iolanda’s protection and help, yet she hoped that there would never be a day she would need either.
In the night, Mattie’s heels clacked ever so loudly on the gray stone by the ducal palace. The enforcers were gone for the night, and only chains stretched between the black and glistening lampposts; their light was weak that night, as if its energy was sapped by the recent disaster. And not even the gargoyles stirred in the darkness. She was alone, as alone as Ilmarekh currently was in his skull. She shrugged off fear the best she could.
She crossed a wide swath of cobbled pavement—it used to surround the palace, but now that it was gone, it looked like empty no man’s land, strewn with rubble, seeded with a thick smell of sulfur and charcoal. She circumvented the rubble heap—so much stone!—as quickly as she could, afraid to look closer out of the superstitious fear that there was someone watching, and he would see and catch her the moment she locked eyes with him.
The building of the temple loomed behind the former palace; it was a dark place, rarely visited by anyone but the Stone Monks. And, apparently the gargoyles—they studded the cupped roof of the temple, immobile and asleep; Mattie wondered if they mourned their stone friends who perished in the explosion, if the gargoyles ever mourned anyone. Mattie stopped and watched for any sign of movement on the roof, but the gargoyles appeared soundly asleep. No monks ventured outside in this dead hour, and she was now far enough from the palace to smell freshness in the air, the wet dust and stone—a reminder of the recent rain.
She passed the temple and approached the low wall that stood there as a reminder rather than a true obstacle—one could clear it in a single long leap if one were so inclined, and Mattie was. She picked up her skirts with one hand, placed the other on the mossy furry top of the wall, and vaulted over it, the springs of her muscles coiling and propelling her with ease. She now stood in a small courtyard that contained nothing but large stone urns half-filled with gravel, and a single tree, long dead but still reaching for the moon with the broken black fingers of its branches.
Mattie found the urn in which the level was the lowest, and crouched low next to it. The feeders were refilled at night and she waited, waited for the footsteps and clanging of the bucket filled with shattered stone, the gargoyles’ favorite food.
She did not have to wait long. Before the dawn arrived, the low gate connecting the courtyard to the temple swung open, and a tall figure appeared, a bucket in each hand. Mattie felt disappointed—it had to be an automaton,
