And yet, if she was coerced, was it wrong of her to do it to others? “Who is it for?” Mattie asked.
“Your master,” Iolanda answered, not looking away. “I promise I won’t harm him.”
“No,” Mattie said slowly. “It’s all right. I don’t really mind if you do.”
Iolanda arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
Fireflies crowded by the window; the lone lamp in her kitchen must’ve looked like one of their brethren to them, trapped inside an incomprehensible, impenetrable barrier, alone like an air bubble trapped in amber. The poor sods strained to get through, not realizing that any semblance of kinship or recognition was just an illusion, and there was nothing hidden from sight; there was nothing but the surface, and the surface lied.
“Yes,” Mattie said. “Do as you will. You want him to love you? To tell you secrets?” She tapped her metal fingers on the jar lid, sending waves through the red sticky liquid inside. “I’m learning some new tricks, and I will bind him to you by blood, I will twist him to your liking.”
“Something tells me you would want more than money for this service,” Iolanda said. Her high cheekbones flushed with color, alcohol or excitement, joy or fear, and who could tell them apart anyway. “What do you want?”
“My key,” Mattie answered. “All I ever wanted was my key and he has it. You can’t steal it, it is bound to him. But he can give it to you, and he won’t give it to me.”
Iolanda touched Mattie’s hand. “You poor thing,” she whispered. “I had no idea.”
“Do you understand then?”
Iolanda nodded. “Show me a woman who wouldn’t. I promise I’ll try to get you your key back.”
“Don’t promise,” Mattie said. “Just try. As for the rest, it is not my concern.”
Iolanda rose from her seat. “Bind him well,” she said. “And I will see you soon.”
Mattie went to the eastern gates to see the Duke and his court depart from the city. Despite the public telegraphs reassuring the populace that the measure was temporary, an uneasy air hung over the mostly silent crowd, occasionally punctuated by the crying of infants, which did little to lighten the mood.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” said a woman in a dress grown murky-gray from too many washes.
The man standing next to her nodded, but his eyes kept glancing away from her at Mattie. “Oh, it’s happening all right.” He spat on the ground, undeterred by the dense crowd. “His father must be trying to crawl out of his grave by now. The Stone Monks should be denouncing his treason from every roof, and it’s about time they did something useful. Disgrace, that’s what it is.”
The first buggies carrying the courtiers and the servants, flanked by shambling columns of automatons, passed the crowd. There were a few boos and a few restrained curses, but most of the people remained silent. Apparently, Mattie was not the only one who took the Duke’s leave at its symbolic value.
She looked over the crowd, moving her eyes separately to focus on different parts of the gathering; she saw a few familiar alchemists, but did not feel compelled to greet any of them. She looked for Iolanda or Niobe, and hoped not to see Loharri. Whatever happened between them, she did not feel eager to face the man she had betrayed. She did not go to the mechanics’ lodge the day before; she did not retrieve the information about the missing medallions.
The crowd shifted, breathing, sniffling, like a large animal. A small girl held high above the crowd on her mother’s shoulder sang in a small shy voice, and people whispered. Mattie’s sensitive ears picked up bits of conversation nearby and farther away. The Duke’s leave did not sit well with anyone.
“The gargoyles didn’t leave,” a male voice behind Mattie said. “The Stone Monks are still with us. Why is he so special that his hide needs to be saved before the city?”
“What’s he gonna do?” someone else asked.
“Nothing, like he done nothing for years. The Parliament will decide, and the Parliament will run things like they always have. Nothing’s gonna change.”
“He was only here to sit pretty in the palace,” the man who spoke first said. “If he ain’t gonna do that, why does he think he can tax us?”
The murmur hushed when the sound of screeching metal and heavy pounding reached down the street. Mattie stretched her eyes as far as they would go, and she glimpsed the rest of the procession, up the hill—the giant lizards resplendent in their brown and gold scales, their claws tipped with mercury and silver, dragged open carriages behind them. As they pulled closer, Mattie saw a number of well-dressed people swathed in yards of silk and brocade stiff with gems and rich thread as they smiled and waved at the crowd from the carriage. The Duke himself, a middle-aged clean-shaven man with kind and tired eyes, held hands with his wife; their daughters, all pretty and haughty in their youth, looked straight ahead of them, pointedly ignoring the rabble catcalling to them. A few more men and women crowded together; normally, the Duke’s favor conferred certain advantages to them, but now they looked fearful, realizing that the favor of a powerful man often had a downside.
The enforcers in full armor drove in small buggies, surrounding the carriages with a protective shield; but those who had foresightedly brought vegetables in regrettable condition were not deterred from throwing them. The enforcers made a move toward the crowd, and the vegetables ceased.
Mattie looked up the street, at the approaching caravan of mechanical caterpillars that hissed with steam and carried the courtiers, dressed somewhat less extravagantly than the ducal family and their favorites. They were less protected by the enforcers, and whatever produce remained in the hands of the displeased populace was thrown at them with guilty alacrity and a few constrained verbal outbursts.
Mattie was ready to turn away as the first carriages of the procession approached the eastern gates, leaving the city with a leaden finality, telegraph’s reassurances notwithstanding.
It was almost as though a part of the city was detaching itself, leaving the place incomplete somehow, although not necessarily worse. There was a sense of freedom in having a piece missing, in having a void that could be filled with something new.
A man jostled past her; he was garbed in the habit of the Stone Monks, but did not move with the usual humility of the clergy—be strode through the crowd, parting it with his heavy shoulder. Mattie stepped aside, giving way, and so did a few of her neighbors.
The man walked past, and only then Mattie noticed that his right hand was deep in the pocket of his robe. Just as she thought that he was about to hurl a spoiled apple or a turnip at the courtiers and judged such behavior inappropriate for a monk, the man pushed into the street, steps away from the ducal carriage.
The object he extracted from his robe was neither a fruit nor a vegetable, but a large clear bottle filled with thick transparent fluid.
The enforcers turned the buggies toward him, screaming warnings. Some of them drew muskets and leveled them at the man, still imploring him to step back.
The man swung and threw the bottle at the carriage and ducked into the crowd just as the first shots rang out. And then all was chaos—Mattie was pushed and almost knocked off her feet as the people around her screamed and ran, as several people from the first row of the crowd fell under the musket shots. Mattie could not look away.
The bottle burst loudly with a flare of hungry fire that engulfed the side of the ducal carriage. The lizards thrashed, trying to escape the inferno, and got tangled in their tack. Their tails whipped madly, knocking over the carriage. The lizards of the carriages that followed reared up and turned away, some dragging the carriages into the crowd, others upsetting theirs.
The fire spread, engulfing two other carriages. Their passengers wrestled from under the wreckage, even as their clothes and their hair caught fire.
The crowd pushed Mattie away from the sight of the explosion, and she only saw snatches of the raging fire, of a bleeding woman, her face smashed on the cobbles into a smoldering ruin. A giant lizard, its scales glistening red, lay on its side, its broken leg a mess of red twitching meat and fragments of sharp, pink bone. It shrieked in a
