would I be mad at you?”
Mattie shrugged, her pestle grinding against the porcelain interior of the mortar. “You seem upset lately.”
“It’s because I am, but it has nothing to do with you.” Niobe sighed and stirred the ground herbs, encouraging the oils to express. “You stay home, and you don’t see. But if you came by my neighborhood, you’d know.”
“What’s happening there?” Mattie tried not to feel too guilty about not visiting—among her crimes, this one seemed the most trivial.
“The enforcers swarm like black flies.” Niobe crossed her arms over her chest as if she grew suddenly cold, and paced alongside the bench. “They think that it is us, the foreigners who blew up your palace and your Duke.”
“Why do they think that?” Mattie interrupted. “I saw the man they arrested, and it was the wrong man… I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t listen.”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” Niobe said. “They decided to blame those they don’t like. They took the jewelers, and they took the bookbinders. They question everyone, men and women, and they threaten to call the Soul-Smoker every time something speaks against them. Half of the easterners left the city to go back home.”
“The Soul-Smoker is a nice man,” Mattie said.
Niobe laughed. “I suppose he is, right up to the moment when he sucks your soul out of you.”
“He has no choice,” Mattie whispered. “And I have no soul.”
Niobe shrugged. “We all have our burdens.”
“You can stay with me,” Mattie said. “Unless you want to go back home?”
Niobe shook her head. “I thought about it, but I won’t go back—at least, not now. I won’t give them the satisfaction.”
“Then stay here,” Mattie said. “It’s safe here, and I can protect you from the mechanics.”
Niobe smiled a little. “You? Protect me? They won’t listen to you.”
“But they’ll listen to Loharri,” Mattie said. “And I have money for bribes, lots of money.”
Niobe nodded slowly. “I suppose you don’t have to spend it on food.”
“No.” Mattie folded her hands, pleading. “Stay with me, I promise I’ll buy you food.”
Niobe laughed and hugged Mattie, her soft breasts giving under Mattie’s hard metal chest, pressing against the keyhole of Mattie’s heart. Mattie hugged back, guilty and grateful. “Thank you, Mattie,” Niobe said. “I would love to stay for a bit—it’s always safer for two than one.”
Mattie thought that she could tell Niobe anything—well, almost anything. She was reluctant to confess her misuse of blood alchemy, and instead decided to confide her next most bothersome secret. “Niobe,” she whispered even though there was no one there to overhear her. “I know a man with a skin like yours… he is in hiding, but I worry that now they will pay closer attention to him and find him out. What do you think I should do?”
“It depends,” Niobe said. “What did he do to have to go into hiding?”
“He told me that it wasn’t his fault. I do know that sometimes what people tell you is not the truth; I just don’t know whether to believe it to begin with.”
Niobe shook her head. “Mattie, bless your clockwork heart. You don’t decide to believe—you either do or you don’t.”
“I wouldn’t presume as much as not to believe someone just because people lie sometimes.”
“In this case, you should probably let him know that he is in danger. Only can you do that without endangering yourself? If someone sees you talking to a suspect—and believe me, he is a suspect—your master’s influence won’t save your little metal parts.”
Mattie thought a little. “Yes,” she finally said. “I think I can; we just need to wait until darkness.”
“Great.” Niobe smiled. “Where do you want me to sleep?”
Mattie knew how to make beds, but she wasn’t in possession of one. She decided to create a nice soft bed for Niobe in the warmest place, by the kitchen hearth—the nights were still occasionally nippy. Besides, it would be as far away from the bench as the apartment allowed, and Mattie did not want Niobe disturbed by Mattie’s nocturnal work.
She found a couple of quilts given to her by grateful but poor customers, and collected most of her dresses into a heap.
Once she covered them with the quilts, the bed acquired quite satisfactory appearance—not of poverty but of whimsy. Mattie liked that, and so did Niobe.
The sun was still high enough in the sky, and they walked to the market to buy some provisions for Niobe. As they browsed, Mattie noticed a few suspicious stares in Niobe’s direction, and a few merchants refused to trade with them outright.
Niobe just shrugged, even though Mattie guessed that the deepening of the color on Niobe’s cheeks meant that she was more perturbed than she showed.
Nonetheless, Mattie led her to the booth that sold a good variety of herbs, and tried to distract Niobe by explaining how one decided on the plant’s usefulness. “You see,” she pointed at the dried plant with purple flowers, “its leaves are heart-shaped, which means it is suited for heart trouble.”
“Are you referring to the actual heart, or love problems?”
“The latter,” Mattie said. “See? Its shape is not of a real heart but of its symbol.”
“Symbol of a symbol,” Niobe muttered. “I see. What about this one?”
She pointed at the glass jar filled with fresh flowers, plump and red, their three petals dripping with nectar. “That’s for the liver,” Mattie said. “See the three lobes?”
“And this one?” Niobe picked up a dried stem clustered with strange fruit—brown and transversed with fissures. “Brain problems?”
Mattie nodded. “That is its signature, yes. Every plant has one. The plants with red sap are used to purify blood, the ones with yellow sap—clear out urinary infections, and so on. See, it’s easy. It’s getting to the potent chemicals inside them that is hard.”
“I see,” Niobe agreed. “Every plant has medicine, as long as you can figure out how to get to it.”
“That’s the tricky part,” Mattie agreed. “This is why it is essential to keep a journal and record every transformation, so if you find something you can recreate it and share it with the rest of the society.”
“If I want to.”
“If you want to.”
“Are you going to buy anything?” the woman who owned the booth asked. There was no open hostility in her voice, and her face expressed carefully cultivated indifference.
“Just a bunch of maiden’s hair and two of bladderwort,” Mattie said. She paid for her purchases. “Thank you, Marta.”
Marta muttered an acknowledgment under her breath, and Mattie and Niobe traded looks.
“Let’s go home,” Niobe said as soon as she picked up a loaf of bread and some olives. “I’m getting tired of all the hostility.”
Mattie nodded that she agreed. She hadn’t realized how rigidly she had held her back, how taut the springs of her muscles were. Just being outside was tiring to her; she could not imagine how Niobe was able to hold up, with her weak flesh body. And she had been enduring it far longer than Mattie.
Mattie took Niobe’s hand in a gesture of support.
“Don’t,” Niobe whispered. “You don’t want to associate with me like this. It’s dangerous.” But she didn’t take her hand away.
“I don’t care,” Mattie whispered and twined her fingers with Niobe’s, metal against flesh, springs against bone.
