The Alchemy of Stone

spirits fought over control, and his small body shook in great spasms. “Underground!” “No, the farms!”

Just as the assault of the opinionated spirits started to subside, another voice, smooth as silk, persuasive, spoke. “There’re other people like them,” it said. “Like you. There’s a resistance, a rebellion growing. It started off with just a few, but now…”

“How do you know it?” Mattie asked, suspicious. “And if you know it, wouldn’t the enforcers know it too?”

“No,” Ilmarekh said in his normal voice. “I don’t tell them what I know. I’m an executioner, not a snitch… unless it is a confession of a real crime.”

“So you know about the resistance?” Mattie asked, still skeptical.

Ilmarekh nodded. “Do you have friends in high places?”

Mattie returned home in the morning, when the gargoyles on the temple roof were outlined against the pink sky with streaks of golden clouds. On the way, she considered whether she trusted Iolanda enough to ask such questions, and every time she thought about it she recalled her obvious joy at the Duke’s leaving, and her desire to stay behind to see what marvelous changes would take place.

Then again, her joy was too obvious. If she were indeed involved with anything illegal, wouldn’t she hide it better? Mattie felt the beveled gears in her head speed up and heat with friction as they manufactured one febrile thought after the next. Loharri, she thought. Maybe she should talk to him.

She chased the thought away, and momentarily worried that he had built it into her, this need to run to him for help or advice every time she needed it. Would he be this calculating? Sadly, she thought, he could be. This is exactly the sort of thing he would’ve done—but did it invalidate his willingness to help?

She reached her building fevered and distraught. Mattie stumbled up the stairs, her head on fire. There was a smell of burning hair, and as she touched her face she discovered that below the cool surface of the porcelain, the metal sizzled, and that the roots of her hair smoldered.

Sebastian was up. He took one look at Mattie and forcibly sat her by the bench. He grabbed a piece of cloth she used to dry her glassware with, wet it in the sink, and wrapped Mattie’s head in it. Steam rose from her brow, and she felt her eyes retract deep into her head against her will. Her thoughts bubbled to the surface, the steam escaped with a slow hiss through her eye sockets, and her heart fluttered in an irregular beat.

It’s the spirits, she thought. It’s Loharri and Iolanda and Sebastian and the gargoyles and too many things to care about, and too many dangers to avoid. That’s what broke her.

Blind now, she heard Niobe’s worried voice. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know,” Sebastian answered. “She’s overheating.”

“Can you fix her?”

Mattie felt Sebastian’s rough fingers search under her jaw line and on the sides. “Don’t,” she wanted to say, but her voice box must’ve gone out too. Sebastian popped off her face, exposing her, helpless and naked, to the world.

“Oh,” Niobe whispered. “She is… so intricate.”

Sebastian sighed. “Yes, she is. The man who built her… I don’t even know what to call this. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“So you can’t fix her,” Niobe said.

Sebastian’s fingers probed something sensitive inside. “I could try… I don’t know what else to do.”

“Call Loharri,” Niobe said. “There’s nothing else you can do.”

Mattie wanted to call out that no, it wasn’t a good idea. Through a great effort, she managed to loll her head to her shoulder, and more steam escaped through some malfunctioning gasket.

“I’m calling Loharri,” Niobe said. “You better find a place to hide.”

“You can’t go out,” Sebastian answered. “It’s not safe.”

“I’ll find someone to take the message.”

Mattie’s ears rang with persistent piping, but even through the ruckus she could hear the window being opened, and Niobe’s strong voice calling over the rooftops and the city below, “Hey, gargoyles! Your friend is in danger.”

Then the ringing grew louder and ceased suddenly, and all sensation left Mattie’s limp frame.

We hear the call, and we run, all the while wondering whether we should be more dignified than to run errands. But the girl is ill—we saw her, her face torn off and the rest of her so broken we would’ve wept if we could. So we do the next best thing, and we rush. People in the streets crane their necks to see us bounding across the rooftops, in the clear light of the day, with no time to hide, and they point and shout. We think dimly that they must think that it was the recent events at the palace and the eastern gates that disturbed us so greatly.

The house where the girl was made, where she used to live is almost invisible for the solid wall of weeds and rose bushes— there’s a narrow path leading through the vegetation to the door. The house stands apart from the rest, and we have no choice but to descend and run across the ground, like fast gray dogs, running on all fours through the fragrant hedge. It lashes out at us, and the branches whip and slide off our hard gray skin, and we wonder if it is growing harder, if small fissures are starting to appear, and if last night another one of us has gone, to leave us fewer and weaker. We knock on the door politely.

A woman answers the door, a woman in loose gown sliding off her round shoulders, a woman with tangled hair and sleepy eyes, which she rubs with her fist like a child. She rubs them again, as if expecting us to disappear back into her dreams, but we remain, stubborn.

“Can I help you?” she says cautiously, after we start wondering if we should speak first.

“We need to speak to the mechanic who lives here.”

“What is that about?” Her eyes are awake now, curious.

We hesitate. “It’s about his mechanical girl,” we say.

She gasps. “Mattie? Is she all right?”

“She’s broken,” we say. “We need to talk to the master of the house.”

She moves aside and beckons us in, but we remain outside, where we would not be easily trapped.

She disappears inside the house, and we wait, hidden among the bushes from the curious eyes of any passersby.

And then he comes out with a small bag of tools, and we recognize him, even though he has grown tall and thin and hunched, his eyes still long and narrow, his face no longer beautiful. He is pulling his jacket on as he walks out on the porch where we are waiting. “Where is she?” he asks.

“In her apartment, high above the streets, her face is off and she is broken.”

“What happened?” he says, but already we bound away, our message delivered.

Mattie woke up to the familiar touch. She extended her eyes carefully, fearful that she still wouldn’t be able to see. Loharri’s stern face swam into her field of vision. She looked past him to Niobe standing by the window, her forehead lined with worry, her arms crossed over her chest.

“What did you do?” Loharri asked.

Mattie sat up from the floor and touched her face to make sure it was back in place. Sebastian had seen her naked, she remembered. She did not find the thought altogether repellent; she liked the way his calloused fingers fit under her jaw, how swift and unapologetic he was…

“Mattie!”

She startled at Loharri’s insistent voice. “Nothing,” she said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Loharri shook his head. “Mattie. You don’t even know why you got ill, do you?”

She shook her head. “I was working too hard.”

His face remained composed, but she recognized the slight slow movement of his jaw, as if he were trying