not to grit his teeth. “You were ill,” he said, “because you went against your desire to see me. I told you that you always must do so. Didn’t I?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know.”
“Wait a moment,” Niobe said and stepped forward. “You booby-trapped the poor girl’s head and didn’t even tell her? Just to make sure she didn’t get away from you?”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Loharri said without even looking in Niobe’s direction. “You’re forgetting your place— what, the alchemists let you join and you think you are their equal?”
Niobe shrank away as if from a slap, but her eyes blazed.
“Don’t be like this,” Mattie pleaded and folded her still trembling hands over her heart. She remembered Loharri’s temper—he often spoke harshly, but it passed.
“I’m sorry,” Loharri said to Niobe. “I do appreciate your calling me and being here for Mattie—but please do not meddle in things that don’t concern you.”
Niobe didn’t answer, and Loharri turned his attention back to Mattie. “Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”
“About the bombing,” Mattie answered. “I told you last time that you got the wrong man, and yet you killed him.”
“How do you know that?”
“The gargoyles. And you keep taking people and banishing them from the city, and—”
“Enough,” Loharri interrupted and rubbed his face. “I don’t like it either, Mattie, but that’s politics for you. People are restless, and they need someone to blame.”
“This is it?” Niobe said. “That’s your entire excuse?”
“It’s not an excuse,” Loharri said. “Things started to change when you people showed up.”
“Your people show up in our cities,” Niobe parried. “We don’t make a fuss about it.”
“You would if your own people were losing jobs to the foreigners.”
“Your people are losing jobs to your machines,” Niobe said. “You put mechanizing everything and making it efficient above your people’s happiness, and you wonder why they aren’t happy?”
Loharri stood and turned to Niobe. “Don’t try to come between me and my automaton,” he said. “Seriously. I have no interest in finding scapegoats, and I’m not going to tell anyone about your presence here; you don’t need to worry about that. But if I have to remove Mattie from your company, I will. She does not need your influence.” He grabbed his bag of tools and was out of the door before Mattie had a chance to say thank you or goodbye.
Niobe waited for his steps to fall silent in the stairwell, stretched and laughed. “What an unpleasant man,” she said.
“He really isn’t,” Mattie said. “He has his problems, but he’s better than most. You just need to get to know him a little.”
“I have no desire to.” Niobe gave Mattie a quick hug and a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we all have friends everyone else hates. Just don’t let him hurt you.”
“I have other plans.” Mattie reached for the shelf over her bench, and picked up a jar sealed with a glass stopper, the figure of the blood homunculus visible inside.
Niobe’s help proved to be invaluable—she was better versed in the darker uses of blood alchemy than Mattie expected, and she managed to get the homunculus moving about and chanting strange words. It wobbled and bubbled along the bench, back and forth, unable or unwilling to get down, and hissed and sputtered. Its heart, woven from two-colored strands, pulsed with grim life.
“How is it supposed to work?” Mattie asked.
“This creature, while alive, holds two wills together as one. Whichever one of them feeds it can command it, and the other person obeys.”
“What does it eat?” Mattie asked.
“Blood. Isn’t it obvious?”
“I’ll tell Iolanda to get sheep’s blood then.”
Niobe shook her head. “If she wants to command the other, she’ll have to feed it her own blood. Don’t worry, it doesn’t eat much—just a pin prick will sate it for a week. The longer you feed it, the stronger it gets, but it only commands for a short time.”
Mattie watched the creature, fearful of it and yet fascinated. Just like Mattie, it was made, not born; and yet Mattie felt no kinship to it, the slimy, organic thing, not with her pristine metal and bone and shiny, hard surfaces. Not vulnerable to the creature, yet unable to command it, for she had no blood to feed it.
It occurred to her that her only kinship was with gargoyles and their affinity for stone and hard skin, with their tormented not-quite life. She felt sad when she realized that freeing them from fate would mean breaking the bond she felt with them, yet, to refuse it would be unkind.
“What are you thinking about?” Niobe asked.
“Sebastian. You think he’s safe?”
“I think so. He said he’ll return tonight to check on you, to make sure you’re all right.”
Mattie flustered. “Do you think he really cares about me?
“Of course he does. He… ” Niobe paused and grabbed Mattie’s arm, and spun her around to face the light from the window so that Niobe could take a better look at her eyes.
Mattie could not avert them, so she retracted them instead. “What?”
“Oh, dear whales in the sea,” Niobe whispered. “You are in love with him, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Mattie said. “Should I be?”
“I haven’t realized that you could… Oh, dear me. What am I saying? Of course you can. You are. This is why this bastard booby-trapped you, this is why he was so cross. He knows you love someone else, Mattie. What will happen to you?”
Mattie weighed her words. “I don’t know. I haven’t accumulated enough history to know things like that. I will ask Iolanda to protect me.” She pointed at the homunculus. “I’ll ask her to make sure that he gives me my key back.”
Iolanda did not take long to show up. She burst through the doors in a whirlwind of wild hair and flared skirts. “Mattie! Are you all right?”
Mattie nodded. “I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
“Loharri,” Mattie said. She explained the device planted in her head, and her desperate need to get her key back. She needed Loharri out of her head and her heart, she said.
Iolanda smiled at that. “Indeed,” she said. “I know exactly what you mean.” She pushed past Mattie to the laboratory, and took a step back once she saw Niobe. “Who is she?”
“Niobe,” Mattie said. “My friend. She was helping me with your request.”
“Ah.” Iolanda walked through the laboratory to her habitual seat in the kitchen, and laughed at the sight of the pile of Mattie’s dresses covered with a blanket. “How cozy! You’re sleeping here?”
“Yes,” Niobe said, showing neither embarrassment nor anger. “Mattie has no need for beds, so I have to make do.”
“A fellow alchemist then,” Iolanda said. “Thank you for helping with Mattie—I’ll pay you too.”
“There’s no need—”
“Of course there is.” Iolanda sat and played with a long strand of her curly hair. “There’s always a need for money.”
“Iolanda only employs women,” Mattie said to Niobe.
“How do they let you get away with it?” Niobe asked, visibly warming up to Iolanda.
“They don’t notice,” Iolanda answered, and both of them laughed.
Mattie did not quite understand what was so funny about hiding oneself, about being allowed to do what one
