you were created as one?”
“Yes,” Mattie replied, although she grew increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation. “And because of the clothes I wear.”
“So if you changed your clothes…”
“But I can’t,” Mattie said. “The shape of them is built into me—I know that you have to wear corsets and hoops and stays to give your clothes a proper shape. But I was created with all of those already in place, they are as much as part of me as my eyes. So I ask you: what else would you consider me?”
“I sought not to offend,” Iolanda said. “I do confess to my prejudice: I will not do business nor would I employ a person or an automaton of a gender different from mine, and I simply had to know if your gender was coincidental.”
“I understand,” Mattie said. “And I assure you that my femaleness is as ingrained as your own.”
Iolanda sighed. Mattie supposed that Iolanda was beautiful, with her shining dark curls cascading onto her full shoulders and chest, and heavy, languid eyelids half-concealing her dark eyes. “Fair enough. And Loharri… can you keep secrets from him?”
“I can and I do,” Mattie said.
“In this case, I will appreciate it if you keep our business private,” Iolanda said.
“I will, once you tell me what it is,” Mattie replied. She shot an involuntary look toward her bench, where the ingredients waited for her to grind and mix and vaporize them, where the aludel yawned empty as if hungry; she grew restless sitting for too long, empty-handed and motionless.
Iolanda raised her eyebrows, as if unsure whether she understood Mattie. She seemed one of those people who rarely encountered anything but abject agreement, and she was not used to being hurried. “Well, I want you to be available for the times I have a need of you, and to fulfill my orders on a short notice. Potions, perfumes, tonics… that sort of thing. I will pay you a retainer, so you will be receiving money even when I do not have a need of you.”
“I have other clients and projects,” Mattie said.
Iolanda waved her hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. As long as I can find you when I need you.”
“It sounds reasonable,” Mattie agreed. “I will endeavor to fulfill simple orders within a day, and complex ones— from two days to a week. You won’t have them done faster anywhere.”
“It is acceptable,” Iolanda said. “And for your first order, I need you to create me a fragrance that would cause regret.”
“Come back tomorrow,” Mattie said. “Or leave me your address, I’ll have a courier bring it over.”
“No need,” Iolanda said. “I will send someone to pick it up. And here’s your first week’s pay.” She rose from her stool and placed a small pouch of stones on the bench. “And if anyone asks, we are casual acquaintances, nothing more.”
Iolanda left, and Mattie felt too preoccupied to even look at the stones that were her payment. She almost regretted agreeing to Iolanda’s requests—while they seemed straightforward and it was not that uncommon for courtiers to employ alchemists or any other artisans on a contract basis, something about Iolanda seemed off. Most puzzling, if she wanted to keep a secret from Loharri, she could do better than hire the automaton made by his hands. Mattie was not so vain as to presuppose that her reputation outweighed common good sense.
But there was work to do, and perfume certainly seemed less daunting than granting gargoyles a lifespan extension, and she mixed ambergris and sage, blended myrrh and the bark of grave cypress, and sublimated dry camphor. The smell she obtained was pleasing and sad, and yet she was not certain that this was enough to evoke regret—something seemed missing. She closed her eyes and smelled-tasted the mixture with her sensors, trying hard to remember the last time she felt regret.
Mice fled from a tall house perched over the Grackle Pond, and Mattie nodded to herself. The Soul-Smoker could not be far now, and Mattie quickened her step, her fine wooden heels clacking on the cobbles of the pavement and then the embankment, as the stream of mice fleeing in the opposite direction parted around her feet. The house stood wrapped in mourning wreaths, dark cypress branches wound in liquid smoke, with windows dark and shuttered. The exodus of mice was almost over, and the family, clad in their mourning whites, huddled on the porch fearful to go back inside until the reluctant soul was evicted.
Mattie wondered about the souls left behind like this, those little bodiless entities made of glassy, transparent fog that liked curling up inside the secret places of houses—behind wainscots, between the wooden planks of paneling, in mouse holes, in cupboards. She wondered why they and not the others lingered where they did not belong, where even mice fled from their watery, weak touch. What did they want? She supposed the Soul- Smoker would know.
She curtsied to the family—two young girls and a small boy, clustered around a withered old woman, their grandmother by all appearances. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.
They nodded to her, respectful through their grief. Emancipated automata were not numerous, and even the wealthy (and Mattie assumed the wealth of the family based on the size of their abode and its desirable location next to water) treated them with reverence for their presumed merit. “We put the opium out,” they said. “The Soul-Smoker should be by soon.”
“I’ll wait with you by your leave,” Mattie said. “I have business with him.”
They said nothing, but Mattie deduced from their lowered eyelids—shot through with delicate veins branching like naked winter trees—that they were not comfortable discussing the matter. She moved away from the porch and stood, erect and still, by an old tree burdened with ivy and long garlands of lichen. She waited for the Soul-Smoker in suitable silence and calm.
She caught sight of him as soon as he turned onto the embankment, making his slow way along the edge of the black pond. The man was small and thin, black-and-white in his black suit and a shock of white hair. His cane drummed a steady rhythm along the cobbles, and his blind eyes, white in his white face, stared upward into the darkening sky. Those who were taking the evening air by the pond scattered at his approach, getting out of his way with almost unseemly haste, risking stepping into the spring mud and staining their ornate shoes and brocade gowns rather than meeting the gaze of his eyes, empty like clouds.
When he approached the house, the family stepped off the porch and retreated into the depths of the garden, leaving the door open for him. His cane tapped on the steps and flicked from side to side, like a tongue of a venomous snake. He was about to put his foot onto the first step, but then he turned to Mattie, undoubtedly alerted to her presence by the loud ticking of her heart.
“Kind sir,” Mattie said politely. “A word at your pleasure.”
“Call me Ilmarekh,” he said in a soft, almost feminine voice that lilted with some slight unidentifiable accent. “It’s been a while since anyone wanted a word with me.”
“I am Mattie,” she said, and softly touched her hand to the blind man’s.
He started at her touch. “Dear girl, are you an automaton?”
“Yes, sir,” Mattie said. “I am an alchemist, and I’m in need of your help. Do you mind if I watch you while you do your work?”
“Not at all,” he said. “Come inside.”
The hallway was subsumed by the twilight, long fingers of shadows stretching from the hollow of the cupped ceiling, reaching all the way down the walls, and only retreating by the western windows, which admitted the last of the sunlight. Ilmarekh sniffed the air, and Mattie tasted it too; both followed the sweet cloying perfume of opium to the kitchen.
The soul of the deceased had already found it—there was a faint shimmer in the bowl of brown powder left on the kitchen table, and a strange watery halo surrounded it, as, Mattie imagined, through a veil of tears.
The blind man carefully patted the pockets of his severe jacket and extracted a long-stemmed pipe with a small shallow bowl cut from ancient knotted wood, silvery with age. Without any ceremony, he stuffed the bowl of his pipe with the opium and lit it with a thick sulfurous match. Sweet smoke filled the kitchen, and the liquid shadow danced in the rising puffs and writhed under the ceiling, becoming smoke, becoming shadow and disappearing,
