At first, they didn’t even look at Mattie, intent and determined. But as more and more men walked by, she noticed that a few glanced in her direction; when the end of the column was moving past her, they stared.
“Hey,” one of them called, breaking the silence. “Shouldn’t we do something about the clunker here?”
She was too scared to take offense as several men left their place in the column, creating a little eddy of people, and walked up to her.
“I’ve done nothing to you,” Mattie said.
“It talks,” one of them said, perplexed. “When did you learn to talk?”
“I always could,” Mattie said. “I’m not like the other machines. I’m emancipated.”
The man studied her, his narrow face unshaven and impenetrable. “We heard about the intelligent machine,” he said, finally.
“The one who tells the government what to do with us,” one of his fellows added. “Is it you? Is it you who took away our land and stuffed us into mines?”
“Their kind took our fields, too,” another one said.
Mattie shook her head and folded her hands. “No,” she said. “It’s not me, I swear. I’m just an alchemist, I make ointments. You want the Calculator by the Grackle Pond.”
“We’ll get to it in due time,” the first man said. “Now the question is, what to do with you?”
Mattie sensed restrained violence in the tense set of his shoulders, in the subtle tightening of his fists, knobby and disproportionately large on his thin forearms.
A shout from somewhere at the head of the procession tore at the silence, and there was a sound of smashed glass and whooping. More shouting, more noises, and a thin wisp of dirty smoke curled into the sky like a curlicue. Mattie’s interlocutors were compelled to look away, stretching their necks to see better.
Mattie bolted. The man closest to her gave a surprised gasp as she pushed him away, and reflexively his fist caught her on the cheek; she felt cracks opening in her face, blooming into stars, but already she ran, the wind hissing in the fissures of her porcelain mask.
The crowd had grown sparser and she had no trouble weaving her way between them. She was faster than any of them, and they seemed too preoccupied to pay her much mind. Her feet pounded the pavement, but instead of resonating loudly like before, her footfalls were nearly inaudible in the cacophony of destruction that erupted all around and behind her.
She heard a woman scream, and thought that the rioters had breached the gates somewhere and were destroying the houses. There was a smashing of glass, and a smell of burning wood and something else—hair? horn?—chased after her. Mattie tried not to think about Iolanda and Niobe, and yet she felt guilty that she was unable to find them— although what good would it have done? She felt a chip of porcelain detach from her cheek and heard it clink on the pavement.
Mattie slowed her steps only when she was certain that the rioters had passed by; even then, she walked quickly, clinging close to the walls of the buildings. There was no one in the streets, and only occasionally she saw a worried face peer through the shutters—a sign that the rioters had passed this way. As she approached the palace district (she still thought of it this way, even though there was no palace anymore), she saw several of the enforcers’ buggies, heading in the direction she came from. They swarmed by the Parliament, organizing, and she breathed a little easier. The riot would be over soon, and she only hoped that it would be stopped before Iolanda and Niobe were hurt. She felt guilty for her earlier resentment of them, as if her thoughts had brought them into danger.
They did not let her into the Parliament building, and she headed for Loharri’s house—it was closer than hers, and she was not ready to face Sebastian just yet. Sebastian. She thought about telling Loharri where he was, about the missing medallion and explosives. Surely, it would be a reason enough? And yet, her entire being cried out against it. It didn’t matter if he was the one who blew up the palace; it didn’t matter if he was involved in the riots somehow. She just couldn’t betray him. She had had enough of that for now. Instead, she wondered if perhaps Iolanda was visiting Loharri, and was thus spared the grisly fate Mattie tried really hard not to imagine.
The door was locked, but Mattie decided to wait. With the shrubbery so bold and unrestrained, she could sit on the front stoop, hidden by the glistening green wall studded with creamy and red roses, drinking in their sweet fragrance. She watched the sky turn deeper blue, and gingerly touched her face, exploring the new cracks. She extended her eyes to take a closer look, and her heart fell—there were so many, with whole chunks of porcelain missing, exposing the shining gears underneath. The corner of her lips was cracked horribly, and she thought that it almost mimicked Loharri’s injury—now she too had half a face maimed. The difference was that he could replace hers.
Loharri came home when the shadows from the hedge grew long enough to touch the walls of the house, to lap at the foundation and to reach up to the windows, gradually consuming the wall from the ground up. The rose bushes looked black in the dimming light, and the night flowers’ fragrance scented the breeze—Mattie smelled jasmine and gardenias, magnolias and lilacs in the thick night air, and almost missed the sound of familiar light footsteps on the path.
Loharri smiled at Mattie but his eyes remained tired. His clothes were rumpled as if he had slept in them, and the white collar and cuffs of his shirt bore long streaks of oil. His hands were stained, black semicircles of grime nestled under the fingernails of his usually clean hands. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Come on in; I’ll get the fire going.”
Loharri still signified home for Mattie, no matter how much she resented this fact. “You look tired,” she said. “Did you see the riots?”
He smirked. “Yes, I did. They burned down a few houses and made a racket before the Parliament. But right now, I just want a bath, a sandwich and a nice drink. Come on in.”
“I don’t want to disturb you,” Mattie said. Her words sounded perfunctory even to her; they both knew that Mattie’s presence would neither tax nor disturb him.
She followed Loharri inside, and it felt as though they had just returned from one of their excursions—it felt like coming home after a long absence. The smells she hadn’t noticed when she used to live here were obvious now—metal and oil, the weak scent of roses wafting through the open windows from the outside, an unfinished glass of tea left in the kitchen—and endearing in their familiarity.
“Go take your bath,” she told Loharri. “I’ll make you your tea and sandwich.”
“I have an automaton for that.”
She tilted her head. “I don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself.” His footfalls retreated into the interior of the house, and she listened to the weak sounds as she rummaged through the ice chest looking for cheeses and cold meat. She heard the running water, the rustling of clothes shed to the floor, a splash and a tired sigh.
She thought that Loharri seemed unusually subdued, considering the events of the past weeks, and especially today. Perhaps the telegraph clerk was right; perhaps there came a time when the most reasonable response was to sigh and ignore everything, because the heart could not absorb all the misery of the world without breaking. Perhaps they should just stay in the kitchen, the kettle bubbling merrily on the woodstove, the flames of the fireplace casting a bright glow on the dark walls, and talk nonsense, and watch the elaborate dance of the fireflies outside.
Loharri was apparently of the same mind—when he came into the kitchen, his hair dripping water onto the collar of his clean shirt, he held up his hand. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“Neither do I,” Mattie said. “I’m just worried about Iolanda—have you seen her today?”
He shook his head and gave her a sharp look. “Since when are the two of you best pals? She worries about you, you worry about her…”
“She bought some ointment for me,” Mattie said, settling for a half-truth rather than an outright lie or a confession. “She seems nice. And you like her, don’t you?”
He settled at the table and drank his tea. “It’s complicated, Mattie.”
She tilted her head. “Everything is complicated with you.”
“It’s a character flaw.” He smiled, then squinted up at her. “Don’t worry, she’ll be fine. But what happened to your face? Did you fall again?”
“Yes,” Mattie said. “No. I was watching the smoke over the city, and walked into a lamppost.” It was just ridiculous enough for him to believe it.
