She felt a forceful pang of guilt when she thought about the last time she saw Sebastian. She had gained enough distance from the event to think about it now, but the shame and turmoil remained strong. She told herself that she had done nothing wrong, that this was what people were supposed to do when in love—and yet, he was the only one besides Loharri who had touched her secret place. She imagined what it would be like to give him her key, to let him wind her—and instead, she recoiled at the thought. If she were to get her key back, she thought, no one but her would ever touch it. She would wind herself well in advance so that she would never need to rely on another to keep herself alive.
They had to push through the crowd all the way to the ducal district, where the temple and the Parliament still stood but felt separate from the teeming life around them, like relics of a bygone era. They did not belong, Mattie thought, just like the gargoyles on the roof did not belong to the world around them. For the first time, she doubted her assignment— perhaps, she thought, she shouldn’t interfere with the natural order of things, perhaps it would be better to let the gargoyles pass into the realm of legends entirely Perhaps they were turning to stone simply because there was no place for them.
Yet, it wasn’t true, Mattie told herself. There would always be nooks and fissures where ancient things born of stone could survive. There was no reason to let them go simply because the world was changing; ushering in the new did not have to mean discarding the old. Did it?
“What are you thinking about?” Loharri said. They were approaching the Parliament, deserted in contrast to the rest of the city save for a few enforcers guarding it—it seemed that everyone was eager to get away, and Mattie doubted that the Parliament building would be open.
To her surprise, once they stepped inside they were ushered along by several enforcers. “Emergency meeting,” they informed Loharri. “Would you like to leave your automaton here?”
“No, I want her along,” Loharri said.
They didn’t argue—apparently, they had more important things to worry about, and Mattie followed Loharri to the second floor, into a darkened and plush room dominated by a large oak table. Almost the entire parliament and a few other mechanics and alchemists sat around it. Loharri took a seat, and Mattie remained standing behind his chair, close to the wall, in the shadows where she betrayed her presence with only occasional glinting of metal and quiet ticking.
She listened to the men talk, and the same sense of disbelief and dread as she felt in Loharri’s kitchen descended upon her—they talked as if the destruction outside was a temporary event, a tornado, disruptive but fleeting. They talked about containment and rebuilding, they talked about reforms as if the city itself hadn’t turned on them; Bokker babbled about the missing medallions and the necessity to find Sebastian—or whoever he could’ve given his medallion to. The mechanics confirmed that his medallion was never surrendered upon his expulsion, and that they knew he was up to no good.
At this point, Loharri turned to look at her. Mattie remained motionless, her new face as mercifully blank as her old one. “What?” she whispered. “Do you need something?”
He shook his head and turned back.
Mattie listened to Bokker and Bergen argue about the measures that had to be taken—how they would look for Sebastian, and what they would have to do to stem the riots. “Cut the head off and the body will die,” Bokker said, and the rest nodded sagely.
Mattie wanted to scream at them that it wasn’t that simple—it wasn’t just Sebastian, there were others. Thousands of miners and peasants, the workers in the automaton factories and those who cleaned the garbage off the streets— they probably didn’t even know about Sebastian, and they wouldn’t miss him.
She left the meeting quietly, her steps muted by the thick carpet, her skirts whispering against the wall as she exited.
She pushed through the crowd, heading for the gates—she wanted to make sure that Ilmarekh wasn’t harmed by the violence, defenseless as he was alone in his this house, blind and weak.
The gates were guarded now—the enforcers swarmed like flies, their caterpillars staining the air with acrid black smoke. Those leaving the city were not detained, and she slid past the enforcers and their eyes hidden under the faceplates of their helms.
She ran up the hill and knocked on the Soul-Smoker’s door. He was there, thankfully whole and in high spirits. He sat by the fireplace where the last flames still guttered and smoldered, his pipe in his pale hand. He smiled when he heard her wooden footfalls, and waved his pipe festively.
“I’m glad that you are all right,” he said.
“I’m glad they didn’t harm you,” she replied.
He smiled a bit, his thin fingers fiddling with the buttons on his waistcoat. “Why would they? I am sympathetic.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mattie replied. “It doesn’t matter to them.”
She had realized something last night, and the terror of the understanding weighed heavily on her mind. It didn’t matter what one thought or did—once perceived as an enemy by a malignant, blind force, one would be treated as such. Those who prided themselves in their intelligence and ability to rule and those who rebelled against them were just like the mindless automatons collecting the dead bodies and limbs amidst the carnage, like the enforcers that moved through the eastern district arresting whoever they saw fit and handing them over to the Soul-Smoker. There was no difference whatsoever; Mattie had been mistaken to think that there was, that they would listen to her.
“I don’t think you know what you are talking about,” Ilmarekh answered with a slight frown. “I can be useful to them—I am useful to anyone. You’re just afraid of change.”
“Of course I am!” Mattie stomped her foot, and the entire house shook. “Everyone should be afraid of change—people die in such times.”
“It has to get worse before it gets better.”
“Maybe.” Mattie paced across the narrow room. At least he recognized that the change was happening, unlike the old men at the Parliament. “I saw the mechanics and the alchemists today… they are talking about repressing the riots. Defusing the situation, as they call it. The miners will get better wages—they will promise them, at least. I don’t think they have enough money to do that, but they’ll promise, and they think it’ll be enough. Do you think it’ll be enough?”
“I’m afraid it just might be,” Ilmarekh answered with a sigh. “They are just people, Mattie. They don’t want to burn buildings and kill people. Even when it is called for.”
Mattie was not assured of the alleged docility of the men who almost killed her yesterday, but she did not argue. “Just be careful,” she said.
Ilmarekh nodded and slouched by the fireplace, groping for a cinder that could be coaxed into lighting his pipe. Mattie found one for him and held it close to the pipe as he puffed on the stem, his brow wrinkled. The opium, resinous and moist, caught fire reluctantly, and Mattie smelled the sweet, cloying smoke. The spirits stirred as soon as the twin serpentine wisps of smoke curled from Ilmarekh’s flared nostrils—the souls pried his mouth open and babbled, their voices mingling into an indistinct cacophony of word fragments and pained exclamations.
Mattie waited for them to calm down and sort out the speaking order among themselves; they always seemed so talkative when Mattie was around, and she thought that they probably disliked talking to each other—if they even could talk to each other—and resented Ilmarekh… they didn’t need words to haunt his every waking moment.
“Do they leave you alone when you sleep?” Mattie asked.
Ilmarekh shook his head, struggling for control over his mouth and voice. “I haven’t had a dream of my own in ages.”
“You deserve it,” one of the ghosts shouted.
“Leave him be,” another interrupted. “He’s not his own man.”
His voice garbled again under the assault of many souls pressing from behind, filling his mouth, his eyes with their ethereal shapes. They cried and pleaded in turns, one after the other—the unfairness of it all, the unfinished business. Each seemed to have something to say to Mattie, because she was the only one who could listen to them, without any fear of her soul being sucked out of her.
But perhaps not—she thought of the gargoyles, and almost cried out once she realized that the gargoyles would be capable of listening to the wrath and pleading of the spirits without any risk. Would the soul of a dead
