Sebastian stared. “You never thought of it before?”
Mattie shook her head, and the joints in her neck whined. “I always thought of it as the only key. If there were more, it would be… disconcerting.” She thought a while, straining after some thought that kept flickering at the edges of her mind. Finally, she remembered. “Did Iolanda tell you about the thing in my head?” she murmured.
“No,” he said. “What thing in your head?”
She told him about Loharri and about her unwilling betrayal.
He listened, his hands clasped behind his back, his face carefully composed. But she could tell that he was upset: from the tendons in his neck, from the way they stood out under his skin. “You sure he took it out?” he said.
Mattie nodded.
“No matter,” Sebastian said, and reached for her face. “I’m going to take a look inside anyway. Let’s see what’s in there, hm?”
Mattie did not protest—it was just another punishment, she thought, her punishment for having done something wrong. She submitted to Sebastian’s hands taking off her face and popping out her eye, to his strong fingers digging with such cool nonchalance in her head. She felt him flipping switches and adjusting gears, and sometimes she blacked out, just for a moment, but she always came to. He found the switch that rendered her immobile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to turn you off for a little while. I promise you will feel better.”
When Mattie came to, the quality of light in the cave remained the same—why would it change, after all, underground so deep that time did not dare to penetrate it. But it felt like time had passed—the oil in the lamps seemed lower, and Sebastian looked older, a dark shadow of stubble appearing on his face.
Mattie was relieved to have woken up, and to be able to see. She felt better too—-her neck turned without grinding, and her thoughts flowed quicker and smoother, without the annoying snags of forgotten words or memories. He had managed to fix her, at least partially. “Thank you,” Mattie said. “I feel much better.”
He nodded. “Don’t mention it.”
Mattie hesitated. “What do I do now?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you want. I don’t advise going to the surface, though—there’s still fighting there.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what they are hoping for—we are right under them! And still they build fortifications. They have a machine that detects vibrations now, so every one of the last raids to the surface was anticipated. Explosives seem to be the way to go, but…” He stopped talking abruptly, and waved his hand in the air. “Go, Mattie. Find your friends. I have things to do.”
Her heart still whined occasionally, and the beats remained irregular. But there was no point in sulking or wishing that he didn’t treat her as an inconvenience. Mattie found one of the lamps that people underground wore on their heads, and she went exploring. The underground tunnels branched and multiplied and widened into caves, the intricate network rife with startling surprises—Mattie wandered through the labyrinth, occasionally finding hidden caches of explosives or food or clothes or equipment; sometimes she found secret groups of people; a few of them were spiders, and they watched Mattie silently out of their dark, sunken eyes. In the dusk, their eyes glistened deep within their sockets like the gems which the spiders often carried in their long hands—as reminders, Mattie guessed, or mementos. Or perhaps they were just entranced with their soft glow. The spiders rarely talked—Mattie supposed it was difficult for them, with their wheezing, whistling breaths. They made Mattie feel uneasy.
When she passed people in the tunnels, she tried not to look at the crates they carried, and she did not ask what part of the city they were going to. She did not ask about what happened to the enforcers who had gone underground before her eyes, and whether they found anything but the abandoned tunnels.
Other times, she helped Niobe to care for the wounded— there were few of them, and the two alchemists had no trouble mixing enough potions and unguents. They talked only of alchemy—Mattie shared her little secrets and contrivances about the use of aloe leaves or chamomile flowers; she taught Niobe to make a strong, tart- smelling brew of green blackberry branches and to apply it to the bandages for stopping bleeding. She talked about her concoctions with a sense of urgency; she never said it out loud, but with a fear that her heart might give out at any moment, she wanted to pass on as much of her knowledge as she could. Niobe did not talk about it either, but she remained alert and attentive.
Mattie grew anxious—there was no sign of changes, and she worried that her body, although ably patched up by Sebastian, would run out before she could see the homunculus work its dark bloody alchemy on Loharri. She needed her key, and she began to feel its absence as a dull ache in her chest.
Mattie did not know whether it was morning or night. She left Niobe to care for the sick and went to wander through the tunnels, but her heart was not in it. Instead, she went to Sebastian’s workshop. He was gone, but she found the smell of metal and oil reassuring in its familiarity. She sat on a crate and waited for the time when she would be able to go to the surface and see the gargoyles again.
There was a rustling of cloth, and Iolanda entered the workshop. Mattie smiled, and Iolanda sat next to her and rubbed her shoulder gently. She seemed so subdued now, her countenance sad, her flesh not galling anymore but merely soft and tired. Mattie wondered where her glee went, her bouncing joyfulness; she wondered if Iolanda had grown disappointed.
Iolanda smiled and sighed, and pulled Mattie’s head into her lap. Mattie resisted at first, but Iolanda took a brush with short dense bristles and a long handle out of her sleeve. “Let me brush your hair,” she said. “You will feel better.”
Mattie carefully rested her head on the soft flesh of Iolanda’s thigh and closed her eye. The brush whispered through the strands of Mattie’s hair—not really hers; she thought of the dead boy the gargoyles had told her about. She thought about Loharri, and what possessed him to save these locks for such a long time, what made him painstakingly attach them to Mattie’s metal scalp. The same thing, she supposed, that compelled the Soul-Smoker to engulf the dead boy’s soul—compassion and desire to remember. Could they really be so similar?
Soon, the repetitive strokes of the brush lulled her and she stopped wondering. Instead, she imagined the things she would say to Loharri if she saw him again—when she saw him again, she corrected herself. If nothing else, she had to see him subjected to another’s will—maybe then he would finally understand what it was like, and would stop being angry with her.
“By all rights he should be down here, with us,” Iolanda said.
“You mean Loharri?”
Iolanda put the brush away and stroked Mattie’s hair. “Yes. He has as many reasons to hate this city as any of us.”
“I don’t hate it,” Mattie said. “I’m here by accident.”
Iolanda did not seem to hear her. “I just don’t understand him. He told me he had been in the orphanage; he should be happy to see it blown up. But instead, he goes and converts the caterpillars into barricades and mounts weapons on them.”
“Is this why we’re still here?” Mattie asked. “There’s still fighting?”
“There’s fighting,” Iolanda answered. “And he, of all people, is acting like resisting the natural course of progress is the right thing to do. What do you make of that, Mattie?”
Disappointment stirred weakly—every time she thought Iolanda was growing interested in her, it was just a pretext for asking Mattie questions of interest to Iolanda. She just shrugged, her metal shoulder butting against Iolanda’s thigh. But in her mind, she thought that Loharri’s behavior was only reasonable. She knew how hard it was to achieve something, to reach a position of some influence; to give it all away would be unbearable. And unlike her, Loharri could not possibly hope to retain his power—the mechanics were the enemy, and he was too prominent to escape notice. He was not defending the city, he was defending himself. She felt close to him now that she knew what the desire to survive just a little bit longer made one do. After all, she had agreed to a duplicate key, and she was disappointed that she could not have it.
Iolanda’s fingers played with Mattie’s hair absentmindedly. “I wonder sometimes, Mattie,” she said. “I wonder at the things we do—I wonder at myself. Have you ever done things that you didn’t expect to? Things that just… happened?”
“Yes,” Mattie said. “Lately, I’ve been feeling that I’ve been doing nothing but.”
Iolanda laughed.
