The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,24
thoughts of the questions she would ask him once he was coherent again. She needed to fix him, and did not dare to think beyond that.
Back in his shack, Ilmarekh had moved away from the fire; it still smoldered, ashes wet from a carelessly dumped bucket of water. He was now curled up on the bed, little more than a mere straw-filled mattress.
Mattie shook her head and poked at the wet ashes with the tip of her foot. “What are you going to do if you want fire later?”
He shrugged, sullen at the nagging note that crept into her voice.
“You won’t . . . you won’t do anything to hurt me, will you?”
From previous experience, Mattie knew that people didn’t trust her just because she mentioned her good will or kind nature. Nowadays, she relied entirely on mercenary arguments. “Why would I do that? I still have questions to ask you.”
Her words seemed to reassure him, and he propped himself up on one elbow, pulling a ragged woolen blanket around him. He grasped the bottle and drank, his long white fingers twitching on the glass, pulsating with every gulp as if they were the tentacles of an octopus testing the strength of its suckers. He was almost finished when his fingertips brushed across the glass medallion with the emblazoned gargoyle, and his blind white eyes widened in surprise.
Mattie was relieved to see a ghost of a smile touch his lips.
“Mattie,” he said. “This is a truly lovely engraving. Thank you.” He fell back on his mattress, still clasping the vial, and was asleep before he remembered to stop smiling.
Mattie guarded his sleep, which gave her plenty of time to look around. She knew the Soul-Smoker was poor, she just hadn’t realized how much so. The house—the hut, if one wanted to be honest—lacked even the most basic necessities. There was no running water, and the fireplace seemed to be the only way to cook meals and heat water for a bath. There was just one room, one corner of it sagging perilously and threatening to bring down the entire house. The wooden floors, drafty and not covered by anything but sparse trickles of sawdust, were worn to a soft shine by the feet of many generations of Soul-Smokers; their daily paths were clearly visible—one led from the fireplace to the table, rickety on its thin, deformed legs; another shot from the table to the bed and the deep ceramic tub in the corner next to it; the third led from the bed to the fireplace. A simple triangle enclosing a life of privation.
Mattie did not have to ask to learn Ilmarekh’s story—the Soul-Smokers were always the same, recruited from those who had no other choice. Usually orphans, usually crippled, those who had nowhere else to go and no one to turn for help to; those who had no chance surviving on their own, without the Stone Monks’ dubious charity.
The orphanage run by the Stone Monks was the northernmost building in the city, its wall just a hair’s breadth from the city wall by the northern gates. Mattie remembered coming there with Loharri—he seemed fond of coming there, with no other apparent purpose but to stand in front of the solid front wall, his hands in his pockets and his disfigured face twisted in an even more unpleasant grimace than usual. Mattie would stand next to him and occasionally ask questions to stave off boredom.
“Why did they put it all the way here?” she asked him once. “Their temple and the gargoyle feeders are all by the palace.”
“Noise,” Loharri said in a strained voice. “There’d be too much noise. They don’t want anyone hearing.”
Mattie cocked her head to listen then, but could not catch any sounds coming through the thick blind walls, just one door and no windows. The stone was too thick, too solid—the building looked like the ones in the ducal district, but the thin lines between blocks of masonry told her that it was man-made. “Why aren’t there any windows?” she asked then.
Loharri turned around sharply and headed away. As she hurried to catch up, her skirts