The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,25
flapping in the rising wind, she caught the sharp sound of grinding teeth. “The windows give one hope, Mattie,” he said. “This is not what this place is for.”
Now, she tried to guess what sorts of horrors happened inside, and just could not think of anything that would push Ilmarekh and his predecessors to choose living in a tiny hut with hundreds of ghosts haunting his every moment, never leaving him alone; he only had time to be alone in his skin during opium withdrawal. She realized that her own experiences had been rather benign and limited in scope, yet it made her fear more. If they could do this to a man, what about a girl automaton whose position in the society was tenuous at best?
She rose from her seat on the floor with a jerking movement, eager to do anything so as not to think the awful thoughts that threatened to overwhelm her. She regretted spending the money on books; she needed to hoard it, to save it, because there could be a day when she would need to bribe people to save her life . . .
Mattie collected every dirty, crusted plate strewn on the floor and on the table, and dumped them all into the tub. Irritated, she ran outside into the nascent rain, and found a small, primitive well behind the house, halfway down the slope. She filled the bucket she found by the well with water and she brought it back, dumped it into the tub, and went back for more. She used to be a house automaton, after all, and she scrubbed the dishes and rinsed them in cold water, she swept the floors with a fury of a tornado, she whirled like a broken mechanized dancer. The familiarity of the movement comforted her momentarily, but soon was supplanted by other memories.
She remembered Loharri’s house, as a house servant sees it—straight planes of the desks and benches and shelves that gathered dust, her habitual irritation at the piled up parts and flywheels and counterweight mechanisms that cluttered everywhere, and Loharri’s insistence that she mustn’t touch them and yet keep the place clean; the desolate expanses of wooden floors that needed to be waxed. Like him or not, but he did let her go—partially, at least.
She fetched another bucket of water and scrubbed the floors with unnecessary force and vigor, her metal bones creaking with the effort. The more she tried to understand what moved those around her, the more she failed—especially with Loharri. She remembered the women who came and went like the seasons; she remembered his long spells of ennui and seclusion, and then visits to the temple and the orphanage, the night stalking of the sleeping gargoyles, immobile and light like birds. And how he always brought her with him.
She soothed him; oh, how she soothed him. She remembered the cool lips on her porcelain cheek, the slight trembling of hands as they touched the metal and the whalebone inlays of her chest, the breath fogging the window behind which her heart whirred and ticked. The almost hungry caress of the fingertips as they traced the outline of the keyhole on her chest, and made her heart tick faster. The taste of human skin on her lip sensors, salty and precipitous, and the feeling in her abdomen that some great misfortune was about to befall her mixed with light-headed giddiness. The smell of leather and tobacco trapped in her hair afterwards.
And then he recovered and worked in his shop, and she cleaned, and the procession of dark-lidded women with heavy thick hair and small, secretive smiles resumed. Women like Iolanda who asked Mattie worrying questions. Mattie was a woman because of the corset stays and whalebone, because of the heave of her metal chest, because of the bone hoops fastened to her hips that held her skirts wide—but also because Loharri told her she was one. She thought then that he loved her; and yet, as soon as she was emancipated she forbade him to touch her.
She dried the dishes and stacked them neatly in the rack by the fireplace. She scrubbed the fireplace free of wet ash and brought in a fresh armload of logs, stacked outside under a sailcloth canopy protecting them from the rain.
Ilmarekh stirred in his sleep and sighed. Mattie settled on the floor by the fireplace and waited for him to wake up. She tried to keep her thoughts on a single track, from Sebastian to