The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,77
turned her chair to face the wall—a plain white wall with nothing interesting painted on it. He shifted more tumblers, and Mattie’s eyes emitted two light beams that met on the wall, creating two partially overlapping spotlights. She whined in fear.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s nifty, really—Bokker’s chemical captures images onto a rotating copper roll, and the same roll records the sound. And everything you see is written on it—it’s like your memory, but now I can see it, too.”
“How long has it been there?” Mattie whispered.
“Since you were last . . . broken,” he answered. “I’m not a fool, Mattie, and I notice things. I notice it when you lie, when Iolanda lies—she thinks she is so clever not to hide her feelings but make them sound like jokes. But now we will see what really happened.”
The light coming from her eyes blinded Mattie, but still she could see through the haze the vague shapes moving, the cobbles of the city streets jumping up and down in rhythm with her steps. Iolanda’s frizzed hair, her pitying look as she leaned closer, her face taking up most of Mattie’s vision. Niobe standing by the window, watching them, her arms crossed.
Sebastian’s face appeared, by turns kind and mocking—Mattie was surprised to see it so clearly now. His face leaning closer, his lips smiling . . . Then the image became dark, and Mattie recalled with embarrassment that her eyes were retracted then, blind, the rest of her oblivious to everything but the pleasure of Sebastian’s hands on her chest.
Loharri made a small sound, of surprise or annoyance, Mattie could not tell. He touched something in Mattie’s head, and the image blurred. Loharri swore through his teeth but fell silent when the pale face of the Soul-Smoker took up the entire wall and the shouts and whispers of the dead poured from his lips. And then there was darkness of the tunnels, the faces of the courtiers . . . Mattie’s voice asking about Iolanda.
“Interesting,” Loharri said. His face remained composed, but she could see the vein swelling on his mangled cheek. “I knew you were hiding something, but this, Mattie, this . . . I have to go now and talk to Bergen. You stay here and we will talk when I get back.”
He picked up his overcoat and put it on, his movements slow and measured. Mattie wanted to plead with him, to remind him that he loved her. But the ice in his eyes told her that he was beyond pleading and entreaties, that she was beyond forgiveness—perhaps, even beyond the consideration that one gives to the most insignificant creatures. She could even hope to live through this, because now she was even beyond vengeful dismantling.
He turned to leave, but stopped abruptly. “Oh, I almost forgot: I’ll need these to show to my peers.” His fingers, cold and accurate, prized her left eye out of her head, then her right. She cried out, but her only answer was the sound of the slamming door, the turn of a key, and a quick rattle of footfalls on the steps outside.
Mattie did not know how much time had passed. She had counted her heartbeats at first, but given up after two thousand. She wished she could see the sun, and if she tried hard enough she could imagine how it would look out of Loharri’s workshop window—large and molten, with a tang of copper, enclosed in the delicate cage of black rose branches, still like cast iron.
It was always so peaceful here, so quiet—Loharri had often said that he enjoyed the stillness of the air, the absence of sound, which made it easy to imagine that this house was the only place that existed, surrounded by an infinite bubble of luminous and empty space. And now Mattie realized that even if she screamed for help, her cries would be muffled by the dense hedge, and in any case, people were used to screams by now and hid and ran rather than rushed to help.
Something touched her lips—a wet, cold, and unpleasant touch tasting of blood and sulfur—and Mattie started. The familiar hissing reassured her; the homunculus clambered up her senseless form and now whispered in her ear, its voice indistinct and blurred by the gargling quality of its speech. “I can help,” it said. “Help?”
“Do you know which switch he has turned?” Mattie asked, her disgust for the creature tempered somewhat by hope.