The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,85

and good,” she said. “But I can’t believe what this bastard had done to you.”

Mattie nodded and cringed at the clicking sound in her neck and the difficulty of such a simple movement. “I’m sure he feels the same way about me. I’ve betrayed him.”

Iolanda shrugged. “You had a better reason.”

Mattie did not feel certain that reasons mattered more than deeds themselves, but felt too exhausted to argue. After her initial burst of verbosity she seemed to have run out of words, and so she listened mutely as Niobe and Iolanda called for a mechanic again and busied themselves with rearranging the crates. Mattie’s heart groaned in laborious beats that seemed to fall farther and farther away from each other. And what did it matter? she thought. If her heart stopped, no one but Loharri would be able to revive her. And maybe as time went on he would forgive her. She could last like this, immobile, awaiting the gentle scraping of the key as it entered the keyhole, a slow turn and a click that would bring her back. Perhaps it would be better to wait until she was forgiven and things had sorted themselves out, so she could awake to a semblance of normalcy. It would be nice just to sleep the chaos away, and wake up in the world where Loharri did not hate her. Even in her pitiful state Mattie realized that it was not likely.

“Iolanda,” she said. “Please use the homunculus soon.”

“It’s not my decision . . . ” Iolanda started.

Mattie held up her hand. “I know. You want to wait until you have control of the city. But I cannot wait that long. Get my key for me, please. Even if my heart stops. You can wind me again. Just get my key, I beg of you.”

Iolanda nodded. “I will, I promise. Don’t worry about a thing.” She looked over her shoulder and threw her hands into the air. “Finally!” she said. “About time a mechanic showed up.”

As Mattie had hoped, it was Sebastian. He nudged Mattie to her feet. “Come on,” he said gently. “Come to my workshop, and we will get you fixed up.”

“My key,” Mattie whispered.

“Shhh,” Sebastian said. “Don’t worry about a thing—we’ll get you back on your feet yet.”

Mattie nodded and tried not to worry as she followed him through a wide, short corridor to another cave that smelled of metal, machine oil, and explosives.

Chapter 18

We look at everything with our new eyes, eyes attuned to noticing flesh before stone. No longer are we paying attention to the buildings, but rather to the buzzing of the slow, overfed flies that seem to be everywhere. They smell our sweat and land on our lips and eyes, their buzzing loud and somehow unclean. We wince and wave them off our faces, but we still feel the greasy touch of their tiny claws.

And the smell . . . the mindless automatons are clearing the streets, but too few of them had survived the riots. Even those that did are in a poor shape—they stumble about, and some of their limbs are missing. And they collect the bodies of the dead miners the enforcers do not bother to pick up anymore. They still carry off their own after skirmishes, but we see the fatigue in their eyes, and we guess that soon they will abandon their bodies too.

There is a smell of rotting garbage everywhere, and it takes us a while to realize that it is coming from the dead bodies, stripped of their poor clothing and crude weapons by the scavengers. We recognize the scavengers too, hiding in the shadows—the light-eyed feral children let loose after the Stone Monks left the city.

We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone—crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try.

We move toward the building of the Parliament—the windows are yellow with light, even though it is morning, and we know that they have been in there all night, too preoccupied to remember to conserve oil, which is going to run out soon, just like everything else in the city.

We climb up the walls and crouch on the windowsills. They don’t see us,