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