The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,93
his opponents are invisible, but he and we know that they have him in the sights of their muskets.
He waves the handkerchief, stiff as a board, in the air to signal his peaceful intentions, and starts his slow descent onto the embankment of the pond below.
Mattie watched Iolanda biting her lips and pacing back and forth. They made a post of sorts in one of the abandoned houses, and judging by the smell of urine and burned rags, they were not the first ones to have done so. It had once been a nice dwelling—the wallpaper, white with delicate blue flowers, spoke of taste and wealth, and the remnants of the wooden floors, now wrenched free and dragged away somewhere to build fires, were well-polished and clean. There was no furniture remaining, and the small party camped out on the floors, apparently just happy to be anywhere but an underground mineshaft. There were maybe twenty people here, mostly courtiers and a few miners armed with axes and a couple of muskets. The crates with explosives were stacked in the kitchen, well out of sight. The men with weapons guarded the entrance, even though no danger was apparent. Mattie felt quite sure that the men at the barricade by the pond were not going to launch an offensive raid.
She listened to the distant sounds of carnage wrought by Sebastian’s war machine, and wondered if the Parliament building survived. Everyone talked excitedly about how all but a few pockets of resistance had been extinguished, and that soon they could start rebuilding. They talked about returning the land to the peasants, and improving conditions in the mines. She overheard a few of Iolanda’s friends arguing in fierce whispers whether the miners and the peasants would be fit to govern, and whether they should establish a temporary council consisting of the courtiers who had abandoned their position, and what to do about the enforcers—after all, they’ve been just following orders, and once the power changes hands, they would have no qualms about serving the new government, would they? And a new Soul-Smoker would have to be appointed—too bad the monks had left, but surely they could find one. Maybe among the spiders who really couldn’t hope for anything better.
For some reason, the conversation made Mattie feel sad—she thought that things always happened around her, but without letting her touch them directly. Life flowed around her, like a stream flows around a solitary rock, which, no matter how much it wanted to, was unable to see anything upstream or downstream from it.
Mattie shook her head. After all, she wouldn’t want it any other way—she was happy to retire into a quiet corner, where she did not have to look at Sebastian’s machine attacking the barricades, crushing metal and flesh with its massive legs and shooting fire from its cannon.
One of the sentries posted by the door came inside. “He’s coming,” he whispered to Iolanda, and Mattie felt a small flutter in her chest at the thought of facing Loharri again. “He’s wounded,” the sentry continued. “You better come outside, it is safe on this side of the pond.”
Iolanda nodded and headed for the door; Niobe and Mattie followed, neither willing to miss Loharri’s surrender. Mattie was anxious now that her goal was so close. She could imagine the weight of the key in her hand, she could almost feel it sliding in and clicking into place, tugging at the spring of her heart, making it well again.
She saw Loharri right away, and the way he walked, stiffly and yet unsteadily, reminded her of the first time she met the Soul-Smoker. She whipped around, to look at the front of the house, and the trampled flowerbeds. There was no doubt—it was the same house where she watched Ilmarekh consume a restless spirit, the same porch from which she first saw him approach. She had a vertiginous feeling of time spinning her around and throwing her into the point where it all began; and yet, Ilmarekh was dead and the gargoyles were flesh. Loharri stumbled along, his feet slurping in the dripping pool of blood that seemed to move along with him—Mattie guessed it for the homunculus, leading him toward his bondage.
Iolanda walked up to him, and they stopped at the embankment, just a few steps away from the house. Mattie watched his face for any sign of recognition, but his gaze slid off her as if she were a fragment of an empty sky, a stone