The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,18

. ” She faltered and bit her tongue, but Loharri was too engrossed in his own thoughts and speculations.

“There’s a pattern,” he said. The iron in his hand hissed and exhaled thin streams of smoke that smelled of amber. “Today was the day when most of the court were visiting the countryside. Everyone knows that, so whoever staged it wanted no casualties.”

“Or was looking for easy access without fear of being caught or interrogated.”

Loharri nodded. “Good point, darling. That would indicate an outsider; I was thinking more of an inside job, but you just may be right. Also, note how the explosives were rigged.”

“It collapsed on itself,” Mattie said. “They didn’t want to destroy other buildings.”

“Yes, but those explosives . . . the whole city shook. I wonder who could make something like that.”

Mattie did not have to answer—they both knew that the Alchemists were the ones with the capacity for making such things; Loharri was still sore since the time when the Mechanics had to go to the Alchemists with their heads uncovered and bowed to ask for their help in blasting a passageway through the mountains.

“Of course, the gargoyles can also command stone,” Loharri said. He flipped through the book Mattie brought him. “Look, it says here that they rebuilt the palace after the earthquake five hundred years ago. They could collapse it if they wanted to.”

He put the iron away and reconnected the sensors in Mattie’s shoulder. She wiggled her fingers tentatively. There was some stiffness, but little pain. She hoped it would go away with some practice.

She cocked her head. “Why would the gargoyles do that? They’ve been aligned with the ducal family since times immemorial.”

Loharri gave her a long look. “Have been brushing up on our history, have we? Be careful there, dear love—history leads to politics more often than you could imagine.”

“I’m not interested in that,” Mattie said. “Unless more buildings were to blow up.”

Loharri paced the room, his long legs loping like a camel’s. “I wonder if there will be. By the way, earlier . . . you said something, like you had some suspicions?”

“It’s probably nothing,” she said. “But at your gathering last night, I heard some mechanics talking about getting rid of the Duke.”

“They always blab about that,” Loharri scoffed. “It’s just talk, understand.”

“As far as you know.” Mattie could not resist this barb.

Loharri bit. “Are you implying that my brethren might have secrets from me?”

Mattie shrugged. “Talk to Bergen if you’re in doubt.”

Loharri laughed—the same soft, almost soundless laugh she learned preceded his more extreme temper tantrums. “And yet you dare to fool yourself that politics is of no interest to you.”

Mattie rose from her seat. “Your well-being is of interest to me. Talk to your friends. I’ll talk to mine. Come by when you feel like you can talk without being angry.”

Loharri seemed taken aback. “As you say, Mattie. Somehow, I missed the shift here—you talk to me like you are my master.”

Mattie shrugged and craned her neck in pretend pensiveness. “Or perhaps you just think that someone who doesn’t want to be your slave is aiming to be your master.”

She didn’t turn when she headed for the door, but all the way she felt Loharri’s burning gaze on the back of her neck.

Chapter 5

The society of the Alchemists never held regular meetings. The news spread through the grapevine, and occasionally, when circumstances called for their special attention, they made use of the public telegraph. That afternoon Mattie decided to stop by the telegraph to see if a meeting was called—after all, the collapse of the ducal palace seemed reason enough to have one. Besides, Mattie thought, the other alchemists could not have missed the implications of large quantities of explosives that were apparently responsible for the disaster. It was only a matter of time before the Duke and his courtiers returned from their trip and started questioning the alchemists. There was also a concern about the gargoyles—always elusive, they never got involved in human disputes, but no one had ever destroyed their creations before; at least, according to Mattie’s book.

In the carefully worded telegram marked “alchemists only” and protected by encoding, Bokker, the elected chairman of the Alchemists’ Society, expressed his concern that the gargoyles might direct their displeasure at the Society’s members, and invited the meeting in his shed—it was a rather spare construction, holding decades’ worth of obsolete equipment, but large enough to fit all of the alchemists who would be concerned enough to attend the