The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,20
everyone today said this. It makes me wonder, it truly does—is a disaster the only thing that can bring us together? Are we that selfish, that embroiled in our own lives? Is there a point to even having this society anymore?”
“Of course there is,” Mattie said, and dared to touch his purple sleeve with her fingertips, as reassuringly as she could. “We don’t have to see each other all the time to work together, do we?”
He sighed but looked somewhat consoled. “I suppose so, dear girl, I suppose so. We’re lucky—two of our Parliament representatives came today. They’ll tell us the latest rumors at the court and in the government.”
Mattie headed inside. The hothouse was not exactly suited for gatherings—it was a huge indoor garden, with potted and hanging plants covering benches, walls, and ceiling. Most of the plants she couldn’t even recognize—rare, exotic blooms nodded at her regally, iridescent blues and reds, and the air was thick with their cloying fragrance. She distinguished the smells of roses and orchid blossoms, of warm melting resin and sweet nectar.
The alchemists gathered between the benches, most of them sniffing and looking at the plants with appreciation. Bokker’s collection was legendary among them, and it was the result and the perpetuator of his wealth. Bokker did not look down on selling his surplus, and the alchemists were always willing to buy the plants from him. Bokker had a reputation for not being petty: lenient with his bills and generous with his measuring scales.
Mattie followed the row of potted plants, all of them in jubilant bloom—reds and yellows, whites and blues—and the scents of musky lilies and earthy irises snaked into the sensors on her lips, filling them to saturation. Still, she discerned the smells of lush greenery and rotting peaches, the sweet decay of leaf mulch lining the flower pots, the dark, foreboding scent of rare orchids that twined their thick white roots around the branches of the small trees cultivated for the purpose of being the orchids’ perch and sustenance.
She brushed her fingertips across a particularly lush, velvet petal, bright crimson streaked with gold, and it showered her fingers with bright yellow pollen. Her fingers smelled of saffron.
It struck her how large the hothouse pavilion was—two hundred alchemists milled about without jostling against each other or banging elbows, and some managed to carry on private conversations in soft blurred voices; despite her superior hearing, Mattie could not make out the words, but the overall tone seemed rather dark.
The gathering had filled an open area at the back of the rectangular pavilion, and stragglers had to strain to hear from the aisles between the benches. Bokker pushed past Mattie and took his place in the opening, among the garden hoses, buckets, and piles of peat moss. “Dear alchemists,” he started from his inauspicious perch. “I need not explain why we are gathered here. I need not tell you that things that turn bad have a tendency to become worse. I do need to prepare you for the blame that will be thrown at us by the Mechanics, and I need you to restrain yourself from blaming them back.”
“He has to be kidding,” the woman standing behind Mattie whispered. Mattie had not met her before, but her Scrying Ring hung conspicuously around her neck on a thin leather thong. The woman spoke with a slight accent, and her dark skin betrayed her foreign origin; no other society in the city would have tolerated her. “He expects us just to sit back and take it?” Judging from the growing murmur around them, many alchemists shared her position.
Bokker turned almost purple and raised his hands, waiting for silence. “I do not ask for your acquiescence in the face of accusations,” he said. “I ask for your tolerance and forgiveness. Do not lash back at those who accuse you, do not give them an excuse to rally the people and give power to the Mechanics. Realize that without ducal trust and support for our society, the Mechanics will rule the city.”
“They already do,” someone in the front shouted.
“Tides turn,” Bokker answered mysteriously.
The woman behind Mattie tugged at her dress. “Excuse me,” she said. “Why do the alchemists need ducal support? I’m new here, still learning . . . ”
“The Dukes had always insisted that both alchemists and mechanics are represented in the government,” Mattie said. “They represent two aspects of creation—command of the spiritual and the magical, and mastery of the physical. Together, we have the same