and hunched, his eyes still long and narrow, his face no longer beautiful. He is pulling his jacket on as he walks out on the porch where we are waiting. “Where is she?” he asks.
“In her apartment, high above the streets, her face is off and she is broken.”
“What happened?” he says, but already we bound away, our message delivered.
Mattie woke up to the familiar touch. She extended her eyes carefully, fearful that she still wouldn’t be able to see. Loharri’s stern face swam into her field of vision. She looked past him to Niobe standing by the window, her forehead lined with worry, her arms crossed over her chest.
“What did you do?” Loharri asked.
Mattie sat up from the floor and touched her face to make sure it was back in place. Sebastian had seen her naked, she remembered. She did not find the thought altogether repellent; she liked the way his calloused fingers fit under her jaw, how swift and unapologetic he was . . .
“Mattie!”
She startled at Loharri’s insistent voice. “Nothing,” she said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Loharri shook his head. “Mattie. You don’t even know why you got ill, do you?”
She shook her head. “I was working too hard.”
His face remained composed, but she recognized the slight slow movement of his jaw, as if he were trying not to grit his teeth. “You were ill,” he said, “because you went against your desire to see me. I told you that you always must do so. Didn’t I?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know.”
“Wait a moment,” Niobe said and stepped forward. “You booby-trapped the poor girl’s head and didn’t even tell her? Just to make sure she didn’t get away from you?”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Loharri said without even looking in Niobe’s direction. “You’re forgetting your place—what, the alchemists let you join and you think you are their equal?”
Niobe shrank away as if from a slap, but her eyes blazed.
“Don’t be like this,” Mattie pleaded and folded her still trembling hands over her heart. She remembered Loharri’s temper—he often spoke harshly, but it passed.
“I’m sorry,” Loharri said to Niobe. “I do appreciate your calling me and being here for Mattie—but please do not meddle in things that don’t concern you.”
Niobe didn’t answer, and Loharri turned his attention back to Mattie. “Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”
“About the bombing,” Mattie answered. “I told you last time that you got the wrong man, and yet you killed him.”
“How do you know that?”
“The gargoyles. And you keep taking people and banishing them from the city, and—”
“Enough,” Loharri interrupted and rubbed his face. “I don’t like it either, Mattie, but that’s politics for you. People are restless, and they need someone to blame.”
“This is it?” Niobe said. “That’s your entire excuse?”
“It’s not an excuse,” Loharri said. “Things started to change when you people showed up.”
“Your people show up in our cities,” Niobe parried. “We don’t make a fuss about it.”
“You would if your own people were losing jobs to the foreigners.”
“Your people are losing jobs to your machines,” Niobe said. “You put mechanizing everything and making it efficient above your people’s happiness, and you wonder why they aren’t happy?”
Loharri stood and turned to Niobe. “Don’t try to come between me and my automaton,” he said. “Seriously. I have no interest in finding scapegoats, and I’m not going to tell anyone about your presence here; you don’t need to worry about that. But if I have to remove Mattie from your company, I will. She does not need your influence.” He grabbed his bag of tools and was out of the door before Mattie had a chance to say thank you or goodbye.
Niobe waited for his steps to fall silent in the stairwell, stretched and laughed. “What an unpleasant man,” she said.
“He really isn’t,” Mattie said. “He has his problems, but he’s better than most. You just need to get to know him a little.”
“I have no desire to.” Niobe gave Mattie a quick hug and a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we all have friends everyone else hates. Just don’t let him hurt you.”
“I have other plans.” Mattie reached for the shelf over her bench, and picked up a jar sealed with a glass stopper, the figure of the blood homunculus visible inside.
Niobe’s help proved to be invaluable—she was better versed in the darker uses of blood alchemy than Mattie expected, and she managed to get the homunculus moving about and chanting strange words. It wobbled and bubbled