The Alchemy of Stone

by Ekaterina Sedia

  Listen. A faint whisper caught her attention, and at first she thought that it was just the wind trapped inside, rattling the old bones.

  Listen, again.

  She stepped inside, looking through the dusk filled with remains. There were just bones, but then she caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of an eye. And then—like in an optical trick the traveling performers entertained their customers with, where one was supposed to look at the jumble of leaves to spot a deer, a lizard, and a giant bird, and once one saw them they would not go away—she saw the folded wings and the gray skin blending with stone, she saw the heavy horned heads and slit eyes, the folded hands, the bent knees. And the mouths opening like fissures in the age-old stone to whisper to her urgent words.

  Listen, they spoke in one voice, the voice of the stone the city was carved from. We will tell you a story.

  There is a notion of time as an enemy, but we couldn’t tell you how fast it was passing until we heard the human heartbeats, counting the seconds as they fell into the eternity. So many million heartbeats ago, when you were not yet here and the eastern woman, the stranger, the daughter of red earth was young, there were two boys.

  Three boys, maybe. We can’t remember, and we sometimes confuse death and sleep, sleep and oblivion. But in any case, there they were—feral children living off scraps and rotten fruit left in the market square after the market was over. They had forgotten how to speak and only snarled at pigeons and stray dogs if they went after the scraps the boys had their eyes on, and they spat and hissed at the passing of the Stone Monks, who were the greatest fear of all children, parented or not.

  We weep often, for the Monks carry our name and everything that they do is attributed to us. But what can we do? We are weak and dying, and they fill our feeders, so we keep our thoughts to ourselves; we shove the gravel into our mouths hastily, rent with guilt, and we do not speak.

  But the boys, the boys… one is raven-haired, narrow-eyed, and so beautiful, dirt and grime and lice notwithstanding; another is white-haired like an old man, and he moves on all fours, feeling his way like a crab. Yet another is quiet and small, and he cries often. He has no words, and his anguish wails and sobs through the night alleys, and we watch over them, like we watch over everyone who is marked for destruction by the grindstones of the world. There is nothing we can do but watch over them.

  Mattie startled at the slamming of the door behind her, and the gargoyles fell silent, blending back into the surrounding walls. “Anyone in here?”

  “Just me,” Mattie answered. “Sorry, Master Bergen.”

  The old mechanic shuffled closer, his limp more prominent now, accompanied by the tapping of a cane. “Mattie? What are you doing here?”

  “The door was open,” she said. “I was looking for Loharri.”

  “Of course you were.” His voice was paternal, soothing, and the look of his rheumy eyes kind. “We’re a tad busy here, but he’s around. I’ll help you look if you want.”

  Mattie followed him to the exit. “What’s happening?”

  “You’ve heard about the Duke, of course.”

  “Of course,” Mattie echoed. She decided not to tell him that she was there—she was indisposed to answer questions, to relive the fear and the disgust she felt watching other automatons, purposefully excluded from the context, gathering limbs. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Bergen said without much conviction. “Terrible. Only now, who’s next?”

  “You’re not leaving the city, are you?”

  “Dear girl, no, pox on your tongue.” He gave a feeble laugh. “What, leave and let the alchemical vultures pick apart everything we’ve built here?”

  “They’re not vultures,” Mattie said, narrowly avoiding using ‘we’.

  Bergen shook his head. “Perhaps I’m being too cautious in my old age. But we are just moving the archives and machinery, in case they decide to bomb the Parliament. One must be careful—dark times, dark times.”

  They walked to the Parliament building, Mattie tactfully restraining her step so as not to overtake Bergen. He kept talking about the intrigues and the damn alchemists, of how things weren’t what they used to be—Mattie saw no virtue in arguing with the latter point.

  Inside the Parliament building, the chaos was even more overwhelming than outside. Mattie bumped into people who ran without heed, and narrowly avoided an automaton that shuffled by with a stack of papers high enough to completely conceal its torso and face. She looked around but saw no alchemists. She cursed her cowardice—if she got the list of the missing medallions in time, maybe her society would not need to be afraid to set foot in Parliament.

  “He’d be in the archives,” Bergen said. “I must be getting on now, but you should find him—check all the way up the stairs, on the fourth floor.”

  Mattie squeezed through the crowd, going against the stream of people and automatons. The stone steps under her feet were worn concave, and her feet nestled securely in the depressions made by many generations of human feet, giving her comfort and a fleeting sense of belonging to the great tradition. Even though she could neither vote nor be elected, she felt a part of it.

  The crowd thinned after she passed the second floor where the offices and the chambers were, and almost disappeared by the fourth. When she set foot into the echoing silent crypt of the archives, it felt like she was the only person there—no, the only person left on earth, so desolate it was.

  She found Loharri at the small desk tucked away in the back, where he sorted through stacks of hand-written and printed documents and scrolls. “Loharri,” she called.

  He jerked his head up, as if coming from deep sleep. “What’s the matter, love?”

  “I know it’s a bad time,” she said. “But the medallions.”

  He nodded. “Here you are. I copied it for you last night and set it aside. Glad you came.”

  She took the proffered scroll with only a dozen or so names on it. “Thank you,” she whispered, guilt washing over her anew. “I can’t believe you remembered.”

  He smiled lopsidedly. “Have I ever forgotten you? Have I ever broken a promise?”

  “No,” she said. “But with everything that’s happening… I thought you’d have better things to do.”

  “But you still came,” he said with a shrug and pushed away the stack of papers in front of him. “See? Great events might shake our foundations, but we still remember our little inconsequential promises. And I bet you money that everyone still carries on as normal—people eat, children wail, couples fight and fuck. These things are the true edifice of the city, not dukes or buildings, not even the gargoyles. How’s your work going, by the way? Found Sebastian yet?”

  “It’s difficult,” Mattie answered. “I’m in a new territory—our formulae are all for people’s needs, not the gargoyles’. Imagine if you had to design a musket for creatures with eight arms and no legs.”

  He laughed. “They wouldn’t run, and could reload much faster. But I get your point, dear girl. Stone isn’t flesh.”

  “Or metal,” Mattie said. “I don’t even know how to begin thinking about it; I mean, I do, but I have no idea what makes sense and what doesn’t.”

  He nodded. “I’ll let you know if anything occurs to me. Anything else you need?”

  She thought of the gargoyles’ story and mentally cursed Bergen for interrupting. “Just a question,” she said. “Do you know the Soul-Smoker?”

  His smile remained but changed, as if his mirth had drained away and only its ghost remained behind. “No,” he said. “Can’t say that I know the gentleman. I’ve seen him, of course.”

  “Have you ever known him? When you were children?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. This city is not that big, and you know how children are, always running in packs. Why? Did he say anything?”

  “No. Just wondering,” Mattie said. “He seems very lonely and very sick.”

  “Comes with the job.” Loharri cleared his throat. “No
w if you don’t mind…”

  “Of course. You have work to do. I will see you soon,” Mattie said.

  As she turned to leave the archives, she heard a weak voice calling Loharri’s name from downstairs. She cocked her head, listening. “Can you hear that? Someone’s calling you.”

  “They can come here,” he answered. His former good spirits were gone, replaced by bile. “What am I, an errand boy?”

  “I think it’s Bergen,” Mattie replied. “It’s hard for him walk up the stairs.”

  Loharri heaved a sigh and cursed under his breath, but stood and followed Mattie down the stairs. They met Bergen halfway between the second and the third floors.

  “Loharri,” the old man wheezed. “Come quick. The enforcers arrested the man who threw the bomb at the Duke.”

  Mattie thanked her stars and her lucky stones that Bergen was too perturbed to pay attention as she followed him and Loharri to the jail adjacent to the Parliament building. The old man worked his cane as if it were a hoe, reaching with it in front of him until the metal-clad tip caught between the cobbles and pulling himself along, his limp pronounced but apparently disregarded. Even Loharri’s long loping strides were barely enough to keep up with the old man, and Mattie trotted behind, hitching up her skirts slightly higher than was proper, but forgivable under the circumstances.

  The enforcers crowded the courtyard of the jail, their buggies clanging against each other and chuffing, the hiss of steam sounding almost identical to Bergen’s wheezing breath—a pleasing symmetry, Mattie thought, since Bergen was the inventor of these buggies, and it seemed only right that they replicated their creator’s habits in such harmony.

  The enforcers, armored and menacing, looked at Bergen and Loharri with suspicious eyes through the narrow slits of their bronze helms, but let them through; Loharri grabbed Mattie’s elbow and dragged her along, without giving the guards a chance to ask her any questions or consider her admittance.

  “Thank you,” Mattie whispered, his kindness a stab.

  “If anyone ever hassles you,” he whispered back, “just tell them you’re mine. Damn your pride and just say it, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” Her heart felt ready to give, to pop the rivets that held it together and explode in an unseemly shower of metal and springs and wheels toothed like dogs.

  They entered the low arch, decorated like everything around this building with carvings of gargoyles—a show of gratitude from the city, from back in the day when the gargoyles were strong enough to grow a jail at the city’s request.

  They had grown it large and sturdy, with a monolithic door that required twenty men to move it aside. There were no windows or water pipes or air ducts, and the jail, one with the stone that birthed it, was cold in winter and hot in summer, and not many lasted long enough to experience both extremes—one or the other killed them before that. But that was for the prisoners condemned for serious crimes; those who were found guilty of lesser offenses were transferred to the southern copper mines, or to the northern fields, where they died slower and side-by-side with people who had done nothing wrong apart from being born to an unpleasant lot in life.

  They found the prisoner just inside the jail. He was dressed in the habit of a Stone Monk, torn at the shoulder, exposing a large gash crusted over with blood. The skin of his shoulder, smooth and brown, was stained with blood and bruised, and his thick lips opened and closed in quick, gulping breaths.

  Mattie noticed his hands shackled together by an elaborate brass device consisting of several metal semicircles nestled inside one another, latching onto the wrists of the man in an overlapping lattice. She also saw the depression in his side, where the robe flapped, seemingly not touching the body.

  “His ribs are broken,” she whispered to Loharri.

  He nodded and narrowed his eyes at her, as if to warn her to stay silent.

  Two mechanics and an alchemist surrounded the man; they were inflicting no violence on him, but their taut faces told Mattie that they wanted to.

  Bergen caught his breath, and addressed the prisoner. “Were you working alone or did you have accomplices?”

  The man just stared, his eyes startled and wide, his mouth still straining after each shallow breath.

  “The bastard can’t even speak properly,” one of the mechanics said.

  “Or he doesn’t speak our language.” Bergen cleared his throat and moved closer to the prisoner. He spoke slowly and loudly, as one did with children or feeble-minded. “Alone? Were you alone?”

  The prisoner gasped. “I did nothing,” he whispered.

  Mattie tugged Loharri’s sleeve. He frowned and shook her hand off. “What?” he whispered with a fierce expression on his twisted face.

  “That’s not the right man,” Mattie whispered. She hadn’t realized how silent the room was, until her whisper resonated, and made everyone turn toward her. “It’s not the right man,” Mattie said, louder, addressing Bergen and everyone else. “I was there, I saw. The one who attacked the procession was much bigger. And he wasn’t an easterner, he was local. I saw his hand—it was pink, like yours.” She pointed at Bergen’s hand gripping the pommel of his cane.

  Tense silence filled the room, palpable, broken only by the ticking of Mattie’s heart and the ragged breath of the prisoner who watched Mattie with almost religious hope on his face, mixed with open-mouthed wonder.

  “Nonsense,” Bergen said, and turned away.

  The rest of the mechanics coughed into their hands and shuffled their feet, covering up their visible relief.

  “Loharri,” one of the mechanics said. “Perhaps you should take your automaton outside—she seems prone to hysterics. I guess all women are like that, mechanical or flesh.”

  Loharri did not say a word and gave Mattie a gentle shove. “Run along, now,” he said softly. “I will see you soon.”

  Mattie turned to the door, the gaze of the prisoner imploring her not to leave him. She gave a small shake of her head and walked out, the panicked eyes of the man, their whites prominent and blinding like those of the sheep in the slaughterhouse, burned into her memory.

  Chapter 10

  We follow the girl as she walks through noisy streets, crawling with the vile mechanical contrivances that did not come from the stone. The girl walks as if blind, stumbling over the cobbles, and we hear her heart whir and whine deep inside her, creaking with tears she will never weep. We are glad that she is gone from the place of sorrow, where so many of our children have perished and so many others have behaved badly.

  Content that she is on her way home, we turn and leap from roof to roof, our toes grasping shingles like steps; our wings balance us, keep us steady. We follow the inverse labyrinth of the buildings, the negative reflection of the streets between them, to a different location.

  We see a small, white-haired man who used to move like a crab when he was little, but who has now learned to walk upright, with dignity and grace. He has words now, and we are proud of him, as proud as we are of any we like to follow. He moves toward the place the girl has just left, the pulsing streets converging on the ugly stone heart of the city, and we almost wish we hadn’t built it.

  Everyone flees at his approach; the soulless creatures like ourselves are the only ones who are immune to his repulsive charms. We remember the time he swallowed his first soul, as we remember all the countless others, gone up in smoke and inhaled by his wide loving mouth. He is nothing but loving.

  The courtyard of the jail is filled with people, but they too flee as he gets closer; they go into the jail building and wait inside. The only man left in the courtyard is the stranger—red earth, salty sea, hands bound, feet shackled, and nowhere to run.

  The white-haired man, the smoker of souls, stands before him, quietly, mildly. “Are you ready?” he asks, his eyes of milk staring over the stranger’s head into the infinity of the jail walls.

  The stranger shakes his head sid
e to side, the frantic motion of a terrified child.

  “Shh,” the blind man says, “shhh.” He takes the face of the prisoner into his hands, and the stranger goes limp and docile.

  The blind man’s hands are soft and gentle, and he touches his lips to the stranger’s.

  The stranger tries to keep his mouth closed, but it is of no use. His soul sensing the companionship of many others, presses on his lips from the inside, and he finally gives with a loud exhalation. His lips brush against the blind man’s and open, and the two men stand for a while, eye-to-eye, mouth-to-mouth, and we listen to the hissing of the escaping soul, we watch the stranger’s eyes go white and empty like the clouds, and we hear the clink of his shackles as he collapses on the pavement, formless and soft like water.

  A mindless automaton enters the courtyard and approaches the blind man who is motionless, his narrow chest expanded as if by an impossibly big breath.

  “You have done your duty,” the automaton says in a grating voice, uncolored by either emotion or understanding. “Write your report by tomorrow morning; someone will be by to pick it up.

  We regret that he has to do it, we regret that among the souls that could not find rest there are others, to whom rest was denied in favor of extracting confessions. We know that our children are mendicant—they speak of never killing anyone, but they let buildings and the smoker of souls take the lives of those they cannot be bothered to kill themselves.

  We did not want it to be like this, but what can we do? We are naught but a shadow of a distant memory, whispering in the rain gutters, clambering along the rooftops; we are nothing but decorations on the building, amusing in our grotesque bodies and webbed wings. We have heard of other cities where the buildings are decorated with statues of angels with golden wings, but we doubt that these angels were ever alive or even real. Most beautiful things are not.

  We regret not having finished the story we started to tell to the girl—our understanding of time is vague, but we have a nagging feeling that it would’ve been useful to her. We resolve to tell her soon, and try harder this time, perhaps hold onto her skirts and plead with our eyes. Listen, we should say, listen.