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clockworks to them, to be examined and figured out and, if necessary, taken apart; the automatons passed beneath notice.
    Several serious fellows greeted Loharri with nods and reserved smiles—Mattie suspected that he was too lively for them, too moody, too unpredictable. His position of influence was assured by his proficiency and his many inventions—the most recent one already belched fire in every foundry, increasing their efficiency by some subtle but important percentage—but his demeanor and his disordered personal life earned him a few disapproving looks.
    Loharri acted as if he didn’t notice—he shook hands and chatted, and even came to say hello to several women sitting around the long tables, away from the men. They came as a decoration, and no one else seemed to pay much attention to them. Mattie wondered if she should join them and keep away from trouble, but her feet already led her after Loharri, the role of an obedient automaton as familiar to her as the sight of her own face.
    She caught snatches of conversations—some talked about the Alchemists rallying for the next election; there were rumors that they were holding their most potent medicines in reserve, to be unveiled before the election, to wow and stun the populace. Imagine that, curing typhoid! Would there be anything but gratitude? Others mentioned that the Alchemists had been getting cozy with a few of the Duke’s courtiers, seeking influence by the route of tradition rather than popularity.
    And yet others talked about the gargoyles. Mattie stopped shadowing Loharri for a moment and listened, not moving, looking fixedly at her creator’s back. The speaker—a small, rotund man of middle age whom she had met many times but whose name she could not remember, talked to Bergen—a man who looked as though pickled by many years that passed over his balding head. His dark clothes hung loosely on his desiccated body, and yet his mind was sharp; he was perhaps the only one in this gathering whom Loharri would call a friend.
    “Think about it,” said the rotund man, his face filling with alarming red color. “Without the gargoyles, what will the Duke be?”
    “The Duke,” Bergen replied. “Sure, the gargoyles and their sanctions might seem irrelevant, and perhaps they are. But without the third leg, this government will not be stable—we do need the court, you know. Otherwise, it’ll be nothing but our squabbling with the alchemists.”
    “And that would be a bad thing?”
    “Of course,” Bergen said. “I for one do not think a civil war is such a good idea, and without the Duke we might have just that. Not that we don’t have enough trouble already.”
    “But the gargoyles . . . ”
    “Are our history. This city is proud of its gargoyles, and there isn’t much you can do about it,” Bergen concluded and turned away from his interlocutor. “Spiritual guidance, be it superstition or tradition, is not always a bad thing. Some people need an external compass.” His watery old eyes stopped on Mattie, and he smiled.
    “Good afternoon, Messer Bergen,” Mattie said in her flattest voice.
    “Hello, Mattie,” he said. “Your master around?”
    She pointed wordlessly at Loharri, still leaning on the table by a cluster of brightly dressed women.
    Bergen chuckled. “I don’t understand what women see in him.”
    “He talks to them?” Mattie suggested.
    “In any case, I need to talk to him,” Bergen said, and walked up to Loharri, favoring his right foot. Gout, Mattie remembered. The old man had gout.
    She moved behind Loharri, to stand still and listen. Loharri shot her a quick glance and a smile, and she momentarily felt grateful for that acknowledgement. Even though he had made her, with his own hands, put her together out of joints and slender metal bones, even though he knew more of her internal workings than anyone, he still managed to really see her as a whole.
    Her attention was diverted by several automatons filing into