The Alchemists of Loom (Loom Saga Book 1)

  The silence stretched on for too long and Arianna stepped away. Betrayal hit her hard in the chest. Her teacher, her friend, the woman who had been her everything, was walking away when the bombs were dropping.

  “I hope you decide to grow into your words,” Florence said softly. Arianna didn’t even turn. “I hope you decide to stay with me, as my friend. I hope you decide you can live up to who you say you are. That you can support me in what I want even if it’s not what you wanted for me.”

  The door clicked closed as her only reply.

  39. ARIANNA

  It had been three days since Florence had last spoken to her. Three days of wading through the din of the Alchemists Guild hall, lacking direction and purpose. Three days of watching Florence recover, stronger than ever.

  The girl threw herself into acclimating to the Guild. At some point, she spoke with Sophie and the Vicar had agreed to let her join whatever pathetic rebellion was brewing. That, or Florence was even better than Arianna had given her credit for at making new friends—and Arianna had given the charismatic girl a lot of credit.

  Cvareh was nowhere to be found, and she insisted to herself that she was glad for that fact. She didn’t need the Dragon in her life. In fact, good riddance if he left her. She didn’t need him or the Raven-turned-Revo-turned-Chimera. She didn’t need anyone.

  At least, those were the lies she told herself. But as Arianna sat tinkering, building lock after lock and useless trinket after trinket, the loneliness grew. After she’d lost everything in the last resistance, she’d gained Florence. And now she’d lose Florence to the new resistance. Cvareh would likely betray them all and she’d be left with ghosts and enemies anew.

  “So this is what the great and charismatic Arianna has been reduced to.”

  “Go away.” Arianna didn’t even turn from her workbench. She remained hunched over the tiny springs and dials of a mechanical bird. Getting its wings to flap had been trying her patience all morning.

  Sophie ignored her, crossing over to the table. She picked up the wingless body of the bird. “Well, if I ever need to send messages via clockwork pigeon, I know who to turn to.”

  “What do you want?” Arianna was already spitting venom. She was in no mood and was utterly unapologetic about the fact.

  “You know what I want.” Sophie put the trinket down.

  “I’ve been wondering when you’d finally start hounding me.”

  “I’m not going to be a rusty gear about this.”

  She didn’t believe it for a second.

  “I’m going to ask you for your help.”

  “Oh, is that all? That’s a relief. No, then.” Arianna returned to fumbling with the wing.

  “Arianna—”

  She made loud squeaking noises, imitating the rusty gear that Sophie had claimed she wouldn’t be.

  “Stop.” Sophie covered Arianna’s hands with hers and the watch she’d been using as a distraction. “You’re not a child.”

  “I was never a child.”

  Sophie laughed. “Well, there we can disagree.”

  “I already told you no,” Arianna reminded her. “I think we’re done here.”

  “Arianna.” Sophie sighed.

  “Sophie.” She sighed dramatically in reply.

  “Weren’t we friends?” Sophie had the audacity to look hurt.

  “No,” Arianna was out for blood. “You and Eva were friends.”

  “You can’t be jealous of her and me. Your presence was the thing that reduced us to nothing. If anything I should be the one cross with you. The woman is dead, let—”

  “Don’t talk about her!” Arianna slammed her fist on the table, suddenly on her feet. She never wanted anyone to make assumptions about the woman she had loved. Least of all Sophie.

  “Let her go.” Sophie covered Arianna’s hand gently with hers. “It’s what she would’ve wanted.”

  Arianna pulled her hand away.

  “I don’t even want you to finish the Philosopher’s Box. I just want you to help because I thought it could offer you closure.”

  When did everyone become so obsessed with my “closure”? Arianna thought bitterly. Then the whole statement seeped into her mind.

  “You don’t want me to finish the box?” The words were hard to say, they made so little sense.

  “No, we already had a Rivet do it,” Sophie announced triumphantly.

  This was the competitive, self-centered Sophie that Arianna knew. “Lovely. It won’t work.”

  “As arrogant as ever, I see.” Sophie picked up one of the assorted lockboxes, inspecting it more closely. “You do good work—excellent even. But it’s wasted if you don’t use it for anything.”

  No one understood. By not using her talents in certain ways, Arianna was trying to protect them all. If the Philosopher’s Box went into mass production it was likely to create an endless roulette of power struggles as one army fought against the next, and the next. She’d seen the destruction it reaped first-hand when men tried to get their hands on it.

  “I use it for my own purposes.” Arianna pulled the lockbox from Sophie’s hand.

  The Vicar shrugged and started for the door. “We’re going to make a perfect Chimera now, if you want to see the fruit of your labor in action.”

  Arianna stood in limbo as the other woman left. She really didn’t want to be involved. She knew there was no way another Rivet had finished her work, not based on the limited notes that had been stolen from her workshop.

  But she found herself hastily following Sophie in two more breaths anyway. If nothing else, she wanted to know if the tensions between Nova and Loom were about to get even worse. Because if they were, she’d take Florence by force if she had to in order to keep the girl safe.

  The Vicar and Arianna were escorted into a viewing room that overlooked a surgical lab. Within, a Chimera lay unconscious on a table. Alchemists surrounded him, preparing instruments and measuring chemicals. The Chimera had Dragon hands and ears, and that was only what was visible. It was a miracle he hadn’t become forsaken yet.

  On one table were the new reagents they were going to stitch in: a tongue and stomach were suspended in stasis liquid, condensing in the air and steaming from the temperature difference. Arianna’s eyes fell on a new machine. It wasn’t much different from the one that had transitioned Florence days earlier. That was what they thought the Philosopher’s Box looked like.

  “Call off the operation, Sophie,” Arianna said softly. She wasn’t going to openly embarrass the Rivet standing next to her, the man who was likely responsible for the monstrosity that would take another’s life.

  “You think I’ll let you stand in the way of this?” Sophie smiled.

  “It’s not going to work.”

  “Oh, Arianna, you can’t stand it when someone else does the work you think only you are fit to do.”

  “This is not personal.” Arianna’s voice slowly rose. “You are going to kill this man.”

  She’d gained the attention of those around her.

  “Vicar Alchemist?” one of the surgeons called up, uncertain at Arianna’s declaration.

  “Continue.”

  “That isn’t going to work. He’s going to go forsaken the second you disconnect.” Arianna spoke over the Vicar.

  “I don’t know who you think you are, but I built that from sketches drawn by a Master Rivet.” The Rivet at her side took offense.

  Well, the line’s been crossed. Might as well throw etiquette out the window. “And I can tell why you don’t have your circle yet, boy. Because that Master Rivet who drew them was me.”

  The Rivet looked between her and Sophie for confirmation. When Sophie didn’t object, he suddenly considered his work a second time. “Maybe we should—”

  “Start the operation!” Sophie demanded.

  “You are condemning him to death.”

  “Silence, Arianna. You may be a dear friend of mine but this is my Guild, and I will not tolerate such rudeness.”
>
  Arianna held her tongue. They were a lot of things, but they weren’t dear friends. Time and age couldn’t change that fact, it seemed.

  The operation commenced, and the Rivet at her side paled as they began removing the tongue and stomach of the man on the operating table. Another Alchemist manned the fake Philosopher’s Box. Blood spiraled in tubes, filtering out the Fenthri blood, turning it gold. The fact that the machine had that much working terrified her. The boy at her side was smart to have deciphered the filtration system. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think he could achieve real success through enough trial and error.

  The problem wouldn’t come until they sewed the man up, let him heal, and unhooked their cumbersome box. Arianna waited for it, watching for thirty minutes as the Alchemists finished. Emotions drained from her heart.

  It was what had made Eva different. She had been an accomplished Alchemist and still held regard for life. She didn’t see creatures as her playthings like these people did—as though the world were a large cage that merely housed their test subjects.

  The man’s eyes opened with a groan. He sat, and the Alchemists all held their breaths. He made it to his feet before he began to howl in pain. His eyes went bloodshot; his mouth began to foam.

  “Put him down, Sophie, he’s forsaken,” Arianna demanded.

  “Don’t do anything.” The Vicar held out her hand to the woman beside her who had reached for a gun.

  “Put him down.” The man was growling, beginning to lose his mind. Magic was spiking wildly around him. The golden tools that littered the room shook, shuddering to life at his distorted and unfocused commands. “Your Alchemists are about to start dying, Sophie.”

  The forsaken Chimera roared and lunged for one of the Alchemists who had been operating on him minutes earlier. The fall to forsaken was fast when that much magic was pumped in at once. Arianna’s reflexes kicked in, but the gunfire echoed before she could steal the weapon. The Alchemist lowered her revolver. The forsaken Chimera was dead in one shot.

  “Well, this was fun.” Arianna turned, anger rising in her. Anger at her greatest work being pilfered and treated as though it was simple enough to be figured out in days. Anger at Sophie’s disregard for the life of her fellow Fenthri. At the Alchemists’ ever-apparent fault—progress without consideration for what that progress might reap for the world.

  “Arianna, help us.” Sophie stopped her. “You can turn the tides. You can change our world.”

  “Change it how?” She spun to face Sophie once again. “Do you even know? Have you even thought what a Philosopher’s Box might do?” She already knew Sophie had no good answer so she didn’t even give her time to offer one. “No, I didn’t think so.”

  “Do you know what Eva told me she loved in you?” Sophie called down the hall after a long moment. “Your vision. Your pursuit of progress.”

  Arianna stopped, clenching her fists. She took a deep breath and let it go, unwilling to rise to Sophie’s goading. Even if what she said was true, the woman Eva the Alchemist had loved died at her side two years ago. That Arianna had not survived her final act: slitting Eva’s throat.

  40. CVAREH

  Word of the incident with the forsaken Chimera reached Cvareh’s ears within the day. He found it odd how no one seemed to mourn the poor soul. Surely, the man had been someone’s friend or family? But the world continued as normal, so he did as well. There was much work to be done in establishing a rapport between House Xin and the fledgling rebel group. But every time he thought he opened a door or had some stroke of luck, it closed back in his face.

  Cvareh sat across the table from the Vicar Alchemist. Sophie was allegedly reviewing the latest schematics from her team of Rivets. But Cvareh sincerely wondered if she could grasp their contents.

  “My sister asks me for updates.”

  “Updates on what, exactly?” Sophie hummed, flipping the pages.

  “She wants to know if the rebels will stand with her bid for Nova’s throne.” He hastily added, “Of course, in exchange, she’ll gladly support Loom’s interests in her new regime.”

  “We aren’t fit to stand against—or behind—any regime.” Sophie finally deemed the conversation worthy of her full attention. “Our ‘rebel army’ is full of initiates with no experience on just about every front.

  “Our supplies are being throttled by the Dragon King. We have to rely on other loyalists of the old ways, and black markets, to get the ammunition we need to merely defend ourselves, let alone stage a rebellion.”

  “But you have the schematics of a Philosopher’s Box…” he offered weakly.

  “I have part of the schematics, and the woman who can finish them won’t help me. And, even if she did, it would take me years to acquire enough reagents to stitch up that many Chimera.”

  The ghastly electric lighting cast long shadows on the woman’s skin. He wondered how old she was. She couldn’t have been more than Arianna’s age, which made her less than half of his age. But she handled herself as though she was eighty. The Fenthri lived half as long as Dragons, and aged twice as fast.

  She leaned forward, folding her hands before her. “We keep having these meetings, Cvareh, yet they do not yield results. I am left with no Philosopher’s Box, no reagents, no supplies. You want us to work with you? Give me results.”

  “And if I get these results, will you support my sister?” He remained focused on his mission, focused on the one thing Petra had demanded of him: leave Loom with the promise of the army they needed.

  “If you get me even half of these results, I will support you or whoever else you want me to,” Sophie swore.

  “Then consider it a deal.” Cvareh stood.

  “Really?” She chuckled. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  He must be acclimated to Loom, because the rude dismissal only made him bristle so much. The slights against him he could forgive, and he had the feeling he’d need to forgive much more to achieve what he wanted. With that in mind, he headed straight from one room occupied by a sharp-tempered Fenthri to another.

  Arianna had made a virtual sundries shop of clockwork items in the workroom she’d stolen. Even as he arrived some Alchemists were leaving, turning over mechanical locks in their hands with fascination, and cackling over the ideas of all the trouble they could use them for. Things were going to be interesting for a bit in the Alchemists’ Guild with Arianna’s work in house.

  Her head jerked up at the sound of him, as though she’d known it was his eyes on her with the feeling of his attention alone. Perhaps she had. He could find her in a crowd by just her footsteps now. Why would it be far fetched to think she would know him by his stare?

  Arianna’s mouth pressed into a line, and Cvareh was equally talkative. They hadn’t said a word to each other since arriving at the Guild a week ago, despite crossing paths. The last time she’d really said anything to him was when he’d let her imbibe from him.

  His obsession with the woman was nothing more than an infatuation, he’d begun telling himself. But one look from her had him questioning everything. To say he loved her would be a stretch. To say he wanted her, wanted to understand her? That was much closer to the mark.

  “I want to talk to you.” He finally broke the silence.

  “I figured that’s why you were here,” she drawled, returning to the little box before her.

  He’d spent so much time around her as the White Wraith that he’d forgotten she was a Master Rivet. Her skills with machinery, locks, buildings—they all contributed so seamlessly to her success as a thief and organ runner that he didn’t look at them as separate from that chosen profession. There was something almost soothing in the way she tinkered.

  Soothing, and restless.

  If he shifted his thinking, it wasn’t far-fetched to see the reason for her attempts at finding peace in gears and coils. Cvareh sighed to himself, crossed to the worktable and sat in the chair opposite her. She pretended he didn’t even exist.

  “I came h
ere to ask for your help.”

  Arianna continued to ignore him, and for the first time he preferred it that way.

  “I came to Loom to bring the schematics for the Philosopher’s Box to the rebellion here because my sister wanted to use it as a bargaining chip for their alliance. On Nova, our House has been the lowest on the social ladder for centuries. I understand that may not mean much to you. But to us, it’s everything. And Petra is the first chance we have at taking the throne. She’s young, and strong, opinionated as anyone, and she fights for who and what she believes in.”

  Ari reached for another tool, working as though he wasn’t there.

  “I think that’s what I see of her, in you.” His soft words finally drew her attention and now that Cvareh had it, he wouldn’t let it go. He would lay it all out on the table. He would do what he should’ve done from the start and let her know exactly who he was and what he wanted. “I don’t know how the King got the schematics. I know, now, you were the one to make them. So I can’t imagine how they fell into the hands of the Dragon King and I can only assume it has something to do with your general hatred for my people and the failure of the last rebellion.”

  Her challenging stare told him he was right.

  “But if I had known they were yours… I would’ve returned them to you, rather than bring them here.”

  “Liar.” Arianna whipped out the word as though she’d been waiting all along for an opportunity to use it. “Why would you sacrifice the bargaining chip that you said yourself means so much to your family, and your sister?”

  “Because of the predicament I’m in now,” he answered easily. “Partial sketches are almost useless. But the help of the woman who made them? That’s worth something far greater.”