Florence wasn’t uncomfortable. She’d been coming here for years now and most of the door guards gave her a nod as she passed. Two streets later, Florence stopped before a man with a shaved head.
“Ralph.” She smiled. “Here for King Louie.”
“Don’t tell me the White Wraith actually did it.”
“If you doubted she would, you shouldn’t have sent her.” Florence proudly flashed him the contents of Ari’s bag. Long enough to tease, never long enough to give away the goods.
“Well, I’ll be greased. Wait here.”
The man disappeared by side-stepping into a narrow door. Florence rocked from her heels to the balls of her feet impatiently, spending the time by making a mental list of the supplies she’d need. She was only ten items down when Ralph reappeared, motioning for her to enter.
Louie was a scrawny, anemic Fenthri who positioned himself chiefly against the Dragons and at the head of Old Dortam’s underworld by adopting the ironic title of “King”. His patent velvet jacket was cutaway, set over another heavy velvet vest underneath. Long black hair, teased into ropes, pulled back tautly and tugged at the skin of his face, making his piercing black eyes look even sharper and more angular. It was all in stark contrast to the white of his skin, not a trace of gray on him.
Florence didn’t let herself be intimidated. The man had more connections with powerful people than a refinery did slag, but that wasn’t going to dissuade her. If this little man was the King of Old Dortam’s underworld, then Ari was his champion knight—and that made Florence her page. The one thing that kings in stories never did was kill their champion’s second.
“I have a delivery from the White Wraith.” Florence slipped the bag off her shoulder, holding it out.
“Let’s see what presents you bring me today.” Louie hooked a bony finger and two men retrieved the bag from Florence. They placed at the foot of Louie’s wing-backed chair. With the toe of his pointed boots, he flipped open the satchel. His eyes lit up like sodium metal in water.
Louie reached forward, swooping down like a bird of prey. He held up one of the three gold canisters, still so cold it wafted mist into the dim and smoky air of his parlor.
“Aren’t you a pretty thing?” He turned the canister before handing it to another one of his lackeys. The man had crimson eyes and the black symbol of two triangles, connected by a line, on his cheek—an Alchemist. “Well?”
“Prime reagents, in healthy condition,” the man affirmed.
“Did you have any doubt?” Florence folded her arms over her chest.
“In my line of work, one must always check.” Louie chuckled at her haughtiness. “I have another job for your master.”
“My master has already accepted something.”
He gasped in mock offense. At least, Florence hoped it was pretend. “Who is the White Wraith cheating on me with?”
“I didn’t realize you two had become so serious,” Florence replied in kind.
“Name this other upstart’s price. I will double it.” Louie settled back in his chair as the Alchemists ushered the reagents out of the room. It unnerved Florence, letting them out of her sight before they were paid for.
“I’m afraid that’s something you can’t do.”
“Girl, do you know who I am?” He gripped the armrests of his chair as slowly and tightly as he enunciated his words.
“Louie, we’ve only been working together for a year now,” Florence said brightly, so sweet it could give the man cavities. “I know well who you are. But this job is personal for the Wraith.”
“I’ve never heard of a Wraith having feelings before.” Louie squinted his eyes. “So Dortam’s infamous thieving ghost is flesh and blood after all.”
Florence needed to tread lightly now. Arianna was strict that no one should know her identity, or anything about her. The few times someone had decided to get cheeky and tail Florence back to the flat, Ari had intercepted them and quickly flayed them with her daggers, leaving the body in Mercury Town as a warning.
In truth, even Florence didn’t know much about her benefactor. She couldn’t say with confidence that “Arianna” was the White Wraith’s real name. But unlike everyone else, the truth didn’t matter to Florence. She wasn’t trying to play detective. She was happy with her life, content to learn what the woman had to teach her. The only thing a person got when they stirred up a river was muck; Florence preferred clean hands.
“Ralph,” Louie called across the room. “Have you heard of a Wraith needing to tend to personal matters?”
“I can’t say I have,” Ralph obliged. He knew who paid his checks, and that meant he had to play along.
“How interesting. So the Wraith really is Fenthri after all.”
Florence didn’t say anything, waiting for Louie to exhaust himself with his futile discourse.
“Perhaps, if he could come himself, we could strike a deal that would put him on my retainer.” Louie hadn’t tried this for a few weeks.
“I don’t think the Wraith will be working for any one man or woman anytime soon,” Florence responded, as she did almost every time. “Now, the three-hundred dunca?”
“I can see why the Wraith chooses you, Florence; you’re quite stony when it comes to giving away his truths.” Louie waved a hand with a smug little smirk. Florence didn’t drive any bargains and they both knew it.
“My Master has taught me well.” Florence watched as Louie’s lackeys filled Ari’s satchel with three paper wads. She knew fairly well what a stack of one-hundred dunca looked like, and she didn’t think Louie would screw them. It wasn’t in his best interest. And if there was one thing King Louie didn’t do, it was anything that didn’t directly benefit him in some way. “I’m afraid I can’t be bought.”
“That’s the first rule, Florence: every man can be bought. What does he give you that I cannot?” Louie smiled, a somewhat sinister curve of the lips. There was an overtly sexual nature to the question.
Florence paid it no mind. Let them think she was the Wraith’s lover. It made no difference to her and it helped maintain Louie’s illusion that the Wraith was a man. The further he was from the truth, the better. Plus, her and Ari shared a bed anyway. “A certain type of knowledge.”
She smirked and excused herself, focusing once more on giant explosions and guns. Louie was likely thinking of explosions of a different sort, judging by the look on his face. Ralph saw her out and the transaction was done. Overall, she liked working with King Louie the best of all Ari’s patrons, and Florence had no doubt that helped Ari decide between jobs when it came down to choices.
It was as pleasant to look at Louie as it was a hairless anorexic cat, almost as bad as looking at a Dragon, and he had an equally appealing sense of humor. But the man paid on time, never backed out, and never wavered on the terms of the job. It made everyone’s lives easier when Ari didn’t have to go on any collection trips. The woman could hold a grudge.
Florence rested her hand on the pistol in her arm holster as she passed by some shady characters—and shady by Mercury Town’s standards was saying a lot. The regular patrons gave her no cause to worry. They knew her, and they wouldn’t risk the White Wraith’s ire by harming Florence. It was the new lot that would set up shop in the dark overhangs and grimy alleys she needed to be wary of, those beneath King Louie who had yet to ingrain themselves in Old Dortam’s illegal economy.
She made her way toward her favorite shop, the one that always had the things that made the biggest boom. This time, Ari had given her free permission to use the dunca as Florence saw fit to prepare for their trip, and she planned to see fit for quite a few things she’d been drooling over.
She was halfway to the shop when she heard the first Dragon Rider’s glider scream through the sky.
4. ARIANNA
“I’m sure she’s fine,” the Dragon said again.
In less than twelve hours he had managed to find Ari’s last nerve, rip it out, step on it, throw it from the window, lig
ht it on fire, and bring it back to life, only to repeat the process twice over. She was half a breath away from telling the Dragon that his boon be damned, he had the choice of lying quietly while she tore out his heart…or struggling while she tore out his heart. And oh, how she hoped he picked the struggling if it came to that.
“Three Riders. There are three Riders now. There were two this morning—other than you. Now there are three, here, in Old Dortam.” Ari peered out at the sky. The rainbow trails that tore through the clouds behind their gliders were still etched in her memory. The foreboding colors had long since vanished, glittering on the wind, but they remained burned into her eyes.
She’d cracked the window and stretched her Dragon sight, but the Riders were too far to be seen, even with her augmented goggles. And Ari couldn’t make out their smell over the heavy aroma of oil, welders’ tools, explosives, and the Dragon she had let into her home.
“Again, I’m sure she’s—”
“Cva,” Ari interrupted him with the grace of a gear falling off its axle. His eyes narrowed at her insistence on using a shortened version of his name. “Tell me something.” She turned her gaze inward from the direction of Mercury Town, pulling off her goggles. The Dragon met her stare; he seemed more disturbed when she smiled than when she addressed him with outright malice. “These Riders, they wouldn’t be looking for you, would they?”
“Why would you think that?” He sat back in his chair.
“Don’t play me for a fool,” Ari spat. “We can go a year without having Riders descend once, even in New Dortam. Now, suddenly, we have two descents in one day? Or perhaps the same descent, and they haven’t left yet? And that just so happens to be on the same day you seek passage to the Alchemists’ Guild for some inexplicable reason.”
Ari didn’t remember crossing the room, but she now loomed over the Dragon. He looked up at her and she could almost smell his fearlessness. The man was confident in his ability to beat her, nearly to the point of arrogance. It was almost enough to make her scream. Almost enough to make her throw him down onto the floor and rip off an ear just to show him she could. Just to show him why he should be afraid.
“You didn’t seem interested in asking me these questions before you accepted my offer of a boon.” The blacks of his eyes narrowed to slits, his body responding to the challenge just as hers did.
“That was before Florence was gone for far too long.”
“If you wish to relinquish the boon, perhaps you should get on with it so we can both move on.” Where Ari’s voice grew louder when faced with a confrontation, his lowered. It was the auditory equivalent of the velvet of his shirt. It was a contradiction that Ari couldn’t explain. One that shouldn’t be but was—something gentle and dangerous.
“No.” She spoke the word like a curse. “No, I am not letting you go. You are going to be mine, Dragon. You are going to hang on the fact that I can call you at any time, on my whim, until I see fit to give you whatever command pleases me.”
A low growl rumbled in the back of his throat. His magic spiked and brought Ari’s up with it. The terms of the boon were only that she had to get him to the Alchemists’ Guild. He’d said nothing about doing so without causing bodily harm in the process.
Magic cracked, strong enough to nearly be heard, and the rumble of an implosion followed. Ari raced to the window, her heart in her throat. Dust plumed up from Mercury Town, marring the horizon.
“We’re leaving.” She raced for her coat and harness, and grabbed the emergency satchel of basic supplies and weaponry she always left on a peg by the door.
Mercury Town was nearly two thousand peca away. It was close enough that if she used her winch box to propel her along her golden cords, she could cross the distance in a few breaths. Ari looked over the rooftops of Old Dortam, the buildings crumbling together to form a skyline of stone sentries no longer needed at their posts.
She could use her winch box if she could find places to loop her line. If she could do so without being noticed, or noticed as more than a blur. Her eyes turned inward and narrowed. If she didn’t have a Dragon in tow.
Ari’s mind whirred faster than a freshly struck flywheel. Eighty greca—or eight thousand peca—separated her from Flor and the Dragon Riders. She could run just under six hundred peca a minute, if she pushed and wasn’t held up anywhere. Which meant, at best, it would take her just shy of fourteen minutes to reach Mercury Town.
A powerful Chimera could recharge an implosion gun in less than seven minutes. Ari suspected a Rider could do it in less than five. And all that was ignoring the havoc they could wreak with their claws and teeth in the meantime.
Every second she wasted was another second Flor was out there alone. The one time she hadn’t trailed the girl into Mercury Town, and this happened. Arianna had no idea if Florence could take care of herself. Sure, she carried a revolver, but Ari had never seen her shoot it. She didn’t even know if it was loaded or if Flor carried extra rounds. The girl had decent enough instinct, but no practice to back it up.
She needed time to get to Florence. Time she didn’t have. Unless…
“Dragon.” Arianna swallowed hard. It took two tries to get her pride down her throat and out of the way of her words. “Cvareh.” Using his name got his attention, the sort of attention that implied he might actually be willing to listen to her. “Where does your power lie?”
He hesitated. The bloody Dragon wasted precious seconds as he sized up her inquiry.
“You infuriating monster, tell me!” Ari snarled.
“Going to sell my organs?” he replied, level. He’d known what she carried earlier. If she could sense the magic off the reagents, a Dragon would certainly be able to.
“If I wanted to turn you into a reagent farm, you’d already be in chains,” she pointed out.
He considered this.
“Knowing what magic you wield will only help me fulfill your request.”
“I have the ability to heal. To control minds and see long distances. To persuade others…”
Blood, eyes, tongue. Ari mentally listed off the parts where each of the magics resided in his body. He had nothing really special about him thus far. Rusty cogs, she was saddled with the most inept Dragon of them all. What was even the point of a boon if the Dragon delivering it barely had magic to speak of?
“And to slow time.”
“What?” Ari focused on him with the attention of a wild dog on a bone. “Your lungs?” She was honestly surprised he’d confessed it to her.
“Yes, I can slow time.” The Dragon was clearly uncomfortable with her naming off what body part the magic lived in.
No matter, she suddenly had the time she needed. “We’re going to run for Mercury Town.” Ari was talking even faster than she was moving. She grabbed an extra empty bag from the bedroom and a long frock coat that would cover up the Dragon’s ghastly clothing. The former was slung over her shoulders and the latter she tossed to him. “I need you to stop time along the way. I want to get there in under five minutes.”
“But that much magic—”
“Imbibe from me if you must.”
His eyes widened and surprise stilled them both. The Dragon looked at her in shock as Ari once more swallowed down that sickening feeling she got from the prospect of working with a creature like him. Of helping him. Of doing anything that could make a Dragon stronger, not weaker.
It betrayed everything she stood for, and everything she worked for. But Ari had learned, the hard way, that fighting for an ideal meant nothing if the people it was meant to benefit died in the process. She was not a proud creature. She was a creature that did what must be done. Her coat was on now, and she was again the White Wraith. A wraith was above nothing.
Shouts drifted up from the streets as Old Dortam continued to descend into chaos at the hands of the Dragon Riders, who were no doubt taking the opportunity to “impose the King’s law” on the side of the city that was less than friendly toward their kind. Ari couldn’t wa
ste any more time. Nearly two minutes had passed since her count began. At this rate, they wouldn’t make it there before there was another implosion.
She grabbed for the door handle. With or without the Dragon, she was leaving. Flor was more important than his indecision.
His hand closed around hers, and Ari felt his magic slipping over her skin. It wrapped itself around her like sentient, invisible ropes, tightening until she wondered how she was even breathing. She felt the magic build as pressure behind her eyes and a swarming in her ears like a thousand gnats. He remained focused on something beyond the physical world before them, oblivious to the discomfort he was causing her.
“Don’t break contact,” the Dragon whispered.
The world slowed, sand sliding through an hourglass underneath her feet and threatening to pull her down with it. Ari clutched onto his hand as though it were a lifeline thrown to her in a riptide. She fought against the current of time, fought for air, fought to break the bonds that chained her within space and time.
You are the White Wraith, Ari reminded herself. This would not stop her. Time itself would not stop her! Least of all when she was on a mission for Florence’s sake. She was invincible, and she would be damned if something as small as magic and minutes got the better of her.
As though she were freeing her feet from mud, Ari pushed forward. She held onto the Dragon—onto her lifeline—and charged out the door. She threw herself into motion like a boulder down a hill. Time slowing had stunted her momentum, her world, but she had regained it with sheer will. Now she was like a locomotive, speeding weightlessly through the chaotic streets.
Men and women moved slowly, sounds were muffled; the fire from a welder’s torch barely flickered. They were like the gradually turning pages of a flip-book, tiny shifts and changes only visible if one stared too closely. Ari darted through them, pulling the Dragon in tow. She may have been breaking the bones in his hand with how hard she was holding onto it, but she didn’t care. Florence was out there alone, still.