Florence had always thought of Louie’s lackeys as greedy bottom-feeders, hungry for the payout that his jobs brought. Or people with such wretched histories that they had no other option than to associate themselves with the gremlin of a man.
But Shannra’s story was relatively benign; if anything, it made her association with Louie borderline normal. For a moment, Florence wondered if, under a different set of circumstances, she would’ve ended up in Louie’s service, too.
For all that she’d thought those on Louie’s payroll were loyal because of the money, she realized now it was because he offered something far more valuable: a place for wayward souls to call home.
“I appreciate your work.” Florence grabbed Shannra’s hand. “And many others will, too.”
Shannra stared at the initiated contact and gave a small laugh. “You have no idea how good it feels to hear someone say that.”
Florence did. In that moment, she was veca away from the dark cavern and back in her and Ari’s flat in Old Dortam. She heard Arianna’s first praise of her work keenly, felt her chest swell with phantom pride.
“I do, actually,” Florence whispered.
“It feels good to hear you say that.” Shannra turned her head, their noses almost touching. “I want to always be there to appreciate your work, Florence.”
It’s not your appreciation I want, Florence realized suddenly.
She was shaken to her core by the revelation, but in the same instant, so was Loom’s fragile reprieve. Gunshots echoed from some faraway location.
Florence was on her feet, ready. The Dragons had made their first attack.
ARIANNA
She had an hour all to herself.
There was no one around her, nowhere to be, no one to interrupt her. Arianna laid out on one of the couches, worn to the perfect softness by countless hours of occupation over the years. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
The smell of leather, the size and shape of the furniture, vaguely reminded her of what she had procured for her and Florence’s home in Old Dortam. She’d chosen those beaten-up sofas more carefully than she’d ever admit. The hours they’d spent on them, discussing, debating, reading quietly.
Arianna opened her eyes, returning to the here and now. Here was the masters’ wing of the Rivets’ Guild. Now saw Florence no longer a girl, nor a wayward student in need of an educational guide and protector.
Sitting, Arianna looked back to the corner where she could still read Master Oliver’s name clearly on the door. He, too, had taken in a girl curious about the world and educated her. But Arianna hadn’t been ready to give up his tutelage; she would still accept it now if she could.
After the events on Ter.0, she had little doubt Florence did not quite feel the same.
A door down the hall opened unexpectedly. Arianna’s feet were on the floor, a hand on her dagger hilt, before the echo of squealing hinges faded from her ears. She coaxed her hand to relax, reminding herself that she was once more around friends and allies.
After spending so much of her life in secret, it was an odd feeling.
“Oh, hello . . .” The coal-skinned man seemed as startled to see her as she was to see him.
“Hello, Master Charles.” The name plaque on the door confirmed her suspicion. But it was an easy deduction; Willard had said there was only one other master in the guild presently.
“And you are . . .?” His body was still tense. His light gray eyes scanned her face, no doubt making note of her lack of guild mark.
“Arianna.”
“Arianna . . .” he repeated, bringing his fingers to hook his chin in thought.
“Master Arianna.” The title was odd on her tongue, unfamiliar. “I was Oliver’s pupil.”
“Oh . . . Oh.” Comprehension lit up the man’s eyes and he crossed the room to her. His hair was cut short, and shone like an oil slick in the light. “I’ve heard about you.”
“Whatever you’ve heard, I’m sure it’s greatly exaggerated.” Arianna leaned back into the sofa.
“It is fairly fantastical to think I’m in the presence of someone who supposedly created the Philosopher’s Box.”
“I did create it.”
“I believe that’s what’s to be discussed with Mas—Vicar Willard soon.” Arianna didn’t miss how his instinct was still to refer to Willard as “Master,” rather than “Vicar.”
“I believe so.”
He produced a watch from his pocket, clicking it open. “It’s early yet, but I doubt the vicar has many other priorities right now. Would you care to walk with me?”
She stood and fell into step behind him as they wandered through the guild hall toward the vicar’s wing. “So, what’s been all the rave at Garre while I was gone?”
“Automations along the line,” Charles responded easily.
“Sounds interesting.”
“It is.” Rivets and their “get to the point” nature weren’t exactly known for small talk.
“And what happened to Master Oliver?”
“I killed him.”
Few statements could stop a conversation as abruptly.
Vicar Willard was in the lavish workshop attached to his private residence. His hands were occupied when they arrived, focusing on making space on the long central table.
“You’re early,” he observed. “Well, since you’re here, help me clean this off.”
Arianna and Charles set to work moving the various parts and tools back to their supposed places around the room. Taking over someone else’s workshop was like slipping into someone else’s shoes. Nothing fit right about it.
“So, I was thinking we would start with building a working model of the Philosopher’s Box that we can use to design the line for mass production,” Willard started.
“It really is true?”
“Yes, she has supplied—”
Arianna grabbed one of her daggers and drew it across her palm, showing Charles the same stream of gold she’d displayed to the Vicar Tribunal. Showing was always better than telling. “Proof enough?”
Charles’s eyes darted from her palm to her face several times. “Yes.”
“As you build, Charles can sketch schematics and I can take notes,” Willard instructed as they finished clearing the table. “That’ll make it easier to pass on the information to the initiates and journeymen who will be working on and overseeing the line.”
Arianna could only nod. The idea of making the Philosopher’s Box again put a lump in her throat.
“Let’s begin, then.”
If she allowed herself to think about how her hands were moving, she risked error. Arianna pushed all else from her mind, beyond the numbers that gave structure to her creations. It had been a long time since she had last made the box, and there were parts that came more slowly to her than others. Still, she worked through them logically; after all, the only other option was allowing Willard to take the only other prototype in existence and build a model based off reverse-engineering. Ari wasn’t about to let that happen.
They worked well into the night, tinkering until the box had mostly taken shape—minus one or two essential parts that could be manufactured with ease. Arianna looked at her work, a nearly identical replica of what sat in her chest and kept her alive.
“So now what?” Charles asked.
“It’s implanted in place of the heart.”
“This . . . it’s just a glorified pump. How does it create a Perfect Chimera?” he asked skeptically.
“It’s unfinished until it’s tempered.” Arianna leaned against the table, ignoring what she had just produced. Her eyes swept over the detailed notes and skillful schematics the men had drawn. The greatest thing she had ever done, reduced to a few sheets of paper.
“Tempered?” Charles’s confusion reminded her that he hadn’t been privy to the Tribunal and that Willard hadn’t had time enough to fill him in.
“There’s a special flower from Nova that has magic properties. It cleans blood of rot.?
?? Judging from Charles’s facial shift, she didn’t need to explain the rest.
“So, when do we get our hands on it?” He looked to Willard.
“Louie, the man whose airship I arrived on, has been asked by the Vicar Raven to procure it, along with the necessary organs.”
Arianna folded her arms over her chest as a physical reminder to keep things close. She wasn’t ready to expose her whisper link with Cvareh yet. Not until she had to. Purely because it was an advantage, and those were best kept as secret as possible for as long as possible. There were no other concerns, Arianna assured herself. She’d see if Louie could do it first, and then step in as necessary.
“I see . . .” Charles hummed. “Well, if it’s what the Tribunal decided . . .” The man chuckled, shaking his head at himself. “Things I never thought I’d say or hear.”
“Indeed, friend, indeed,” Willard agreed. “For now, it’s been a long day. We’ll resume tomorrow, setting up the journeymen on building out a manufacturing line for this. Can the metal be tempered after the fact? Or is it a high-heat tempering that will warp?”
“It can be.”
“Good, then we’ll produce as many as we can while we’re waiting for the supplies to finish them. Rest well, you two. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Dismissed, she and Charles wandered back through the empty guild. He made no attempts at conversation until they were back at the masters’ hall.
“What you said, about killing Oliver . . .” She’d commend him for holding in the need to clarify for as long as he had.
“It’s not a lie.” Arianna sighed when she saw the spectrum of emotions run across his face. “But it’s not entirely the truth, either.”
“Why?”
“I had my reasons.” That I will not divulge. She’d had enough of baring her soul to strangers.
“Well, if the vicar is unconcerned, then I am, too.” Charles let the matter go. “After all, no one held Oliver in higher esteem than Willard.” Before Arianna could ask him to elaborate, he started for his chambers. “I’ll see you in the morning, Master Arianna.”
“In the morning, Master Charles,” she murmured.
Arianna looked toward the back of the room for a door that was now completely shrouded. She wondered if in that darkness, the ghost of her former master still lingered, watching, waiting. She started for the door.
“I’m here, Master,” she whispered. Her fingers hovered over Oliver’s lock. “Sorry I’m so late.”
Without a second thought, she spun the dials on Oliver’s lock in a succession that required a series of clockwise and counterclockwise rotations, pulling on the different dials, and unlatching small parts of the lock itself to reveal secondary push buttons. After a long minute, the lock eventually gave with a click. It was a code he hadn’t decided to tell her until she’d made the Philosopher’s Box.
Now, Arianna wondered if the man had somehow foreseen their betrayal by Finnyr. How much had he accounted for?
Inside, the musty air of the room hit her like the first yawn of a long-slumbering beast. It smelled of oil and grease, metal, aging paper, cracked leather, and the faint tinge of a floral note that was in Oliver’s blood, one that Arianna could never quite place. Nostalgia attacked her from every corner.
Understandably, the room hadn’t been fitted with electricity. But Arianna knew exactly where he’d kept his oil lamps and matches. Illumination did little to scare away the lingering memories clinging to every wall, book, and unfinished piece of creation that still sat out, waiting for its master to return.
She walked over to his desk, drawn by a familiar set of scribbles. Arianna lifted up her own schematics, done in a rough hand years ago when she was little more than a child.
“Why did you keep these?” she whispered. Her heart knew the answer. It was the same reason why she would always carry a canister marked with the notches of a clumsy Revolver-in-the-making.
Speaking of Revolvers . . .
“Letters with the Vicar Revolver . . .?”
She pushed papers aside, skimming through about a month’s worth of missives. They went back and forth about ideas, about Dragon bone density and how coronas worked. The words “in a purely hypothetical question for intellectual pursuits” were scrawled multiple times over, safeguarding each page against potential accusations of treason.
“Intellectual pursuits.” Arianna scoffed at the idea. This was talk of methods to kill Dragons. She’d always known Oliver to be a revolutionary, but it seemed to extend into his entire history.
Her hand shifted a letter to the side and exposed a very different schematic than the childish one she’d held earlier. This was done with a graceful, steady hand, lines built on each other, coming together to form what Arianna could only describe as a masterpiece of death. And just perhaps, Loom’s salvation.
FLORENCE
If there was some test in the Revolvers’ Guild that involved running through pitch-black corridors towards certain danger, gun in hand, and nothing more than a makeshift plan—Florence would have already achieved master status.
Nothing good ever comes of the Underground, she couldn’t stop repeating to herself. It was still the most logical place to have collected the majority of Loom. But that didn’t change its innate nature: a gaping black hole, filled with nothing but misfortune and bad luck, especially every time she was in it.
More gunfire echoed as her hands counted the canisters that ran along her belts and shoulder harness. She had a good twenty made, ready to go. Those, combined with the one disk bomb she also had tucked away, should be enough ammunition. Should be. If it wasn’t, she would just have to improvise as she had done so many times before.
“All noncombatants,” one Raven stood at a crossroads shouting, “head down to the lower halls. This is not a drill! All noncombatants should retreat down to the safety of the lower halls. This is not a drill! Do as you were instructed.”
Florence broke free of the startled and cowering masses, and continued to head upward toward the gunfire. The potent smell of sulfur in the air guided her, like a hound attracted to the scent of its quarry. But when she emerged at last into one of the uppermost tunnels—a rare exit topside—ready for a fight, she found none to be had.
A Dragon lay prone on the floor. Gold blood still oozed from his gaping chest and from the forearm that had been torn off at the elbow. Four Fenthri lay dead, scattered around the Dragon. Two Chimera nursed slowly healing wounds; they bled black, which was lucky, but would be out of commission for however long it took their bodies to mend.
“Press forward,” Vicar Gregory ordered from just ahead. “Reseal the doors.”
Florence strode past the deceased Dragon, toward the vicar. Just around the bend where he stood, Florence saw two heavy steel doors warped open. Wedged between them, like tree limbs through walls after windstorm, were the remnants of a glider.
“The bloody Rider slammed right into them,” Gregory explained unnecessarily.
“Are there more?” Florence asked, trying to catch a glimpse of the sky through the sliver of an opening.
“Likely.”
“How did he even get through?” The doors were thick and sturdy. There should have been no way to penetrate them, even sacrificing a glider. What was more, the Dragon shouldn’t have known about the entrance at all. Florence only recognized it as the one major access point to the Underground because it was fairly infamous in the Ravens’ Guild. But because it was so notable, no one ever used it.
“Came out of nowhere. We didn’t even see him until it was too late.” Her confusion still apparent, Vicar Gregory continued, “I had taken a small party out through the gates in an effort to help fortify them.”
“Oh, the irony.” Did it not go without saying that they should not be opening gates and letting the Dragons know of their location?
“Florence, I don’t know what you’re aspiring for, but do be mindful that I am still the Vicar Revolver,” Gregory said in a cautionary to
ne.
“Yes, you are, and I am grateful that you hold yourself to the highest standard in order to prevent oversight that leads to accidents like this.” Her remarks earned some looks from the other Revolvers, but Florence held her ground. Let them see; she wasn’t in the wrong here.
“You only just arrived, so I realize you have not yet been informed that the vicars have agreed to collapse tunnels to protect from below and fortify the entrances above.” Vicar Gregory ground his teeth. “I think you should head back into the depths of the caverns for safety. With the other noncombatants.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. After all, you said it yourself: I’m a Revolver, right?” Florence had no inclination to be dismissed and was ready, at last, to use Gregory’s words against him. She looked back to the Dragon, then returned her eyes to the sky. There were no rainbow trails, and the sensation of magic did not prickle against her skin. “Plus, I think he was just a scout.”
“Why would the Dragons merely send a scout? They made it perfectly clear their attack would come in three days.”
“Three days were up two days ago. I’m sure the attack came, but they went to Ter.0 first, expecting to find us waiting and insolent.”
“Scouts,” Gregory repeated. “They’re sending scouts to see where we ran off to.”
“That would be my guess. And we can only hope that this Rider was the first.”
“And why is that?”
Florence wanted to think his aim was a lot more accurate than his intellect. “Because when this Rider doesn’t make it back to Nova, it will be fairly logical for the Dragon King to assume he was killed. And the death of this Rider will lead the Dragon King and his agents directly to us.”
“And why would we want that?”