The Alchemists of Loom (Loom Saga #1)(12)
“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.