The Alchemists of Loom (Loom Saga #1)(38)
“When it came time for the second test, I knew I wouldn’t pass. Half of us wouldn’t. But we knew more then. We knew there were days before the Dragons when people studied as they wished. When you could be more than where you were born and what you were born into. So we escaped.”
“Anyone caught running from the guild can be put to death.” The laws the Dragons put into place suddenly seemed less sensible when he stared in the face of someone perfectly capable who would be lost from the world were they strictly upheld.
“Anyone who fails the first or second guild test is put to death with certainty. If you run, they may just jail you in an effort to persuade you to come back before killing talent… That’s what happened to my friends.”
“But you’re not dead or imprisoned.”
“I’m not.”
“How?”
Florence was silent for a long time. She focused on selecting canisters from the ones she had made, and made one or two new ones. From time to time, she’d look at him from the corner of her eyes, expectant. Cvareh rested the back of his head against the wall and waited. He wouldn’t repeat himself, and didn’t need to. He just needed to be patient enough that she’d be out with it on her own.
“My friends and I escaped through the Underground,” Florence said briskly. “Seven died, three of us made it out. Two were caught in Ter.4.2.”
“How did you—” Cvareh already knew the answer to his question. He knew who got Florence the rest of the way into obscurity: the only woman in the world who seemed to evade all capture, all pursuit.
“She saved me.” Florence smiled, seeing him put it together. “I wouldn’t be alive if Arianna hadn’t smuggled me with her onto that freighter.”
Dots connected, one after the next, forming a time line that spanned across blanks in history. Arianna met Florence, took her to Ter.5. They made their way to Dortam and she set up a name for herself as the White Wraith, enemy of all Dragons. But why? Everything before her meeting Florence was still wrapped in the enigma of chaos.
“Was she living in Ter.4.2?” he ventured.
Florence shook her head. “I don’t really know. And before you ask, I don’t know where she may have came from. I don’t really know much more than you do. She’s a Master Rivet—”
That was news. He hadn’t known she was a master.
“—and she hates Dragons more than anything. Her first rule in taking me with her was that I would never ask anything else.”
“And you never did,” he observed.
“And I never did. It doesn’t matter who she was. It matters who she can become…” Florence’s hands paused on one of her boxes, pausing mid-close. She spoke only for herself, barely more than a whisper. “If only I could make her see that.”
14. Arianna
Arianna was a stone gargoyle atop one of the spires surrounding the port of Ter.5.2. Magic pulsed through her fingertips, wrapping around the cabling and clips, making its grip on the ironwork surrounding her sure and strong. She watched men and women go about their business.
Dragons walked with guild masters on and off airships. The sight alone made her want to retch in disgust. Fenthri—no, not just Fenthri, guild masters—fraternizing willingly and openly with Dragons. She remembered a time when guild masters embodied everything pure and true in the academic world, when they were the pillars of guilds. Now, they spilled their secrets for their oppressors like dogs returning a fetched ball.
The world had changed in the nearly three years she had sequestered herself in Dortam. Every day, it slipped further and further from the land Arianna had been born into. Now, it seemed to race toward a future that cared little for the past.
The line nearly cut into her flesh, she held it so tightly. She was no better than those she judged. She worked with a Dragon, harbored a Dragon; she’d let a Dragon imbibe from her. The line finally bit into the same hand Cvareh had, drawing blood. Her mind betrayed her, filling her with thoughts of the way he looked at her while he consumed her.
Arianna snarled at the memory, scaring it into the recesses of her awareness. She uncurled her fingers and watched the wound on her hand heal slowly. She was part Dragon, too, more than she would ever admit to anyone.
“Eva…” She touched her wrist and the tension faded from Arianna’s shoulders. “I’m headed back. I’m going back, finally. I will finish what we started.”
That was what separated her from those she watched fraternize with the Dragons below, from the Chimera who prided in being part Dragon. Arianna did not act for herself. She hadn’t taken on Dragon organs for pleasure or self-centered power. She didn’t help Cvareh for his own sake, or to use his boon for personal gains. She’d done it for her mission, for Loom, but most of all for her vengeance.
Arianna waited for darkness before moving. Three freighters remained docked after the sun set and she already had her eyes and suspicions on one being their best chance for getting to Ter.4.2. But there was one place that would have all the information. Before leaving, and just after docking, Arianna had watched the captains of each of the vessels make their way into a building across from where she perched. She saw them through the third floor windows as they talked with a portly man. This same stout man locked up his business only after the port had gone quiet and the last of the light had diminished from the sky.