The Alchemists of Loom (Loom Saga #1)(45)

“They’re honest men and women.” She shrugged. “I believe what Pops said about the captain.”

“A thief concerned about honor.” He laughed.

“Honor is what I fight for—honor, justice, freedom, and above all, Loom.”

“I didn’t take you for such an idealist.” Cvareh shifted to face her, resting his hip against the railing. Arianna’s eyes fell from the sky, where they’d been following the trail of billowing smoke, to meet his. Neither said anything for a long moment.

“You never asked.”

He contemplated it. Somewhere, in the week they had spent together, he was certain he had. But he would give her this. For the first time, Cvareh yielded to her. Because she was fundamentally right. If he had asked it had certainly been defensive or insulting. He hadn’t asked to know. He hadn’t asked in such a way that implied he would listen.

“Why did you take my offer of a boon?” Cvareh dared appealing to her logic. “You’re clearly well learned, and you use it to your advantage to get what you want. You’re a Chimera, so you can use magic. What does a boon give that you don’t already have?”

“The one thing I truly want,” she whispered, not looking at him.

“Arianna, what is that?” He shifted closer, to hear her over the sea wind, to not miss a word that fell from her lips. His fingers brushed against her elbow.

Arianna’s head snapped down, looking at the offending contact. She pulled away with an expression of horror, laced with confusion. Cvareh tried to make sense of how that touch had elicited such a reaction.

“I want Nova to burn.” Arianna looked him right in the eye and Cvareh couldn’t find a trace of lie. “And I will use your boon to help me do it.”

Cvareh didn’t back down. He curled his fingers into fists to keep his talons from unsheathing out of instinct when she threatened his home. “Why?”

“For what you have done to Loom.”

“What we have done?” he balked. “We have given you magic, we have gifted you with progress. We have imposed logical systems of government, a hierarchy in which everyone knows their place and how they fit.”

She began to laugh, though he failed to see how what he said was funny. Arianna grasped her stomach and her shoulders trembled with barely containable, malicious mirth.

“You—you gifted us, with progress?” She shook her head. “Dragon, check your history. Your people fell from the sky. We were the ones to give you wings, to make your magic useful.”

“It was quite useful to begin with.”

“And we knew how we fit together before. We were a chain, every Guild forming a link that supplied the next, which made Loom work.” She prodded a finger in his chest. “Then you came, and put gates on the system. You tried to turn links in a chain into rungs of a ladder, one atop the next. Our trade has yet to recover, our output is only half of what it was, without the Vicar council the Guilds do not communicate, and that’s not even touching on problems with educating our youth now that they are trapped within your asinine notion of ‘families,’ condemned to their guild only to be killed off if they don’t make the cut.”

Cvareh didn’t know where to start, didn’t know if he should engage physically as she encroached on his space. He didn’t know if he should try to correct her. Or if there was something to be understood in everything she was telling him.

“Dragon.” He had been demoted again. “I do not presume to know your ways. I have studied them, but I do not know them. Frankly, I don’t care. Keep your Nova logic up in your sky world and leave us alone.”

Arianna eased away slowly. If looks could kill, Cvareh would be dead a hundred times over. She panted softly from her tirade. When she took another step, Cvareh’s hand closed around her wrist before he could think to arrest it.

He stopped her.

Why did he stop her?

Frustration knitted his brow. This woman was going to drive him mad long before they ever saw the Alchemists’ Guild. She had her prejudices and Cvareh knew that she would keep them no matter what he said, but that didn’t stop him from speaking. “You’re right, Arianna. You don’t know anything.”

“Unhand me,” she snarled.

“I listened to you.” He released her. “Now listen to me.”

Miraculously, she stayed. Perhaps it would’ve been better if she’d left.

“The Dragon King kills your people, just as he kills mine. The hierarchy he is imposing upon your world, service and servitude at the cost of wellbeing, is the same as he imposes on ours. I want to see him dead. That’s why I’m here.”

The blood rushed into his ears, deafening all sound other than the echo of his confession. He’d never said such treasonous words aloud before. That had always been Petra’s role. She was the brave one, and he was just her right hand.

“I want Yveun Dono dead,” Cvareh said again, just to prove to himself he could. “And I want a new world order too. For Nova and Loom. The Alchemists hold the key to making it happen. Once we’re there—”

“—we will find the power to change the world?” she finished, her flat tone deflating him to match. “Everyone on Loom knows of the Council of Five. But that resistance died long ago, and their hopes for the future with them.”