The Rebels of Gold (Loom Saga #3)(104)
“Then I will be Dono.” Cvareh searched her face, surprised to find pain there. “I promise you, Arianna, I will be a Dono for Nova. Loom will have their sovereignty.”
“I have no doubt.” She pulled away from him and snatched up her white coat. Arianna tugged it on with renewed purpose and went right for the door.
“Ari—.”
“I have to get back to Loom,” she interrupted him curtly, not even bothering to look back. “More Perfect Chimera are ready to sent, and guns will soon be ready to ship with them. I need to help train Ravens to run gliders.”
Cvareh stared dumbly as she left him to wonder what, exactly, he had said wrong.
Certainly, he could’ve chased after her, but he didn’t. He could’ve whispered to her in the days that followed, but he didn’t do that either. The words that needed to be said, words he was still discovering, needed to be said to her face. And those he wanted to hear, he likewise wanted to see emerge from her mouth.
So, when she whispered a week later that Perfect Chimera were on their way, Cvareh vowed to be ready. He prepared his heart, only to have it sink when he discovered not Arianna making the delivery, but Helen in her stead.
Florence
The Rivets’ Guild hall was everything Florence expected after her brief time in Ter.3.2. The clockwork structure of patchwork metal—some dulled with time, greening with age, and other parts fresh like new skin grafts over old wounds—fit with what she’d come to learn was the Rivet sensibility. Steam hissed and gears churned in perpetual motion within the walls.
She was put up in very sensible chambers close to Willard. Florence could tell they were designed especially for guests, as they had different accommodations than usual. Even in comfort, there was something purposeful and methodological about the way the Rivets approached their existence. The whole place echoed of Arianna in the most nostalgic of ways.
Florence had been sequestered from the first moment she’d arrived. Willard and Ethel had greeted her at the platform and talks began almost immediately. How would they allocate their increasing numbers of trained Perfect Chimera? Would they outfit them with Florence’s weapon, or would they save the weapon for regular Chimera in effort to double their effective fighting force? Would they be willing to supply the weapon directly to the Dragons? On and on the questions went.
They looked to Florence for answers that she wasn’t sure she had. She was the Vicar Revolver, and hadn’t ever set foot in the Revolvers’ Guild hall—at least, hadn’t set foot when she wasn’t sneaking. She didn’t know the first thing about how to properly train Alchemists to think like fighters. So she made it up as she went, and hoped it all worked out.
Yes, she was exhausted from trying to live up to others’ expectations. She was tired of the world looking to her for answers she didn’t even know if she had. But Florence knew she wouldn’t sleep tonight.
Her mind was heavy, and her heart was knotted. It was a combination that kept sleep at bay and Florence knew better than to fight losing battles. So, instead, she attempted something she hoped would be productive.
She had set out to find Ari and, thanks to Will’s help, she knew right where to look.
Master Oliver, the name plate on the door still read. She gave a few solid knocks before noticing it was slightly ajar.
“It’s open, Flor.”
The voice alone shot right to the heart of her. Florence suddenly wondered if she had the courage to enter. She’d done so much, but felt daunted by this small task.
Pulled by an unseen hand, Florence pushed through, and saw, for the first time in months, the visage of the woman she’d admired for years.
Arianna sat behind a large drafting table, where papers weighted by rulers hid under pencils worn down to nibs. Her coat was hung on a peg nailed into one of the bookcases, almost hidden by manuscripts draping half off the overfilled shelves like crooked teeth. Ledgers stuffed in-between threatened to spill out their secrets in protest of their treatment.
Florence’s eyes drifted from the worn leather chairs around a table, to the bookshelves, to the doorway to the rooms beyond, and back to Arianna. Any frustration or apprehension she felt melted away the moment she saw the white-haired woman dressed in plain woolen trousers and a rumpled shirt, open at the collar.
It was like finally a piece had been slotted back into place. This was where Arianna belonged, not in some dingy flat in Old Dortam.
“So, this is where you grew up?”
Arianna looked around the room, as if with fresh eyes. “Sort of, I suppose . . . Willard found me at seven, and we left due to differences in ideology when I was about ten.”
“When he joined the Council of Five and started the rebellion?” Florence helped herself to one of the seats facing Arianna.
“Indeed.” Arianna’s eyes drifted back to whatever it was she’d been working on and her hand reached for a pencil, no doubt on instinct more than command.
Florence let her work. She knew how Arianna was with an idea; there was no stopping her mind once it was coiled around something. If history had proved anything, it was that the world was better off for letting Ari’s ideas run their course.
The chair wrapped her in a cozy embrace, inviting Florence to lean into it. So, she obliged, and tipped her head back. She was going to allow her eyes to flutter closed, perhaps even sneak in a moment of sleep in this tranquil oasis amid a sea of war and questions. But the ceiling captured her focus.