The Rebels of Gold (Loom Saga #3)(23)

Coletta


Usually, after supper, Coletta preferred to retire to the company of her plants. On rare occasions, she treated herself to chilled mead out of a crystal snifter to sweeten the sunset over Lysip. Tonight, in a rare occasion, Coletta treated herself to blood.

It had been a busy day, but one full of triumphs. Nevertheless, there was no reprieve for the righteous, and Coletta had a few more items of key importance on her agenda to complete before the candle wax burned out for the day. It was a list mostly comprised of what her and Yveun had discussed, and the ideas he’d seeded in the back of her mind.

That, more than anything else, was what she valued him for. Certainly, his other uses were vast and important. But he was the one to inspire great thoughts in her. He was the muse, not the painter. Fortunately for them both, she had skill enough with the brush.

“Ryu, your nightly libation has been set out in the garden.” Ulia emerged, hands folded and head bowed, from a side hall.

“Return it to the chill box for tomorrow.” The girl had to scamper to keep up when Coletta took an unexpected turn from her usual pathways back to her quarters. “Fetch me Topann. I shall be waiting in the gray receiving room.”

“Gray receiving room?” Ulia repeated, clearly confused.

“Topann will know where it is.”

The orders given, Coletta continued alone.

Toward the top of the Rok Estate was space to store gliders for Riders, as well as the necessary landing and departure areas that accompanied them. But down the slope of the hill, on the side of the estate that faced the edge of the island, was a series of chambers burrowed into the ground below. There, amid the desolate stone walls and dimly lit halls, was another landing area for gliders. One room was connected to the barren track of stone, aptly named for its decor and function.

The gray receiving room was vacant and dark, the air stale. Coletta left the door to the hall open as she walked over to a thin countertop along one wall. It was barren, save a striker.

She picked up the tool that resembled a pair of shears, steel on one side, flint on the other, and lit the two iron oil lamps bolted into walls on either end of the room. It was barely enough light to scare darkness away from the corners and, if anything, seemed only to accentuate the inky blackness that clung to the edges of the room.

This will do nicely.

She leaned against the table and passed the time by inspecting her claws until Topann arrived.

“I apologize for my delay.” Topann gave a small bow as she entered the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

“You were not delayed,” Coletta pointed out. She knew how long it took to arrive at the Gray Room from Topann’s quarters among the flower fields on the opposite end of the estate. “If anything, you hurried.”

“I do not like to keep my lady in wait.” Topann crossed the floor, taking Coletta’s hand in hers. The woman’s red fingers curled around her wrist and she brought Coletta’s knuckles to her lips.

“A trait of yours I appreciate.” Coletta freed her hand from the prostrating woman. “Tell me, have we heard anything from our Fen traitor?”

“He has acquired information on the stores of gold on Loom.”

“Excellent.”

“However, he seeks to negotiate before he shares this information.”

“Negotiate for what?” she inquired.

“I do not yet know.”

Coletta thrummed her fingers against the table, annoyed. Her day had been going so well, so smoothly. She was not about to let a Fen be the blemish upon it.

“Very well . . .” Coletta hummed. “You shall go see what he wants.”

“Ryu?”

No, she wouldn’t understand. “Yveun will go to Loom himself to bring the Fen to their senses.”

“I see.” Her tone proved she agreed with Coletta that such a course was inherently foolish.

“Yes, well, I would like you to go with him. Take the opportunity to squeeze this Fen for all the information he’s worth, and be my eyes and ears.”

“Such a mission would be my honor.”

“Before that,” Coletta continued, “I require your assistance with something.”

“Anything.”

Coletta knew it to be true. Topann was the oldest of her little buds and had bloomed into a loyal zealot. Though, zealots were easy enough to create. All it took was saving someone whose desperation to be free of something had reached a critical mass. Whether the shackles took the form of a person or a place, Coletta broke her flowers’ chains. Thereafter, they were hers.

In that way, all her little flowers were the same. Buds that had grown on the underside of Lysip. Girls that would have sprouted from nothing, into nothing, and died nothing . . . and yet, they had been saved from their fate, given a taste for greatness.

“I need you to find me an Alchemist from among the Fen.”

“Ryu, with every respect, I did not think we kept Alchemists here—only Rivets to maintain the gliders.”

Coletta ran her fingertips across her lips in thought. “I once brought an Alchemist from Loom to give me their knowledge on the plants and herbs of their world . . .”

Extracting that knowledge had been bloody, at first. But there was an unsurprisingly direct inverse correlation between the willingness of a person to impart their knowledge and the number of toes they still possessed. So unfortunate for the Fenthri that they could not regrow body parts as a Dragon could. It truly was a wonder the gray race had survived at all.