The Rebels of Gold (Loom Saga #3)(51)

Arianna looked at the line that ran around her wrist where the soft blue skin of her hands met her natural, steel-colored flesh. These hands had tried to dismantle her world. She would use those same hands to be that man’s downfall—to annihilate all who sought to oppress Loom.

The door to the deck opened.

“Am I taking your spot?” Will asked, from where he hovered on the threshold.

“Yes.” Arianna turned her eyes forward, pointedly ignoring the child.

“Sorry about that.” He clearly wasn’t sorry, and sat down next to her. Will drew his heavy coat tighter around him, pulling up the collar to shield his face from the wind that whipped around them. “How are you not freezing to death out here?”

“If it’s too cold for you, perhaps you should return indoors?”

“I just may.”

Victory, Arianna thought.

“I’ll wait just long enough to lose him.” Will peered over the window ledge and looking into the upper deckhouse before ducking down again.

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Wasn’t as if she had anything else to do. “Lose who?”

“Vicar Willard. The old man just won’t shut up about how to make the engine run more efficiently.”

Arianna laughed. “Oh, to be young and stupid—”

“Hey!”

“—and not capitalize on the opportunity to learn from a vicar.” Arianna adjusted her goggles. Granted, she had some mixed feelings about Vicar Willard, but she was allowed—they had history.

“At first I did.” Will was instantly defensive. “But he corrected everything.”

“That’s because everything in this rig is wrong.”

“No, it’s not. It runs just fine, thank you,” the boy insisted.

“It could be better and you know it.” He made it too easy for her to push right on his soft spots. “You’ve been away from the Ravens’ Guild proper for a while. Getting sloppy, Will.”

“Sloppy? You’re one to talk.” Will breathed on his hands, looking out at the magic discharge. “Thought you were supposed to be some great White Wraith, master thief, super sneaky.”

Arianna arched her eyebrows, not even dignifying him with a response.

“I overheard you and Florence. I know what you gave her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Arianna looked him in the eye, challenging him to call her on her bluff.

To her frustration, he did. “Sure. Well, then I heard some other Arianna through a crack in a wall talking to some other Florence about some other copy of a ledger she made of something she stole in Ter.3 before leaving the five-tiered hall.”

“You were sent to spy on me?” Arianna mentally cursed herself for not inspecting more carefully the rooms surrounding her laboratory.

“Louie likes to know what’s going on.”

“That he does,” she agreed, training her expression to be void of emotion. “Too bad any reports he gets would be from a bored Raven with an overactive imagination.”

“Be careful, Ari. I wasn’t the first and won’t be the last.”

“The irony of you telling me that.” She’d been in dangerous situations longer than he’d been alive.

“Fine, ignore me.” Will shrugged. “Just saying that if it had been anyone else in Louie’s crew, you would’ve been outed.”

“Anyone else? Including Helen?” Arianna wondered if she was hearing between his words correctly.

“Helen has her eyes on inheriting all of Louie’s operations. She’ll do anything to suck up to him.” Will had the tone of a friend who’d been chapped by some rather cold treatment.

“Why are you telling me this?” Helen and Will were a matched set. In no world could she imagine Will doing anything that would separate them.

“Because when she does inherit Louie’s kingdom, we’ll need a champion. I hear he has a pretty good one he’s been working with. Don’t want to see Helen burn any bridges we may need to drive over.”

Arianna snorted with laughter at the idea of taking orders from either of the children. But still, fair was fair. The warning he gave her was valuable, almost adult-like, and she appreciated it. “Play your cards right, and maybe you’ll be so lucky. If you can pay.”

“The business is pretty lucrative.” Will glanced through the window into the deck cabin.

“Have you heard anything else?” Arianna asked when they both confirmed no one was observing their clandestine meeting.

“Anything else?”

She didn’t know if he was being coy, or just stupid. “Why did Louie want the ledger in the first place?”

Will’s mouth turned into a frown. “I don’t really know. But I know he speaks to someone on Nova with the red-eared one, Adam.”

Red ears. Arianna’s instincts went off again as they had the first time, apprehensive at anything that resembled Rok.

“Do you know who?”

“That’s all I know . . . for now.”

“For now?”

“Like I said, I want to work with you.” Will shrugged again. Arianna didn’t know what she’d done to endear herself to the boy, but she wasn’t going to challenge it. The fact that he hadn’t gone to Louie—or at least claimed he hadn’t—was good faith enough. “Except, can we please do this in the future where it’s not freezing? I think I’ll brave the vicar and his corrections over losing my fingers.”