The Rebels of Gold (Loom Saga #3)(94)
“Dragon friends?” Xavier was brought back to life with the mention of Dragons. “It’s true? Xin?”
“It is.” Willard ushered the master toward him. “Come, come, we’ll get you inside. I’ll summon the Vicar Alchemist to look at you both.”
“I’m fine, Willard.” Arianna stretched. She knew the cure for her ailments—a good night’s rest, rarer than gold now on Loom. “I’m going to head toward the workshops.”
“The Vicar Alchemist is here?” Xavier asked, ignoring her. Arianna was hardly offended; she wanted to be forgotten by people as quickly as she appeared before them.
Willard gave Arianna a nod before ushering Xavier away.
“We’ve come to attend you, oh queen!” Helen burst through a door opposite the one Willard had just departed through. She gave a bow with a mocking flourish.
Arianna was weeks away from trying to fight the foolishness of her unwanted Raven chicks. Instead, she shrugged out of her coat. “Will, follow Willard and tell him that I still need to speak with him when he’s done with Xavier.” Arianna threw the garment at Helen. “And you, fix my sleeve.”
“I am not a tailor!” Helen fumed to the point of nearly stomping her foot like the child she was.
“And I am not a babysitter. You want to remain in my good graces?”
Helen stormed off without another word, thanks to a look of encouragement from Will, who followed close behind. Arianna headed in the opposite direction.
The manufacturing line might be where the boxes were made, but the workshops were where they transformed into functioning Philosopher’s Boxes that were then passed along to what had become the Alchemists’ wing of the guild hall. They were implanted in Chimera, and after that . . . it was up to the Revolvers for training.
“I’d like to see everyone’s progress,” Arianna announced the moment she entered the room and set down the tubes of flowers in their storage spot. She was too tired for pleasantries, and focused on the task at hand. It was a mixed bag of successes that launched her into a familiar lecture. “ . . . Extracting the properties of the flowers comes more from magic than mechanics. You need to heat the gold using magic, and then pull the magic that lives in the flower into it while it’s near-molten.
“Try again.” Arianna stood over one particularly focused journeyman and, at the risk of breaking his concentration, said, “Exactly like that . . .You know the magic is transferring properly because the gold will actually begin to cool again. It’s very similar to tempering with blood.”
“Oh.” One journeyman said. “But we’re not mixing the molten gold with blood here.”
“No, just the magics are mixing,” Arianna reiterated. “It’s not identical to tempering with blood—fundamentally similar, but not the same.”
A woman gave a grunt of frustration, hanging her head over like a wilted flower petal. Arianna didn’t even need to touch the box in her hands to know that it wasn’t tempered properly. She struggled with all her might to stifle a sigh and failed. She was too tired these days to expend much energy on patience.
“Put any boxes you think are successful on the table here.” Vicar Willard’s voice cut through the room, saving Arianna from herself. “The rest, bring back into the finishing room to be recalibrated so we may try again tomorrow.”
Arianna gave the man a severe look, but managed to hold her tongue until they were alone—somehow. “There won’t be a tomorrow if they don’t get better at this.”
“Exactly, so why stress them further and lessen our chances?”
She ground her knuckles into the table next to her.
“You don’t really take after Oliver, after all.”
“Excuse me?” Arianna arched her eyebrows.
“Well, given how you were at first with the initiates, with Florence, I thought perhaps we had a new great teacher among us.”
Florence. She knew the woman had departed for Ter.3.2, where they had begun manufacturing the new weapons.
“I just play favorites with the competent. In that way, I’m exactly like Oliver.” Arianna shrugged, leaning against the table, completely unashamed of the fact. Willard chuckled at the idea but didn’t contest it. “How’s our master?”
“With Vicar Ethel, then I think some much-needed rest.” Arianna let her silence be her agreement. She could not imagine what the man was going through, having spent his life on Nova until now. Willard returned his attention to the boxes. “Will you be able to do any today?”
Arianna glanced over at the boxes that lined the table. She’d already counted how many they had started with and knew how many more were in the other room waiting to be salvaged. Even more still waited at the end of the line on the factory floor beyond that.
“Ten, maybe fifteen . . .”
“Stick with ten,” Willard cautioned. “You have been expending a lot of magic these days with your jaunts up to Nova.”
“I’m not a child, old man. I don’t need you cautioning me.”
“I think you do.” Willard stood his ground and Arianna didn’t argue the point further. The last thing she wanted was him bringing up the last time she’d pushed herself too hard, and he’d found her completely passed out the next morning on the floor of the workshop. It was an embarrassment he’d spared her publicly, but Arianna was now tempted to tell all of Loom herself so the man couldn’t hang it over her head. “We don’t have that many flowers, in any case. We’re somewhat limited until more Perfect Chimera can confidently fly gliders. We should preserve them for more practice.”