by Elise Kova
“But how does magic come into play?” Cvareh passed back the canister and bullet to Florence and picked up the gun. The hammer and muzzle were gold. Poured into the side of the barrel were golden shapes he vaguely recognized, but couldn’t place. He peered down the barrel and noted the inside was gold as well.
Florence’s fingers wrapped around the barrel, pulling it away from him. “Never point the muzzle of a gun at something unless you’re ready to shoot it.”
“But it’s not loaded.” Cvareh didn’t appreciate being treated like a child.
“It isn’t now. But it could’ve been. It’s just good practice. Every young Revolver learns that.”
“Ah, Flor, if he wants to point guns at his face, why don’t we let him? It’s not like the shot would kill him. Maybe he should learn the hard way and have to sit around a few weeks like a blob while he grows back part of his brain,” Arianna quipped unhelpfully.
“If he wants to learn, he should learn the right way.” Florence turned to look at her master and Cvareh followed the girl’s stare.
He opened his mouth to retort with equal sarcasm, but the look on Arianna’s face stilled him. She looked past Florence, who continued on about something, and stared straight at him. Her rounded face was relaxed, her lips forming a thin line that he would almost dare call an appreciative smile. Cvareh gave her a small nod, swallowing down the bitterness her verbal jab had filled his mouth with. Arianna shifted her eyes to Florence, and made him question entirely if he’d read the expression wrong.
“In any case,” Florence continued, turning back to him, “the magic lies in the runes. It’s something the Alchemists developed, similar to tempering metal. A Chimera, or Dragon I suppose, charges the metal with magic. Different shapes hold different types of magic.”
She cocked the hammer back, showing him the striking point. Sure enough, there was a rune there that mirrored a similar one etched onto the flat end of the canister. Cvareh turned the canister over once more, staring in wonder. Magic that could be used to manipulate the physical world. For half of his life, for centuries on Nova, it was something that couldn’t be done. Magic existed only in the mind, the realm of the ephemeral. It couldn’t be used to make explosions, lift gliders, turn wheels or do half the other things the Fenthri had been able to devise. For as strong as the Dragons were and had always been, there were things that eluded them—things the Fenthri could do and they could not.
He passed the canister back to Florence and his hand fell to the folio around his waist. That was why he was on Loom. It was that power he sought, to change the natural order and challenge the laws of the world. The power Cvareh hoped could build an army and lead his family to victory.
“But,” Florence continued, “as time goes on the runes can lose their magic, or get worn down.”
“They need to be recharged,” Cvareh reasoned.
“Which is where Arianna comes in.” Florence directed the tiniest of smiles at the gun, rather than her teacher.
Arianna looked weary as she echoed a similar expression, unbeknownst to the girl. “I think I’ll go and work a bit. And figure out what ship is headed for Ter.4.2, and how we’re getting on it.”
Florence didn’t acknowledge Arianna for the first time. She didn’t even turn. The older woman stood, waiting, crumbling under the weight of the silence from her pupil.
Here it is, then. The one thing that could break the White Wraith.
Catching his eyes, Arianna’s face transformed. She shot him a nasty look and stormed out the room. It was a glancing blow, a warning. They both knew the longer they stayed around each other, the more familiar they would become. No matter how hard she tried, he would learn her secrets, at least some.
But that would come in the days leading to the Alchemists’ Guild. For now, Cvareh focused on one task at a time. And there was still unfinished business sitting before him.
“Flor.” He tried out Arianna’s familiar name for the girl. She looked up in surprise, but didn’t scold him for using it. “Why don’t you want to go to Ter.4.2?”
Her fingers ran over her gun kit, as though she couldn’t decide what tool she needed to solve the problem presented to her. When that proved futile, she moved onto her powder box, shifting through the various tins. But Cvareh knew her answers weren’t in there either. He was patient, and waited for her to come to that conclusion on her own.
“I was born a Raven.” Her fingers finally stopped moving when they rested on her cheek. “But I wasn’t any good at it—useless, really…”
“You got a mark,” Cvareh pointed out.
“And I barely passed that test.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have. I had help.”
“Your friends?”
“My friends.” Florence dropped her hand with a heavy sigh. “I wish I could’ve been like Arianna and escaped the mark entirely.”
“Why?” Cvareh didn’t understand. At every opportunity, he donned the symbol of House Xin. It was as much a part of him as his skin color. It signified who he was, where he belonged. No matter how far he went in the world, being Xin would always be etched upon his identity. Who wouldn’t want that?
“Because then I could’ve been truly free.” She sighed wistfully. “People wouldn’t look at me and see a Raven, they’d see me.”
“You mean you could be a Revolver.”
“I could be anything I desired,” she corrected.
Loom had a backwards system before the Dragons. People going wherever they wanted, doing what they wanted. For a society that Cvareh had been always taught favored logic, it didn’t seem based on reason.
“When it came time for the second test, I knew I wouldn’t pass. Half of us wouldn’t. But we knew more then. We knew there were days before the Dragons when people studied as they wished. When you could be more than where you were born and what you were born into. So we escaped.”
“Anyone caught running from the guild can be put to death.” The laws the Dragons put into place suddenly seemed less sensible when he stared in the face of someone perfectly capable who would be lost from the world were they strictly upheld.
“Anyone who fails the first or second guild test is put to death with certainty. If you run, they may just jail you in an effort to persuade you to come back before killing talent… That’s what happened to my friends.”
“But you’re not dead or imprisoned.”
“I’m not.”
“How?”
Florence was silent for a long time. She focused on selecting canisters from the ones she had made, and made one or two new ones. From time to time, she’d look at him from the corner of her eyes, expectant. Cvareh rested the back of his head against the wall and waited. He wouldn’t repeat himself, and didn’t need to. He just needed to be patient enough that she’d be out with it on her own.
“My friends and I escaped through the Underground,” Florence said briskly. “Seven died, three of us made it out. Two were caught in Ter.4.2.”
“How did you—” Cvareh already knew the answer to his question. He knew who got Florence the rest of the way into obscurity: the only woman in the world who seemed to evade all capture, all pursuit.
“She saved me.” Florence smiled, seeing him put it together. “I wouldn’t be alive if Arianna hadn’t smuggled me with her onto that freighter.”
Dots connected, one after the next, forming a time line that spanned across blanks in history. Arianna met Florence, took her to Ter.5. They made their way to Dortam and she set up a name for herself as the White Wraith, enemy of all Dragons. But why? Everything before her meeting Florence was still wrapped in the enigma of chaos.
“Was she living in Ter.4.2?” he ventured.
Florence shook her head. “I don’t really know. And before you ask, I don’t know where she may have came from. I don’t really know much more than you do. She’s a Master Rivet—”
That was news. He hadn’t known she was a master.
“—and she hates Dragons more than an
ything. Her first rule in taking me with her was that I would never ask anything else.”
“And you never did,” he observed.
“And I never did. It doesn’t matter who she was. It matters who she can become…” Florence’s hands paused on one of her boxes, pausing mid-close. She spoke only for herself, barely more than a whisper. “If only I could make her see that.”
14. ARIANNA
Arianna was a stone gargoyle atop one of the spires surrounding the port of Ter.5.2. Magic pulsed through her fingertips, wrapping around the cabling and clips, making its grip on the ironwork surrounding her sure and strong. She watched men and women go about their business.
Dragons walked with guild masters on and off airships. The sight alone made her want to retch in disgust. Fenthri—no, not just Fenthri, guild masters—fraternizing willingly and openly with Dragons. She remembered a time when guild masters embodied everything pure and true in the academic world, when they were the pillars of guilds. Now, they spilled their secrets for their oppressors like dogs returning a fetched ball.
The world had changed in the nearly three years she had sequestered herself in Dortam. Every day, it slipped further and further from the land Arianna had been born into. Now, it seemed to race toward a future that cared little for the past.
The line nearly cut into her flesh, she held it so tightly. She was no better than those she judged. She worked with a Dragon, harbored a Dragon; she’d let a Dragon imbibe from her. The line finally bit into the same hand Cvareh had, drawing blood. Her mind betrayed her, filling her with thoughts of the way he looked at her while he consumed her.
Arianna snarled at the memory, scaring it into the recesses of her awareness. She uncurled her fingers and watched the wound on her hand heal slowly. She was part Dragon, too, more than she would ever admit to anyone.
“Eva…” She touched her wrist and the tension faded from Arianna’s shoulders. “I’m headed back. I’m going back, finally. I will finish what we started.”
That was what separated her from those she watched fraternize with the Dragons below, from the Chimera who prided in being part Dragon. Arianna did not act for herself. She hadn’t taken on Dragon organs for pleasure or self-centered power. She didn’t help Cvareh for his own sake, or to use his boon for personal gains. She’d done it for her mission, for Loom, but most of all for her vengeance.
Arianna waited for darkness before moving. Three freighters remained docked after the sun set and she already had her eyes and suspicions on one being their best chance for getting to Ter.4.2. But there was one place that would have all the information. Before leaving, and just after docking, Arianna had watched the captains of each of the vessels make their way into a building across from where she perched. She saw them through the third floor windows as they talked with a portly man. This same stout man locked up his business only after the port had gone quiet and the last of the light had diminished from the sky.
She leapt off her ledge, the cord pulling taught and spool whirring as she dropped in free-fall. Kicking her legs in front of her to swing, Arianna set her second line flying toward a crane that loomed high above the docks. The cable clipped to itself, locking with magic. As soon as the new line was fastened, the first unwound and retreated back to its spool.
Changing lines and cabling with her winch-box was mindlessly simple. Her hands knew how to move, her magic operating on instinct. She soared through the night unhindered. No barrier, no watchmen, could keep her out.
The wind howled in her ears and her nose singed with the smell of the sea. She was weightless as she soared high above the port. She was well out of the glow of the lamplight below, and the creaking and clanging of vessels against their tethers with the shifting tides masked the sounds of her lines and winch-box.
Arianna kept her knees loose, bending and curling her body inward to help absorb shock and sound as she landed against the building’s exterior. She cast a cautionary eye across the docks. A few sailors and pilots milled about, attracted to the glow of smoking parlors and bars.
Letting out the line, she lowered herself to the third floor windows of the port authority. Her goggles enhanced her Dragon sight, rendering the darkness a mere annoyance rather than a hindrance. The windows opened at the halfway point, no doubt to let in cool sea breezes during warmer months. Simple locks, nothing that would pose a real problem…
She fished through one of the smaller bags on her belt. She could just break the glass and be done with it. But Ari didn’t want to do anything that could raise suspicion before the ship they were on was well out of port. Her tool looked almost like a ribbon of gold, flat and hard, it didn’t bend as she shoved it halfway through the window jamb.
Arianna shifted her weight on the line, allowing tension and physics to hold her in place more than magic. With her mental capacities freed, she applied them to the strip of gold. It wiggled to life, working its way into the room. At her command, it wrapped itself around the lever of the lock and pulled. The window clicked open, and Arianna slipped effortlessly inside.
The office was well lived in. The leather wing-backed chair was cracking in places of heavy use. The desk had dimples from where forearms had rested for years.
You could learn a lot about a person from their home, and offices were nothing if not second homes. The man was a creature of habit. He paced when he was nervous—judging by the threadbare tracks in the carpet—and he never missed a day. His records had been methodically checked every morning and night for the past year.
Arianna flipped through the port manifest, the record of every vessel, its contents, and its crew. The cargo ship she’d selected for them was named Holx III. She suspected that a ship named after the capital city of Ter.4 would be headed in that direction. She slowly flipped through the papers, careful to do so in such a way that she could return them exactly as she found them.
“Holx III, cargo… Textiles, safe enough,” she mused aloud. “Arrives and departs at night.” There wasn’t much time; she flipped the papers back in place.
By ship, it would take just under twelve days to travel to Ter.4.2. The Holx III was a simple freighter and would likely cruise around 27,800 peca an hour—or 27.8 veca an hour. Arianna breathed a sigh of relief when she saw it ran with a refined engine. Most of the regular runners were outfitted with engines that could run on magic or steam to help save on coal. There would always be room for another Chimera on board a magically-propelled vessel.
Her fingers paused over the ledgers she had been returning in order. Her eyes narrowed and Arianna skimmed the records, trying to put her finger on what her mind was telling her wasn’t quite right. She flipped the page, then the one after, and the one after that. That’s when she found it—or rather, didn’t find it. Not one vessel had headed for Ter.2.3, the main port of the Alchemists’ territory, in nearly a year.
Arianna hunted like a Dragon on a blood scent through the port authority’s records for evidence of even one vessel headed for Ter.2.3. Sure, it was a far voyage and likely to only be made once every few weeks, even months. But to have none, in or out? That made no sense.
It had been the Alchemists who developed the first Chimera. The Rivets were the ones who’d soused out the refining process in their steel mills and all the applications for gold. The Revolvers were close behind, eagerly finding further uses in their guns and explosives. It was the Harvesters who supplied them all with their base materials and the Ravens who moved the entire world—people and goods. Yes, the Five Guilds of Loom were a connected system, a chain in which every Guild formed a link.
So why was one being cut off?
Arianna’s hands rested on the file drawer as she closed her eyes in thought. The Revolvers needed Alchemical runes for their weaponry and refining. The Alchemists’ Guild hall was in the city of Keel, nestled in the center of The Skeleton Forest, where they needed weapons to fend off all manner of beast. Stopping all trade from the Revolvers would basically be a death sentence for a city that l
ived in constant fear of wolves, bears, and the endwig.
Cries of reverie from the street brought Arianna’s attention back to her purpose: get them out of Ter.5. She’d let the anomaly surrounding the trade routes remain just that, simmering in the back of her mind until she had some explanation for it.
The port authority safe provided a sufficient distraction, pulling her mind fully back into the present. It was complex enough to be a challenge, but not enough to annoy—ideal, really. She lifted some of the tariff and taxes funds. Not so much that it would be immediately noticed or prove detrimental to the running of the port, but a tidy amount sufficient to grease a captain’s gears enough that he’d take on three extra crew.
Locking the safe behind her, Arianna scanned the room, comparing it to her mental image of its appearance when she entered. One or two things showed small signs of having been moved, but only to eyes that were looking for inconsistencies. People only saw what they wanted, and there should be no cause for suspicion until their vessel was well out to sea.
She closed and locked the window, slipping back into the night through the front door. Come morning, the port authority would be none the wiser of their late night guest.
When she returned to the inn, there was talking on the other side of the door; Florence’s laughter gave her pause. Arianna had felt guilty the moment she’d proposed the notion of navigating through Ter.4 with Flor’s old comrades. The young woman’s mental collapse had been poison more potent than any Arianna had ever drank. So to hear laughter now… it fit a gear in the mechanics of her heart back into place.
Her expression fell at the resonance of Cvareh’s voice. “I can tell you that Dragons wear much less than even that on Nova.”
“What about modesty?” Florence asked.
“What about it?”
“Having everything so… on display all the time. Wouldn’t that make people nervous?” she ventured timidly.
“Why would it? If anything it displays our physical prowess and discourages duels.”