by Elise Kova
“Now, take watch, and wake me if you hear anything.” Arianna rested the back of her head on the wall, closing her eyes.
“You can trust me.”
“So it seems.”
The words should’ve made him elated. But there was a heavy note of skepticism that weighed them down from having the same effervescence as her prior declaration. It echoed in the heart she’d saved, and cast a shadow of doubt on everything that was building between them.
25. LEONA
“So, what’s the plan?” Camile kicked her feet off the edge of the rooftop where they had decided to land their gliders. She picked her teeth with one of the tiny finger bones from the Fen they’d taken their frustrations out on.
“I’m still working that out,” Leona confessed, much to her displeasure. The whole night had been one catastrophic failure after the next. Leona was proud enough to feel an insatiable desire to rectify the events with the sweet solution of a vengeful rage. But she wasn’t foolish enough to run in headfirst at the next possible opportunity.
This was the White Wraith’s home. She had every advantage of skill and allies. Leona had researched Loom in depth, as had been her duty. But practical application of knowledge was always harder than attaining the knowledge itself.
“Why is she helping Cvareh?” she mused aloud.
“Who?” Camile reminded Leona that she couldn’t read her mind.
“The White Wraith.” Leona began to think aloud. “She’s the self-proclaimed enemy of all Dragons. The pale man in Dortam said she’d take any job if it hurt a Dragon or Dragon interests in some way.”
Camile hummed in agreement, rubbing her bloated stomach. The Fen flesh wasn’t sitting well with Leona either. Though the killing had been satisfying; at the very least the gray people were good for that much.
“So why help Cvareh? He’s certainly a Dragon—”
“Undeniably so.”
“—and he’s acting only in the interest of his Dragon House.”
“Could that interest overlap with her interests?” Camile mused. The woman was smart. The details of their mission were on a need-to-know basis, and Camile didn’t need to know every fact that Leona was privy to. But she could work well enough around the blanks. “What does Xin want more than anything else?”
“Power, their ‘ends before ideals,’ the throne.”
“But to do that they’d need to overthrow Yveun Dono. And that’s certainly not happening as long as House Tam keeps ‘all things equal’,” Camile said with an arrogant huff.
House Rok had been in power for hundreds of years. It would take an army to stand up against a House with the amount of manpower and resources Rok had amassed in that time. Xin may be able to take them to task if they had the support of House Tam. But Tam and Rok made cozy bedmates, leaving Xin short of the manpower they’d need for a civil war.
And if they couldn’t find an army on Nova… Leona bolted upright.
“I’ve an idea,” Leona said. “But it’s still hazy at the edges.”
“Going to disappear for a chat?” Camile turned her attention back up to the sky. Boring and gray every hour of the day, just like the rest of Loom.
“I’ll be back.” Leona waved the other woman’s inquiry off. She wasn’t in the mood to field any comment on who she was talking to.
She rounded down the quiet stairs into the living quarters—or maybe they were working chambers? Seriously, the Fen had no sense of originality; every room looked the same. Crimson blood still stained the floor from where her and Camile had violently redecorated.
Leona raised a hand to her ear and whispered, “Tarukun.”
The word had no meaning. It was a series of sounds she’d strung together when she’d first learned how to whisper and stuck with ever since. But that was the way it should be to avoid random conversation as a result of saying a common word.
Magic tingled between her fingers and her ear. There was a faint pulse along a thin, invisible tether, a line that connected her all the way back to Nova.
She waited, knowing that it was possible she was waking her King. But as loath as she was to do it, Yveun Dono would want an update. Though waiting for him to activate his end of the whisper nearly killed her.
“Leona,” he very nearly purred her name. “Tell me good news.”
“Regretfully not.” Leona made no excuses. As much as she despised having to admit her shortcomings, hiding them would be far worse. Yveun Dono was silent as she recounted the events of the night prior, and that silence stretched toward infinity after she finished her retelling.
“I know you did not wake me merely to report failure. You are far too savvy to my will to do such a thing.”
Leona’s heart soared. Even in the wake of shame, he put faith in her. Rather than lashing out, he gave her another opportunity for redemption—one she would not squander.
“Yveun Dono, I know what Cvareh—all of House Xin—is after.”
“Do you?”
“They want to make an army of perfect Chimera to stand against you,” she declared boldly, praying her logic was sound. “If they managed to create a working Philosopher’s Box and solve the issue of forsaken Chimera, they would be able to make Fen as strong as Dragons.”
His silence told her everything.
“Dono, my sovereign, I have put this much together on my own… But I cannot decide upon a heading. Would they travel to the Rivets to find an engineer who could solve the riddle of their box? Or would they head to the Alchemists, to put it in the hands of those responsible for splicing Chimera into existence? Has there been word from those loyal to us in the Rivets’ Guild since I left?”
Yveun Dono rightfully preferred his inferiors to be able to reach their own conclusions; he didn’t have time for nor interest in holding their hands through every decision. But this was a risk Leona deemed worth taking. At worst, she would upset him marginally now by asking for guidance, rather than enrage him later with another failure.
“The watchers you appointed in the Rivet guild have been silent. And they would report immediately should Cvareh appear. If he goes there, let him be lulled into a false sense of security until you arrive for his heart.” Yveun Dono’s voice shifted into the cold and calculating tones of a commander—the true and cunning nature he masked under the charm he applied for his Crimson Court. “However, the Alchemists prove… resistant, even still. It has been merely two years since their last petty uprising was squelched, but they remain obstinate in their tiny corner of the world. They hide much behind their veils of secrecy, so much so that even my eyes are blurred. I would not find it surprising if they felt inclined to harbor a Dragon like Cvareh, given his desired ends.”
“All else aside, perhaps my presence may remind them that no guild operates in half measures when it comes to loyalty to their King.” Leona grinned faintly to herself, savoring the idea of having an entire guild under her boot and hanging on her every beck and call.
“Indeed.”
“Then I make my heading for Ter.2,” Leona declared. “And this time, I will not fail you.”
“See that you don’t.”
Magic popped and the link between them fizzled. Leona lowered her hand from her ear. They would move a lot faster with their gliders than Cvareh would be able to travel in the Underground, even with two renegade Ravens. She had time before he would emerge again—if he emerged again. Though, Leona knew if he were lost to the creatures of the depths of Loom, she would be disappointed at fate for stealing her kill.
Yes, she started up the stairs, Cvareh and the Wraith will be mine. But she wasn’t going to be made a fool a second time, and she was no longer going in blind. Leona now knew what type of forces she was up against.
“You look surprisingly chipper,” Camile assessed as Leona returned to her prior place.
“We’re heading back to Ter.5.”
“Oh?”
“We need to pay the Revos a visit.” Leona flexed her fingers, sheathing and unsheathing
her claws. They were trusty, reliable weapons. She hadn’t been like her sister, adopting every new killing tool that came into existence; she’d favored the tried and true methods of slaughtering her enemies for years. But that was up on Nova, and here on Loom the fights were different. “Cvareh had a pistol.”
“A fragile one,” Camile scoffed.
“So let’s get some better ones.” Leona bared her teeth, showing that the matter wasn’t up for discussion. The Revos would give her something the world had never seen before, something so powerful that it would slay even Wraiths, and Dragons who could manipulate time.
26. ARIANNA
From the brief and tumultuous explanations of Florence’s last time in the Underground, Ari understood why it was called “The Ravens’ Folly.” The Guild wasn’t known for their building skill or logical city planning—however good they were at cartography and public transportation. The Underground was mazelike at best, hellishly backwards at worst—from all the different “builders” adding on at their own discretion. If that wasn’t enough, the deepest parts were said to be occupied by some of the most wretched creatures found anywhere on Loom. And, unlike the Harvesters who occupied the mines of Ter.1, the Ravens who ventured into the Underground were not outfitted regularly with weaponry from the Revos to keep such monsters at bay.
It wasn’t until Arianna was grasping onto the side of a strange mine cart-like transportation machine, with two Ravens laughing gleefully at every pitch-black corner they took at break-neck speed, that she grasped the concept of the Underground also being described as the “Ravens’ Playground.”
“Is this it?” Helen called back to Will. “This is the best she has?”
“Rusty!” Will replied with a shout, pulling another lever on the contraption housed in a back compartment of the vessel. Arianna focused on it—trying to figure out how it worked—rather than the mind-numbing feeling of being hurled through the unknown while trusting the most annoying girl she’d ever met at the wheel and the clinically insane at the engine. “Flor, you have any grease?”
“When have I ever carried grease on me?” Florence couldn’t plaster herself any tighter against the side of the cart if she tried.
Ari hated seeing her distressed. But there was something about the girl’s fear she found the slightest bit endearing. Despite Flor’s Raven tattoo, she was a wrench in a toolbox of screwdrivers here. Ari had only ever known her pupil as a Revo in training. But now she saw clearly why Florence had felt the need to flee the Ravens. There would be no way the girl could pass the mandatory Dragon tests imposed on Guild initiates to cull out those who lacked talent and manage the population they’d sent into a spiral when they’d removed Loom’s breeding policies.
“You had to pick this cart. Didn’t like the other rider,” Will huffed.
“We’d need two riders and only one of these,” Helen answered. “Stop complaining and just manage my speed!”
It wasn’t long before Cvareh was emptying the contents of his mostly empty stomach over the railing. Ari laughed with the rest of them at his expense and he alternated the rest of the day between fuming and panting softly, muttering prayers under his breath to Nova’s endless pantheon. At least, Ari assumed it to be the rest of the day.
Hours were lost to the darkness of the Underground. She’d originally tried to keep up with her timepiece, but quickly abandoned the idea. They pushed every hour they were awake at her behest, moving as fast and as far as they could beneath Ter.4 before exhaustion took over.
Cvareh and she alternated watches. They needed less sleep. Having magic in the blood that constantly healed their bodies and kept them in shape increased their ease of survival tenfold. It also made the fading conditions of the Fenthri in their party all the more obvious. Living creatures weren’t meant to make these halls home for extended periods of time. The strange sleeping schedule and hours upon hours of darkness took a toll on the body as much as the mind. Laughter faded from the group first, talking second, and soon the only sound that filled the air was the screeching of brakes and the clacking of metal wheels on veca after veca of track.
They were four days into their journey and somewhere around Holx, according to Helen, when the last of their rations ran out. The empty bag stared back at Arianna, more vacant than every tunnel she had faced during the hours of their travel. They weren’t going to make it to Ter.4.3 without additional supplies.
“What are you going to do?” Cvareh watched her thoughtfully as she retreated away from the last of the diminished supply bags. The other two mostly empty sacks were in the cart with the sleeping trio.
“I don’t know yet.” Her mind had yet to work out the best solution. It was strange to admit it, however.
She never confessed to Florence when she needed time to work through a plan, or operated with less than one hundred percent certainty. The girl was someone Arianna wanted to look after, care for—someone whose well being Arianna wanted to ensure into eternity. And, while Arianna could see the woman she had become in the past two years, part of her still clung to the idea of protecting the shaking, scared little crow who had run lost through the streets of Ter.4.2.
“They’re not going to last long.”
“No, they won’t, not at this pace anyway.”
“Is there something down here you could hunt?” He was making an effort, she’d grant him that much. But the effort was ill placed; he just didn’t know enough about Loom.
“Not down here.” Rather than taking the easy insult, Ari explained: “The softest things are glovis grubs. But they feed off rocks, so they’re filled with corrosive acids. The people who do eat them… don’t last long.”
But those people didn’t die. The chemicals in the glovis ate away at their bodies and corroded their minds until what was once Fenthri became something between man and monster. The Wretched were worse than forsaken Chimera. At least the forsaken had a timer on their lives. If the Fenthri body managed to adapt to consuming the glovis’ flesh, they could survive indefinitely, haunting the tunnels.
“Up then?” he reasoned.
“I seem to have no other choice.” She adjusted the strapping on her harness. As much as she didn’t mind wearing it, she was ready for a reprieve that would let her take it off.
“When are we going?”
She laughed with a shake of her head. “There is no we on this trip. Alone I can navigate whatever streets or plains wait above us effortlessly. If I’m looking out for everyone, it’ll slow me down.”
“I can look out for myself, and you know I’ll help look after them,” he insisted defensively.
“I know,” she confessed. A similar sensation to the one she’d felt a few days ago washed over her, and Arianna assessed the Dragon in the darkness. Without light, he looked the same as any Fenthri would—save for the black slits of his eyes and his physical size. Perhaps that was why she was beginning to feel easier around the man. But that didn’t quite make sense, as Arianna didn’t find relief, but rather a small disappointment, in not being able to see the colors she knew him to be. “And I will trust you to do it.”
“What?”
“I’m going alone. I’ll only be gone an hour, and I’m certain they’ll sleep the entire time and then some … But I’m trusting you to look after them.” The words still made her uneasy because it meant that she really was daring to put her faith in another Dragon. But they came more smoothly than she expected.
“Be careful, Ari. First you trust me, then you may actually like me.” He leaned against the wall with a smug grin.
Her emotions ran wild. Arianna tried to get them back under control but didn’t know where to begin. Correcting him on his use of Flor’s shortened name? The ease by which he assumed her trust? The implication that she might actually enjoy him and his company?
Or perhaps it was the fact that, yet again, he reminded her of a woman who was long dead.
“Don’t push your luck.” It was a weak return, and she knew it. But she wouldn’t b
e too hard on the man, she insisted to herself; she told him she’d liked his newfound sass and it would be contradictory to squelch it.
His eyes followed her as she woke Helen softly, helping the girl out of the cart without waking Will or Florence. She could feel his attention prickling at her magic until she disappeared around a winding tunnel, Helen leading the way. And yet, she still felt his presence long after. It was a shadow connected to her heels, waiting on her as her footsteps echoed through the caves, no doubt audible to his Dragon ears.
That sensation faded away as a hazy dawn faded into view. Helen blinked blearily at the light, the small amount nearly blinding after spending five days trekking with nothing more than torches and the faint glow of glovis eyes lining the tunnel walls. Fresh air kicked the dust around, making no effort to pierce the depths of the Underground. Nature heeded the lines between above and below; it was the boldness inspired by steam and guns and magic that inspired Fenthri to blur it.
“You’re going to make it back?” Helen yawned. “Do you need me to wait here?”
Arianna made a show of pocketing her grease pen. “I can follow the line.” She tapped the mark she’d drawn while walking.
“You’re sure? If we get separated, there’s no hope of finding each other down there,” the cartographer cautioned.
“So go back and sleep, and don’t move for a while—if you can manage that.”
“Sleep, yes, understood.” Helen’s dramatic salute quickly deteriorated into another wide-mouthed inhale of air. She passed the hardened eye of a glovis from hand to hand. It still emitted a faint glow even after the creature’s death, and Ari watched the speck of light as Helen traveled back into the depths.
The fog embraced her as Ari emerged, breathing fresh air for the first time in what felt like forever. Standing alone for the first time in weeks. She wasn’t accustomed to traveling in a pack.