by Elise Kova
“For now?”
“For now.”
At that, he finally pulled away, leaving a hulking vacuum of space where his Dragon form once was.
Arianna instantly recognized the two other Dragons in their midst. It had been some time since she’d last seen Dawyn, but she remembered the woman’s name keenly from her first affair on Nova. Cain—now there was a face she’d never forget.
“Been awhile.” Arianna was nonchalant, confronted with Cain’s anger and Dawyn’s outright confusion.
“Why are you here?” Cain growled in her direction, looking accusingly at Cvareh.
“He didn’t know I was coming either. Heard you might need some help with the flowers, and we can use them on Loom now.” Arianna looked to the Dragon corpses. One still frothed bubbles from lips frozen and parted with death. “Poison? Fighting fire with fire now?”
“No.” Cvareh turned away from her and looked to Dawyn. Arianna fought the urge to pull his face back to her. She wasn’t done having him look at her yet. “Dawyn knew they were Coletta’s, because…”
“I found out spending some time on Lysip.” Dawyn answered the unspoken question.
“On Lysip?” Arianna narrowed her eyes at the girl. She didn’t have much reason to love her, and now she might have a reason to hate her.
“It’s not like that.” Dawyn shook her head and added hastily, “I went there after the wine incident. I wanted to know what happened and wasn’t getting anywhere on Ruana. So, I went to spend time with a relative.”
“You’re Rok?” The Dragon in front of Arianna was as blue as the sky.
Dawyn shook her head. “My mother’s sister mated with a Rok; their son, my cousin, came out red, so she stayed there and joined Rok.”
“I’m sorry.” Cvareh sounded sincere. Arianna withheld comment that this was the danger of the whole idea of families on Nova. It was so much simpler on Loom without them.
“The situation proved useful enough.” Dawyn shrugged but her magic had the sour note of regret all around it. “I heard the rumors of Coletta’Ryu’s flowers there. Yveun has his Riders and, while most think she’s a disgrace of a Ryu, she has her flowers to act out her nefarious plans.”
Arianna looked to the poisoned Dragon, prone on the ground. Sure enough, a lacquered flower sat around her neck. “Who would’ve thought flowers of all things would be so important,” she muttered, and Cvareh hummed his agreement. “We should dispose of the bodies.”
“Dispose of them?” Cain looked to Cvareh. “You heard what this wench said.” He pointed to the Dragon foaming at the mouth. “She just watched as Petra died. I say we leave their bodies as a message that—”
“We will dispose of them,” Cvareh interrupted firmly.
“You’re taking her side?” Cain was aghast.
“I’m taking the side of reason. The only message would be that they need to wage war against Xin and now have cause to do it.”
“No bodies, no deaths, and no stupid duels,” Arianna finished with a nod of affirmation from Cvareh.
Cain looked as if he still wanted to object, but he had the sense to keep it to himself.
One by one, they carried the Rok corpses to the edge of the island, tossing them over like a great offering to the world below.
“The boco, too,” Arianna suggested when they were finished.
“The boco?” Dawyn repeated with surprise.
“No trace they even made it to the island tonight.” Cvareh unsheathed his claws in agreement with Arianna’s suggestion. “We kill the boco, send them over the edge, then we take as many flowers as we can back to your family’s vineyard before dawn.”
Dawyn and Cain shared a look, then nodded in agreement.
“Whatever you say, not-Oji.”
Arianna gave a sideways glance at Cvareh. Of course he wouldn’t be the Oji; that role fell to Petra.
“I’m going to take you somewhere safe.” He clearly mistook her look as an expectation of attention.
“I was fine on Nova last time.” Arianna pressed her fingers together, summoning the guise of Ari Xin’Anh Bek for emphasis.
Cvareh radiated pure happiness. It fluttered from him and soared through his magic. Arianna wasn’t used to feeling so much joy from one person, and especially not at the sight of her. She was unsure how to process it, so she ignored it entirely. “We need to move the glider, too.”
She hopped back onto the piloting platform, gripping the handles. “If we fly with the dawn, we may be able to hide the trail in your watercolor skies.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Cvareh brought his fingers to his lips and gave a sharp whistle, summoning his boco. “Follow me, and fly low.”
The boco took off with a hop and a flap of its wide wings. Arianna sparked the glider to life, following behind as the bird tucked its feathers and dove toward the clouds below at Cvareh’s command. The rising sun lightened the sky from a pale, ethereal gray to the colors of spun candy, brightening almost to white by the time they directed themselves upwards and toward the isle of Ruana.
At first, Arianna thought they were headed for the Xin Manor. But they were too far back; Cvareh pointed at a waterfall ahead of them, pouring between the massive towers and structures carved into the underbelly of Ruana. Whatever he shouted to her was lost, so Arianna was left curious, but followed dutifully behind.
The waterfall was attached to a massive opening into the earth itself. Cvareh went ahead unhindered, but Ariana slowed as she crossed into the vast unknown of the cave beyond the falls. The magic of her glider lit up the darkness, just enough in combination with her magic eyes to make out the path ahead.
Pulling right, pulling left, weaving between columns of stone, stalagmites, and stalactites, there was only one course for her to go and Arianna for once found herself struggling to keep up with Cvareh. He charged ahead with the dexterity of a Raven and just as much disregard for the dangers of how he progressed. Arianna gritted her teeth. Her back felt as though it was going to snap in half from tension.
Light filtered into the blackness, and Arianna breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the squawking of the bird ahead and felt the buffet of wings that usually signaled landing.
The cave had opened up into a small cavern with a wide-ledged mouth. Arianna parked the glider and mentally forced every white-knuckled finger to uncurl.
“Are you trying to kill me?”
“Was it hard to navigate?” Cvareh seemed genuinely concerned.
Arianna sighed heavily. It may not have been hard for a suicidal Raven like Helen or Will, but Arianna had come to start valuing her life, as insane as the notion was. “It’ll be fine as a transport route. If I can do it, a Raven can make it twice as fast.”
“Careful, Arianna—that sounded like humility.” Cvareh extended a hand to her, offering to help her off the glider. Arianna stared at it, but stepped off unassisted thanks to that remark.
“So, where are we?”
“We are at the refinery of Ruana.”
“Refinery of Ruana?” Arianna repeated, utterly dumbfounded.
“This way.”
Curiosity propelled her to follow Cvareh without further comment around a lip of stone and into a narrow passage that quickly opened up into a cut staircase. The walls transformed from rough and natural to carved, as they ascended into what was clearly a Dragon-built structure.
She watched the back of the man ahead of her, as if the skin between his shoulder blades had some secret to reveal. Not for the first time, Arianna found herself studying him, wondering just what it was about Cvareh that drew her. It was not the depth of his mind, nor the muscle of his frame. Their pull to one another was indescribable; the features she would not usually find her eye drawn toward attracted her like the sheen of a freshly oiled gearbox.
At least, until her eye was pulled in a different direction.
The stairway leveled into an icy hall. Glassless windows welcomed the high snowdrifts of the mountains through their thresholds.
Flurries danced on unseen currents, crunching underfoot as they traversed to a large room.
She found herself in a spacious antechamber overlooking an even larger space. Ahead of her, a window of tempered glass—slight imperfections rippled through it—looked down at the core of the refinery. A large vat was suspended by a massive hook off to the side of a grounded tank. They were surrounded by machines and long belts, all cold, waiting for molten steel to be poured down them.
“It’s a refinery,” she whispered.
There was an odd disconnect between her mind and body. Her eyes told her mind that she looked at a refinery, albeit a small one. But her mind argued back that such a thing was impossible, for she knew she was up on Nova, where paragons of industry did not rightly exist.
“I told you it was.” Cvareh was at her side.
“Why?” Arianna was trying to process the idea.
“Yveun is—or at least was—setting them up on Lysip. Started the project a decade back and put Petra in charge of oversight. Naturally, she seized the opportunity to build one here as well.”
“So, is your sister here now, then?” Arianna’s voice was still a whisper, matching Cvareh’s tone. She’d felt a somber shift in Cvareh’s magic when he mentioned Petra. Warning bells and alarms sounded in Arianna’s mind.
“No. Petra is dead.”
Cold.
Detached.
Arianna felt the muscles around her lungs contract and her breathing grow shallow. A feeling deeper than reason and stronger than logic ruled her—empathy. She clutched his hands as though she was pulling him from the unbearable riptide of grief, grabbed him like someone should’ve grabbed her after Eva.
“You will make it through this,” she vowed, acting entirely on impulse.
Cvareh tilted his head to the side and his mouth cracked with a tired smile. He leaned forward and Arianna’s eyes closed of their own accord. They, like all other parts of her body, moved in the ocean of this man. He didn’t kiss her, but merely rested his forehead against hers and breathed.
“I know.” Cvareh took a slow breath. “I have you.”
Why did those words make tears prick her eyes? She felt so frustrated by them, so angry, yet so happy. It was like drinking chocolate and licking salt.
“Are you the Oji now?” She had to focus. She couldn’t let herself be distracted by the things she’d given away years ago.
“No, but I will be.” Arianna opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by his movement. “I must go now and see to that. But I will return to you. Make yourself at home until then.”
Oji. Cvareh as the Oji. Her mind tried to wrap itself around the idea. The prone Dragon she’d found on Loom, leading the rebellion on Nova. He would be pulled from her to change the world, just as Master Oliver had been, just as Eva had been. As Florence was.
The space before her had never felt more cold.
FLORENCE
Dragons were annoying. They weren’t scary, they weren’t dangerous, and they certainly weren’t the fearsome creatures they made themselves out to be.
More than anything, right now, Dragons were simply a nuisance.
Florence sat in an abandoned building on the outer edge of Holx. From her vantage, she could see Dragons swirling around the Ravens’ Guild. Every now and again, one would land and its Rider would disappear inside for a few hours. Then they’d eventually return to their glider, having accomplished nothing, and take to the skies again.
She leaned against the wood paneling of the room she’d made her temporary home. Watching the Dragons, recording their movements, keeping track of how far they seemed to get in the guild and how long it took them to do so was a convenient excuse to spend extended time outside the Underground. It had been almost a month since the first Dragon attack, the first unsuccessful one of many, and a month was too long to spend in the dark. Florence felt sorry for the Fenthri who had no other options beyond spending their days confined below. Not sorry enough to pass up the chance to escape the ever-oppressive gloom herself, but sorry still.
Here, her window was cracked. She didn’t open it fully because she didn’t want her magic to betray even the slightest scent on the wind. But that same wind tickled her cheeks as it whispered of the outside world. Here, Florence could stare up at the sky and watch day turn to night and, more important, night turn to day.
When the Dragons weren’t flitting around the guild hall—their forays grew less frequent by the day—she would invent stories about the people who had lived in the apartment she now occupied. When her stories lost their luster, she would wonder how she and Arianna would have redecorated to make things more comfortable. When thinking of Arianna was too painful, or frustrating, she had Shannra to smooth away the rough edges of annoyance.
Shannra was in her arms now. Florence loved the way the light painted the woman’s dark skin in graphite hues, like a page from a Rivet’s sketchbook. These schematics drew what could be argued as the perfect female proportions.
A soft rapping at the door jarred Florence back to reality. No matter how nice it was to daydream, this was not her home and she was not spending a lazy afternoon with the woman who had somehow become her unorthodox lover. Florence tugged the blankets around them as Shannra began to stir. She loathed disturbing the woman, but the second set of knocks did just that anyway, and Florence worked to preserve their modesty.
“Come in.” Florence didn’t have to speak loudly to be heard. They were as quiet as possible due to the Dragons’ keen hearing.
The door cracked and another Revolver poked her head in. She seemed unsurprised to find Florence and Shannra together.
“I was told to fetch you.”
“Fetch me to where?”
“There was a letter for you on the last train from Ter.3. Vicar Gregory wishes to see you regarding it.”
“I’ll be there in a moment.” Florence dismissed the other Revolver with a small nod.
“A letter?” Shannra repeated.
“I know no more than you do.” Florence began to button up her clothing once more from naval to neck.
“From Arianna, I’d bet.” Shannra straightened and leaned against a window frame. The wind ruffled her hair slightly as Shannra stared at the few Dragons in the sky.
Florence could sense the tension whenever Shannra spoke of Arianna, though they’d never spoken of it, not outright. Florence didn’t even know what she’d say if Shannra pressed for clarity. What had she and Arianna been to one another? What were they now? Some questions were best left unanswered or better, unasked.
“Perhaps.” Florence leaned forward and kissed Shannra’s cheek lightly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Keep an eye on things for me.”
Shannra merely nodded as Florence moved for the door. But before she could reach it, Shannra spoke. “Flor, when all this is over, how about we get a nice little flat in New Dortam, right by the guild hall?”
Florence’s mind immediately went to the home she’d shared with Ari in Old Dortam and a melancholy ache filled her chest. “There is no guild hall,” she murmured.
“They’ll rebuild it.” Shannra finally turned her head, her eyes searching, begging. “What do you think of that idea?”
“I think I love sharing my days with you.”
Florence left before she could soak in Shannra’s reaction and affirm her suspicion that the response was not the one her lover was looking for. Right now, the only thing Florence could let herself think about was seeing Loom survive another day.
Through a back door into a narrow alley, Florence slipped from above ground to under in a mere moment, dropping down through what looked like an open sewage grate. It led her into a tunnel, straight to one of the still-open passages for what had become Loom’s unofficial capitol.
She found all the vicars gathered in Ethel’s makeshift receiving room, just outside the Vicar Alchemist’s sleeping chamber.
“Ah, Florence, thank you for coming.” Powell was the first to notice her.
/> “A Revolver always heeds their vicar’s call.” Florence wasn’t quite sure if Gregory was speaking to her or Powell.
“I heard there was a letter?” She cut right to the chase.
“Yes, here.” Powell shifted, passing a carefully sealed envelope. Its thickness was more like a folio than a letter, and Florence looked at the curious marking on its front.
To Florence
From Arianna
“Vicar Gregory suggested that we open it, but since it was addressed to you specifically, I wanted to make sure it found its way into your hands foremost.”
“Thank you, Vicar Powell.” Florence could feel the curiosity burning off Gregory to the point that the temperature in the room might have been rising.
Wasting no time, she broke the seal and slid out the papers.
Every leaf was marked over in many places. Layers of text betrayed years of work from different hands. Some, Florence recognized as Arianna’s scribbles. Others were foreign to her.
“Don’t hold us in such suspense,” Vicar Dove practically yawned.
Florence read over the notecard twice. She knew what she was looking at without Arianna’s hasty explanation.
“It’s schematics for a gun . . . that could fire through a corona.”
“Does Arianna now fancy herself a weaponsmith?” Gregory seemed amused, dismissive.
Florence didn’t even bother to combat her scowl. “Given what she’s accomplished to date, I wouldn’t put it past her. Furthermore, it looks like the work wasn’t started by her, but the late Master Oliver and the Vicar Revolver I believe you replaced.”
Gregory clearly was not pleased with her tone. “Let me see those,” he demanded.
Florence had little option but to pass them over.
He read over the papers once, twice. Everyone in the room was attentive, waiting for his assessment.
“Ethel, let me use a pencil?” Gregory dropped to the ground, scraping away pebbles and dust to lay out the schematics on what had now become his work surface. The Vicar Alchemist produced the requested utensil and he set to making hasty smudges and drawing lines across the notes.
