by Elise Kova
“Let us hold a tribunal tomorrow, when you’re feeling stronger,” Powell suggested. “We need to go over the status of the Philosopher’s Boxes and how we can manufacture your guns, in addition.”
“Right. Send me Shannra.” Florence tried to keep her voice strong. She felt a tempest of emotions, but none of them was hesitation at being named the Vicar Revolver. “She can whisper to Arianna for me.”
The room cleared and Florence found herself alone for one very long minute. She could do nothing more than stare at her hands in shock. Somehow, she’d managed to keep herself level, composed, in control, but now her bones felt like they were trying to rattle her flesh into gelatin.
She curled and uncurled her fingers into fists, thinking of Powell’s metaphor. If the guilds were like hands, then she, too, must be. There was a part of her that was scared and it was no less or more than the part of her that was thrilled. Nerves flourished within the confident woman who knew she was about to step into the most important role of her life.
She inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. Her hands balled into fists. Like the competing parts within her, she would bring all of Loom together as one.
The door opened and Shannra practically bounded in with excitement. “I just heard!”
“News travels fast.” Florence smiled faintly.
Shannra sat on the edge of the low table Florence had been laid out on. “I’m sure you wanted to be the first to tell me.”
“So don’t be upset, hm? Especially because now that you have been told, I need you to whisper to Arianna. I must tell her what’s happened with the gun.”
“I am at your service, Vicar Revolver.”
She very much liked the way Shannra purred the words “Vicar Revolver.” Florence reached up a hand and cupped the curve of the cheek she so adored.
“I do like the sound of that.”
“There’s something else you should know.” Shannra sat on the edge of her bed, brushing Florence’s hair from her face. “There was a whisper while you were out. You’re not the only one with a new title.”
“What?”
“It seems she’s killed Louie. We’re all reporting to the Queen of Wraiths now.”
“Killed Louie?” Florence repeated, wondering what could’ve possessed Arianna to go so far. “Don’t we need him?”
“She seems to think otherwise.”
Florence struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. Just what was Arianna doing?
Shannra raised her hand to her ear, but Florence tugged it away before she could activate the whisper link to one of Louie’s—Arianna’s—lackeys.
“It can wait one more second,” Florence said, pulling the other woman toward her. She claimed Shannra’s mouth and felt her lover relax into the kiss. Florence herself relaxed for what felt like the first time in ages, despite the weight of all her new responsibilities. That was Shannra’s power, or perhaps the power of them coming together.
Florence would tell Arianna—she must. But vicars did not jump to associate with those who ruled the underworld, and she—Florence, the runaway Raven who had been decreed to die—was a vicar now.
PART TWO
ARIANNA
Her golden cabling whizzed through her harness with a precise zip.
The clang of gold on metal as her clip slid along the railing came to a hard stop, Arianna swung around a low smokestack at breakneck speeds two seconds after the initial churning of gears ceased. Three seconds after that, a glider whizzed around one of the giant main houses of the refinery hall. To make the jump to the glider, Arianna had to know the glider’s approximate rate of speed, her terminal velocity mid-swing, and the cusp where the two would meet.
Numbers like those were all child’s play.
She soared through the air on a collision course with the glider. A shining corona coated the Dragon’s skin, so Arianna’s daggers were sheathed. During her first stint on Nova, a Dragon had pointed out something pivotal to her: The corona was designed to protect from harm, and it was designed by Fenthri. So, the Fenthri engineers—who were geniuses to develop such a magical field—did so to protect from Loom’s weaponry: metals, bullets, blasts.
There was never any accounting for bone.
Bone was just what protruded from both of Arianna’s fingertips—bone in the shape of giant talons, forged by magic and hardened by the Dragon hands she’d stolen from a man who had worked against Loom until his dying breath. Now, she’d use that same magic to sculpt Loom’s future from the flesh that shredded beneath her palms.
The Rider had only a moment to look up in shock as Arianna landed atop him. Her claws dug into his shoulder and neck, shearing flesh from muscle and muscle from bone. Tendons snapped; she savored his look of shock in the moments before he released the handholds, sending them both tumbling through the air.
Wind gusted over her ears, and Arianna knew she had mere breaths before they would both be plastered on the next metal cropping. Live to fight the next battle, instinct cried. Arianna relinquished the Rider to the sound of the crashing glider behind her.
She unclipped the golden clip from her harness. The Dragon snarled in rage and flailed his arms, attempting to strike her, or cling to her—whichever he could manage. Her gold line was impervious to his strikes, so she cast it without hesitation. Her stomach was in her throat and shot back down to her lower abdomen as the line snapped to tension.
The Dragon’s claws sunk into her calf and Arianna swiped at him with a snarl. She shredded the tendons in his wrist, his hand going lax, and he continued to fall without her. His body met the refinery’s rocky foundation with a calamitous clang.
Arianna tapped her winch box.
She slowed her descent to nonlethal speeds, keeping the line loose enough that the cabling spun freely off its spools and her stomach shot back into her throat. When she was two pecas from the ground, she pulled the lynchpin on the box and fell the rest of the way.
Dazed and barely conscious, the Dragon Rider blinked up at her. Fools hesitated and sympathizers died. Arianna plunged her claws into the man’s chest, perforating his lungs and surrounding his heart. She twisted, ripped, and ended the Dragon’s life.
The door to her right burst open.
Arianna sunk her teeth into the soft tissue of the Rider’s heart. Blood exploded in her mouth—the taste of blackberries, tart yet sweet. With that sweetness was something all the more savory. Magic flooded her senses. It pulsed within her, bolstered her own. Her wounds healed, her skin regained its strength, and, with a snap of her fingers, her line returned itself to its coil as she turned to face the next enemy.
The Dragon levied a gun against her—one of the reasons she was here to begin with. Arianna dropped into a crouch, ready to dodge the shot. The Dragon snarled and pulled the trigger at the same time as she lunged.
He tried to anticipate her movements; his gun swung right as Arianna pushed forward. He thought she’d move to the side. But Arianna went straight for the jugular.
He swung back. The Dragon pulled the trigger again and Arianna heard a familiar click. She drew her dagger and plunged it into his throat.
“With that style rifle, you need to reload a canister with every shot,” she chided softly.
The Dragon threw aside the empty weapon with a shout of frustration. He had fight in him as he gripped her shoulders, making a play for her throat. Arianna tumbled, slid into a crouch, and prepared to lunge anew.
“Witch!” he shouted at her before swiping with his claws.
“Scientist!” Arianna corrected, dodging his slash. She thrust with one dagger and the Dragon moved left, completely ignoring the second blade attached to a golden line at his back.
He fell, and another appeared.
The Dragons here were bleary from sleep, shocked into sluggishness, out of their element in narrow industrial halls. There wasn’t a true combatant among them—at least not by the standards of the Queen of Wraiths.
She tore through t
hem, one after the next. Golden daggers floated at the ends of her lines like barbed tentacles shooting from her hips, carving out the hearts of all who dared to oppose her. Arianna killed without question. Man, woman, young or old—if they stood before her, they would be struck down.
Dawn broke over the horizon to find her bathed in slowly evaporating gold. Arianna’s chest heaved and her eyes were blurry from exhaustion. She ran on the magic of her conquests, shoving hearts into her mouth in the same unreserved way Florence would indulge herself on an unattended plate of cookies.
Magic from deep below prickled at her senses. Arianna knew what she’d find before she arrived at the heavy, bolted door. Still, when she pulled it open and looked at the squalor within—the men and women blinking nervously at her—her chest felt heavier than all the metal and stone of the refinery that surrounded her.
“I can’t save you all.” It was where she had to start. “But I can try to give you each the power to save yourselves.”
“Who are you?” a woman stammered.
“The Wh—The Queen of Wraiths.” Arianna sheathed her daggers. “And I come from the rebellion on Loom.”
Shocked rumors rose among the Fenthri slaves.
“House Xin is standing with us, and together we will overthrow the Dragon King and save Loom.” For all she believed in Florence and Cvareh, uttering the words was hard. How many times in her lifetime alone would she espouse the end of Yveun’s rule? “Help me dismantle this refinery, then flee, hide. Stay out of sight and stay alive until Rok has fallen.”
They looked nervously at each other. No one moved. She wondered if Florence would have been able to inspire them to action. Arianna was not meant for rousing speeches or motivating the masses. She was the hired blade in the dark.
“I can take one of you with me,” she continued anyway. “Loom needs knowledge of the weaponry and whatever else they’re having you make here. I will let you decide who it will be. This is the Fenthri way.”
The slaves looked among themselves, and still, no one moved. Then murmurs, speaking, a consensus. Arianna watched them use their minds for themselves for the first time in what may have been decades. They selected one man with the circled symbol of a Rivet on his cheek. He was young enough that Arianna didn’t recognize him from her time in the guild, but old enough that she had no doubt he’d spent most of his life on Nova.
“I’ll bring the information back to Loom.”
“Good.” Arianna gave a curt nod. “Now that that’s settled, let’s get to work making Rok’s life as difficult as possible.”
COLETTA
Even when the world was at war, Lysip was a beauty to behold. The brown winter grasses against the brilliant reds of the estate created an ethereal elegance that was capped with a bright sky, its blue almost washed into a soft off-white. It was not uncommon for the clouds above the God’s Line to deposit rain or snow onto their island. But the winter had been dry so far.
Coletta preferred it this way. She didn’t like getting the hems of her clothes muddy, and the only damp she ever wanted to feel on her hands was the blood of her enemies.
As much as Tam flaunted their island’s perpetual jewel tones as some kind of superiority, Coletta found the world in stasis several times more stunning than the lushest of gardens—with the exception of her own garden, of course.
It was a day for thinking of Tam, as she’d greeted the viridian house just hours ago. She played the part of the Rok’Ryu they expected—a mysterious woman whose presence often heralded death, but it couldn’t be of her own doing, for she was much too frail for that. She didn’t have the spine to kill someone; she didn’t have a spine at all. Or so Coletta imagined them whispering.
The entourage would take the rumors back to a hungry Gwaeru, where the nobility would eat them up like dogs fighting over the juiciest scrap to bring some satiation to their meaningless lives. House Tam represented balance, “all things equal,” as their motto stated. But balance, Coletta found, was a close sibling to complacency, and complacency was the lover of sloth.
While the Dragon in her thought it was always a shame to see her race reduced to something that glorified excess, Tam’s taste for finer things and the time to enjoy them suited her. It made the house easy to control, and fairly simple to work with. If there was one thing that didn’t suit the comfort of luxury, it was the chaos of rebellion.
The woman walking next to her was one of the few Coletta did not expect to deceive. From the first moment Doriv Tam’Ryu To arrived at the Rok Estate, she saw Coletta as a force to be reckoned with. Coletta saw much the same in her fern-colored counterpart. They each knew who was really in charge at the respective households. So, while the majority of the attendants and upper nobility of both houses sat in on a meeting with Yveun’Oji and Cashi’Oji, the real decisions were being made by the two women who strolled the estate with only a few handpicked attendants many steps behind.
“Lysip in the winter is stunning. The way the sun shines on the browning grasses that adorn your hillsides makes the whole of the island look as though it has been dipped in gold.” Doriv’Ryu made no effort to further disguise the remark on their dead foliage as a compliment.
“Gwaeru is equally stunning this time of year. All of your large flowering trees endlessly dumping their petals is quite the spectacle to behold—or so I hear.” Coletta responded in kind.
“I didn’t know you thought of Gwaeru with such fondness, Rok’Ryu.” Doriv’Ryu adjusted the chiming earrings that pulled needle-eye holes into the lobes of her long ears. “Perhaps we’ll conduct one of our future meetings on my homeland. Rather than dragging the entirety of House Tam’s nobility across the sky.”
“Ah, I know how so many speak with fondness of the opportunity to come and try Lysip beef and see the Rok Estate. I’d hate to deny them the opportunity.”
“You are a truly charitable woman. I don’t know how you give so much away to others while still having enough for yourself, such that you can create the flamboyant lodgings where you house guests.” Doriv motioned to the gilding on the columns that supported the roof covering the walkway, which wound through the wild outer fields they roamed.
“It is important to make sure we both take care of our people, while continuing to display Rok’s might.”
“Indeed . . .” Doriv stopped and half-turned, looking out over the sea of slowly dying greenery between carefully placed statues. Coletta stopped as well, angling her body to mimic the other Ryu.
Neither of them cared about the flowers, or the grasses, or the sun, or the end of the boco mating season, or any of the other pointless topics they had spent the morning discussing. They cared about one thing alone: how close they were to any other living, sentient creature who was not one of their most loyal vassals.
“You like this spot,” Coletta observed. “You usually stop here.”
“This scuff here—” Doriv answered, running her fingers over an unassuming etching on the column beside her. “—marks the point at which our conversation officially becomes private.”
“Indeed.” Coletta smiled. She enjoyed the reaction her scarred, gray gums and knobby teeth evoked in other Dragons. It was its own type of terror. “This was a meeting you called. What is so important that you needed to speak with me in person?”
“The wine turned sour at the Crimson Court . . .” Doriv began walking again. “An odd affair, that . . . I don’t believe there has ever been a case of deadly mold on wine casks before.”
“An odd affair, indeed. Perhaps it was Lord Xin requesting a tithing of his people.”
“I certainly hope so.” Doriv’s hand was back to playing with her earring. “I’ve heard whispers of some nefarious designs.”
“Have you?” Coletta asked earnestly. It was imperative that, at any given time, she knew what the world knew about her. The moment the masses actually saw her as a threat was the moment she lost the vast majority of her effectiveness. Yveun was the visible menace, she the invisible hand
holding the dagger from the flanks.
“Only rumors, nothing more, and nothing worth heeding past the gossip parlor doors.” The answer wasn’t satisfying for Coletta, but she saw no avenue to pursue the matter. Furthermore, she had to trust her alliance with Doriv; if there was something to consider alarming, the woman would tell her. Doriv immediately proved Coletta right. “However, if they are true . . . It would be a grave offense. Ending a Crimson Court before the majority of grievances could be heard would be the least of it, really. To slay Dragons outside of proper duels or cause death on such a mass scale . . . the idea is unprecedented.”
Coletta skillfully refrained from pointing out that Xin’s mere existence gave her cause to wipe their blue faces off the earth itself.
“And then, there’s the matter of Petra Xin’Oji,” Doriv continued. “Her death is not sitting well with House Xin. They think that, too, has some darker truth to it. The new Oji dueled the late Finnyr on such grounds. If these accusations prove true, in addition to the other oddities . . . House Tam would need to evaluate, and potentially work to remove a power that acts so far out of Nova’s structure.”
She heard Doriv’s warning clearly. “Well, if such terrible things were to have transpired, it seems the persons involved would have acted with the utmost cunning, if there are only floating rumors. The Xin can hardly be trusted to be unbiased, or logical for that matter. They all have so much to grieve for now. They act like children in their time of mourning.”
“One would hope it is just the lunacies of a grieving house . . . It would be a shame to have to forcefully shift the world back into balance so that all things are once more equal.”
“Indeed. After all, doing so could result in many of the Tam nobility being forced to give up the titles and the luxuries that come to them from the graciousness of House Rok.”
