26. Florence

The land had changed.

The Skeleton Forest had thinned and the dominant pines that oppressed their senses at every waking hour of the day had become scrawnier. As the train barreled down the winding pathway, they swerved out to the coast, giving Florence her first glimpse of the tall, rocky bluffs that made the Western side of Ter.2 impenetrable by boat.

The majority of Ter.2 was an imposing place—tall and shadowed, full of harsh rocky outcrops and the forest that boasted some of the most dangerous monsters in the world. But they had eluded the endwig, and lived to see the land change from the cold north to the more temperate, flatter south.

Tall grasses grew like in Ter.4, but the terrain was mostly flat, not hilly. It lacked significant features to the point that Florence wondered how the oceans had not just swallowed it whole. She watched it blur by as they continued on their tiny, overgrown track.

Nora and Derek alternated helping her. She had forced them to learn. She would shoulder as much of the burden as she had to, as they needed, but she could not do it alone. Will only went so far; skill was always required to make up the remainder.

They were begrudging at first, but not as much as Florence expected. She was too tired to question why, and thankfully the reason became apparent soon enough. She had earned an unexpected amount of respect from her companions after the night of the endwig. Her unconventional upbringing had served a purpose.

“How do you know how much coal to add, again?” Nora asked from where she was manning the grate and shovel.

Florence tapped the gauge next to her. “This meter. You want this to stay out of the high and low levels here and here. Ideally, it should sit around fifteen.”

“Why?”

“For an engine this size, that amount of power seems to clip us along without wasting power. There’s only so fast we can push her, or should…” Florence thought back to the sloppy repairs she’d made across the train following their frantic flight, and especially those she had less faith in holding. At least she’d had some training in the Ravens, but all her knowledge as a Rivet came from watching and helping Arianna.

Arianna. The name sat within Florence’s heart, still encased in love. The months apart had shown Florence that much. She loved Arianna as the teacher and guardian she had been. The recognition of the fact made the distance, surprisingly, more bearable. It dulled the harsh words they’d spoken to one another and quietly assured Florence of Arianna’s intentions. She knew the woman, and she knew that her venture to Nova was for the right reasons. And she knew that when Arianna returned, they would embrace once more and Florence would again be crafting canisters to help both the revolution and the White Wraith.

“What is most important to a Raven?”

Florence used the rattling of the train to mask a heavy sigh. She was always going to be seen as a Raven before anything else. She’d delighted in it when it had served her, when it had made people unassuming of her canisters in Mercury Town or her skill with the revolver. Or when it had helped her blend in at the port of Ter.5.2. But she was quickly learning she would give such things up for the sake of choice.

“Speed, mostly.” The echoes of trikes whizzing through the streets of Holx echoed in Florence’s ears. “Suicidal speed.”

“And for a Revolver?”

Florence paused in surprise. She glanced over at Nora, who stopped her inspection of the gages long enough to search Florence’s face.

“You’d know that too, right?”

“Explosions.” Florence gave the woman a small smile.

“And Rivets?”

Florence had to think about that for a moment. While Ari was a Master Rivet, she was also not the most conventional of her guild. “Mathematics, perhaps?”

“That sounds terribly dull.” Nora scrunched her coal dust-coated nose.

Florence grinned. “I think so too.”

They slept together, all three of them, in the back car during the day while they were in the Skeleton Forest, and transitioned to sleeping at night in Ter.1. The air itself in the southern territory was thick; it made the hair on her neck stick without any effort. Florence much preferred working through the day when she would be uncomfortable in the engine anyway, than struggling to sleep in the moist daylight hours.

The nights were cooler, and it made huddling together all the more pleasant. There was a different sort of comfort among them than she’d found with Arianna. When Florence had lain in bed with Arianna, even snuggled together, there was a relaxed ease about it. But with Derek and Nora the pressure sat in her stomach, closer to her abdomen. It was the first time she’d felt such tension. She was smart enough to understand lust, but she wasn’t fully aware for whom it stirred.

In all, the trip was mostly peaceful. There was still the stress of maintaining the train and managing the coal, but the old track they rode on was in good enough condition that Florence was confident it’d been used to smuggle things more recently than anyone let on. It was an overall straight shot with only two dead-end switch-offs until they reached Ter.1.2.

The train’s terminal was an abandoned yard and they subsequently left it behind. Florence, Nora, and Derek continued on foot. Despite their brands, they were far enough from the Alchemists’ Guild hall and past the territory border that they could move without any major concern. Derek carried two large trunks, Nora one, and Florence managed hers and a small case of their remaining powders onto the final train that would take them the rest of the way to Faroe.

They paid into a simple car, huddled with other patrons in bench seats. It was quite unlike her last train ride with Arianna when they had their own cabin; this trip lacked all sort of privacy or grace. Harvesters and others piled into the car, taking all available space, and they found themselves sharing their benches with three others.

Florence was pressed against the window for the two-day ride, and she watched as the land continued to change. The fertile middle ground between the end of the Skeleton Forest and the far end of Ter.1 became rocky and barren, void of life.

“What’s that?” Florence squinted at a hole in the earth far in the distance. It looked as if someone had taken a spoon and carved out the land, removing it for some unknown reason.

“A strip mine,” one of the Harvesters—Powell—replied.

“That’s a mine?” Florence tried to reconcile what was before her. “Aren’t mines in mountains? Tunnels?”

“They can be,” Powell whispered, trying hard not to wake their sleeping companions squashed into the bench together. “It depends on the mineral we’re mining for. If it occurs naturally in large pockets, we strip mine it. If it’s in veins, tunnels may be more effective. Some can only be found in mountains.”

The Harvester was quiet for a long moment.

“You lived far from home.”

“What?” Florence asked, startled. They’d barely spoken more than courtesies, yet he had somehow known that about her.

“There are no mountains in Ter.4, little crow.” The man gave a knowing smile. “Which leads me to believe you’ve spent some time in Ter.5.”

Florence pursed her lips.

“Well, wherever you come from, you’re far from home.” He looked out the window.

“I don’t know where home is.” She didn’t, not anymore. Florence longed for the flat she’d shared with Ari in Old Dortam. But it no longer fit them. Too much had changed. And, if the smaller flat in Ter.4.2 was any indication, Ari had no problem abandoning homes to move on when life demanded it.

“You’re young enough that home should be Holx.”

“It should be.”

“But people are rarely what they should be.” The man was older than her, perhaps nearing twenty-five. Older than Arianna, at least, and that meant old enough to know of the time before the Dragons. “Why do you head to Faroe?”

“I’m taking my friends.” Florence nodded at Nora and Derek, slumbering the hours away across from her.

“It’s your first time in Ter.1?”

Florence nodded. The man leaned back in his chair, his gaze still focused on the mine in the distance as they slowly plodded along past it. Even packed in close as they were, they swayed slightly, shoulders brushing and sides flush.

“The land has changed much, in my years.” Florence tried to decipher the somewhat somber note in the man’s voice. “The Guild Initiates and Journeymen your age know it only as it is…”

“What’s wrong with it?” Florence asked, still hearing the haze of regret that floated through the man’s words.

“How long will you be in Faroe?”

If Florence wasn’t so accustomed to Arianna, the questions answered with questions might have been grating. But there was a tranquil similarity in the obscured truths and hidden meanings. “I’m not sure.”

“Then it will be long enough for you to arrive at your own opinions on these matters.”

Florence heard the finality in the statement and rested her head on the glass of the window. The strip mine was now out of view, but she kept her eyes forward as the train swayed in determined progression to the home of the Harvesters. More and more mines dotted the surface of the land as they neared Faroe. Deeper and wider they ran, until the train traversed suspended bridge-ways that spanned a mine directly below them.

She stared over the ominous edge, keenly aware of the thin pieces of steel that separated the train from the seemingly infinite oblivion stretched deep into the earth below. Men and women worked on spiraling walkways on the outer edges of the mine, so far below her that they looked like flicks of dust floating in the mine’s smoky haze rather than actual people. So, so far below that the explosions they set off were nothing more than flashes of light and dull reverberations.

It was as if the Harvesters had peeled back the surface of the earth to find its soul. And its soul was the very lifeblood of Loom: iron, minerals, oil, and coal.

Faroe was perched in the center of these seemingly endless mines, like an island among an empty sea. Its towering buildings and compact construction was unlike anything Florence had ever seen. Buildings made of concrete had spires of brick built atop them, foundations made from the carved stone left from long-ago mining. Like an impenetrable wall, it was all connected. One city, one guild, every peca of space used. She wondered if Arianna had ever been to Faroe, and if so, what the Rivet’s take on the architectural choices were.

The train ran into a station underneath the city. Powell, in his kindness, offered to escort them to the guild hall. Florence was thankful they accepted when he led them through a rat maze of tunnels and tiny elevators that served as the city’s only means of getting around.

“Faroe built up when it could no longer build out,” Powell explained. “The problem with situating itself at the world’s richest mineral deposits meant that most of the land needed to be committed to mining. The Rivets tried to make sense of it, but the Harvesters ended up doing what we do best.” He knocked on the rough, bare stone wall next to him. Pick marks still pocked its surface. “We tunneled our way through.”

Within the city proper, Florence felt an omnipresent weight. Rock and steel, brick and concrete hovered over her. It compressed Florence’s lungs, and she was suddenly reminded of the last time she’d felt such a sensation.

“The Underground,” Florence said boldly. It was a taboo subject in Ter.4, and, judging by the rise of Powell’s eyebrows, it was known as such in Ter.1 as well. “Did Harvesters help with that at all?”

Powell considered it a long moment, encouraging in that he didn’t immediately refuse the subject. “At the time the Underground was first being conceived, perhaps. We did grant them some of our explosives long ago, pre-Revolvers even, to help blast deeper after the ground was broken. But the limestone of Ter.4 is prone to pockets and holes, and the Ravens seemed impatient and determined to make the place their own. Moreso after the Dragons’ regulations on the guilds.”

The man’s tone differed from Ari’s at the mere mention of the Dragons. There was no bitter bite, no longing for the past. Instead she heard quiet acceptance. His eyes reflected... appreciation?

The weight was lifted as they ascended to the guild proper. A disk shape at the very top of Faroe, the hall’s outer walls were all windows, permitting the gray sunlight and a view of the barren earth beyond. Florence set her bag down slowly, her hand numb from carrying it. As if in a trance, she crossed to the nearest pane of glass. Five times her width, three times her height, it felt as if the view could swallow her whole.

With the flatness of the land she could see for veca upon veca. She saw the dusty clouds that plumed off the ground between the mines. She saw the far explosions that broke into the earth farther and deeper. The mines she’d seen from the train had only been a small part of a much, much larger system.

“What do you think?” Powell asked.

Florence jumped, startled. She hadn’t heard the man approach. Pulled from her trance, she immediately sought out Derek and Nora, but they were nowhere to be found.

“They had business on behalf of the Vicar Alchemist for the Vicar Harvester. I saw that they spoke with the right people to get them where they were going.”

“Thank you,” Florence said sincerely. “You’ve been quite kind to us.”

“You are guests in my home.” Powell smiled in reply. “Ter.1 may not be what it once was, but it is still home and I will still love it and see it is shown in the best light.”

“You said that before,” she noted. “That it’s not what it was.”

He nodded, but offered no more explanation this time than he had the last.

“Do you mean before the Dragons?” she pressed.

“I do.”

She followed Powell’s stare, looking out at the land. “What was better, then? How has it changed?”

Powell shook his head and chuckled. “The Dragons changed a lot, overseen directly by the King.” Again, unlike Ari, there was no bite at the mention of their oppressors. “Not much was better in my lifetime. We’ve been on this suicidal path for hundreds of years. If they hadn’t come when they did, Loom would be in a difficult spot now.”

“What do you mean?” Florence couldn’t comprehend what the man before her was saying. There was no path of logic that let her get to his point until he spelled it out.

“The Dragons, Florence. They saved Loom.”