46. Florence

“Something isn’t right.” It was the fourth time Derek had said so in the past day. The train made due course from Ter.1.2 to Keel along the main tracks.

“Take your pick from the garden of Everything Is Wrong. There’s no shortage of bounty in the field.” Florence settled in the plush seat of the train cabin they’d been given on Powell’s behalf. But even if Powell hadn’t asked it of the train, they still could’ve each taken their own cabin if they wanted. The vessel was at less than half capacity and most of the travelers kept to themselves. A heavy weight kept heads down and mouths quiet.

Nora gave Florence a tired look at the discourse repeating itself.

“There should be more Dragons along the checkpoints. They’ve been monitoring all trains going in and out of Keel for months, looking for an illegal transport of supplies,” Derek clarified. “But we haven’t seen a single one so far.”

“I suppose they only have enough time to burn Loom and not dance on its ashes.” Florence folded her arms.

“I don’t know why they’re not here...” Derek leaned his forehead against the window, watching one of the aforementioned tunneled checkpoints that kept the endwig at bay through the Skeleton Forest whiz by. It was dark and unmanned, so the train continued on.

“Yes, you do.” Florence wouldn’t stand to see fear and shock dull Derek’s sharp senses. “You know why they left.”

“No, they still need to…”

“To what? To guard the transportation of goods? Derek, there has to be a guild for the goods to go to.”

“There’s no way they would do that to the Alchemists.” He couldn’t even say what “it” was.

“The Harvesters are more essential to Loom than the Alchemists.” Derek and Nora both gave Florence incredulous stares at the notion, but she held fast. “If they’ll do it to one guild, they’ll do it to any.”

Or all, Florence thought but didn’t say. The more she had time to mull over everything that had happened, the more she realized there really was no other alternative. After what Powell had said, after what the Dragons had done… It was to be total warfare between their worlds.

“The Alchemists have fought off the Dragons for years. We’re the only guild to refuse to allow them in.”

“They don’t need to be ‘let in’ to reap destruction.”

“Enough, both of you.” Nora pinched the bridge of her nose with a heavy sigh. “Derek, Florence is right, something must have happened. But until we get there, we won’t be able to see exactly what.” She shook her head and looked out the window.

Florence let the topic drop. She hadn’t had a home for most of her life. She was born five years before Dragon contact was made. Her vague memories of Ter.0 were nothing more than the ghosts of emotions and the hazy remnants of bygone dreams. She had been moved to the Ravens, arbitrarily, as part of the Dragons’ restructuring following the end of the brief war. There she learned, and she failed, earning a few friends rather than a sense of belonging to a guild. When she left, she did the bidding of the Wraith of Dortam, and was little more than a transient ghost herself.

Florence leaned against the door on the opposite side of Derek and Nora, watching them. She had always found more family in people than places or things. But they were different from her. Their place was their identity, and they belonged to the Alchemists.

So, while all three felt heartbreak the moment they arrived in Keel and learned the Alchemists’ Guild hall had been destroyed mere hours after the Harvesters, Florence’s pain was of a different sort than her two companions.

The streets of Keel were full of Alchemists, not unlike how Ter.1.2 was now the de facto hall for the Harvesters. However, unlike Faroe, the Alchemists Guild Hall was far enough from the city that the majority of the capital city of Ter.2 remained unharmed. Physically, at least.

Their train was the first to arrive from Ter.1, so carrying the burden of truth was their responsibility. Men and women alike collapsed on the platform. Screams of sorrow harmonized oddly with cries of relief as people embraced in both pain and joy. Some survived, some didn’t; their world had been thrown into a shaker and then spilled back out upon the land. Now, it remained to be seen what was left.

“James?” Derek called from halfway down the platform to an Alchemist directing the flow of people.

The man, James presumably, looked around before finding Derek’s eyes and giving a wave. “Derek! Nora!”

They met each other in the middle with a reserved clasping of hands in relief at seeing each other again.

“We thought you for dead.”

“We nearly were,” Derek confessed. “The new Vicar Harvester got us out in time.”

“It really is true then?” James’s voice took a deeper, heavier turn. “The Harvesters as well?”

“What happened here?”

“Vicar Sophie suspected something was amiss when the day before all Dragons were pulled from Keel. Mysteriously, the King’s men who had been so intent on becoming our official liaisons and staying permanently in the guild decided they had tired of the job.

“The Vicar sent a team of men and women to investigate. While they were here in Keel, they were approached by a Chimera living in the city, a graduated journeyman. He manages a store that sells dried fish from the coast, near Ter.1.3. His supplier contacted him, informing him of delays as a result of the attack on the Harvesters’ Guild.”

“Did the Vicar Alchemist not try to fight the Dragons?” Derek asked hopelessly as they traversed the platform.

“With what weaponry?” James sighed. “You know how it was: there was barely enough gunpowder to make a spark.”

The image of that giant canister plummeting through the sky toward the Harvesters’ Guild came back to Florence. There wasn’t much fight to be had. The Dragons had set out to make a statement about the helplessness of Loom and so far, they had succeeded. They had traveled and killed using Loom’s technology.

“How much of the guild escaped?” Florence asked.

“About two thirds.”

The three words formed a single golden lining to an otherwise terrible situation. It put the Alchemists in a better position to remain the spearhead of the resistance if the other guilds were in a state that was anything like the Harvesters. But James didn’t seem to share her reasoning. His mouth formed a scowl at the news.

“Then it should be no trouble for us to see the Vicar?”

“Sophie is quite busy.” James’s pointed look at Florence’s right cheek was missed by no one. No matter what she did, she would be seen as an outsider to them.

“She’ll want to see us,” Derek insisted.

“Derek, you may want to wait,” James cautioned.

“It’s urgent.”

He had the right credentials, and James begrudgingly led them out of the station and into Keel proper.

It was Florence’s first time in the capital city of the Alchemists. Much like Faroe was different from Dortam, which was different from Holx, this was another city where the Rivets had put to use the natural resources and terrain to optimize structures. Pine buildings, no doubt constructed from the trees that were cut down to make room for the city itself, were stacked on top of each other around what trees remained.

Metal pipes funneled steam and wires among them, winding across bridges and trailing down walls like eager, industrial roots. It glittered in the early evening light as biofluorescent lanterns sparked to life, swirling like Dragon magic caught in jars. The heavy tree canopy, the narrow windows sparkling with seeming magic... it felt the way Florence expected the secretive city of the Alchemists to feel—dark, but full of promise.

James led them down a wide street to one of the towering trees that was nearly smothered by all the structures built against it and on top of each other. Plumes of steam mingled with an odd trail of red smoke that curled in the air around its upper levels, piped out from what Florence could only assume to be a laboratory within. James stopped just shy of the door.

“Vicar’s inside.”

He pointedly turned on his heel, starting for the station again. The three of them watched him go with a mindful note. There was no denying the haste with which he had wanted to get away from the place. Combined with his earlier hesitation…

Was he avoiding Sophie? Florence kept the question to herself.

“What now?” an incredibly disgruntled Vicar snapped the moment they walked in. Sophie tore her eyes away from her paper, dropping it onto the desk. They gained a different sort of clarity, however, when Sophie saw exactly who sought an audience. “Derek? Nora?” There was a long pause. “Florence.”

“We’ve returned from the Harvesters’ Guild, and have spoken with the Vicar there.” She got it out of the way first. Florence didn’t want any question as to what they had accomplished, especially given the terms she’d left on. It had only been a few months, but it felt like years.

“You actually made it?” Sophie narrowed her eyes in apparent skepticism. “The Vicar Harvester is dead.”

“We were there when they elected a new one in Ter.1.2,” Derek explained. This seemed to satisfy Sophie for the time being.

Florence was getting rather tired of needing Derek to step in to validate her claims to Alchemists.

“How did you survive?” Sophie’s tone shifted to genuine curiosity rather than outright interrogation.

“Florence made friends with the man who is now the newly-elected Vicar on the way to the guild. Because of that, he worked to get us out when the Harvesters received word of the attack.”

“Did you?” Sophie’s eyes were on Florence again.

“Yes.” Calling Powell her friend seemed rather forward. Their relationship had been up and down, odd, and short, but he had gone out of his way to save her life. If that didn’t make him her friend, she didn’t know what did. It had worked for Ari, at the very least.

“Will he be sending the supplies we need?” Sophie addressed Derek, but Florence couldn’t stop herself from answering.

“After what happened to Faroe, I don’t think much will be coming out of the Harvesters for some time.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Sophie said casually, not even bothering to look at Florence when she spoke.

Florence clenched her fists in frustration but held her tongue.

“I believe he will help us…” Derek was beginning to look uncertain now. “But circumstances have changed.”

“They have not changed in the slightest.” Sophie frowned. “Now, more than ever, we must launch an attack against the Dragons. Loom has seen the danger they bring.”

“Exactly.” Florence saw her opening and took it. “Loom knows of the danger—all of Loom. Every guild is unified once more and will all fight together.”

It was like Florence was speaking a different language, there was such a look of confusion on Sophie’s face. “We do not need the other guilds to fight.”

“What?”

“We need their supplies, certainly, but we do not need their involvement.” Sophie scoffed at the very notion.

“How—how can you say that?” It flew counter to everything Florence believed the resistance stood for. Everything Sophie should know. Hadn’t this woman been Arianna’s friend?

“The Dragons see us as weak.”

“And we should show them we are strong.”

“No.” The word was said so quickly that it punctuated Florence’s sentence. “We must let them think we are weak and divided. Wait for them to make a mistake, then strike.”

“What if they don’t?” Florence shook her head incredulously. It was sheer lunacy. “What if this is merely the beginning?”

“This is a scare tactic, one you seem to be falling for. If we unite, they will merely respond with more force. However, if we show weakness and open doors, they will come down among us to rebuild, just like after the One Year War. Then will be our time to strike.”

“That could take years. It could never happen! Who knows what they will do to Loom while we wait and do nothing?” Sophie was gambling with Loom’s freedom rather than taking it. It made Florence want to scream and stomp. The Dragons had attacked them in cold blood. They had set Loom afire simply because they could. And now? Now Sophie wanted to roll over before them, continuing what had amounted to a pathetic quasi-rebellion in secret.

“And if the rebellion fails, as it did last time, all of Loom will live to fight again if we conduct ourselves quietly. Past failures can still teach valuable lessons, Florence.” Sophie remained undeterred.

“Arianna will never go for this. She wants the Dragons dead.”

“Do you really know what she wants?” Sophie challenged. “After all, she’s been on Nova for some time doing who knows what.”

“It has something to do with the Philosopher’s Box.” Florence prayed that everything she knew about Arianna remained true. She was betting not only everything that she had, but Loom itself, on the fact. “Ari will come back, and she will go to the Vicar Tribunal.”

“Vicar Tribunal?” It was Sophie’s turn to be incredulous.

“There is a Tribunal happening on Ter.0 in two months. The Vicar Harvester is spreading the word to the other guilds. They expect a demonstration of the box, and the Vicar Alchemist in attendance.”

If Florence could pack the look Sophie was giving her into a canister, it would be the most deadly shot she’d ever made. After several long breaths, the Vicar slowly dropped her hands to the desk, standing slowly. She rose to her full height, a head taller than Florence.

“Florence, a word of advice,” Sophie spoke as soft as a knife point dragging across flesh. “Be wary of who you speak for. Because you have made promises that you were not permitted to give on behalf of two very, very powerful women.”

It was the nicest thing Florence had ever heard Sophie say about Arianna. And it was being used as a pointed threat. She wanted to rebuke the notion. But the fact was, Arianna was just as likely to be angry with Florence for her decision as she was to be obliging.

“It’s the only way.”

“There are lots of ways.” Sophie rounded the desk, running her hand along its edge. “You are young, and you see the only solution as outright warfare.”

“What else is there? Your plan to lure the Dragons into some false sense of triumph?”

“That, and many more strategic approaches that wouldn’t result in hundreds, thousands, of Fenthri deaths.”

“The strategic approach hasn’t worked.”

“Neither has outright warfare.” Sophie referred to the quick failure that was Loom’s last war. “Perhaps when you are older, when you have lost more, you will understand this.”

“Do not say I have not lost.” Florence took a step forward, barely stopping herself from outright attacking the woman. “You know nothing of me.”

“I know you are still a girl, quick to ire and stumbling in the pitfalls of pride.” Sophie remained poised. “I know you have yet to see the merit of strategic sacrifice to attain one’s goals.”

“You must go to the Tribunal.”

“You may not tell me what I must do.” The Vicar Alchemist shook her head. “Derek, you will be on the first train back to Ter.1.2 in the morning. You will tell the Vicar Harvester to call off the Tribunal. You will inform him that the Alchemists will not be working with the rest of Loom, and encourage him to call off this ridiculous notion of a demonstration against the Dragons. Denounce all knowledge of a working Philosopher’s Box as the misinformed whims of a child.”

Derek looked between Florence and the Vicar of his guild helplessly. But Florence knew what his decision would be. She knew it as clearly as the two interlocking triangles on his cheek.

“Understood, Vicar.”

“Good.” Sophie returned to her chair, waving them away. “Now, the three of you… get out of my sight.”

Nora stepped away and Derek followed, linking arms with her. Florence hesitated one moment. Venom poured from the glands in her mouth instead of saliva, and the brief, challenging look Sophie gave her was almost enough to made her spit it all out on the woman’s desk.

But Florence made for the door. She would heed Sophie’s words and apply them that very moment. She would make a strategic sacrifice of her pride in the form of a tactical retreat. The Vicar had won the battle, but Florence would not give her victory in the war between them.