50. Florence

The forest at night was cool, despite summer encroaching on them. Faint light from the gray sky above was almost completely smothered by the tree canopy. The leaves rustled in a faint wind, echoing the restlessness of the Fenthri below.

Florence had followed Derek and Nora to a group of their friends. She recognized James from earlier, but the rest were vaguely familiar faces, a tight-knit group of Alchemists that had no interest in allowing a wanderer to penetrate their ranks.

Perhaps that was the problem with Loom. They had all been told to stay in their place, to follow their guild marks, to not question when it had been their nature for so many years to question everything. The older generations resisted, but Florence’s age and younger? They knew no better. They had grown up accepting the idea that Loom was as it was for some unknown reason, even if they didn’t fully agree with it—even if history didn’t agree with it.

That was the danger of Sophie’s plan. She spoke of sacrifices, but the sacrifices she was risking encompassed the very future of Loom. The longer they spent accepting the Dragons’ rule, the more they would all forget. It was easy for Sophie to say otherwise from where she sat; she was of the last generation. Her heart had been hammered into shape before the Dragons had ever ruled.

The young ones who sat among them now were still taking form. Florence watched silently from her seat at the far end of the table, closest to the open window, as the younger initiates slowly trickled from the room. When they were older, would they even remember a rebellion? What world would they inherit?

“You’ve been quiet,” Nora noted, tearing some bread off the loaf in the center of the table and shoving it into her mouth.

“Just hungry,” Florence lied. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. She was hungry. But that had nothing to do with her silence.

Nora hummed, clearly unconvinced. “Does it have to do with what the Vicar said?”

“What else?” Florence mumbled, wishing the conversation would change. She had yet to work through the best response to Sophie’s decision.

“You spoke with the Vicar Alchemist?” one of the women seated at the other end of the table interjected with surprise.

“When we returned,” Derek affirmed.

“What did she have to say for herself?” The woman stabbed at the food on her plate with renewed purpose.

“In regards to…” Florence left the question hanging. She wanted to see how the woman would finish it. Her tone was too similar to the one James had spoken with when they asked about the Vicar earlier that day.

“Killing her own guild.”

Everyone at the table suddenly found everything else in the room far more fascinating than the Master speaking, or the three people she addressed.

“Explain yourself.” Derek was visibly uncomfortable with the narrative being constructed before him.

The master exchanged a look with another circled man at the table, as if tacitly asking—and being granted—permission. “When we learned of the Dragons’ plot, we made to evacuate the guild as fast as possible. But our Vicar didn’t want to risk alerting the Dragons to our attempts. She didn’t want to see Keel attacked in place of an empty guild hall, or in addition to.”

The logic was very real, and instantaneously uncomfortable.

“She wanted to give the illusion that nothing was amiss.”

“She left a third of the guild in the hall.” It escaped Florence’s mouth the moment she thought it.

“She told them we were moving in groups to prevent suspicion. The first group left. Then the second, her with it. It wasn’t until we reached Keel proper that any of us realized her intent…”

“… and by then it was too late,” Nora whispered.

Florence rested her elbows on the table, her chin sinking into the heel of her hand in thought. The reasoning, however horrible, made sense. No one would ever really know if Sophie’s calculation had paid off. Keel wasn’t attacked, but who could say if that was for Sophie’s decision or merely because the Dragons never had any intention of destroying the city?

“You went to Ter.1 to seek help for the rebellion, didn’t you?” One of the Masters asked. If their trip had been a secret, it wasn’t any longer. “We must see an end to these Dragons.”

The tiniest sliver of light appeared on the floor of Florence’s mind as a door of opportunity cracked open.

“We did go to Ter.1 for help with the rebellion,” Derek started delicately.

“And? Were you successful?”

“Not quite…”

Florence was going to smash through that door with force if she had to. “We were successful,” she said, injecting herself once more into the conversation. “Not only the Harvesters, but the rest of the four guilds of Loom want to align with the Alchemists. This is Loom’s fight, and they will stand with us, give us the help we need.” It was a bit of an embellishment, but Florence believed it to be nothing but truth. There could be no other way for the future to unfurl. Surely, the other guilds would see this logic.

The two Masters exchanged a look of relief, and a surge of power flowed through Florence. She had always seen tools of destruction as the way to gain control. Hope was a much more dangerous weapon.

“Florence—” Derek urged her for silence, but she ignored him.

“The first Vicar we spoke to was uncertain. But after his untimely death, the current Vicar Harvester was all too happy to agree to a Tribunal at Ter.0.”

“A Vicar Tribunal?” The Master sat back in his seat. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“Well, you may not…” Florene gave a heavy sigh, picking at her food anew. “The Vicar Alchemist refused to attend, demanded the Tribunal be called off.”

“What?” the woman gasped. “Derek, is this true?”

Florence felt mildly guilty for the position Derek was put in as he looked between her and the Master. “Well, yes.”

“Why?” the entire table seemed to demand at once.

“Vicar Sophie said that it is best for the rebellion if we submit to the Dragons, for now. Lure them into a false sense of security, strike when they’re not expecting.”

The Master stood so quickly his chair nearly went tumbling behind him. He slammed his palms on the table in visible rage. “She still has her head in the clouds from the last rebellion. There is no Council of Five to lead us any longer, not unless we make one by banning together. There are no great minds to lead us through this dark night. If we do not ignite the flame of our own lanterns, we will lose the way.”

“What do you think should be done?” Florence asked, as if she had never even mentioned the Tribunal.

“The Vicar must go to Ter.0. Sophie must work with the other guilds. The Dragons have asked for war; we must give it to them.”

Whispers of agreement turned into murmurs that then gave birth to outright spoken affirmation.

“There is no way Sophie will agree.” She tried to muster all the delicacy she had.

“We must make her agree.”

“And if she still doesn’t?”

The Master sat heavily, suddenly deflated. “If she still doesn’t, then we will honor her wishes. For the world will slip into true anarchy if the guilds begin to go against their Vicars.”

“Who would have suspected the Harvesters were lucky for their Vicar dying,” Nora whispered.

“It was certainly convenient for them,” the Master agreed, most of the table echoing the dangerous sentiment.

Florence remained at the table until the lamp glow was dim and the food had long since been finished. She listened to Masters and journeymen alike lament their situation. She listened to how they would want to do things differently.

By the time the last of them finally broke away, her mind was made up.

She knew where gunpowder would be kept. She’d know it by logic and looks alone. All good Revos were trained how to properly store their explosives.

“Florence,” Derek called after her, arm in arm with Nora. The two exchanged a look, and Nora gave a small nod, breaking away and starting in the opposite direction. Derek sprinted the distance between them.

She looked into his dark eyes, searching, waiting. She would not say the first word, not this time. He had sought her out, after all.

“You’re walking a dangerous path.”

“I’m walking the only path.” She shifted her weight, still assessing if they were, indeed, talking about the same thing. “Will the rest of them see it that way?” She gave a nod in the direction of the now-empty hall.

“I can’t say for certain…” The very idea of it made Derek uncomfortable, but he was not objecting. He had yet to speak a true word against it.

“Say for you.” Florence took a long step toward him, their toes almost touching. She ran her hands down Derek’s forearms slowly, encircling his fingers with hers. The touch demanded his attention. It was slow, but not quite sensual; demanding, but not quite heated. There was a certain life-changing weight to it that almost negated the need for a link mark. “Here, now, no one is around, Derek… What do you want, as an Alchemist?”

“I want to fight,” he whispered, as though the words themselves could damn him in some way.

“Good.” Florence squeezed his fingers.

For the first time in her life, she thought about kissing someone. She thought about closing the gap between them and placing her mouth on his, about crossing the line of familiarity into desire. It would be easy to do, almost too easy, and somewhere inside herself, she knew it wouldn’t be unwelcome.

“Why do you stand with me?” she asked, holding them in place, letting the world fall away in the gaps between her words.

“Because you see the world differently. You have a connection to the greatness that Loom was, like the elders… But you look with eyes like mine, like Nora’s, to how that will change to make a future for all of us. You’ve seen so much.” Derek swallowed. “Because you’re as undeniable as a pulse.”

“Stay with me, Derek. Stay with me. Tether the rest of them to you, and stay with me.”

“Are you sure you want this?”

“This is what I was made to do.” She let him go, allowing him to reach his own conclusions. She was satisfied.

The rest of them were chained to something: love of a guild, loyalty to a Vicar, memories of the past. Florence did not live in bondage. She had struggled for so long trying to find a place where she belonged that she had never stopped to see the innate benefits of belonging to nowhere. She could do things no one else could do. She could be things no one else could be.

Florence helped herself into the room where they kept the gun powder. The lock hung open on the door. A quiet invitation, the first “accident” in a series of many to come in the following minutes and hours.

The canister she made was simple and small. It would be a quiet shot, one with the power it needed and no more.

As she continued silently back through the city, across bridges that spanned the trees and through spiraling outer staircases, Florence cemented her resolve. She wondered what Arianna would think. The woman would undoubtedly find out. Would she be angry, or proud?

In the end, it didn’t matter. Florence wasn’t doing it for Arianna. She was doing it because she believed it was right. Because it was what Loom needed, and in the name of a cause she was willing to die for. She had set the future she thought the world needed in motion; she would accept the responsibility that came with keeping its momentum.

The door to the Vicar’s chambers was unlocked. Florence rounded the desk from behind which she had been reprimanded mere hours before. Behind it was another door that led upward to a makeshift laboratory. Magic hummed quietly in the air. The bubbling of beakers over tiny torches masked her footfalls. There was a power in sneaking, in moving unknown to all. It was a predatory rush and she wondered momentarily if Arianna still had the same feeling when she donned the coat of the White Wraith.

Florence opened the door to the uppermost level over the course of several breaths. It sighed softly, but the speed silenced any squeals from the hinges. There, sleeping under the moonlight filtered through the clouds above Loom and the thin curtain, was the Vicar Alchemist.

Florence adjusted the grip on her revolver.

Now was not the time for second guessing. Now was not the time for hesitation. There was one future before them, kill or be killed. Any who didn’t see that were a risk to the rest of them.

Strategic sacrifices had to be made.

Florence crossed the room in a few wide steps. A floorboard creaked from her unhesitant movement and the Vicar stirred. Florence raised her arm.

Sophie’s eyes opened to the barrel of a gun. Florence didn’t give her more than a breath. Her pupils barely had time to dilate in shock, to register what was happening, before it happened.

Florence squeezed the trigger.

A single shot echoed through the streets of Keel. It was the first bell to usher in an assembly the following morning, in which the Masters of the Alchemists’ Guild appointed a woman named Ethel—a woman who had been seated at the opposite end of Florence’s table the night before—as the new Vicar Alchemist. The transition was smooth, simple, and well received by the guild entire.

No one spoke of the mysterious departure of the not-Raven, not-Revolver, who had been in their midst for months. Not one Alchemist searched the airships headed for Ter.4 for a coal-skinned, ink-haired girl. No one even breathed a word about finding the assassin of the former Vicar.

Sophie’s death was a mystery, and the culprit was nothing more than a whisper on the wind.