“If you could sharpen my blades while you have them, that’d be great.” Ari smiled cheerfully, patting the Alchemist on the shoulder. The girl who was taking their weapons rolled her eyes.
“Hurry up, then.” The leader was impatient, ushering them toward one of the lifts.
The gears under the platform churned to life against the pitted tracks that ran up the wall. The Alchemist was silent, focus clouding his eyes. Arianna folded her arms over her chest. She gave the appearance of being nonchalant, but Florence could feel the tension radiating off her. Then there was Cvareh. He didn’t even bother with appearances, fumbling relentlessly with the clips of his folio.
For Florence, despite all her exhaustion and her slowly waning strength, she stared in wonder at the world around her. She was getting a glimpse of the most secretive Guild in the world. These were the hallways in which Loom had been changed, the place that had cultivated the scientists who uncovered the ability to refine metal into gold, the doctors to make the first Chimera; some of the greatest thinkers of the ages had lived in these rooms.
Within them, she felt for the first time what Arianna had been telling her all along: the Loom she knew was the shadow of something grander. Every Guild was told by the Dragons what they would be. The students were told what to learn. The people were told where to study. They were kept sequestered like livestock and expected to produce, yet a mind imprisoned was not a mind that could think great thoughts.
The other Guilds regarded the Alchemists with skepticism and jokes. They were either perceived as being mad hermits, hiding in their corner of the world, muttering over their vials and experiments. Or as mad scientists, muttering over their vials and experiments. They might be a bit of both, she decided.
But if they were mad, they were mad because they kept dreaming when the rest of Loom merely slept in stasis. They pushed out others to preserve their way of life. And it was here that a rebellion could be born.
The elevator stopped at the very top of the tower. Florence stared down at the atrium. On the floor was the symbol of the Alchemists: two triangles, one pointing up and one pointing down, connected by a line—symbolizing earth and sky.
The landing led to a set of wooden doors emblazoned with the same symbol. Their guide knocked, but let himself in after only a second. Florence’s heart raced as they entered the office. The room was littered with workbenches made out of metal. Vials and beakers cluttered their surfaces. Tubes connected them, transporting bubbling liquid throughout the cluttered lab. The concrete floor was stained in some places, rough in others from various chemical spills.
“Just a second,” a woman’s voice called from somewhere in the back corner. “I’ll be with you in just one second!”
Arianna stiffened. Florence watched her hand twitch for a dagger that wasn’t there. After being nonchalant through the entire encounter, she was panicking now?
“Sorry about that, I had just gotten it to the right temperature…” A woman with coal-colored skin and ashen hair rounded the tables, weaving her way toward them through the lab. She wiped her hands on a stained apron, lifting goggles onto her forehead. They left a ring on her cheeks from having been there for an extended period of time.
The Vicar Alchemist said nothing as she locked eyes with Arianna. Arianna remained tense as well, a scowl fighting at the corners of her mouth.
“It’s you,” the woman breathed in shock. “You’re alive?”
36. Arianna
She thought she recognized the voice from the first second, but being face to face with the woman was far worse than she’d ever imagined. Arianna wished she were literally anywhere else in the world.
“It’s been some time, Sophie.” What did one say to the self-centered best friend of the dead woman she’d loved?
“It is you, then?” Sophie repeated in shock, leaning against one of her tables, almost knocking over a pipette stand in the process. “You died, two years ago…You died with the rest of them.”
“I have been called a wraith.”
“Why are you here? Did you come back to help us? Arianna, this is excellent, together we can—”
She held up her hand, stopping Sophie before she ran away with her thoughts. “I’m not here for you.” She pointed to Cvareh. “I’m just delivering him.”
“What?” Sophie looked between them in confusion. “Who’s he?”
“He’s the one we told you about,” the Alchemist who had led them there reported. “The one who claims to have a message for some sort of rebellion.”
“Drop the pretenses, Derek. These people are friends.”
Sophie was getting ahead of herself on that fact, but Arianna held her tongue on the matter. Perhaps the woman had changed with time. Believing in Sophie’s good nature and ability to change would be the ultimate proof of Florence’s influence.