“Why? Why not? What if it runs out? What if you are a week away from not having any water and you don’t know it? There could be a large glacier that has been melting for hundreds of years, trapped in some far mountain valley, and it’s soon to be exhausted.”
“I doubt it.” Cvareh shrugged. “Lady Lei gives the Dragons all we need to survive. She wouldn’t have our water run thin before the end of days.”
“Lady Lei, the Caregiver.”
He looked honestly surprised she knew the Goddess’s title, meriting a turn of his head.
“I’ve been talking with Cain.”
“So it would seem.” Cvareh tugged on the boco’s reins, pulling left. The creature banked away from the mountains and toward the sloping hills that flattened across the island. “Hearing him start to speak of you was a surprise.”
“I had to speak to someone or I was liable to go mad.” Arianna bit her tongue, holding in the rest of her thought: she was driven to speak to Cain because Cvareh had not come to visit her once. She would not sound so desperate.
“The surprise came more from knowing he was speaking to you in return. He holds no love for Fenthri and even less for Chimera. And, from what I hear—and saw first-hand with a dagger at my forehead—you have done little to endear yourself to him.”
“And why would I?” She snorted. “I gathered we weren’t going to be friends from the first time he laid eyes on me.”
“You seem friendly now.”
“Apparently the word ‘friends’ does have a different meaning on Nova and Loom.” She would describe her and Cain more like begrudging allies in their current state.
Cvareh chuckled. “Do you prefer his company, or mine?”
“I haven’t had much of a choice in the matter,” she reminded him.
“Even still?”
“Yours.” There was little thought in the answer, even despite the confusion and annoyance Cvareh had caused her across the past few months.
It sparked a pulse of delight in his magic that set the palms of Arianna’s hands to tingling.
Honestly, talking with Cain for the past few weeks had been nearly as thrilling as cutting off her own hands the night before. Arianna flexed her fingers, instantly regretting the analogy. They still felt strange, like phantom limbs given substance.
She had yet to confront Cvareh about their origin, but she let the matter stew. There was time yet. Now that she had freedom on Nova, she had more time for everything. Not much—Florence still needed her—but time enough. The fact that he produced hands that matched her ears connected a few dots for her all on her own, however. She was closing in the lines that explained how he’d even known of, not to mention acquired, her schematics. It meant the man who took them was somewhere close.
Arianna bared her teeth at the notion. The Dragon known as Rafansi was so very near, and she would find him.
Cvareh hissed loudly, jolting forward. “You have claws now.”
She retracted them, not even realizing she’d unsheathed them at the mere thought of the man who had betrayed her and the last resistance. “That comes with the territory of having Dragon hands.”
“Yes, well…” She saw Cvareh’s profile as he considered her hand on his waist. There was a note of recognition, a familiarity in the way he regarded it. He continued before the questions about its origins could spill from her lips. “I suppose it also comes with the territory to know how to pull your claws. You will attract unwanted conflict if you go waving them about, or digging them into people’s sides.”
“Are you going to duel me, Cvareh’Ryu?” she teased. Cain had told her in various brisk snippets—as most of their conversations went—about the importance of Dragon duels.
Cvareh laughed. It was loud and seemed to echo off the hills below and swirl like raw color in the wind. It was a different sound than he’d had down on Loom. Arianna regarded the man thoughtfully. She certainly hadn’t acted the same on Nova as she would on Loom. She was out of her element and outnumbered—an unwanted person in a foreign land. It would make sense he would’ve acted strangely on Loom in the same circumstances.
Which begot a new curiosity. What was he like here on Nova? What was the real Cvareh, and which did she favor?
“Cvareh’Ryu?” His mirth was uncontrollable.
“That is your name.”
“It is, but twenty gods, I never thought I’d hear you address me with any formality.”
“I was hardly being formal.” She’d used the title for ironic emphasis.
“That much was obvious. Still, a strange treat to hear it from your lips.” A smile was in his words, one Arianna didn’t quite understand.
“Where are we headed?” She changed the topic as the landscape beneath her began to give way to smaller towns that only grew against the far horizon.
“That down there is Abilla. They’re known for their millineries and cobblers. Some of Nova’s finest textiles come from their looms.”
The rooftops were shingled with wood, the houses made in all shapes and sizes. Arianna saw large windows and small. Bridges stretched between some; over others, ivy crept across to create a leafy walkway. The streets were cobblestone, or gravel, or packed dirt, winding like gnarled roots around the homes.
They were each coated in plaster and washed in some kind of ink, or paint, or clay. Yellow houses stood against purple ones, trimmed in vermilion or edged in ruby. The gears of her mind created smoke that clouded her head as they tried to find a pattern or logic in it. But if there was some rhyme or reason, it eluded her. It looked as though a child had spilled an architect’s models across a mossy surface, then proceeded to draw tall, thin, trees between the shorter balls of foliage connected by spindly trunks.
“See, look there.” Cvareh pointed to a river on the edge of town that had flowed down mightily from the mountains they’d started in. “They’re washing the inks from the fabrics.”
“I know what it looks like to wash ink from cloth.” Arianna rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Really?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“There’s a science, you know, to getting the right color and getting it to stick to the fibers. I learned it during my basic schooling on Ter.0.”
Cvareh was silent an acceptably somber second following the mention of the demolished Territory on Loom. “I wouldn’t have thought you studied something like dyeing fabric.”
“Why? There’s a practical methodology to it. Furthermore, sometimes you need different colors to mark things like ships or cautionary areas.”
“Practical methodology,” he repeated thoughtfully. “It would be something like that.”
“Let me guess: you do it for these impractical, gaudy rags you call clothes.” Arianna picked at his love of fashion and his clothing in the same breath.
He snorted. “For once, I can’t disagree with you. These are gaudy rags, nearly a full year old.”
She was utterly lost as to why his clothing would have some sort of expiry.