“What are you expecting?” She put aside the odd excitement at the prospect of the day’s events. There was work to be done, and Florence needed her focused.
“I know Vicar Harvester will be here. The Vicar Raven may be a question, with all the help the guild is giving to collect up Loom and bring them here . . . I heard Vicar Rivet and Vicar Alchemist arrived last night.”
Arianna grimaced at the very idea of seeing Sophie again.
“What?” Florence didn’t miss the distasteful expression. Then again, Arianna had done almost nothing to hide it.
“I went quite a few years without seeing Sophie. I could go quite a few more,” she admitted. This was Florence, after all. The one person Arianna would make the Philosopher’s Box for. If Arianna couldn’t trust Flor with the truth, who could she trust?
“That won’t be an issue.” Florence adjusted the holster that held her guns on both sides of her ribs.
“It won’t? She didn’t make it through the Dragon’s attack?” Arianna didn’t feel bad in the slightest. Sophie was intolerable and, had the roles been reversed, Arianna had no doubt Sophie would be thinking the same thing about her.
“She survived. An accident after did her in, I believe.”
“An accident?” The notion was almost delicious. Sophie, with her ability to stubbornly survive anything, done in by some innocuous happenstance. “Of what kind?”
Florence shrugged. “Not sure. You know how the Alchemists are . . . ever the secretive bunch.”
Ari knew all too well. It had taken her years to penetrate Eva’s shell and get the woman to trust her enough to share her research. So, she let the matter with Flor drop entirely, and put it from her mind as one small, golden lining to the whole madness that had become her world.
They rounded into the entrance hall. Even at this hour, people continued in a steady stream, led by Ravens and ushered into the various towers the Rivets had reinforced enough to be usable.
“What a mess we are,” Arianna murmured.
“Maybe so . . . But to be a mess, we have to exist. Which is more than a lot of Loom can say.”
Arianna kept quiet from then on, watching Florence interact with the people who seemed to know her already. They greeted her respectfully and bowed their heads and tipped their hats as she passed by.
And the day had only just begun.
“We’ll be in here.” Florence motioned to an open set of doors. “There are similar halls in the other towers, but this one was in the best condition and still happened to have working doors.”
“I remember studying in here, once.” Arianna paused to run her hand over the wood of the door. It was dusty and dented, but managed somehow to hold all the memories of her time on Ter.0 as a child and a young adult.
“Did you?” Florence paused as well.
“I was just a girl . . . and it was only for one lecture. This had been the Alchemists’ tower, so the talk took place in here.” Arianna could barely remember what was said and hated herself for the fact.
“Perhaps, someday, we will see lectures in here again.”
“Perhaps.” Such a day seemed so far away given their present circumstances that it was pointless to even think of.
At tight capacity, the room could hold maybe one hundred people. Large, but not the sort of room that would dwarf the speaker on the floor. Arianna and Florence walked down a sloping aisle that stretched along one of the five points of the pentagon-shaped space.
The floor was tiered in traditional lecture hall-style seating, with the occupants intended to sit directly on the edge of the tier, their feet over the edge. At the lowest point, where the lecturer would stand to address the room, the five guild symbols had been painted, one in front of each side of the pentagon.
“Florence?” A man’s voice drew the girl’s attention.
“Vicar Powell, it’s so good to see you again.”
Her apprentice, the girl she had pulled from the Underground, shaking and scared, now stood a woman who was bold and brave and capable. Florence was speaking with a vicar as though they were casual friends; Arianna had nothing more to do than stand to the side and watch.
“And good to see you as well.” Powell clasped hands with Florence. “I heard there was some turmoil at the Alchemists’ Guild shortly after your arrival.”
“I heard so as well. Such a shame. Happened just after I left to come to Ter.0. I have yet to meet the new Vicar Alchemist . . .”
Arianna took another step closer as a few Ravens began to trickle in. She was honestly surprised they weren’t late. The Ravens were notorious for it.
“And this must be the infamous Rivet.”
Arianna knew when she was being spoken about and was pulled immediately back to the conversation.
“Yes, this is Arianna, Master Rivet under Master Oliver,” Florence introduced them semi-formally.
Arianna clasped hands. “It’s good to meet you, Vicar Powell.” At least, she hoped it was.
“I owe a lot to Powell.” Arianna took note when Florence dropped his title, and further notice that Powell didn’t seem to mind. Arianna wasn’t sure if it was a sign of some deep familiarity . . . or if Nova had ruined her when it came to reading into titles too much. “He was the one who helped me escape the Harvesters’ Guild when the Dragon King attacked.”
Arianna immediately saw the man with the circled sickle tattoo on his cheek in a new light. “Thank you, truly. If anything had happened to Florence . . .” She trailed off, barely able to bring herself to think of the idea.
“A decision that seems to be reaffirmed as wise with every passing moment.” Powell looked only at Arianna now. She noticed a shift in him, from when he looked anywhere else to when he looked at her, as if she was different than the rest of the room.
These were the eyes of a man who knew what she was.
“And the best thanks you could give me is what Florence has already promised,” he continued. “The Philosopher’s Box.”
Arianna nodded. She didn’t have any other words. After all, she had spent most of her life pursuing the box in secret, then fighting to keep its existence carefully guarded. Now that people knew, she had to develop a new toolkit, and fast, for managing the topic.
“Vicars sit on the lowest tier.” Florence had the insight to save Arianna from herself. “Then elder masters behind them, younger masters behind that, and every guild is allowed a handful of journeymen to sit along the back.”
“I’ll take my seat, then.” Arianna started for the Rivet’s section.
Florence grabbed her arm and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Sit on the edge? I may need you to speak . . .” She glanced around the filling room. “After all, I got them all to agree to come because of you.”
“I understand, Flor.” The last thing Arianna wanted was to cause Florence to lose esteem with those gathered.
She heeded the girl’s advice. She sat four rows back from the floor, at the very end. She didn’t want to be in the foreground. She was the White Wraith, a member of the last rebellion. Her whole life had been lived in secret—a quality she realized she no longer shared with Florence.