“The Philosopher’s Box will mean little if all of Loom starves before it can be made.” Powell remained on his feet as well.
“If it can be made,” Dove retorted.
“It certainly can be made.” Willard pushed off on his knee, bringing himself into a standing position and fighting for the floor. “I knew Arianna as a girl, and knew her teacher. If there would ever be someone who could make such a thing, it would be her.”
She just loved being spoken about as if she weren’t there. Maybe if Arianna let them continue, she could actually sneak away and no longer be on display like some prize pig. Her fingers twitched, magic curling around her pinky. It’d be easy to illusion the room in a fog. They’d be none the wiser until she was already on a trike.
“If it so easily can be made, how did none of your guild make it before?” Dove didn’t back down. “Or have you? And did you sit on the knowledge for years, locked away in your ticking halls?”
“If anyone had locked it away, it would have been an Alchemist,” a master seated behind Dove remarked dryly.
“Certainly not a technology we have had in our possession.” Vicar Ethel didn’t rise to refute the notion.
“If it exists at all.” Dove gave a look back to Arianna.
She knew when she was being goaded. The question was, should she let herself be? Arianna looked to Florence, who was allowing the volley of words from the center of the floor. Florence stared up at her with what Arianna hoped she read correctly as an expectant look.
Arianna rose to her feet.
“When I was seven, I left Ter.0 under the tutelage of Master Oliver. We travelled together around the world and ultimately back to the Rivets’ Guild.”
“I didn’t ask for your life’s history.” Dove folded her arms over her chest.
“Let her speak.” Powell, unnecessarily, came to Arianna’s defense.
“Master Oliver, as some of you may or may not know, was the one who occupied the seat of knowledge for the Rivets on the Council of Five for the last rebellion,” Arianna continued, as though Dove nor Powell had said anything. There were some whispers at the mention of the Council of Five. “If you think talking on the Council of Five is still taboo, you should leave the room now. You’re all complicit in this new rebellion, and that will carry a far greater punishment than speaking on the last.”
No one moved, but the room was thoroughly silenced.
“Was the box developed for the last rebellion?” Powell asked.
“Indeed.” The metallic contraption that occupied her chest, for the first time, seemed loud, as if it wanted to drown out her words—to conceal itself forever under her skin and harness and coat. Arianna pressed onward. She would utter this once, and then never again. “I worked with other guild journeymen in the rebellion on the box. We struck close a few times, but the difficulty lay in finding a way for the blood to remain clean, and the Fenthri body free of rot.
“That was when Eva—” Arianna touched her wrist where Eva’s link mark was dated in ink underneath her skin. “—a fellow Alchemist in the rebellion . . . made a discovery.
“We worked with a Dragon then, one who claimed to seek Loom’s liberation. Who claimed to be on our side. He brought a flower from the sky world of Nova.”
“A flower?” Willard clarified.
“Just so,” Arianna affirmed. “Eva noticed that her reagents didn’t deteriorate in the presence of the flower.”
“Why?” Of course the Vicar Alchemist would be the one to inquire.
“I confess . . . I never fully understood it,” Arianna admitted. “But, together, we found a way to temper gold with this particular flower.” She withheld the name for now; it was too early yet to give them key details. She and Florence still held power as long as they held pertinent information.
“And how does all this relate to the box?” Dove asked.
“Don’t you see?” Willard couldn’t stop himself. “A metal that purifies the blood by merely being in its presence.” He looked back to her. “Do the qualities imbued by tempering wear off?”
“They haven’t yet.” Arianna saw his somewhat confused look and knew it was time to elaborate. “It was critical for all blood to pass through the box continually, to be purified and prevent rot. All blood passes through one location.”
Arianna brought her thumb to her chest.
It was a dark sort of amusement seeing who in the room could follow the relatively simple logic she was presenting them. Willard was the first to get it, followed by the other Rivets. Dove seemed the first, and one of only two, to get it on the Ravens’ behalf. It gave her some faith that all the vicars seemed to put it together.
“Eva performed the surgery, both to implant the box and the subsequent organs to test that I would not fall.” Arianna drew the sharper of the two daggers crossed at the small of her back. “Naturally, I cannot show you what the box looks like at this moment, as I vitally need it where it is. But I can assure you that the operation continues to be a success.”
Arianna wrapped her fingers around the blade and drew it quickly across her palm. She held up her hand for the room to see. Blood, the color of molten gold, dripped from her palm and, in true Dragon fashion, quickly evaporated when exposed to the air. Her wound magically healed over; just like that, all signs of her being the Perfect Chimera disappeared.
All signs, excluding the shock in every set of eyes around the room.
“Traitor to Loom!” One of the Revolver journeymen was on his feet, finger pointed at Arianna.
That certainly wasn’t the reaction she’d been expecting.
“You had this weapon and kept it from us? We could have been fighting the Dragons all along.”
“I do not think a Revo should point fingers about concealing weapons from Loom.” Helen’s biting remark was thrown from the back corner but echoed throughout the whole room.
“Do not speak of what you don’t understand, little crow,” a master Revo cautioned.
“I kept it from Loom because I did not think we had the capability to unite together to use it effectively.” Arianna didn’t need to defend her decision, but she couldn’t stop either. She looked to the vicars, rather than the boy. She didn’t care if some little pistol understood, but the vicars must.
“And look at us proving you right . . .” Her Dragon ears picked up Powell’s murmur. She was liking him more and more by the moment.
“Furthermore, Perfect Chimera would mean war—something I didn’t think Loom could stand more of.”