“No, but it seems you do.”
“I’m going to return with help,” Cain vowed.
Cvareh gave a solemn nod. “See that you do.”
Raku took to the skies and soared higher and higher before becoming nothing more than a speck. The boco was almost as fast as a glider, and they needed that speed now.
Cvareh dropped his eyes back to the earth.
Divots where the flowers had been rooted nestled between ridges of upturned earth. They’d been uprooted, not trampled, not burned. Why? Why would Rok remove them? Why waste the time, when total destruction was so much more efficient?
Cvareh tried to make sense of it. Was it possible that Arianna had negotiated with someone else? He suddenly imagined the flowers already in her possession, acquired via whisper link with some other Dragon. He couldn’t stop himself from looking to where they had made love on the stone steps of the temple before his patron and the pantheon above.
“She wouldn’t,” he whispered, needing more than anything to believe it was true. “Saran, take to the skies.” Cvareh gave a whistle and gestured the command. The bird took off.
Cvareh raised a hand to his ear, still staring at that spot. She had given herself to him, and he to her.
He uttered a specific, magic word, and felt the tension spring up between them.
“I told you not to contact me.” The snappish words were the first he’d heard of her voice in months and somehow, despite their edge, he found them lovely.
“I know. Don’t break the link.”
The subtle hum of magic filled his ears. There was no retort and the connection between them didn’t drop. Cvareh took a deep breath.
“It’s important.”
“It must be.” Her voice had already softened.
“The Flowers of Agendi are being uprooted.”
“What? By whom?” Her surprise reassured him that there was no auxiliary method she’d used to acquire them.
“Who else?”
“Rok?”
“I think so. I’m at the temple now. I’ll wait and see who comes.” Cvareh leaned against one of the pillars at the top of the stone steps, looking over half the barren earth. “Do you know anyone who could’ve betrayed us?”
There was a long pause that said more than her actual answer. “I’m not sure.”
“But you suspect.”
“I do.”
He was impressed at how well their conversation was going, though everything in him told him not to push things too far. “I’m going to do everything in my power to protect the flowers, but you need to get them sooner rather than later.”
“Understood.”
There it was: the end of their interaction, the moment when everything was going to drop. “One more thing,” he added hastily.
“What?” He was relieved to hear more curiosity than annoyance in her voice.
What was he going to say? I love you still? Cvareh knew better; she had no interest in such professions.
“Be careful.”
“You too.”
The connection ended.
Cvareh walked under the shade of the temple’s roof, proceeded to the far wall, and wedged himself in the corner behind the statue of Lord Agendi. He would wait there to discover what force was disrupting the flowers that were so special to them both.
Arianna
He contacted her.
She had asked him not to. She had told him that if he valued anything about them, he would not.
She had excused herself from the manufacturing line when she felt his whisper and now stood in a small side room adjacent to the floor. Arianna stared at the line through the window. It was beginning to run well. Their defect rate was almost low enough now to call it a proper line. But it would be worth nothing if they didn’t have the flowers.
Her Dragon had paid attention to that. As dense and inept as he was at a great many things, he truly understood how critical the flowers were for them. A smile crept on her lips.
She shouldn’t be smiling. It betrayed all reason. After all, he’d done what she’d explicitly asked him not to, and the flowers they needed were being destroyed. Not to mention there was still the matter of the Dragon attacks and the schematics she needed to send to Florence.
But her heart was pounding. Her mind was alert and ready. Even as Arianna the Rivet, she experienced the acute sensations normally reserved for Arianna the White Wraith—those that meant something big was coming.
“Charles!” she called, storming back toward the line. “Charles!”
“Yes, here!” A hand waved from the far end of the line and Arianna sprinted to the other master. She gripped his elbow and pulled him to the side. Over all the noise of gears churning and machines whirring, they could barely hear one another, let alone be overheard by anyone else.
“Charles, where do the Rivets keep gliders?”
“Excuse me?”
“I know you keep them here.”
“There’s a hangar, just outside of Garre proper . . .” His voice trailed off and he gave her a look likely intended to be probing. When she remained silent, he came outright with it. “What do you need it for?”
“Tell Willard I’ve gone to get him the flowers we need.”
“From Nova?”
“The same. We have enough boxes ready; we can begin stage two.” Arianna paused, thinking of the gun she’d been working on for weeks. “I’m going to leave out some gun schematics in the masters’ hall. See that they’re sent to Florence.”
“To Florence? Not the Vicar Revolver?” Charles seemed confused. The demand was unorthodox.
“Yes, to Florence—only Florence,” she affirmed without hesitation.
“When will you be back?” He glanced nervously at the line.
“When I can,” she said. “You’re fine. You understand the box.”
“The code to the hangar is red, thirty-two, five, orange.”
“Heard.” Arianna quickly stepped away, betraying the urgency of the situation.
He caught her elbow. “And be careful.”
“I—”
“Truly, Arianna, be careful.” Charles gripped her arm tightly a moment before letting go. “The world needs you alive right now.”
The words “right now” stuck in her mind as she ran up through the halls, back to Master Oliver’s room. They echoed like a quiet promise as she grabbed the gun prototype and laid out the schematics for Charles to find later. They continued to replay as she sought out one of the gliders in the far hangar with as much speed as she could manage.
Right now, the world needed her as Arianna the inventor and crafter of the Philosopher’s Box. But when the fighting was over, when the rebellion succeeded, she could retire back to obscurity. She could be whomever she wanted and answer to no one, as she’d done all her life in the years leading up to this rebellion.
But before she could slip back between the cracks of time and memory, she needed to see Loom’s victory secured. And that meant going back to Nova.
Cvareh
He had been waiting for an hour that felt like eternity when Cain arrived.
His friend and a female Rider unknown to Cvareh landed, dismounted, and started down the path toward the temple. Cvareh stood, emerging from the late hour shadow into the remaining sunlight.
“Send away your boco,” he called to them.