“She did something more than that,” Powell interjected. “She united Loom.” The Vicar Harvester held up his hand, drawing a circle in the air around his palm. “Five guilds, once separate like fingers, united once more as a singular entity.” He curled his hand into a fist.
The five guilds of Loom—Florence had always imagined them like one great chain, but perhaps they were more like a hand. They could move separately, but their strength came from banding together, from seeing that they were one unified force.
“I support her.” Vicar Ethel finally made up her mind. All eyes fell to Bernard.
“I’m outvoted.” He shrugged. “My opinion hardly matters.”
“It matters to me.” Florence waited to continue until she was sure the whole of his attention was on her. “You are one of only two masters. I will need your help, leadership, and insight. I will not take up this mantle surrounded by bad blood.”
He squinted at her, and Florence wondered what he was searching for. She knew nothing about the man, so she didn’t know what to portray. Even if she did, she was too tired to fabricate anything.
“Had it been you and Gregory alone and you knew his gun was defective, would you still have tried to warn him?”
“Yes.” Despite her honest answer, Bernard’s eyebrows rose and he looked even more skeptical. “He was the Vicar Revolver. I would have tried to save his life even if it meant pointing out his mistake.”
“And if he still didn’t listen?”
“Then I would have let him die. As the Vicar Revolver, he must be held responsible for his own mistakes, even if they cost his life.”
“And you? Will we hold you accountable with your life?”
“I would have it no other way.” A bit of her Raven shone through, and Florence smiled wildly. “Isn’t that the way of the Revolver? Taking life in your hands and accepting what happens if you drop it?”
Bernard continued to scrutinize her, but finally gave a nod and left the room. On his way out, he said, “You have my support.”
There was a gravity to the way the door clicked closed. It was as if the matter was deemed finished before Florence had even wrapped her mind around it. Had that really just happened?
“Let us hold a tribunal tomorrow, when you’re feeling stronger,” Powell suggested. “We need to go over the status of the Philosopher’s Boxes and how we can manufacture your guns, in addition.”
“Right. Send me Shannra.” Florence tried to keep her voice strong. She felt a tempest of emotions, but none of them was hesitation at being named the Vicar Revolver. “She can whisper to Arianna for me.”
The room cleared and Florence found herself alone for one very long minute. She could do nothing more than stare at her hands in shock. Somehow, she’d managed to keep herself level, composed, in control, but now her bones felt like they were trying to rattle her flesh into gelatin.
She curled and uncurled her fingers into fists, thinking of Powell’s metaphor. If the guilds were like hands, then she, too, must be. There was a part of her that was scared and it was no less or more than the part of her that was thrilled. Nerves flourished within the confident woman who knew she was about to step into the most important role of her life.
She inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. Her hands balled into fists. Like the competing parts within her, she would bring all of Loom together as one.
The door opened and Shannra practically bounded in with excitement. “I just heard!”
“News travels fast.” Florence smiled faintly.
Shannra sat on the edge of the low table Florence had been laid out on. “I’m sure you wanted to be the first to tell me.”
“So don’t be upset, hm? Especially because now that you have been told, I need you to whisper to Arianna. I must tell her what’s happened with the gun.”
“I am at your service, Vicar Revolver.”
She very much liked the way Shannra purred the words “Vicar Revolver.” Florence reached up a hand and cupped the curve of the cheek she so adored.
“I do like the sound of that.”
“There’s something else you should know.” Shannra sat on the edge of her bed, brushing Florence’s hair from her face. “There was a whisper while you were out. You’re not the only one with a new title.”
“What?”
“It seems she’s killed Louie. We’re all reporting to the Queen of Wraiths now.”
“Killed Louie?” Florence repeated, wondering what could’ve possessed Arianna to go so far. “Don’t we need him?”
“She seems to think otherwise.”
Florence struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. Just what was Arianna doing?
Shannra raised her hand to her ear, but Florence tugged it away before she could activate the whisper link to one of Louie’s—Arianna’s—lackeys.
“It can wait one more second,” Florence said, pulling the other woman toward her. She claimed Shannra’s mouth and felt her lover relax into the kiss. Florence herself relaxed for what felt like the first time in ages, despite the weight of all her new responsibilities. That was Shannra’s power, or perhaps the power of them coming together.
Florence would tell Arianna—she must. But vicars did not jump to associate with those who ruled the underworld, and she—Florence, the runaway Raven who had been decreed to die—was a vicar now.
PART TWO
Arianna
Her golden cabling whizzed through her harness with a precise zip.
The clang of gold on metal as her clip slid along the railing came to a hard stop, Arianna swung around a low smokestack at breakneck speeds two seconds after the initial churning of gears ceased. Three seconds after that, a glider whizzed around one of the giant main houses of the refinery hall. To make the jump to the glider, Arianna had to know the glider’s approximate rate of speed, her terminal velocity mid-swing, and the cusp where the two would meet.
Numbers like those were all child’s play.
She soared through the air on a collision course with the glider. A shining corona coated the Dragon’s skin, so Arianna’s daggers were sheathed. During her first stint on Nova, a Dragon had pointed out something pivotal to her: The corona was designed to protect from harm, and it was designed by Fenthri. So, the Fenthri engineers—who were geniuses to develop such a magical field—did so to protect from Loom’s weaponry: metals, bullets, blasts.
There was never any accounting for bone.
Bone was just what protruded from both of Arianna’s fingertips—bone in the shape of giant talons, forged by magic and hardened by the Dragon hands she’d stolen from a man who had worked against Loom until his dying breath. Now, she’d use that same magic to sculpt Loom’s future from the flesh that shredded beneath her palms.
The Rider had only a moment to look up in shock as Arianna landed atop him. Her claws dug into his shoulder and neck, shearing flesh from muscle and muscle from bone. Tendons snapped; she savored his look of shock in the moments before he released the handholds, sending them both tumbling through the air.