But even as Porzia orchestrated the children’s bedtime, Leo and Faraz lingered in the dining hall, standing about and chatting some more. They acted familiar with each other in a way that made Elsa uneasy, but in light of de Vries’s request for her to get along with them, she didn’t want to be rude so she stayed as well. Mostly she watched them; the boys clearly shared a long-standing friendship, unconsciously matching their tones and gestures to each other. Leo had his pocket watch out, but he was fingering it idly instead of using it to check the time.
When the children were gone, Porzia circled back around to the sphere of their conversation.
“Done?” said Faraz, glancing up at her return.
“Time for my parlor trick,” Leo boasted.
“Parlor trick?” Elsa asked, hoping her alarm didn’t show in her voice.
“He observes and deduces,” Faraz said with a slight shake of his head.
Leo clapped him on the shoulder, grinning. “Step back and give the deductive genius some space, will you?”
“You may not have noticed that Leo must be the center of attention at all times,” Porzia said dryly. Then she leaned closer to Elsa. “It’s something of an initiation around here, you see. And quite popular at parties.”
For all their posturing, Porzia and Faraz seemed not just tolerant but eager to hear Leo’s analysis. In the pause before Leo spoke, the empty dining hall fell disconcertingly silent.
“Let’s see…,” Leo said, narrowing his eyes at Elsa. “The dress is well-made but the tailoring doesn’t quite fit, so it’s likely secondhand. Not exactly proletariat, but she doesn’t come from money either. Speaks excellent Italian but pokes at the food as if it might bite back, so she was educated but cloistered—hasn’t seen much of the world yet. Oh, and hesitant with her peers. Quite reserved. I suspect she’s spent too much time around adults and not enough with those her own age.”
Elsa felt hot with embarrassment at his scrutiny, at her own awkwardness, but she held her tongue. She broke eye contact and ducked her head, looking down at her feet. “What an impressive trick.”
“Oh, look at that!” Leo crowed. “Falsely deferential. You think yourself superior, but you’re accustomed to hiding it.”
Elsa’s patience was rapidly waning. She pulled herself up to her full height and quietly said, “Engine oil beneath your fingernails.”
“What?”
“Engine oil. You spend enough time working that it’s not worth scrubbing it all the way out until the end of the day. The nails themselves are bitten down, a nervous habit, but you avoid letting other people catch you doing it. You put on a nice show of self-confidence, but secretly you worry about how other people see you.” At this, he visibly paled, but Elsa kept going.
“That pocket watch you keep fiddling with, are you planning to tuck it away anytime this week? It’s old, the silver backing a bit scratched up—a family heirloom perhaps, given to you by someone significant, someone who stays in your thoughts.” She paused, wanting to take the watch all the way to its ultimate conclusion, but decided it would be unwise to say your father is dead purely for the sake of showing off. Instead, she let her gaze travel up to meet his own. “That is just your hands. Shall I go on?”
Tight-lipped, Leo said, “You’ve made your point.”
“Excellent. I do so appreciate successful communication.”
“Quite,” he said, his tone putting worlds of meaning behind the word. He sounded embarrassed and furious and intrigued all at once.
“And no, I’m not from around here.” With satisfaction, she added, “In fact, I’m not from Earth at all.” She turned away from their shocked faces and paced unhurriedly from the room, a smile playing on her lips.
She might not be able to blend into their world as de Vries hoped she would, but when it came to verbal sparring, she could still hit the hardest. She was untouchable, the way Jumi taught her to be.
* * *
It was late by the time Alek de Vries arrived at the Order’s headquarters in Firenze. His bad hip protested as he climbed the front steps, stiff from sitting still for too long on the train ride. He was getting too old for all this excitement and intrigue. But Jumi needed him.
He located the secret lever concealed within the intricate stone facade beside the entrance, and gave it a yank. The door unlocked and swung open for him with a ratcheting click-click-click. Inside, the main floor was eerily quiet—most of the Order members must have already gone home, or else up to their guest rooms on the third floor. Gia had sent a message ahead over the wireless, though, so her husband was waiting in one of the burgundy leather armchairs that decorated the broad, flagstoned lobby.
Filippo looked up at the sound of the door and stood. He was shorter than Alek, and he had more gray in his hair and more paunch around his middle than the last time they’d met.
“Alek,” he said, “it’s good to see you. I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“It’s been a long time,” said Alek.
“Too long.” Filippo pulled him into an embrace. In their youth, Filippo had been like family to Alek. But now every time Alek visited the living brother, all he could see was the ghost of the dead one. Massimo.
It was a little easier now. After all, Filippo aged, while the memory of Massimo in Alek’s mind stayed always the same. Always in his prime, with ink on his fingers and that devil-may-care grin, achingly beautiful forever.
Alek cleared his throat. “So, what have I missed?”
“You know the Order,” Filippo replied with a rueful grin. “We can’t possibly arrive at a course of action after only a single afternoon of debate. But finding the people responsible for Montaigne’s murder is now a top priority. This matter will not go unresolved, I promise you.”
“And Jumi,” Alek corrected him. “Finding the people responsible, and rescuing Jumi.”
Filippo blinked. “Yes. Yes, of course. Jumi, too.”
Despite Filippo’s reassurance, there was no denying the doubt that began to twist in Alek’s gut. The Order had their own priorities, and in this matter, they might not be the stalwart allies Alek had expected. Perhaps Elsa was right not to rely on their assistance.
He had hoped the damaged worldbooks would simply serve to keep her occupied and safe; now he hoped she would prove him wrong. Jumi’s life might depend on it.
* * *
The bed was too soft. After an hour or two of tossing around trying to get comfortable, Elsa yanked the heavy blankets off the bed and made a cocoon for herself on the floor instead.
The clear spring sunlight woke her early, and though the exhaustion of the past two days’ events had not entirely left her, Elsa resisted the urge to roll over, cover her face with the blankets, and go back to sleep. There was work to be done.
She needed to figure out who had taken her mother. The salvaged books were her only lead, and they weren’t going to repair themselves. While Jumi might very well rescue herself, or become a beneficiary of the Order’s assistance, Elsa couldn’t rely on either of those possibilities.
She untangled herself from the blankets and stood, stretching. “Um … Casa? Are you there?”
“Yes, signorina,” Casa replied. “I am always here.”
“Would it be possible to have some food brought here, to my rooms? I’m eager to get to work,” she said, which was true, of course, though part of her was also eager to avoid Porzia’s prying questions and Leo’s overcompensating self-assurance.
By the time Elsa finished washing up at the washbasin and dressed herself, her breakfast had arrived at the door, carried by a waist-high brass bot with an arm that ended in a serving tray instead of a hand. It rolled quietly inside and used its other arm—the one with digits—to transfer the food onto the low table in front of the sofa. Then the bot turned around and made a silent, dignified exit. Elsa nibbled at the soft cheese and white bread—still warm from the oven—while considering the dilemma of the damaged worldbooks.
There was n
o way around it: she would have to repair the books by hand before she could look for clues about Montaigne’s involvement. If he had hidden notes or plans or letters inside one of the worldbooks, she wouldn’t be able to tell just from reading the text—she would have to go inside the worlds to retrieve his papers. And for that, the worldbooks needed to be fully functional. Elsa rinsed her breakfast from her fingertips and began straightaway.
First she opened the cover of each book in turn and pressed her fingertips to the paper, concentrating. None of them felt dead; they all had a bit of the tactile vibration that indicated a live worldbook, but the buzz swelled and receded as if the books were struggling for breath. It was not the steady, strong hum of a complete worldbook, a world that would be safe to enter.
Then Elsa flipped through the books page by page, noting the extent of the damage and trying not to despair. When possible, she wrote down her guesses about what the singed sections might have contained. Often, only the top line or two of a page were too badly blackened to read, sometimes only one word in the corner. Other pages were worse, and lost sentences would be difficult to reproduce with perfect accuracy.
Evaluating the condition of the books was slow work, and to patch up all the ruined sections would be even slower. She’d never tried to repair a burned worldbook before—the sheer number of pages that needed work was much greater than anything she’d attempted. To finish even one book would take her days.
Her mother could be dead in a week, for all she knew. There wasn’t time for this, but what other option did she have? Montaigne had known the abductors, but with him dead, the only way to get that knowledge was to go through his papers, which were stuck inside the damaged worlds.
An unexpected knock at the door made Elsa jump and smear the ink where she was taking notes. She sighed, sheathed the pen in its holder beside the inkwell, and got up to see who had caused the disturbance.
Elsa opened the door. Porzia strode in past her, as if she’d been invited, and asked in a casual tone, “How are you finding your stay here on Earth? Have everything you need?”
Porzia regarded her with perfect innocence, lips forming a small, polite smile. But Elsa suspected the other girl was burning with curiosity. “I’m quite fine, thank you,” she replied.
“Well, if there’s anything … particular you require, as a non-Terran, please don’t hesitate to ask.” Porzia wandered through the sitting room into the study. “Settling in already, I see.”
Elsa followed her, wary of having the other girl snooping around. She quickly closed the covers of all the books lying open on the writing desk.
“Can I help you with something?” Elsa asked, her tone a little stiff.
“You weren’t at breakfast,” Porzia said, as if this were sufficient explanation for her intrusion.
“No, I wasn’t,” Elsa agreed, watching as Porzia wandered over to the side table where Elsa had set down the Pascaline last night. She reached out to fiddle with the damaged dials, and Elsa snapped, “Don’t touch that!”
Porzia turned, giving her a raised-eyebrow look. “I hardly think my touch could ruin it any further.”
“It’s not ruined. It can be fixed,” Elsa said tightly. Her omission of who, exactly, would be doing the fixing was deliberate. No need for Porzia to know that.
Porzia sighed, turning away from the table to face Elsa. “About last night…”
Elsa raised an eyebrow of her own. “You’re here to apologize for your friends being presumptuous cads?”
“Actually, I was going to say it wasn’t entirely diplomatic of you, either. Everyone likes Leo—you won’t win any friends by humiliating him.”
Elsa pulled herself up to her full height and dropped her tone from chilly to downright arctic. “I don’t need anyone to like me, I just need them to understand I’m not to be toyed with.”
Porzia shrugged. “Just offering a bit of advice.”
“I have work to do.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Porzia swept out of the room with the same unflappable grace as always, leaving Elsa to wonder what exactly the other girl was trying to accomplish.
Porzia’s warning irked her, and even more irksome was the small twinge of worry she felt. No, she did not care to make friends with these people—they were at best a distraction, and at worst a danger to her and her mission to find Jumi. She pushed the worry aside and made herself focus.
Midday came and went, Elsa hardly noticing except to nibble at the rest of the bread and cheese when her stomach growled.
She’d started with the book she thought had the highest probability of containing relevant information—a small world scribed to serve as an office, the worldtext written in Montaigne’s own hand. Perhaps Montaigne had corresponded with the abductors ahead of time, in which case there could be letters or telegrams with identifying details.
Her own study here in Pisa was well equipped for scriptological endeavors. Fishing through the drawers and cabinets, she quickly found a sheaf of loose paper, a bottle of paper glue, and a narrow-bladed shaping razor. She began with the first damaged page, gently brushing away the charred fragments and then cutting a small triangle of new paper to match the shape of the damaged section. She slid a gluing board under the page, lined up the burned page with the patch, and carefully brushed a thin layer of glue over the edges to fuse them.
Elsa sat back to admire her work. Page one of book one, nearly finished. This was a section of mild damage, so when the glue dried, all she would have left to do would be to get out her ink and scribe in the three words missing from the top line. They wouldn’t all be so easy, but she was determined to do this. One page at a time.
Right now, though, she needed to stretch her legs, to focus her eyes and her attention on something else for a minute. Perhaps she’d take a break from the grueling work of book repairs to tinker with the Pascaline a bit.
“Casa?” she said, standing up from the chair. “Is there a place I could find a clockmaker’s toolkit, or something of the kind?”
“Why yes, signorina. Mechanists often have need of fine-sized tools. I would be happy to direct you.”
A knee-high brass bot arrived at her door as an escort, and Casa led Elsa around to a side stairwell much narrower than the main stairs in the foyer. The bot rolled to a stop at the head of the stairs, but when Elsa descended to the first floor, another bot met her there.
She followed the new bot—down a hallway and around a corner and down another hall—until it stopped in front of an empty doorway. The wood of the doorframe looked new, still raw instead of finished, and hinges had yet to be installed. A pair of bots were industriously repairing damage to the walls on either side. The first had three arms—two ending in hands and one in a hammer—and was installing wide wooden laths over a hole that went clean through the wall. The other bot had a palette knife for a hand and a can of plaster fastened to its side, and was smearing wet plaster over the recently installed lathing.
“Um,” said Elsa. “What happened?”
“Oh, that?” said Casa bashfully, as if the house had been hoping no one would notice. “Some minor repairs. A hazard of hosting so many pazzerellones, you know.”
Elsa declined to point out that she did not, in fact, know. Did they all really live in a constant state of destruction and reconstruction here? The idea sounded rather exhausting to her, but then she came from a world too small to afford destruction—every last leaf and pebble of Veldana was precious.
“So … there are tools in here?” Elsa asked, stepping through the new doorframe.
“Oh yes, signorina,” Casa assured her. “Many kinds of tools.”
The laboratory beyond had a sunken floor with half a flight of steps leading down to it from the entrance. Enormous machines hulked here and there, some of them twice as tall as a person. She stared in wonder. It took her a moment to remember to breathe, and another to remind herself that she wasn’t here to go poking around inside someone else’s inventions.
> She quashed her curiosity and tried to focus on her original intent: repairing the Pascaline. Where would the tools be stored? There were some scattered across the nearest worktable, but the surface was a far cry from organized. Elsa wondered how anyone could expect to find anything in all this mess. A tall cabinet stood against one wall, but when she opened the doors, the contents of the shelves inside seemed to lack any sense of order.
She sighed. “Aren’t you at least going to give me a hint, Casa?”
“Yes…,” Casa answered slowly. “Go back to the worktable and look under the pile of design sketches.”
Elsa lifted a corner of the messy pile of papers and peered underneath. Yes, there was something small wrapped in brown suede. She dragged it out and flipped open the leather coverings, revealing a kit of fine clockmaker’s tools.
“What are you doing in here?”
Elsa jumped. Leo stood just inside the doorway, his arms folded across his chest and his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, showing the cords of muscle in his forearms. Odd that she hadn’t heard him approach.
Feeling guilty as a pickpocket, Elsa yanked her hands away from the worktable and knotted her fingers together. If she was to keep her mechanist tendencies a secret, Leo mustn’t find out she’d come looking to borrow tools. “Sorry. I, uh … I’m afraid I must have gotten turned around. The corridors are a maze, you know.”
Leo sauntered in until he was standing on the opposite side of the table, facing her. There was a spark of deviousness shining in his eyes. “Right. Well, this is my personal laboratory and machine shop. Now you know where it is.”
Elsa’s eyes flicked up angrily, wanting to snap at Casa, but she bit her tongue. Why ever would Casa send her here, of all places? Surely there were other ways to acquire tools.
When she failed to reply, Leo quirked an eyebrow at her. “Would you like a tour of the lab? It’s mine, so naturally it’s all fascinating.”
“No, I … I didn’t mean to disturb you. I should go.” She slipped around the table and hurried past him, wanting nothing more than to be safely alone. Leo’s presence disquieted her in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Ink, Iron, and Glass Page 6