Mist, Metal, and Ash

by Gwendolyn Clare

  * * *

  Elsa sat cross-legged on the floor of Pasca’s plush prison and waited for Aris to regain consciousness. At first she’d tried to move him to the divan, but his limp weight proved too much for her alone. So the carpet it was for them both. She dabbed at his forehead with a damp cloth, which probably wasn’t doing anything useful but nonetheless seemed appropriate.

  Eventually he stirred, and when his eyes opened, he blinked blearily up at her.

  “There you are,” she said. “Welcome back to the land of the conscious.”

  He slurred, “Wha did you…”

  “Sorry about all that,” she said, setting aside the damp cloth. “I have a weak spot for Leo, as you well know.”

  “Leo? Where—”

  “He left with Pasca.” At this Aris attempted to sit up, agitated, but Elsa pushed him back down. “Relax, there’s no point. He has a five-hour head start—they could be anywhere by now.” She hadn’t expected Aris to stay asleep so long; Faraz must have gotten a bit overenthusiastic with the potency.

  “You knocked me out,” Aris said indignantly, just now piecing together the memories.

  “Mm, and I’m sure this violation of your trust comes as a terrible shock, given that you never trusted me in the first place,” she said. “Besides, I owed you one for that time your sleeping gas knocked me out.”

  “When we took your mother? That was a lifetime ago,” he scoffed. “I thought you came here to bury the hatchet.”

  “That was last month, and don’t pretend you didn’t know I came here for Leo. But now that I’ve discharged my duties to him, I am … free.” Even Elsa could no longer tell where the truth ended and the lies began. She had sent Leo back home to Faraz and Rosalinda, as promised. And if the implication was, free to be with Aris, was that not also technically accurate?

  Aris propped himself up, with more care and deliberation this time. “‘Free’ is such a delicious word, don’t you think? How do you say it in Veldanese?”

  “Hmm … there’s no exact word, though the phrase weh iket-nenu veralsa comes close in practical usage.”

  “Weh iket-nenu veralsa,” Aris repeated. “What’s the literal translation?”

  Elsa just smiled. It meant, Never is the white guy coming back.

  18

  TO UNDERSTAND IS TO FORGIVE.

  —Blaise Pascal

  Leo stepped out of the portal onto the train platform in Riomaggiore and heaved a sigh of relief.

  Vincenzo had met up with them almost immediately—he must have been hiding in the valley, keeping an eye on the fortress—and gave Leo a receiver cleverly disguised as a portal device. After the long walk into town, Leo had used the receiver to home in on Elsa’s supplies, hidden behind a crate in a storage area inside the clock tower. He’d opened the portal using coordinates from the doorbook, but the doorbook itself needed to stay behind in Trento with Vincenzo—otherwise Elsa would’ve been stranded in the Austrian Empire.

  Which meant that if this portal hadn’t worked, Leo and Pasca would’ve been the stranded ones.

  A cool breeze off the water brought the salt-scent of the sea, and Leo watched his brother breathe deep of it. Riomaggiore was still cloaked in night, but the sky behind the rough hills to the east was starting to pale. The clockwork creature stuck to Pasca’s side protectively, though she looked around in wonder at everything, equally impressed with the vast ocean and the quaint little village.

  Leo checked his clothes and discovered a bit of luck: the bills stuffed forgotten in his trouser pocket were Sardinian currency. He’d never spent enough time in Trento to bother exchanging them for Austrian money.

  “We can get some breakfast in town and then take the morning train to Corniglia.” Porzia had left a note with the doorbook instructing Elsa not to return to Casa della Pazzia under any circumstances. “You must be exhausted after all that hiking around the Trentino countryside, yeah?”

  Pasca did not reply. Leo realized his brother had his eyes closed, facing into the sea breeze, and did not even know Leo had spoken. Pasca was deaf.

  The clockwork creature had heard him, though, and while she did not seem to comprehend, she nonetheless touched Pasca’s shoulder to catch his attention. Pasca glanced up at her, then turned an expectant gaze upon Leo.

  In that moment, Leo would have traded a limb for the Veldanese talent at languages. To get his little brother back from the jaws of death, physically here and yet unable to communicate … it made Leo feel as if he’d swallowed ground glass.

  Pasca had been only seven years old the last time Leo had laid eyes upon him. He didn’t look fourteen now, though simple math insisted he must be. Perhaps the stasis chamber—the one Ricciotti had used on Jumi—was originally invented with someone else in mind. Either way, it was clear Pasca had been through hell, and Leo could not even ask him what he needed.

  He decided he’d better at least try to let Pasca know his plan for their immediate future. He pointed at his mouth, then gestured at the train tracks.

  Pasca narrowed his eyes, confused.

  Leo suppressed a sigh and tried again, holding up a finger to indicate first, food and two fingers for second, train ride.

  Pasca’s expression opened with comprehension, and he nodded.

  That was something; that was a start at least. Now that Leo had liberated Pasca from Aris’s custody, there was no choice but to make this work. His little brother would be his whole world now.

  * * *

  Leo couldn’t admit how terrified he was to return until he found himself in the grand hall surrounded by a cluster of excited children shouting questions. He spotted Faraz the instant his best friend entered the room, and as Faraz’s long strides ate up the distance between them, a small part of Leo wanted to freeze time, his dread at what would come next too intense to face. But then those familiar lanky arms were embracing him, and Leo’s throat tightened. He hadn’t ruined his closest friendship, after all.

  “Leonardo Garibaldi!” A voice echoed in the deep, shadowed recesses of the entrance hall. Faraz let go of him, the children fell silent, and all eyes turned to the archway where Porzia stood, fists against hips.

  Porzia crossed the expanse of floor as if her fury were like the pressure in a steam chamber, powering her. “How dare you. How dare you!” Leo stiffened, and Faraz pulled back from him a step, as if instinct demanded he withdraw out of range of her ire.

  “Don’t call me Garibaldi,” Leo growled.

  She arched an eyebrow. “What should I call you then?”

  “‘Trovatelli’ will do just fine,” he said, with a raw finality in his voice. The surname Trovatelli meant foundling. Orphan. It was the alias he’d grown up using before he knew his father’s real identity; to reclaim it now had layers of meaning he hoped she’d understand.

  Porzia sniffed, determined not to soften so easily. “Don’t think this is over—I’m not done with you yet.” She turned her gaze upon his traveling companions. “Where is Elsa?”

  Leo winced. “She stayed behind.”

  “You’re saying you left Elsa there,” Porzia said flatly. “Alone with your megalomaniacal father.”

  Guilt bloomed in his chest, but he said, “Vincenzo’s keeping an eye on things. And anyway, it was her decision.”

  “Unbelievable,” Porzia muttered.

  Faraz pointed out, “She did promise to pursue the editbook, first and foremost.”

  “Faraz, I’m shocked—shocked, I say—that you’re rushing to his defense,” Porzia answered, voice dripping with sarcasm. She looked again at the clockwork creature and at Pasca, as if truly noticing him for the first time. “Leo … who is this?”

  Leo’s mouth pressed into a thin line. The words didn’t want to come out. Finally he managed to say, “This is my brother, Pasca.”

  Porzia stared, stunned. Beneath all his gruesome modifications, Pasca looked pale and tired, and something in Porzia’s expression softened. “Olivia?” she called.

  The girl see
med to appear at Porzia’s elbow as soon as her name was spoken. “Yes?”

  “Will you please take Leo’s brother upstairs and find him a quiet place to rest?”

  Leo twitched at the word quiet but decided it wouldn’t be prudent to correct her on the irrelevancy of quiet to a boy who could not hear. Olivia gently coaxed Pasca and the creature to follow her, taking the boy by his mechanical hand and smiling at him. Leo felt relieved at the thought of having help taking care of Pasca … followed immediately by deep shame at his own relief.

  As Pasca and company left the hall, a dark-skinned stranger passed them; the clockwork creature leaned curiously toward the young man, who squeezed against the wall to give her a wide berth. Porzia peeled away to intercept him, and from her gestures she was explaining the situation to the new boy.

  Leo frowned and asked Faraz, “Who’s that?”

  “Elsa’s friend, Revan,” Faraz said.

  “Elsa doesn’t have any other friends—we’re literally the only people she knows on the planet.”

  “From Veldana,” Faraz explained, giving Leo a quizzical look. “Where has your deductive genius gone? Is this the real Leo, or an automaton replacement?”

  “Oh,” Leo said, feeling stupid. “In my defense, he doesn’t have the eyes.”

  “Why would you assume all Veldanese have green eyes?”

  Leo shrugged off the question, too busy trying to remember. Hadn’t Elsa said something about how Leo wasn’t the first boy she’d seen with his shirt off? His scowl deepened. “So … wait. Define ‘friend.’”

  Faraz laughed. “Sorry for doubting you—you’re definitely our Leo.”

  * * *

  After Pasca had rested, they took over the long table in the dining room and spent the afternoon on the difficult task of establishing communications. Pasca’s mechanical right hand seemed quite dexterous when he signed, but it lacked the muscle memory for writing, so he could only write in the jerky fashion of a child first learning to hold a pen. That was sufficient, at least, to write a word in big, blocky letters, and then sign the same word, teaching Leo the visual language he now relied upon.

  Leo was not a fast learner; language had never been his strength. And though hope crested like a wave when he learned Pasca could still speak aloud, that same hope came crashing down as he realized his brother was painfully self-conscious of speaking words he could not hear.

  Leo had been an older brother again for mere hours, and already it overwhelmed him. How was he supposed to take care of this child who felt like a stranger, with whom he couldn’t even speak?

  He rose and left the table, needing a moment to himself, but Porzia followed him out into the empty entrance hall.

  She folded her arms tight over her ribs. “You haven’t explained why you turned on us yet.”

  “It was a deal to protect Elsa—a foolish deal.” Leo scuffed the toe of his boot against the floor. “Your note didn’t have any details about what happened at Casa della Pazzia. Is everyone safe?”

  “Do you care, one way or the other?” Porzia gibed.

  “Of course I do.”

  “The younger children are locked in the nursery, and Mamma and Burak stayed behind. We’ve had no word from them.”

  “Well, thank you for taking in my brother and me, despite the terrible timing.”

  Porzia gave him a glacial stare. “Pasca is welcome to stay with us. I haven’t decided about you yet.”

  Leo let the threat go. He knew her too well; if she were going to throw him out, she wouldn’t have hesitated so long. “I don’t know what to do for Pasca. He’s been locked away and experimented on for half his life—is that something a person can ever recover from?”

  “He’s safe here for now.” She sighed. “The rest we’ll figure out in time.”

  Would they, though? Was any amount of care and patience enough to erase the horrors of the past? Not in Leo’s experience. Listlessly, he said, “It might have been better if Aris had let him die.”

  Porzia’s eyes went wide with shock, and then she slapped him across the cheek. “Don’t you dare say that, not ever! No matter what’s happened to his body, your brother is still in there.”

  Leo raised a hand to rub his stinging cheek. “He used to love scriptology. Now he can’t even hear, let alone write cleanly enough to scribe. What sort of a life is that?”

  “Are you so blinded by your father as to think a person’s worth can only be measured in madness? That to be silent is to be less than whole? Olivia knows that is not so, and she’s only twelve. Grow up, Leo.”

  Leo didn’t have time to formulate a response, because at that moment Sante burst in through the front doors, his eyes wild with excitement. “There’s an airship coming over the mountains!”

  “An airship!” Porzia said sharply. Airships did not visit tiny, remote villages like Corniglia. “We have to get the children inside.”

  Leo grabbed his rapier from where he’d left it by the front doors and bolted outside, a step behind the others. Porzia was yelling at Sante to stay, and Sante was rushing to keep up with her, yelling back that he could help.

  And then Leo caught sight of it: the airship skimmed close over the rolling peaks of the Apennines, the landscape seeming to dwarf it at first, but it grew larger and larger as it aimed straight for the ruins. Great mechanical wings extended out from the sides of the gondola, sailcloth stretched over jointed metal frames, and cold panic flooded Leo like ice water in his veins. Aris’s airship.

  Hovering above the clearing where the children had been playing, the airship opened its belly and let down half a dozen ropes like tentacles reaching for the earth. Black-clad soldiers rappelled to the ground below, armed with rapiers and military sabers, moving with the precision of Carbonari training.

  At least they didn’t have guns. Was that a sign Aris didn’t want his men using lethal force? Or simply a sign of his hubris?

  Leo spotted Revan near the trees north of the ruins, swinging his sling in a blur of gathering momentum, and he couldn’t help but grin. If the Veldanese kid was as competent as he looked with that thing, the invaders were going to be sorry they didn’t bring ranged weapons. Leo, on the other hand, ran to intercept them head-on, buying Porzia the time to frantically herd the children inside.

  He met the nearest soldier sword-to-sword, and after only three parries he made an opening in his opponent’s defense. Leo ran him through and left him coughing blood and dying in the dirt. He couldn’t afford to dwell on what he’d done; for now he was nothing but the weapon Rosalinda had trained him to be. So he followed the song of adrenaline in his ears and moved on to his next target.

  Leo dispatched another enemy, then looked up for the next. Halfway across the clearing, he spotted Sante closing in on an attacker with a rapier he’d stolen off a corpse. God, what was the boy thinking? Leo’s feet moved, trying desperately to close the distance even as his brain worked out the cold calculation of how long it would take a Carbonari-trained fighter to disarm a thirteen-year-old.

  Sunlight glinted off Sante’s weapon as it spun out of his hand, and the boy went down in a splash of red. Stabbing the attacker in the back was almost an afterthought for Leo; all that mattered was the deep gash the man’s saber had sliced across Sante’s torso.

  Leo dropped his rapier and fell to his knees beside Sante. He pressed his handkerchief to the wound, but the cloth was too small and soaked through in seconds; Sante made awful groaning sounds, eyes glassy with shock.

  How was it possible to feel this helpless? Where was Porzia, or Faraz, or anyone? Suddenly Leo was sweating and shaking, and he was eleven years old again in a house on fire, pulling the pocket watch off his father’s corpse, or so he’d believed. He gulped quick, deep breaths, desperate to banish the memory and cling to the present.

  “Porzia,” he tried to shout, but he could find no air.

  * * *

  Porzia scanned the clearing in front of the ruins for wayward children, but the frantic racing of h
er heart made it difficult to focus. The resonant growl of the airship engine and the enormous wings buffeting the earth added to the chaos. There were men on the ground—dead or incapacitated thanks to Revan and Leo—but a second wave of attackers followed the first few men, and these wore bulky contraptions over their faces, obscuring their features.

  One of the soldiers threw a metal canister at Revan; it landed at his feet, and he looked down at it, confused. Porzia stared as a horrible realization dawned on her: the contraptions worn by the soldiers weren’t masks, they were some kind of respirators, like the ones Elsa had built in the labyrinth world.

  “Revan!” she screamed. “Kick it away! Cover your mouth!”

  Instead of following her instructions, Revan looked up at her, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. Then the canister began to spray gas in all directions, enveloping him in a gray cloud, and his expression of surprise quickly went slack. Revan collapsed, unconscious.

  Or dead, Porzia thought to herself as she whipped out a handkerchief to cover her nose and mouth. At least the gas was dissipating quickly, carried away on the wind created by the powerful wing strokes of the airship. Porzia was grateful they’d met the assault outside instead of holing up within the ruins. In a confined space, one or two canisters would be enough to knock out all of them.

  As soon as she dared, Porzia ran to Revan’s side, still holding the handkerchief over her face against any traces of gas that remained. With her free hand, she scrambled to find his pulse—he had one, slow but strong, and relief flooded through her like cool water in her veins. Then the hard sole of a boot landed on her shoulder and shoved her aside, sending her sprawling in the grass, the back of her head hitting the ground with enough force to make stars burst in her vision.

  She scrambled to find her feet, but her sense of balance listed wildly, and by the time her head cleared, two of the attackers were dragging Revan away toward the airship.