“Stop!” she shouted uselessly, but she got her feet under her and bolted after them as fast as her skirts would allow.
As if Revan’s capture had been a signal, all the remaining soldiers ran back to the airship and grabbed ahold of the ropes. The soldiers climbed, while Revan’s limp form—now trapped in a rope harness—was reeled in from above. Porzia reached the ground below the airship just as Revan disappeared into the belly of the mechanical beast.
But they’d arrived with more men than were now in condition to retreat … which meant there were a few ropes free and empty, still brushing the ground.
“Porzia, no! Don’t!” Leo shouted.
She glanced over her shoulder; he was crouched over something on the ground, she couldn’t see what. It didn’t matter. Someone had to go after Revan—they couldn’t just let the soldiers kidnap him.
Porzia grabbed the rope in both hands, and it lifted her off her feet. For a terrifying second she struggled with her skirts, then managed to pinch the rope between her knees, securing her hold. The ground dropped away beneath her.
“Not your best-laid plan, Porzia,” she muttered to herself, clinging to the rope as the airship rose into the sky.
19
IT IS NOT ALWAYS THE SAME THING TO BE A GOOD MAN AND A GOOD CITIZEN.
—Aristotle
Elsa hadn’t seen Aris all morning, and she couldn’t find him anywhere. After a fruitless search of the fortress—or at least a search of all the unlocked rooms—she gave up and sat in her room, defeated and worried.
It seemed an ominous sign for Aris to vanish like this. She imagined him locking himself away in a scribed world, determined not to eat or sleep until he deciphered the editbook.
When a knock came, she assumed it must be Aris, done pouting about Leo’s departure and ready for some verbal sparring. But when she opened the door it was Garibaldi who strode in.
“Signor,” she said cautiously. “To what do I owe the honor…?”
“We must speak,” he declared. “Come, sit.”
Garibaldi took the chair that went with the writing desk, and Elsa perched on the edge of the bed, reminding herself not to act nervous.
“Both my sons seem quite taken with you,” he began. Elsa didn’t know what to say to that. Apologize? Deny it? But Garibaldi continued, sparing her from the need to choose a response. “I, however, can’t say I see what all the fuss is about, if we’re to be frank.”
“Excuse me?” Elsa raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“I’m disappointed in you, Elsa—you’ve been putting on airs, leading Aris to believe you’re a unique commodity. I’ll reluctantly admit it’s been a source of some friction between us.” Garibaldi pinned her with his gaze. “But you’re not the only Veldanese speaker on Earth, are you?”
Elsa went cold. Revan. How could Garibaldi possibly know about him? She tried to keep her expression mild, to prevent her fear from giving anything away. “I suppose Charles Montaigne knows a few phrases—he did scribe my world, after all—but he’s hardly fluent enough to understand the editbook.”
“Oh no, not him,” Garibaldi said. “We did take Montaigne off the Order’s hands, but you’re right that he proved of little use.”
“Who, then?”
Garibaldi showed her a horrible, gloating smile. Elsa felt sick to her stomach.
He stood without another word and left, pulling the door closed behind him. Terror sharp in her veins, Elsa darted for the door, but there was a mechanical whirring sound on the other side, and when she yanked the knob it did not open. She pressed her eye close to the crack—they’d attached some kind of locking mechanism to the outside of the door.
She was trapped, and Garibaldi was going after Revan.
* * *
It was difficult to say how many hours passed. Elsa didn’t have a real watch, just the empty casing Faraz had given her, which had worked well as a potion-hiding place but helped not at all with telling the time. The sky outside was a thick slate gray, so not even the angle of the sun could give her a hint.
Eventually, Elsa heard the click-whir of the locking mechanism. The door opened just far enough to admit Colette, then the guard in the hall closed it again.
“I’ve brought you an early dinner, signorina,” the girl said, holding up a silver service tray with a domed lid.
Elsa looked away, disheartened. “Thank you, Colette, but my appetite’s abandoned me.” Her stomach twisted into anxious knots every time she wondered what Aris was up to, and that thought was never far from her mind.
“No, signorina,” Colette said significantly. “I’m sure you’ll want this meal.”
Elsa turned her attention back, her eyes widening as understanding dawned. Colette gave a small, conspiratorial smile, and lifted the lid.
There was no food. Upon the tray sat two enormous kitchen knives.
“On second thought, you’re probably right. I should take the tray,” Elsa said.
Colette set it down on the desk, and they each quietly lifted one of the knives. Elsa positioned herself behind the door, out of the line of sight, while Colette knocked to signal the guard to let her out.
The door opened just wide enough to let Colette slip through the opening, but she came out brandishing her knife at the guard’s face, with Elsa ready to follow right behind. The guard was much larger than either of them, but he didn’t have a weapon out because he needed both hands free to operate the locking mechanism and the door handle. He flinched in surprise, then plucked the knife from Colette’s grip and backhanded her hard enough to knock her to the ground. In those precious seconds of distraction, Elsa rushed to close the distance.
The guard pulled his foot back as if to kick Colette, but Elsa growled, “Don’t,” pressing the pointed tip of her carving knife into his lower back. “A stab wound to the kidney is a fast way to bleed out.”
The guard froze, then dropped Colette’s knife and held his hands up in surrender. Gruffly, he said, “Haven’t thought this through, have you, signorina? Unless you’re prepared to commit murder.”
“That’s a tempting offer, given how hard you hit my friend. But instead, you’re going to turn—slowly!—and get inside the room.”
Elsa kept her knife on him as he followed her instructions. When he’d moved all the way through the door, she withdrew quickly, pulling the door shut and flipping the lock.
As soon as the locking mechanism clicked into place, Elsa rushed to Colette’s side and helped her stand. “Are you hurt?”
A livid mark rose across her cheek; she raised a hand to press against it, wincing. “I don’t think I’ll lose any teeth, so that’s something.”
“I’m so sorry, this is all my fault,” Elsa said miserably. When she’d set out to befriend the servants, she hadn’t thought anyone would get hurt.
Colette stretched her neck as if the blow had wrenched a muscle. “I knew what I was getting myself into when I brought that tray.”
Elsa smiled. “Of course. And thank you.”
Colette inclined her head in acknowledgment. “Now, we’d better get out of here before we’re seen.”
Elsa followed as the other girl strode down the hall. “Do you still have the key for the kitchen door?”
Colette shook her head. “Not that way—there’s a guard posted there now, and I wouldn’t care to try our luck with the knives again.”
Instead of leading her down into the warren of servants’ corridors, Colette took the stairs up and up—headed for the high courtyard where Aris parked his airship. As they climbed, Elsa worried about Colette’s involvement.
“Are you sure you should be helping me so openly? Do you have anyone Garibaldi might retaliate against?” He did have a nasty habit of controlling people through their loved ones.
Colette glanced at her with wide-eyed surprise. “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that, I don’t think. I’m not nearly important enough to merit Signor Garibaldi’s vengeance.”
Elsa shook her head, bemu
sed. “I will never understand you Europeans.”
They emerged from the attic onto the airship field, which proved startlingly vacant. Colette led the way to a hidden path that angled sharply down toward the valley floor below.
“Halt!” someone called out behind them.
Elsa and Colette did not halt; indeed they did quite the opposite. They flew down the mountainside, careening around the switchbacks and half sliding down the slopes. When the path leveled out into a shallow, grassy glen, they leaned into a desperate sprint.
Elsa glanced over her shoulder and spotted a pair of guards, not quite on top of them yet but closing in. Fear kicked in her chest.
But then Vincenzo appeared out of nowhere, dashing full-tilt at the first guard and knocking him down. The second guard swung around, pistol in hand. A gunshot echoed off the valley walls, but Vincenzo was no longer where the shooter had aimed. He moved like a wildcat, dodging and then closing in, twisting and hitting until the second guard was moaning on the ground.
By this time, the first had found his feet again, but Vincenzo had found the second guard’s pistol. Bang, bang—and the first guard crumpled.
The second guard was still down, breathing but unmoving. Vincenzo turned the gun upon him and shot him in the head.
Colette yelped and covered her mouth with both hands.
Shocked, Elsa said, “You killed them.”
“Dead men tell no tales,” Vincenzo answered casually, as he retrieved the other pistol from the grass. But then he looked up and saw her distress at his cavalier display of violence. “Elsa, we are at war. Don’t think for a second that Garibaldi isn’t prepared to kill to get what he wants.”
“But … they’re former Carbonari. They were your own people, once.”
“These scecchi? Nah, they’re mercenaries. Besides, it’s not as if I’m close personal friends with every member of the Carbonari; we operate in isolated cells.” Vincenzo held out the spare pistol to Elsa, and when she didn’t immediately take it, he tucked it into her empty gun holster himself. “I don’t even want to know how Garibaldi got his hands on state-of-the-art Austrian firearms, but let’s not waste them.”
Colette wrung her hands together. “I don’t…” She paused and glanced uncertainly at Elsa, as if unsure of her right to speak. “I don’t understand. The Carbonari want a unified Italian state, yes? And so does Garibaldi. Why are you enemies?”
Vincenzo shook his head, amused at her naïveté. “Sweetheart—if you think Garibaldi’s ‘rule of the people’ would be the same as the Carbonari’s, you’re in for a sore surprise. When he says ‘the people,’ he means pazzerellones, not the likes of you and me.”
Elsa pressed her hands to the sides of her face. “Let’s save the political nuances for a later discussion. We just need to get away from here now. Please tell me Leo left my escape kit intact.”
“Huh? Oh yeah, the portal-making stuff. He opened a portal with it, but left all the gadgets behind for you.” He strode off into the bushes and retrieved a canvas satchel. “I brought everything along—figured we might need a quick getaway.”
Elsa exhaled heavily with relief. “Let’s get ourselves back to Pisa, then.”
“Yeah … about that,” Vincenzo said. “There’s some news you haven’t heard yet, regarding Casa della Pazzia. Porzia left us a note. We’re headed to Cinque Terre instead.”
* * *
Faraz arrived like an angel of mercy to save Leo from drowning in blood and memories. They lifted Sante between them and rushed him inside, Faraz immediately taking charge.
“Clear the dining table!” he commanded the children, who were gathered in the entry hall. “I need a clean sheet on it now. Olivia, fetch my alchemy kit. You, find Simo—he’ll know where the alcohol is. Distilled, as strong as you can get.”
Leo could hardly process the words through Sante’s strangled screaming. The boy’s eyelids scrunched shut with pain. They tried to lay him out flat on the table, but he stayed half-curled around his wound, the muscles in his limbs tensed. Leo had given up on the handkerchief and stripped off his linen shirt to use as a makeshift bandage, but even that was soaked through now.
Olivia rushed in, carrying Faraz’s black leather kit. “What do we need first?”
“Glass vial, purple liquid,” ordered Faraz. She fished it out and handed it over, and he poured the sleeping potion onto Sante’s neck, so it could absorb through the skin.
Finally, the boy stopped keening and relaxed into unconsciousness. Leo took a step away, giving them room to work.
Faraz lifted the linen shirt for a peek. “Bleeding’s not too bad, considering.”
“You call that ‘not too bad’?” Leo croaked. His own throat felt raw, as if he’d been the one screaming instead of Sante.
Simo arrived with a brown glass jug. Faraz doused his hands with clear liquid and passed the jug to Olivia so she could do the same, and the air filled with the sharp smell of distilled grain alcohol.
To Olivia, Faraz explained, “We’ve got to pack it with cotton so we can actually see and assess the damage. Looks like he took the worst of it over the ribs, and if we’re lucky the sword didn’t penetrate the abdominal wall.”
Leo crossed his arms awkwardly over his bare chest, trying not to touch anything with his blood-covered hands. Between the alcohol fumes and the sight of Faraz peeling back the linen to expose the gaping wound, Leo was edging toward nausea. He wondered if he oughtn’t take young Olivia out of the room, but the girl seemed to be handling the situation fine. Underneath her solemn expression, she seemed more interested than disgusted.
Leo, on the other hand, possessed the stomach of a mechanist. He’d seen dead people before, but the knowledge that the wound belonged to Porzia’s still-living little brother somehow made it infinitely worse. When Faraz glanced up, he noticed. “You’re looking green, Leo; if you’re going to be sick, do so outside.”
Since Faraz and Olivia had a hold on things there, Leo let his woozy and useless self out of the room in search of fresher air. He sat on the lowest step of the collapsed main stairway and gulped a few breaths.
God, Porzia was gone. She and that Revan fellow both captured. He should do … something, surely, but a vague desperation was as far as his brain managed to go. With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Leo felt as if his soul had been wrung out like a wet rag. It was too much to process.
His cheek itched; he rubbed it with the back of his wrist and discovered another smear of blood. Wash up—that was the first step. And then maybe he could come up with a plan.
Leo was still trying to scrub the blood out from under his fingernails when serious little Aldo found him to report that someone was approaching on foot. As he ran for the entrance, his body made a weak attempt at scrounging up some adrenaline, but there really was none left to give.
Luckily, these intruders proved to be Elsa and Vincenzo. “Good Lord, am I glad to see you two,” he said, and then corrected himself. “Uh … three?” They had that servant girl in tow; the one who’d unlocked the kitchen door.
Vincenzo said, “It looks like a battle zone out there. What happened?”
“It was a battle zone out there,” said Leo. “They kidnapped Revan and Porzia.”
“What!” Elsa said. “How long ago?”
“I don’t know, an hour? Two?”
“And you haven’t gone after her yet?”
“How? Aris has a functional airship, and all we have is a poorly stocked pile of rubble.” Leo gestured angrily at their surroundings.
Elsa said, “Did Porzia bring the tracking worldbook with her when they left Casa della Pazzia?”
Leo grabbed the sides of his head in both hands. “I don’t know! I know nothing of use, all right?”
And then, against all reason, Elsa hugged him. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
Before he could really process her touch, she let go, intent on finding Porzia’s bags and rifling through them for
whatever worldbooks might have been smuggled out of Pisa.
Vincenzo took one look at his expression and laughed. “For someone so smart, you really are an idiot, aren’t you?”
Once Elsa finished ransacking Porzia’s bags, they all met up with Faraz to formulate a plan. Faraz looked tired and harried, but reported that Sante was stable. Elsa took a quick trip into her lab world to replenish their medical supplies, and then they got down to business.
“We have the tracking book,” she said. “So long as Porzia and Revan are still on-world, we should be able to locate them.”
Leo said, “The main question is, how do we mount a rescue after we find them?”
Vincenzo nodded. “Crashing an airship is easy, assuming you don’t care about the health of the passengers. But boarding an airship is ridiculously difficult.”
“Let’s look at this from the other direction. What resources do we have?” Elsa said. “We can build weapons, but we still have only four people to operate them—five, if we can talk Colette into helping.”
“Who’s Colette?” said Faraz.
Leo frowned. “Where’s Colette?” The girl had vanished from their company, but he couldn’t recall when or why.
Vincenzo looked at Faraz and Leo like they were scum on his boot. “Sometimes you pazzerellones really are unbelievable.”
“Let’s put the class war on the back burner until Garibaldi’s stopped, all right?” Elsa said. “How’s our supply of knockout potion?”
“Gone,” answered Faraz. “I didn’t have any anesthetic, so I had to use my last dose on Sante.”
“Could you synthesize more sleeping potion in my lab?” she asked.
“I could start, but one of the steps needs to incubate at thirty-seven degrees for fourteen hours. You can’t rush chemistry.”
“Hm.” Elsa chewed her lip, which Leo found distracting. “Where’s Skandar?”
“I don’t know, hiding somewhere.” Faraz shrugged. “Skandar’s funny that way—doesn’t blink in the face of a slavering monster, but someone familiar gets hurt and the poor beast crawls under a piece of furniture. Why?”
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