Behind her, he said, “You’re really going to walk out like that? Without the tools you came for?”
Elsa stopped but didn’t turn, her cheeks suddenly flushing with hot dread. Did he know?
“Normally I wouldn’t let anyone but Gia borrow my tools, though in your case I think I can make an exception.”
Deciding the damage was done and there was no use in denial, Elsa walked back to the worktable. She took the toolkit, but kept her gaze locked on it instead of looking him in the eye. “Thanks,” she muttered.
“Do you … need me to fix something?” he said, but the words sounded more like a cautious foray than a challenge.
Elsa’s mind raced, searching for a response that wouldn’t give her away as a polymath. “It’ll be a simple repair, I think, but I’ll let you know if I can’t figure it out.”
“I am at your disposal,” he said, letting the subject of her talents go. His gaze left her and flitted about the room, as if searching for a different topic. “So … you’re not from Earth.”
“No, I’m not.” She fidgeted with the toolkit. She shouldn’t have told him that.
“Veldana?”
“You’ve heard of Veldana?”
He snorted. “Every pazzerellone with ears has heard of Veldana. The first populated worldbook—and unless some pazzerellone has defied the Order’s ruling on the matter of scribed humans, still the only populated worldbook.”
Unless Veldana was gone, Elsa thought bitterly, in which case she and Jumi would be the only scribed people left alive in all of existence. “I wonder,” she said, “is that rule intended to protect people like us from people like you, or the other way around?”
Leo looked surprised. “I’m not sure, actually. When Montaigne scribed Veldana, I doubt he expected his creations to have the madness. You’re more interesting than anyone could have predicted.”
There it was again in his tone—the implied question. But he did not ask it outright, he did not say the word polymath. He suspected the truth, but apparently he also respected her right to share it in her own time.
“My mother’s missing,” she said as if the words had bubbled up in her throat and needed to come out.
“Missing? What happened?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know … anything, really!” Elsa took a deep breath; she wasn’t explaining this well at all. She started over. “My mother was taken—abducted from our world.”
He stepped closer. “I am sorry—”
Elsa hugged her arms against her stomach, suddenly regretting her openness and his proximity. “Anyway, that’s why I’m here.”
Leo stopped, rebuffed, and then looked around his lab in mock bewilderment. “Here? I’m fairly certain she isn’t hiding under one of my tarpaulins.”
Curtly, Elsa said, “By ‘here’ I meant Earth, which I’m certain you understood.”
His eyes softened, a silent apology. “Of course. This tongue has a nasty habit of turning everything into a jest, I’m afraid.”
“Why?” she said, morbidly curious. “Is it … some sort of experiment?”
“An experimental replacement tongue? Sadly, no—it’s the one I was born with. Though perhaps it would be wise to pursue an alternative, since this one simply refuses to behave itself.”
Elsa narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re a bit strange, you know.”
“Says the girl from a different world,” he retorted, but there was a grin playing at the corners of his lips, which took the edge from the words. The curve of his mouth made her flush again for an entirely different reason, and she suddenly felt as if she didn’t know where to look.
She frowned at her own silliness. No daughter of Jumi da Veldana would succumb to such hollow charms. “I … should get back to work.”
“Naturally. I’m sure you must get back to whatever it is you’re doing.” He gave her a hopeful look, as if this were an invitation for her to explain more, but Elsa had exceeded her quota of sharing for one day. She just wanted to retreat back to the quiet of her rooms.
“Thanks again for the tools,” she said, and made her way toward the door.
“Oh, and Elsa?” he called.
She turned on the steps to look at him. “Yes?”
“You know you don’t have to do everything alone.”
“Of course,” she answered, thinking, If only that were true.
5
TO APPLY ONESELF TO GREAT INVENTIONS, STARTING FROM THE SMALLEST BEGINNINGS, IS NO TASK FOR ORDINARY MINDS; TO DIVINE THAT WONDERFUL ARTS LIE HID BEHIND TRIVIAL AND CHILDISH THINGS IS A CONCEPTION FOR SUPERHUMAN TALENTS.
—Galileo Galilei
After seeing Leo’s messy but nonetheless well-stocked laboratory, it occurred to Elsa that she could use one of those, too. Jumi’s abductors had used metal canisters of knockout gas, which meant at the very least they had a mechanist and an alchemist in their employ. For a rescue operation to work, Elsa would need the ability to combat every kind of madness.
It wouldn’t surprise her if there were a few extra mechanics labs stashed away in some unused wing of the giant house, but with Porzia already poking around, she doubted her secrets would last very long if she asked Casa for help. Elsa suspected Casa had deliberately arranged her encounter with Leo, for whatever inscrutable reason.
Elsa wasn’t sure she liked Casa’s ever-present watchfulness. It gave the back of her neck that hot, prickly feeling; it reminded her of when she was a child learning to scribe, of how Jumi would hover over her shoulder, judging and correcting her work. Don’t get sloppy with your syntax. Remember, you need specificity in your word choice. Not the most elegant solution, but it will do. Then, at least, the scrutiny had come from a trusted source, whereas now Elsa couldn’t begin to guess at Casa’s motives.
So, that left only one option available to her: she would have to scribe a laboratory for herself. Repairing the Pascaline would have to wait. When she arrived back at her rooms, she set down the clockmaker’s tools and turned to face the scriptology shelves.
Her study came with an ample supply of ready-made empty scriptology books, which made her wonder again who the previous occupant had been. He or she had either been rich enough to purchase such a stock or had made a hobby of bookbinding. Elsa herself didn’t have much experience with bookbinding—they had the technology for crude papermaking in Veldana, but scriptology paper was another matter altogether. Her books had always come imported from Earth.
From the shelf of empty books, Elsa selected as small a volume as she could find, only a little larger than her doorbook. She would never understand why Earth scriptologists favored working with enormous tomes. For a whole world like Veldana, it was admittedly necessary, but a small book would almost always suffice to scribe a single room. There was no telling what obstacles she might face when rescuing her mother, but with a portable lab book, she’d be prepared for anything no matter where she went.
Elsa sat at the writing desk and began with the basics of any usable world: gravity, air, time. The reference library in her study was small compared to the one in Montaigne’s house before it burned, but it had the basics, so Elsa didn’t need to reinvent the entire field of scriptological physics. She merely opened a physics reference book and cited the properties she needed her lab worldbook to take on.
To be useful as a laboratory, she’d need not only work space but also materials to work with. She scribed supply rooms full of tools and chemicals and mechanical components, and then she designed a property such that whatever object she desired would automatically shift to the front of the room. Elsa hated looking for things and not being able to find them.
Focused on her work, she lost track of time until she looked up at the window and was startled to see the daylight dwindling. The little pendulum clock mounted atop the bookcase reported that the dinner hour was nearly upon her.
To her surprise, Elsa found she didn’t dread the thought of seeing Leo again at supper, but she couldn’t afford to form attachments her
e—these people could only serve to distract her from her goal. She needed to arm herself with a laboratory worldbook and then find her mother. So she looked back down at her work and let the dinner hour pass.
The next day, Elsa stayed sequestered in her rooms. She repaired six more pages of the first of Montaigne’s damaged books, but she reached an impasse with her lab book. A normal scriptologist wouldn’t have use for the technical manuals she’d need to reference in order to stock her laboratory with equipment. She would have to venture forth from her rooms to complete the lab book.
Reluctantly, Elsa broke the silence in her rooms. “Casa, do you have a larger collection of scriptological resources anywhere? Or technical manuals, perhaps?”
“Why yes, signorina. In the library, of course.”
Elsa stood up from her chair. “Might you direct me there?”
Doubting the wisdom of it, she nonetheless consigned herself once more to Casa’s guidance. Soon, Casa had led her down to the first floor and into the rear of the house.
Elsa rounded the corner and stopped dead in her tracks. A short stretch of hallway ended in a broad, arched doorframe—to the library—but between her and the doors stood Porzia, Leo, and Faraz, casually conversing. Casa had once again delivered her, probably quite deliberately, into the company of the other residents. Elsa’s first instinct was to back around the corner before any of them noticed she was there. And she would have—except for the allure of the fascinating creature perched on Faraz’s shoulder.
Elsa had never seen an alchemically fabricated life-form before, but she knew it instantly for what it was. Most of its mass appeared to be tentacles (of which there were at least ten, Elsa estimated) and large, hairless bat-wings (of which there were, sensibly, only two). One enormous eye shone wetly in the center of its body, and if it had a mouth, Elsa couldn’t see where.
“What a curious creature!” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
They all turned to look at her—Porzia with a little jump of surprise, and Leo with a cool insouciance, as if he’d known she was there all along. “Elsa,” he said, “I see our newest scriptologist has found her way to the library.” There was something odd about the way he emphasized scriptologist, but Elsa couldn’t focus on that with such a diverting specimen in front of her.
She stepped forward for a closer look, and the creature reached one tentacle out to her curiously. Faraz gently batted away the tentacle before it could touch her, admonishing, “Manners, now. No grabbing, you know that frightens the girls.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Elsa said. “I don’t mind creatures. Whenever there’s an expansion in Veldana, I try to sketch all the new species. Or I used to, anyway.”
“Do you … want to hold it?” he asked, sounding abashed, as if he were bracing himself for her to respond with disgust.
Elsa held out her arm, but Leo said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Sometimes it strangles people for no reason. And it’s got these little poisonous fangs—”
“Don’t listen to him,” Faraz said, unperturbed by his friend’s unflattering descriptions. “He’s a lying liar who lies.”
To the creature, Elsa said, “Don’t worry, little darling—I don’t believe him for a second.”
It crawled with a sort of undulating motion, its wings spread wide for balance as it moved down Faraz’s arm and transferred itself to her shoulder. Slowly, Elsa lifted a hand to stroke it. She’d expected slime, but its skin was dry and slightly bumpy beneath her fingers. It snaked one tentacle down the back of her dress, the suckers clinging to her skin for stability, and though the suction force was surprisingly strong, Elsa didn’t find the sensation disquieting. The tip of another tentacle brushed her cheek tentatively, as if saying hello.
“Hi,” Elsa cooed. “What’s your name?”
“Skandar,” offered Faraz.
“Well. Pleased to meet you, Skandar. Aren’t you a sweet little thing?”
Porzia made a gagging sound. “Is it really necessary to coddle Faraz’s disgusting tentacle monster like a newborn babe?”
Faraz sniffed. “Just because you convinced Gia to ban Skandar from the dining table doesn’t mean the rest of us have to share your squeamishness.”
“And with an attitude like that, it’s no wonder you have to fend off all your adoring female suitors with a stick,” Porzia said sarcastically.
“Well, I think Skandar’s wonderful,” Elsa offered.
“And I think,” said Leo, “that we should stop loitering in the hall when there are perfectly comfortable seats inside.” He led the way, apparently confident the rest of them would follow.
The library was a cavernous eight-sided room three stories tall and topped with a domed roof. The books were shelved along the walls, with two floors of balcony running around the circumference for perusing the upper bookshelves. Four tall windows were spaced around the third story. On the main floor, clusters of couches and armchairs, tables and reading lamps occupied the center of the space.
Aside from the four of them and Skandar, the library had only one occupant, a boy of eight or nine years with a large book open on the table in front of him. He swung his legs against the rungs of the chair while he read, too short for his feet to touch the floor.
“Ah,” said Porzia, following Elsa’s gaze. “My youngest brother. Say hello, Aldo!”
“Don’t bother me, I’m reading!” he shouted back.
Leo flopped down on a couch and sprawled over it as if it were a much-battled-over hill and he was planting a flag.
Porzia sighed, looking first at Aldo and then at Leo dominating the couch. “Sometimes I think Casa takes the right approach with the children, treating them like a pack of feral animals. No manners.”
Porzia and Faraz found armchairs, and Elsa took a chair beside Faraz. She tried to hand the creature back to him, but it held on rather firmly.
“Looks as if someone’s made a new friend,” Faraz said, surprised. “Skandar doesn’t usually like other people.”
Leo said, “Yes, that is curious. I’ve never seen Skandar take to someone who wasn’t an alchemist before.”
Was he trying to goad her into revealing her secret? Elsa struggled to keep her expression neutral. She never should have trusted him.
Elsa had little experience with alchemy, and she wasn’t sure how much affinity she might have for it. Except she had felt an instant fascination with Faraz’s alchemical creation, hadn’t she? And she’d always loved the creatures of Veldana, even if they were prickly or slimy or had too many legs, even when no one else appreciated them.
Stroking her fingers down one of Skandar’s leathery wings, she replied, “Well, if I were Skandar, I certainly wouldn’t take to anyone who thought I was a hideous tentacle monster, either. It’s hardly Skandar’s fault.”
Aldo stomped over, holding the large volume tight against his chest, and gave them all a severe look. “Libraries,” he pronounced, “are supposed to be quiet.” Then he turned on his heel and left the room in a huff.
Porzia watched him go. “With the way he clutches at books, he’s going to break Mamma’s heart.”
“What do you mean?” said Elsa, thankful for any distraction from the topic of alchemy.
“He’s sure to turn out another scriptologist,” Porzia explained.
“Yes, I understood that part,” she said. “But is that a bad thing?”
“To keep the house in the Pisano family, there must be a mechanist in every generation—someone capable of maintaining Casa’s exceedingly complex systems. That’s why Papa married Mamma, you know. Poor grandmamma had six children and none of them a mechanist. It was apparently quite the scandal, and now here we are again, with two scriptologists and two children who haven’t settled on a field yet. If Sante and Olivia don’t settle soon, I’ll have to start courting mechanists.”
“What a terrible thing to say,” Faraz said. “That your father married your mother only for her talent, and for producing an
heir.”
Porzia shrugged. “There are worse reasons to take a wife.” There was a note of pride in her voice that Elsa didn’t quite understand.
“The truth is always preferable, even if it is an ugly truth,” Elsa said, aware she was parroting her mother only after the words had left her mouth.
Leo, who’d been fidgeting throughout the conversation, vacated the couch, ran up to the second-floor balcony, and climbed up on the narrow wrought-iron railing. He proceeded to walk along it, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, arms out for balance.
“Show-off,” Faraz harrumphed.
Porzia rolled her eyes. “If you fall and break your neck, I’m not cleaning it up. Casa? You have permission to dispose of Leo’s corpse in the nearest furnace.”
“Very good, signorina,” Casa serenely replied.
“And if you’re going to die anyway, I’m taking your seat,” Faraz said as he shifted over to the couch.
From his precarious perch atop the railing, Leo declared, “Have no fear! I’m a trained professional, raised in the finest circus in Vienna.”
Elsa looked at Faraz, who said, “That one’s definitely not true.”
“I don’t know what a circus is, in any case,” she replied.
This seemed to deflate Leo somewhat. “Well, that’s no fun. What is the point of inventing an outlandish background if it doesn’t even make sense?” He crouched down to grab the railing and swung off, then dropped the rest of the distance to the floor. He landed gracefully, as if he were quite accustomed to jumping off things. Given how they’d first met, Elsa supposed this impression must be accurate.
“Did you have something in mind you needed from the library?” Faraz said to her rather suddenly, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.
“Oh, yes.” Elsa felt the heat rise in her cheeks, embarrassed that she’d let herself get so thoroughly diverted from her task. “Well, nothing in particular, but I did fancy a look through the scriptology section.”
Ink, Iron, and Glass Page 7
