“Only one way to find out,” said Faraz, bringing the vial over to the table where Elsa lay. “It’s the best I can do. Whether it will prove to be an antidote or not…”
Leo grabbed the vial out of his hands. “Stop stalling and hold her mouth open, will you?”
“Wait!” said Faraz, grabbing a hypodermic syringe. “Unconscious people don’t have a swallow reflex—it’ll end up down her lungs. We have to inject it intravenously.”
Faraz insisted on injecting the antidote very slowly, and in several different arteries. Leo thought he might indeed go insane from waiting. When Faraz finally set aside the empty syringe and pressed his fingers to Elsa’s throat to check her pulse, Leo let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“How is she?”
After a pause, Faraz said, “I think it’s working. Her pulse is stabilizing.”
“Thank God.” Leo scrubbed his face with his hands, relief flooding through him. But a little stream of anxiety followed quickly behind, because Elsa would not truly be safe until they knew for certain who had ordered the attempt on her life. He wrapped the dagger again, tucked it into his belt, and said, “I have to go.”
“You’re leaving now?” Faraz said, gaping at him.
Leo tapped his fingers nervously against the side of his leg. “Is she going to live?”
“I … I think so. Yes.”
He reached for the door. “Then there’s something I have to do.”
* * *
Elsa awoke to the feeling of a tickle against her cheek. She cracked open an eyelid to see Skandar’s huge eye staring at her from a few centimeters away, one tentacle anxiously poking her face.
With her eyes open, she grew increasingly aware of the pounding headache at the base of her skull, and the room spun around her. It took a minute to confirm that she really didn’t recognize the brown leather couch she was lying on, or the neatly organized shelves of jars and vials that lined the walls. In the center of the room, Faraz was standing at a worktable, cleaning up the detritus left over from some recent experiment.
“Hi, Skandar,” Elsa said hoarsely. And then, “Faraz?”
“You’re awake,” he said, looking up from what he was doing. “Good. Porzia will be relieved to hear it—she’s been a nervous wreck.”
“What happened?”
“Do you remember the attack? The assassin’s dagger was dipped in poison. I’ve administered an antidote, but you’re not out of the woods yet.”
Elsa picked her head up, trying to get a better look at her surroundings, and the motion caused a wave of nausea to wash through her. “Where’s Leo?”
“He … He’ll be back soon, I’m sure.” Faraz busied himself organizing a shelf of little glass vials, as if the question made him uncomfortable.
“How long was I out for?”
“A couple hours.”
Elsa dragged herself into a sitting position, her head still swimming. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, willing the dizziness to recede, but she still felt disoriented. When she opened her eyes again, the room seemed to tilt to the left.
Faraz turned, saw what she was doing, and rushed over. “Lie back,” he admonished. “You shouldn’t try to get up yet. You nearly died, Elsa.”
She gave in and let Faraz guide her back into a more relaxed position. He gave her a stern look before going back to the worktable to finish tidying up. Skandar, now content that she wasn’t dead, crawled up onto her stomach and settled there. She idly scritched the creature with one hand.
Staring at the ceiling, Elsa wondered where Leo could have run off to while she was busy surviving a poisoning. To go talk to this mysterious someone else who might be able to identify the assassin? Why go alone instead of waiting for her to recover first? She was aware in a distant, academic way that she ought to be furious with him for leaving, but in the haze of her recovery, anger would have required too much effort.
Elsa turned her head to look at Faraz. “Can I ask you … what happened to Leo’s family?”
“What, now?” he said, surprised. “You should be resting.”
“Yes, because listening is so very taxing,” she said, and then realized it was the sort of thing Porzia might say. The other girl’s sarcasm must be rubbing off on her. “Besides, if I fall asleep, Skandar will go back to poking me in the face.”
Faraz kept his hands busy with rolling up a long strip of medical gauze. “They all died. In the Venetian rebellion seven years ago. His father was an advocate for Italian unification, and they were attacked in their home during the riots. The way it haunts him, I’m fairly certain he … you know, saw it happen.”
“That’s awful,” Elsa said, trying to imagine the trauma of seeing one’s family slaughtered at such a young age. Even now, the thought of Jumi being hurt was almost too much to bear. “How did he escape?”
“A servant, I think, managed to sneak Leo out and get him to safety. I don’t know the details—he hardly ever speaks about his family.”
“So he hides things from you, too.”
Faraz shrugged it off. “Find me a person who has never hidden anything from anyone.” But the way he avoided her gaze made Elsa think it bothered him more than he was letting on.
There was a swift knock at the door, and Burak stuck his head into the lab. “Everyone alive in here?”
Faraz waved him in, but Elsa found she couldn’t reply—her throat went suddenly tight with rage. Someone had gone to great lengths to see her dead. What exactly had she done to deserve this? Elsa was simply trying to rescue her mother. Who did these people think they were?
“What did you find?” Faraz was saying to Burak.
The younger boy scooted around the worktable and took something out of his pocket to show Faraz. “We’ve definitely been bugged. I found one in the library and a few in Casa’s control room. We’ll have to sweep the whole house.”
“What is it?” Elsa said from her place on the couch. Faraz handed her the device—a fat brass beetle the size of her palm, complete with legs for scurrying and sensors for spying. It tried to climb off her hand and escape, but she flipped it upside down so its legs waved uselessly in the air. Skandar lifted a tentacle curiously, but Elsa clicked her tongue to tell the little beastie it wasn’t for him.
Faraz asked Burak, “Do you recognize the design?”
“No, but it’s genius. I’ve never seen anything so small and sophisticated. No off switch that I can see—we’ll have to get creative to disable them. Leo should really take a look inside.” Burak glanced around, noticing Leo’s absence.
“I’m sure he will,” Faraz said ambiguously, declining to explain Leo’s whereabouts. “You should deliver an update to Porzia—you can tell her Elsa’s awake, as well—and then find Sante and Olivia and anyone else Porzia assigns to you, and start sweeping the house. All right?”
Grinning, Burak snapped a mock salute, took the bug back from Elsa and ran out of the room. Silence stretched between Elsa and Faraz for a minute after the boy had gone.
“It’s not unusual. Leo disappearing for a while, I mean,” Faraz eventually offered, though Elsa had not pressed the issue. “He goes off on his own sometimes. He always comes back, though.”
Off on his own to meet with this mysterious other person who might be able to identify the body. Elsa snorted. “Well this time, Leo better come back with some answers.”
Faraz did not disagree.
12
IF AN OFFENSE COME OUT OF THE TRUTH, BETTER IS IT THAT THE OFFENSE COME THAN THE TRUTH BE CONCEALED.
—Saint Jerome
Leo should’ve taken the spider hansom, stealth be damned. It was a mistake to walk—walking gave him time to think, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became. There was no escaping the fact that the assassin had been Carbonari-trained and had carried a dagger forged by the Carbonari’s own bladesmith. Both of which inevitably led Leo to conclude that the Carbonari had ordered Elsa’s death. By the time he was c
rossing the bridge over the river, he felt convinced Rosalinda must have known about the hit—his dear Auntie Rosalinda—being as she was the only Carbonara currently residing in Pisa, and high up within the rebel organization.
Leo paused halfway across the Middle Bridge and leaned against the stone sidewall, staring out over the calm waters of the river Arno. The bridge was the oldest in the city, a Roman construction, wide and low with three arches supporting it. It was one of Rosalinda’s favorite places in Pisa—she liked to pause in this very spot whenever she went out for a stroll.
Rosalinda had never been an especially warm or maternal sort of person. She only visited the Trovatelli household to give fighting lessons, but despite her gruff manner, young Leo had always felt he was her favorite. He would call her Auntie, though there was no blood relation between them, and she would pretend to be vexed by the name. When his father and brothers were killed, it was Rosalinda who got him safely out of Venezia. And when the Order claimed guardianship of Leo, she followed him to Pisa, just to stay close.
Now, to have Rosalinda violate not only the Order’s agreement with the Carbonari but his bond of trust with her—it was unthinkable. But what other conclusion could he draw?
Leo pushed away from the wall and made his feet move again, disgusted with himself for wanting to delay the moment of truth.
South of the river, there were fewer grand plazas and more red-tiled houses packed snugly together along narrow streets. Leo found his way to Rosalinda’s door, the route so familiar he could have walked it in his sleep. He knocked, and the seconds before the door opened seemed to stretch to infinity, his stomach roiling with a mixture of anxiety and betrayal.
And then, suddenly, they were face-to-face. Rosalinda looked the same as always: dressed in men’s breeches, with her silver-shot brown hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. Leo pushed past her into the house, and though she could have stopped him if she wanted, she allowed it.
Rosalinda followed him down the short entry hall to the sitting room. “Leo, what’s happened?”
“You are very, very lucky,” he said, his voice cold with fury, “that no one died.”
She gave him a curious look. “My dear boy, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re referring to. Why don’t you have a seat and start at the beginning.”
Leo did not sit. Instead, he paced an angry line across the floor. “Oh, spare me. Did you really think a Carbonari assassin could roam the halls in Casa della Pazzia without my knowing it?”
Rosalinda took her own advice and settled on the brocade sofa, but there was a stiffness to her posture that belied her calm demeanor. “You know as well as I that we don’t interfere with the affairs of the Order.”
“Well, the body I hid in the library closet says otherwise.” Leo stopped pacing and planted his feet in a wide, angry stance. He took the dagger from his belt, unwrapped it, and tossed it on the table before her. “As does this.”
She picked up the dagger delicately, pinched between two fingers, and gave it a thorough examination. She kept her expression impassive, and only someone who knew her as well as Leo did would have noticed the almost imperceptible rise of her eyebrows. Genuine surprise. His anger cooled a bit upon recognizing her emotion.
Leo cleared his throat. “He died easily. Not one of your best, I take it.”
“No. The truly excellent ones never betray me.” She gave him a steady look, as if daring him to be a counterexample. “It’s the mediocre ones you have to worry about. Always looking for a quick way to improve their standing in the world.”
Leo ran a hand through his hair, uncertain what to think. “So he didn’t get his orders from the Carbonari?”
“If someone within the Carbonari ordered this, they were wise enough to keep me in the dark,” Rosalinda hedged. “I would not have permitted violence to cross your threshold.”
Leo forced himself to think past his confused emotions—was Rosalinda deceiving him? Or had the Carbonari betrayed them both?—and dredged up the name Elsa had found in Montaigne’s journal. “Could this have been the work of someone named Garibaldi?”
The color drained from Rosalinda’s face, and she leaned back in her seat, as if afraid his words might burn her like heat from an engine furnace. “Garibaldi? Where did you hear that name?”
Leo frowned, wondering at her reaction. “It’s … a bit complicated. Abductions and thefts and murders, a sabotaged train and now this Carbonari assassin, and the only substantive clue we’ve found is ‘Garibaldi.’”
She touched her face with her hand, an uncharacteristically vulnerable gesture, and when she spoke the words seemed more for herself than for him. “So he’s come back, after all. Perhaps I should have hidden you.”
“Who?” he demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“Leo…” She took a deep breath and let it out, as if steeling herself. “The Venetian rebellion … not everything happened the way you think. Your father and Aris are still alive.”
“Why would you say something like that?” Leo’s hand went to the chain of his father’s pocket watch and clutched it like a lifeline. “I saw the bodies with my own eyes.”
“What you saw were homunculi—alchemical copies that looked like your family.”
“That’s not possible!”
“The fire was supposed to destroy the evidence,” she explained, “but the Carbonari recovered enough pieces to determine they weren’t genuine human remains. Whatever else I might say about him, your father was always a talented alchemist.”
Leo felt like his legs might fail him. It couldn’t be true—it was simply too much to believe. This whole time he’d been alone in the world, they were out there somewhere, alive and still together. Still a family. “Why didn’t you tell me? I grieved for them.”
Rosalinda gave him a pitying look. “You think it would have been easier, knowing they were alive but—” She cut herself off then.
“Had abandoned me?” he asked. This time his words barely came out in a whisper.
“I made a decision to spare you that knowledge. Try to understand, I did it to protect you.”
“I’m not a child anymore! I don’t need you or anyone else to shield me.”
“But you were—you were a child,” she insisted. “When should I have told you about their plan to leave you behind, so carefully thought through, days or perhaps weeks before the riots began? Explain to me how it would have been a kindness to tell a child this.”
His jaw worked, tense with fury. “It may not have been kind, but it would have been the truth.”
“I only did what I thought was best for you.”
Leo tried his best to swallow his anger. There was a question he must ask. “And what of my younger brother? You said Father and Aris, but not…”
“I don’t know if Pasca lives. We searched what remained of the house, but found no evidence either way.” She paused for a moment. “Leo, your father wasn’t born Rico Trovatelli—he was living under an alias to protect you and your brothers, and to continue his work in secret. His real name is Ricciotti. Ricciotti Garibaldi.”
Leo stared at her, eyes wide. “I think I need to sit down.”
“You already sat down.”
“Oh. How nice for me.” He glanced down at the wooden arms of his chair. When had that happened?
“Your grandfather was the late general Giuseppe Garibaldi, famed champion of the people. I know this must come as a shock.”
Leo snorted at the vastness of her understatement. “But what does Father want? Why all this subterfuge?”
“His goal is the same as ours, the same as your grandfather’s: to unify Italy into a single state. He used to be an ally of the Carbonari, but there were some … philosophical differences about how to achieve unification.” She covered her lips with her fingers for a moment, thinking. “We lost a number of Carbonari during the riots, and they were all assumed dead. But now I think perhaps some of them stayed loyal to your father and left with him.”
Leo dropped his head into his hands. Through the web of his fingers, he mumbled the most important question. “Why did they leave me behind?”
“I can’t tell you, my dear boy. I don’t know why.”
In his heart he knew the answer, though. They’d left him behind because he wasn’t good enough, had never been good enough—he was no polymath.
* * *
Gradually, Elsa managed to once again master the fine arts of sitting and standing. She even successfully downed a cup of chamomile tea brought to her not by a house-bot, but by a girl named Olivia. The girl looked like a younger version of Porzia, pretty with her dark hair and round cheeks, but unlike her sister, Olivia was painfully shy and disappeared as soon as she delivered the tea.
Porzia, on the other hand, strode in like she owned the place. “Where’s Faraz?”
Elsa, seated on the couch, replied, “He went to help sweep for bugs, now that I’m stable enough to be left alone.”
“Mm-hmm.” She leaned in close, squinting at Elsa. “You don’t look nearly as almost-dead as I was led to believe.”
“It seems Faraz does good work. Otherwise, I believe I’d be looking all-the-way dead.” Elsa felt oddly comforted by Porzia’s brisk, unworried manner. It made her brush with death seem not so frightening after all.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t expire, because there’s simply so much happening and I really need you alive and conscious. While you were resting, a courier arrived from the Order to confiscate anything having to do with Garibaldi.”
“What!” Elsa sat up straighter. “All of Montaigne’s books?”
“No, no—the worldbooks are safe. I gave the courier just the one journal with Garibaldi’s name in it, the one we’ve already read. Everything else I hid before he got here.” Porzia’s mouth curled up into a sly little smile.
“Oh, that’s good.” Relief cooled her veins, though a moment later she had to wonder if Porzia was feigning all that apparent confidence. “But … your parents are in the Order. Won’t you get in trouble?”
“Only if I get caught,” Porzia said, though the lightness of her tone seemed forced. There was tension across her cheeks, as if she was not entirely happy with herself for what she’d done. “Besides, the worldbooks weren’t mine to give. I just did what I thought you would if you weren’t busy being poisoned.”
Ink, Iron, and Glass Page 16
