Ink, Iron, and Glass

by Gwendolyn Clare

  Elsa frowned. “Potentially. Leo, do you ever think of it as yours?”

  “No … it’s my father’s, always my father’s. That’s the point of wearing it, after all.” Leo swallowed, his throat tight. The pocket watch felt odd in the palm of his hand—a suddenly foreign object, the old meaning stripped away. How could he keep carrying around a remembrance of the dead when no one had died?

  “Then we’ve got what we need to test this world,” Elsa said. She held the book open to the first page for Porzia to input the coordinates. As the portal irised open, she added, “Oh, and … I suggest everyone remove their shoes.”

  * * *

  They stepped through into cool, ankle-deep water that let off the salty scent of the ocean. A few meters away, a narrow strip of land stretched to their left and right, more blue water visible beyond. Elsa stepped closer for a better look, eager to make sure it had manifested properly, and there it was: a scale model of the Italian peninsula, fifty meters long and ten meters wide, with the rest of Europe laid out beyond.

  “Oh dear Lord,” Porzia swore behind her. “I’m standing in the middle of the Adriatic.”

  Skandar had one tentacle wrapped around Faraz’s neck and was leaning precariously off his shoulder to get a look at the miniature ocean below. Faraz put a hand up and steadied the over-curious beast.

  “You can move around,” Elsa told everyone. “Just be careful not to wander off the edge of the map.”

  The hem of Porzia’s skirts was drenched, and she struggled to hold it up above her ankles without dropping the portal device. Elsa had tucked her own skirts over her arm before crossing through the portal, and was secretly amused at how uncomfortable the sight of her bare brown calves made the boys. That thought recalled the memory of Leo’s bedroom, though, and the mirth drained out of her. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between them to pretend nothing had happened, so she squared her shoulders and stepped up onto land.

  The topographical contours felt rough on the soles of her bare feet—she’d scribed the model to withstand the weight of giants like herself tramping all over Europe, but hadn’t considered that the extra-firm structural integrity might be rather uncomfortable from the giants’ perspective. Elsa picked her way cautiously through the jagged peaks of the Alps, which were just tall enough to bang her shins against if she wasn’t careful. She crossed through Switzerland and over Paris, and waded out through the English Channel to the Atlantic.

  Rising from the water was a shiny brass podium with a glass front like a grandfather clock, displaying a complex interplay of gears within. At the moment, the inner workings were still and silent. Elsa slid open a small drawer on the side, checking the contents: a silver-backed pocket compass with not one but two needles, nestled in a bed of red velveteen cloth.

  Satisfied, she closed the drawer and held out her empty palm to Leo. “I do believe we’re ready to begin.”

  His amber gaze locked on her. There was tension around his eyes, but otherwise his features were schooled to appear calm. Resolute. He dropped the watch into her outstretched hand.

  Elsa placed the watch atop the podium, pressed a series of buttons, and yanked down on a lever. The innards whirred to life, gears singing against one another. Soon, she could hear the ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk of the target settling into place. Then the mainspring let out a soft twang, and the machine fell silent again.

  She picked up the watch and handed it back to Leo while Porzia waded to shore, staring down at the map. Elsa followed, calling, “Do we have a location?”

  A beacon of light pulsed in southeast France along the coast. “The city of Nizza,” Porzia said. “That makes sense, I suppose.”

  Faraz said, “How so?”

  “Leo’s grandfather, Giuseppe Garibaldi, was a native Nizzardo. Ricciotti has returned to his family roots.”

  With sudden savagery, Leo declared, “That man cares nothing for family.”

  “Still,” Faraz said in a soothing tone, “perhaps he inherited property there. French-occupied Nizza is as close as you can get to Italian soil without actually crossing into Sardinia. It’s an ideal location for a man in hiding—just outside the reach of anyone who might be looking.”

  For a moment Leo seemed to wrestle with his temper before tamping it down, and even then, his words came out clipped. “Yes. Well. Let’s go, then.” His fist, tense around his father’s watch, loosened one finger at a time, and he tucked it away in the pocket of his waistcoat.

  “Not so fast—we still need to confirm our destination,” Elsa said, her palm resting on the carved-wood grip of her mother’s revolver, holstered at her right hip. She took a deep breath, drew the gun, and gently laid it upon the pedestal. “Moment of truth.”

  The whole tracking world seemed to hold its breath as the machine chugged away. Or perhaps that impression simply came from the way the molecules of air rang in her ears. Elsa waited for the finishing twang of the mainspring, but it did not come—instead the machine fell prematurely silent, as if too tired to complete its task.

  Porzia glowered at the revolver. “It’s not working.”

  “What does that mean?” said Faraz.

  She’s dead, thought Elsa, and pressed the back of her hand against her lips to hold in the cry of grief that threatened to erupt from her lungs. But then she remembered Jumi’s old lecture: We are stewards and caretakers—do you understand, darling? None of this is ours, it belongs to all Veldanese. She’d thought her mother meant Veldana—the trees and stones and water—but what if Jumi did not believe in the individual ownership of possessions in a general sense? Their world had so many shared resources that private property was not a terribly Veldanese concept. Even young Elsa had needed the idea of not yours explained to her when she’d disassembled Montaigne’s Pascaline.

  She said, “I don’t think we Veldanese have a very strong sense of ownership. Even a few days of carrying around Jumi’s revolver is enough to confuse the targeting machine about who owns it.” She didn’t say, Either that or Jumi’s dead.

  Porzia said, “Do you have anything else of your mother’s?”

  “Nothing I haven’t been carrying or wearing or otherwise using.” Elsa jammed the revolver back into its holster, frustrated. There was no way to confirm that Garibaldi had Jumi with him, or even that she still lived.

  Leo held out the pocket watch again. “Then we rely on what we do have.”

  Elsa took the watch and retargeted Garibaldi, then grabbed the two-needled compass from the drawer on the side of the machine as Porzia turned the dials on her portal device. Porzia went first into the portal to return to her sitting room. Elsa stepped through next and collided with Porzia on the other side.

  “What are you—oh.”

  On the settee sat Gia Pisano, arms crossed, aiming a none-too-pleased glare at her daughter.

  Porzia swallowed, and then said with forced brightness, “Mamma, you’re back. How was Firenze?”

  “When you wrote that Casa needed maintenance,” Signora Pisano said, “I didn’t imagine you meant the house had been sabotaged.”

  Leo and Faraz piled into the room behind them. Leo looked at Gia, looked at Porzia, muttered that he’d be right back, and fled the room.

  Porzia watched him leave with a withering look, as if she considered him a coward for his sudden retreat in the face of an angry Gia. Then she squared her shoulders and said to her mother, “Casa’s upkeep is a family matter. I thought it prudent to keep the details private.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Gia said skeptically. “And all of this?”

  Porzia blinked, the very picture of innocence. “All of what?”

  “Whatever it is you’ve been cooking up on the other side of that portal,” her mother said. “You children are going after Jumi’s abductor by yourselves—I suppose that’s also a family matter?”

  “That’s my fault,” Elsa offered, though she had some difficulty mustering anything like contrition.

  Dryly, Gia said, “Oh, well, in t
hat case, my daughter is absolved of all responsibility.”

  “We were only going to do a little reconnaissance,” Porzia insisted. “Confirm where Elsa’s mother is being kept and by whom. Then we were going to bring the information to the Order, I swear—we wanted hard evidence first, is all.”

  Just then, Leo rushed back in, his rapier now hanging from his belt. Gia took one look at him and raised an eyebrow at her daughter. “Reconnaissance only, you say?”

  Porzia flushed an impressive shade of pink. “Best to be prepared, just in case?”

  Leo stopped short and looked annoyed at no one in particular. “I thought this would be sorted by the time I came back. We don’t have time to stand around debating the finer points of—”

  Gia stood from the settee and gave Leo a quelling look that made his jaw snap shut midsentence. Then she turned to her daughter. “I expect rash behavior from Leo. But you—I left you in charge because I thought you were mature enough to shoulder the responsibility. You were supposed to be watching the children, running the house, not hunting a dangerous pazzerellone!”

  Elsa’s chest twinged with a knot of sympathetic guilt. She knew exactly what it was like to have a mother with high expectations and a legacy that required massive responsibility. She could all too easily imagine how Porzia felt facing Gia’s disappointment.

  Porzia’s eyes glistened with moisture, but her voice rose to match her mother’s volume. “Responsibility! What of my responsibility to my friends? Am I supposed to refuse them help?”

  Gia pointed her finger angrily at the floor. “You are supposed to prioritize the good of the house above all individual concerns.”

  “And you were supposed to convince the Order to rescue Jumi!” Porzia retorted. “How exactly is that going?”

  “Augusto Righi is a coward. But your father and Alek are still working to convince—”

  “Leo’s right, time is of the essence,” Porzia interrupted. “We’re going, Mamma, whether you like it or not.”

  Tightly, Gia said, “You’re right, I can’t stop you. I can’t leave the children here alone with Casa in such need of repair. But you must promise me not to engage with these people. Observe only. When you have more information, we will decide—together—what is to be done. Am I clear?”

  “Understood,” said Porzia. Elsa got the sense she was only barely resisting the urge to snap a sarcastic salute.

  Gia took one last, long look at her daughter’s face, as if trying to commit every detail to memory. Then she turned toward the door. “Casa—is Burak still working in the generator room? Tell him I’ll be there shortly.”

  Her mother gone, Porzia took a deep breath, straightened her skirts, and said, “Well. Are we all set, then? We should go before the compass loses its charge.”

  A little flower of guilt bloomed inside Elsa. Porzia was fighting with Gia because of her, and she didn’t know what to say to make that better.

  Faraz stroked Skandar soothingly. The tension with Gia had made the poor beast anxious. “Ready as we’ll ever be,” he said.

  Porzia threw him a blistering look. “You are not bringing that thing with us. We’re trying to be inconspicuous, remember?”

  Faraz harrumphed, but he pried Skandar off his shoulder and set the beast down on the armrest of a chair. “One of these days we’re going to need him,” he grumbled.

  “I can’t imagine for what,” Porzia replied. “Now let’s go.”

  * * *

  After a short trip through the doorbook, Elsa, Leo, Porzia, and Faraz emerged onto the narrow, curving cobbled streets of Nizza. It was a maze of a city, not so overwhelmingly large as Paris but easily the equal of Pisa, Elsa guessed.

  “Here,” she said, handing the compass to Leo. “The black needle points toward magnetic north. The silver one points toward the tracking target. Garibaldi, in this case.”

  Leo frowned down at the compass and swiveled left and right, testing it. “It’s a part of the targeting machine?”

  Elsa nodded. “Yes—I figured we’d need an object from the tracking world to keep us on course.”

  Leo led the way as they began the uncertain task of finding one woman in a city of ninety thousand. Elsa felt hyperaware of his proximity, the angle of his shoulders, the small crease of concentration between his brows. Just nerves, she told herself, and tried her best to ignore the feeling.

  It was late afternoon, and the city bustled with carriages and foot traffic. Here and there, Elsa caught snatches of English and French alongside the native Nizzardo dialect. The foreigners, though numerous, were overwhelmingly white, and self-consciousness burned down her spine—even without Skandar, she and Faraz were far from inconspicuous.

  Elsa couldn’t puzzle out why there were so many northern Europeans until they had to squeeze past a particularly obstructive cluster of Englishmen, and Porzia muttered, “Bloody English vacationers.”

  They followed the compass needle east and left the vacationers behind in favor of sailors and dockworkers. They circled around a ship-choked port that cut inland, the air heavy with the scent of brine and rotten fish. Leo slowed to a stop and tapped at the glass face of the compass.

  “This can’t be right. My father was a man of means, not a”—he waved his hand in the vague direction of a raggedly dressed man stumbling out of a tavern—“an unemployed deckhand.”

  Elsa took the compass from him, ignoring the way he looked at her when their hands touched. She pivoted back and forth on one heel, watching the compass needle hold steady, pointing to a run-down tenement house across the street. “It seems to be working fine. That’s the place.”

  They ducked into a narrow alleyway to strategize. The sun hung low in the west, lighting up the wisps of cloud in shades of pink and orange, and the shadows between buildings had grown comfortingly dark.

  Leo stared in disbelief at the ramshackle building. “This has got to be a malfunction.”

  “No, it’s perfect,” Porzia said thoughtfully. “Unsavory characters can go in and out all day without anyone batting an eye. And who would think to look for upstanding citizen Rico Trovatelli here? Not even his own son.”

  Leo’s lips tightened angrily. “My father—”

  “Your father was a fiction,” Porzia interrupted. “We know little and less of the real Ricciotti Garibaldi, except for this: we know he can deceive.”

  For a moment, Leo looked as if he might like to slap her. Then his gaze shifted back to the tenement house, and Elsa could practically hear the gears of his thoughts shifting. “All right,” he finally said. “I’m going in alone.”

  Porzia lifted her gaze to the heavens, as if begging a higher power for patience. “You’re not leaving us behind now, Leo.”

  “Look,” he said, exasperated. “We can’t all go in together. If this doesn’t go well for us, someone has to return to Toscana and report to Gia what happened. And, obviously, that would be accomplished most expediently if the return party had a scriptologist to open a portal.”

  Elsa stepped closer to Leo. “I’m sorry, but he’s right.”

  “What?” Porzia screeched, clearly surprised to have Elsa side against her.

  “Leo and I go in. Garibaldi knows about us already, so even if we’re spotted, he gains nothing. But he doesn’t yet know we have help, and we might need that element of surprise later.”

  “This is just ridiculous—” Porzia huffed, but Faraz put a gentling hand on her shoulder. She frowned but said, “Fine.”

  “Here,” Elsa said, handing over the doorbook to Porzia. “In case you need it.”

  Porzia accepted it gingerly, the scowl vanishing from her features. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m quite sure I don’t want something this useful falling into the hands of our enemies.” She shrugged a shoulder, hesitant, then added shyly, “Besides, I trust you with it.”

  Porzia nodded, her eyes wide, as if genuinely touched by the gesture. “I’ll take good care of it.”

  Leo was fiddling with th
e grip of his rapier, anxious to get moving and oblivious to the weight of the moment Elsa and Porzia had just shared. He said, “Wait for us at the east end of the promenade. If we haven’t met up with you by midnight, get yourselves back to Pisa and tell Gia what happened.”

  As Porzia and Faraz turned back the way they’d come, Elsa and Leo crossed the street, keeping to the shadows. The lamplighters had yet to grace this part of the city with their presence, so the growing dark was on their side. With whispers and hand gestures, they agreed to approach the building from behind. They snuck through the cramped, filthy alleyways, the walls of the tenement buildings muffling the sounds of the city. There was the splash of Elsa’s shoes in the alley’s damp muck and the steady hiss of her breath, but that was all. Leo moved as quiet as a cat—she knew he was still with her only by the dark shape of his silhouette.

  They crouched low as they drew closer. The first-floor windowpanes were grime-smudged and warped, but they glowed with lamplight from inside, which would ease the task of spying somewhat. Leo crept up to the nearest window, and Elsa pressed herself close to the bricks beside him. The light drew a sharp line across his cheekbones as he peered inside. After a moment he withdrew, shook his head at her—nothing—and slunk over to the next. Pulse pounding in her ears, she followed. If the compass had led them true, one of these rooms might have her mother in it.

  Elsa heard a click behind her. Before she could register what it meant, Leo spun around, his hand flying to the hilt of his rapier. Turning, she reached for her revolver, at the same time placing the sound: the click of a cocked-back hammer.

  Black-clad Carbonari assassins emerged from the shadows, weapons out and aimed.

  15

  WHATEVER LIES WITHIN OUR POWER TO DO LIES ALSO WITHIN OUR POWER NOT TO DO.

  —Aristotle

  Relieved of her pistol, Elsa was half dragged inside by two burly Carbonari. Her instinct was to fight back however she could—with feet and fists and teeth—but Leo caught her eye and, with a subtle jerk of his head, warned against it. They were badly outnumbered and should wait for a better opportunity to effect their escape.