Ink, Iron, and Glass

by Gwendolyn Clare

  They were led up a narrow, dim-lit stairway. The smell of pine tar clung to one of Elsa’s captors, and it burned in her nostrils. With a Carbonaro attached to each arm, she couldn’t lift her skirts and stumbled on the stairs, but they just hauled her up and kept going.

  On the third floor, they passed through a door into a room that was much larger than a single tenement, with rough patches where interior walls had been knocked down. A long, sturdy table that dominated the center of the room held an assortment of papers—maps, blueprints, shipping manifests, and others Elsa couldn’t identify at a distance.

  Leaning over that table was a man. All but two of the Carbonari retreated from the room, and when the door slammed, the man behind the table looked up. Elsa knew instantly who he was.

  Ricciotti Garibaldi had the same high forehead, straight nose, and expressive mouth as Leo, but he was brown-haired, and—Elsa noted with a spark of surprise—he had a bit of a weak chin. The paternal resemblance was there, but far from complete. She found the differences oddly comforting, as if they were an outward sign of the differences within.

  Ricciotti looked at each of them for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he moved around the table and walked over to Leo.

  “Ah, my son. I’ve been expecting you.” He reached his hands forward as if to grab Leo’s head and kiss his cheeks. Leo’s eyes went wide and he shoved him away.

  “Don’t touch me,” Leo said hoarsely.

  “I see.” Ricciotti straightened, rubbing the place on his chest where Leo’s hand must have connected. “I knew it would be a difficult adjustment for you, returning to the fold, but we hardly have time for your childish antics.”

  “My antics? I’m not the one who sabotaged a train full of innocent bystanders as some sort of ridiculous test!”

  Ricciotti shrugged it off as if Leo’s accusation were of little consequence either way. “It has been hard to know the proper time to reintegrate you—you were much too immature when we fled Venezia. I wanted to observe a show of your abilities. But, to my dismay, you weren’t the polymath who solved the problem.”

  Elsa’s eyes widened at the brazenness of his admittance. What kind of parent subjects his own son to a life-or-death test?

  But Leo did not seem horrified at this; instead he let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, poor Father. What a disappointment it must have been, to think I’d finally followed in Aris’s footsteps only to discover the honor belonged to someone else. I suppose that’s why you tried to have her killed?”

  “Sending the Carbonari man was an error. My intelligence was incomplete—if I’d realized who your lovely companion was, I would not have targeted her.” He inclined his head toward Elsa in a brief acknowledgment of her presence.

  “Of course,” said Leo. “Why destroy a person you already have means of controlling?”

  Ricciotti continued as if Leo hadn’t spoken. “In any case, my agent was under strict instructions to only deliver the poison. The train to test your mechanics, the poison to test your alchemy. And of course the problem of finding me, which would have tested your scriptology if you hadn’t yet again allowed others to do your work for you.” He gestured toward Elsa. “I never intended Jumi’s daughter to die, and as she appears quite well, I hardly see what you’re making a fuss over.”

  Elsa felt as if her mother’s name were a punch to the gut, robbing her lungs of air.

  “What is wrong with you?” Leo demanded. He looked about ready to pop a gasket. “I have to figure out you’re alive by deduction and conjecture? You couldn’t have—I don’t know—sent a telegram like a normal person?”

  But Elsa was still focused with the intensity of a microscope on those two small syllables: Jumi. “So you admit it,” she snapped, the words like acid in her mouth. “You are the one who took Jumi da Veldana.”

  “She speaks,” Ricciotti said, amused and unabashed. “Indeed, I have her.”

  Leo looked stricken at the shamelessness of the confession. He bent his head toward Elsa and spoke hushed words for her ears only. “There is nothing I can say in his defense.…”

  She squeezed his arm. “You are not responsible for this.”

  “I told you,” said a voice behind them, “we should have brought him back sooner.”

  Elsa jumped and whirled around, but Leo turned slowly, as if he already knew who it would be. A young man, perhaps a few years older than she, leaned casually in the doorway. His hair was dark, but he had the same wide-set tawny eyes she’d grown accustomed to seeing in Leo’s face. He had Leo’s beauty, too, but he wore it like a mask over whatever lay beneath. Aris.

  He pushed away from the doorframe and sauntered over to Leo, and with the two brothers standing close to each other, she could see Aris was somewhat taller but also slimmer. “You should know it was for your own good,” he said to Leo. “One doesn’t bring children to war. I wanted to send you a message, at least, but Father insisted you would never be content to stay away if you knew we lived.”

  Leo shifted his weight, as if he wanted to step away but couldn’t, held in place by the magnetic pull of brotherhood. “Well you’re right on one point: there’s nothing you could have done to content me after Venezia.”

  The corner of Aris’s mouth quirked. “Haven’t lost your flair for the dramatic, I see.” His gaze flicked past Leo to land on Ricciotti, and his voice took on layers of meaning that Elsa found difficult to parse. “Same old Leo, isn’t he?”

  Leo’s hand flashed out and snatched ahold of Aris’s sleeve, demanding his brother’s full attention. “Aris—” His voice came out hoarse and urgent. “Where’s Pasca?”

  Ricciotti started to say, “Now is hardly the time to—”

  “He’s dead,” Aris interrupted, staring intently back into Leo’s eyes. Leo seemed pinned beneath his gaze. “Pasca was supposed to be at fencing lessons with you. Signora Rosalinda was supposed to get both of you out. By the time we knew he was unaccounted for, it was much too late.”

  Leo’s eyes went wide, and all the color drained from his face. He looked as if he might be sick. Elsa couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking in that moment—but, apparently, his brother could.

  Aris cupped Leo’s face in his hands. Unlike with Ricciotti, Leo made no move to stop him, and this more than anything else chilled Elsa. “Oh, little brother,” Aris said, “you couldn’t have known. Pasca was always sneaking off, skipping lessons. It isn’t your fault.”

  “Of course it’s not his fault,” Elsa said, her temper finally snapping like a brittle twig. “He’s not the one who set fire to the house!”

  The brothers both looked at her, Aris with a trace of annoyance, Leo as if he were trying to focus on her through a thick fog.

  Elsa turned her wrath on Garibaldi. “We’re not here for a reunion,” she said through gritted teeth. “Why did you take Jumi? Where is she?”

  Garibaldi clasped his hands behind his back. “As to the second matter, Jumi is alive, she is under my care, and I will remand her to you in exchange for a favor.”

  Fury flashed through her veins, but Elsa lifted her chin and tried to channel the brazen calm with which Porzia might have this same conversation, were their positions reversed. “And as to the first matter?”

  “Therein lies the rub,” he replied, the corner of his mouth lifting ruefully. “My men had instructions to gain access to Veldana with Montaigne’s assistance, then acquire your mother along with a scriptology book she created.”

  Elsa felt an absurd sense of triumph at hearing Montaigne’s betrayal confirmed. And the scriptological weapon they’d heard rumors of—it must be inside the worldbook that had gone missing from the cottage along with Jumi.

  “Unfortunately,” Garibaldi continued, “the mission went awry. A third party killed Montaigne, set fire to the house, and in the ensuing confusion made off with the book.”

  Elsa said, “So where is this book now? Who has it?”

  “I know not. A double agent for the true Carbonari, some
vindictive Veldanese, a spy for Sicilia or Veneto or the Papal States…” He took a breath, and for a second he almost seemed rattled before regaining his smug superiority. “I’ve had agents searching for it, unsuccessfully so far. But now I think this is no longer my problem to solve.”

  “You’re proposing a trade. You want me to find it for you.”

  “Who better to find the book than the daughter of its creator?”

  Elsa kept silent for a moment, watching him. The creator herself would surely be better than the creator’s daughter, and this thought sent a spike of fear through Elsa. “I’ll see my mother now. I want proof she’s alive before agreeing to anything.”

  Garibaldi gestured to another door at the far end of the room. “Signorina, if you’ll accompany me, I’ll take you to her.”

  This seemed to sober Leo enough for him to regain control. “She’s not going anywhere with you—”

  Elsa rested a hand on his arm to quiet him. “It’s all right. I’ll be all right.”

  She followed Garibaldi despite Leo’s protestations and found herself traversing a narrow, windowless hall, and doubting whether it was wise to be alone with him in a confined space. If anything, Garibaldi seemed amused by her stiff reluctance.

  “Think what you will of me, but everything I do is for the good of the people. To put an end to foreign rule and crushing taxation, an end to religious laws strangling the progress of science. To unite my countrymen for a better future.”

  Elsa glared at him. “You have a funny way of showing it, abducting an innocent woman from her home.”

  “Innocent!” Garibaldi let out a surprised laugh. “Your mother is hardly innocent. She scribed the single most dangerous book in the history of mankind.”

  “But has she ever actually used it?” Elsa countered with a show of confidence. In truth she felt queasy at the thought of her mother using a worldbook to manufacture weapons—corrupting the beautiful, pure scientific discipline of scriptology. She did not want to believe her mother capable of such perversion, but at the same time she knew Jumi would do anything to protect Veldana.

  Garibaldi led her into a smaller room, and what she saw there drove those thoughts from her mind. Her mother lay prone, unmoving, inside a glass coffin nested within a large machine. Elsa’s breath caught in her throat.

  “What have you done?”

  “Everything I could.”

  “What is that supposed to—” She stopped midsentence as she got a better look at the machine. A mask with a thick tube trailing from it covered her mother’s nose and mouth. A sound almost like hydraulics—hiss and suck, in rhythm with the rise and fall of Jumi’s chest. A needle oscillated across a ribbon of paper, drawing a peak for each slow beat of Jumi’s heart. It was medical equipment.

  Softly, Elsa said, “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She is ill,” said Garibaldi, “and not of my doing. I believe she has been ill for some time. Consumption, you see.”

  “You are mistaken. She has been quite well.”

  Garibaldi said, “A scriptologist of your mother’s talent would have no difficulty scribing restorative properties into Veldana, so her symptoms would not trouble her while at home.”

  “No.” Elsa’s mind raced. His version of events sounded plausible, but perhaps Garibaldi had made her sick, or perhaps she was not sick at all. How could she know the truth when she couldn’t trust a word he said?

  “I did not cause her illness, and indeed it has been a matter of some inconvenience for me. Yet”—he spread his hands philosophically—“here we are.”

  “You claim to be faultless, and yet your Carbonari minions abducted her, and now you force her to stay in this toxic world.” Elsa pressed her palms to the curved glass lid of the chamber. She wanted to take her mother’s hand, but even with her so close, she was still out of reach. It was too much. Elsa ran her hand along the bottom edge of the glass, desperate to find a release mechanism to open the lid.

  Garibaldi grabbed her wrist. “I wouldn’t do that. If you attempt to open the casket without entering the correct code, the machine will asphyxiate her.”

  Then Elsa saw the latch for the lid, and just below the latch a row of six metal switches. Six binary switches meant sixty-four possible combinations, of which sixty-three would kill her mother. She yanked her hand out of Garibaldi’s grip. “You’re a monster.” A brilliant monster, perhaps, but she wasn’t about to admit that aloud.

  “Every great leader gets demonized by someone. It is the price we pay for pursuing our vision of the future. But I am just a man, and though my actions may seem abhorrent, I can assure you they are all in service of my country.”

  “If you are not a monster, then prove it: release her into my care immediately.”

  Garibaldi gave her a sad look, as if he pitied the simplicity with which she saw the world. “Alas, that is not an option. I require Jumi’s book. If you can find and retrieve it before my men do, I will consider her a fair trade.”

  Elsa bit her cheek to force away the sting of angry tears. “Very well. But I warn you: if she dies for the sake of your ridiculous political games, I will rain destruction upon everything you hold dear.”

  Oddly, Garibaldi responded with a well-pleased smile. “I have every confidence it will not come to that. I do not think even you understand the depths of your power when you are … properly motivated. I expect our transaction will be completed quite soon.”

  * * *

  Leo felt as if he’d been thrown from the seat of the spider hansom, the breath knocked out of him. He had steeled himself against the possibility of confronting his father, but somehow he had not prepared for this new version of Aris. Even the boy-Aris of his childhood memories held a certain sway over him. He’d always had that effect on people, drawing them in like moths to a flame. But this older Aris, more shrewd and subtle, had unfamiliar depths.

  Who was this new Aris, grown son of Ricciotti Garibaldi? How could Leo and Aris be Leo and Aris, without the youngest brother to complete them?

  His mind reeled, and Aris’s sharp gaze seemed the only lifeline within reach. Aris said, “Everything is going to be all right now that you’re with us again, brother.”

  Leo’s lips parted, but he couldn’t find the strength to contradict him. Instead, he said, “What are you planning?”

  Aris cocked his head, as if he thought this an amusing question. “To finish our grandfather’s work, of course: bring an end to the tyranny of foreign kings and unite our people. With Jumi’s book, we can realize Grandfather’s vision for Italian unification.”

  Leo thought back to the day before Elsa had arrived, to the earthquake that wasn’t an earthquake, which had corresponded with chilling accuracy to the moment when the Carbonari abductors brought Jumi and her mysterious worldbook into the real world. He had no proof, but could it be that one was the direct result of the other—that the tremor had been the world’s straining protest against the sudden introduction of such a powerful object? And, too, he remembered the shattered carnevale mask, the mask that had always reminded him of Aris.

  “Listen to me, you can’t use that book. If Elsa’s mother has truly invented a way to make scribed weapons, no one can know about it. Can’t you see that using it would endanger all scriptologists?”

  Aris cracked a grin. “I know you’ve missed the benefit of my mentoring these past years, but really, Leo—have you forgotten that anything worth doing is going to be dangerous?”

  “Don’t mock me,” Leo said hotly.

  “You’re angry, and I don’t blame you for it,” Aris answered, dropping the smile. “But we’re not enemies, you and I.”

  Leo watched his brother through narrowed eyes. “I don’t know what we are now.”

  The greater part of his concern was reserved, however, for Elsa. Surely Father wouldn’t hurt her, not now that he knew how valuable she was. No, not hurt … but ensnare? He’d wanted all along for Leo to find him, and Leo had led Elsa right into his trap. Rosalind
a was wrong, he thought. He was never smart enough. He couldn’t see how to get himself—or Elsa—out of this mess. He cast a worried look in the direction she had gone.

  Aris rested a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “He won’t make a play for her now. Not until he has that book in his possession.”

  “What?” Leo said, alarmed. Strange, how even after their long years apart, he could not seem to hide his thoughts from Aris.

  “You’re right to worry, though,” Aris continued. “We both know how Father is about polymaths—he must realize what a powerful asset she could be.”

  Was Aris offering allegiance? Or attempting to goad, to manipulate? Leo searched his brother’s expression. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing, brother.” Aris shrugged, a careful show of disinterest. “But I’d keep an eye on the Veldanese girl, if I were you. Wouldn’t want to lose that one.”

  * * *

  Leaving the tenement building—and with it her mother—Elsa felt as if she’d ripped out a vital organ and left it behind. The image of her mother, lying so very still within Garibaldi’s stasis chamber, seemed emblazoned on the insides of her eyelids. She had to think about something else, anything else. If she dwelled on that image for one second longer, she would burst into tears right there in the street.

  The worldbook, she would think about the worldbook. The most dangerous book ever created, which Jumi had kept hidden from her. The betrayal stung—they had always shared everything, or so Elsa had thought. What sort of weapons did it contain? Why would Jumi have created such a thing? No, the worldbook was no better, so she pushed the thought from her mind.

  Instead, she focused on Garibaldi—his mocking smile, his casual dismissal of Leo’s talents. She fanned the flames of her hatred until it outshone everything else.

  “Your father is horrible,” she told Leo as they hurried across a shadowy plaza. “Testing you like that, and then having the nerve to call you a failure.”

  “It’s not horrible to speak the truth,” Leo said listlessly. All the fight seemed to have drained out of him, his store of righteous anger depleted after the confrontation with his family.