Elsa, on the other hand, still had plenty to spare. “First, he set preposterous standards for success. Second, he doesn’t understand that the smartest way to tackle a problem is to use the people at your disposal—something you taught me, by the way. And third, is he even a polymath himself?” The medical chamber Garibaldi had shown her was an impressive combination of alchemy and mechanics, but he’d never actually claimed credit for its construction.
“No…,” Leo said. “He has some mechanist tendencies, but he’s primarily an alchemist. His talents are unusually broad, but he’s not a full polymath like you and Aris.”
“So he expects more from you than he himself can deliver. Who the hell does he think he is, to suddenly come back into your life and judge you?”
Leo shrugged. “My father?”
She snorted. “He forfeited his claim to that title seven years ago when he abandoned his own children in a burning house.”
Leo declined to answer, and Elsa clenched her jaw and forced herself to let the subject drop. He must be processing the encounter in his own way, trying to sort through deeply conflicted emotions, Elsa knew, and she should respect that—even if her own rage and terror were threatening to overwhelm her.
It was late by the time their footfalls landed with hollow thunk, thunks on the wooden boards of the promenade. A fat gibbous moon rose in the east, and each wave crest caught and scattered the light. Elsa found she was grateful for what darkness the night could offer, obscuring just how endless the ocean was. How distant the horizon. She felt like some tiny tide-pool creature, swept away from her cloistered home into the impossible depths of the open sea. This was a vast world—a vast responsibility. Much depends on the choices you make, the Oracle had told Elsa and Faraz. Could Jumi’s worldbook truly lead to freedom for the Italian people, or enslavement for pazzerellones, or both? For the briefest of moments, she hated Jumi for laying such a weight upon her shoulders.
Leo’s gaze swept left and right, picking out two darker silhouettes amidst the gloom, and he strode straight for his friends. Elsa couldn’t recognize them in the dark, but she followed without questioning.
The moonlight glinted in Faraz’s eyes as he turned. “Ah, you see? I told you they’re still alive.”
“Oh, thank the Lord!” Porzia exclaimed, throwing an arm around each of them and pulling them into a messy embrace. “Don’t scare me like that. And you,” she said to Faraz, “don’t gloat—you were just as worried as I.”
Faraz managed a casual poise, as if he had no idea what she was talking about. “I tried to tell her you’d be fine.”
Porzia looked from one of them to the other, taking in Leo’s dazed expression and Elsa’s grim determination. Her jubilant relief settled into concern. “What went wrong? Didn’t you find anything?”
“We found something, all right,” Elsa said. “In a way, we found too much.”
Together they all ported back to Casa della Pazzia, and Elsa and Leo related the events of their confrontation with Garibaldi.
Everyone agreed to reconvene in the morning to plan this new search for the book. As she trudged up the stairs, Elsa wondered if they were all thinking along the same lines as she. They would retrieve this dangerous worldbook … and then what? Trade it for her mother’s life, and in so doing give Garibaldi exactly what he wanted? When she’d first fled to Amsterdam, all she cared about was rescuing Jumi and salvaging Veldana, but now the thought of helping Garibaldi left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Sleep refused to come. Elsa played through her encounter with Garibaldi, sifting through each memory as if to glean some overlooked grains of insight. Jumi lying so still inside the chamber that both sustained her and held her prisoner. Garibaldi’s confidence that he would get what he wanted, one way or another. But Elsa’s mind kept catching on one thought in particular, like a linen shirtsleeve snagging and tearing on a rough metal edge: there existed a worldbook that Jumi had deliberately hidden from her own daughter.
After a while she gave up the attempt to sleep, threw on her dressing gown, and wandered out of her room. She had no particular goal, other than to clear her head.
A little bot appeared at her heels, holding up a candlestick. In a hushed voice, Casa said, “Some light, signorina?”
“Thank you, Casa,” Elsa replied. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, signorina. It is kind of you to ask.”
Elsa tugged her robe tighter. “At least one thing is going well. We are overdue for some good luck.”
“If you will excuse my forwardness, signorina: you are a pazzerellona. You make your own luck.”
In her wanderings, Elsa came upon the door to the cloister garden, and on a whim she let herself outside. She left the little candlebot waiting on the veranda and stepped out under the stars. There was a stone bench toward the middle, which seemed a reasonable place to sit and think.
The garden was lovely at night. Crickets chirped, and the pale glow of the moon transformed the fruit trees into a surreal landscape of light and shadow.
Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention, and Elsa looked up to see Leo leaning against his balcony railing, one hand wrapped around the neck of a wine bottle. His hair was mussed, his shirt rumpled, the unbuttoned cuffs hanging loose about his wrists. Though his face was shadowed and his posture gave away nothing, Elsa could feel the precise moment when his gaze fixed upon her.
If he’d meant to be alone with his wine, he didn’t seem at all put out to discover he had company—instead, quite the opposite. He vaulted over the balcony railing, picked his way down the sloped tiles of the veranda roof, and swung off the edge. Some of the wine splashed from the bottle when he landed, staining his white shirtsleeve. “Damn,” he said absently, switching the bottle to his left hand and shaking wine droplets from his right.
“Can’t sleep?” she called.
He strolled over to her, more or less in a straight line, and sat beside her on the bench. “How ever did you guess?”
Her instinct was to bristle at his sarcasm, but she managed to let it go instead. By now she could recognize his bravado for the defense mechanism it was. “Neither can I. I can’t seem to switch off all the unsolved questions.”
“Mm,” he said, then held the bottle out to her. “Would you care for some liquid off-switch?”
Elsa raised an eyebrow and declined to take the bottle. “And how’s that working for you?”
“Ask me again when it’s empty,” he said, and took a generous gulp.
Elsa stayed quiet, waiting for him to work his way around to what he really wanted to say. After a minute of silence, he spoke again.
“Don’t you agree the nightmares ought to go away, now that I know my father’s alive? But they’re still up here”—he tapped his temple—“worming away at my brain. Everyone else makes it look so easy. Such a simple matter, sleep. But not for me, never for me.”
“I’m so sorry, Leo,” Elsa said awkwardly. She found herself wishing she’d spent less of her childhood sketching sea creatures and more time learning how to be a good friend. She didn’t know what to do with this raw, exposed version of Leo. She didn’t know what to do for him.
Leo took another swig straight from the bottle. “And you? What are you doing wandering the garden at this hour?”
“Can’t get my own parent out of my head,” Elsa confessed. “I thought I was the one person Jumi trusted completely. I thought she shared everything with me, but she was hiding things from me, too. If Alek is a fool for believing he knew her, then how much more foolish am I, who lived with her every day of my life and still didn’t know?”
“Not sure it’s possible to ever really know someone else. Know their mind.” Leo was watching her with an oddly intense expression, as if the wine made it difficult to focus. Then he added, “Your hair is like shadows.”
Elsa blinked at him. “Uh … what?”
“Shadows,” he said again, as if repetition would make his point clear. He reached out
for a strand of her hair and ran his fingers down its length. Elsa stiffened, but he didn’t seem to notice, too intent on the strand. “Is like you could melt into darkness, dissipate like smoke. Poof. You’re a phantom, Elsa.”
“And you’re a drunken idiot,” she said, batting away his hand.
“You’re not going to disappear on me, are you? Oh, Elsa, I don’t think I could stand losing you too.…”
Elsa flushed with a sudden awareness of how close he was, how he leaned in toward her like a plant reaching for the sun. She could smell the wine on his breath; she wondered if she would taste of it too, tannic and sweet at once, if she pressed her lips to his. For a weak moment she wanted nothing more than to kiss him, to be drowning in him the way he was drowning in the wine bottle.
Leo’s eyes narrowed at her and he leaned away, as if he somehow sensed what she was thinking. Apparently even drunk Leo had a firm sense of propriety.
Elsa could not help but smile at him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I thought all you wanted was to get your mother and go home to Veldana,” he said, the edges of his words worn ragged with pain. Even in the dark, she could see the deep-rooted fear of abandonment etched around his eyes.
Elsa whispered, “That’s not all I want. Not anymore.”
Leo focused his bleary stare upon her, as if he were trying to will himself to sober up enough to comprehend her meaning. Subtlety was wasted on the intoxicated.
Taking pity on him, Elsa stood and said, “Come along. I think you’ve had quite enough wine, and it’s time to try your bed again.”
“That’s what all the ladies say to me,” he said with a lopsided grin.
Elsa snorted. “I’m going to assume that’s the wine talking.”
“It was a joke!” Leo threw his head back dramatically, as if to plead his case to the stars. “Why must you always assume the worst of me?”
“If you always assume the worst, you can never be disappointed,” Elsa quipped. Then she reached for his hand to drag him to his feet.
Leo did not resist her, but neither was he especially cooperative as they made their way inside and up the stairs. She tried to take the wine bottle but he fought to keep it, and since there wasn’t much left at the bottom anyway, she relented.
In his bedroom, he managed to kick off his shoes with only a little difficulty, then flopped onto the bed fully dressed, wine-spotted shirt and all. He curled on his side, facing away from her, but kept ahold of her hand.
As his grip relaxed, she tried gingerly to ease her hand away, but he mumbled, “Don’t go.”
“You’re drunk,” she countered.
“Yes,” he said, with surprising lucidity, “but I am not too drunk to know I want you to stay. That I always want you to stay.…”
Elsa huffed, but she gave in and stayed. It was pointless trying not to care for him—if she was honest with herself, she’d long since lost that particular battle. As his breathing slowed and deepened into the rhythms of sleep, she brushed his soft golden hair away from his face with her other hand.
People, like clockwork, needed care and maintenance. Leo’s gears slipped and ground against one another, and his brass casing rattled, and his mainspring was always, always wound too tight. The thought filled Elsa with such righteous anger, knowing Garibaldi had broken the one thing she couldn’t fix.
Before that moment, all she’d wanted from Garibaldi was Jumi’s safe return. She’d known he was awful and she’d hated him, but not like this. Now she wanted to see Garibaldi pay for what he’d done—not just to her family, but also to his own kin. Now she craved vengeance on behalf of them both.
“For this,” Elsa whispered to the sleeping boy, “for this I will destroy him.”
16
IF YOU WOULD BE A REAL SEEKER AFTER TRUTH, IT IS NECESSARY THAT AT LEAST ONCE IN YOUR LIFE YOU DOUBT, AS FAR AS POSSIBLE, ALL THINGS.
—René Descartes
Elsa spent the morning with Porzia, arguing over the possibility of modifying the map world to detect an object—namely, the missing worldbook—instead of a person. When their discussion devolved into a shouting match, Elsa decided that perhaps a different approach was called for.
Some time later, Faraz wandered into the library and set a plate of bread and cheese on the table beside Elsa’s elbow. “You missed lunch again. How goes the hunt?”
Elsa was flipping through Montaigne’s journals for the fifth or sixth time. “It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no mention of any political connections except Garibaldi. So if Montaigne wasn’t the leak, how did this mysterious third party even know the theft was occurring?”
Faraz pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat. “Perhaps we’re approaching this from the wrong direction. Could we make a list of everyone who knows the worldbook exists and might want to take it off Garibaldi’s hands?”
“Montaigne would be at the top of that list, except for the part where he’s dea— Oh!” she said, interrupting herself as a thought occurred.
“Oh?”
“Porzia!” she called.
Porzia leaned over the railing of the third-floor balcony. “What?”
Elsa waved a hand impatiently. “Get down here, I’ve had an idea.”
Porzia, clattering down the stairs, said, “Casa? I believe it’s past time you roused Leo.”
“Leo is … somewhat indisposed,” the house said delicately.
“I don’t care, Casa. Drag him from his bed if you have to.” She came over and leaned one hip against the table beside Elsa. “What is it?”
Elsa looked from Faraz to Porzia and back again. “Why kill Montaigne and burn the house? There are other ways it could have been accomplished. Killing Garibaldi’s men, or using their own knockout gas against them. Why the fire?”
Faraz shrugged. “To cause panic or to destroy evidence.”
“Evidence,” Elsa said, latching onto the word. “When Leo was a child he saw his father’s body, but it wasn’t his real body, it was an inanimate homunculus. A copy. What if Garibaldi, in the process of befriending Montaigne, told him that story?”
Faraz’s eyes went wide. “You mean Montaigne created a homunculus of his own? That just might be possible. He’d need an excellent alchemist, though—faces are a challenge.”
Elsa sat back in her chair and shook her head, disappointed in herself. “The body was positioned facedown, and the house being on fire was rather a distraction. A shoddy likeness wouldn’t have fooled Garibaldi himself, but his ex-Carbonari followers wouldn’t have thought to look for the signs. I certainly didn’t, and I’m a pazzerellone.”
Porzia frowned thoughtfully. “Is that the sort of thing Montaigne would do? He was a scriptologist, after all, not an alchemist.”
“Tricking someone using their own brand of subterfuge?” Elsa said. “Absolutely. He always loved proving how much smarter he was than everyone else.”
Faraz tapped the table. “We need to establish whether he’s truly dead.”
“Who’s dead?” Leo said groggily from the doorway. His hair was a mess, he squinted as if the sunlight through the window pained him, and he was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, now wrinkled in addition to wine-stained. At the sight of him, Elsa felt as if there were a hand around her heart, squeezing.
With some effort Leo pushed away from the doorframe and joined them, flopping down in the chair beside Faraz. “Or who’s potentially not dead, rather?”
Porzia explained, “Montaigne may have faked his death.”
The more Elsa considered this possibility, the angrier she became. If Montaigne was alive, was he also complicit in the burning of his library? Had he set the fire himself, knowing full well that it might mean the destruction of Veldana? Her home, her legacy, her people—all potentially destroyed. “That bastard! If he’s alive, he’s going to wish he wasn’t.”
Leo folded his arms on the tabletop and rested his head on them. “I don’t suppose you could all whisper? My skull’s about to explode.�
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Elsa clenched her teeth. “I need to know. I need to know for certain who’s responsible for that fire.”
“Fantastic,” Porzia said, heavy on the sarcasm. “What are we supposed to do? Go to Paris and dig up his corpse?”
Faraz brightened. “Actually, I don’t think that will be much of a problem. I’ve got this machine—”
“You have a grave-robbing machine?” Porzia screeched. Leo winced.
Faraz held up his hands. “It’s not mine! I don’t work on people, remember? It’s something the previous occupant left behind in my lab—looks like it’s been under a tarpaulin for forty years. I’m not even sure it still works.”
“Oh, it works,” said Leo.
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“What?” he said defensively. “There was a mysterious machine cluttering up Faraz’s lab. I’m naturally curious.”
After an awkward pause, Faraz cleared his throat. “The larger problem is how to find Montaigne’s grave. It’s not as if we can show up in Paris advertising our intent to exhume a corpse. There are laws about such things.”
Porzia said, “If only one of us knew a revolutionary with a network of spies all across southern Europe. Do you think the Carbonari might have someone in Paris who could help?”
“Wonderful plan. After a little nap, I think,” said Leo.
“Now.” Porzia grabbed his arm and dragged him from the chair. “You need to call on a friend.”
* * *
Rosalinda met him at the door with a penetrating scowl. “Are you hungover?”
Leo squinted against the afternoon sunlight, which seemed to be stabbing right through his eyes into his pounding skull. “We need a favor. Do you have an agent in Paris?”
Rosalinda let him inside but commanded him to sit while she prepared a pot of calendula tea. Cradling the warm cup in both hands, Leo realized this was her way of caring for him. She was a warrior—she understood the needs of the body. Her ministrations might be brusque, but this was how she expressed affection. How she always had.
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