Ink, Iron, and Glass

by Gwendolyn Clare

  By the time he was done explaining everything that had happened—even the conversation with Aris, which he’d kept to himself so far—the tea had eased his headache and settled his stomach.

  Rosalinda tapped her long, dexterous fingers against the arm of her chair and watched him speculatively. “So do you believe Aris would side with you against your father, or do you only wish to believe it?”

  “Ugh, I don’t know.” Leo set down his empty cup and rubbed at his eyes. “He could just as easily have been manipulating me at Father’s request.”

  Her lips pressed into a thin line, Rosalinda seemed to arrive at a decision. “Very well, I’ll reach out to my contacts in Paris regarding the gravesite. But you must do something for me: think carefully about how you’ll proceed. Aris may prove unworthy of your trust, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong about Ricciotti’s interest in Elsa.”

  Leo gave her a rueful smile. “As Gia would say, even a broken clock tells the time twice a day.”

  She nodded. “Just so.”

  As much as he blamed his father, Leo desperately wanted to trust in Aris. Aris, who had teased his brothers mercilessly, but would not suffer a single word spoken against them by anyone else. He’d once broken the stable boy’s arm in three places for making fun of Pasca. Leo remembered that day with perfect clarity, because it was the day when he thought, Nothing can ever hurt me, because Aris will protect us.

  But he also remembered little Pasca, in tears, begging Aris to stop hurting the bloodied stable boy. And Aris, who’d taken a long time to stop.

  * * *

  “So this is where you put dead people, huh?” Elsa said, looking around. “It’s not what I’d imagined.”

  They’d timed their arrival for after nightfall, and there were no gaslamps to illuminate the cemetery. By the light of the kerosene lantern Faraz held, she could make out a brick-paved walkway lined with skinny trees. Little stone buildings and statues cast a starburst pattern of long shadows away from where he stood. The cemetery stretched into absolute dark in all directions, so massive it was hard to believe they were inside the city. Somewhere in the darkness, an owl hooted.

  “The grave’s just over here,” Porzia said, taking the lead.

  They’d taken a portal directly to the gravesite to avoid attracting attention. Apparently, as Porzia had explained to Elsa, a group of foreigners entering a cemetery with a large machine in tow might be viewed with suspicion.

  Leo said, “Hold on a minute.” He flipped a switch on the digger bot’s control box, but nothing happened.

  Standing idle, the machine looked a bit like a giant ant. It had a narrow body almost two meters long, and three sets of multijointed legs. Leo gave the control box a good whack and tried the switch again, and the machine lurched into motion. It wasn’t especially skilled at walking, so now it looked like a giant drunken ant.

  As they all followed Porzia, Elsa watched Leo out of the corner of her eye. His scowl suggested he’d like to disassemble the bot for proper repairs right here in the graveyard, the very sight of a poorly functioning machine offending his sensibilities. Elsa hid a smile.

  “It’s this one,” Porzia said, checking the name engraved on the stone to be certain.

  The machine positioned itself above the fresh-turned earth and planted its feet wide. With a high-pitched whine, its belly split in half, revealing a column of smaller scoop-shaped appendages. As the machine warmed up, the methodical scoop-and-dump motions sped faster and faster until the digging arms blurred together and the dirt was flying. The machine lowered its body into the rectangular hole as it progressed downward.

  “I don’t get it,” Elsa declared.

  Leo looked up from the control box. “Get what?”

  Elsa waved a hand vaguely, indicating the graveyard as a general concept. “Take the grave markers, for instance. If you’re not supposed to dig them up again, why do they all need to be labeled so precisely? It’d be much harder to steal the right corpse if they weren’t all marked.”

  Faraz gave her a look that suggested she was missing something. “The headstones are for the families. So they can visit their loved ones.”

  Elsa frowned, perplexed. “Their dead loved ones…?”

  Briskly, Porzia interjected, “Let’s save the theological discussion for another time, shall we? The machine’s almost finished.”

  Elsa still had no idea why anyone would want to visit a corpse disposal site, but she agreed with Porzia’s assessment: this gap in her knowledge simply wasn’t high on their list of priorities at the moment.

  Metal scraped harshly against wood, the digging arms slowed to a halt, and the dirt stopped flying. With a chuff of hydraulics, the body of the machine slowly rose out of the hole in the ground, a casket held firmly in its clutches. The bot scuttled to one side, deposited the casket on the grass, and backed away, settling into idle mode.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got,” Leo said, setting aside the control box and hefting a crowbar. He wedged the crowbar beneath the pine lid and worked it up and down, the fabric of his shirt taut over flexing muscles. Elsa caught herself staring and flushed, embarrassed, but in the dark nobody seemed to notice.

  The nails of the coffin lid squealed against the wood as they pulled loose. Once fully open, an unpleasant stench rose from the casket. It wasn’t the foul odor of putrefaction that Elsa had expected, though—it was something unfamiliar.

  “Whew,” Leo declared, holding his sleeve to his nose and backing up a step. “Smells like burnt rubber, only worse.”

  Faraz, on the other hand, stepped closer and crouched over the contents, holding the lantern close. His nose wrinkled, but otherwise he gave no indication of discomfort.

  “I can’t believe they buried this stuff in a graveyard,” he scoffed. “No one could tell this isn’t human? It’s not even organic—looks like some kind of wax-based composite. Consider my faith in the intelligence of normal folk to be shattered.”

  Porzia raised her brows. “Don’t rush to judgment. I certainly wouldn’t volunteer to perform an autopsy on that. It’s disgusting.”

  “And charred human bits wouldn’t be disgusting?” Faraz countered. “Anyway, we have our answer. Montaigne is alive.”

  Elsa leaned over the casket, breathing shallowly. A sticky black tar-like substance coated what remained of a fake skeletal structure. The corpse she’d tripped over in Paris had never been real; it was all a misdirection. Even though she’d known Montaigne had little respect for the Veldanese, she still felt a sharp stab of betrayal that he would risk destroying Veldana to serve his own ends.

  Leo scrunched his face. “You’re not going to touch that mess, are you?”

  “Oh dear Lord,” Porzia groaned, as if she might be ill. “I can’t look.”

  “No, no,” Elsa reassured them, backing away. “Seeing it is proof enough. Faraz is right: Charles Montaigne lives.”

  Stepping away from the stench of the burnt homunculus, Elsa took a deep breath and let it out. So far, everything the Oracle had told her was true: Jumi’s captor was a brilliant megalomaniac, and Montaigne—the man who had betrayed her—had the worldbook Garibaldi wanted. And what if the last piece of the Oracle’s prediction proved correct as well?

  You will lose something precious to you.

  * * *

  Everyone seemed subdued as they opened a portal back to Casa della Pazzia.

  Leo cleared his throat. “Casa, would you give the digger bot a good cleaning and return it to Faraz’s lab? Better not to track dirt all over Gia’s floors.” They were standing in the foyer, which meant the bot would scatter dirt through half the house to get back to the alchemy lab if it wasn’t cleaned first.

  “How atypically considerate of you, Signor Trovatelli,” Casa mocked.

  “Not really,” said Porzia. “He just doesn’t want to put Mamma in a mood before we talk to her.”

  Leo shrugged. “Guilty.”

  To Elsa and Faraz, Porzia said, “You two sho
uld go ahead to the library and see if you can track Montaigne’s location. I have to go convince Mamma not to lock us all in the wine cellar until this whole business is over with.”

  Difficult as it was for her, she would have to trust in Porzia’s persuasive abilities, so Elsa simply nodded. “Of course.” She felt Leo’s gaze lingering on her for a moment, as if he were trying to extract some hidden meaning, but she had no idea what he was looking for.

  After Porzia and Leo left to find Gia, Faraz said, “I’ll meet you in the library in a minute. I’ve got to pick up Skandar from the alchemy lab.”

  “Skandar?” She gave him a confused look.

  “Let’s just say the creature has its uses.” Faraz flashed her a grin and went.

  Elsa just stood there on the inlaid tile floor for a moment, exhausted. She watched as a tiny brass bot rolled into the room and began scrubbing down the much larger gravedigger. Then she made herself move, heading for the library. Time to track down Montaigne, and with him find the leverage she needed to rescue her mother.

  * * *

  Leo tugged on Porzia’s elbow as they passed near his laboratory. She raised an eyebrow, but let him lead her down the half flight of steps and over to the workbench where the scrambler sat. He flipped the switch so they could talk in private.

  “What are you doing?” she said, fists planted on hips.

  He held up a hand. “Let’s just think about this for a moment. This worldbook we’re going after … if it really contains some sort of apocalyptic-level weapon, we can’t let my father get his hands on it.”

  “Obviously,” she said, her voice clipped with impatience.

  “But we also can’t tell the Order about it, which means we can’t risk telling Gia.”

  Her eyebrows shot up and she took a moment to reply, taken aback. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course I have to tell Mamma. Especially after … how we left things.” Despite their Tuscan tempers, Porzia and Gia had always been close, and Leo knew it pained her to be at odds with her mother for any length of time.

  He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “If the Order gets ahold of a dangerous worldbook, they’re going to lock it away, all other concerns be damned. They’ll write off Elsa’s mother as an acceptable loss without a second thought.”

  “And what if your father is manipulating us? What if he has no intention of releasing Jumi, no matter what we do in exchange?”

  “We won’t let that happen. We’ll have leverage!”

  Porzia’s face twisted in a pained expression. “I can’t not tell my mother where we’re going, Leo. I’m sorry, but that’s asking too much.”

  Her hand darted out and deftly turned off the scrambler, and then in a swirl of skirts she was up the steps and out the door.

  “Hold on! Porzia!” Leo called, but she did not stop.

  Leo exhaled in frustration and chased after her, following her through the halls and down the basement stairs.

  “Wait a minute!” he said, an urgency bordering on panic growing in his gut. “The last time we so much as mentioned my father’s name to the Order, they sent a courier to divest us of everything we’d collected that even might have to do with Ricciotti Garibaldi.”

  “I know that,” Porzia snapped. “I was the one who deceived the courier and sent him on his way with just a single journal from Montaigne’s library. But you can only stretch my loyalties so far.”

  “What of your loyalty to Elsa?”

  She stopped just inside the doorway of the generator room. Her eyelids squeezed shut and her hands curled into fists. “Can’t you see you’re tearing me in half?” she hissed.

  “Please, Porzia. Think.”

  The room was so warm the air felt too thick in Leo’s lungs, and pinpricks of sweat immediately began to tickle the back of his neck. The great hulking generators chuffed noisily, indicator needles vibrating just shy of the redline. Gia must have spooled them up to full power in order to test their functionality.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my thinking,” Porzia squeezed out from between clenched teeth. “She’s my mother, and the Order will hold her responsible for all of us. For whatever we do.”

  Burak’s skinny, grease-smeared form appeared from around the side of a generator. He ran over, oblivious to the tension between them. “Leo! Where have you been? We worked all day and it’s going to be a long night, too, and you’re missing all the fun.”

  Leo managed a strained smile, feeling a little jealous that Burak was still young enough to think everything was fun. “Well, you’re getting so good at this stuff, I figured you didn’t need my help.”

  Apparently his smile was not convincing enough, though, since Burak’s cheerful expression faded into uncertainty. “Signora Pisano went over to the charging room. Do you want me to fetch her?”

  Leo turned to Porzia again, his tone imploring. “If she doesn’t know, she can’t be blamed. We’d actually be protecting her.”

  Porzia made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, grappling with indecision. “Promise me,” she said, and though she couldn’t elaborate on the specifics with Burak listening, Leo knew her well enough to guess: Promise me we’ll rescue Jumi and stop Garibaldi; promise me this is the right choice.

  Leo flashed her a conspiratorial grin. “We can do this; I know we can.”

  She gave him a solemn nod—her official acquiescence.

  Leo, still smiling, turned to Burak and said, “Never mind. No need to disturb Gia, after all.”

  * * *

  Inside the tracking world, Elsa sloshed barefoot across the miniature sea and picked her way over the miniature mountains to the brass podium. She slid open the side drawer and returned the tracking compass to its proper place so the machine could retarget. Then she placed one of Montaigne’s worldbooks atop the podium, pushed all the right buttons in the right order, and pulled the lever to start it up.

  The gears whirred, warming up. The tracking machine went ka-chunk, ka-chunk—just twice—then the gears wound down to a slow idle, sounding to Elsa’s ears as if the machine were too depressed to perform its duties. Elsa shut it all the way off. Maybe she’d made a mistake. She lifted the book off the top of the podium, wiped the surface down with her sleeve, replaced the book, entered the start-up sequence again, and yanked the lever.

  Again, the machine refused to take the target.

  Scowling, Elsa opened the return portal. The floor of the library was cold against her still-damp feet, but that was the least of her problems.

  Faraz and Skandar were already waiting in the library, but before he could ask her how it went, Porzia and Leo arrived. At least Elsa wouldn’t be required to relate the bad news twice.

  “Well?” Porzia said, flushed with nervous energy. “Where’s the bastard hiding?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Elsa replied. “It didn’t work.”

  That drew Leo and Porzia up short. Leo gave her a dumbstruck look. “What?”

  Elsa pulled out a chair and flopped down, dismayed at the sight of Montaigne’s worldbooks stacked on the table. She said, “All the worldbooks went through the restoration machine—they’ve not only been handled by other people, they’ve been completely disassembled, repaired, and reassembled by someone else’s invention. The ownership must not have survived.”

  “Damn,” said Porzia, hands on hips. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Faraz said, “But ownership is a property you just invented. Can’t you rewrite the map world so one of Montaigne’s books will work?”

  “Oh, of course,” Porzia said. “If we had time to go to university and complete a doctoral dissertation on ownership properties!”

  Elsa explained, “There’s an element of stochasticity involved whenever you scribe a complex property. Porzia and I could spend weeks creating a dozen different variations on the map world and still fail to produce one that would accomplish precisely what we require.”

  Leo’s eyes widened in horror as the realization sank in. “So now we ha
ve nothing of Montaigne’s.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Damn it, we had exactly what we needed and we ruined it.”

  Had that been Montaigne’s true intention when he set fire to his house? To leave no trace of himself behind, no fragment to be exploited, to sever all connections that might lead to the worldbook’s true thief? Unwittingly, Elsa had salvaged precisely the objects she would need to locate him; and just as unwittingly, she had completed the fire’s work and destroyed those selfsame objects.

  Porzia’s eyes narrowed, her lips pursed. “Wait a moment, Elsa. Did you ever fix that Pascaline?”

  Elsa’s heart skipped a beat. “No, I didn’t! I borrowed some tools, but I never started the repairs. And Montaigne owned it for years—it might have a strong enough ownership bond even with the fire damage.” With a sudden burst of renewed hope, she shot out of the chair. “Porzia, you’re brilliant!”

  “Well I hardly think that was ever in question,” Porzia said primly.

  Elsa ran all the way to her study and back, returning breathless with the charred and warped Pascaline. The fire alone might have done it in. Or what about that time she’d disassembled it as a child? Still, it was their best hope—she could only pray the ownership was still intact.

  All four of them went through to the map world together, as if Elsa needed help to be even more nervous than she already was. Her hand was shaking when she reached for the controls, and she had to squeeze it into a fist and then shake out her fingers to steady the muscles. Porzia pulled the lever for her.

  Elsa held her breath through the first iterations—ka-chunk, ka-chunk—and did not relax until the twang of the mainspring signaled completion.

  “Whew. I think it worked this time.”

  Porzia fished the compass out of its drawer and scrutinized it. “Seems to be pointing at something, at least.”

  Elsa sloshed through the ankle-deep ocean back to the continent, intent on discovering where their search would take them next. The sound of splashing water told her Porzia and the boys followed close behind.

  “Unbelievable,” she said, staring down at the pulsing red dot on the map. “He has a lot of nerve going there, after what he did.”