Ink, Iron, and Glass

by Gwendolyn Clare

  Faraz stepped up beside her, curious to see. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I know exactly where he’s hiding,” Elsa explained.

  The dot glowed over Amsterdam: the home city of one Alek de Vries.

  17

  THE MOVING FINGER WRITES, AND HAVING WRITTEN MOVES ON. NOR ALL THY PIETY NOR ALL THY WIT, CAN CANCEL HALF A LINE OF IT.

  —Omar Khayyam

  The doorbook took them to a too-familiar street. The quiet canal on one side, the narrow, squashed-together brick buildings looming up on the other, the warm pools of gaslight on the cobblestones. Elsa hardly needed to check the compass for confirmation, but Porzia held it out for her to see, so she glanced at it anyway. Her hunch had been right—the needle pointed straight at Alek’s front door.

  “We’ll have to pick the locks,” Elsa said. “I don’t have a key.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Leo said. He produced a set of lockpicks and crouched by the door.

  Porzia kept an eye on the street, looking out for anyone who might notice their illicit behavior, though passersby were unlikely—the hour was so late it might better be called early. “Isn’t this the part where you tell us all about how you grew up with a band of professional thieves, or some such?”

  “It hardly seems fun anymore,” Leo said, “if you’re going to make up the lies for me before I get a chance to tell them.”

  He gave the torsion wrench a quick twist and the front door swung inward.

  Elsa stepped inside. “Quietly now. He’s on the second floor.”

  They climbed the stairs single file, hugging close to the railing to keep the steps from creaking beneath their weight. Elsa pointed at Alek’s door, and Leo slid a pick into the lock. This time everyone stayed silent while he worked, hardly breathing.

  When the lock popped open, Leo grabbed the door handle to hold it mostly closed. He raised his eyebrows at Elsa. The hinges were going to creak, she knew, but she gave him a quick nod anyway.

  Leo tucked the lockpicks away and let the hinges creak. They were inside.

  A sleep-blurred voice from the other room said, “Listen, Alek, I can explain—”

  Then he rounded the corner and came face-to-face with them. Charles Montaigne was of de Vries’s generation, grayed hair and tired skin, though he was shorter and more portly. “You’re not Alek.” He stared for a moment, dumbstruck, and then let out a short bark of laughter. “The daughter, of course! I should have guessed you’d come for it.”

  Elsa drew herself up to her full height and spoke with as much authority as she could muster. “Monsieur Montaigne, I need my mother’s worldbook.”

  Montaigne considered her, his expression both sad and superior at once. “I’m sorry about Jumi, I am, but you can’t have the book. No one can—it’s too dangerous.”

  Leo took a step forward, fingering the grip of his rapier. Elsa could practically feel the tension in his body vibrating through the air. He said, “Don’t mistake this for a request. We’re prepared to take it by force if we have to.”

  Montaigne let himself down into Alek’s armchair, as if Leo’s threat simply wearied him. “When Garibaldi approached me about acquiring it, I knew this was my chance to hide the book where no one can ever use it.” He picked up Alek’s pipe and began packing it with tobacco.

  Elsa ground her teeth. “So you don’t deny it’s your fault she was taken.”

  He struck a match and sucked on the pipe, pulling the flame into the bowl for a nice, even light. “You know … I spent years afraid of her, hating her, but the truth is I brought it on myself. The arrogance, to think I knew what was best for the Veldanese simply because I’d created them. So you see, when it comes to that book, I’m just as culpable as Jumi. Though to be fair, none of this would have happened if Alek hadn’t taught her to scribe.”

  Elsa was stunned at the man’s talent for shifting blame, and it was Faraz who replied, “You tried to burn the Oracle worldbook—an original Jabir ibn Hayyan. And you call yourself a scriptologist.” His voice shook with cold fury. “You are no scriptologist!”

  Montaigne turned a sick shade of green at this accusation. His hand dropped to the armrest, as if the pipe were suddenly an unbearable weight. “The men I hired were supposed to take the ibn Hayyan along with Jumi’s worldbook—I thought it would throw Garibaldi off my scent if they were seen stealing from my library. But some idiot dropped the ibn Hayyan in the struggle.”

  Privately, Elsa thought it was rather telling that the part Montaigne felt ashamed of was burning the books, when he had no shame over encouraging and facilitating Jumi’s abduction. Even now, the Veldanese had little value to him beyond the scriptological accomplishment they symbolized—they were never going to be fully human in his eyes.

  Which meant no argument about Jumi’s welfare would sway him. Elsa’s throat felt tight with desperation. “You cannot right one wrong by committing another. I need the book!”

  Faraz stepped forward. “This is getting us nowhere.” He tossed a small glass vial at Montaigne, which broke on impact, spreading a bluish ooze all over his shirt and up his neck.

  Montaigne said, “Ugh, what is this foul—” And then he went, quite suddenly, as limp as a sleeping babe.

  “Excellent,” Faraz said, satisfied with the results. Perched on his shoulder, Skandar raised a few tentacles in glee, as if this were all a show Faraz had performed for the creature’s enjoyment.

  Leo stared down at Montaigne, curious but unperturbed. “What did you do to him?”

  “When I heard about the sleeping gas from Elsa, I figured we could use some of our own. Don’t touch it—the active ingredient absorbs through the skin. Not such a widespread effect as gas, of course, but better for close-contact situations, I thought. He’ll be out cold for a few hours at least.”

  “Huh.” Leo looked from Montaigne’s motionless form to Faraz’s attempt at an innocent expression. “Then I suppose I won’t need this for anything,” he said, resting a hand on the hilt of his rapier.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” Elsa said to Faraz. “I still have questions.”

  “He wasn’t going to tell us anything useful,” said Faraz, though he looked abashed. Faraz was the last one she’d expected to act hastily out of anger instead of cool logic. He slipped out of the room to check the rest of the flat.

  Elsa stared at Montaigne’s slack expression. Did he know whether or not the Veldana worldbook had survived the fire? Did he even care?

  She sighed. “What are we supposed to do with him now? If he were Veldanese, we’d send him into the Edgemist for this betrayal.” But she could not even guess whether or not Veldana still existed.

  “We can turn him over to the Order,” said Porzia. “But only after we find the book.”

  Elsa knelt, careful to avoid Faraz’s sleeping ooze, and examined Montaigne’s right hand. “There’s ink on his fingers. Still damp. He’s been scribing.”

  Porzia folded her arms. “If I were trying to hide something important, I’d hide it inside a worldbook.”

  Elsa looked up at her. “A worldbook full of puzzles only you know how to solve?”

  “Or perils only I know how to survive,” she said.

  Leo drummed his fingers against the rapier’s pommel. “I might get to stab something, after all.”

  “Here it is,” Faraz said, returning from the other room with a tome held open in his arms. “But wouldn’t he scribe it to be inaccessible to anyone but him?”

  Elsa shook her head. “Too risky—that’s a great way to render yourself textual.”

  Leo said, “Shame he didn’t do it, then.”

  “Leo!” Porzia scolded, as if she took deep offense at the idea of wishing someone textualized.

  “Anyway, there’s no such thing as an impenetrable security system,” said Leo. “So are we going in, or what?”

  Porzia took the book from Faraz and flipped to the beginning. Elsa stood to look over her shoulder. After a few minutes of inspection, Po
rzia said, “My French isn’t perfect, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t look as if it’ll kill us just to step inside. What do you think?”

  Elsa took out her portal device. “Read me the coordinates.”

  * * *

  Leo didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.

  They stood in front of a fieldstone wall seven meters high that stretched to their left and right, curving gently away in both directions. Behind them was Edgemist, and directly before them was a gap in the wall, like a doorway absent the door. The dimness inside seemed somehow foreboding, as if it had been a long time since light trespassed in its territory.

  The silence stretched long while Elsa waved that glove of hers around. Leo watched her working for a moment, but he felt acutely aware that they were not alone. He tried looking away, but that felt obvious, too—was it more telling to stare or to avoid staring?

  Apparently satisfied with the stability of the world, Elsa removed the glove and cleared her throat. “This doesn’t seem so difficult. Obviously he must have hidden the book through there.”

  Leo rested his hands on his hips as he eyed the wall, forcing his brain to focus. “You see how the wall’s curved, as if it might be one enormous circular structure? It’s a labyrinth. Full of dead ends and nasty surprises, no doubt.”

  “Blind exploration and booby traps?” said Faraz lightly. “I thought you’d be thrilled.”

  “Normally, I would be, but time is of the essence. We can’t afford to spend a week wandering lost in a maze.”

  “No, we really can’t,” Elsa said tightly. Was she thinking of her mother? Leo felt a sudden urge to reach out, make contact, but when Elsa’s defenses were up it seemed as if she were the one behind protective glass, not her mother. Leo wasn’t sure he could touch her even if he tried.

  Porzia said, “We needn’t explore the entire structure. If it is a labyrinth, everyone knows anything of importance will be located at the center.”

  Leo took a deep breath and let it out, steadying his resolve. The best comfort he could give Elsa would be the safe return of her mother. He looked to Faraz. “Into the wolf’s mouth?”

  Faraz grinned and replied, “May the wolf choke on us.”

  And with that, Leo led the way.

  * * *

  At first the darkness made it difficult for Elsa to see much of anything in the center of her visual field, and she had to rely on peripheral vision just to place her feet without tripping. But after a minute within the labyrinth’s corridors, her eyesight adjusted to the diffuse lighting, and it became a relatively simple task to determine the difference between a shadow and a fallen fieldstone when one or the other crossed her path. She considered fetching a lantern from her laboratory worldbook, but if the light suddenly blew out, they’d all be left blind again.

  Porzia was squinting at something she held in the palm of her hand. “Well, thank goodness for small blessings,” she said. “This world has a magnetic north.”

  Elsa stepped closer. Porzia was holding the tracking machine’s compass. The tracking needle swung listlessly, aiming at nothing in particular, but the magnetic needle pointed straight ahead. So the entrance where they came in must be on the southernmost edge of the maze. “Interesting. I never thought we’d need it just as a regular old compass.”

  Porzia said, “Between this and the curvature of the walls, we should be able to keep track of our progress relative to the center.”

  “That’s good,” Leo called. He and Faraz had gone ahead and were now standing at a wall where their current corridor terminated. “Does that mean you’re going to decide: left or right?”

  “Both,” Elsa called back. “Let’s evaluate our options.”

  Leo and Faraz disappeared from view in opposite directions. Elsa and Porzia caught up just as Faraz came back around a bend. “The eastward corridor looks like it doubles back and heads south again.”

  Porzia nodded and tucked the compass away. “So we’ll try the southwest quadrant. See where it takes us.”

  They proceeded from there in much the same fashion, splitting up for a brief time at each intersection so as to make an informed decision about which path to follow. Though Elsa recognized this was probably the fastest way to find the center, it still made for slow going, and impatience burned in her gut. Damn Montaigne for this.

  They wasted time pursuing two separate dead ends. Once, a slight tremor reverberated through the floor for a few seconds and they all froze until it passed, but whatever had caused it failed to make an appearance. At the third dead end, Porzia huffed, “Labyrinths are not supposed to have dead ends!” But otherwise, their exploration was proving uneventful. Elsa couldn’t help but feel it was suspiciously uneventful.

  They were walking a long stretch of corridor with no turnoffs when, up ahead, something caught her attention—a flicker of darkness, like a shadow in motion. She held up a hand, drawing the group to a halt. “Did anyone else…?”

  Her questioning frown elicited nothing but blank looks from her companions. She looked down the corridor, took a few cautious steps forward, scrutinizing every nook and cranny. Nothing but stones with the occasional weed pushing up through the cracks. “Strange. I thought I saw something move.”

  “We’re all on edge,” Porzia assured her. “And it’s easy for your eyes to play tricks in this light.”

  “Right.” That must have been it, though she could have sworn she’d seen something. An insect, maybe, she told herself.

  They all began to walk again, Elsa slightly in the lead. She stepped forward, the stones of the floor looking entirely normal, and her foot landed on … nothing. Her stomach lurched as she tipped forward and began to fall. Faraz lunged, making a desperate grab for her arm, but even as his hands closed, her forward momentum slid her other foot over the edge. She dug her fingers into his forearm, clinging as her weight wrenched her shoulder joint, and the sharp-angled edge of the invisible chasm hit her hard in the ribs. She slid down as Faraz fought for purchase.

  When her head dipped below floor level, the illusion vanished, and she could see the blackness gaping beneath her. The chasm yawned wide and deep, and the only wall visible through the gloom was the one pressed against her cheek.

  “Give me your other hand!” Leo was screaming at her, crouched at the edge above. From the panicked, searching look on his face, it seemed they still could not see below the illusion, so all they had of her was an arm sticking up out of the floor.

  Elsa flailed, trying to reach for Leo without compromising Faraz’s already tenuous hold. After three failed attempts, Leo finally caught her wrist, and the boys hauled her back up.

  Elsa sat on the floor for a minute, catching her breath, before she even tried to stand. Skandar, who had taken wing during the commotion, resettled on Faraz’s shoulder and gave Elsa an accusatory glare, as if it were all her fault for displacing him.

  Porzia appeared at Elsa’s elbow to help her up. “Are you all right?”

  “Lucky I didn’t crack a rib on the edge,” she said, holding her hand against her sore side. For once she felt a flash of gratitude for the corset stays that had spread out the impact, though tomorrow she imagined she’d have some lovely bruises.

  Leo was cautiously shuffling across the width of the corridor, dipping his toe over the edge to map the extent of the hidden chasm. “No way around—it’s as wide as the corridor. Do you think we could jump it?”

  Elsa shook her head. “It seemed cavernous down there.”

  Faraz picked up a pebble and tossed it a few meters ahead. Instead of clattering against stone, it disappeared into the floor without a sound. “Definitely too far to jump.”

  Leo ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. So, in addition to dead ends, we have impassable gaping holes in the floor. Fantastic.”

  Elsa rolled her shoulder, testing for torn muscles, while she considered the problem. “Listen, when I was down there, I couldn’t see the other four walls. The space looked muc
h wider than this corridor. If we move one corridor to the left or right, I think we’re likely to encounter the same chasm.”

  Porzia said, “So we retrace our steps. Go back to the entrance and try our luck in the southeast quadrant, instead.”

  Faraz stroked one of Skandar’s tentacles. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our ‘luck’ hasn’t been of much assistance so far.”

  Porzia rolled her eyes. “The southeast quadrant can’t be worse than falling to our deaths in a bottomless pit.”

  “Now you’ve done it,” Leo said with a wry grin. “Now we’re definitely going to find something worse than a bottomless pit.”

  But in the end they all agreed that Porzia’s plan seemed best. They followed the curve of the corridor, retracing their steps. Left, left, past two turnoffs, right, left again.

  “Wait,” Elsa said. Up ahead, the corridor ended at an unfamiliar wall. “Does this look right? Did we take a wrong turn somewhere?”

  Porzia scowled. “We were all counting the turns. We should be able to see the entrance from here.”

  Faraz spun in a slow circle, looking around. “Where in hell are we?”

  * * *

  Leo planted his fists on his hips and exhaled sharply. This was getting ridiculous.

  At this rate, they would need to go back for provisions, except that they probably couldn’t. They’d lost the entrance, and he’d bet his favorite screwdriver that Montaigne had scribed the world such that portals could only be opened at the Edgemist. Which meant they were not only failing to find the book, they were also getting themselves increasingly entrapped.

  It was time to try a more radical approach. He unbuckled his sword belt and handed it to Faraz.

  “What are you doing?” Faraz said, accepting the rapier.

  “We’re lost.” Leo flashed him a grin. “I think it’s time we cheat.”

  With that, he wedged the toe of his boot in the crack between two fieldstones, and he began to climb.

  “Oh good Lord,” Porzia swore. “Be careful!”

  “Fortune favors the bold!” he called down to her. Best to sound confident. The strain of clinging to the wall with only his fingertips was already making the muscles in his forearms burn, and a bead of sweat trickled down his spine.