Mist, Metal, and Ash Page 12

  A metallic bang on the far side of the doors heralded Casa’s awareness.

  Revan jammed the chair tighter against the doors. “I thought you said the bots would all be out of power!”

  “They were supposed to be!” Porzia flinched at a second, louder bang. The house had definitely noticed them, and was displeased.

  A muffled whirring sound began, and then the doors vibrated as a radial saw bit into the wood. Recognition settled cold and dreadful in Porzia’s stomach. Revan backed up several steps, taking something from his pocket, but whatever he had would be no match for Casa now—the house had control of Leo’s training bot, the one he’d “improved” too much, the one that had carved a path of destruction on the day Elsa arrived.

  “Goddamn it, Leo,” Porzia swore under her breath, but to the last of the children she urged, “Go, go!”

  “It’s not going to hold…,” Revan warned, his attention focused on the besieged doors.

  “That’s everyone. Come on!” Porzia shouted, looking back long enough to make sure he followed. The doors were buckling under the training bot’s assault. Porzia dove toward the portal with Revan at her heels. The last sound she heard was the splintering of wood as the bot broke in.

  They stepped out of the portal’s blackness into dazzling sunlight and air heavy with the salt-scent of the sea. Porzia looked around—they stood on a train platform. To one side, the Ligurian Sea crashed against the rocky coast below, and to the other, narrow buildings clung to the rugged landscape. The buildings crowded together in a strict utilitarian fashion, not a meter of space wasted, but they were painted in a whimsical array of colors—sea green and safflower yellow, sky blue and salmon pink. Out to sea, a cluster of similarly bright-painted fishing boats bobbed up and down with the passing of each swell.

  Porzia had barely gotten the chance to orient herself when Faraz came over, arms crossed, expression accusing. “This isn’t Corniglia—it’s Riomaggiore.”

  She tucked back a strand of hair that the breeze had pulled loose. “Elsa scribed the destination. Probably she thought it best not to port to the exact location of the ruins, on the chance that Aris is monitoring portal activity at Casa della Pazzia. We have seen him track portals before.”

  “I don’t suppose we brought money for more than a dozen train tickets,” said Faraz. “It’s going to be a long walk with this crowd in tow.”

  “But we can walk, yes?” Revan asked.

  Porzia closed her eyes for a moment, praying for patience. She had to remind herself that feet were the only form of transportation available in Veldana, so Elsa probably hadn’t thought of this as a potential problem.

  Finally, she said, “The inland paths are much too difficult, but there’s a trail that follows the coastline. We should be able to manage.”

  First get the children safely to the castle, then worry about Elsa. Porzia couldn’t leave for Trento anyhow, not until she scrounged for a second portal device—one to hide with the doorbook for Elsa’s use, and one to get Porzia back home. Or back to Cinque Terre, now that home was gone.

  Hold on, Elsa, she prayed. Find the editbook, just … not yet.

  10

  NEVER WAS ANYTHING GREAT ACHIEVED WITHOUT DANGER.

  —Niccolo Machiavelli

  Leo saw who was in the foyer and his heart stopped. He flashed hot and cold, panicked and elated in the same instant. She was the person he most yearned to see in all the world—and the very last person he wanted to see here.

  “Elsa,” he croaked.

  She looked over at the sound of his voice, her expression unreadable, only the barest flicker of recognition in her bright green eyes. Her indifference cut into him like a well-honed blade.

  Leo and Aris had been summoned by one of their father’s ex-Carbonari guards to deal with “the intruders.” Ricciotti himself had been mysteriously absent all day—Aris had offered only that he was occupied elsewhere with the business of rebellion, and Leo hadn’t pressed for details—so in his absence the guardsmen deferred to the elder brother.

  Aris, for his part, was much more interested in Elsa’s companion. “Vico!” he crowed, sauntering inside the circle of guards surrounding the intruders. For a moment Leo didn’t recognize the man standing beside Elsa and thought his brother must have gotten it wrong. In Leo’s mind, Vincenzo was still a gangly youth, all knees and elbows, quick with a rapier but even quicker with a verbal jibe.

  “There he is!” Vincenzo greeted Aris with a wide grin and a clap on the shoulder. “Been too long, cumpari.”

  Leo watched, stunned. It was all too surreal. What was Elsa doing here in the company of a Carbonaro? Ever since that first reunion in Nizza, where Leo came face-to-face with his father and realized he would have to protect Elsa from him, Leo had been constructing a story in his mind. In the story, he sacrificed whatever was necessary to keep Elsa safe and free, but now the fragile house of his self-told narrative came crumbling down around him.

  He had failed. He had betrayed everyone who mattered and left his life behind, but in the end, none of it made a difference. Elsa came walking straight into the spider’s nest of her own accord.

  Elsa’s eyes were on him. She moved as if to approach, but one of the guards lifted his pistol menacingly in response, and she halted.

  “Oh, put your weapons away, you morons,” Aris commanded as he slung an arm around Vincenzo’s shoulders. “These two are to be our honored guests.”

  The guard reluctantly stepped aside. They did not obey Aris in the manner of subordinates following a trusted superior; rather, they slunk away as if afraid to invoke his wrath. As if the boss’s mad sons were off their leashes, and anything might happen.

  Elsa kept an eye on the guards as she passed them. She moved slowly, deliberately, over to Leo. He felt her proximity as if she carried an electric charge. He wanted to drink in the sight of her—the fall of her black hair, the dramatic sweep of her low cheekbones, the luminescence of her bronze-brown skin.

  Elsa tilted her head, acknowledging him. “Leo.”

  Leo’s throat went suddenly dry. He swallowed. “Hi.” He almost asked her what she was doing here, but that would have been a stupid question. She was here for the editbook … wasn’t she?

  “Where’s your father?” she asked, her tone guarded.

  Leo lifted a shoulder awkwardly. “Damned if I know. It’s not as if Ricciotti keeps me apprised of his presumably nefarious activities.”

  She attended to his words as if scrutinizing each syllable for hidden meaning, but she gave him nothing to work with in her reply. “Hmm.”

  Leo flexed his fingers, resisting the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she gave him an honest reaction. Yell, scream, threaten, cry—anything would be better than this smooth, impassive shield. It was torture being so close to her and yet having no idea what she was thinking, as if she weren’t really there at all.

  “So, is this place … like Casa?” Elsa asked, her tone carefully neutral.

  Leo stared at her, trying to gauge her meaning. Was she asking if it was safe to talk freely? And if so, did he even have a definitive answer to give her? He now knew who—or what, rather—was spying through the windows, but he couldn’t be sure that creature was the only tool they had for keeping track of him. He decided to hedge his bets and say, “In some ways it’s similar.”

  She nodded, her expression still composed, and Leo had no idea whether she’d taken his meaning. It was like speaking with a stranger, as if Elsa had somehow purged the memory of him from her mind.

  “Chambers!” Aris announced, drawing Vincenzo over to join Leo and Elsa. “We must find you both chambers. You must be tired after your journey.”

  Vincenzo said, “You’re too kind, Aris. But there is much to discuss.”

  “It can wait. It can wait! Father will return in the morning, and there will be ample time for talking politics then.”

  While Aris summoned someone from the household staff to prepare two of the g
uest rooms, Leo stood paralyzed. This wasn’t happening. Perhaps if he squeezed his eyes shut tightly enough, the world would revert to the way things ought to be, with the girl he loved safely back in Pisa.

  * * *

  Elsa set her carpetbag on a padded bench at the foot of the freshly made bed. Her guest room here did not have all the useful accommodations of her rooms in Casa della Pazzia—no scriptological supplies in sight—but it had a similar degree of pointless lavishness to the decor. The sight alone exhausted her, all that carved wood and intricately patterned upholstery.

  Though if she was being honest with herself, the room wasn’t the problem. It stung worse than she’d thought it would, seeing Leo again like that. Even with all her mental preparation, it still felt as if someone had whacked her in the diaphragm with a walking stick, driving all the breath from her lungs with one quick slap of wood on skin.

  A part of her wanted to believe what Faraz believed—that Leo had been tricked into betraying them back in Nizza, and that Garibaldi had held him hostage in a prison worldbook ever since. But here was the evidence, as cold and unforgiving as the stony landscape outside: Leo, wandering unfettered through his father’s stronghold, his beloved older brother at his side. He could have walked right out the front door anytime he wanted, but he chose to stay.

  While Elsa banged her head against the problem of how to find the editbook, he chose to stay. While Faraz and Porzia tore into each other like starving wolves, he chose to stay. While Vincenzo deceived his superior, and in so doing possibly burned his connection to the Carbonari who meant everything to him, Leo chose to stay. After all that strife, to see the proof that Porzia was right … it was almost more than Elsa could bear.

  She heard footsteps out in the hall, and Leo paused in her open doorway. Think of the devil and he shall appear, as Alek would say.

  “Hello, Leo,” she said, her voice tight with contained anger.

  He stood by the door for a moment, uncertain, before crossing the room to her. He leaned close and lowered his voice. “You shouldn’t have come,” he hissed. “I can’t keep you safe here.”

  Under her breath, Elsa replied, “I don’t need you to protect me. I never asked for that.”

  “I forgot,” he said bitterly. “Elsa the island, who never needs anything from anyone.”

  “Funny, then, how it was me who stuck with Faraz and Porzia when you abandoned them.”

  Leo’s eyes widened and he leaned back, as if the words hit him like a slap. “I did it for you—”

  “For me! Is that a terrible joke?” The hurt and rage she had worked so hard to lock away threatened to come bubbling to the surface, and Elsa had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment to push it back down. “I don’t. Want. To talk about this.”

  “Of course,” he said tightly. “Stubborn as ever, I see.”

  “Mm, yes. I stubbornly persist in wanting to make my own decisions. How very unreasonable of me.”

  He sighed at the acidity in her tone. “I didn’t come here to fight.”

  “And you’re doing a bang-up job of that.”

  “Elsa, please, I—”

  He reached for her arm, but she slipped out of reach and walked over to the door. She rested a hand on the knob suggestively. “I’m tired.”

  Leo cleared his throat. “Right. Good night, then.” He retreated awkwardly out of the room. In the hall he turned to give her a searching look, but Elsa shut the door in his face.

  This was hardly the time to fall to pieces, not now that she’d infiltrated her enemy’s stronghold. It was Vincenzo’s life on the line, too, if she let slip her true feelings. So, with grim determination, Elsa resolved to set all thoughts of Leo aside. She would get him out if she could, as per Rosalinda’s wishes, but her one true mission was to retrieve the editbook.

  * * *

  It was already light out when Elsa woke, but the sun seemed to have forgotten to bring any warmth with it this morning. She threw on a dressing gown over her thin white shift and fished out her thickest pair of socks to ward against the chilly floors. Good thing she’d found the energy before bed to wash the road dust off her face; the water in her washbasin, which had been pleasantly warm before, had cooled overnight and was now frigid.

  Elsa was still standing in front of her carpetbag, trying to decide whether she should properly unpack, when there was a knock on the door.

  She opened the door to find Aris standing on the other side. His eyes raked down her frame, as if simultaneously shocked and pleased at her state of undress. Elsa yanked her robe closed over her nightgown and folded her arms angrily.

  “Yes?” she prompted.

  Aris leaned casually against her doorframe. “It’s time for breakfast, if you eat that sort of thing.”

  “All right.”

  He didn’t budge.

  She said, “I’ll just put on some proper clothes, then, shall I?”

  “Oh, signorina, don’t go to any trouble on my account,” he replied with a smirk.

  Elsa closed the door in his face. Apparently, this was becoming a habit with the Garibaldi boys.

  A minute later, as she dressed, it occurred to her that she ought to have asked Aris for directions to the dining room before closing him out. Oh, well. She’d have to find her way on her own.

  Her limited experience with large European estate houses got her as far as guessing that the dining room would be downstairs from the bedchambers. The house was eerily silent, which made her miss the constant whirr and clatter of Casa’s house-bots and the periodic shrieking of children at play. Odd, how she’d filtered out the background noise at the time and only noticed it retroactively from its absence.

  This place wasn’t a home. It reminded her more of the graveyard in Paris, that night when they’d dug up the false remains of Charles Montaigne.

  The quiet did, however, assist Elsa in discovering the location of the dining room. She caught the muffled sound of voices and followed it until she glimpsed Vincenzo through an open doorway.

  Between Elsa and the dining room was a narrow butler’s pantry where a young woman appeared to be working. She had pale skin and neatly tied mouse-brown hair, and she wore an apron over a plain dress. She was lifting a silver food tray out of a square hole in the wall, not unlike the trapdoor that Casa’s food train emerged from. At Elsa’s approach the poor girl jerked like a spooked animal, nearly fumbling the tray, and her eyes went wide as saucers. She quickly dropped her gaze to the floor and muttered, “Signorina,” squeezing back against the wall to give Elsa room to pass.

  For a second Elsa froze in place. She’d meant to say hello; with her friendly overture rebuffed before it had even begun, she couldn’t think how to proceed. It seemed the girl wanted Elsa out of the way and in the dining room, so without a better idea of what to do, she complied.

  Leo and Aris were already seated with Vincenzo at the table. There was only one place setting left unclaimed, so Elsa had no choice but to slide into the chair beside Leo. No Garibaldi yet, and if the number of plates was any indication, he did not plan to breakfast with them.

  As soon as Elsa was settled, the girl came in through the side entrance, balancing the tray of food on one arm and carrying a carafe in the other hand.

  “Who is that?” Elsa whispered to Leo as the girl set the carafe on the table and began serving them from the tray.

  “Who?”

  Elsa leaned away to give the young woman access to her plate, then waited for her to move on to the other side of the table. “Her.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Leo said. “Part of the household staff.”

  His dismissiveness stunned her. While Elsa understood that an automated household like Casa was the exception rather than the rule here in Europe, she had little experience with servants and found the situation disquieting. Everyone pretended the girl who brought the food was invisible, or at least beneath their notice. It didn’t seem right.

  Elsa and Jumi were the closest Veldana came to royalty, on ac
count of their scriptological talents, and they still tended their own vegetable garden and raised their own chickens and kept their own cottage. The concept of “lower” classes—people who did not matter—was a foreign one.

  Elsa made herself push those thoughts aside to be mulled over later and focused on her breakfast instead. Her plate now held a stack of paper-thin brown pancakes, folded over. She prodded them gently with her fork and discovered melted cheese inside.

  “Buckwheat crepes,” Aris said from across the table. “They’re French.”

  The group spoke of nothing in particular until the servant girl had finished her task and vanished from the room.

  Aris commenced eating with a healthy appetite. “So, Signorina da Veldana,” he said in between bites, “my father has an unfortunate history with you. What assurances do I have that you aren’t here to stab us all to death in our sleep?”

  Elsa nearly choked in surprise at his bluntness, and had to clear her throat with a mouthful of coffee. “Uh, well … for one thing, I’m no use with a blade.”

  Aris shrugged. “A well-timed laboratory explosion, then.”

  “Mm, that would seem more likely, wouldn’t it?” Elsa agreed. “I can give you no assurances, because you can never be truly sure what lies in someone else’s heart. Isn’t that right, Leo?”

  Leo’s eyes widened and he swallowed heavily, as if he were shocked to find the verbal jousting suddenly aimed at him. He declined to answer.

  Across the table, Vincenzo was watching her with a look that said, Careful, but Elsa had a feeling that careful wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Trying to earn Aris’s trust was like hunting a mythical beast that could never be caught. It seemed the only way to get him to shed his suspicion would be to make him intrigued instead.

  Before Elsa had time to test her theory, their conversation was interrupted by the clomp of boots in the hall, and Garibaldi burst into the dining room.

  Everyone except Aris froze with their forks in midair and stared at the sudden arrival. Garibaldi swept his gaze over them in a way that noted and quickly dismissed the presence of the guests. Instead, he turned his attention to his eldest son.