Mist, Metal, and Ash Page 15

  “I want to add mountains,” she said.

  Aris quirked an eyebrow at her. “Add mountains?”

  “To Veldana. We don’t have any mountains.” She’d never thought of that as a lack in need of correcting before.

  Suddenly, the airship gave a shudder so strong it rattled her teeth, and the steady chuff-chuff of the wing mechanisms working beneath the floorboards ground to a halt. The engine promptly filled the unexpected quiet with a piercing whine of escaping steam.

  Elsa clapped her hands over her ears and shouted, “What’s happening?”

  Aris glanced out a side window to confirm what he probably already knew. “The wings have jammed.”

  “Obviously! But why?”

  “I don’t know!” Aris dashed back to the instrument panel. “We’re losing altitude.”

  Elsa did not like the screech of that steam. She looked at the instruments and pointed to the pressure gauge. “We’ve got pressure building in the steam chamber. If the engine blows, we’ll lose our chance to fix the wings.”

  Aris yanked back on the acceleration lever, but the screech didn’t stop. “If the engine blows, like as not the hydrogen in the gasbag will ignite, and we’ll be too dead to worry about what happens when the ship goes down.”

  “Fair point,” she said. “So let’s not explode, shall we?”

  “Let’s not,” Aris agreed. “I’m open to ideas for how to avoid a fiery demise.”

  Elsa’s mind raced, formulating and discarding a long list of solutions that would have worked if only she’d brought her laboratory worldbook with her. But the lab book was safely hidden in Trento, where Aris couldn’t access it. She’d outsmarted herself. “There’s got to be a valve we can loosen, just to buy us some time.”

  “There’s one on the workshop side,” Aris said. He rushed back down the passageway, with Elsa following close on his heels. “I added it in case I needed to borrow some steam power for the laboratory equipment.”

  Aris shoved his hand into a thick leather glove, grabbed the valve handle, and loosened the valve just a little. Steam hissed into the cabin, turning the air hot and humid. The pitch of the escaping steam lowered and then the screech faded out altogether. Aris waited another few seconds before closing the valve.

  “That should do it for now,” he said, tossing the leather glove aside.

  Elsa said, “Where’s the access hatch for the crawl space?”

  “Right here.” Aris yanked up on the floor panels and a trapdoor opened.

  Elsa lowered herself into the crawl space feet-first, ducking her head to squeeze below the floorboards. The air was hot and stuffy, difficult to breathe, and everything was dark except for the little sunlight that snuck in through the gaps in the hull where the mechanisms connected to the wings outside.

  “Hand me a lantern!” she called up to Aris.

  He passed one down to her. “There’s a hook on the ceiling to hang it from. You see?”

  “Yeah, found it.” Elsa hung the lantern, then turned her attention back to the mechanical problem at hand. At least she could see the gears now.

  First she checked for breakages, but no failure points were evident. Then she searched for obstructions in the mechanism, anything that might have gummed up the works, but found none. Instead, it looked like the friction of running at full steam had heated the gears and deformed the metal enough to make everything grind to a halt.

  “I need a wrench!”

  A leather satchel full of wrenches landed behind her with a muffled clang. Elsa dragged the satchel around and rifled through its contents, selecting the proper-size wrench. She fitted it to the component she wanted to loosen and heaved, but the wrench handle wouldn’t budge.

  She yelled up to Aris, “I can’t decouple the drive shaft from the wing mechanism! The engine’s applying too much strain.”

  “Can you fix it without decoupling?” Aris called down.

  “Get me some lubricant!”

  There was no hope of actually fixing the problem in the air with the engine running. The best Elsa could hope to do was get the wings pumping again and keep them aloft long enough to perform a controlled landing instead of a crash.

  Aris leaned down through the gap in the floor to pass her an oil canister with a long, narrow snout. Elsa took the lubricant and crawled closer to the gears.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she observed Aris’s strange behavior. Helpful and compliant, almost deferential. It seemed out of character; maybe he’d dropped his usual act on account of the mortal danger they were in. She had no time to puzzle it out now, though.

  Elsa squirted lubricant over the gear teeth and along any other point of friction she could find. The gears scraped and ground together, making a horrible noise as they grudgingly began to rotate. The jammed-up pistons struggled to push the deformed gears into motion. Chug … chug, chug chug chug. As the components began to move Elsa backed away, shielding her head with one arm, not entirely certain the mechanism could handle the strain. But no chunks of metal went flying, and the wings gradually began to chuff against the air again.

  Elsa twisted around in the cramped space and pulled herself out through the trapdoor. “I got things moving down there, but we’re nowhere near full power and it could break down any minute, even with the reduced drive.”

  Aris nodded. “We’ll have to do an emergency landing. No way we’re getting back the elevation we’ve lost without the wings fully functional.”

  Elsa followed him back into the pilot’s cabin. While Aris went to the front window to look for potential landing sites, Elsa checked the gauges. The needle on the altimeter was still going down, but much slower than before—a controlled descent, for now at least.

  “Adjust our heading ten degrees to port,” Aris said.

  “Port?” Elsa had no experience with nautical terms.

  “Left.”

  Elsa grabbed the wheel and gently eased it counterclockwise, adjusting their course.

  “Good, just there,” Aris said, still looking out the window at the section of the valley floor he’d selected as an emergency landing site.

  Elsa was also thinking ahead to their landing, though she was more concerned with the possibility of the impact rupturing the engine and igniting the gasbag.

  She said, “I’m assuming the coal feed is automated?”

  “Yes, you can shut it off here,” Aris said, pointing to a lever.

  “How long does it take the engine to cool after you cut the coal?”

  “The steam tank will stay pressurized for ten minutes or so—maybe less, since we released some of the pressure.”

  Elsa checked the progress of the altimeter. “We’ll be on the ground sooner than that.”

  It was a calculated risk either way. Cutting off the fuel input would mean a harder landing, but also a less explosive engine. Elsa did some quick math in her head and flipped the lever.

  As the ground rose toward them, Elsa stepped aside and gave the controls back to Aris in the hope that he had some experience with landing flying machines. There wasn’t time to ask. He course-corrected a bit, then leveled them off and adjusted the wing angle for maximum lift.

  “Brace yourself!” Aris said, grabbing the edge of the console.

  Elsa pressed her body against the doorframe and held on as best she could. Wham! They hit the valley floor hard enough to rattle her teeth and bounced back up into the air for a few stomach-lurching seconds. They landed again and stayed down this time, skidding along the grass for several meters before coming to a stop.

  Aris released his death grip on the console. He tugged on the front of his waistcoat, straightening his somewhat disheveled clothes. “Well, that could have gone worse.”

  Elsa exhaled. “At least we didn’t explode.”

  Aris turned to face Elsa and swept an appraising look over her, then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Hold still.”

  “What—” she started to say, but Aris was already reaching forward to
wipe her cheek with the handkerchief. She froze under his touch, and her pulse thrummed in her ears.

  He was the enemy, Elsa knew that deep down in her bones, but she had to pretend to like him. And there was an unexpected tenderness to the way he wiped the smear of lubricant off her cheek. Suddenly she didn’t know how she should feel.

  “There,” he said, “that’s better.”

  Elsa tucked away her confusion and reached for dry wit instead. “Oh good. Now that my face is clean, we can trudge all the way up the dusty road in the heat of the afternoon.”

  As they left the crash site and started the long walk back to the fortress, Elsa actually found the weather to be pleasantly cool. Before she came to Europe, she had spent many an afternoon hiking in the Veldanese heat, surveying her world. She didn’t admit this to Aris, though; if he felt guilty about their situation, that would serve her purposes.

  But instead of apologizing, Aris glanced at her with a look of evaluation. “You handled yourself fairly well, I have to admit.”

  Elsa wasn’t sure whether to be more irritated with his grudging praise or with the fact that he felt entitled to judge her skills in the first place. “You, on the other hand, were hardly any use at all.”

  A wicked grin spread across his face, and Elsa realized he’d played her. The whole thing—the flight, the breakdown, the midair repairs—it was all a setup.

  A flash of anger heated her cheeks, and she stopped dead in her tracks to glare at him. “You know it’s rude to test someone without warning them first.”

  Aris gave an unapologetic shrug. “I am my father’s son. Besides, it wouldn’t have been much of a test if you were forewarned.”

  Elsa snorted and recommenced trudging up the path. After a few meters traversed in silence, she said, “I could have just as easily made the situation worse instead of fixing it. What were you planning to do then?”

  “I was confident you’d perform well. And anyway, I wanted to see it for myself: Elsa in action.”

  Through gritted teeth, she said, “You gambled with our lives.”

  “As it turns out, you’re a solid bet,” he replied, that grin of his returning.

  “And you’re unbelievable.”

  Elsa picked up her pace, stalking away from him. She didn’t have to feign her irritation now; it was all too real. Her heart hammered against her ribs not so much from the exertion as from the anxiety of realizing just how little control she had over her situation. Rosalinda had been right to warn her about the Garibaldis. They were all spiders.

  * * *

  Dinner was a tense affair, for Leo at least. Aris gave off his usual air of impermeable insouciance, Vincenzo settled in as if he’d never parted ways with Aris, and even Elsa seemed to be edging toward cautious comfort at her new situation. Leo fumed inside—betrayed by his father and the universe at large, his sacrifice transmuted into a meaningless gesture.

  Leo suspected Ricciotti had never harbored any intention of honoring their deal. And even if he had, he certainly wasn’t going to honor it now that Elsa had practically offered herself up to him. Good God, what a fool Leo had been to think he could prevent this. There was no shame like the shame of being rendered ineffective.

  There must have been dinner conversation, but Leo heard none of it. He was too busy mentally calculating whether it would be better to confront his father later, in private, and what he could say to fix Elsa’s precarious situation. There must be something he could do.

  After dinner, Ricciotti retired to his study to attend to business. Leo stood in the hall outside the closed door, hesitating, his stomach a nervous knot that threatened to reject what little food he’d managed to put into it. But he had to face his father, man to man.

  Leo rallied his courage, grabbed the doorknob, and let himself inside.

  Ricciotti was seated at his desk, looking over a handwritten report. “Amazing,” he said, “how quickly a situation can fall to the wolves. The French police are already tightening their grip on the port district. We’ve hardly been gone two weeks.”

  “What?” said Leo from the doorway. Per usual, his father had neatly knocked him off balance. Ricciotti had a way of expecting everyone to follow his train of thought, without the assistance of any stated context—and failure, of course, was a sign of intellectual incapacity.

  “Nizza,” Ricciotti said, in a tone full of disappointment at his son’s slowness. He’d been running a base of operations there when Leo caught up to him. And Nizza was where Leo had betrayed his friends.

  It sparked anger in Leo’s chest, where the fuel was already dry and crisp for the kindling. “Why should I care anything for Nizza? You never even spoke of the city when we lived in Venezia.”

  Ricciotti shrugged. “You still thought our name was Trovatelli then; we had a false identity to maintain. But Nizza was your grandfather’s childhood home, and he took it as a blow when the king treated with France and left the city under French rule. A wrong he did not live to correct.”

  Leo’s jaw tightened as he tried not to shout. “I came to discuss Elsa.”

  “What of her?” Ricciotti said. “I thought you’d be pleased. You’ve been moping ever since you left Pisa, and now one of your friends has come to visit.”

  Leo ground his teeth together and managed not to say, She isn’t here to visit, she’s here to take back what I stole from her. “We had an agreement. You cannot keep her here.”

  Ricciotti’s eyebrows rose haughtily. “I’m not keeping anyone.”

  “You promised to leave her out of this!” Leo fumed.

  “She showed up at our doorstep like a lost puppy. What would you have me do, Leo—turn her out, to wander the countryside alone?”

  Ricciotti’s gaze upon him was so calm, so smug, it made Leo want to scream. He was powerless against his father, and Ricciotti reveled in his control. Leo could do nothing to protect Elsa; he could not even win a simple argument.

  “I hate you,” Leo said, and left the study.

  He stalked through the empty halls like a loose grommet rattling around inside a massive machine, redundant and unnoticed.

  If Elsa truly sought an alliance, there would be no convincing her to leave. But if she’d come for the editbook, as Leo suspected, then there was a way to get her away from here: he would have to steal back the very same book he’d once stolen for Ricciotti.

  Leo did not appreciate the irony.

  * * *

  It required an unexpected effort for Elsa to ferret out the location of the servants’ stairs down to the lower levels. Garibaldi’s fortress was enormous, and until that moment Elsa hadn’t realized how much she’d relied on Casa’s assistance to navigate the maze of hallways back in Pisa. Now there were no house-bots to lead her, and she had to deduce the layout for herself.

  Once down on the proper floor, Elsa found the kitchen largely from the leftover smells of cooking and the residual heat of the ovens. She snuck closer and heard the banging of pots and pans, and the sound of two voices. She risked a quick glance inside.

  Colette was helping an older woman—presumably the cook—clean up the kitchen for the night. They spoke a Latinate language unfamiliar to Elsa. It sounded rather like the dialect she’d overheard in Nizza, but with stronger overtones of French pronunciation. Elsa tucked herself against the wall beside the doorway and listened, ears straining to parse the words. She knew French and Italian and Latin, so it wasn’t long before this new language began to clarify in her mind.

  As the sounds resolved into sentences that carried meaning, Elsa supposed she ought to feel ashamed for spying on Colette and the cook. They were innocent in all this. But the voice of Elsa’s inner, stone-cold pragmatist overruled her guilt. Anything to get the editbook—the welfare of two worlds rode on her success.

  She listened long enough to get a decent grasp of the language, and then she listened a little more. She would need to understand these people, understand their worldview as best she could. It was an analytical problem, no
t unlike studying the internal structure of a worldbook or the workings inside a machine. Though Elsa knew she lacked a natural instinct for people, she was determined to make up for it with a brute-force application of logic. Anything—or anyone—could be puzzled out like clockwork.

  Colette and the cook spoke mostly of the minutiae of their work. They gossiped a bit about the mysterious new arrivals, but apparently none of the staff knew anything of consequence about Elsa and Vincenzo, which seemed to only heighten their interest.

  Elsa made sure to leave her post outside the door before their tasks in the kitchen drew to a close. She had gleaned enough to think on, for the moment. Perhaps she could leverage their curiosity to get closer to them.

  When she went back upstairs, Elsa discovered the door to her bedchamber was not quite all the way closed. There was a rustling inside, someone moving around. Silently, she pushed the door open, slid inside, and snuck up on Aris, who was absorbed in the task of rifling through her luggage.

  “Find anything good?” Elsa said.

  Aris jumped and whirled around, but his expression held no trace of guilt. Instead, he flashed her an unapologetic grin. “Can’t blame me for looking. I’m the curious sort.”

  “I didn’t bring any worldbooks, if that’s what you’re searching for.” Elsa raised her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t want to make myself redundant, now would I?”

  Aris gasped. “My dear signorina, how could you believe such a thing? You are unique and irreplaceable.”

  “Mm-hmm. And you’re a scoundrel,” she quipped, silently grateful that he didn’t seem put off by her natural abrasiveness. It wasn’t that she understood him, precisely, but she did find him surprisingly easy to spar with. “There’s nothing here to help you figure out how to use the editbook.”

  “The ‘how’ is trivial, I’m sure,” Aris said. “But there is the small matter of it being scribed in Veldanese—a language that literally no one in the world speaks.”