Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(19)
Then Elsa flipped through the books page by page, noting the extent of the damage and trying not to despair. When possible, she wrote down her guesses about what the singed sections might have contained. Often, only the top line or two of a page were too badly blackened to read, sometimes only one word in the corner. Other pages were worse, and lost sentences would be difficult to reproduce with perfect accuracy.
Evaluating the condition of the books was slow work, and to patch up all the ruined sections would be even slower. She’d never tried to repair a burned worldbook before—the sheer number of pages that needed work was much greater than anything she’d attempted. To finish even one book would take her days.
Her mother could be dead in a week, for all she knew. There wasn’t time for this, but what other option did she have? Montaigne had known the abductors, but with him dead, the only way to get that knowledge was to go through his papers, which were stuck inside the damaged worlds.
An unexpected knock at the door made Elsa jump and smear the ink where she was taking notes. She sighed, sheathed the pen in its holder beside the inkwell, and got up to see who had caused the disturbance.
Elsa opened the door. Porzia strode in past her, as if she’d been invited, and asked in a casual tone, “How are you finding your stay here on Earth? Have everything you need?”
Porzia regarded her with perfect innocence, lips forming a small, polite smile. But Elsa suspected the other girl was burning with curiosity. “I’m quite fine, thank you,” she replied.
“Well, if there’s anything … particular you require, as a non-Terran, please don’t hesitate to ask.” Porzia wandered through the sitting room into the study. “Settling in already, I see.”
Elsa followed her, wary of having the other girl snooping around. She quickly closed the covers of all the books lying open on the writing desk.
“Can I help you with something?” Elsa asked, her tone a little stiff.
“You weren’t at breakfast,” Porzia said, as if this were sufficient explanation for her intrusion.
“No, I wasn’t,” Elsa agreed, watching as Porzia wandered over to the side table where Elsa had set down the Pascaline last night. She reached out to fiddle with the damaged dials, and Elsa snapped, “Don’t touch that!”
Porzia turned, giving her a raised-eyebrow look. “I hardly think my touch could ruin it any further.”
“It’s not ruined. It can be fixed,” Elsa said tightly. Her omission of who, exactly, would be doing the fixing was deliberate. No need for Porzia to know that.
Porzia sighed, turning away from the table to face Elsa. “About last night…”
Elsa raised an eyebrow of her own. “You’re here to apologize for your friends being presumptuous cads?”
“Actually, I was going to say it wasn’t entirely diplomatic of you, either. Everyone likes Leo—you won’t win any friends by humiliating him.”
Elsa pulled herself up to her full height and dropped her tone from chilly to downright arctic. “I don’t need anyone to like me, I just need them to understand I’m not to be toyed with.”
Porzia shrugged. “Just offering a bit of advice.”
“I have work to do.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Porzia swept out of the room with the same unflappable grace as always, leaving Elsa to wonder what exactly the other girl was trying to accomplish.
Porzia’s warning irked her, and even more irksome was the small twinge of worry she felt. No, she did not care to make friends with these people—they were at best a distraction, and at worst a danger to her and her mission to find Jumi. She pushed the worry aside and made herself focus.
Midday came and went, Elsa hardly noticing except to nibble at the rest of the bread and cheese when her stomach growled.
She’d started with the book she thought had the highest probability of containing relevant information—a small world scribed to serve as an office, the worldtext written in Montaigne’s own hand. Perhaps Montaigne had corresponded with the abductors ahead of time, in which case there could be letters or telegrams with identifying details.
Her own study here in Pisa was well equipped for scriptological endeavors. Fishing through the drawers and cabinets, she quickly found a sheaf of loose paper, a bottle of paper glue, and a narrow-bladed shaping razor. She began with the first damaged page, gently brushing away the charred fragments and then cutting a small triangle of new paper to match the shape of the damaged section. She slid a gluing board under the page, lined up the burned page with the patch, and carefully brushed a thin layer of glue over the edges to fuse them.
Elsa sat back to admire her work. Page one of book one, nearly finished. This was a section of mild damage, so when the glue dried, all she would have left to do would be to get out her ink and scribe in the three words missing from the top line. They wouldn’t all be so easy, but she was determined to do this. One page at a time.
Right now, though, she needed to stretch her legs, to focus her eyes and her attention on something else for a minute. Perhaps she’d take a break from the grueling work of book repairs to tinker with the Pascaline a bit.
“Casa?” she said, standing up from the chair. “Is there a place I could find a clockmaker’s toolkit, or something of the kind?”
“Why yes, signorina. Mechanists often have need of fine-sized tools. I would be happy to direct you.”