Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(30)
With Leo at the helm of a shiny brass walking machine, a manic grin on his face and the wind lifting his hair, Elsa felt like a character in one of the adventure novels she used to pilfer off de Vries’s bookshelves when she was small. The spring air seemed potent with possibility, and she could almost forget the sense of panic that had clawed at her ever since the moment she realized her mother had been taken.
While they rode, Leo talked at length about the walker and about engine theory in general. “There’s a German pazzerellone doing glorious things with thermal efficiency,” Leo was saying. “He had something of a setback last year, nearly blew himself up, but—”
“You call that a setback?” she interrupted.
“Well, you can hardly hold that against him.” He waved a hand, dismissing her concern. “If things aren’t exploding now and again, it means you’re not trying hard enough.” He flashed a roguish grin.
Elsa folded her hands in her lap and gave her carpetbag a worried glance. “If the spider hansom explodes while we’re in it, I hope you know I shall be very put out. It would cost me a substantial delay.”
“The mechanical theory’s all sound, so there really isn’t any cause for concern.” He schooled his expression, as if his invention could be held together with confidence alone.
The spider hansom let them down before the wide portico of Pisa Centrale station, and Elsa watched with interest as the machine proceeded to walk off on its own with no driver at the controls.
“Autopilot,” Leo explained. “It’s programmed to follow a homing beacon back to the carriage house at Casa della Pazzia.”
No longer safely sequestered in the high perch of the spider hansom, Elsa felt exposed. Her spine crawled with the sense that people were noticing her. Because she was dark and foreign? Because she did not act sufficiently urbane? She and Leo walked under an arch of the portico and through the front doors, and Elsa felt secretly relieved to have someone with her to handle the purchasing of tickets and the navigating to the correct platform. The station was crowded with people walking in all directions and with strange noises and smells, and she hadn’t expected the whole experience to feel so overwhelming.
Leo, on the other hand, seemed quite at ease counting change at the ticket counter and navigating the station, all while keeping one eye on everything else around them. They passed by a man hand-cranking a mechanical organ, and Leo handed a coin to the organ grinder’s monkey, which was dressed in a fancier coat than the organ grinder himself.
Turning back to Elsa, Leo said, “That’s the worst rendition of ‘La donna è mobile’ I can imagine.”
Elsa gave him a confused look. She had no idea what he was talking about. For that matter, she wasn’t sure why there was a man playing music in the station, or why Leo had given the monkey a coin.
“‘La donna è mobile,’” Leo repeated, as if this were an explanation. “From Rigoletto. You should listen to it sometime.”
Elsa resisted the urge to ask what a rigoletto was. At least she wasn’t trying to navigate this utterly foreign country alone. She didn’t like to admit it, but perhaps there was some merit to the idea of accepting help. Leo was proving himself to be an impressively competent escort.
When they boarded the train, Leo selected a box on the left, and he hefted her carpetbag onto the luggage rack. Elsa settled herself on the plush bench seat across from him, uncomfortable in her borrowed clothes. The corset boning held her spine straight, making it impossible to slouch. But at least she attracted fewer stares dressed as she was.
“Have you ridden a train before?” Leo asked, perhaps mistaking the source of her discomfort.
“When I was younger, to visit de Vries in Amsterdam.” Before she’d scribed the doorbook, but she left that part out.
“We’re lucky the Kingdom of Sardinia has an excellent rail system. The modern infrastructure is rather spottier in the other Italian states, but I suppose that’s what happens when you conscript and imprison pazzerellones. Progress requires intellectual freedom.”
“Huh.” Elsa didn’t know much about the role of pazzerellones in European society, how they might be subject to the whims of their government. For that matter, she had never considered the process of how inventions went from prototype to common use on Earth; Veldana was too young a world to have seen much of anything invented.
The train rumbled and lurched forward out of the station, gaining speed as it headed down the track. Elsa watched out the window as the train crossed over the river again, heading north, and sped away from the city into the hilly Tuscan countryside. Every now and again, they would pass a field so overtaken by some kind of scarlet flower that the earth would seem like a frozen red sea. The flowers were quite striking, but Elsa caught herself wondering why anyone would scribe such a persistent agricultural weed—until she remembered that no one had.
What a strange world, built of random chance and long, difficult refining.
Elsa shifted her gaze to Leo. Now that he was settled in the confined space of the train with nothing pressing to do, he was acting oddly subdued. It seemed as if his nearness were an illusion, and if she stretched out her hand, she would find he was actually beyond her reach.
She didn’t like him retreating into the realm of his private thoughts after just last night cajoling her to share so freely of herself. It was hardly fair turnaround.