Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(31)
Elsa folded her hands in her lap and said, “So, now that you and all your closest friends know my secrets, are you going to tell me what your story is?”
Leo leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked at her with serious eyes. “My father was chief cryptographer to the king of Sardinia, and my mother an Austrian spy, so you see their love affair was doomed from the start, and her inevitable betrayal—”
Elsa held up a hand, begging him to stop. He was really quite good when he committed himself to a story—so sincere with those mesmerizing tawny eyes and the smooth cadence of his voice. Revan had been a terrible liar. When they were children and got in trouble, he would always try to talk their way out of it, and Baninu would always see through her son’s improvised excuses. Revan hesitated when he lied, needing time to sort the details in his mind before saying them, but with Leo the words flowed as if he were reciting real memories.
Silence hung in the air between them for a minute before Elsa said, “Are you ever going to tell me the truth, or just keep making up ridiculous stories we both know are lies?”
“Oh, definitely the second option, I’d say.” He grinned and turned to look out the window, as if to deflect her question as neatly as he might parry a rapier thrust.
“Look, I know they’re all dead, all the people you cared about.” His head snapped back to stare straight at her, making her suddenly doubt the wisdom of saying it. She continued uncertainly, “So, you … ah … don’t have to keep up the pretense on my account, is all.”
He stayed silent so long she wasn’t sure he would ever answer. Then he quietly said, “Sometimes pretense is the only armor we have against the world.”
“But you still wear that every day,” she said, casting a significant glance down at the pocket watch chain hooked through a buttonhole on his waistcoat.
Leo looked down. “I saw the bodies. My father had this on him when he died.” He slid the watch out of his waistcoat pocket. “Forgetting was never the goal.”
“If you’re so convinced of the worthiness of your friends, why do you never speak of your own history, even with the people you claim to trust?”
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “They know enough.”
Elsa cast him a skeptical look. “I have to wonder whether you’re trying to convince me or yourself.”
This time, Leo didn’t answer. His gaze shifted to the window, the beginnings of a scowl furrowing his brow.
Elsa bit her tongue, fearing she’d pushed him too far. She should not have been so forward, not here and now, not with Leo, whose help she needed.
Her mother had raised her to be forthright, to speak her mind. Never forget that words have power, Jumi would say, pacing the slate floor of the cottage while Elsa sat diligently at the writing desk. We use them to remake the world. Our best weapons are words. Jumi had taught her how to make war with words, but not how to make peace with them. And even a sword made of words has two edges.
7
POURING FORTH ITS SEAS EVERYWHERE, THEN, THE OCEAN ENVELOPS THE EARTH AND FILLS ITS DEEPER CHASMS.
—Nicolaus Copernicus
Leo found he couldn’t look Elsa in the eye for long—there was something disconcerting about her gaze. Maybe it was the chiaroscuro effect of her dark skin turning those green eyes startlingly clear and bright, like spotlights in an opera house. Or maybe it was the way she seemed to look right through him, as if she could read his thoughts as easily as she could the words on a page. Certainly, she had demonstrated an uncomfortable tendency to skewer the truth no matter how carefully he concealed it beneath layers of lies.
Leo did not want to examine why he felt the need to hide it in the first place. He did not want to admit to the disservice he did his friends, even if it was out of self-preservation. To share the truth would be to make it more real, and it already felt too real to bear.
It seemed safest to stare out the window, only acknowledging Elsa with the occasional sideways glance. She had a sharp beauty, and he fancied it might cut him if he gazed upon it too long. Exotic was the word he wanted to use, though Faraz abhorred it (Exotic, meaning “from the outside,” Faraz would say, someone who can never, no matter what they do, count as “one of us.”). But in truth, Elsa was exotic, she was as exotic as it was possible for any human to be: she was not from Earth. And if he read her properly, she intended to return from whence she had come as soon as physically possible. Yet another reason to keep her at arm’s length.
In the end everyone left, one way or another. Aris, who had seemed an unstoppable force of nature right up until the moment he was stopped. Little Pasca, brilliant and sensitive. Father, who had never fully been there in the first place, his mind always on matters larger than his sons. All of them gone.
Even Rosalinda—who had dragged Leo kicking and screaming from the house fire in Venezia, who for weeks afterward had sat up with him when the nightmares made sleep impossible. Even she let him go when the Order demanded custody, as they did for all mad orphans. Not that Casa della Pazzia turned out so bad for him, but as a frightened, traumatized ten-year-old, the last thing he’d wanted was to be dragged away from a familiar face and thrust in amongst strangers.
In any case, Elsa was not here to stay. So Leo knew very well he ought to keep his distance.
*
They changed trains at the station in La Spezia, and by the time they were pulling out to follow the Cinque Terre line, it seemed to Elsa that Leo had regained some of his usual spirit.