Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(40)
Porzia was waiting in the library, seated at one of the reading tables and sipping a cappuccino out of a broad-rimmed china cup. The carpetbag rested on the table at her elbow, looking to Elsa’s eyes rather like an inanimate hostage. Elsa rushed over, opened the bag, and started laying out all the worldbooks on the table.
Porzia regarded her with raised-eyebrow amusement. “Rested then, are we?”
Elsa spared a moment to glower, then finished unpacking the books.
Faraz and Leo arrived with one of the younger children in tow. He was a scrawny lad with wide, dark eyes and a quick smile; Elsa was fairly sure this was the one named Burak.
Leo paused in the doorway and said to the boy, “This is very important: don’t let anyone inside. We have secret business to do for the Order, and we’re not to be disturbed.”
“Right,” Burak said. He glanced curiously inside, but did not press Leo for details. A grin flashed across his face. “If all of you die in there and leave me out here guarding your corpses indefinitely, I’ll be rather put out.”
Leo grinned back and clapped him on the shoulder. “If that happens, I’m afraid I’ll be past the point of feeling your ire.”
When the doors were shut, Burak on the far side of them, Porzia gave Leo a dry look. “I didn’t realize you required a private guard, Mr. Trovatelli.”
Leo sauntered over to their table, back to his usual insouciant self. If he was still mad about yesterday, Elsa could see no outward hint of it. He said, “If all four of us are going to be inside the books, don’t you think it’s wise to keep curious children from wandering in and playing with them?”
Porzia sniffed, granting him nothing. “In any case, shall we get started with the least damaged world?”
She reached out a hand for the book, but Elsa snatched it up, irked by the other girl’s bossiness. Flipping through the pages, she tested the feel of the paper beneath her fingertips. The gentle hum felt the same as yesterday: old and comfortable, settled, well-developed. A finished worldtext satisfied with its contents.
“They feel successfully repaired to me. But,” she grudgingly admitted, “we do have to start somewhere.”
The least-damaged world would also be the least risky to enter. This world didn’t seem a likely candidate for containing Montaigne’s private notes, but Elsa could evaluate its structural integrity. If the book repair process had left no residual damage here, it would probably be safe to proceed with searching the other worlds.
It cost her an ounce of pride, but Elsa made herself hand the book to Porzia, letting the other girl set the coordinates into a portal device. Porzia’s device was much newer and fancier than Elsa’s, with decorative silverwork set into the brass backing.
“Ready, everyone?” Porzia paused to glance up at them, nervous determination in her eyes. Then she flipped the final switch. “Here we go.”
The portal yawned open in the air before them. Elsa slid her hand into the stability glove, activated it, and stuck her arm into the portal up to the shoulder. She wasn’t entirely certain the glove would be able to detect an unstable world through the portal, but it seemed like a reasonable precaution. She drew her arm back out again and checked the indicator light, which had turned neither red nor green but remained dark instead. Inconclusive.
Porzia, one eyebrow raised, leaned over to view the results for herself. “Well, your arm didn’t fall off. That’s a good sign.”
“I suppose,” Elsa said. “Shall we risk it?”
Porzia surprised Elsa by linking arms with her. She’d expected Porzia to be the voice of caution and didn’t know where the other girl’s brash confidence came from. Together they stepped through into the frigid black nothingness, the boys right behind them, and out the other side.
Elsa craned her neck to take in their new surroundings. They stood on a ledge overlooking a dark, mist-shrouded abyss. A cliff face rose above them, decorated with a network of ledges, wooden ladders, and dark cave openings. Artificial terraces supported beds of tilled earth, but nothing grew in them. The wind whistled low and eerie, playing the cave-pocked cliffside like a flute.
Elsa held her arm out and splayed her gloved fingers, hoping to detect any potential instabilities. After a moment, the light turned green. For whatever that was worth. “It should be safe to move around a bit,” she said.
Leo leaned out to look over the edge and whistled. “Long way down.”
“It’s Edgemist,” said Elsa, grabbing the back of his waistcoat to pull him away from the edge. “Concealed behind a bit of scribed fog for the aesthetics. If you fell, you’d never hit the ground—you’d simply cease to exist. So try not to fall, will you?”
“You make a gentle death sound so ominous,” Faraz said lightly, while Leo tugged at his waistcoat to straighten it. He turned his tawny eyes on her with an inscrutable look, and Elsa turned away, feeling heat rise in her cheeks.
“It’s all nicely done,” said Porzia appreciatively, “but I can’t say I understand what it’s for.”
Relieved to have something else to focus her attention on, Elsa said, “Montaigne was obsessed with the idea of scribing subtextual humans as an emergent property of a worldbook. This must be one of his early attempts.”
Faraz looked around, interested. “So why didn’t it work?”