Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(41)

“Not enough arable land, and nothing to hunt. It was obviously designed by someone who’d never needed to grow his own food,” she said, not trying to hide her scorn.

Leo shook the nearest ladder to check for structural stability and then started climbing. “We should take a look around anyway.”

Up the ladder, they spread out, each taking a different cave to examine. Elsa’s was a single room outfitted as if a person might call it home. A fire pit just inside the entrance, where the smoke would be carried away by the breeze instead of pooling inside the cave. A rough woven blanket laid out along one wall. A neatly arranged collection of clay bowls and pots in a variety of sizes. A broad, flat stone for grinding grain into meal.

The emptiness of the world began to seep into Elsa’s bones, and she shivered. It felt far worse than any abandoned place—this was not simply a place where people used to be and no longer were. This was a place where people never had been and never would be, and that pervasive absence of life seemed to emanate from the very walls.

“We should go,” she called to the others.

Leo clattered down a ladder to her ledge, a manic glint in his eye. “So soon? What fun is that?”

Elsa folded her arms. “This world is a failed attempt. Montaigne wouldn’t have left anything important here.”

Faraz edged slowly over a narrow strip of ledge to join them in front of Elsa’s cave just as Porzia made her way there as well. She held up her portal device and said, “Anyone care for a ride? I’m stepping back. This is lovely and everything, but we need to stay on task.”

Against the rock wall of the cliffside, a portal irised open, as if an especially dark cave entrance were suddenly appearing before them. Watching it widen, Elsa felt a pang of regret that her mother had never altered the Veldanese portal dynamics. The way Montaigne had written her world, portals could only be opened at the Edgemist; perhaps if Veldana had been as flexible as this world, with portals opening any old place, Elsa could have caught up with Jumi’s abductors that first day.

Elsa shook off the feeling. Self-pity and what-ifs would not save her mother. She had to stay focused, objective, unsentimental—this was the only way to help Jumi.

They all stepped through the nothing-moment of the portal back into the comfortable warmth of the library. Gathering around the table, they looked at the array of worldbook candidates.

Porzia chewed her lip. “Which one next, do you think?”

Elsa fished around in the pile. “Montaigne had an office scribed somewhere … that’s probably our best chance. Now which one was that?”

She picked up an older book to check it, but as soon as she cracked the cover open, she remembered it was the world scribed in an alphabet she didn’t recognize. This was the book she’d found lying on the floor beside Montaigne’s lifeless hand. Without the restoration machine, she never would have been able to repair this one, at least not until she’d mastered the language.

“Where did you get this?” Faraz suddenly exclaimed, grabbing the volume out of Elsa’s hands. “Montaigne had this in his library?”

Elsa blinked. “Yes. Actually, he was holding it when he died. What’s wrong?”

He opened the book, intent on examining it. “The cover’s newer—it’s been rebound—but look at this paper, this ink. Don’t you understand? This is an original Jabir ibn Hayyan scribed world!”

“Who?” said Elsa, baffled.

Faraz, at a loss for words, cast a disbelieving look at Leo.

“A famous eighth-century polymath from Persia,” Leo explained. “He revolutionized the science of alchemy. He also redesigned all the materials used in scriptology, which, I understand, provided the basis for modern scriptological technique.”

Porzia stepped closer to take a look. “If it was important to this Montaigne fellow, I’d say it’s worth taking a look inside.”

“We must be careful,” Faraz said. “Jabir was notorious for his use of steganography in all his treatises. There’s no telling what we might be walking into.” Somehow, though, the excitement in his tone failed to convey a sense of warning.

Elsa had heard of steganography, the practice of hiding coded messages in written works, but she had never seen it in a worldtext before.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to go in blind or not at all,” said Porzia. Then she raised her eyebrows at Elsa. “Unless you can read classical Arabic text?”

Elsa shook her head. “It would take me a while to learn, especially if the scriptologist was prone to using idiosyncratic syntax.”

“Blind it is, then!” Leo declared, grinning. He rubbed his palms together as if he were expecting to receive a treat.

Porzia rolled her eyes. “You could at least pretend to be concerned for our collective safety.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Anything really,” said Elsa. “The walls might eat us. Or perhaps the atmosphere’s pure sulfur tetrafluoride and the acid dissolves our lungs. Or it’s a world where fluids can’t exist, so our blood instantly freezes in our veins.”

Everyone stared at her. Leo’s mouth hung slightly open.

“What? I’m not saying we shouldn’t go. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to scribe a world like that—it’s just possible, is all.”