Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(60)
*
Leo thought about chasing after Elsa to apologize, and then he considered smothering his stupid mouth with a pillow. But instead he elected to lie awake and stare up at the ceiling for a long while after Elsa left. If only telling the truth wasn’t so exhausting, if only it hadn’t come as such a shock to find himself with Elsa on his bed in a compromising position, if only the whole encounter hadn’t felt too strange and wonderful to be true—maybe then he could have managed to go one night without destroying something precious.
“Casa,” he said into the darkness, “Elsa’s room is awfully far away for her to have heard me.”
“Signor?” said Casa innocently.
“Did you wake her up?”
Casa paused. “It is important for you children to look after one another.”
Leo scowled. “You manipulative psychopath. Now everything’s ruined.”
“One must be a human to be a psychopath,” Casa replied, sounding perfectly self-satisfied. “And I would say things are progressing quite nicely.”
“She hates me now.”
“Hmph. We’ll see. She is a magnificent specimen, is she not?”
“You’re unbelievable!” Leo tossed his hands in the air and let them fall back onto the bed. “She’s not a specimen, and I’ve had enough of your interference.”
Smugly, Casa said, “I’m not the one who kissed her.”
*
In the morning Elsa skipped breakfast. Between the poison and Faraz’s cure, all those chemicals had left her stomach feeling unsteady, and the last thing she wanted was to face Leo while also fighting nausea. Would things be awkward between them now? Would he avoid her, or pretend nothing had happened? Her absence left her to envision Leo performing his usual brash confidence over cappuccinos and pastries, serenely unruffled, as if nothing ever touched him. She couldn’t stand that idea, and she needed desperately to find some diversion upon which to focus her attention. She had to get out of her rooms.
The library seemed the most logical destination. But when she pushed open the door, the library was not empty—there was a figure slumped over one of the reading tables amidst chaotic piles of open books.
“Porzia…?” Elsa said, disbelieving. “Are you well?”
The girl lifted her head off her arm with a groan and scrubbed her hands over her face. Elsa had never seen her looking so disheveled. Porzia let down her sleep-mussed dark hair and ran her fingers through it, working out the tangles. “I must have dozed off.”
Elsa narrowed her eyes in mock scrutiny. “Aren’t you the one always cajoling us to sleep and eat and whatnot?”
She shrugged off the question. “I thought I’d go over my research again, now that we know exactly who Garibaldi is. I’ve been trying to identify places that might be significant to him.” She shuffled through a pile of hastily discarded books at the far end of the table and pulled out a large atlas. Laying it open before Elsa, she said, “Here, have a look.”
The page was a map of southern Europe, showing the Italian peninsula carved up into four independent political units. The north, including Pisa and Firenze, belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia. A chunk in the middle around Roma was labeled The Papal States. Below that, the southern end of the peninsula was part of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, along with the island of Sicilia itself. The far northeast was labeled VENETO, including the city of Venezia, where Leo had grown up. Opposite the map was a loose sheet of paper Porzia must have tucked between the pages, cities and dates listed on it in her elegant cursive. Marsala—1860—father Giuseppe and brother Menotti killed. Venezia—1867(?)—establishes himself under assumed name. And so on.
“The atlas is in German, sorry,” said Porzia.
“That’s fine,” Elsa replied. “I read German.”
Porzia blinked in surprise. “How many languages do you know?”
“Veldanese, Dutch, French, and now Italian,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “I can also read English, German, and Latin, but haven’t had the chance to hear them spoken yet. Oh, and I’ve just started Greek, but I’m not very far along. That’s more your fault than mine, though, since none of you seem inclined to speak more than a word or two of Greek at a time.”
Porzia shook her head, a wry grin pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I can see why you’ve awoken in Leo such a sense of inferiority.”
Elsa felt heat rise in her cheeks. Porzia’s eyebrow twitched at her too-transparent reaction to Leo’s name, but she let it pass unremarked upon. Quickly, Elsa said, “So where did you get with the Garibaldi research?”
“Well, as I see it, we have three problems: locating your mother, reaching her as soon as possible, and escaping with her.”
Porzia’s hand rested on the open page of the atlas, her gaze focused on her notes as if determined to rake through them for undiscovered information. Elsa felt a pang in her chest as she watched the other girl. She’d stayed up all night doing research alone so Elsa could sleep and recover; she’d agreed to conceal Leo’s parentage from the Order, whatever the consequences might be for her own family. It was past time to trust Porzia.
Elsa took a deep breath and said, “Well, I don’t know how we’re going to locate Jumi, but getting to her won’t be a problem once we have.” Before she could change her mind, she pulled out the doorbook. “We’ll use a portal.”