Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(68)
They were led up a narrow, dim-lit stairway. The smell of pine tar clung to one of Elsa’s captors, and it burned in her nostrils. With a Carbonaro attached to each arm, she couldn’t lift her skirts and stumbled on the stairs, but they just hauled her up and kept going.
On the third floor, they passed through a door into a room that was much larger than a single tenement, with rough patches where interior walls had been knocked down. A long, sturdy table that dominated the center of the room held an assortment of papers—maps, blueprints, shipping manifests, and others Elsa couldn’t identify at a distance.
Leaning over that table was a man. All but two of the Carbonari retreated from the room, and when the door slammed, the man behind the table looked up. Elsa knew instantly who he was.
Ricciotti Garibaldi had the same high forehead, straight nose, and expressive mouth as Leo, but he was brown-haired, and—Elsa noted with a spark of surprise—he had a bit of a weak chin. The paternal resemblance was there, but far from complete. She found the differences oddly comforting, as if they were an outward sign of the differences within.
Ricciotti looked at each of them for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he moved around the table and walked over to Leo.
“Ah, my son. I’ve been expecting you.” He reached his hands forward as if to grab Leo’s head and kiss his cheeks. Leo’s eyes went wide and he shoved him away.
“Don’t touch me,” Leo said hoarsely.
“I see.” Ricciotti straightened, rubbing the place on his chest where Leo’s hand must have connected. “I knew it would be a difficult adjustment for you, returning to the fold, but we hardly have time for your childish antics.”
“My antics? I’m not the one who sabotaged a train full of innocent bystanders as some sort of ridiculous test!”
Ricciotti shrugged it off as if Leo’s accusation were of little consequence either way. “It has been hard to know the proper time to reintegrate you—you were much too immature when we fled Venezia. I wanted to observe a show of your abilities. But, to my dismay, you weren’t the polymath who solved the problem.”
Elsa’s eyes widened at the brazenness of his admittance. What kind of parent subjects his own son to a life-or-death test?
But Leo did not seem horrified at this; instead he let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, poor Father. What a disappointment it must have been, to think I’d finally followed in Aris’s footsteps only to discover the honor belonged to someone else. I suppose that’s why you tried to have her killed?”
“Sending the Carbonari man was an error. My intelligence was incomplete—if I’d realized who your lovely companion was, I would not have targeted her.” He inclined his head toward Elsa in a brief acknowledgment of her presence.
“Of course,” said Leo. “Why destroy a person you already have means of controlling?”
Ricciotti continued as if Leo hadn’t spoken. “In any case, my agent was under strict instructions to only deliver the poison. The train to test your mechanics, the poison to test your alchemy. And of course the problem of finding me, which would have tested your scriptology if you hadn’t yet again allowed others to do your work for you.” He gestured toward Elsa. “I never intended Jumi’s daughter to die, and as she appears quite well, I hardly see what you’re making a fuss over.”
Elsa felt as if her mother’s name were a punch to the gut, robbing her lungs of air.
“What is wrong with you?” Leo demanded. He looked about ready to pop a gasket. “I have to figure out you’re alive by deduction and conjecture? You couldn’t have—I don’t know—sent a telegram like a normal person?”
But Elsa was still focused with the intensity of a microscope on those two small syllables: Jumi. “So you admit it,” she snapped, the words like acid in her mouth. “You are the one who took Jumi da Veldana.”
“She speaks,” Ricciotti said, amused and unabashed. “Indeed, I have her.”
Leo looked stricken at the shamelessness of the confession. He bent his head toward Elsa and spoke hushed words for her ears only. “There is nothing I can say in his defense.…”
She squeezed his arm. “You are not responsible for this.”
“I told you,” said a voice behind them, “we should have brought him back sooner.”
Elsa jumped and whirled around, but Leo turned slowly, as if he already knew who it would be. A young man, perhaps a few years older than she, leaned casually in the doorway. His hair was dark, but he had the same wide-set tawny eyes she’d grown accustomed to seeing in Leo’s face. He had Leo’s beauty, too, but he wore it like a mask over whatever lay beneath. Aris.
He pushed away from the doorframe and sauntered over to Leo, and with the two brothers standing close to each other, she could see Aris was somewhat taller but also slimmer. “You should know it was for your own good,” he said to Leo. “One doesn’t bring children to war. I wanted to send you a message, at least, but Father insisted you would never be content to stay away if you knew we lived.”
Leo shifted his weight, as if he wanted to step away but couldn’t, held in place by the magnetic pull of brotherhood. “Well you’re right on one point: there’s nothing you could have done to content me after Venezia.”
The corner of Aris’s mouth quirked. “Haven’t lost your flair for the dramatic, I see.” His gaze flicked past Leo to land on Ricciotti, and his voice took on layers of meaning that Elsa found difficult to parse. “Same old Leo, isn’t he?”