Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(76)
“No, no,” Elsa reassured them, backing away. “Seeing it is proof enough. Faraz is right: Charles Montaigne lives.”
Stepping away from the stench of the burnt homunculus, Elsa took a deep breath and let it out. So far, everything the Oracle had told her was true: Jumi’s captor was a brilliant megalomaniac, and Montaigne—the man who had betrayed her—had the worldbook Garibaldi wanted. And what if the last piece of the Oracle’s prediction proved correct as well?
You will lose something precious to you.
*
Everyone seemed subdued as they opened a portal back to Casa della Pazzia.
Leo cleared his throat. “Casa, would you give the digger bot a good cleaning and return it to Faraz’s lab? Better not to track dirt all over Gia’s floors.” They were standing in the foyer, which meant the bot would scatter dirt through half the house to get back to the alchemy lab if it wasn’t cleaned first.
“How atypically considerate of you, Signor Trovatelli,” Casa mocked.
“Not really,” said Porzia. “He just doesn’t want to put Mamma in a mood before we talk to her.”
Leo shrugged. “Guilty.”
To Elsa and Faraz, Porzia said, “You two should go ahead to the library and see if you can track Montaigne’s location. I have to go convince Mamma not to lock us all in the wine cellar until this whole business is over with.”
Difficult as it was for her, she would have to trust in Porzia’s persuasive abilities, so Elsa simply nodded. “Of course.” She felt Leo’s gaze lingering on her for a moment, as if he were trying to extract some hidden meaning, but she had no idea what he was looking for.
After Porzia and Leo left to find Gia, Faraz said, “I’ll meet you in the library in a minute. I’ve got to pick up Skandar from the alchemy lab.”
“Skandar?” She gave him a confused look.
“Let’s just say the creature has its uses.” Faraz flashed her a grin and went.
Elsa just stood there on the inlaid tile floor for a moment, exhausted. She watched as a tiny brass bot rolled into the room and began scrubbing down the much larger gravedigger. Then she made herself move, heading for the library. Time to track down Montaigne, and with him find the leverage she needed to rescue her mother.
*
Leo tugged on Porzia’s elbow as they passed near his laboratory. She raised an eyebrow, but let him lead her down the half flight of steps and over to the workbench where the scrambler sat. He flipped the switch so they could talk in private.
“What are you doing?” she said, fists planted on hips.
He held up a hand. “Let’s just think about this for a moment. This worldbook we’re going after … if it really contains some sort of apocalyptic-level weapon, we can’t let my father get his hands on it.”
“Obviously,” she said, her voice clipped with impatience.
“But we also can’t tell the Order about it, which means we can’t risk telling Gia.”
Her eyebrows shot up and she took a moment to reply, taken aback. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course I have to tell Mamma. Especially after … how we left things.” Despite their Tuscan tempers, Porzia and Gia had always been close, and Leo knew it pained her to be at odds with her mother for any length of time.
He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “If the Order gets ahold of a dangerous worldbook, they’re going to lock it away, all other concerns be damned. They’ll write off Elsa’s mother as an acceptable loss without a second thought.”
“And what if your father is manipulating us? What if he has no intention of releasing Jumi, no matter what we do in exchange?”
“We won’t let that happen. We’ll have leverage!”
Porzia’s face twisted in a pained expression. “I can’t not tell my mother where we’re going, Leo. I’m sorry, but that’s asking too much.”
Her hand darted out and deftly turned off the scrambler, and then in a swirl of skirts she was up the steps and out the door.
“Hold on! Porzia!” Leo called, but she did not stop.
Leo exhaled in frustration and chased after her, following her through the halls and down the basement stairs.
“Wait a minute!” he said, an urgency bordering on panic growing in his gut. “The last time we so much as mentioned my father’s name to the Order, they sent a courier to divest us of everything we’d collected that even might have to do with Ricciotti Garibaldi.”
“I know that,” Porzia snapped. “I was the one who deceived the courier and sent him on his way with just a single journal from Montaigne’s library. But you can only stretch my loyalties so far.”
“What of your loyalty to Elsa?”
She stopped just inside the doorway of the generator room. Her eyelids squeezed shut and her hands curled into fists. “Can’t you see you’re tearing me in half?” she hissed.
“Please, Porzia. Think.”
The room was so warm the air felt too thick in Leo’s lungs, and pinpricks of sweat immediately began to tickle the back of his neck. The great hulking generators chuffed noisily, indicator needles vibrating just shy of the redline. Gia must have spooled them up to full power in order to test their functionality.
“There’s nothing wrong with my thinking,” Porzia squeezed out from between clenched teeth. “She’s my mother, and the Order will hold her responsible for all of us. For whatever we do.”