Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(86)

Elsa set the last two numbers. “1873,” she said. “The year he completed the Veldana worldbook, and made history as the first scriptologist to create sentient people.”

Porzia asked, “Are you sure?”

“One way to find out.” She pulled the lever.

From deep within the wall there was a click click click click, and a whirring of gears, a grating of stone, and on the floor two stone panels swung upward. Elsa had to back up hastily to get out of the way. When the hole in the floor opened, a pedestal rose out of it, and upon the pedestal was a large leather-bound volume. The spine was marked in Jumi’s elegant script.

“Careful,” Faraz warned. “Could be yet another trap.”

“Mm,” Elsa agreed.

She circled the pedestal, examining it from all angles. No hidden weapons compartments, no pressure plates, no suspicious-looking materials, no electrodes. She tapped the front cover with one finger and quickly withdrew her hand. Nothing.

Leo fiddled with his pocket watch impatiently. “Oh, just pick the damned thing up, already.”

“Fine,” Elsa said, “but if the ceiling caves in, I’m blaming you.”

Still, she hesitated. This was her mother’s secret creation, part of the legacy she was born to inherit. Jumi had chosen to hide it from her, and that knowledge pinched like a thorn between her ribs.

Elsa placed both hands on the worldbook. Even through the cover, the pages seemed to sing to her. The air close to the book vibrated, as if it were made of butterfly wings instead of paper. And Elsa found that she did want to pick it up—deeply yearned to, in fact.

She lifted the book.

The ceiling did not collapse, though Elsa might not have noticed if it had.

No one wanted to cut it close with the oxygen, so Leo led them back through the minefield of temporal pockets. As they climbed the stairs, Elsa cradled her mother’s book in her arms the way another person might hold a young babe.

“Don’t just hug it,” said Porzia, stepping out into the courtyard. “Let’s crack that cover and give it a read, shall we? Find out what sort of weapons are inside.”

An anxious tentacle tugged at Elsa’s skirt, but she had her hands full with the book. Faraz lifted Skandar to his shoulder while Elsa opened to the first page.

As she read through the text, she could feel the weight of their gazes upon her. She didn’t need to look up at Leo to know the wait was killing him.

“So?” he finally said. “What kind of worldbook is it?”

“It’s … not.” Elsa scanned the front pages a second time, but the usual properties—gravity, land, air, heat—remained stubbornly absent.

“Not what?” Porzia leaned closer, scowling at the Veldanese text as if she could understand it by force of will alone.

“Not a scribed world at all. You see these references here?” Elsa pointed to a particular section; though Porzia couldn’t read the words, she might recognize the structure and formatting. “The text is linked to Earth, like my doorbook.”

“Really? Oh, I see … but it’s so much larger than your doorbook.”

Elsa flipped through a few more pages, her heart sinking as she read further and her suspicions were confirmed. Dread settled in her stomach, and when she spoke again, her voice came out hoarse. “That’s because it’s not meant for traveling.”

Leo said, “What does the damned thing do, then?”

Elsa looked up to meet Porzia’s waiting gaze, but she could tell the other girl—for all her scriptological talents—had not guessed what the book could do. Elsa cleared her throat. “It makes … changes. It doesn’t contain a weapon, it is the weapon: this book is designed to edit Earth.”

All the color drained from Porzia’s cheeks.

Faraz said, “But—but that’s not possible. Is it?” On his shoulder, Skandar fanned its wings anxiously, picking up on the sudden change in mood.

“It’s preposterous,” Leo protested with a sudden, blustering confidence. “You can’t edit the real world! It’s the real world—it wasn’t made with scriptology.”

“There is precedent,” Porzia said quietly. “A person born in the real world can be changed. Think of Simo—he was textualized by a bad script. There’s no theoretical impediment preventing someone from designing a book to make intentional changes to reality.”

Faraz held his hands up in a steadying gesture. “Okay, okay. Let’s assume for the moment this … editbook, or whatever you want to call it, actually works. What’s Garibaldi planning to do with it? How dangerous is this thing?”

“It’s not just that he could edit the world to make Italy a single, unified state,” Elsa explained. “He could edit the world to force everyone to want unification. Of course if he tried that and mucked it up, he might accidentally textualize the entire population of southern Europe.”

Porzia sucked in a breath between her teeth, horror written all over her face. For her own part, Elsa struggled to hold down the nausea roiling in her gut. How could her own mother have given birth to such a diabolical invention? She felt unclean by association.

In a dazed voice, Faraz recited, “‘The world has entered a time of flux. Much depends on the choices you make.’”