“I’m not a child anymore. I could be useful.”
“And that’s precisely what I’m afraid other people might realize.”
Elsa narrowed her eyes at him, remembering how Signora Pisano had asked Casa to prepare a room for our guest, singular. “How soon?” she said.
“What?”
“I know you aren’t staying. You’re going to leave me here with these people. So, how soon?”
De Vries rubbed the back of his neck, reluctant to admit it. “I’ll catch the evening train to Firenze tonight. But you must know I wouldn’t leave you with just anyone—I’ve known the Pisano family a long time, they’re dear friends. You’ll be safe here.”
“Safe and useless,” Elsa said sulkily.
“Yes, safe and useless,” de Vries repeated, as if it were a triumph.
“You can’t stop me from leaving.” Elsa was the one who’d scribed the doorbook that could transport her anywhere in the real world—means of escape were hardly the problem.
“Please, Elsa—stay here. I couldn’t bear to find Jumi, only to have to tell her that I’d lost her daughter.” Then his tone brightened, as if to coax her toward enthusiasm. “Besides, this is a house of madness—it shouldn’t be too difficult to keep yourself occupied. Make friends, learn from them. Jumi’s an excellent scriptologist, but she couldn’t teach you the other sciences. Think of this as an opportunity, not a prison sentence.”
Elsa glowered. An opportunity. But could she afford to ignore de Vries’s advice when she knew so little about what it meant to be a polymath in Europe? He seemed genuinely afraid that some government would snatch her off the street.
“Fine, I’ll stay for now,” she grudgingly agreed, “but I’m going to search Montaigne’s books for clues. You know how he was, always hiding away inside his worlds—he may have left behind something relevant.”
“That’s a fine idea.” De Vries gave her an indulgent smile, as if he saw this activity more as a distraction than a viable strategy for finding Jumi. “But don’t worry overmuch—the Order of Archimedes will uncover what happened to your mother.”
After he left, Elsa pulled open the top drawer of the commode and slipped the gun inside. Better not to leave it out for anyone else to find. She trusted de Vries, but his trust in these people was another step removed from that. Her mother would warn her to be cautious, to keep her guard up. On second thought, she tucked away the doorbook and portal device beside the gun. It was rather too obvious a hiding place, but if she hid them more thoroughly she would lose time retrieving them whenever a hasty departure became necessary.
It wasn’t that she believed de Vries would betray her. It was just that it all seemed … too fortunate. If her luck the past two days served as any indication, she had better be prepared for the worst. Even if it meant turning away from de Vries’s well-intentioned help.
Jumi had taught her that love was a weakness—that if you let someone in, you gave them the power to hurt you. But before today, Elsa had thought of this as an untried philosophy, a theoretical truth that she had never gotten the chance to test.
She loved her mother and she loved Veldana, and now they were both beyond her reach, possibly both destroyed. She had never felt pain like this before, so acute it made her breath catch in her lungs. Her mother had been right—it was those you loved who could hurt you the most.
At the same time, she had to wonder: Was it simply the losses that hurt? Or did it also hurt to have nothing at all left to love?
*
Leo needed the help of five of Casa’s cleaning bots just to haul the damaged training bot back to his laboratory, and a trail of hydraulic fluid leaked along the floor in his wake. He hoped Casa could get that mopped up before Gia stepped out of her office again—there was only so much mess the poor woman could take. He didn’t mean to be such a source of trouble, but things always seemed to spiral out of hand.
In Venezia, Aris had been the troublemaker, the ringleader whom the younger boys would follow anywhere. Rosalinda used to say that if Aris jumped in the Grand Canal, Leo would jump in two seconds after—she’d meant it as a criticism, though Leo had chosen to take it as a compliment.
Now, like it or not, Leo managed to make his own trouble. He wondered if his brother would be proud. He wondered what Aris’s grin would look like now—still magnetic as ever, but in a grown man’s face?
Leo shook his head to clear those futile musings. It was just the broken mask that had him thinking of his childhood, and all he’d lost. He perched himself on his favorite tall stool at the high worktable and resolved to focus on the repairs.
“I love what you’ve done with the place.”
He glanced up; it was Porzia, stepping through the gaping hole in the wall where the door had been. When Leo had activated the training bot, it had plowed its way out of the laboratory, taking the door and part of the walls with it. Now there was nothing to deter visitors.
Porzia lifted her skirts to pick her way through the rubble and entered uninvited.
Leo frowned at her. “What do you want?”
“Why do you always think I want something? Isn’t it enough that I came to say hello?” Porzia said, but she motioned with her eyes, casting a significant look at the worktable. With feigned casualness, Leo reached over and flipped a switch on the top of a device shaped like a cube.
“The scrambler’s on,” he said. “It’s safe to talk.”
Porzia glanced at the ceiling. “Casa? You’re a dusty old junker with grinding gears. I wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.” She paused, waiting for a response. “I guess it works.”
Leo tapped a finger on the top of the box. “Like I said—instant blind spot. Casa can’t monitor us when it’s on. So what’s happening?”
Porzia settled herself primly atop a packing crate, as if it were a fine-upholstered settee. “Papa’s friend Alek de Vries brought us a new girl today.”
“I know, we met in the foyer,” Leo said, omitting the part about battling the runaway bot.
“Yes, well. There’s something odd about her. Do you know which rooms Casa prepared for her? Uncle Massimo’s old rooms—with the scriptology study opposite the bedroom.”
Leo frowned. “Perhaps Gia…”
Porzia tilted her chin down and gave him a scathing look. “Mamma would not instruct Casa to prepare those rooms for a guest. Really, her deceased brother-in-law’s rooms?”
“Right.” He leaned forward, planting his elbows on the workbench. “That means Casa is taking initiative, and the house only makes independent decisions when something significant is going on. Do we know for certain the girl’s a scriptologist?”