Elsa, who expected Porzia’s reaction to involve some self-important blustering, was surprised to hear the other girl softly say, “Of course, Mamma. What needs to be done in your absence?”
“I’ll write you a list.” Then Signora Pisano raised her voice to ensure all the children heard the instruction to obey Porzia’s authority in her absence. The Pisanos, mother and daughter, left together to settle the details, while the dining hall erupted with curiosity and supposition about the mysterious goings-on of the Order of Archimedes.
Elsa found her appetite had vanished as she worried over what, exactly, complicated was supposed to mean. De Vries was in Firenze, meeting with the Order. He’d seemed so confident they would help, but what if he’d been wrong?
In all the commotion, Elsa slid off her chair and crept out of the dining hall, freeing herself of the obligation to sit through the entirety of the too-long meal. She thought she’d managed to make a clean escape, but the sound of footsteps in the hall behind her told her otherwise. She looked back to see Leo jogging to catch up, and with a sigh of defeat she stopped walking.
Even as he rushed up to her, he managed to preserve an unhurried air about himself, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “You left early,” he said. “If I were the easily offended type, I might come to the conclusion that our presence repels you.”
Elsa shrugged. “I like being alone.”
“Nobody likes being alone,” Leo insisted, his voice suddenly too sharp. “You adapt to being alone if you must, but no one enjoys it.”
She blinked at him, surprised by the sentiment. His mood changed like a sea breeze that couldn’t decide from which direction it should blow. “Who elected you Speaker for Everyone Everywhere? I, for one, enjoy a bit of solitude.” To Elsa it was a foreign concept that anyone might abhor being alone.
“Sure, just keep telling yourself that,” Leo said with a slight grin, his sharp edge vanishing as quickly as it had come.
Elsa huffed out a breath, uncertain how to deal with him. “I have work to do.”
Leo tucked his hands into his pockets and leaned against the wall of the corridor. “The Order’s urgent business—first Signor de Vries and now Gia rushing off to Firenze—this is all about your mother, isn’t it?”
Elsa knotted her fingers together to keep her hands from clenching into fists. “I have every confidence in de Vries.”
“De Vries and two dozen other pazzerellones you’ve never met before?” Leo said skeptically. “You’re not seriously going to sit by while some strangers in another city may or may not be looking for your mother, are you?”
“Well … yes,” Elsa lied.
“No, you’re not! And do you know how I know?” He pushed away from the wall, his breath rapid with agitation. “Because if there were even the slightest chance that I could be reunited with my family, no power on Earth could stop me. That’s how I know.” He turned abruptly as if he meant to stride off, but he stopped short. His shoulders hitched as he took a deep breath, mastering his temper.
Reluctantly, Elsa admitted, “I am … investigating my own line of inquiry, but it’s slow going.”
He turned back a little, not quite facing her, but at least she could see him in profile. He had the pocket watch out again and began slowly walking it across his knuckles like a very large coin, staring down at his hands as if it required his full concentration. “I can help you save your mother, if you’ll let me.”
His pain was too raw to bear, etched like shadows around his eyes. Quietly, Elsa said, “It won’t bring you comfort, to watch me get back that which you cannot.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Still without looking at her, he said, “Because no one should lose everything. It isn’t just, and I was raised to believe in a just world.”
She stared at him, searching for any sign of false intentions. How much harm could it cause to explain what had happened?
Elsa pursed her lips for a moment, then related the details of the abduction, Montaigne’s murder, the fire, and the damaged worldbooks. She left out the part about being a polymath; she did not have to tell him all her secrets.
Leo defied her expectations and proved to be a patient listener. When she finished the story, he frowned thoughtfully and said, “That’s not much to go on.”
“I don’t know who took my mother.” Saying the words aloud made her chest ache with renewed fear, as if she were reopening a partly healed wound. “I don’t know if the Veldana worldbook survived the fire, and even if it did, I don’t know where it is now. All I have is the hope that they burned Montaigne’s library for a reason—that somewhere in his worldbooks there’s a clue they didn’t want anyone to find.”
“So you’ve been trying to repair the books by hand? That’s insane, it could take you months to get through all of them,” Leo said. “Whoever abducted your mother, whatever their intentions … even if she refuses to help them at first, there are ways of persuading a person. Unpleasant ways.”
Elsa’s voice rose, a note of desperation creeping in. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve been prioritizing as best I can. What else can I do?”
His expression brightened with the light of a dawning scheme, his amber eyes seeming to glint. “What if there was a faster way to repair the books?”
“‘What if,’” Elsa muttered, impatient with his ambiguity. “Are you saying there’s a faster way? Tell me what it is!”
Leo simply offered a sly smile. “Get the worldbooks packed. I know where we have to go.”
6
WE TRAVEL TO LEARN; AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN IN ANY COUNTRY WHERE THEY DID NOT DO SOMETHING BETTER THAN WE DO IT, THINK SOME THOUGHTS BETTER THAN WE THINK, CATCH SOME INSPIRATION FROM HEIGHTS ABOVE OUR OWN.
—Maria Mitchell
Nestled along the rugged coastline north of Pisa, Leo said, were five little villages collectively referred to as Cinque Terre, and near one of those villages hid the ruins of the Pisano ancestral castle. Once a refuge for pazzerellones, the ruins still contained a collection of old inventions. When Leo was twelve, the Pisanos took him there for the first time, and he felt like a knight running amok in a dragon’s hoard while the dragon was away, with room after room of old treasures to be discovered.
And he still remembered, in one large laboratory, the book restoration machine.
Leo took the corridors at a jog. He burst through the cracked-open door of Gia’s office to find Porzia on the other side.
She looked up from her seat at her mother’s desk. “Mamma’s already left for the train station. You just missed her.”
“Actually, I was hoping to find you,” he said, a manic edge to his voice making the words spill out too fast.
“Really…” Porzia stretched the word out like caramel. She got up from the chair and came around to the front side of the desk. “Have you finally come to your senses? Going to tell me what it is Elsa’s hiding?”