“You call that a setback?” she interrupted.
“Well, you can hardly hold that against him.” He waved a hand, dismissing her concern. “If things aren’t exploding now and again, it means you’re not trying hard enough.” He flashed a roguish grin.
Elsa folded her hands in her lap and gave her carpetbag a worried glance. “If the spider hansom explodes while we’re in it, I hope you know I shall be very put out. It would cost me a substantial delay.”
“The mechanical theory’s all sound, so there really isn’t any cause for concern.” He schooled his expression, as if his invention could be held together with confidence alone.
The spider hansom let them down before the wide portico of Pisa Centrale station, and Elsa watched with interest as the machine proceeded to walk off on its own with no driver at the controls.
“Autopilot,” Leo explained. “It’s programmed to follow a homing beacon back to the carriage house at Casa della Pazzia.”
No longer safely sequestered in the high perch of the spider hansom, Elsa felt exposed. Her spine crawled with the sense that people were noticing her. Because she was dark and foreign? Because she did not act sufficiently urbane? She and Leo walked under an arch of the portico and through the front doors, and Elsa felt secretly relieved to have someone with her to handle the purchasing of tickets and the navigating to the correct platform. The station was crowded with people walking in all directions and with strange noises and smells, and she hadn’t expected the whole experience to feel so overwhelming.
Leo, on the other hand, seemed quite at ease counting change at the ticket counter and navigating the station, all while keeping one eye on everything else around them. They passed by a man hand-cranking a mechanical organ, and Leo handed a coin to the organ grinder’s monkey, which was dressed in a fancier coat than the organ grinder himself.
Turning back to Elsa, Leo said, “That’s the worst rendition of ‘La donna è mobile’ I can imagine.”
Elsa gave him a confused look. She had no idea what he was talking about. For that matter, she wasn’t sure why there was a man playing music in the station, or why Leo had given the monkey a coin.
“‘La donna è mobile,’” Leo repeated, as if this were an explanation. “From Rigoletto. You should listen to it sometime.”
Elsa resisted the urge to ask what a rigoletto was. At least she wasn’t trying to navigate this utterly foreign country alone. She didn’t like to admit it, but perhaps there was some merit to the idea of accepting help. Leo was proving himself to be an impressively competent escort.
When they boarded the train, Leo selected a box on the left, and he hefted her carpetbag onto the luggage rack. Elsa settled herself on the plush bench seat across from him, uncomfortable in her borrowed clothes. The corset boning held her spine straight, making it impossible to slouch. But at least she attracted fewer stares dressed as she was.
“Have you ridden a train before?” Leo asked, perhaps mistaking the source of her discomfort.
“When I was younger, to visit de Vries in Amsterdam.” Before she’d scribed the doorbook, but she left that part out.
“We’re lucky the Kingdom of Sardinia has an excellent rail system. The modern infrastructure is rather spottier in the other Italian states, but I suppose that’s what happens when you conscript and imprison pazzerellones. Progress requires intellectual freedom.”
“Huh.” Elsa didn’t know much about the role of pazzerellones in European society, how they might be subject to the whims of their government. For that matter, she had never considered the process of how inventions went from prototype to common use on Earth; Veldana was too young a world to have seen much of anything invented.
The train rumbled and lurched forward out of the station, gaining speed as it headed down the track. Elsa watched out the window as the train crossed over the river again, heading north, and sped away from the city into the hilly Tuscan countryside. Every now and again, they would pass a field so overtaken by some kind of scarlet flower that the earth would seem like a frozen red sea. The flowers were quite striking, but Elsa caught herself wondering why anyone would scribe such a persistent agricultural weed—until she remembered that no one had.
What a strange world, built of random chance and long, difficult refining.
Elsa shifted her gaze to Leo. Now that he was settled in the confined space of the train with nothing pressing to do, he was acting oddly subdued. It seemed as if his nearness were an illusion, and if she stretched out her hand, she would find he was actually beyond her reach.
She didn’t like him retreating into the realm of his private thoughts after just last night cajoling her to share so freely of herself. It was hardly fair turnaround.
Elsa folded her hands in her lap and said, “So, now that you and all your closest friends know my secrets, are you going to tell me what your story is?”
Leo leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked at her with serious eyes. “My father was chief cryptographer to the king of Sardinia, and my mother an Austrian spy, so you see their love affair was doomed from the start, and her inevitable betrayal—”
Elsa held up a hand, begging him to stop. He was really quite good when he committed himself to a story—so sincere with those mesmerizing tawny eyes and the smooth cadence of his voice. Revan had been a terrible liar. When they were children and got in trouble, he would always try to talk their way out of it, and Baninu would always see through her son’s improvised excuses. Revan hesitated when he lied, needing time to sort the details in his mind before saying them, but with Leo the words flowed as if he were reciting real memories.
Silence hung in the air between them for a minute before Elsa said, “Are you ever going to tell me the truth, or just keep making up ridiculous stories we both know are lies?”
“Oh, definitely the second option, I’d say.” He grinned and turned to look out the window, as if to deflect her question as neatly as he might parry a rapier thrust.
“Look, I know they’re all dead, all the people you cared about.” His head snapped back to stare straight at her, making her suddenly doubt the wisdom of saying it. She continued uncertainly, “So, you … ah … don’t have to keep up the pretense on my account, is all.”
He stayed silent so long she wasn’t sure he would ever answer. Then he quietly said, “Sometimes pretense is the only armor we have against the world.”
“But you still wear that every day,” she said, casting a significant glance down at the pocket watch chain hooked through a buttonhole on his waistcoat.
Leo looked down. “I saw the bodies. My father had this on him when he died.” He slid the watch out of his waistcoat pocket. “Forgetting was never the goal.”