Leo yanked a handkerchief from his pocket, grabbed the assassin’s dagger, and wrapped the blade, hoping to preserve some of the poison. Then he tucked the dagger through his belt and heaved Elsa into his arms. She was small, but apparently even small people were difficult to carry when entirely limp. Adjusting his grip, he staggered out into the hall.
When he burst through the alchemy lab door and saw Faraz inside, a wave of relief flooded through him. Faraz, unlike Leo, actually kept his work space neat, so there was an empty table upon which to lay Elsa. Leo set her down gently, careful not to crack her head against the wood.
“What in the name of God is going on? Casa reported an intruder.” Faraz rushed over to look at Elsa. “Did she faint?”
“She’s been poisoned. With this.” Leo handed the dagger over to Faraz, then pulled back Elsa’s sleeve to show the cut. “We have to synthesize an antidote.”
“I’m—I’m not qualified,” Faraz stammered. “I don’t work on humans.”
“Seeing as how the only other person with alchemical talent in this house is twelve and enjoys mixing perfumes, I really do think you’re the most qualified candidate.”
Faraz gave him a wide-eyed look of horror. “I wasn’t suggesting we consult Olivia. Maybe someone at the university…”
“I hardly think a carriage ride across the campus will do her good. She hasn’t much time. Now, I can assist with whatever you need,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “We know it’s an alchemical poison used by the Carbonari, which narrows down the possibilities somewhat, and we know it attacks the heart. So what do we do?”
Faraz unwrapped the blade, handling it with precision and care. He lifted it close to his face to give the poison an evaluative sniff, then looked at Leo. “We get to work.”
Even with Leo’s passing knowledge of Carbonari poisons, it took Faraz several minutes to narrow down the possibilities and definitively determine which agent was, even now, killing Elsa. Faraz did not waste a moment on interrogating Leo about his familiarity with the Carbonari, though Leo could see the question lingering in his friend’s eyes.
Leo took a damp cloth to Elsa’s flushed face while Faraz rummaged furiously through his supply cabinets, glass vials clinking together.
“We’ll need a chelating agent to bind the toxin,” he said. A vial fell from the shelf and crashed on the floor, spreading yellow fluid and sparkling glass shards everywhere, but Faraz ignored it. “And a cardiac stimulant to counteract the symptoms, and maybe…” His voice trailed off into mutterings Leo couldn’t quite hear.
Precious minutes ticked by while crystals were dissolved and liquids were boiled and distilled and mixed together. Leo didn’t quite follow every step, but he decided not to ask Faraz to waste time explaining anything to him.
“Come on, come on,” Leo muttered, checking Elsa’s pulse again. “Can’t you work any faster?”
“Of course,” Faraz snapped with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “There’s a much faster way to do it, but I decided to take the leisurely route just to drive you insane.”
Leo winced.
Faraz’s hands were steady as he grabbed the neck of a glass flask with metal tongs and moved it away from the burner flame, but tension pulled at the corners of his mouth and his gaze turned intense. Even Skandar seemed to pick up on his stress and crawled into the narrow space underneath a cabinet to hide.
The seconds passed like hours. At long last, Faraz held up a glass test tube and met Leo’s gaze.
“Is that it?” Leo said, heart in his throat.
“Only one way to find out,” said Faraz, bringing the vial over to the table where Elsa lay. “It’s the best I can do. Whether it will prove to be an antidote or not…”
Leo grabbed the vial out of his hands. “Stop stalling and hold her mouth open, will you?”
“Wait!” said Faraz, grabbing a hypodermic syringe. “Unconscious people don’t have a swallow reflex—it’ll end up down her lungs. We have to inject it intravenously.”
Faraz insisted on injecting the antidote very slowly, and in several different arteries. Leo thought he might indeed go insane from waiting. When Faraz finally set aside the empty syringe and pressed his fingers to Elsa’s throat to check her pulse, Leo let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“How is she?”
After a pause, Faraz said, “I think it’s working. Her pulse is stabilizing.”
“Thank God.” Leo scrubbed his face with his hands, relief flooding through him. But a little stream of anxiety followed quickly behind, because Elsa would not truly be safe until they knew for certain who had ordered the attempt on her life. He wrapped the dagger again, tucked it into his belt, and said, “I have to go.”
“You’re leaving now?” Faraz said, gaping at him.
Leo tapped his fingers nervously against the side of his leg. “Is she going to live?”
“I … I think so. Yes.”
He reached for the door. “Then there’s something I have to do.”
*
Elsa awoke to the feeling of a tickle against her cheek. She cracked open an eyelid to see Skandar’s huge eye staring at her from a few centimeters away, one tentacle anxiously poking her face.
With her eyes open, she grew increasingly aware of the pounding headache at the base of her skull, and the room spun around her. It took a minute to confirm that she really didn’t recognize the brown leather couch she was lying on, or the neatly organized shelves of jars and vials that lined the walls. In the center of the room, Faraz was standing at a worktable, cleaning up the detritus left over from some recent experiment.
“Hi, Skandar,” Elsa said hoarsely. And then, “Faraz?”
“You’re awake,” he said, looking up from what he was doing. “Good. Porzia will be relieved to hear it—she’s been a nervous wreck.”
“What happened?”
“Do you remember the attack? The assassin’s dagger was dipped in poison. I’ve administered an antidote, but you’re not out of the woods yet.”
Elsa picked her head up, trying to get a better look at her surroundings, and the motion caused a wave of nausea to wash through her. “Where’s Leo?”
“He … He’ll be back soon, I’m sure.” Faraz busied himself organizing a shelf of little glass vials, as if the question made him uncomfortable.
“How long was I out for?”
“A couple hours.”
Elsa dragged herself into a sitting position, her head still swimming. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, willing the dizziness to recede, but she still felt disoriented. When she opened her eyes again, the room seemed to tilt to the left.
Faraz turned, saw what she was doing, and rushed over. “Lie back,” he admonished. “You shouldn’t try to get up yet. You nearly died, Elsa.”