She gave in and let Faraz guide her back into a more relaxed position. He gave her a stern look before going back to the worktable to finish tidying up. Skandar, now content that she wasn’t dead, crawled up onto her stomach and settled there. She idly scritched the creature with one hand.
Staring at the ceiling, Elsa wondered where Leo could have run off to while she was busy surviving a poisoning. To go talk to this mysterious someone else who might be able to identify the assassin? Why go alone instead of waiting for her to recover first? She was aware in a distant, academic way that she ought to be furious with him for leaving, but in the haze of her recovery, anger would have required too much effort.
Elsa turned her head to look at Faraz. “Can I ask you … what happened to Leo’s family?”
“What, now?” he said, surprised. “You should be resting.”
“Yes, because listening is so very taxing,” she said, and then realized it was the sort of thing Porzia might say. The other girl’s sarcasm must be rubbing off on her. “Besides, if I fall asleep, Skandar will go back to poking me in the face.”
Faraz kept his hands busy with rolling up a long strip of medical gauze. “They all died. In the Venetian rebellion seven years ago. His father was an advocate for Italian unification, and they were attacked in their home during the riots. The way it haunts him, I’m fairly certain he … you know, saw it happen.”
“That’s awful,” Elsa said, trying to imagine the trauma of seeing one’s family slaughtered at such a young age. Even now, the thought of Jumi being hurt was almost too much to bear. “How did he escape?”
“A servant, I think, managed to sneak Leo out and get him to safety. I don’t know the details—he hardly ever speaks about his family.”
“So he hides things from you, too.”
Faraz shrugged it off. “Find me a person who has never hidden anything from anyone.” But the way he avoided her gaze made Elsa think it bothered him more than he was letting on.
There was a swift knock at the door, and Burak stuck his head into the lab. “Everyone alive in here?”
Faraz waved him in, but Elsa found she couldn’t reply—her throat went suddenly tight with rage. Someone had gone to great lengths to see her dead. What exactly had she done to deserve this? Elsa was simply trying to rescue her mother. Who did these people think they were?
“What did you find?” Faraz was saying to Burak.
The younger boy scooted around the worktable and took something out of his pocket to show Faraz. “We’ve definitely been bugged. I found one in the library and a few in Casa’s control room. We’ll have to sweep the whole house.”
“What is it?” Elsa said from her place on the couch. Faraz handed her the device—a fat brass beetle the size of her palm, complete with legs for scurrying and sensors for spying. It tried to climb off her hand and escape, but she flipped it upside down so its legs waved uselessly in the air. Skandar lifted a tentacle curiously, but Elsa clicked her tongue to tell the little beastie it wasn’t for him.
Faraz asked Burak, “Do you recognize the design?”
“No, but it’s genius. I’ve never seen anything so small and sophisticated. No off switch that I can see—we’ll have to get creative to disable them. Leo should really take a look inside.” Burak glanced around, noticing Leo’s absence.
“I’m sure he will,” Faraz said ambiguously, declining to explain Leo’s whereabouts. “You should deliver an update to Porzia—you can tell her Elsa’s awake, as well—and then find Sante and Olivia and anyone else Porzia assigns to you, and start sweeping the house. All right?”
Grinning, Burak snapped a mock salute, took the bug back from Elsa and ran out of the room. Silence stretched between Elsa and Faraz for a minute after the boy had gone.
“It’s not unusual. Leo disappearing for a while, I mean,” Faraz eventually offered, though Elsa had not pressed the issue. “He goes off on his own sometimes. He always comes back, though.”
Off on his own to meet with this mysterious other person who might be able to identify the body. Elsa snorted. “Well this time, Leo better come back with some answers.”
Faraz did not disagree.
12
IF AN OFFENSE COME OUT OF THE TRUTH, BETTER IS IT THAT THE OFFENSE COME THAN THE TRUTH BE CONCEALED.
—Saint Jerome
Leo should’ve taken the spider hansom, stealth be damned. It was a mistake to walk—walking gave him time to think, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became. There was no escaping the fact that the assassin had been Carbonari-trained and had carried a dagger forged by the Carbonari’s own bladesmith. Both of which inevitably led Leo to conclude that the Carbonari had ordered Elsa’s death. By the time he was crossing the bridge over the river, he felt convinced Rosalinda must have known about the hit—his dear Auntie Rosalinda—being as she was the only Carbonara currently residing in Pisa, and high up within the rebel organization.
Leo paused halfway across the Middle Bridge and leaned against the stone sidewall, staring out over the calm waters of the river Arno. The bridge was the oldest in the city, a Roman construction, wide and low with three arches supporting it. It was one of Rosalinda’s favorite places in Pisa—she liked to pause in this very spot whenever she went out for a stroll.
Rosalinda had never been an especially warm or maternal sort of person. She only visited the Trovatelli household to give fighting lessons, but despite her gruff manner, young Leo had always felt he was her favorite. He would call her Auntie, though there was no blood relation between them, and she would pretend to be vexed by the name. When his father and brothers were killed, it was Rosalinda who got him safely out of Venezia. And when the Order claimed guardianship of Leo, she followed him to Pisa, just to stay close.
Now, to have Rosalinda violate not only the Order’s agreement with the Carbonari but his bond of trust with her—it was unthinkable. But what other conclusion could he draw?
Leo pushed away from the wall and made his feet move again, disgusted with himself for wanting to delay the moment of truth.
South of the river, there were fewer grand plazas and more red-tiled houses packed snugly together along narrow streets. Leo found his way to Rosalinda’s door, the route so familiar he could have walked it in his sleep. He knocked, and the seconds before the door opened seemed to stretch to infinity, his stomach roiling with a mixture of anxiety and betrayal.
And then, suddenly, they were face-to-face. Rosalinda looked the same as always: dressed in men’s breeches, with her silver-shot brown hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. Leo pushed past her into the house, and though she could have stopped him if she wanted, she allowed it.
Rosalinda followed him down the short entry hall to the sitting room. “Leo, what’s happened?”
“You are very, very lucky,” he said, his voice cold with fury, “that no one died.”