She gave him a curious look. “My dear boy, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re referring to. Why don’t you have a seat and start at the beginning.”
Leo did not sit. Instead, he paced an angry line across the floor. “Oh, spare me. Did you really think a Carbonari assassin could roam the halls in Casa della Pazzia without my knowing it?”
Rosalinda took her own advice and settled on the brocade sofa, but there was a stiffness to her posture that belied her calm demeanor. “You know as well as I that we don’t interfere with the affairs of the Order.”
“Well, the body I hid in the library closet says otherwise.” Leo stopped pacing and planted his feet in a wide, angry stance. He took the dagger from his belt, unwrapped it, and tossed it on the table before her. “As does this.”
She picked up the dagger delicately, pinched between two fingers, and gave it a thorough examination. She kept her expression impassive, and only someone who knew her as well as Leo did would have noticed the almost imperceptible rise of her eyebrows. Genuine surprise. His anger cooled a bit upon recognizing her emotion.
Leo cleared his throat. “He died easily. Not one of your best, I take it.”
“No. The truly excellent ones never betray me.” She gave him a steady look, as if daring him to be a counterexample. “It’s the mediocre ones you have to worry about. Always looking for a quick way to improve their standing in the world.”
Leo ran a hand through his hair, uncertain what to think. “So he didn’t get his orders from the Carbonari?”
“If someone within the Carbonari ordered this, they were wise enough to keep me in the dark,” Rosalinda hedged. “I would not have permitted violence to cross your threshold.”
Leo forced himself to think past his confused emotions—was Rosalinda deceiving him? Or had the Carbonari betrayed them both?—and dredged up the name Elsa had found in Montaigne’s journal. “Could this have been the work of someone named Garibaldi?”
The color drained from Rosalinda’s face, and she leaned back in her seat, as if afraid his words might burn her like heat from an engine furnace. “Garibaldi? Where did you hear that name?”
Leo frowned, wondering at her reaction. “It’s … a bit complicated. Abductions and thefts and murders, a sabotaged train and now this Carbonari assassin, and the only substantive clue we’ve found is ‘Garibaldi.’”
She touched her face with her hand, an uncharacteristically vulnerable gesture, and when she spoke the words seemed more for herself than for him. “So he’s come back, after all. Perhaps I should have hidden you.”
“Who?” he demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“Leo…” She took a deep breath and let it out, as if steeling herself. “The Venetian rebellion … not everything happened the way you think. Your father and Aris are still alive.”
“Why would you say something like that?” Leo’s hand went to the chain of his father’s pocket watch and clutched it like a lifeline. “I saw the bodies with my own eyes.”
“What you saw were homunculi—alchemical copies that looked like your family.”
“That’s not possible!”
“The fire was supposed to destroy the evidence,” she explained, “but the Carbonari recovered enough pieces to determine they weren’t genuine human remains. Whatever else I might say about him, your father was always a talented alchemist.”
Leo felt like his legs might fail him. It couldn’t be true—it was simply too much to believe. This whole time he’d been alone in the world, they were out there somewhere, alive and still together. Still a family. “Why didn’t you tell me? I grieved for them.”
Rosalinda gave him a pitying look. “You think it would have been easier, knowing they were alive but—” She cut herself off then.
“Had abandoned me?” he asked. This time his words barely came out in a whisper.
“I made a decision to spare you that knowledge. Try to understand, I did it to protect you.”
“I’m not a child anymore! I don’t need you or anyone else to shield me.”
“But you were—you were a child,” she insisted. “When should I have told you about their plan to leave you behind, so carefully thought through, days or perhaps weeks before the riots began? Explain to me how it would have been a kindness to tell a child this.”
His jaw worked, tense with fury. “It may not have been kind, but it would have been the truth.”
“I only did what I thought was best for you.”
Leo tried his best to swallow his anger. There was a question he must ask. “And what of my younger brother? You said Father and Aris, but not…”
“I don’t know if Pasca lives. We searched what remained of the house, but found no evidence either way.” She paused for a moment. “Leo, your father wasn’t born Rico Trovatelli—he was living under an alias to protect you and your brothers, and to continue his work in secret. His real name is Ricciotti. Ricciotti Garibaldi.”
Leo stared at her, eyes wide. “I think I need to sit down.”
“You already sat down.”
“Oh. How nice for me.” He glanced down at the wooden arms of his chair. When had that happened?
“Your grandfather was the late general Giuseppe Garibaldi, famed champion of the people. I know this must come as a shock.”
Leo snorted at the vastness of her understatement. “But what does Father want? Why all this subterfuge?”
“His goal is the same as ours, the same as your grandfather’s: to unify Italy into a single state. He used to be an ally of the Carbonari, but there were some … philosophical differences about how to achieve unification.” She covered her lips with her fingers for a moment, thinking. “We lost a number of Carbonari during the riots, and they were all assumed dead. But now I think perhaps some of them stayed loyal to your father and left with him.”
Leo dropped his head into his hands. Through the web of his fingers, he mumbled the most important question. “Why did they leave me behind?”
“I can’t tell you, my dear boy. I don’t know why.”
In his heart he knew the answer, though. They’d left him behind because he wasn’t good enough, had never been good enough—he was no polymath.
*
Gradually, Elsa managed to once again master the fine arts of sitting and standing. She even successfully downed a cup of chamomile tea brought to her not by a house-bot, but by a girl named Olivia. The girl looked like a younger version of Porzia, pretty with her dark hair and round cheeks, but unlike her sister, Olivia was painfully shy and disappeared as soon as she delivered the tea.
Porzia, on the other hand, strode in like she owned the place. “Where’s Faraz?”
Elsa, seated on the couch, replied, “He went to help sweep for bugs, now that I’m stable enough to be left alone.”
“Mm-hmm.” She leaned in close, squinting at Elsa. “You don’t look nearly as almost-dead as I was led to believe.”