Difficult as it was for her, she would have to trust in Porzia’s persuasive abilities, so Elsa simply nodded. “Of course.” She felt Leo’s gaze lingering on her for a moment, as if he were trying to extract some hidden meaning, but she had no idea what he was looking for.
After Porzia and Leo left to find Gia, Faraz said, “I’ll meet you in the library in a minute. I’ve got to pick up Skandar from the alchemy lab.”
“Skandar?” She gave him a confused look.
“Let’s just say the creature has its uses.” Faraz flashed her a grin and went.
Elsa just stood there on the inlaid tile floor for a moment, exhausted. She watched as a tiny brass bot rolled into the room and began scrubbing down the much larger gravedigger. Then she made herself move, heading for the library. Time to track down Montaigne, and with him find the leverage she needed to rescue her mother.
*
Leo tugged on Porzia’s elbow as they passed near his laboratory. She raised an eyebrow, but let him lead her down the half flight of steps and over to the workbench where the scrambler sat. He flipped the switch so they could talk in private.
“What are you doing?” she said, fists planted on hips.
He held up a hand. “Let’s just think about this for a moment. This worldbook we’re going after … if it really contains some sort of apocalyptic-level weapon, we can’t let my father get his hands on it.”
“Obviously,” she said, her voice clipped with impatience.
“But we also can’t tell the Order about it, which means we can’t risk telling Gia.”
Her eyebrows shot up and she took a moment to reply, taken aback. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course I have to tell Mamma. Especially after … how we left things.” Despite their Tuscan tempers, Porzia and Gia had always been close, and Leo knew it pained her to be at odds with her mother for any length of time.
He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “If the Order gets ahold of a dangerous worldbook, they’re going to lock it away, all other concerns be damned. They’ll write off Elsa’s mother as an acceptable loss without a second thought.”
“And what if your father is manipulating us? What if he has no intention of releasing Jumi, no matter what we do in exchange?”
“We won’t let that happen. We’ll have leverage!”
Porzia’s face twisted in a pained expression. “I can’t not tell my mother where we’re going, Leo. I’m sorry, but that’s asking too much.”
Her hand darted out and deftly turned off the scrambler, and then in a swirl of skirts she was up the steps and out the door.
“Hold on! Porzia!” Leo called, but she did not stop.
Leo exhaled in frustration and chased after her, following her through the halls and down the basement stairs.
“Wait a minute!” he said, an urgency bordering on panic growing in his gut. “The last time we so much as mentioned my father’s name to the Order, they sent a courier to divest us of everything we’d collected that even might have to do with Ricciotti Garibaldi.”
“I know that,” Porzia snapped. “I was the one who deceived the courier and sent him on his way with just a single journal from Montaigne’s library. But you can only stretch my loyalties so far.”
“What of your loyalty to Elsa?”
She stopped just inside the doorway of the generator room. Her eyelids squeezed shut and her hands curled into fists. “Can’t you see you’re tearing me in half?” she hissed.
“Please, Porzia. Think.”
The room was so warm the air felt too thick in Leo’s lungs, and pinpricks of sweat immediately began to tickle the back of his neck. The great hulking generators chuffed noisily, indicator needles vibrating just shy of the redline. Gia must have spooled them up to full power in order to test their functionality.
“There’s nothing wrong with my thinking,” Porzia squeezed out from between clenched teeth. “She’s my mother, and the Order will hold her responsible for all of us. For whatever we do.”
Burak’s skinny, grease-smeared form appeared from around the side of a generator. He ran over, oblivious to the tension between them. “Leo! Where have you been? We worked all day and it’s going to be a long night, too, and you’re missing all the fun.”
Leo managed a strained smile, feeling a little jealous that Burak was still young enough to think everything was fun. “Well, you’re getting so good at this stuff, I figured you didn’t need my help.”
Apparently his smile was not convincing enough, though, since Burak’s cheerful expression faded into uncertainty. “Signora Pisano went over to the charging room. Do you want me to fetch her?”
Leo turned to Porzia again, his tone imploring. “If she doesn’t know, she can’t be blamed. We’d actually be protecting her.”
Porzia made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, grappling with indecision. “Promise me,” she said, and though she couldn’t elaborate on the specifics with Burak listening, Leo knew her well enough to guess: Promise me we’ll rescue Jumi and stop Garibaldi; promise me this is the right choice.
Leo flashed her a conspiratorial grin. “We can do this; I know we can.”
She gave him a solemn nod—her official acquiescence.
Leo, still smiling, turned to Burak and said, “Never mind. No need to disturb Gia, after all.”
*
Inside the tracking world, Elsa sloshed barefoot across the miniature sea and picked her way over the miniature mountains to the brass podium. She slid open the side drawer and returned the tracking compass to its proper place so the machine could retarget. Then she placed one of Montaigne’s worldbooks atop the podium, pushed all the right buttons in the right order, and pulled the lever to start it up.
The gears whirred, warming up. The tracking machine went ka-chunk, ka-chunk—just twice—then the gears wound down to a slow idle, sounding to Elsa’s ears as if the machine were too depressed to perform its duties. Elsa shut it all the way off. Maybe she’d made a mistake. She lifted the book off the top of the podium, wiped the surface down with her sleeve, replaced the book, entered the start-up sequence again, and yanked the lever.
Again, the machine refused to take the target.
Scowling, Elsa opened the return portal. The floor of the library was cold against her still-damp feet, but that was the least of her problems.
Faraz and Skandar were already waiting in the library, but before he could ask her how it went, Porzia and Leo arrived. At least Elsa wouldn’t be required to relate the bad news twice.
“Well?” Porzia said, flushed with nervous energy. “Where’s the bastard hiding?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Elsa replied. “It didn’t work.”
That drew Leo and Porzia up short. Leo gave her a dumbstruck look. “What?”
Elsa pulled out a chair and flopped down, dismayed at the sight of Montaigne’s worldbooks stacked on the table. She said, “All the worldbooks went through the restoration machine—they’ve not only been handled by other people, they’ve been completely disassembled, repaired, and reassembled by someone else’s invention. The ownership must not have survived.”
“Damn,” said Porzia, hands on hips. “I hadn’t thought of that.”