He drew Aris farther into the corridor, away from the labyrinth’s exit, always careful to keep himself positioned between his brother and his friends. He played just well enough to keep Aris’s rapier away from any vital organs, but let him believe he had the upper hand. He even allowed the sharp tip to graze him once, and tear his sleeve another time, all the while making room for the others to inch their way closer to the Edgemist.
“You’re out of practice, brother,” Aris crowed, slicing dangerously close to Leo’s cheek. “Pisa has turned you soft.”
“Or maybe I don’t believe you’re willing to skewer me just to get the book,” Leo countered.
“I’m confident I could patch you up afterward.” He flicked his wrist, the rapiers knocking together with a clack.
Leo deflected. “Emphasis on ‘confident.’”
Finally, he heard the sound he’d been stalling in anticipation of: the whoosh of a portal opening behind him. Leo glanced over his shoulder to see Elsa hesitating at the mouth of the portal. “Go!” he cried.
For once, she went without argument. Thank God for small mercies. Leo pushed in with a quick combination—riposte, counter-parry, counter-riposte—unbalancing Aris and buying enough time to disengage. Then he turned and dove for the portal just as it began to close.
*
Elsa skidded to a stop along the inlaid tile floor of Casa della Pazzia’s grand foyer. She glanced around. They’d all made it without any pursuers following them through, and the portal was already winking closed.
Faraz held a protective hand up to Skandar. “Is Aris coming after us?”
Porzia said, “If he could track our portals to Amsterdam, he can track us here.”
Faraz said, “But how is that even possible?”
“A recently opened portal leaves a residual weakness in the fabric of reality, even here on Earth, it seems.” Porzia spared a second to throw a rueful look Elsa’s way. “Aris must have invented some sort of device—like our tracking worldbook—that detects and locates these weak spots. He’d also need some way to exploit the weak spots, to link up his departure point with our destination portal.”
“You mean … like Elsa’s doorbook, except it reopens old portals instead of creating new ones. Did he find out about the doorbook somehow?” Faraz turned his confused frown upon Elsa.
“No, he never saw it.” Elsa reluctantly added, “Though he may have inferred its existence from how freely we’ve been hopping around the continent.”
Porzia’s hands found their usual position on her hips. “One way or another, he’s invented a way to follow us. The question is, will he follow us here?”
Everyone looked at Leo. He’d been disturbingly quiet since they’d arrived back at Casa della Pazzia.
“I … I don’t know,” Leo said, sounding shaken. “We have to go back to Nizza for Jumi, and he knows it. He may wait for us to come to him.”
Anxiety roiled in Elsa’s gut, and she could not honestly say how much of it was for Leo and how much for herself. “I have some work to do, and fast. I’ll be in my study.” The editbook clutched in her arms, she took the stairs at a run.
Behind her, Porzia was already planning for the worst. “Casa, set all monitoring systems to high alert. What’s the status of your defenses?”
Elsa didn’t linger long enough to hear the house’s reply. Up in her rooms, she took a portal to her scribed laboratory. It was at best impossible and at worst extremely dangerous to make alterations to a worldbook while inside that same world, and she guessed the editbook worked the same way with Earth. She cleared a space on her workbench and threw herself into her chair. Sucking in a deep breath, she opened the cover with a combined feeling of reverence and dread.
Inside, the paper tingled with anticipation beneath her touch, as if the editbook yearned to be used. The more she looked over the text, the more beautiful it seemed, and she marveled at Jumi’s ingenuity. Elsa could not help but admire her mother’s grand accomplishment. At the same time, she was terrified of how drawn she felt to the editbook, of her own insidious desire. Terrified that her mother had been capable of creating such an instrument of potential destruction—what need or hatred or desperation had led Jumi down this path?—and equally terrified that she herself might contain those same cold capabilities.
Elsa hesitated, pulling her hands away from the pages like a guilty thief. But her beloved Veldana was in peril, cut off from Earth if not entirely destroyed. She needed to muster her courage. She needed to trust in herself.
She flipped past the core text, which defined the nature of the book, giving it power to alter the real world. Toward the back she found a section describing the one small change Jumi had made; Elsa focused all her attention on that text, trying her best to ignore the flash flood of relief that threatened to carry her away as her suspicions were confirmed.
The chamber inside the wall of Montaigne’s library, where the Veldana worldbook resided, was a scriptological addition to Earth. A tiny pocket universe, latched onto the real world like a barnacle to a whale’s hide. Which meant there was a chance—even a reasonable probability, Elsa dared to hope—that Veldana had survived, attached to Earth but unaffected by the fire, still there-but-not-there even now. Her heart fluttered against her ribs at the thought.
Toward the end was an unfinished line of text. At the time of her abduction, Jumi had had the editbook open on her writing table … apparently with the intention of scribing access privileges for Elsa, so her daughter could also open the Veldana worldbook’s hiding place.
Elsa’s throat stung with the pressure of unshed tears. Jumi might have hidden the editbook, but she entrusted Elsa with something even more precious to the both of them: the text of their own world. Jumi had meant to give Veldana to her daughter that very day in their cottage.
Her hands unaccountably steady, Elsa took out a bottle of scriptological ink along with a pen. Her pulse quickened as she dipped the nib. The words must be chosen with the utmost care—specific enough that, in effect, only she would gain access privileges, yet vague enough that it could theoretically refer to someone other than Elsunani di Jumi da Veldana. It would be all too easy to accidentally render herself textual.
Looking over Jumi’s half-finished work, she discerned her mother’s intent: change the permissions from the protector of Veldana to the protector of Veldana and his or her descendants. Elsa dipped her pen and cautiously completed her mother’s changes.
She held her breath as the ink dried, irrationally afraid despite the confidence she had in her own work. But as the text settled in and the real world subtly altered, Elsa remained self-aware and free. She had not turned herself into another Simo. Letting out a sigh of relief, she set the pen aside.