Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(8)
“Right this second? Why?” Elsa said obstinately. She didn’t understand his sudden change in mood, and that set her on edge.
De Vries made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, but when he spoke, he chose his words carefully. “Did Jumi ever talk to you about … the madness?”
“Yes. When someone is brilliant at something, like scriptology, you Earth people say they have the madness.”
“It’s not quite so simple. The madness is brilliance, yes, but it’s also a sort of single-minded drive. An obsession. No one could succeed at scriptology without being at least a little obsessive. Jumi has it, and you do, too.”
Elsa shrugged, still not sure how this was relevant. “If you say so.”
“We can’t stay in France. Your mother was infamous. If the nationals get ahold of you, you’ll spend the rest of your life in a very comfortable prison scribing worldbooks for the Third Republic. Amsterdam is hardly better than Paris. Lord, what a fool I’ve been.”
“Is,” Elsa corrected him. “My mother is infamous.”
De Vries shot her a look of pity. “Of course. My apologies.”
Elsa didn’t particularly like the idea of being rushed off somewhere with little explanation, but if her mother trusted anyone on Earth, it was de Vries, and he seemed genuinely afraid for her. For now, that knowledge would have to be enough. “So, where do we go, then?”
He pursed his lips for a moment, thinking. “Do you speak Italian?”
“Not yet,” said Elsa. “But I will.”
“Abbiamo bisogno di pratica.”
“It doesn’t happen that fast,” Elsa replied, still in Dutch. “I have to listen for a while before a new language clicks.”
De Vries smiled, as if her response was funny. “I said, ‘We have need of practice.’” He cleared his throat, and his tone turned serious. “I have friends in the Kingdom of Sardinia—we’ll go there, to the city of Pisa. Of the four Italian states, Sardinia is the safest, and Pisa in particular has a long history as a refuge for persecuted scientists.”
She nodded. “Very well.”
Before they left, Elsa gently lifted the wounded Pascaline into her arms, intent on taking it with her. She’d lost so much—she wasn’t going to give up on this, too, without at least trying to repair it.
They took the doorbook back to Amsterdam, surprising a pair of old ladies with parasols half to death when they appeared out of nowhere on the sidewalk. They cast furtive glances at de Vries and Elsa before nervously scurrying away down the sidewalk.
Up in the flat, Elsa washed up and changed again into her mother’s laborious European clothing—chemise, stiff-boned corset, long skirts, high-necked white blouse, fitted jacket. The clothes were uncomfortable and impractical, and it struck her that she’d never asked Jumi how she’d felt when she traveled in Europe. Elsa had thought she’d known everything about her mother, and this small detail suddenly seemed of desperate importance. Panic roiled in her stomach. What else didn’t she know?
Elsa pulled herself together, finished with the jacket buttons, and gathered whatever else of Jumi’s possessions she could find that might be of use. De Vries gave her a pair of carpetbags: a larger one for the stack of rescued books and a smaller one for the Pascaline and her mother’s personal items. She looked at him curiously when he came out of his room with his own set of packed luggage—she’d assumed he would return immediately to Amsterdam after making the introductions—but he offered no explanation.
“Well, I think that’s everything,” said Elsa. “Have you been to Pisa before?”
“It has been some time,” de Vries said, stretching out the words with a reluctance that made Elsa wonder if there was more to the story. He didn’t seem to be in a forthcoming mood, though, so Elsa decided not to press him.
“Any time is good enough, so long as you’ve been there. Just describe a particular place to me. Something unique.” She opened the doorbook to a fresh page. “Do they have any distinctive buildings in Pisa?”
He smiled. “Yes, you could say that.”
De Vries gave her details and Elsa scribed them onto the page in the proper order, but her mind kept straying elsewhere, back to the events of the past day. Had the intruders taken Jumi because of her madness? It would’ve been easier to abduct someone here on Earth if they just needed a scriptologist. So they probably wanted Jumi specifically, but to what end? How could Elsa get Jumi back if she didn’t even know who had taken her or why?
So many questions, and no answers in sight.
3
YOU MAY HAVE THE UNIVERSE IF I MAY HAVE ITALY.
—Giuseppe Verdi
They stepped out of the portal’s darkness into a bright, pale world. Elsa looked around: they were standing on a flat, featureless plain, everything around them obscured by white haze.
De Vries squinted, wiped the condensation off his glasses with a handkerchief, and looked around again. “This … I don’t believe this is right.”
“No,” Elsa agreed primly. “We quite failed to get there.”
He paled. “You mean to say failure was an option?”
“Oh, no need to worry. I scribed the doorbook to shunt you to a fabricated world if the description isn’t accurate enough to connect to the destination. Minimal possibility of accidents with bad portals. It’s proved thoroughly reliable so far.”