THE LIFE SO SHORT, THE CRAFT SO LONG TO LEARN.
—Hippocrates
Porzia had resolved to assume Elsa would succeed. If—no, when—Elsa returned with the editbook, they would need an ironclad plan for what to do with it. After all, they’d had it in their hands once before, only to lose it when Leo turned against them. The editbook couldn’t be destroyed without risking damage to the real world, so they would need a way to contain it securely.
First Porzia needed to scribe a workshop, the way Elsa had scribed herself a laboratory world. This would allow her to create specialized scriptological materials that didn’t exist in the real world—the first line of defense would be to make a worldbook that was itself difficult to use. Charles Montaigne may have gone entirely unhinged, but he was right about one thing: the value of nested security measures.
As Porzia added the finishing touches to her workshop world, she realized the one problem with her scheme: so far, she’d been exceptionally careful to keep hidden the location of the ruins by not opening any portals near Corniglia. But to use her workshop, she would have to go through a portal. Which meant she would have to go elsewhere to do so.
Porzia left her room and, reluctantly, went in search of Faraz. Someone needed to watch the children while she was away, so he’d just have to man up and put aside their argument.
After a few minutes of searching, she hadn’t found Faraz, but she did find Olivia scrunched onto a narrow stone window seat with an enormous volume open in her lap.
“What are you reading?” Porzia asked, perching on the stone beside her sister.
Olivia tilted the cover up to let Porzia read the title. It was an anatomy textbook—the kind meant for university students studying to become doctors.
Porzia raised her eyebrows. “How dreadful. Where did you get such a thing?”
“I brought it with me from Pisa,” the girl answered quietly.
Porzia blinked, baffled. Tiny twelve-year-old Olivia smuggled that enormous tome out of Casa della Pazzia and lugged it all the way here? All she could think to ask was, “Whatever for?”
Olivia finally looked up from the pages and gave her sister one of those impassive, older-than-her-years stares. “Faraz doesn’t specialize in human anatomy. And we’re going to need a doctor in this family.”
Porzia sucked in a breath. It was a wonder her heart didn’t shatter like glass when her sister said things like that. She wanted to protect her siblings from the whole horrible world, but there was one thing she couldn’t protect them from: growing up.
“I thought you liked chemistry,” Porzia said, and then dug deep to recall some of the relevant terms. “You know, esters and aldehydes and … turpentines…?”
“Terpenes,” Olivia corrected, her gaze drawn back down to the page.
“Yes, terpenes. What about those? Your perfumes.”
She shrugged. “When Elsa was poisoned, she almost died because we don’t have an alchemist who knows human medicine.”
Porzia swallowed, her throat tight. She tucked a loose lock of Olivia’s dark hair behind her ear. “I’m proud of you.”
“You wanted something,” her sister reminded her.
Porzia had nearly forgotten. “Oh, just wondering if you’d seen Faraz anywhere.”
Olivia shook her head.
Porzia huffed. “What about Revan? Is he about?”
“He went outside with Sante.”
“Well they better not have gone far.” Porzia planted a quick kiss on the top of her sister’s head and left Olivia to her study.
Someday, her siblings would no longer need their older sister; her duties to them were finite. And Casa della Pazzia, once the unbreakable stone foundation of their family, had become quicksand beneath their feet. The defining aspects of Porzia’s life had turned suddenly ephemeral. Who was she, if not the responsible eldest sibling destined to marry a mechanist and raise another generation of pazzerellones within Casa’s walls?
Was there room for her to want a different life for herself?
Porzia took the servants’ stairs, which were frightfully narrow and steep yet still managed to improve upon the crumbled devastation that had once been the main stairs. She crossed through the dim-lit hollow of the entryway, grabbed a door handle, and leaned her weight back against the stiff hinges.
In the clearing outside the front doors, she discovered Revan and Sante standing together. Revan was holding a length of thin rope by both ends and saying something she couldn’t quite hear to Sante. He lifted the rope and whirled it around so fast it blurred into a disk, then jerked his wrist and released one end. Something small—a pebble?—shot from the sling and hit a tree trunk, and even from so far away Porzia could hear the hollow thud of its impact.
Sante let out a delighted whoop, and Porzia found herself reluctant to interrupt. But she did have work to do, so she walked up behind them.
“What are you two up to?” she said.
Sante glanced back at her with a look of hero worship in his eyes. “Revan’s showing me how to use a sling! It’s so awesome.”
Porzia smiled indulgently. If only he could muster that kind of enthusiasm for a scientific discipline—any scientific discipline. To Revan she said, “How kind of you.”
He gave an easy shrug. “It’s no trouble, we’re having fun.” And she could tell he meant it—that finding fun and sharing it with others came naturally to him, no matter the circumstances.
“Hah! You say no trouble now, but just you wait,” Porzia joked. She raised a hand to ruffle Sante’s hair, but he ducked deftly out of reach and gave her a perfect teenage glare. “I was hoping I could leave you in charge for a bit.”
“Are you going somewhere?” The sun painted highlights on Revan’s dark skin in a way Porzia found distracting.
She almost missed her cue to reply. “I, uh … I’ve got some work to do, and I’d rather not risk opening a portal near our secret stronghold.”
“Sure, of course,” he said, as if it were nothing. And Lord if she didn’t feel grateful to have someone she could rely on.
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “Stay safe.”
“I will. And you,” she said to Sante, “try not to set anything on fire.”
Her brother rolled his eyes. “Killjoy. You’re as bad as Mamma.”
“Well I do try.”
With that, Porzia went back inside to gather her scriptological supplies. Despite her tendency toward suspicion, she found it oddly easy to trust Revan. And after her blowup with Faraz, there was a profound sort of relief in finding a new ally.
Porzia had a tiny seed of resentment buried deep in her gut for Elsa, who had left her with all this responsibility, but she knew the feeling to be irrational. She refused to let it take root and grow. Instead, she chose to be grateful for Revan, and to do everything she could to prepare for Elsa’s return with the editbook.
Alek had been rattling around the empty halls of Casa della Pazzia for a whole day now. Last night Casa had offered him the use of Elsa’s bedroom—Massimo’s old bedroom—as if it were a boon. What a cold sadist of a machine. Alek could hardly breathe in there, where the memories rose unbidden and the old familiar pain of Massimo’s death became once again fresh and sharp. He declined curtly and insisted on taking up residence in one of the smaller guest chambers instead. He did not need the ghost of his dead lover scratching at his mind, on top of everything else.
In the morning he discovered the nursery was locked, with the young children still inside. Casa refused to allow him access. He discovered the dining hall doors were gone, nothing but empty hinges in the doorframe, and the scratched plaster on either side suggested the doors’ removal had been a messy event. Inside, the hall was scrupulously clean; a single bot twirled like a dancer, polishing the floor, the picture of innocence.
What had happened here? Where had everyone gone? Casa spent the day demurely avoiding his questions and deflecting his attempts to investigate. It was enough to test even Alek’s patience.
Then, much to Alek’s surprise, a narrow access panel slid open and a grease-stained Gioconda Pisano climbed out of the wall.
“Gia! What—” Alex exclaimed at the same time that the house said, “Signora! You’re here!”
“Of course I’m here, Casa, darling. I could never abandon you,” Gia said. “Hello, Alek. I’m afraid you’ve chosen rather a poor moment for a visit.”
“But signora,” the house moaned. “You were gone. Everyone left me!”
“I just popped out for a bit to check on the children for you. I knew you’d be worried about them. They’re quite all right, but they miss you terribly.”
There was a heavy silence as the house pondered this. “Are they coming home?”
“Not yet, Casa, but soon I hope.”
Alek frowned. He recognized that soothing tone of Gia’s—the tone that meant she was handling someone difficult by whatever means necessary. She met his gaze and shook her head ever so slightly, warning him off any indelicate questions.
Even Gioconda Pisano, master engineer, worried about what Casa might do. Good Lord, what had Alek blundered into?
“You’re back, then.”
Porzia looked up, startled. She hadn’t heard Revan enter the dining hall. “Yes, sorry—I should’ve found you to let you know you’re off duty.”
He waved a hand, dismissing this consideration as if it were nothing. “Good to know you made it back safely, that’s all.” He helped himself to a chair on the opposite side of the long table and surveyed the loose pages and reference books scattered across the surface. “What is all this?”
Porzia sighed. “Notes and such, for the next phase of the project I’m working on.”
He lifted a sheet of paper, glanced at it—upside down—and then put it back. With a little shock, Porzia realized that despite his inborn Veldanese talent for languages, Revan could not read.
His lips parted in a teasing smile. “Does this project of yours involve burying yourself in paper?”
“I just want to be ready,” she snapped, before reminding herself to lower her hackles. “When Elsa returns with the editbook, we’ll need a way to store it. Something well protected.”
Revan seemed unfazed by her momentary sharpness. “I meant it seems like maybe you’re focusing on this as a distraction.”
Porzia shrugged, fussed with rearranging the papers, avoided thinking about what he was implying.
“Also seems like Faraz is making himself scarce whenever you’re around,” Revan observed.
She froze, then set aside the papers. If she’d been asked a moment earlier, Porzia would have thought she didn’t want to talk about it. But beneath Revan’s steady, nonjudgmental gaze, she found the words. “It’s hard, you know? For so long it was me and Faraz and Leo against the world. Now, when I’m with Faraz, all I can feel is Leo’s absence. I think we’re both just tired of the constant reminder.”
Revan nodded. “Leo has become a wedge between you.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “He’s the wedge.”
“Elsa and I were close when we were young,” he offered. “We were the two oldest children in Veldana, so I suppose we naturally gravitated toward each other.”
Softly, Porzia said, “What happened?”
Revan splayed his hands open, holding palmfuls of empty air. A helpless gesture. “Elsa had this whole other world I couldn’t touch. She was always right there, but also unreachable, as if there were a wall of glass between us, and with time the glass just got thicker and thicker until we couldn’t even hear each other through it. I would only see her silhouette passing in front of the light, and wonder who it was. Does that make sense?”
Porzia watched him curiously. For someone who couldn’t read, there was an odd sort of poetry to his words. “Perfect sense,” she said.
A pained smile flashed across his face, then vanished just as quickly as it came. “And now she’s left me behind. Again.”
“At least she’s coming back.”
“Is she? I never know.” It would have been easy to say those words resentfully, but to Porzia’s ears he simply sounded sad.
In that moment she couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed in Elsa, who ought to have been a better friend to Revan. And quick on the heels of that thought, she felt foolish and childish and disappointed with herself, because they all had much greater concerns than these.
Porzia needed to close the rift between Faraz and herself—now, while they had time. Who knew what storm would follow on Elsa’s heels when she returned with the editbook? They had to be ready.
The next morning she rose early, hoping to get some work done in the predawn silence, when it was easy to concentrate. The children were still piled together in a sea of warm blankets, its surface softly undulating with their deep, even breaths.
In the middle of scribing a sentence, Porzia glanced up at the unexpected sound of footsteps shuffling down the hall. She rose and peered out of her room, but the guilty feet were already descending the stairs. With an annoyed glance back at her unfinished work, Porzia decided she ought to follow and discover who was sneaking out at such an hour.
Downstairs, she heard the creak of hinges echoing in the entry hall, and she pursued the sound through the castle and out the front doors. Dawn paled the eastern sky, though the sun had yet to crest the hills, so the world outside was lit with a soft, eerie, directionless glow.
She did not spot anyone at first. Porzia tilted her head, listening, and beneath the twilight trilling of birds she thought she heard footfalls moving up the path toward the ancient, half-wild lemon grove. Centuries past, one of Porzia’s ancestors must have planned and planted the grove, though none of those original trees remained. Over time the grove reseeded itself, new trees replacing the dying ones until all traces of the once-neat orchard rows were gone.
Porzia followed the path. There was someone up ahead, at the edge of the grove; after a moment she recognized the lanky figure as Faraz. He had a prayer rug unrolled over a flat slab of stone, and he was kneeling on it facing southeast. Porzia stood still, listening, and caught the drone of recited Arabic carried on the early morning breeze. Quietly, she turned and backtracked, giving him some privacy.
From her pocket she took out a small cloth bag—one of several items she liked to carry with her everywhere, along with a pen and a bit of paper—and she busied herself picking lemons. She waited a few minutes before proceeding deeper into the grove again. This time it was quiet; Faraz must have finished his morning prayer.
She rounded a bend in the path and got a closer look at Faraz. He was wearing a long gray tunic instead of his usual European-style button-up shirt; Porzia had no idea where or when he might have purchased the garment.
“Morning,” Porzia called out to announce her presence.
Faraz glanced over his shoulder, startled, but thankfully he didn’t seem displeased to see her. “Hello.”
“I didn’t know you had one of those,” she said, indicating the prayer rug.
“My old teacher in Tunis felt it was superstitious, unbecoming for a scientist’s apprentice.” As he spoke, he focused on the task of carefully rolling the rug.
“So … you’ve been doing this for a while, then? Getting up early to pray, I mean.”
He nodded. “Sometimes in the courtyard when the weather’s agreeable. It’s nice to get outside in the morning.”
Porzia swallowed hard. Why would he keep this a secret? How could she not have known? Faraz had always been the unassuming type, not inclined to draw attention to himself, but Porzia made it her business to know people. Apparently she was not so accomplished at this task as she’d thought.
Faraz looked up at her and quipped, “I see you’ve fully transformed into a schoolmarm.”
“What? Oh, yes, I suppose I have.” She had fallen asleep last night still wearing her plain gray dress, so now it was rumpled in addition to being terribly unstylish. Fashion fell low on her priority list these days.
Movement in a nearby tree caught Porzia’s eye, and the shape clinging to a low branch resolved into Faraz’s favorite pet. Apparently even the tentacle monster knew about his morning prayers.
Faraz followed her gaze and said, “Time to go, buddy.”
Ignoring him, Skandar plucked a small, underripe lemon from the tree branch and made it disappear. Porzia wasn’t exactly sure what the beast had by way of a mouth and had no desire whatsoever to find out. She also didn’t know, when the beast squeezed its one enormous eye shut, whether this was an expression of pleasure or of shock at the lemon’s tartness.
Faraz lifted his prayer rug and carried it under one arm. “Are you headed back to the ruins?” he said.
It was an olive branch, and she took it. “Yes, let’s go.”
Faraz fell into step beside her and whistled through his teeth at Skandar. The beast opened its membranous wings, flopped off the branch into the air, and glided down the path to latch onto Faraz’s shoulder.
The sight of those tentacles wrapping around him—even around his neck—was so grotesque as to be downright nauseating. But in the interest of making peace, Porzia held her tongue. If her silence on the matter of tentacle monsters was the cost of repairing their friendship, she was prepared to pay it.
They followed the path back to the ruins, and for the first time in a while, the silence between them felt light.