“In theory?” Leo said.
“See? Aren’t qualifications just infuriating?” Elsa smirked at him. “In any case, we have to take the chance. If we port somewhere on Earth, Aris will be able to trace our destination. But if we wait off-world for a while, we can slip back undetected.”
Leo frowned. “You think that’ll work?”
“His device may be able to detect the energy signatures of portals, but they all look the same. He can find us only if he knows the precise time a portal opens, or if he keeps an eye on a particular location, like Casa della Pazzia. But we won’t be going there. We’ll be lost in the background noise of all the other scriptologists porting back to Earth.”
Porzia pursed her lips thoughtfully. “We’ll have to hide the editbook somewhere before returning here.”
Elsa nodded. “I was thinking of the old castle near Corniglia. It’s well hidden.” She paused. “If that’s all right with you, of course.”
Porzia gave her a thin smile. “We don’t have the luxury of time. Let’s use the ruins for now, until we can come up with something more secure. I’ll grab the keys.”
When everything they would need was collected together, they took a minute to shuffle the objects. One portal device was set for Nizza and the other for Elsa’s laboratory, and Porzia took the doorbook. Leo drew his rapier and held it at the ready. Elsa opened the editbook to the early pages—the most critical part of the core text—and Porzia pressed the bottle of ink into Elsa’s other hand.
“Ready?” Porzia made eye contact with each of them in turn before flipping the switch on her portal device.
Faraz and Leo stepped through first, with Elsa and Porzia quickly following. The portal opened directly into the room where Jumi was being kept. Elsa had only a second to absorb the scene—Jumi lying prone inside the machine, one guard leaning in the corner—before it started.
“Skandar, quick—the guard,” Faraz urged.
The beast launched into the air on a collision trajectory with the guard’s face. At the last moment, Skandar released one of the vials and angled sharply upward, skimming over the guard’s head with mere inches to spare. The vial, however, met its mark, shattering on contact to coat the guard in bluish ooze. He made a surprised noise and then collapsed, unconscious.
The sound of a grown man hitting the floor was enough commotion to draw attention from the other room, but they were ready. Skandar hovered over the doorway and hit another two of Garibaldi’s highly trained ex-Carbonari guards with sleeping bombs dropped from above. The third person through the door—Aris—ducked to the side, narrowly missing his own dose of blue ooze. Aris, glowering up at Skandar, reached for his rapier, and at that point the beast had the good sense to retreat back to Faraz’s shoulder.
“Don’t!” Leo said to his brother. His own rapier was already free of its sheath and aimed in Aris’s direction. “Leave it.”
Aris released the hilt and held his hand open in a show of compliance, though he grinned as if the situation amused him.
At last Garibaldi stormed through the door, nearly tripping over the prone forms of his men. “What in hell is going on here?”
“Not a step closer,” Elsa said, holding up the clear glass bottle of scriptological ink. “Make one move, and I’ll ruin the editbook.”
Garibaldi’s eyes widened, and Elsa let herself feel a grain of pleasure at surprising him. Whatever he’d expected they might try to do, he hadn’t considered this. “You wouldn’t,” he said.
“Wouldn’t I?” Elsa shook the bottle menacingly. “Do you know me so well you can be sure?”
“That book is your mother’s magnum opus, her greatest achievement, and you’ll throw it away?”
“My mother,” Elsa said, “wouldn’t want her greatest achievement falling into the wrong hands.”
“Disposing of the editbook in the wrong manner could damage the real world,” Garibaldi said with growing confidence. He took one step toward them.
Elsa narrowed her eyes and added some steel to her voice. “What do I care for Earth? I am Veldanese. I’d burn your world to the ground if I had to.”
Those words seemed to give Garibaldi some pause. She could see the indecision in his face as he considered the veracity of her performance. On her left, there was a click as Porzia flipped the switch and opened a portal to Elsa’s laboratory world.
“I’ll have the code now, if you please,” Elsa said.
Garibaldi ground his teeth, but gave it to her. “Up down down, up down up.”
Elsa held his gaze with her own as she said, “Faraz, if you would…?”
In the periphery of her vision, she saw Faraz nod and move toward the stasis machine. He flipped the switches, and there was an audible click as the lid unlatched. “I think we’re good,” he said, checking Jumi’s vitals.
“Get her through the portal,” Elsa told Faraz.
The whole apparatus was on wheels, though it proved so heavy that Porzia had to throw her weight in, too. Together, the two of them wheeled her mother out of her field of view while Elsa and Leo stood facing Garibaldi.
There was a scrape of wheels against the wood floor and a soft whoosh, and then Porzia and Faraz were through the portal with Jumi.
Elsa allowed herself the luxury of a triumphant smile. “A pleasure doing business with you. Don’t expect to hear from us again.” Then she backstepped toward the portal, Leo following at her side.
On the brink of the portal, Leo sheathed his rapier and turned to her, whispering, “Hand me the book.”
“What?” she whispered back, holding on to the editbook.
His hands moving almost too fast to see, he reached forward and neatly wrenched the book from her grasp.
“What are you doing? We had a plan!” she hissed.
“I’m sorry, Elsa,” he said, “but this was always the plan.”
He grabbed her upper arm and shoved her, sending her flying backward. The cold of the portal hit her like water and swallowed her whole.
Elsa fell out the other side, losing her footing and sprawling across the wood floor of her lab. The ink bottle flew from her grasp and shattered against the leg of a table. She scrambled to her feet, ready to lunge back through the portal, but it was already closing. “Ugh!”
“Oh my God,” Porzia said, taking in the scene. “Where’s the editbook? Where’s Leo?”
“Open the portal, we have to go back!” When neither Porzia nor Faraz replied, Elsa yelled, “What are you waiting for?”
Recovering from her shock, Porzia fumbled with the device, rushing to enter the coordinates. A black portal irised open halfway, then snapped closed again.
“What’s wrong?” Elsa shot over her shoulder as she ran to her mother’s side.
“I don’t know!” Porzia tried again with the same result. “They must be blocking the connection somehow.”
“Keep trying!” Elsa checked the rise and fall of Jumi’s chest, the slow but even pulse in her wrist.