Dorrie watched Saul peer out the window. “Not while Roger’s eating one of them.”
“He won’t hurt you,” said Ebba. “Marcus isn’t worried.”
“Not in the least,” said Marcus as he calmly swept a patch of floor.
“See!” said Ebba triumphantly.
Marcus poked the broom under a chair. “Because I’m not going down there either.”
The vein crossing Mathilde’s forehead began to throb noticeably.
Ebba grabbed Dorrie’s hand and towed her toward the den door. “We’ll do it.”
Dorrie forced herself not to drag her feet.
Down in the yard, Dorrie and Ebba emptied and restuffed the mattresses with furious energy. Roger helped by sending fresh jolts of energy into Dorrie’s weary arms every time he snorted or breathed down her neck when she least expected it. Mathilde helped by sticking her head out of the window every five minutes, asking if they could go faster and describing in great detail her plan to have them walk a very short plank into a crocodile-infested bucket of dirty mop water if they didn’t.
At one point, through a haze of straw dust, Dorrie saw Sven clamber out on the windowsill high above. With no hesitation or fear, he reached up to release a great coil of rope that was hanging from a pulley set above the window.
Ebba jammed in another handful of clean straw and snorted. “He’s willing to do that, and yet he won’t spend a little time with Roger.”
Dorrie watched Sven send one end of the rope snaking down to the ground. He looped the other end over the pulley and disappeared back into the attics with it. “So that’s how we’re getting the mattresses back up.”
“Two at a time,” said Ebba.
“Hurry!” Mathilde shouted down.
“She is way worse than Amo,” muttered Ebba as she and Dorrie buttoned up the last mattress.
In a few minutes, they had the first pair of mattresses trussed up.
“Ready?” cried Mathilde from the window, her eager hands on the rope.
Kenzo suddenly appeared beside her, panting. “Mistress Lovelace is on her way!”
“Nooooooo,” cried Mathilde, beginning to haul furiously on the rope.
Ebba turned to Dorrie, looking dismal. “No way can we get all these up there before Lovelace gets here.”
“People!” cried Marcus, pushing Kenzo aside and pointing at Roger now busy eating the wooden frame off a window. “We’ve got to work smarter, not harder.”
A grin split Ebba’s face. “Roger could pull half the mattresses up at once.”
Or a third of them anyway. Fifteen minutes later, Dorrie sat atop the last stack of eight trussed-together mattresses. She snaked the end of the rope into one last granny knot. The other end had been thrown down for the third time to Ebba, who had tied it again to Roger’s great leather collar. Led by Ebba across the yard away from the windows, he had lifted the first two stacks up as though they were made of cobwebs.
Finished with the knot, Dorrie was about to climb down when Roger snorted loudly and bolted forward at a gallop, sending her rocketing upward, holding on to the rope for dear life. She screamed.
“No, Roger!” Dorrie heard Ebba call. “Come back!”
Dorrie forced herself to look up. Seated upon the mattresses, her arms and legs wrapped around the rope, she was hurtling toward the enormous whirring pulley. She was going to smash into it. Instead, the mattresses jerked to a sudden dead halt. Dorrie gulped for air, listening to the rope supporting her gently creaking. She was dangling three-quarters of the way up to the attic windows.
Marcus was leaning out of one of them, his hand on his heart. “Gah! Don’t scare me like that!”
Dorrie was about to bellow back indignantly, but a glance down at the ground made all the important working bits of her throat seize up.
“I think something stung him!” called Ebba. There was a sound of great effort in her voice. Dorrie guessed she was using all her strength to hold Roger still.
Mathilde pushed back her admiral’s hat. “Dorrie, this is no time to be fooling around.”
“I’m not fooling around!” Dorrie shrieked as the mattresses dropped several feet.
“Please stop making loud noises,” pleaded Ebba. “I can’t hold him still.”
Dorrie, now at the level of a lower window, peered through it into an unfamiliar room. She had the mad idea to kick the glass in and try to scramble to safety that way. She was about to swing her foot when a movement caught her eye. On the other side of the window, Egeria stood with her arms around a young, dark-haired man. His clothes were dusty, and his boots coated in mud as though he’d traveled a long way. As Dorrie watched, he and Egeria kissed.
The mattresses dropped another few feet. Dorrie couldn’t help but shriek again. Egeria broke off the kiss and looked at Dorrie wide-eyed. Another drop put Egeria out of sight. The mattresses spun madly.
“I’ll have you down in a minute, Dorrie,” called Ebba.
Above her, Dorrie heard Kenzo’s panting voice again. “Lovelace is five rooms away!”
Dorrie licked her lips and stared down at the ground for a moment and then back up to the attics’ window, sweat pouring off her palms. “Make me go higher!” she forced herself to shout.
“Are you sure, Dorrie?” Ebba asked.
Dorrie nodded vigorously. She wanted this wild ride to be over, but more than that, she wanted to save the apprentices’ practicums. She heard Ebba encouraging Roger forward. The rope creaked ominously, and then Dorrie felt herself rising.
Above her, Egeria and the young man Dorrie had seen her kiss appeared in the attics’ window, shouldering Mathilde and Marcus aside.
“It’s the Bang!” Dorrie heard Izel say breathlessly.
Though he was only a little older than Marcus, the young man’s arms were thick with muscles. His teeth were refrigerator white.
“I’ve got you,” he said, grabbing Dorrie around the waist as she came level with the attics’ window.
Dorrie felt mammoth gratitude, mixed with resentment for Marcus’s sake.
With great difficulty, she persuaded her fingers to release their hold on the rope. Bang dragged her over the windowsill and lowered her onto the floor.
To anxious questions of “Are you okay?” Dorrie nodded, getting awkwardly to her feet. “Get the mattresses in! Keep going!”
As Sven struggled with the knot that bound the mattresses together, Marcus offered Bang a high five. “Thanks a lot. She’s the only sister named Dorrie I’ve got.”
Bang looked curiously at Marcus’s hand and then put an arm around Egeria. He chuckled, his white teeth showing. “Anyone the love of my life cares about, I care about.”
Marcus stared at Bang, his high five still hanging.
“We’d better go before Mistress Lovelace gets here,” said Bang, grabbing Egeria’s hand. “Wouldn’t want her to think you apprentices had hired in help.”
Giggling a little, Bang and Egeria made for the attics’ door, which suddenly burst open.
Kenzo skidded in. “She’s coming up the stairs.”
Dorrie flew with the other apprentices to return the mattresses to the beds.
There was no time to think about Marcus’s feelings.
Chapter 8
Don’t Eat the Baklava!
It wasn’t until Mistress Lovelace had finished running her white-gloved finger over the last bit of baseboard and declared the attics “clean enough” that Dorrie remembered with a start the kiss she’d seen through the window. The apprentices had collapsed in celebratory exhaustion upon the barren furniture. Dorrie glanced around for Marcus, but he wasn’t in the den.
He wasn’t in his bedroom either.
“Where’s Bang been anyway?” Dorrie asked Ebba a few hours later, trying not to sound bitter. A rainstorm had moved in over the whole of Petrarch’s Lib
rary, and they had settled themselves on the floor in front of the den fire with the intention of finalizing their practicum choices.
“Manchuria,” gushed Izel from where she sat working on her embroidery again. “Finishing up his first assignment staffing at one of the Lybrariad’s branch libraries. He’s going to be made a lybrarian any second now.”
She then treated them to a detailed enumeration of Bang’s accomplishments and stellar qualities and the many ways in which he and Egeria were perfect for each other, stopping only when Mathilde threatened to use the pulley to send her down for a visit with Roger.
Thinking she’d better have the basics covered and wanting to spend time with Hypatia, Dorrie finally settled on Principles of Lybrarianship. Ebba decided to take that as well. For her second practicum, Ebba chose:
Burros, Horses, Camels, and Yaks: How to Ride Anything with Four Legs. Taught by Yeshi Khan, riding master. Meets Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Ebba said, her eyes shining. “My parents are taking me out to fourteenth-century Mali to visit their old city next interim.”
“So it’s safe out there for your family now?” asked Dorrie, knowing that Ebba’s parents had come into the library as refugees many years before.
“The Lybrariad thinks so,” said Ebba. “We’ll get to travel from the Timbuktu Spoke Library across the Sahel on camels.”
Dorrie grinned at Ebba. Before last quarter, Ebba had been too afraid to go out into any of the wherens.
For her second practicum, Dorrie felt pulled in fifty directions.
“I’m thinking about taking Staying Afloat on Rafts, Sailboats, and Logs.”
“Not Swords, Daggers, and Coffee Can Tops: A General Survey of Sharp Edges and Their Uses?” said Ebba. “I’ve heard Lybrarian Khan is a wonderful teacher. Scary but wonderful.”
“I’ve got Savi to teach me sword,” said Dorrie, her hand itching to hold a rapier again. She looked at the Staying Afloat teacher’s name. “What’s Mistress Daraney like?”
“Well,” Ebba said, considering. “She lives in the cove on a boat. She hates coming inside Petrarch’s Library. Gets lost every time, which is funny because she can navigate beautifully on the sea. I think she once worked as some king’s librarian in Siam.”
“Had to pretend she was a man, of course,” added Mathilde from where she sat curled in one of the fatter armchairs. She had already chosen her practicums and was flipping eagerly through one of the books Lybrarian Davis had assigned. “The king sent her on a voyage to pick up some new manuscripts, and on the way back, pirates attacked and kidnapped her. They didn’t care that she was a woman, and she liked the freedom. She’s even missing part of a leg.”
“But that happened before the pirates,” said Ebba. “A bookcase fell over on her during an earthquake.”
Dorrie considered the irony of that for a pleasurable moment and then circled the Staying Afloat practicum.
Giving up on Marcus returning to the Apprentice Attics before dinner, Dorrie and Ebba hurried down to the circulation department to get their practicum supplies and new clothes for Dorrie.
“And don’t forget, you can check out a practice rapier too,” said Ebba, which made Dorrie break into a run.
When Dorrie and Ebba arrived, Mistress Lovelace was standing behind the long counter, her face impassive, listening to a sun-burned lybrarian apologize repeatedly as she handed over a pair of pantaloons with a spectacular tear in the seat.
“I wonder what that mission was all about?” whispered Ebba.
Besides the counter and a lot of flowered wallpaper, the only things in view were a few poufy armchairs with lacy bits on the arms, a curtained doorway behind the counter, and a row of wooden booths for trying on clothing. However, Dorrie knew that through the curtained doorway lay a maze of cavernous rooms that held all the supplies and disguises necessary for the Lybrariad’s missions. Shelves held zealously organized bins of mustaches made from real hair in every style ever conceived, boxes of belt buckles, barrels of boots, and great buckets of coins from every time and place. Capes and caftans and coats and chitons hung from long racks that reached to the ceiling. Dorrie knew about the rooms because she’d once had to spend a good many hours among the barrels and boxes, ironing undergarments to work off a fine for an overdue item.
Ebba led Dorrie to one end of the counter, where a fat folder lay. “The practicum supply lists are in here.”
After a bit of shuffling, they found the right ones. Hypatia’s list was written in a neatly flowing hand on a piece of papyrus.
Principles of Lybrarianship
One copy of The Twelve Principles of the Lybrarian
One copy of The Foundation: Essential Dictums
One writing implement (please, no chalk)
Material on which to take notes (please, no pottery shards)
Dorrie and Ebba’s eyes met briefly, shining with excitement. Dorrie picked up Mistress Daraney’s list next. It was written in thick, blotchy ink on what looked like a weathered wooden shingle, which smelled faintly of dead fish.
•Compass
•Rigging knife with marlin spike
•Telescope
•Six feet of manila rope
•Thirty-seven feet of bandage
•None of those newfangled bathing suits. You swim in what you sail in or nothing at all.
When they staggered out of the circulation department a half hour later, Dorrie was pleased. Along with her practicum supplies, she had acquired a pair of leather boots that made her feel instantly invincible, a soft, striped sailor’s shirt, a many-layered skirt in a shocking shade of orange that hung to just below her knees, and a frock coat worthy of the most foppish pirate. Best of all, she now wore at her side a practice rapier with an ornate hilt that she felt compared favorably to King Arthur’s own Excalibur. One pocket jingled with her apprentice’s allowance of Filthy Lucre, the currency used in Petrarch’s Library for small purchases between its residents, and in her satchel was a battered pocket watch.
Later at dinner, distracted by the fact that Marcus hadn’t shown, Dorrie nearly missed Mistress Wu’s announcement that she’d be visiting the attics the following evening to take nominations for the first field trip destination. “And please,” she begged, “don’t propose any wherens in which the Black Plague is active. I’ll only have to say no.”
Immediately, the apprentices began to argue about where they should go.
“How are we ever going to all agree?” asked Dorrie as, under Ebba’s supervision, she filled out her apprenticeship request form, carefully writing her name on the line beside the word “Apprentice” and then “Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, Keyhand” beside “Requested Lybrarian.”
“Oh, it’s impossible,” Ebba said. “We always just end up picking out of a hat.”
Since Saul and Amo seemed about to come to blows on the question of whether they’d have more luck spotting a vampire in sixteenth-century or thirteenth-century Transylvania, Dorrie thought that was probably for the best.
Dorrie blew carefully on the drying ink. “So Petrarch’s Library has two archways that lead into Transylvania?”
“No, just one,” said Ebba, picking apple cores off the other apprentices’ plates and wrapping them in a handkerchief. “It leads out to thirteenth-century Transylvania. If you want to get to seventeenth-century Transylvania, you have to exit Petrarch’s Library through the Paris, 1643 CE archway and then do some traveling.”
Hearing the archway that led to Savi’s home wheren mentioned, Dorrie felt another surge of impatience for his return. She watched Ebba shove the apple cores in her satchel. “What do you want with those?”
“For Roger. I’ve got to go fill his water trough.” She clambered off the bench.
“What about dropping off our registrations?” Dorrie asked. “Don’t they have
to be in Mistress Wu’s mailbox by eight o’clock?”
Ebba slung her satchel across her shoulder. “We’ve got plenty of time. I’ll meet you at the Celsus in a half hour.” She hurried off, leaving Dorrie to wonder why she hadn’t asked her to come along.
“Well, I guess we won’t be allowed to go out to twenty-first-century Passaic,” said Izel.
Dorrie snapped her head around. “Why not?”
“After you brought so much attention to the Passaic Public Library getting caught in that newspaper photograph?” She leaned toward Dorrie. “I shouldn’t even say anything, but—”
“Oh, since when has that ever stopped you,” said Mathilde without looking up from her food.
Izel glared at her. “I just wanted to warn Dorrie that Millie told me that Francesco is furious about it.”
Dorrie’s stomach dropped. She tried not to show her dread. “Well, thanks. Good to know.” She turned to Fatima, eager to change the subject. “You haven’t seen Marcus today, have you?”
“Not since the cleanup,” said Fatima. “We were supposed to play a little music together before dinner.”
Dorrie surveyed the Sharpened Quill once again, uneasy. “It’s not like him to even miss a snack.”
“Hope he didn’t decide to eat at the Inky Pot instead,” said Amo in the cheerful way he seemed to say everything now that the inspection was over.
The argument about Transylvania abruptly ended.
“What’s the Inky Pot?” asked Dorrie.
“A terrible place!” whispered Fatima.
“A coffeehouse,” said Mathilde in a sepulchral tone.
Dorrie let out a breath, relieved. “Petrarch’s Library has a coffeehouse?”
“You don’t want to go there,” said Fatima. “It’s run by this guy named Fedya, and he hates apprentices. A couple years ago, he poisoned some kid.”
Dorrie’s eyes widened.
“And the worst part?” said Mathilde. “He pretends to be friendly.”
The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks Page 7