Mistress Wu looked pityingly at the apprentices who had been switched. “It must be horrible to have your hopes for the quarter dashed like that. Simply horrible!” She pulled out more handkerchiefs. “If anyone needs to cry, I won’t think any the less of you.”
Dorrie had been furiously building a wall against just that urge, but Mistress Wu could talk her into any emotion, and horribly, tears began to form. She fought them back by glaring at one of Athena’s knees. No way was she going to give Millie the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
“Oh, I’m feeling dashed to bits all right,” said Mathilde, “but I don’t want to cry about it. I want to throw something very heavy through a window.”
“I quite understand,” said Mistress Wu.
Mathilde glowered. “Hopefully, the feeling will go away before I find an anvil sitting around.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Mistress Wu, beaming brightly and giving Mathilde a bracing squeeze on the shoulder before bustling off.
“Who’s Master Ishaq?” Dorrie forced herself to ask.
“Oh, Dorrie,” Ebba said, her hands over her mouth.
“What?” demanded Dorrie.
Slowly, Ebba turned and pointed across the room to a table where the shaken-looking Archivist stood gathering up his papers.
Chapter 10
The Archivist’s Apprentice
At breakfast the next morning, Dorrie battled the lowest of spirits. The tables and corridors were alive with talk about Mr. Biggs’s threats and theories about how the Foundation could have gained knowledge of the Lybrariad’s missions. Dorrie felt ashamed that even with things gone so wrong for the Lybrariad, she couldn’t shake her deep disappointment about her reassignment to the Archivist. Eating her eggs and sausage, she tried not to feel left out of the excited chatter of those heading off to the apprenticeships they wanted.
At last, following Mathilde’s instructions, Dorrie made her way to the Archivist’s office with dragging feet, sure it would be a horrible dank place filled with molding orange peels and spiders and dripping pipes. Her practice sword, which she hadn’t at all got used to wearing, caught on innumerable table legs and tapestries along the way. She felt an angry resentment toward Savi growing beneath her disappointment. Dorrie scowled. Why hadn’t he told her about the change in plans himself?
Arriving at the Archivist’s office, Dorrie sighed deeply and knocked.
The door was opened promptly.
“Come in, come in,” said the Archivist, who looked as though he’d made some attempt to tame his hair. He ushered Dorrie in awkwardly. She avoided his eyes. The room was bright with white plaster walls and one unadorned window. A long bench draped in carpets ran along one wall. A low, extravagantly carved table stood in front of it. A long plain table with a few neat piles of books and papers upon it was pushed up against another wall. The only other furniture was a great bank of floor-to-ceiling wooden cupboards. Clean and orderly, the room smelled pleasantly of the spices Dorrie’s mother liked to put in her coffee.
The Archivist went to the low table and lifted a steaming teapot in a proffering manner. “Tea?”
Dorrie shook her head, feeling stubborn, despite the pleasant surprise of the absence of dripping pipes. “No, thank you.”
He hesitated for a moment and then gestured to the bench. “Please. Sit.” He poured hot amber liquid into one of the two small cups on the table.
While the Archivist stirred sugar into his tea, Dorrie noticed three tidy rows of symbols had been painted above the work table. They did not waver beneath her gaze, and Dorrie recognized them from the pages of Petrarch’s journal.
The Archivist set her to work organizing a tall stack of mission reports into seven different piles based on the continent in which the mission had been run. The reports were so filled with tantalizing details that Dorrie had to keep forcibly reminding herself to stop reading them and focus on the task.
Halfway through the morning, the Archivist paused in his own work at the other end of the table and offered Dorrie tea again—this time with a little plate of gingersnaps. She again refused it—on principle and out of pique—though her stomach was growling. He set the plate down softly with an apologetic nod, and Dorrie felt a little ashamed.
When he saw her to the door at lunchtime, he paused before closing it behind her. “I know working with me wasn’t your choice, but I shall try to make it worthwhile.”
Dorrie felt her face going red. She forced herself to meet his gaze. “It’s…I…if…”
He smiled with sad humor. “Would you believe that once upon a time, young people chose to apprentice with me?”
“No, I actually can’t,” Mathilde said a little while later when Dorrie told her about the conversation over lunch. “And I can’t believe anyone would voluntarily apprentice with Lybrarian Della Porta either.”
“I think he’s brilliant,” Izel said, buttering a piece of crusty bread.
“He has three apprentices, and all morning, he complained about how he really needs five,” Mathilde said, stabbing a meatball.
“Well, his work is important.” Izel lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Lybrarian Della Porta says he’s going to crack the code before the quarter is half done.”
Millie clambered off the bench, taking a piece of bread and cheese with her and slinging her satchel onto her shoulder.
“You just sat down,” complained Izel.
Millie slung her satchel onto her shoulder, her bangs in her eyes. “I said I’d give Master Callamachus extra help before practicums.”
Dorrie began to carefully move a chunk of carrot around in her stew. “Great,” she muttered, intending only Ebba to hear. “Everyone else is doing work that will really help the Lybrariad, and I get to be the idiot’s apprentice.”
“Hard to believe the Archivist is a keyhand, isn’t it?” said Mathilde.
“He is?” said Dorrie, astonished.
Mathilde nodded. “Tyre, 327 BCE. The Lybrariad hasn’t asked him to take on a mission in ages. The only reason his skipkeys don’t have cobwebs on them is that he still travels out to the wherens to look for stuff ‘written’ in Petrarch’s language.”
“What’s a skipkey?” asked Marcus dolefully. Though he’d resumed eating meals in the Sharpened Quill, he still couldn’t seem to string together two words without an enormous sigh in the middle.
“The lybrarians use them to get around out in the wherens,” explained Ebba. “They’re made of a little bit of two libraries. Every keyhand has a whole set of them. They can travel from their Spoke Libraries to any of the branch libraries in their centuries.”
“What, like instantly?” said Dorrie.
“I think it’s faster than that actually,” said Sven.
“If you’re lucky, Dorrie,” Izel said, gathering up her things, her eyes sparkling with malice, “maybe the Archivist will take you on one of his expeditions to look for proof of his language theory.”
“Yeah. Maybe,” Dorrie said, not wanting to give Izel the satisfaction of seeing her look appalled at the prospect.
“Which reminds me,” said Mathilde. “The field trip pick is tonight”—she raised her voice to reach Amo—“and I’m just saying it once. If anyone even thinks about choosing another wheren in which I have to wear wooden shoes, I will take my revenge. With a wooden shoe.”
Dorrie was happy to set off with Ebba for the courtyard of the Dharmaganga Library, where Hypatia had decided to hold her Principles of Lybrarianship practicum.
As they passed the open door of a room full of vases on which Chinese characters danced, Ebba stopped short.
“That’s it,” she said gleefully, pointing at an archway on the far side of the room. “That’s the archway that leads out to Timbuktu. The one my parents and I are going to use for our trip.”
At that moment, a keyhand with a sky-blue cloth wra
pped around her head strode through the archway, making them jump.
“Keyhand Obaji,” said Ebba. “You scared us.”
“Oh, good,” she said and bopped them both on the head with the leather packet she carried, as she passed.
Ebba giggled and Dorrie was reminded of all that was wondrous about Petrarch’s Library, even for an Archivist’s apprentice.
In the courtyard, they found Hypatia already seated at a large, square wooden table, along with a half dozen other lybrarians-in-training. Hypatia welcomed them with one of her calm smiles and gestured to the two remaining empty chairs. Dorrie sat down beside a woman who appeared to be the oldest human on earth. Her back bent, a set of glaringly false teeth in her mouth, she had to turn her head sideways like a bird to see anything. Regarding Dorrie, she gave her a wink. The other lybrarians-in-training had copies of The Twelve Principles of the Lybrarian sitting on the table in front of them. Dorrie quickly pulled hers out as well.
Leafing through it, she saw that the chapters had names like “The Extra Mile,” “The Stayed Hand,” and “A Place for Everything, and Everything in Its Place.” She was just beginning to read about a principle called “The Preserving Shield” when Hypatia spoke again.
“In this practicum, we’ll focus on the twelve principles of the lybrarian. Your books contain beautiful descriptions of each of them written by Petrarch himself not long before he died.” She began to pass around sheets of paper. “However, even Petrarch’s thoughtful ruminations will only take us so far in developing our understanding of the principles. For that reason, I am going to ask each of you to plan and execute at least one mission of your own out in a wheren and to attempt to apply the principles of the lybrarian as you do so.”
An hour later, Dorrie and Ebba left the courtyard clutching the pieces of paper Hypatia had given them, their eyes glowing. Dorrie peeled hers off her chest and looked it over again.
Each Principles of Lybrarianship student will plan and execute a mission designed to assist an individual or organization facing the suppression of his/her/its thoughts, ideas, or opinions. You will hereafter refer to this person or organization as the “imperiled subject” of your mission.
“We get to go out on a real mission!” crowed Dorrie. “On our own! To help anyone we want! In any wheren!”
“Well, not exactly,” said Ebba. “Look farther down.”
**IMPORTANT: Mistress Wu would like me to specify that apprentices taking the practicum may only choose to assist imperiled subjects facing Class Three threats. These threats include: destruction of written artifacts of which there are no other copies, social ostracization, minor injury, ridicule, and financial hardship. Apprentices are strictly forbidden from choosing imperiled subjects facing Class One or Two threats of impending assassination, imprisonment, loss of home, loss of family members, loss of livelihood, loss of limbs, or loss of copious amounts of blood.
***Apprentices are expected to work in pairs.
“Fine with me,” Dorrie said, grinning at Ebba. She thought of Mr. Biggs’s threat of a reversal. “I don’t suppose Hypatia would let us choose Algernon Sidney.”
Ebba gave Dorrie a side eye. “I’m pretty sure a beheading counts as”—she consulted Mistress Wu’s addendum again—“a Class One threat.” She folded up the paper. “Anyway, Petrarch’s Library doesn’t even open up into Algernon Sidney’s time anymore. I mean, time’s moved on in that wheren since that mission was run.”
Dorrie stopped walking, feeling stupid. She’d been thinking that even if the Foundation did cause Algernon’s beheading to happen, the Lybrariad might be able to re-reverse it.
They decided to get to work right away on choosing an imperiled subject. They headed to the main reference room. The two long lines of study tables with their green-shaded lamps were packed. A good number of lybrarians were even sitting at the one that held the History of Histories books, which itself stood inside a strange birdcage-like enclosure in the center of the room. The dozen sets of mahogany doors were in constant motion as lybrarians entered and exited. After looking up some promising-sounding history book titles in a strange cupboard full of tiny drawers that Ebba called “a card catalog,” Dorrie and Ebba copied them down on slips of paper and headed for the great oak reference desk, where a line had formed.
At last, Ebba turned over their slips of paper to the harassed-looking lybrarian managing the desk. Almost instantaneously, a man dressed very much like the messenger Dorrie had seen in the Inky Pot materialized beside the lybrarian, the words “Reference Runner” embroidered across his shirt. He wore a close-fitting leather pack covered in pockets of various sizes. The reference lybrarian filled them with a load of scrolls, a damp-looking mud tablet, and a bundle of book request slips, including Dorrie and Ebba’s.
“They’re tremendously fast,” Ebba said as the man sprinted away.
It was only after she and Ebba had sat down at one of the crowded tables to wait for their books that Dorrie noticed Millie a few seats down, scribbling madly, books open all around her. Before she could look away, their eyes met, and Millie’s fountain pen went still. Hurriedly, without acknowledging Dorrie and Ebba, she stuffed her books in her satchel and left the table.
“Ever since she found out about that stupid picture in the newspaper, she’s been treating me like some kind of leper!” said Dorrie, looking after Millie.
That evening, when Mistress Wu came up to supervise the field trip pick, she looked distracted and anxious.
Marcus looked positively gloomy. Saying he had no desire to visit any particular destination or any desire to do anything at all really, he offered to write down the other apprentices’ suggestions and toss them into Mathilde’s admiral’s hat.
The apprentices began calling out their choices, which were subject to Mistress Wu’s approval, based on her knowledge of current conditions in the various wherens.
“Tenth-century Dublin,” called out Fatima.
“There’s intense fighting going on there at the moment,” Mistress Wu said, sighing.
“But no Black Plague…” wheedled Fatima.
“I suppose not,” said Mistress Wu, gesturing to Marcus, who scribbled it down. “But if that gets chosen, you’ll need to wear armor under your clothes.”
Marcus folded up the scrap of paper and tossed it into the hat.
“Ninth century, Morón de la Frontera,” called out Saul.
Marcus snickered and then apologized and got very serious as he put pen to paper—but then ruined his apology by snickering again. He folded the suggestion and threw it in.
“Next.”
“Tyre, 327 BCE,” Sven said slowly from where he sat carving a slingshot for Kenzo.
“Lovely choice,” said Mistress Wu approvingly.
“If you don’t mind depending on the Archivist to get through the archway,” said Mathilde under her breath.
“Twelfth-century Constantinople,” said Saul.
“Such an elegant city and time,” said Mistress Wu. “The chariot races are a must-see, but I must insist that no betting take place. Riots, you know.”
As angry as Dorrie was at Savi for utterly abandoning her, Dorrie still nominated Paris, 1637, his home wheren.
Finally, only Ebba was left. First, she said Nubia, then quickly changed that to Mexico City, and then Lapland. She opened her mouth again.
“Lapland it is!” said Marcus, scribbling hurriedly.
“Are you sure you don’t want to suggest a destination, dear?” Mistress Wu asked Marcus, looking at him with motherly concern.
“No,” he said. “I’ve decided not to want anything anymore.”
Looking a little alarmed, Mistress Wu danced her fingers among the strips of paper while the apprentices waited with bated breath, and she finally plucked one out. “Tyre, 327 BCE it is!”
A buzz of excited chatter broke out, except from Marcus
, who merely sighed heavily and threw himself on the sofa with Fatima’s balaban.
Mistress Wu patted him on the shoulder. “Do go on the field trip at least. Always fun to use the Tyre archway. It leads to our only Spoke Library located on a boat!”
Most of the next morning passed more or less like the first with the Archivist, with Dorrie continuing to organize mission reports into piles. This time, however, the Archivist took one of her piles of mission reports and began to enter the details of the completed missions into various large, red books stacked on his end of the worktable.
Watching him out of the corner of her eye, Dorrie gave a start. The spines of the books bore the words History of Histories. The books were all volumes from the set she and Marcus had accidentally ripped the page out of the previous quarter. Remembering again how she’d left the Archivist to take the blame, her insides squirmed.
A wave of irritated justification followed. It hadn’t been her fault that the Archivist had left open the door of the little room that held the History of Histories books, and if he hadn’t startled them, the accident never would have happened. Closing her mouth tightly, she went back to her task.
That afternoon, the first thing Dorrie learned at her Staying Afloat practicum, besides the annoying fact that Izel and Millie had signed up for it as well, was that Mistress Daraney was not a fan of talk. Within the first five minutes, everyone taking the course had jumped or been thrown off a short pier fully clothed to assess their swimming skills. Anyone who couldn’t swim back to the beach without assistance would be limited to plying their boats close to shore in the shallows.
“Couldn’t we just wear life preservers?” asked a rather timid lybrarian-in-training with a bobbing Adam’s apple. “They’ve been invented, you know.”
“And you know what they’re good for?” scolded Mistress Daraney. “Keeping you from ever feeling that you’d better learn to swim a good distance.”
The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks Page 10