The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks

by Jen Swann Downey

  “If the Foundation manages to reverse it,” sputtered Della Porta, “thousands upon thousands of lives will be lost, countless others will suf—”

  “—I am acutely aware of the possible consequences,” Francesco said through gritted teeth.

  “And yet, Mr. Biggs still sits on his island free to withhold the location of Whim’s Gift.” Della Porta’s voice rose. “Free to keep the means to break the journal’s code to himself!”

  The two stared at each other for another long moment. The History of Histories page. The words echoed awfully in Dorrie’s head. She felt as though she were falling faster and faster into a bottomless pit.

  “The Board of Directors has made its decision,” said Francesco, his voice tight.

  “And we must force them to reconsider,” said Della Porta, clutching at his arm.

  Francesco stared at Della Porta’s hand, a dangerous light in his eye. “I have work to do.”

  Della Porta released his hold. “I will leave it there for now.”

  He turned and descended the stairs, Francesco staring after him. When the door at the bottom closed with a sonorous boom, Francesco shifted his gaze to the portrait of the woman. To Dorrie’s astonishment, a sound of animal anguish escaped him. He plunged his hand into one of his black tailcoat’s pockets. When he drew it out again, his fingers cradled a circle of silver set with a black stone that glinted in the torchlight. For a moment, Francesco stared at it along with Dorrie. Then, with a savage cry, he hurled it against the wall. As he stormed down the stairs, the armband bounced and skittered, finally coming to a rest near Dorrie’s feet.

  As soon as the door below slammed again, Dorrie staggered out from behind the tapestry and began to hammer at the wall beneath the portrait. “Ebba! Marcus!”

  She stopped and listened intently. Nothing. Desperate to get off the landing before Francesco returned, her gaze roved over the wall. “There has to be some way back in.” She felt along the bottom of the frame and in the cracks between the stones. Just when she was going to give up on one of the torch brackets, it bent to one side and the wall lurched into motion again, Dorrie holding on for dear life. She tumbled onto the carpet at Marcus and Ebba’s feet in a cloud of dust.

  “That was one hundred percent Scooby-Doo,” said Marcus.

  “Are you all right?” asked Ebba.

  Marcus helped Dorrie up. “Where’d you go?”

  “To the landing outside Francesco’s office,” said Dorrie, relieved that Ebba and Marcus were alive but unnerved by the sight of Darling tucked under Ebba’s arm like a long, scaly, drooling football.

  “Did he see you?” Ebba asked, giving the lizard’s underside a stroke.

  “I hid,” Dorrie explained, a feeling of overwhelming horror welling up in her as she recalled what she’d overheard. “But I found out something terrible.”

  Dorrie quickly relayed what Lybrarian Della Porta had said about the crux mission and the History of Histories page.

  “Who was the imperiled subject of the crux mission?” asked Ebba.

  Dorrie frowned. “Della Porta didn’t say.”

  “I’d say let’s go check the History of Histories books in the main reference room to find out,” Marcus said, “but…”

  Dorrie groaned. “That’s not funny yet.” She hurled herself on the tattered couch. “Stupid History of Histories page! Stupid Foundation. Stupid Athens! Stupid us for losing it.”

  “We weren’t stupid,” said Marcus, joining her. “Just surprised. Then clumsy. Then blundering. Then unlucky.”

  Ebba tried to sit down as well, but Marcus shot her such an outraged look that she reversed course and headed for the closet they’d discovered. Standing well back, she opened the door. When the skeleton was done erupting, she stuck Darling in with it and closed the door.

  “If that crux mission gets undone, it’ll be our fault,” said Dorrie, wrapping her arms around her knees. Her thoughts skittered in panicked circles. The History of Histories page. In the Foundation’s hands. How could such a terrible thing have happened?

  “I hate that we lost it and they’ve got it,” said Marcus, “but it was an accident.”

  “So you don’t feel guilty?” asked Dorrie.

  Marcus’s face took on a thoughtful look as he felt around his chest with one hand. “Nope.”

  “Well, I do!” said Dorrie as she experienced an unpleasant vision of Algernon Sidney’s head rolling around all by itself.

  A thick silence took hold, broken only by the sound of Darling chewing on what Dorrie was sure was one of the skeleton’s femurs.

  “Francesco got so mad after Lybrarian Della Porta left,” murmured Dorrie. “He threw some keyhand’s armband at the wall.”

  Ebba, who had been reaching down to pick up the book of ghost stories she’d dropped the first time the skeleton had erupted, straightened with a jerk. “You’re sure it was a keyhand’s armband?”

  “Positive,” said Dorrie.

  “I guess he kept it,” said Ebba. “I mean, after he got in trouble and couldn’t be a keyhand anymore.”

  “Francesco used to be a keyhand?” asked Dorrie.

  Ebba nodded. “Years and years ago.”

  Marcus looked as though he’d gotten a dream birthday present. “What did he get in trouble for?”

  Ebba lowered her voice as if Francesco might be listening. “I don’t know exactly what he did, but I heard it was really bad.”

  As Dorrie tried to take this in, another thought oozed through her. How long would it be before everyone in Petrarch’s Library knew that, courtesy of Dorrie and Marcus, the Foundation had a blueprint for undoing a crux mission? She’d go from being thought of as “the Idiot’s Apprentice” to “Mr. Biggs’s Apprentice.”

  She felt for the hilt of her sword. She was pretty sure Savi wouldn’t waste time worrying about people’s reactions. He’d think about what to do next to keep the Foundation from getting any use out of the History of Histories page.

  She scrambled to her feet and faced the others. “I want to find Whim’s Gift.”

  “And I want a bean feast,” said Marcus.

  She ignored that. “Do you still want the Archivist’s skipkey to get to Aristotle?”

  Marcus raised his eyebrows. “Possibly.”

  “Okay,” Dorrie said. “I’ll get it, and we’ll go to Athens, 327 BCE—just like you said.”

  Ebba stared at Dorrie. “You want to look for Whim’s Gift there?”

  “Lybrarian Della Porta wanted the Lybrariad to see if the Foundation was remaking Whim’s Gift in the house of this guy out in Athens, 399 BCE named Critius, but Francesco sort of shot Della Porta down.”

  “But we’d be going to Athens, 327 BCE,” said Ebba. “That’s about seventy years later.”

  Dorrie took a deep breath. “I know, but—”

  “Why should Francesco listen to Della Porta?” interrupted Marcus.

  “I know, but it’s the best I can do. Athens, 399 BCE is crawling with lybrarians. I doubt I could ever get through undetected. Plus I’d be breaking my promise about not going through any of the archways on my own.”

  “Okay,” said Ebba. “But if the Foundation is rebuilding Whim’s Gift at Critius’s house in 399 BCE, what would there be to find in 327 BCE?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dorrie. “Proof that the Foundation had been there in the past so the Lybrariad will put it at the top of the list?”

  “What makes you think Della Porta knows what he’s talking about?” asked Marcus.

  “Because he knows a lot about ancient Athens,” Dorrie said, not feeling it necessary to explain why exactly that was.

  Ebba frowned. “If there are good reasons to look at Critius’s house, how come Francesco doesn’t want to do it?”

  “Francesco has a really long list of places to check on,” said Dorrie. “M
ore places than lybrarians. Plus, I don’t think he likes Della Porta very much.”

  “Because Della Porta wants to go all Torquemada thumbscrews torture on Biggs?” asked Marcus.

  “I think so,” said Dorrie. “But Della Porta might be right. It’s a lead anyway.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look,” said Ebba.

  Dorrie beamed. “You’ll come?”

  Ebba snorted. “Instead of going souvenir shopping in Tyre? I’ll make the sacrifice.” She began to flip through True Spine-Tingling Ghost Stories from around the World.

  Dorrie felt a rush of relief. Though a part of her felt like she should try to talk Ebba out of getting involved, she couldn’t bring herself to try.

  “Well, I think we have our plan-making lair,” said Marcus, looking approvingly at the smirking portrait and the stuffed vulture.

  Thinking about the flooded, stinking, rat-filled tunnel that had gotten them here, Dorrie had to agree.

  “Even with Francesco so close?” Ebba asked, nervously looking up from her book.

  “If this Ghost Library just squeezed in, he probably doesn’t even know about it yet,” said Marcus.

  Ebba’s eyes lit up. “Could we hide Darling here?”

  “I’m sorry, but all questions must be submitted in writing,” said Marcus.

  After a long argument about Darling’s fate, during which Marcus finally agreed to share the lair with Darling on the condition that Ebba build the lizard a fortress to live in, they backtracked through the tunnel and along the Middle Shelf. Sloshing past one of the torches, Dorrie caught sight of her thumbnail and nearly stopped walking. The patch of black had shrunk further.

  “Let’s see if there are any crumbs of crumbs left at the Sharpened Quill,” said Marcus after they’d slipped back into the Biblioteca Marciana.

  “You guys go,” said Dorrie. “I’m not really hungry. I want to start looking stuff up about Critius.”

  When they’d disappeared up a stairway, Dorrie took a deep breath and fished Mr. Biggs’s vial out from under her shirt. She couldn’t lose her ability now. Not with the History of Histories page in the Foundation’s hands. Not with the plan to get to Athens, 327 BCE depending on it. With a rapidly beating heart, she unscrewed the cap, and before she could have second thoughts, she let the remaining drops fall on her tongue. Just in case.

  Chapter 15

  To London, 1913

  During her next Staying Afloat practicum, Izel, to Dorrie’s dismay, couldn’t stop talking about how Lybrarian Della Porta had said that Algernon Sidney’s head was going to roll again any second now.

  This didn’t go over very well with Mistress Daraney, who was trying to show them how to raise the sail on a little gaffe-rigged sloop.

  “Once you’ve got your sail up, it’ll be under a lot of tension,” she said after sending Izel away to press sticky, black pitch into the hull of a beached boat. “You must tie off the halyard end so it stays put but can be released quickly if need be.” She looped the end of the halyard rope deftly over two thick, wooden pegs embedded in the side of the boat, one pointing up and the other down. “Three times minimum. Fewer than that and you’ll find the whole weight of your sail and gaffe boom falling on your head when you least expect it.”

  As Dorrie and Millie raced in dogged silence to see who could get her sail up first, Dorrie tortured herself with the thought that Francesco had already told Millie about the kind of danger Dorrie and Marcus had put the Lybrariad in—probably as they sat sharpening daggers together or whatever they did for father-daughter fun.

  But to Dorrie’s perplexed relief, Millie gave no indication she was sitting on any explosive piece of information. As the days passed, Dorrie grew less wary. Hypatia, Phillip, and Ursula treated her with the same kindness and consideration they always had, and none of the other apprentices behaved differently toward her.

  The Archivist continued to pour tea. He told Dorrie stories about the many years he’d spent keeping the History of Histories updated, but he said nothing about the lost page. He did show Dorrie rubbings of symbols from some old caves on an island in the Mediterranean Sea that resembled a few of the symbols in Petrarch’s alphabet. He explained how unknown alphabets were deciphered when no one was left who used them. “It’s a Rosetta stone I need.”

  “What’s that?” asked Dorrie.

  “An artifact that has the same thought expressed in one known and one unknown language. For our purposes, one written in Petrarch’s language and one in a known translatable language.” He sighed. “If it exists.”

  By the time another week had passed, Dorrie had begun to half believe that the Archivist wasn’t completely crazy.

  Master Francesco and Lybrarian Della Porta were a different matter. Whenever Dorrie passed Francesco on the oyster-shell paths, he stiffened, avoiding her gaze. Though he never said a word, Dorrie sensed a shaking anger in him that made her want to run in the opposite direction. Often, when she looked up from eating in the Sharpened Quill, she found Della Porta’s gaze sliding away from her. Dorrie had the distinct feeling he was keeping silent about the Foundation’s possession of the page against his will.

  At her next lesson with Savi, he showed her a sand-filled glove suspended from a rope that he’d rigged up against the courtyard wall. Savi’s job was to release the rope and send the glove plummeting. Dorrie’s job was to pin it to the wall with the point of her sword as it fell. Which she failed to do. Repeatedly. As she labored, Savi continued with his writing, stopping only to shout things like “deplorable!” and “underwhelming!” when Dorrie’s aim went especially wide.

  Not sure which lybrarians knew about the Foundation’s possession of the History of Histories page, Dorrie couldn’t bring herself to bring the matter up even with Savi, certain she wasn’t meant to know.

  Busy as she was helping Ebba build a pen for Darling in the Scooby-Doo Library, planning the trip to Athens, 327 BCE, and searching Petrarch’s Library for any documents that mentioned Critius, Dorrie hardly had a thought to spare for their upcoming trip to England.

  The more time Dorrie spent in the Scooby-Doo Library, the more she felt strangely at home in it, despite the killer chandelier. Rather than genuinely scary, the library now seemed more like someone’s odd joke.

  Ebba, who now spent all her spare moments lost in True Spine-Tingling Ghost Stories from around the World, didn’t want to hear about Dorrie’s theory. “Don’t ruin it. I like it scary.”

  At last, the day to embark arrived, and Dorrie found herself standing side by side with Ebba in front of the London, 1913 archway wearing the clothing that Mistress Lovelace’s assistant had chosen and carrying an umbrella and a drawstring bag.

  Mistress Wu nervously checked them over as one of the keyhands, a tremendously tall keyhand with stooped shoulders and a shock of white hair, waited for her to complete her interrogation.

  “You’ve got your map? Your money? Your letter of introduction?” Mistress Wu said, making little checkmarks on a wax tablet.

  Dorrie and Ebba nodded vigorously.

  Mistress Wu looked up. “The addresses of the seventeen branch lybrarians of England in case of emergency?”

  “Regulation battle-ax? Yak-hide tent? Emergency hatbox full of beef jerky?” inquired the keyhand, tapping his foot.

  Mistress Wu shot him a look. “Well, off you go then.”

  The keyhand held out an arm each to Ebba and Dorrie. Dorrie took it, feeling too shy to say she didn’t need help. They walked toward the invisible barrier. Anticipating the warmth and the momentary sensation of being lost in a staggering amount of space, Dorrie glanced at Ebba, but she looked eager.

  “Remember!” Mistress Wu called. “You are English ladies of the early twentieth century! Don’t hit anyone with your umbrellas.” There was a pause. “Unless absolutely necessary.”

  A few steps into the London Libr
ary, the keyhand released them.

  “I didn’t even begin to panic!” crowed Ebba, looking utterly transported.

  They were in a windowless, stuffy room full of packed bookshelves with narrow aisles between. The keyhand led them down four flights of stairs every bit as narrow as the aisles and then steered them through the public reading room, where Dorrie tried not to give herself away by gawking at the patrons.

  “You know where you are, I assume,” said the keyhand once he’d shepherded them through the library’s front door and out onto the cold street.

  “St. James’s Square,” said Dorrie, her breath a little faint as a large pair of dappled horses, their nostrils whooshing steam, pulled a lorry into view.

  The keyhand readjusted the umbrella in Dorrie’s hands. “A little less like a sword for best results.” He disappeared back inside.

  Their route to the headquarters of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage took them along several broad streets filled with honking motorized trucks and horse-drawn vehicles. At last, they came to the large park they’d need to cross. At its edge, a group of children played with a piece of rope, the soles of their bare feet flashing black when they ran.

  They had almost made their way across the park to the street on the other side, when over the sounds of traffic, Dorrie heard a raised voice.

  Ahead, a woman stood on a wooden crate, her arm lifted in a passionate gesture, a few people gathered around her. “I should no more have to explain to you why women want the vote than you should have to explain to me why you don’t want a piano to fall on your head!”

  Curious, Dorrie pulled Ebba closer.

  “Have you not heard Lord Curzon say that the vote ‘is the imperishable heritage of the human race?’” the woman cried. “Well, I believe him on that point, and interestingly, I happen to be a human! Yet our laws ignore this truth. Right now, women who demand the vote are being held as base criminals in the Brixton and Holloway jails.”

  “Well, the harpies broke windows, didn’t they?” shouted a young man passing by in a group of shoving, jostling friends. They all laughed uproariously.