The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks

by Jen Swann Downey

  In the midst of all the planning and researching, the time Dorrie spent on the water became even more of a relieving pleasure. She loved the feeling of skimming over the waves in one of Mistress Daraney’s little sailboats. She loved swimming from one side of the cove to the other, lost in the simple pleasure of making her way through the water. And it didn’t hurt that Dorrie learned all of Mistress Daraney’s knots faster than Millie did.

  Two days before the field trip, sitting in Hypatia’s practicum, Dorrie was entirely preoccupied. Near the close of their time together, Hypatia called her name. With a start, Dorrie looked up to find the other students staring at her and Hypatia holding up a worn white book with a picture of three diamonds balanced atop one another on its cover.

  “I was saying, now that we’ve discussed the first six principles of the Lybrariad, you might want to look at The Foundation: Essential Dictumsand and compare.”

  Mortified, Dorrie nodded.

  At last, the day of the field trip arrived.

  “I can’t believe the Lybrariad’s still letting us go,” Izel said as the apprentices waited at the Tyre, 327 BCE archway for one of the keyhands to arrive. She lowered her voice so Mistress Wu couldn’t hear. “Lybrarian Della Porta says things are much worse than the lybrarians are telling us.”

  Dorrie pretended she hadn’t heard and calmed her nerves by putting her hand on the little leather pouch she’d been issued. Tied around her waist, it held a few coins for lunch and the skipkey she’d taken from the Archivist’s chest.

  After warnings from Mistress Wu about the unsteady footing in the Tyre Spoke Library due to the fact that it was in actuality a worn-out Phoenician merchant’s ship called the Hura, the keyhand took them through in pairs. There was a regrettable bit of shoving, pushing, and treading on borrowed chiton hems as the apprentices tried to stay upright on the tilting floor, but at last, they were all in.

  A woman, her dark wig askew, stood beside a hatch ladder, an electric sort of delight on her face.

  “Welcome! Welcome!” she called, holding out a tray full of fruit chunks stabbed through with what looked like a rough version of toothpicks. “I’m Jalileh, the Tyre Spoke Lybrarian. I’m so very glad you’re here to peruse our small but important collection.”

  Dorrie, Marcus, and Ebba eyed each other. They hadn’t factored a tour into their plans.

  Mistress Wu looked caught out. “Ah…hello there, Jalileh. I’m afraid we’re just passing through today. Must row directly over to Tyre.”

  Jalileh’s face all but collapsed on itself. “Oh, I see…”

  “I don’t think she gets many visitors,” whispered Mathilde.

  “Are you sure?” pleaded Jalileh. “The Hura is really a beautiful Spoke Library, even if she is small and isolated. Not that I’m unhappy with my assignment here. I mean, you find things to appreciate.” She laughed a little maniacally. “Let’s see, there’s the total freedom I enjoy from the petty demands of patrons, the unrelenting smell of fish, the unremitting silence…”

  “Jalileh…” began Mistress Wu.

  “Not that I don’t have adventures,” Jalileh interrupted brightly. “One night, the anchor came free in a storm, and I drifted a good ways across the Mediterranean Sea. I heard later that inside Petrarch’s Library, the Tyre archway temporarily became the Kourian archway, then the Paphos archway, and then the archway to a whole string of other town the Hura passed while I slept. Her shoulders shook with laughter. “I didn’t wake up until we got to Xerxesville.” She looked dreamy for a moment. “I should have gone ashore and visited. I really need to get out more and—”

  “Jalileh,” Mistress Wu shot out more forcefully, “we really must move on.”

  Jalileh plunged her hand into an urn and pulled out a scroll. “Not even time for a read-aloud of The Odyssey?”

  “Everyone up the ladder,” said Mistress Wu firmly.

  “You simply must let me show you the deck cleats,” said Jalileh, hurling herself at the ladder and beginning to climb. “Did I mention that the Hura’s prow is carved in the shape of a bird?”

  Dorrie, Marcus, and Ebba hung back until Izel, the last one up the ladder, had disappeared.

  “Hey!” Marcus called up the ladder. “Dorrie’s not feeling well.”

  Instantly, Mistress Wu’s head appeared in the hatchway, framed in blue sky.

  Dorrie did her best to look sickly.

  “I told her not to eat that mushroom,” said Marcus.

  “What mushroom?” asked Mistress Wu sharply.

  “A Gyromitra esculenta. Looks sort of like a purple brain. I learned about it in Egeria’s foraging practicum last quarter.”

  “I ate some of it too,” Ebba said with an impressive tremor in her voice, “and I feel kind of faint.”

  Mistress Wu looked of a mind to possibly leap back down into the ship’s hold.

  “They’ll be fine!” said Marcus quickly. “But they should go lie down before the confusion sets in.” He turned to Dorrie. “Do. You Have. The. Strength. To. Get. Us. Back?”

  Dorrie nodded.

  Marcus looked back at Mistress Wu. “I can take them to Ursula.” He sighed. “I’m not really in the mood for a field trip anyway.”

  “Oh, you poor ducks,” said Mistress Wu. “Well, all right then.”

  The moment Mistress Wu’s head disappeared, Dorrie dug the skipkey out of her pouch. She took hold of the metal pin the way she’d seen the Archivist do. “No matter what, don’t let go of me.”

  Marcus and Ebba each caught hold. Stilling her breath, Dorrie flicked the metal pin upward.

  The two halves of the skipkey came together with the faint click of magnets meeting, and the sound of the ocean ceased as though it had been unplugged.

  Dorrie didn’t feel as though she’d moved—more like while she had stood perfectly still, the world had slid a new stage set around her. The ship was gone, and they were standing in a cool room full of scrolls arranged neatly in cubbyholes on the walls. “We made it,” she said with relief.

  “Step one. Locate Aristotle,” said Marcus. “And remember,” he said with far too much satisfaction, “I’m a thoughtful young man doing some philosophy school shopping, and you are my slaves.”

  Dorrie and Ebba rolled their eyes.

  “Yes, well, since it’s ancient Athens and we’re girls, we can’t be much else if we want to walk around freely during daylight hours, can we?” said Ebba.

  They peeked through the nearest door and saw that it led out to a courtyard lined with colonnades with a plashing fountain in the middle. A young man was walking slowly toward them, with his nose in a scroll.

  “Excuse me,” said Marcus. “Where can I find Aristotle?”

  “He’s lecturing in the auditorium,” he replied and pointed to a half-open door across the courtyard. Dorrie, Marcus, and Ebba settled themselves on a bench beside it to wait. From inside the auditorium, Dorrie heard a deep, sonorous voice talking, then appreciative laughter. A man in a short, dirty chiton was lounging against a nearby wall. He eyed them curiously.

  “Aristotle,” he called a moment later as a man with thick, dark hair streaked with gray and a mounding beard emerged from the auditorium, along with a flood of students. Dorrie looked nervously from Ebba to Marcus as Aristotle gave the lounging man what looked like coins and took a large sack in exchange. Turning, he started down the colonnade.

  Marcus sprang off the bench and hurried after him. “Excuse me, sir,” he called as Dorrie and Ebba jumped up to follow.

  “Yes?” Aristotle shot out without stopping.

  “May I talk to you for a minute, please?”

  “Ha!” Aristotle said without stopping. “No one ever talks to me for a minute. Especially not on a day when I have a rare hour to spend on my categorizing project before my next blasted lecture.”

  “It’s about a musician n
amed Timotheus.”

  Aristotle put on the brakes hard, and they all nearly plowed into him.

  “Timotheus, the banger-outer of cacophonous rhythms?” said Aristotle, his face mottling. “Robber of sleep? Thief of serenity?”

  Marcus blinked. “Er…possibly.”

  Aristotle pushed through a door into what Dorrie took to be some kind of study or laboratory. The shelves held scrolls and tablets, carefully organized collections of shells and rocks and skulls and feathers, and what looked like thin sections sawed out of trees. There were teeth and horns, dried grasses arranged by height, and a whole tray of things that looked like pinecones.

  He dropped the sack on a table. “And?”

  Marcus was most of the way through his very logical argument as to why Aristotle should drop his charges against Timotheus—and had just used the word “ergo” for the fifth time—when out of the sack poked a small, sleek head with protuberant brown eyes and a set of twitching whiskers.

  “A seal,” Ebba cried out. It wiggled the rest of itself out of the bag and barked sharply. “A baby seal!” Quite forgetting herself and their situation, she fell upon it. “Oh, what’s its name?”

  Aristotle lifted a wooden basin from beneath the table and set it down with a clatter. “You might as well ask me where the rays of yesterday’s sun have gone.” His face took on a faraway look. “I wish someone would ask me that.”

  “Right,” said Marcus, “but about Timotheus. As a citizen of Athens, I have to protest your suit against him. Your charge of hubris is based, in fact, not on the volume of Timotheus’s drumming but on the fact that you don’t happen to like his style of drumming, ergo—”

  The seal barked again and nuzzled at Ebba’s face.

  She stroked its head. “I think it’s hungry.”

  “Not for long,” said Aristotle, rattling the contents of a cupboard as he searched for something.

  “Oh, may I feed it?” Ebba cried.

  The rattling stopped, and Aristotle stood with several knives in his hands. “I’m afraid you’ve gotten the wrong impression.”

  Ebba’s eyes widened as understanding seemed to dawn on her. “Nooooo!”

  “Come, come,” said Aristotle, dropping the knives on the table and beginning to rummage in a basket of scrolls. “I want to know how a seal is made and in what ways it is like and unlike a man. I must go inside to find out.”

  “Well, go inside a dead one then!” cried Ebba.

  “That’s what I intend to do, you silly girl. It won’t feel a thing.”

  “She’s not silly!” said Dorrie.

  “And you know what else isn’t silly?” said Marcus. “The rest of the very logical argument I’d like to make about why you should drop your charges against Timotheus.”

  “Timotheus will have ample opportunity to make his arguments before the jury,” Aristotle said.

  “And I want to go on record saying that I think it’s completely unfair that he has to go up against you in the courtroom. You’re a philosopher! You’re used to making arguments. Timotheus is a musician.”

  “And this seal has a right to a life,” said Ebba, her eyes blazing.

  Aristotle raised an eyebrow. “I see your point.”

  “You do?” said Ebba, her face brightening.

  Aristotle shot her a look. “Not yours.” He jerked his chin toward Marcus. “His.” He pulled down a tray of empty bowls from a shelf. “If Timotheus is incapable of making sound arguments, then he should hire an orator to write up a defense of his position. Surely he can memorize something someone else has written.”

  “That’s a thing?” said Marcus.

  “Sounds like more cheating,” muttered Dorrie.

  “Well, I think it is,” said Aristotle, now rummaging through a basket full of clay pots. “But it’s perfectly legal. Surely you’re aware that half of lazy Athens does it.” He gave up his search. “Zeus alive, I specifically told my assistant I needed a jar of green ink.”

  He headed for the door.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Dorrie saw Ebba’s hands creeping toward the seal.

  “Well, where can Timotheus find an orator then?” Marcus asked, chasing after Aristotle.

  Ebba’s hands dropped to her sides as Aristotle spun around to look sharply at Marcus. “In the Courts District. Where else?”

  “Of course,” said Marcus. “But what I really want to know, Aristotle of Stagira, is do you know the exact location of the Courts District?”

  Aristotle raised both eyebrows this time. “Adjacent to the agora, oh citizen,” he said putting an undue amount of emphasis on “citizen.” “And a piece of advice: If you decide you must have a fried fish sandwich while you’re there, do not buy it from Tacitus of Macedonia.” He shivered as if recalling a horrendous experience and disappeared into the colonnade.

  Marcus chased after him as Ebba scooped up the seal.

  “No!” Dorrie hissed at Ebba. “What are you doing? We can’t just…take him! We’re supposed to be inconspicuous! We still have to find Critius’s house.”

  “Well, I can’t leave him here,” Ebba said fiercely as she shoved the little seal down the front of her chiton.

  “All right, all right,” said Dorrie. She pulled Ebba, now considerably more plump, over to the door and peered out. Aristotle and Marcus were arguing a little farther down the colonnade. Not too far away in the other direction, Dorrie saw a gap in the wall that encircled the Lyceum’s buildings. Beyond it, she glimpsed the bustle of a street and headed for it, towing Ebba along.

  “I think we should go, master,” Dorrie yelled back at Marcus.

  “Fine,” he said, backing away from Aristotle. “But I’m not going to let Timotheus be the baby seal under your philosophical knife. Did I mention that he’s the sole support of six younger siblings and one of them lost a hand in a fishing accident?”

  “Three times,” said Aristotle.

  Dorrie, Marcus, and Ebba tumbled into the street. Marcus stuck his head back through the gap. “I’m going to find him the best orator money can buy!”

  Chapter 17

  Deals

  “What do you mean you’re going to find an orator?” Dorrie asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “Well, you heard Aristotle,” said Marcus. “It’s the only way to save Timotheus. Did I mention he’s the sole provider for—”

  Dorrie punched him in the shoulder, unable to restrain herself. “We don’t have time! The whole point of coming was to find Critius’s house.”

  “Your whole point,” said Marcus. “Mine is to help Timotheus.”

  “So now we’re supposed to go shopping for an orator!”

  “Relax,” said Marcus. “Those old maps showed that Critius’s house is just on the other side of the agora. Two birds, one stone.” He looked darkly at Ebba. “Anyway, I think that’s the least of our problems.”

  “I’m sorry!” she cried, holding on tightly to the shifting bulge inside her chiton. “But I couldn’t leave it there to be carved into pieces!”

  After a twenty-minute walk, they found themselves at the outskirts of the open square where people were selling goods and services from various stalls shielded from the sun by cloths stretched tight over poles. A heady smell of cooking garlic wafted toward them. Everywhere, crowds of people eddied basketfuls of vegetables, bread, and other purchases.

  Marcus shaded his eyes and peered around. “I better find Timotheus’s stall and see if he’ll go for the orator idea.”

  Dorrie took a deep breath. “Okay, but—”

  The seal barked sharply and stuck its whiskery nose out of the top of Ebba’s chiton.

  Ebba adjusted her hold. “I think he really is hungry.”

  Dorrie closed her eyes. “All right, Ebba and I will look for milk or sardines or something for the seal. Marcus, you go talk to Timo
theus.” She saw a man hauling a bucket of water out of a well. “We’ll all meet back at that well.”

  Dorrie, Marcus, and Ebba had thought that the clothing they’d checked out for the Tyre field trip looked close enough to the pictures they’d found of clothes worn in Aristotle’s Athens, but people eyed them curiously as they walked past stalls full of ribbons, honey, strongly scented myrtle wreaths, and great sacks of wool.

  “That’s what we need,” said Ebba, stopping. Above a stall, a painted cloth banner showed a picture of a goat and her kid frolicking. A woman brushed by them with a jug full of frothy white liquid.

  The seal began to struggle again. Dorrie and Ebba joined the line in front of the stall.

  “Next,” said a voice. It was their turn. An old man, his eyes bright in a mass of wrinkles, looked at them expectantly.

  “Some milk, please,” said Ebba, trying to keep the seal still.

  “Put your jug up here.”

  Dorrie stopped digging for her coins. “Our jug?”

  The goat-milk seller sucked on his teeth. “Unless you want me to pour the milk into your hands.”

  “Here,” said a voice from the next stall over.

  Dorrie turned. A woman about her mother’s age was holding out a jug with a piece chipped out of the rim. In her other hand, she held a wax tablet—the kind that Master Callamachus preferred for taking notes. She passed the jug to the goat-milk seller. “They can have this one.”

  “Thank you,” said Dorrie and Ebba together.

  The woman jabbed a stylus into the messy knot of her hair, where several others stuck out. She smiled wryly. “Oh, with that chip, I was never going to sell it anyway.”

  Dorrie looked more closely at the woman’s stall. A sign hanging above the woman’s head read “Kalliope’s Erstwhile Treasures.” The stall was choked with piles of dusty baskets, chairs with missing bits, and sagging tables. Broken crockery covered the floor and tables. A stack of wooden bowls looked as though they were actively rotting.