“Well, which one already?” Saul said.
Izel swept her gaze around the room. “The one that cut the size and power of Tomas de Torquemada’s Spanish Inquisition in half.”
There was an outbreak of hot, urgent talk.
“Torquemada is a monster,” Izel said, raising her voice over the hubbub. “Lybrarian Della Porta says he had thousands of people burned at the stake. He’s just the most evil of evil humans.” She turned back to Dorrie. “This is all your fault!”
Dorrie felt as though Izel had punched her. Around her, she sensed the accusing stares mounting in number. Her eyes caught on Millie’s. Instead of judgment, the other girl’s held panic, and Dorrie realized Millie was afraid. Afraid that Dorrie would spill her secret in the face of Izel’s attack.
Mathilde whistled shrilly through her fingers. The talk died down. “Even if the Foundation does terrible things with that History of Histories page, it’s not Dorrie and Marcus’s fault. They made a mistake. They didn’t give the page to the Foundation, and they tried to get it back. If the crux mission does get reversed or Algernon Sidney loses his head again, that’s on the Foundation.”
“But if they hadn’t been so selfish and sneaky last quarter, the page wouldn’t—”
“Izel!” said Mathilde sharply. “You’re being flat-out mean!”
“You won’t think that when I tell you the worst of it,” shrieked Izel. “Lybrarian Della Porta found out today that if the crux mission is reversed, someone here in Petrarch’s Library will die.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Dorrie felt as though her heart was falling out of place. She raced out of the den, scarcely able to breathe. The door banged closed behind her. She wanted to be alone. She needed air and space.
She zigzagged her way through the library, pounding through corridors and down staircases, her sword rat-a-tatting against the spindles. Faces of those she’d come to love in Petrarch’s Library flashed before her, eyes closed, still in death. At last, she tumbled out into the cool, stiff wind of the Bottom Shelf, gasping for breath.
The sea glittered with moon-brightened whitecaps.
Running down the stairway that led to the beach, Dorrie felt her foot go out from under her. She caught herself and watched something small and round bounce down the last of the steps and land silently in the sand. It was an orange, the kind the Archivist tended to read out by the dozens when he was upset and had drunk too much wine. She looked up and down the beach. Had the Archivist heard the terrible news as well? She walked along the edge of the cove faster and faster, passing a second orange and then a third.
A terrible thought took hold of her as she remembered the Archivist’s strange mood that morning and how he’d stared at the symbols on the wall. What if, driven by the terrible news, the Archivist had decided to try to get the answers he wanted so badly from Mr. Biggs?
She scanned the water in the cove and saw nothing. About to chastise herself for jumping to such a crazy conclusion, a movement beyond the protective arms of the cove made her shift her gaze. She squinted. Unlike the other whitecaps, which melted away a few moments after appearing, one seemed to persist. Was it a sail? Her heart raced. She stared up and down the beach once more.
No light showed on Mistress Daraney’s houseboat. Dorrie wondered if she was still at Ursula’s. She looked back to where she’d seen the sail. The Archivist didn’t need more trouble. If she could just overtake him, she could persuade him to return before he got into trouble.
Dorrie ran for one of the rowboats pulled up on the beach and turned it over. Throwing in a set of oars, she pushed it into the waves and clambered in. The tide was with her, and soon, she was passing through the rocky mouth of the cove and into the open sea.
The sail shone clearly now in the distance, Crackskull Island a distant dark hump behind it.
She pulled on the oars as hard and fast as she could, grateful for all the hours of practice she’d put in. Gaining quickly on the other boat, she saw that its prow was pointed toward the cove. It was heading in rather than out. Relieved that the Archivist had come to his senses, she stilled the oars. “Master Ishaq!” she yelled above the sound of the waves. “It’s me, Dorrie!”
She strained to hear a reply, but none came. Putting her oars to work again, she soon closed the distance. The boat’s sail, which had been full of wind, now billowed loose and untended.
Drawing alongside it, her heart juddered. Against the mast slumped a figure. Dorrie shipped the oars with a clatter, hoping the Archivist hadn’t been bashed into unconsciousness by the freely swinging boom. She had just tied the dinghy fast to the sailboat when the slumped figure sprang to its feet. It was Mr. Biggs.
With a startled cry, Dorrie stumbled backward. What had he done with the Archivist? Dorrie drew her sword, but before she could do anything useful with it, Mr. Biggs grabbed hold of the back of her coat and hauled her through the air to land painfully in the bottom of the sailboat. Her sword bounced free of her hand.
“Well, well, well…” he said, looming over her. “I’ll have to thank the fates.” He bent closer, his eyes hunting and cold. “I can smell it on you.”
No idea what he was talking about, Dorrie tried to scramble away. Growling, he knocked her back down. Taking hold of the loop of yarn around Dorrie’s neck, he tore the hidden vial free.
For a moment, he stared at it triumphantly. Then, his nails flashing white in the moonlight, he unscrewed the cap. Rushing the vial to his lips, he violently upended it, only to pull it away an instant later, livid.
“Empty,” he hissed. Like a rattlesnake striking, he caught hold of Dorrie’s hand, nearly crushing it in his own massive fist. Dorrie reared back, unable to break free. He stared at the blackened thumbnail. “Enjoyed my personal store of Whim’s Gift, did you?”
“Whim’s Gift?” Dorrie choked out, bewildered, as the sail flapped lazily in a burst of wind. “No, it’s only Travelers’ Tea.”
Dorrie yelped as Mr. Biggs hauled her up to a sitting position by her shirtfront. “They’re one and the same, girl, and both nicknames.”
Dorrie’s old images of Whim’s Gift as some sort of machine melted away. Her thoughts turned desperately to escape. She glanced around wildly until her eye caught on the end of the sail’s halyard, looped in a single loose figure eight once over and under the pegs. In her head, Mistress Daraney’s voice warned again about how the sail and boom would fall if the knot slipped free.
Mr. Biggs jerked her closer. “I prefer its true name.” He lifted the vial. “Vox Mortis.”
The name sounded like fear and poison and the saddest ends. “W-what does that mean?” said Dorrie, desperate for time, her fingers feeling for her sword.
“Let me show you.” The tones in Mr. Biggs’s voice chilled Dorrie’s blood and made it hard to think, hard to remember she had bones.
As Mr. Biggs drew slightly back, Dorrie’s straining fingertips touched the cold metal of her sword.
If she could pick it up, she’d have one chance to hit the knot in just the right place so the tip of her sword could push the halyard loop over the peg. One chance to drop the sail on Mr. Biggs and possibly get away. Her hand curled round the sword’s hilt.
In a flash, she drew back her sword arm and drove the rapier toward the knot. Time seemed to slow, and the crash of the waves seemed to fade as she watched the blade hurtle forward. She sensed Mr. Biggs’s arm swinging toward her. The rapier tip hit the knot, but too low. It glanced off with no effect.
“No!” she cried as Mr. Biggs’s arm sent her sprawling to the bottom of the boat again. Holding her down, he pressed the vial against the center of her chest. Below its coldness, Dorrie could feel her heart bucking wildly.
“Now,” Mr. Biggs said, his eyes boring into hers. “Tell me what you want to say, and I’ll kill you. Tell me what I want to hear, and you’ll live.”
Dorrie st
ared back at him, adrenalin shooting through her, bewildered at the strangeness of his words. Then their meaning penetrated. Almost instantly, she felt a great tide of many things she knew to be true moving through her heart and demanding expression. She wanted to say that grass was green and that she loved her mother and that the thought of one of the lybrarians of Petrarch’s Library dying because of her mistake terrified her.
But Mr. Biggs had said that these were the things he would kill her for saying. She choked on the words, holding them back. The things she wanted to say struggled to survive. Fear tried to smother them. Her chest felt like a battleground, her heart in danger of exploding to pieces. At last, she could bear it no longer. What would he want to hear?
“I-I-I give up,” she gasped. The unbearable pain died instantly, but rather than relief, Dorrie felt a sensation deep in her chest, as though a small piece of her core had just crumbled to dust.
“Many thanks,” said Mr. Biggs, peering into the vial. “Filled to the brim.”
Dorrie fell back, too wretched and weak to do anything more.
Mr. Biggs brought the vial to his lips. As he drank, his fingernails blackened. He stood. “Powerful little things, aren’t they? As it happens, a hundred of the Foundation’s new allies are waiting patiently in the past for Vox Mortis vials to call their own. I haven’t appreciated being delayed in sending them off.”
“What allies?” whispered Dorrie.
Instead of answering, he tossed her back into the dinghy like a rag doll. She fell hard, bashing her knee and forehead. She gasped in pain, seeing stars.
“What are they going to do with the vials?” choked out Dorrie as Mr. Biggs rummaged in the bottom of the sailboat.
“Find plenty of ways to fill them, I hope.”
Nausea rolled over Dorrie.
“We have a grand inquisitor to put back in power, and it will take a good deal of Vox Mortis to open a way into the fifteenth century for the Foundation.”
Mr. Biggs straightened. To Dorrie’s horror, he held an ax.
“Since I’m the only one who knows where the vials are hidden at the moment, you’ll have to forgive me for harboring a good deal of resentment toward the Lybrariad at the moment.” With a splintering crash, he stove a hole in the bottom of Dorrie’s boat. “I’m not in the most merciful mood.”
A fountain of seawater bubbled up from the jagged opening. Without another word, Mr. Biggs took the oars, cut the boats apart, and set sail in the direction of Petrarch’s Library.
Dorrie’s brain sizzled. The hole was huge, and no amount of bailing was going to keep the dinghy from sinking. If she couldn’t find a way to warn the lybrarians, Mr. Biggs was surely going to escape from Petrarch’s Library. With him would go the chance to stop the Foundation from reversing the crux mission. Torquemada’s power would grow again, and a lybrarian would die.
Dorrie paddled furiously with her hands, trying to force the half-submerged boat toward the lights of Petrarch’s Library. She tried not to think about the sharks and poisonous jellyfish of Crackskull Island and what Mr. Biggs might have done to the Archivist there. She was getting nowhere. In fact, the current was taking her farther out to sea. She stared toward shore. It was a very long way away, but she felt she no choice. She had to try to stop Mr. Biggs. Kicking off her boots, Dorrie dove into the water and began to swim.
For a while, keeping her eyes on the rooftops of the library, Dorrie made steady progress, but soon, the water grew rougher. One wave slammed on top of her, pushing her far beneath the sea’s surface. She came up sputtering, kicking hard, and wondered for the first time if she’d made a mistake in leaving the boat.
As Dorrie eyed the distance to the shore, an unfamiliar voice that seemed to come from deep inside herself spoke.
“You can’t swim that far.”
Dorrie kicked savagely and continued on, but her strokes felt clumsier.
“You’ll never make it,” said the voice, chewing at the connection between Dorrie’s will and her body. Her arms and legs began to thrash without purpose or plan.
Dorrie had never understood how anyone could drown, thinking one only had to float when tired and then swim on. Now, as she sank beneath the water, she understood.
Chapter 20
Shore
Dorrie woke to the sound of low voices talking. Her eyelids felt terrifically heavy. There was a soft pillow under her head and something heavy and warm on top of her. She resented the voices that had pulled her out of the simple peace of her sleep.
Slowly, Dorrie opened her eyes. She was lying in a windowed alcove in a very large round room. Ebba and Marcus were sitting on chairs nearby.
“Where I am?” she murmured.
A relieved grin split Marcus’s face. “In the human repair and preservation department.” He poked at her. “How dare you stay unconscious that long? I almost got worried.”
Ebba gathered Dorrie up in a bear hug. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, but what happened?” demanded Dorrie. “Where’s Mr. Biggs?”
In whispers, so as not to disturb the injured lybrarians in other alcoves, Marcus and Ebba took turns telling Dorrie what had happened in Petrarch’s Library while she had been out on the water.
“Mr. Biggs attacked Mistress Daraney in a corridor on her way back from Ursula’s,” said Marcus.
“Yeah,” said Ebba. “He hit her over the head with an oar, stole her peg leg, and then disappeared through the Athens archway. It took her forever to find help obviously.”
“She was furious,” said Marcus. “Apparently, he was wearing her favorite bedsheet she’d left on a clothesline down in the cove.”
“A bunch of lybrarians went after him. Mistress Daraney had others launch every boat in the cove toward Crackskull Island to see what had happened,” said Ebba. “It was Mistress Daraney who spotted you with her eagle eyes. She said you were almost a goner.”
Dorrie steeled herself. “Is the Archivist…”
“Dead?” answered Marcus. “Nah. The whole time you were out on the water, he was snoring in a rowboat on the beach.”
Joy flooded Dorrie and then confusion. “But then how did Mr. Biggs get the sailboat?”
Ebba put her finger warningly to her lips. She pointed to an alcove with drawn curtains. Behind them, Dorrie could hear the murmur of adult voices.
“Master Francesco found Lybrarian Della Porta on Crackskull Island,” whispered Ebba.
“What!” said Dorrie, sitting bolt upright.
“It turns out he hasn’t really made any progress on deciphering Petrarch’s journal,” said Marcus. “His plan was to force Mr. Biggs to give him the information he needed to break the code. Instead, Mr. Biggs broke his arm and gave him two black eyes.”
“And Mr. Biggs got away,” said Dorrie miserably. Quickly, she told them what he had told her about his plans before leaving her to die in the ocean. She couldn’t bring herself to tell them about how he’d used her to make Vox Mortis. That she had already shut up in a little box.
“So how exactly is he going to get the vials to the Foundation’s new allies?” asked Ebba.
Dorrie frowned. “He didn’t say.” She pushed the covers back. “I have to tell the lybrarians what Whim’s Gift actually is. They have to know.”
Just then, Ursula bustled over. Despite Dorrie’s protests that she was fine, Ursula wouldn’t allow Dorrie to begin to speak until she’d demonstrated she could walk, see, hear, write her name, and do a cartwheel. Finally, she sent a message to Hypatia that Dorrie was ready to talk.
When Dorrie arrived in Hypatia’s office, it was already crowded with most of the library staff.
Nervously, she began her story. When Dorrie had to explain how Mr. Biggs had used her to make more Vox Mortis, she did so quickly with as little detail as possible, as though it had happened to someone else.
“Mr. Biggs tre
ated you monstrously,” said Hypatia when she’d finished. “You were in no position to resist him on your own. It was courageous of you to try to swim back to the cove to warn us. Thank you.”
“Whim’s Gift,” Phillip said, sounding furious. “Nice polite name for such a foul substance. Though I hate to agree with him, Mr. Biggs is correct: Vox Mortis is its true name.”
Hypatia steepled her fingers. “Well, now we know. To make use of Petrarch’s Star, the Foundation needs a good deal of Vox Mortis, and to make Vox Mortis, the Foundation needs to get those vials of which Mr. Biggs spoke into the hands of their allies. We need to get to the vials first. At least we can now narrow the search to 399 BCE.”
Francesco, who hadn’t stopped pacing since the meeting began, stopped and rounded on Dorrie. “What were you thinking, going out there by yourself?”
Dorrie felt her face redden. “I-I…”
“You could have been killed!” said Francesco, his breathing ragged. “What would we have told your parents? Did you think about them?”
“She thought I was out on the water and in trouble,” said the Archivist, “and she went to my aid.”
Francesco ignored him, keeping his eyes on Dorrie. “Why must you always do things? If you just hadn’t gone out there, then Mr. Biggs wouldn’t have—”
“Francesco,” Hypatia said sharply.
Snapping his mouth shut, Francesco stalked out of the room. The door slammed behind him, shaking the frame.
Dorrie stared after him, crushed, and finished the thought. “Then Mr. Biggs wouldn’t have been able to collect the Vox Mortis from me and couldn’t have escaped.”
“Nonsense,” said Phillip firmly. “He would have found another way.”
“Please try to forgive Francesco,” said Hypatia. “He is under great strain.”
Dorrie summoned her courage. She had to know. “Lybrarian Della Porta said that if the crux mission on the History of Histories page is reversed, Torquemada’s powers will grow, but also…someone here in the Library will die. Is that true?”
The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks Page 19