The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks

by Jen Swann Downey

  “She was killed in an ambush planned by Torquemada a week after Francesco rescued her from the dungeon. A poem she had written while imprisoned would ultimately ruin Torquemada’s chances of extending his Spanish Inquisition into other parts of the world, but Torquemada didn’t know about that when he murdered her. He just wanted her dead so no one would find out he’d fathered a child.”

  “That’s horrible,” whispered Dorrie.

  “He tried to kill Millie as well,” said Phillip. “But Francesco was able to save her.”

  “Who else knows?” Dorrie asked finally.

  “Now?” said Phillip. “The Library staff, the keyhands, and Hypatia of course, but Francesco only told us of the direct danger to Millie some weeks ago. The day before Mr. Biggs escaped.”

  “Why did he wait?”

  Phillip frowned. “He knew the Lybrariad was working as hard as it could to stop the Foundation from reversing the Torquemada crux mission, even without knowing that Millie’s life hung in the balance. He’d never told anyone about Torquemada being Millie’s father. I think he wanted to protect her from that knowledge by keeping her danger a secret.” He folded his hands over his generous belly. “And he had another reason to hold back. When Francesco returned from his mission in Castile with a baby in his arms, he didn’t talk to the rest of us about what had happened. He went into a meeting with Hypatia to report on Sophia’s death, and after he came out, he was no longer serving as a keyhand. Nobody knew why. I regret to say that a rumor that he’d been suspended went unchecked.”

  “I’d heard that rumor,” said Dorrie. “So what really happened?”

  “He gave up his keyhand status himself,” said Phillip. “In the terrible moment when he’d been ambushed by Torquemada’s soldiers and they’d killed Sophia, a woman he’d come to love, Francesco came to within a hairsbreadth of killing Torquemada. Lybrarians are prohibited from dealing a killing blow, even in self-defense and certainly not to exact vengeance.”

  “The twelfth principle,” said Dorrie softly. They hadn’t yet got to it in Hypatia’s practicum, but Dorrie had seen it listed.

  “Francesco didn’t kill Torquemada,” Phillip said, “and that was his heroism, but he didn’t trust himself anymore. He had felt the desire to kill Torquemada so keenly that he was afraid of losing control again. Taking on the job of director of security, he was able to spend more time in the Library and take better care of Millie, and he didn’t have to go out on missions so often. It felt…safer.”

  Dorrie’s sympathy for Francesco grew. “So if Francesco hadn’t rescued Millie and her mom from the dungeon, what would have happened to Sophia’s poem?”

  Ursula hung the kettle back on its hook. “It would never have seen the light of day, and Torquemada would have extended his Inquisition.”

  “And Millie?”

  “Torquemada would have killed her.”

  “And if the reversal of the crux mission happens…”

  “Then that will be her history.”

  Dorrie didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to make a scene. But something was going to happen. She could feel her control crumbling. She slowly bent forward, her arms folding around her head. A moan escaped her.

  She heard Ursula’s footsteps and hated that she heard them. Hated that she had to continue to be aware. To know. She felt Ursula crouch down beside her. She put a hand on Dorrie’s back.

  “I know this has been terribly hard to hear,” said Ursula, “but we have to ask you to keep this information to yourself. Millie does not know that her life is in danger, and Francesco wants to keep it that way.”

  “Shouldn’t she know?” said Dorrie, straightening up.

  “Francesco believes it would be too hard for her to live a normal life under such a black cloud.”

  “Well, it’s hard to live a normal life when you’re dead too!” cried Dorrie. “And she is living under a black cloud right now. She thinks Francesco is ashamed of her for being Torquemada’s daughter.”

  Ursula looked troubled.

  “And shouldn’t she have the chance to fight for her life?” Dorrie asked. “I’d want to know if my life were in danger.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Phillip. “But those are Francesco’s wishes.”

  When Dorrie returned to the attics, the den was deserted. She went straight to her room, planning to wake up Ebba. Amazingly, she was still awake, sitting amid a sea of books, nothing left of the candle at the bottom of her bed but a flickering flame in a melted pool of wax.

  “There you are!” she said before Dorrie could speak. “I went to the Scooby-Doo Library three times, the Inky Pot twice. The Celsus—”

  “There’s something I have to tell—”

  “No! There’s something I have to show you first,” interrupted Ebba. “Remember when we were under Mr. Sacks-Sandbottom’s desk and that envelope fell on the floor?”

  “Yeah,” said Dorrie uncertainly.

  “Do you remember the little picture in one corner? You know, where a return address usually goes? At least in some wherens.”

  Dorrie thought back. “Yeah. The thing that kind of looked like a folded-up bat?”

  “That’s funny,” said Ebba, tilting her head. “I thought it looked like a lady in a hat. Anyway,” she said, opening True Spine-Tingling Ghost Stories from around the World. “I didn’t say anything at the time, but it was as if I’d seen the picture before.” She tapped her finger on the illustration of the black-fingered skeleton. “And I had!”

  At first Dorrie saw nothing. She tilted the book so that more of the candlelight reached it. Above the skeleton head, fine lines made a perfect copy of the picture on the envelope. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. “It’s the same!”

  “Exactly!” said Ebba. “And that’s not all.” She dug out her copy of The Foundation: Essential Dictums and thrust it into Dorrie’s hands.

  “What?”

  “Remember the three stacked diamonds?”

  Dorrie, exhausted and still burdened with the news about Millie, grew impatient. “What about them?”

  “Well, doesn’t the folded bat picture look like it’s hiding three stacked diamonds?”

  Dorrie stared at the picture above the skeleton’s head and then at the white book’s. At first, the images seemed to have nothing to do with each other, but then, as if tilting one of those magic picture prizes from a box of Cracker Jack, she could suddenly see the three diamonds embedded in the folded bat.

  She sucked in her breath. “One is inside the other! Maybe Lady Whitcomb is connected to the Foundation!”

  “That’s how it seemed to me,” whispered Ebba.

  Dorrie cast her mind back over all she remembered of her encounters with Lady Whitcomb. She grabbed Ebba’s arm, her eyes widening. “Didn’t she mention Timbuktu when we were under the desk?”

  “And bottles,” said Ebba. “Yes, Lady Agnes said Lady Whitcomb’s family owns ginger beer factories, but what if she was talking about waiting for Vox Mortis vials?”

  Dorrie’s heart began to thunder. “Ebba, Mr. Biggs said that only he knew where the Vox Mortis vials were stashed and that he had to send them off to all the Foundation’s new associates in the past. I’ve been assuming, since he used the Athens, 399 BCE archway, that the vials were hidden in the city. But it’s been weeks since Mr. Biggs escaped, and none of the missions have been reversed yet.”

  Ebba wrinkled her nose. “That might just be because the Foundation’s new friends haven’t finished making enough of that foul Vox Mortis.”

  “Or maybe he had to travel a great distance to get to them,” said Dorrie. She began to pace the tiny bedroom. “Just because we saw Mr. Biggs in Athens that one time last quarter doesn’t mean that’s where the Stronghold actually connects with 399 BCE or where the vials were being stored.”

  “They could be any place in
399 BCE,” Ebba whispered.

  “Like in that cave,” Dorrie said grimly. “And if Mr. Biggs is trying to get to Timbuktu from Athens and he has to travel the regular way—walking and by boat and all that—of course it would take him weeks.”

  Ebba threw aside The Foundation: Essential Dictums. “But if we use the Timbuktu, 1567 archway, we could be there in a few hours.”

  “And maybe we could get to the vials first,” cried Dorrie.

  “If his ship sinks or an adder gets him anyway,” said Ebba.

  Dorrie frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if Mr. Biggs stowed the vials in the cave there around 399 BCE, they’ll only still be there in 1567 if he never got to retrieve them.”

  “A lot might happen to a person between Athens and Timbuktu,” said Dorrie, hoping. “Ebba, we have to talk to Millie.”

  Chapter 23

  Valiance and Verity

  Millie had been shocked when Dorrie asked her to wait for her after their Staying Afloat practicum, and Izel positively boggled when Millie had shrugged her shoulders and agreed. In near silence, Dorrie led Millie to the Scooby-Doo Library. To her credit, Millie made no complaint about the rat-infested tunnel or even the fact that Darling, who had finished destroying her enclosure, was lying on the back of the couch, cracking a chicken bone to pieces. Ebba was sitting beside her, idly playing with Dorrie’s practice sword. She hastily stuck it in the elephant leg with the other weapons when Dorrie and Millie arrived.

  “So what’s this all about?” asked Millie, standing stiffly just inside the door.

  Dorrie glanced at Ebba to draw strength and hoped she was doing the right thing. “I’m not supposed to tell you, but your life is in danger.”

  “Oh yeah?” Millie barked, sounding very much like Francesco. “How?”

  Dorrie drew another breath. “You’re the person Lybrarian Della Porta was talking about when he told Izel that reversing the crux mission would cost someone in Petrarch’s Library their life.”

  Dorrie told her all she’d learned from the History of Histories book and how Millie’s survival was entwined with Francesco’s mission to save her mother twelve years ago and how Francesco had kept the identity of Millie’s mother and father a secret to protect Millie from the burden of knowing that her life was in jeopardy.

  Millie’s eyes had glittered throughout Dorrie’s explanation—but with what emotion, Dorrie wasn’t sure.

  “I’m sorry if you wish I hadn’t told you,” said Dorrie, bracing for anger, “but I just kept thinking that I’d want to know if my life were in danger.”

  A look of deep joy slowly bloomed in Millie’s face. “So he wasn’t ashamed of me,” she murmured.

  “Definitely not,” Dorrie said. “Just terrified of…well…you…uh…disappearing.”

  Millie’s eyes shone. “And my mother’s poem made all the difference in keeping Torquemada in check?”

  Dorrie nodded.

  “You understand, right?” said Ebba carefully. “You know that if the mission Francesco ran gets reversed—”

  “That I’ll die? Or never live? Or whatever?” Millie snorted in her old scornful way. “That just makes me really mad! That’s something I can fight. It’s nothing compared to thinking Francesco thought there was something wrong with me. That I was someone who was too evil-spawned to be a lybrarian.”

  Dorrie felt a mixed pang of empathy and resentment, Millie had often said in one way or another that Dorrie wasn’t good enough to become a lybrarian simply because she hadn’t grown up in Petrarch’s Library. “I know what that feels like,” she said with a bit more sharpness than she meant to.

  Millie met her eyes. “I guess you do.” She seemed to squirm a little. “Sorry about that.”

  Dorrie shrugged. “Yeah, well, I feel kind of stupid even thinking about it right now, but thanks.”

  Millie got to her feet. “Now what?”

  “Well,” said Dorrie, exchanging glances with Ebba, who began to dig in her satchel for the books to show Millie, “we have a lead to follow.”

  “Our evidence is kind of flimsy, not enough to bring to the Lybrariad, but Ebba and I think there’s a small chance the Vox Mortis vials might be out in this cave in the desert not too far from the Timbuktu, 1567 archway.”

  Dorrie and Ebba explained why as Darling, who had finished her bone, slid off the couch to gnaw on the fireplace poker.

  “I’m in,” said Millie when she’d heard their idea.

  That night, as quietly as they could, Dorrie and Ebba crept out of their room with the burlap bags they’d stuffed with their supplies, and met Millie in the den. Together, they picked their way with utmost care through the chambers of Petrarch’s Library, having to dodge and hide from several research runners despite the late hour.

  In the Chinese library, by the dim light of the glowing calendar to the right of the Timbuktu archway, they changed into the desert clothing that Ebba had checked out with the excuse that her family wanted to get prepared early for their trip to Mali at the end of the quarter.

  Done dressing first, Ebba pulled a fat Encyclopedia of Mammals out of her pack. “It has a very vivid description of a camel in it,” she whispered. “I hope the saddle comes too.”

  While Dorrie pushed the plug more firmly into one of the sloshing water skins, she watched Millie strap on a curved sword, then a dagger. Millie was in the process of strapping on a second dagger when she caught Dorrie’s stare.

  “What?” she said.

  “Do you really need to bring so many?”

  Millie shot home the last buckle. “Francesco says you should never go out into a wheren with fewer than three weapons.” She peered into her pack. “I brought eleven. All made in Petrarch’s Library.” She tossed a small sword to Dorrie.

  Busy opening to the right page of the encyclopedia, Ebba declined Millie’s offer of a scimitar. “I’ve got my slingshot.”

  Millie rummaged further. “I also brought a tinderbox, two pounds of jerky, a fishing line and hook, a tent, a needle and thread for stitches, bandages and salve, and a snakebite kit.”

  Dorrie stared at it all. “Nothing like planning for success.”

  Millie gave her an unyielding look. “Nothing like planning for survival.”

  Feeling exposed but preferring to attempt the camel read-out inside Petrarch’s Library rather than out in the unfamiliar Spoke Library, Dorrie kept anxious watch on the corridor while Millie kept her eyes trained on the archway to warn of any late-arriving lybrarians.

  Rigid with concentration, Ebba knelt by the book and placed her fingertips on the drawing. She began to whisper the passage aloud. Dorrie saw her begin to sweat, and in another moment, a little hump of something velvety appeared beneath her fingers.

  “I feel her!” gasped Ebba.

  Slowly, the little mound became a pair of immense lips pulled back from a set of yellowed, Halloween pumpkin teeth. The book bent and flexed as more of the nose emerged and then a rolling brown eye surrounded by lashes thicker even than Saul’s. With a sudden plunge, the camel shook itself free of the page, its neck festooned with lengths of woven red strapping hung with tassels. It towered over them.

  Dorrie marveled at it.

  “Oh, you great, big, darling, beautiful creature,” Ebba crooned as it tried to stick its head in what looked like a Ming vase.

  “I sure hope it’s well-trained,” said Millie.

  Ebba patted the camel. “You know, the book didn’t say anything about that.” She got busy reading out a second one.

  A few minutes later, the apprentices and two camels stood in the empty Spoke Library in Timbuktu. Dorrie had been surprised at how willing the camels had been to go through the archway.

  Getting the camels out into the faintly moonlit street through the low doorway proved not nearly as easy. The apprentices had nearly despaired of
being able to get any further with their plan when the camels, for reasons known only to themselves, changed their minds with such suddenness that they nearly crushed the three girls as they clambered through.

  After a bit of a struggle, Ebba got both camels to kneel. She explained to Millie and Dorrie how to get on and how to stay on when the camel stood so many times that Millie finally shut her up with, “I know, I know”—but then did topple off when the camel stood and had to start all over again.

  At last, with Dorrie and Ebba perched on the second camel, they were on their way.

  Dorrie felt for the compass she’d tied onto her sword belt. Before she could consult it, her camel broke into a gallumphing run. Dorrie screamed and threw her arms around Ebba. They flew past low doorways flanked by water cisterns and assortments of jars, and when the camel took a sharp turn, Dorrie almost had her head knocked off by a beam sticking out of a stucco wall. She ducked just in time. When she dared lift her head again, they were bursting out of the end of a street and into what looked like an endless sea of sand. The camel slowed down and came to a splay-legged stop.

  The second camel joined them, Millie hanging off to one side.

  “These are not well-trained camels,” Millie said as she fell again.

  After Millie remounted, and the other camel turned around and bit Dorrie’s foot, Dorrie finally had a chance to get their bearings. Their hurried research on caves in the desert surrounding Timbuktu had turned up a few results, but one had excited them. A book had described a cave at the base of a rock formation called the Crocodile Cliffs as being unpleasant and infrequently visited, and five miles northwest of Timbuktu.

  “We can’t just keep calling them ‘first camel’ and ‘second camel,’” said Ebba as they plodded across the sand in the deep dark.

  Millie snorted. “They don’t deserve names.”

  “They’re letting us ride them,” said Ebba. “And they might be helping us find the vials.” She took off one of the two scarves she had wrapped around her head and tied it around her camel’s neck. “I dub thee Verity.” She looked back at Millie. “Would you mind dubbing yours Valiant?”