The Accidental Keyhand (20 page)

Now Savi and his attackers came into view again. He was crossing blades with two swordsmen at once. Dorrie scrambled to her feet as a man with a long, thick pole caught Savi with a blow on the side of his head. He staggered but didn't fall. Dorrie felt a surge of pure rage. She longed to drive them all back and away from Savi, but she had nothing to fight with, nothing to hurl but hay, and Savi had told her to stay put. In that moment, Dorrie realized that if Savi's attackers drove him back any farther, they would be able to reach her and Udo.

“Under, under,” she cried to Udo, pointing beneath the wagon. Together, they scrambled between the heavy wooden wheels. Peering out through the wheel's spokes, Dorrie stifled another cry as one of Savi's attacker's strokes hit Savi, ghastly and hard and unforgiving. Dorrie saw Savi grimace. To Dorrie's horror, a red stain bloomed on his side. She stared at it, paralyzed.

With a snarl and all in a blur, Savi switched sword hands, parried another attack, and then thrust hard. Savi's attacker fell, his head hitting the cobbles with a thud and his blade clattering to the ground beside the hay wagon. Dorrie broke out of her trance and pounced on the hilt of the sword, dragging it beneath the wagon. The forest of shifting, shuffling legs showed her that three or four attackers were still pressing Savi.

Fighting the skirt she wore, Dorrie pulled the heavy sword back. “Don't drop it!” she ordered herself through clenched teeth. “Don't drop it!” With a grunt, she thrust the blade forward toward one of the attacker's legs as hard as she could. She closed her eyes at the last minute, but the point of the sword must have found its mark, because she felt resistance and then heard a scream. Her stomach turned violently.

She opened her eyes again to see that Savi had reversed the press and was moving his attackers backward again. Panting, Dorrie pulled back the sword. This time she forced herself to keep her eyes open and aimed for a man's calf just above his heavy boot. She heard another howl.

Suddenly there were fewer legs. She heard a crash of steel against wood and saw a club go spinning across the cobbles. Only Savi's legs and one other pair now danced before her eyes. She didn't dare thrust again. They were moving too fast and too close together. And then suddenly they were moving apart and a man tumbled to the cobbles. Savi slid down behind the wagon, his back against the wall, breathing in great hoarse rasps.

Dorrie hurled herself toward him. “Savi!” she cried out as he closed his eyes. He had gone still and deathly pale. Kneeling, she hovered over him, afraid to touch him, afraid to let him alone, afraid to make a noise, afraid of the sudden silence on the quay, afraid the way she'd never been in her life. “Don't die,” she whimpered, trying not to look at the red stain spreading along his side.

The sound of running footsteps coming closer filled her ears. With a fierce growl, she lifted her sword.

A man in a dark cloak appeared around the end of the wagon. “Friend,” he said, lifting his empty hands at the sight of Dorrie's quivering sword.

Savi took a long, shuddering breath and opened his eyes. “What took you so long, Gabriel?”

***

Back in Petrarch's Library, Dorrie sat alone before the crackling fire in Ursula's cottage, waiting for a chance to talk to Savi after Ursula finished attending to his wounds. Dorrie stirred the contents of a black kettle round and round in mechanical circles. Ursula had given her the job to stop her pacing back and forth in front of the door to the room full of beds where Ursula tended her patients.

Dorrie's thoughts turned along with the spoon. She saw Udo Gurren sprawled, knife at his throat on the cobbles. She saw the thugs creeping in from all directions toward Savi, the stain of blood spreading along his side. She felt again the fear that had almost paralyzed her below the wagon. People had been willing to hurt other people to keep Loos's manuscript a secret. Udo had risked his life to bring the manuscript out of its hiding place, and Savi had risked his life to save that man and to keep the manuscript from being destroyed or hidden again.

Dorrie had seen the danger that mere words could put a person in. She had seen what the Lybrariad's work meant to those they protected. Savi had made a difference. He had stopped something horrible from happening to Udo, and perhaps now a hundred or twenty or even five fewer people would be accused of witchcraft and made to suffer like Ursula, or die. A time-traveling lybrarian's job was exciting, yes, but scary and so dangerous. Dorrie shivered, thinking about what a world without a Lybrariad might look like.

Finally, Ursula let Dorrie in to see Savi. Ursula took a closer look at Dorrie's torn dress and dirt-smeared face. “So she—”

“Admirably if…unconventionally,” said Savi, wincing as he stood. “I thank you, apprentice. For everything you did today.”

Dorrie's breath caught. She almost glanced behind her to see if someone else was standing there. Savi had called her “apprentice.” Her heart swelled with pride. “I don't think I've really been paying attention to what the Lybrariad's trying to do,” Dorrie said all in a rush. “I've just been thinking about—I've just been thinking about what I could get out of staying here. You know, sticking up for Mr. Kornberger a little, but mostly thinking about how cool it would be to learn how to sword-fight and go to other times.”

“And now?”

Dorrie bit her lip. “Remember when you asked me if I wanted to apprentice to a swordsman or a lybrarian?”

“Yes.”

Dorrie met Savi's gaze. “I want to apprentice to a lybrarian.”

Savi was silent a moment and then smiled ever so slightly. “Well, for now, go get cleaned up.”

She turned to leave.

“And don't forget to give me back the dress. A hundred swordsmen I'd gladly face, but not Mistress Lovelace empty-handed.”

THE MIDSUMMER LYBRARIANS' CONFERENCE AND FESTIVAL

Word spread about Dorrie's actions with Savi at the Porte de Nesle. Francesco had been furious that Savi had taken Dorrie out of Petrarch's Library, but since neither Francesco nor Hypatia had told Savi that he couldn't do such a thing, Francesco had to content himself with blustering.

The apprentices, however, spent hours reading out a feast's worth of caramels, hot chocolate, rice pudding, baklava, and sweet custard breads to spread out on a table in the den. Sven and Saul put Dorrie up on a chair with a bedsheet cloak and a garland of olive leaves on her head, while Mathilde read out a limerick she'd written to document forever Dorrie's adventure.

The lybrarians seem to have more smiles for her in general, and Phillip gave her a bear hug out on the Commons, saying, “I knew you belonged here!” No longer did Dorrie have to hear Millie mentally tack “…you morons” onto anything meant for Dorrie's ears, because Millie now refused to speak to Dorrie at all. Even at Master Casanova's rehearsals, Millie carefully avoided even looking at Dorrie as if determined to balance out, with pointed oblivion, all the attention that Dorrie had been getting.

Between all the smiles and pats on the back and the undying honor of Mathilde's limerick, Dorrie felt an occasional twinge. The page from
History
of
Histories
still lay in Athens. Would the lybrarians and apprentices treat her with so much goodwill and acceptance if they knew that she was responsible for it being there? She shook off the worry—nothing could be done until the lybrarians reopened the Athens archway anyway.

Soon Dorrie's exploits were set aside as a topic, and all the talk at the apprentices' table shifted to the upcoming Midsummer Lybrarians' Conference. Keyhands and lybrarians from all the wherens would soon be descending on Petrarch's Library for three days of sport, entertainment, celebration, and meetings. They'd compete in the Lybrarian Games, which supposedly featured just as fierce competition in timed scroll-shelving and book-cart racing, as in rappelling and dagger-throwing, and Casanova would present his play, which actually seemed to be coming along quite well.

Dorrie was looking forward to the conference with both excitement and dread, for when the last event had concluded, it would be time for the Lybrariad to make its decision about her and Marcus. While Dorrie ached to see the rest of her family and Passaic, she wanted to return to them as a true apprentice of the Lybrariad, not just someone who had had a wonderful adventure that was over.

Her experience in Paris had filled her with fresh energy for her sword-fighting lessons. No longer did she spend her time daydreaming about the Passaic Academy students cheering her on as she conquered Tiffany Tolliver. Instead, she saw herself fighting side by side with Cyrano de Bergerac to free people like Cornelius Loos from their prisons. Preferably before they died in them.

The first day of the Midsummer Festival finally arrived. Getting through the Library's most central rooms and corridors was now difficult, choked as they were with people arriving from every corner of the world and from fifty different centuries. Every handcart had been pressed into use and loaded with boxy suitcases, cloth sacks, carpetbags, leather satchels, baskets, and heavy-looking wooden trunks.

People called out to one another and stopped in inconvenient clumps to chat. All day long, in her travels through the Library, Dorrie had to dodge this way and that, her head in constant danger of being stove in by heavy luggage toted on visitors' shoulders.

In the Gymnasium that early evening, Dorrie and Savi had just finished a lesson when the distant sound of tambourine and drum erupted. A merry bout of fiddling followed. Over at the Villa de Papyri, the Opening Day Party had begun.

Savi hung up their swords. “Your parry, though still dreadful in many ways, now has a little something to it.”

A thrill ran down Dorrie's spine. It was the closest thing to a compliment that Savi had ever paid her. Dorrie hid her grin and went into one of the changing rooms. Pulling the wadded-up pirate costume that she'd worn to the Pen and Sword Festival out of her satchel, she sighed.

Almost everyone at tonight's party would be wearing fun clothes from whichever era and place tickled their imaginations. Checked out from the circulation desk with Mistress Lovelace's blessings. Still unable to produce their overdue dressing gown and bathrobe, Dorrie and Marcus hadn't dared approach her. They'd decided to attend the party in their Passaic clothes, as a pirate and a twenty-first-century teenage sleepwalker.

Out in the Gymnasium, Dorrie could hear Savi reciting his latest epistle to Madeleine. When Dorrie emerged, Savi abruptly stopped speaking. He wore his regular clothing, but set off by his best cape and hat.

Dorrie hitched her satchel onto her shoulder. “The party already sounds crowded!”

“Oh, it'll be packed,” said Savi. Dorrie watched him fold the papers he held into a small square. He carefully stowed them in a red cloth pouch that hung from a thin braid of leather around his waist. “Lots of visiting field lybrarians.”

Dorrie picked up Savi's feathered hat from a bench and handed it to him. Savi settled it on his head.

“So you're going to go through with it on your own?” asked Dorrie.

Savi brushed at his sleeve. “How can I not when you've set me such an example? When day after day you are willing to boldly present yourself to me with such a severe paucity of skill in the art of the sword that I tremble for you?” He bestowed the tiniest of smiles upon Dorrie. “If you can do that, than surely I can stand in front of…Madeleine all by myself”—here he paused—“whether I make a hash of it or not.”

Dorrie didn't try to stop her grin.

“But first,” he said, holding out his arm. “The party.”

At the Villa de Papyri, they emerged into an open area enclosed on three sides by long, low grand-looking buildings, each with a half-dozen doors opening onto covered walkways. A glinting pool of clear water rippled in the center of the space. It was much cleaner looking and more spacious than the bath beside the Gymnasium and open to the sky. Candles floated in the pool, and reflections of their tiny flames danced in the water. Someone had hung Chinese lanterns all along the covered walkways that ran along the surrounding buildings. The thrum of conversation and laughter mixed with the music filled the air.

“As I said in
Areopagitica
,” Dorrie heard a loud voice pronounce. “He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.”

The tall speaker was addressing Phillip, who was leaning against a pillar as though hoping its atoms would rearrange themselves and allow him to disappear inside it.

“If I may add to that thought, Mr. Milton!” said a very short man beside the tall one. “The opinion compelled to silence may be the opinion that describes a truth.”

Phillip suddenly noticed Savi and Dorrie and waved frantically to them. “Oh! Savi!” he called out with clear desperation.

Dorrie began to wave back, but Savi held her arm down.

“Just walk along. No need to engage,” Savi said in a singsong voice, steering Dorrie past Phillip and the strangers.

“Oh, Savi!” called Phillip again, more loudly.

Dorrie glanced back.

“Well, don't look right at them!” growled Savi, glaring at Dorrie as if she'd used his sleeve to blow her nose.

“I think he needs us!” Dorrie protested.

Phillip was looking pleadingly at them and making desperate gestures with his finger across his throat, as the men surrounding him droned on with their conversation.

Savi sighed. “I am about to officially pay Phillip back for any favors rendered in the past or future!” He spun on his heel and headed for Phillip, Dorrie trailing in his wake.

A third stranger with a bushy beard was speaking. “New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed, without any other reason but—”

“Many pardons, gentlemen,” Savi interrupted loudly, striding through the living fence the conversationalists had made around Phillip. “Tedious keyhand business.” He bowed and then spun on his heel again. Phillip gave a passable impression of disappointment and followed Savi out of their midst.

“Beware the Johns!” Phillip warned. He shook his head as if to clear his ears. “Otherwise known as the Titans of Free Expression. Not that I don't love what they have to say.”

“Over and over again, and they hardly go far enough,” said Savi.

“Who are the Titans of Free Expression?” asked Dorrie, looking back at the huddled threesome.

“John Milton, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill,” said Phillip. “Look them up sometime.” He rocked up on his toes. “Now where is Ursula? I'd just convinced her to dance when they cornered me.”

Dorrie scanned the crowd. People sat and stood in little clusters on the pool's patio, or eased through the crowds with plates full of dolmas and tall glasses of white beer or pomegranate punch. Others danced at the far end of the pool where the musicians sent the bright, stinging music into the air. Dorrie shivered with pleasure.

“I don't see Ursula,” said Savi, his lip curling. “But there's Mr. Gormly, using every talent he possesses at the buffet table.”

“You really are terrible to him, you know,” said Phillip amiably.

As they watched, Francesco marched up to Mr. Gormly, tore the plate he was filling out of his hands, and pointed to the spot on the patio that Dorrie supposed he was supposed to be patrolling.

“I feel sorry for him,” said Dorrie. “He doesn't even like the job. Really. He's told me so.”

A little way down the patio surrounding the pool of water, Dorrie caught sight of a group of female apprentices clustered around Saul, their giggles curling and twisting around him. Saul looked earnestly confused.

“There's Ursula!” Dorrie shouted, pointing. Beyond where Saul leaned, at one end of the pool, iron gates opened into a large garden. Ursula was being led around a fountain on the back of the aurochs by Ebba.

Dorrie watched proudly. “Hasn't Ebba done a good job training Roger? And you should see what she's done with Moe.”

“Excuse me,” said Phillip, moving off into the crowd. “If Ursula can ride that beast, she can certainly give dancing with me a go!”

“Hi!” shouted Marcus from behind Dorrie, his head bobbing to the rhythms of the music. He held a cup of pomegranate juice in each hand.

Dorrie reached for one.

“Get your own,” said Marcus, taking a sip out of each cup.

Dorrie pulled one out of his grasp.

Marcus looked around them, satisfied. “Lybrarians gone wild.”

Dorrie grinned. “I can't see Mr. Scuggans enjoying this.” She tried the punch. It was tart and sweet and delicious.

For the next two hours, Dorrie and Ebba danced with the other apprentices, rode the aurochs, and tried everything on the buffet table. Dorrie had only been forced to endure three minutes of Millie's company when they stood waiting to have their glasses refilled with pomegranate punch at the same time. Izel stood with Millie, wearing a long, sky-blue velvet dress. “It's from nineteenth-century Venice,” Izel had said, looking at Dorrie's stained and tattered “pirate” outfit with a wrinkled nose.

She had lifted her foot slightly to show Dorrie the soft suede ankle boot she wore. It was the color of milk. “These were last worn by Caroline Bonaparte, Queen of Naples.” Dorrie wasn't sorry when Moe experienced a relapse and, snarling, leaped from Ebba's shoulder onto Izel's head, ruining her painstakingly arranged hair.

Later, as Dorrie watched some of the visiting field lybrarians perform acrobatics on ropes strung across the pool, Savi sidled by. “I'm off,” he said.

“Good luck,” whispered Dorrie.

When the performance ended, Ebba went to get them more mince tarts, and Dorrie sought out a quiet patch of patio. She eased herself back in a woven rush chair, the scent of jasmine in her nose. Her heart stretched satisfyingly at the turn her life had taken. This was her world now too, as much as Passaic was. And she'd proven her worth and dedication to the Library at least a bit. They had to let her stay on.

Hypatia stood nearby, talking with a few lybrarians Dorrie didn't know. The light from a nearby torch illuminated the scars on Hypatia's face as she laughed at something one of the other lybrarians had said. Dorrie wondered, not for the first time, how exactly Hypatia had gotten those scars. A splashing attracted her attention. Kenzo, Saul, Mathilde, and a few people Dorrie didn't know stood in the pool, a blanket suspended between them. She giggled as an older woman, wearing an enormous flowery bonnet, threw herself onto the blanket.

Ebba returned with the mince tarts and Marcus. “Dorrie!” she hissed, squeezing in beside her on the chair. “Izel says that Aspasia and the other Athens keyhands are going back in first thing in the morning. They're going to hold this um…um….symposium thing where people sit around and talk about an idea. They're going to invite all the big decision-makers in Athens to debate Socrates' situation and try to argue their way to a pardon.”