The Accidental Keyhand (13 page)

“That's your favorite too,” Izel purred to Millie. “Maybe you two can spar sometime.”

“Really?” said Dorrie, excitement surging through her.

Millie lifted a sword with a leather-covered tip out of a scabbard that hung off the back of her chair. “Here, catch.”

Dorrie just managed to catch the tossed sword by its hilt. Proudly, she held it aloft.

Millie's eyes flicked to Izel's. “We can go down to the Gymnasium and spar right now, if you want.”

“I'd love to!” cried Dorrie.

“Um, Dorrie…” began Ebba.

“Let me just get my sword,” said Dorrie, hardly hearing Ebba. The prospect of really sparring, not to entertain an audience, but to prepare to face a true villain, made Dorrie's heart pound with pleasure.

In her bedroom, she rummaged in her duffel bag, working to untangle her sword from its nest of sweatshirt sleeves, dirty socks, and candy wrappers. Ebba stuck her head through the door. “Hey, Dorrie,” she said quietly. “Millie didn't ask you to spar to be nice. She and Izel are just hoping to make you look bad.”

“I'll do fine. I've practiced for years,” said Dorrie, finally pulling the sword free. “This is what I'm
meant
to do.”

“Are you coming or not?” yelled Millie from out in the den.

“Coming,” Dorrie yelled back.

***

In the Gymnasium, Millie and Dorrie threaded their way along the wall, around lybrarians and students preparing for practice or recovering in states of sweaty exhaustion. Millie found them an open place on the Gymnasium floor.

“You're sure you're experienced enough to do this?” asked Millie.

“Definitely,” said Dorrie.

For a fleeting moment, as Millie unsheathed her sword in a swift, practiced motion, Dorrie felt a prick of unease. She shook it off. Recalling Mr. Kornberger's insistence on a salute, Dorrie began to slowly raise her blade. Millie rolled her eyes.

“Don't be cheap, Millie,” came a voice from the edge of the Gymnasium. It was the man with the enormous nose that she'd seen fencing so thrillingly when Ebba had first showed her the Gymnasium and then again in Francesco's office. Francesco had called him “Savi.” He was lolling on a bench, his face wet with sweat, as if he'd just been working hard. An enormous shaggy-haired man sat on his left and, on his right, a woman with deep wrinkles and a gray knot of hair.

Millie quickly matched Dorrie's gesture. She had a new expression on her face. One that confused Dorrie. One of tentative triumph. “Will you start us, Mistress Mai?” called Millie loudly, her gaze on Dorrie.

Dorrie caught her breath.
Mistress
Mai.
The lybrarian teaching the Renaissance blades practicum.

The woman nodded.

“To five, please,” said Millie.

With her heart beginning to pound, Dorrie shifted into the en-garde position that Mr. Kornberger had taught her.

“
Allez!
” cried Mistress Mai.

Before Dorrie had even moved, Millie had touched Dorrie's shoulder with the blunted tip of her sword.

“One,” said Millie roughly, as Dorrie stared at the spot.

Dorrie shook herself and again took her en-garde position. Over Millie's shoulder, she caught sight of Savi staring at her feet. One of his eyes seemed to have grown and the other to have shrunk in an expression of undisguised horror.

Dorrie glanced quickly at the floor behind her, wondering if she was about to step into something disgusting, but saw nothing. She turned back. Savi made an emphatic separating motion with his hands. Dorrie glanced at Millie and saw that she had her feet spread more widely apart than Dorrie's. Quickly, Dorrie shifted into a wider stance.

“
Allez!
” cried Mistress Mai again. Millie attacked. Dorrie managed to parry once before Millie knocked the blade clean out of Dorrie's hand and touched her on the chest with her own blade.

“Two,” said Millie.

Slowly bending down to pick up her blade, Dorrie felt her head whirling. She couldn't understand what was happening.
She
knew
how
to
use
a
sword. Didn't she?

“
Allez!
” came Mistress Mai's command for the third time.

In an instant, Millie sprang at her. Dorrie met Millie's blows with her own sword any way she could. Clumsily, never quite in time. Meeting them at all and not tripping over her own feet demanded Dorrie's full attention. Clang, clang, clang. Dorrie reached deeper for breath.

“Three,” rang out Millie's voice.

Mistress Mai set them going a fourth time. As much as she tried to do something different, Dorrie only found herself stumbling backward in an infuriatingly inescapable circle of Millie's casual design. Dorrie's arm began to burn, growing heavier with every passing second. Millie didn't even look like she was trying! Struggling to keep her sword aloft, her own ragged breath loud in her ears, Dorrie felt that the center of her world was caving in. Something seemed to tear in her chest.
She
didn't know anything about sword-fighting!

Once more, Millie's blade tip found Dorrie's shoulder.

“Four!” Millie came in close. “Fencing you is like fencing a tree,” she muttered. “Mistress Mai is never going to let you join her practicum.”

Mortified, Dorrie had no breath with which to respond. Sweat poured down her face. Her knees trembled.

The call of “
Allez!
” roused her again. Anger, fueled by humiliation, poured its last energy into Dorrie's arms, and she spent it on her first thrust of their encounter. Millie parried it easily and touched Dorrie lightly for the fifth time.

“Thanks for the bout,” murmured Millie. “Glad we all know your level now. Keyhand.”

Spent, Dorrie let the tip of her sword fall to the ground and bent over it, her lungs burning with the effort of keeping her in oxygen, her eyes swimming in sweat. The blood pounded in Dorrie's temples. She squeezed her eyes shut on humiliated tears. Dorrie didn't want to recover, didn't want to look up and face the onlookers.

Mistress Mai's voice floated hazily over her head. “Don't feel a bit bad about that effort, child. Millie's been practicing for years.”

“You were courageous to try,” said the shaggy-haired man.

Dorrie still couldn't make herself straighten. Courage was what you showed when you knew something was going to be scary or hard and you did it anyway. But Dorrie hadn't felt frightened facing Millie. She had thought she knew something. Enough to hold her own with another kid at least, but she hadn't been able to get one touch.

Tiffany's jeers at the Pen and Sword Festival echoed in Dorrie's ears.
Tiffany.
Dorrie's heart seemed to fold down into itself. Tiffany waiting in Passaic for Dorrie to return for their bout. Lavinia had been right. Tiffany was going to destroy her, and Mr. Kornberger was going to pay.

“You'd have to know something to get a touch on her,” said Savi. “But you were a nervy sort of a fool to try.”

Dorrie forced herself to look up.

“As difficult for me to get a touch on the legendary Savi de Cyrano de Bergerac,” said the shaggy-haired man.

Savi
de
Cyrano
de
Bergerac.
The name tickled at Dorrie's memory.

The shaggy-haired man stood and stretched. “Though you'd think his big, ugly nose would make an easy enough target.”

He and Savi burst out laughing.

“Yes,” said Savi, “and the prudent recognize a big nose as the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, and generous man.”

Dorrie felt in grave danger of breaking down in full-on tears. “Thanks for the help,” she said in a strangled voice. Turning on her heel, she looked around wildly for an escape route. A door leading to a courtyard hung ajar. Dorrie headed for it at a run.

Outside, she found a bench set in a clump of bushes, out of sight of the Gymnasium doorway. Huddling there, she felt her tears brim over. Dorrie tried not to make the little sobbing sounds that bring people who want to see if you're all right.
I
was
meant
to
do
this.
Dorrie mocked her words to Ebba bitterly, every muscle in her body contracting at the humiliating memory of announcing that and then failing so epically.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her arm and stared at her fingertips. How was the Lybrariad ever going to accept her as a real apprentice when she didn't even possess the one skill she'd claimed as her own? She groaned out loud. Whether they did or not, she'd still have to face Tiffany. And her odds of beating her no longer felt like fifty-fifty.

A shadow fell across her knees. Dorrie looked up. Savi stood beside one of the sheltering bushes. Dorrie felt her face warm. She looked down quickly.

“Ah, the duelist from the future,” he said, his eyes dancing. “If it's any comfort, I'm sure Millie knew from the moment she saw you wrap your hand around the hilt of your sword that you knew next to nothing.”

“Is it that obvious?” cried Dorrie.

“That Millie played the churl to your fool? But, of course.”

Dorrie remembered the way Savi's sword had danced the first time she had seen him sparring in the Gymnasium. Oh, to be able to make a sword move like that, she thought fiercely. To face Tiffany with that kind of skill. Suddenly Dorrie didn't care how much more of a fool she looked like. “I'm staying here for four weeks,” she shot out breathlessly.

“Yes, I know.”

Dorrie licked her lips, feeling desperate and fiercely determined all at once. “Will you let me be your apprentice? Temporarily, I mean? And teach me what you know? I'll work hard!”

“Sacre bleu,” Savi swore under his breath. He must have meant it, for Dorrie heard it loud and clear in French. He ran his hand through his hair. He seemed to gather himself. “And do you want to serve as this apprentice to a swordsman or to a lybrarian?”

Dorrie stared back at him. “I…I…” She couldn't make herself say “lybrarian.” It didn't feel true.

Savi unsheathed the sword that hung at his side so quickly that Dorrie didn't even have time to flinch. “You have a child's romantic ideas about the sword, I suppose.” His eyes looked both hard and sorrowful.

She stood and faced him. “It's…It's…a matter of honor.”

“Honor,” he scoffed, turning the sword so that sunshine glanced off the blade. “Honor and what else?”

Dorrie poured out the story of the Academy's performance and Tiffany's mockery and the words Tiffany had written on the shirt and her bargain with Dorrie. “So you see? If you taught me even a little, at least I'd have a chance to beat her. I can't let her humiliate Mr. Kornberger like that.”

One of Savi's eyes seemed to have developed a twitch. “And this Mr. Kornberger. Is he a big, fat fool?”

“No!” Dorrie cried loyally. “Not really,” she said more quietly. “Not underneath.”

Savi's shaggy-haired friend strode out into the courtyard with an armload of long poles and propped them up against the wall.

“Well,” said Savi, sighting down his sword blade. “I'm afraid this is not the best time for me to take on an apprentice. I've gone seventeen missions back-to-back, and I'm on sabbatical. I have my writing to attend to for a while.”

“Love letters,” laughed the shaggy-haired man as he laid one of the poles across his knees and began to sand it.

Savi gave him a withering look. “A work of satire.
Voyage
to
the
Moon
needs its finishing touches.”

“Please!” begged Dorrie.

“Yes, Savi,” said his friend, grinning. “Why not break your perfect record of never taking one on?”

Savi turned back to Dorrie and regarded her for a long moment. “I can teach you for an hour a day, but on one condition. After you vanquish your ill-mannered little nemesis and free yourself from having to wear the abhorrent shirt in question, you will instruct said nemesis that
she
is still entirely free to wear the garment if it so pleases her.”

“But why?” Dorrie leaped to her feet. “What she wrote is a lie and mean, and she just wants to hurt Mr. Kornberger!”

“Because I am a lybrarian.”

“And because Savi de Cyrano de Bergerac is contrary on principle,” added the shaggy-haired man.

Savi ignored him. “If you can agree to that condition, then we'll begin tomorrow.”

After a half moment of hesitation, Dorrie nodded so hard she could feel her brain shaking inside her skull.

“Very well. I'll see you here at eight o'clock in the morning.”

“Thank you!” called Dorrie, her heart beating wildly as he strode off toward the Gymnasium door. He turned back for a moment. “But only because I was once a fool like you.”

Staring at him, doused in sunshine, his nose casting its own shadow, Dorrie suddenly knew exactly where she'd heard the name Cyrano de Bergerac before.
On
stage. In New York City with Mr. Kornberger and the Academy students, in a theater hung with balconies and buttery lights.
“Wait, isn't Cyrano de Bergerac a character from a play?” sputtered Dorrie, bewildered.

“That damnable play, again!” Savi shouted, shaking his fist at the sky.

“Oh, come on now, it's a good play,” said the shaggy-haired man.

“It's a fiction with my name stuck in it for decoration,” declared Savi, a dangerous light in his eye.

“Yes,” said his friend, roaring with laughter. “That part about the man's quick temper is definitely off.”

Savi's lips twitched. “Touché.”

Dorrie gaped at him. “Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person?”