The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks by Jen Swann Downey

Author:Jen Swann Downey [Downey, Jen Swann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2016-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

To London, 1913

During her next Staying Afloat practicum, Izel, to Dorrie’s dismay, couldn’t stop talking about how Lybrarian Della Porta had said that Algernon Sidney’s head was going to roll again any second now.

This didn’t go over very well with Mistress Daraney, who was trying to show them how to raise the sail on a little gaffe-rigged sloop.

“Once you’ve got your sail up, it’ll be under a lot of tension,” she said after sending Izel away to press sticky, black pitch into the hull of a beached boat. “You must tie off the halyard end so it stays put but can be released quickly if need be.” She looped the end of the halyard rope deftly over two thick, wooden pegs embedded in the side of the boat, one pointing up and the other down. “Three times minimum. Fewer than that and you’ll find the whole weight of your sail and gaffe boom falling on your head when you least expect it.”

As Dorrie and Millie raced in dogged silence to see who could get her sail up first, Dorrie tortured herself with the thought that Francesco had already told Millie about the kind of danger Dorrie and Marcus had put the Lybrariad in—probably as they sat sharpening daggers together or whatever they did for father-daughter fun.

But to Dorrie’s perplexed relief, Millie gave no indication she was sitting on any explosive piece of information. As the days passed, Dorrie grew less wary. Hypatia, Phillip, and Ursula treated her with the same kindness and consideration they always had, and none of the other apprentices behaved differently toward her.

The Archivist continued to pour tea. He told Dorrie stories about the many years he’d spent keeping the History of Histories updated, but he said nothing about the lost page. He did show Dorrie rubbings of symbols from some old caves on an island in the Mediterranean Sea that resembled a few of the symbols in Petrarch’s alphabet. He explained how unknown alphabets were deciphered when no one was left who used them. “It’s a Rosetta stone I need.”

“What’s that?” asked Dorrie.

“An artifact that has the same thought expressed in one known and one unknown language. For our purposes, one written in Petrarch’s language and one in a known translatable language.” He sighed. “If it exists.”

By the time another week had passed, Dorrie had begun to half believe that the Archivist wasn’t completely crazy.

Master Francesco and Lybrarian Della Porta were a different matter. Whenever Dorrie passed Francesco on the oyster-shell paths, he stiffened, avoiding her gaze. Though he never said a word, Dorrie sensed a shaking anger in him that made her want to run in the opposite direction. Often, when she looked up from eating in the Sharpened Quill, she found Della Porta’s gaze sliding away from her. Dorrie had the distinct feeling he was keeping silent about the Foundation’s possession of the page against his will.

At her next lesson with Savi, he showed her a sand-filled glove suspended from a rope that he’d rigged up against the courtyard wall.

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