The Accidental Keyhand Read online

  Kenzo shrugged. “Millie said you probably were.”

  “Yeah, well, Millie says a lot of things,” said Mathilde, looking pointedly up the table to where Millie sat. Millie gave Mathilde a hard look back. Mathilde resumed her introductions, pointing across the table at a giant of a boy with a lantern jaw and a shock of red hair. “That’s Sven.” The boy nodded in a morose sort of way. “That’s Izel,” she said pointing to the girl with the darting eyes who sat next to Millie. Lastly, she patted the boy beside her. His dark lashes were startlingly long. “Saul. Of Ye Olde Tarsus.” She sighed melodramatically. “He doesn’t think girls are much good.”

  A couple of the older apprentices farther down the table snorted. Saul put down his piece of toast and extended his hand to Dorrie and then to Marcus. “Don’t listen to her. She likes to make fun of me.”

  Mathilde shook her head so that the gold and brown feather in her hat bobbed mischievously. “What about: ‘But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.’ Paul in a letter to Timothy: First Timothy, chapter 2, verse 12.” She leaned forward, nodding conspiratorially. “Paul was once named Saul. He changed his name.”

  “I’m obviously not THAT Saul. I would never write that and you know it!” Saul protested. He turned to Dorrie and Marcus. “I wouldn’t. I really wouldn’t.”

  Dorrie looked back at Saul, bewildered.

  “Not yet,” said Mathilde primly. She leaned toward Dorrie. “So wheren are you from?”

  Around the table, the chewing of food largely ceased. Everyone at the table looked with rapt attention at Dorrie and Marcus.

  “Shouldn’t we let them eat before we start diving at them with questions?” protested Ebba.

  “It’s okay,” said Dorrie. “But…what does ‘wheren’ mean?”

  “Sorry,” said Mathilde. “It’s just a word we use around here. It means both ‘where’ and ‘when’ at once. ‘Wheren are you going?’ or ‘Wheren are you from?’”

  “We’re from Passaic, New Jersey,” said Marcus. Piously, he added, “A world-class city.”

  “What century?” blurted out Kenzo.

  Dorrie could hear the apprentices holding their collective breath.

  “Twenty-first,” Marcus answered.

  Excited murmurings rose from the table. Even Millie looked up.

  “So is anyone living on Mars yet?” asked a tall, dark-haired boy.

  “Not yet,” Marcus replied, biting into his own toast. “But people have been to the moon.”

  “Told you!” said Kenzo loudly, elbowing the tall boy hard.

  “Are people still listening to ragtime music?” Ebba asked.

  Marcus stopped chewing. “Ragtime? Are you serious?” He looked around the circle of expectant faces. “What’s the last year that Petrarch’s Library opens into?”

  Saul shrugged. “1912.”

  Dorrie’s mouth fell open. “So you don’t know about anything that happened in the world after 1912?”

  Millie looked daggers at Dorrie over the top of the newspaper she held. “And I doubt that you know about anything that happened before 1912.”

  Marcus leaned back, his arms folded behind his head. “Two words, people: electric guitar.”

  Now the apprentices looked at each other confused and amazed.

  “Yes, but can women vote in any of the nations yet?” asked Mathilde.

  “Of course,” said Dorrie, suddenly wondering exactly how long ago women had started voting.

  A surprised and pleased murmur traveled around the table.

  Mathilde’s eyes shone. “How wonderful!”

  “Telepathy?” asked Sven. “Can people communicate by telepathy yet?”

  “Uh,” said Dorrie, “I don’t think so.” Sven looked so disappointed that Dorrie racked her brain for something that might impress him.

  “We have cell phones,” said Marcus. “Which is sort of the same idea.”

  Dorrie rolled her eyes. “They’re nothing alike!”

  “Sure they are,” said Marcus. “With a cell phone, I can send a message to you even if you’re miles away.”

  “How does it work?” asked Ebba excitedly.

  Dorrie frowned. “It’s not real telepathy! It’s just people carrying cell phones.”

  The apprentices looked confused again.

  “What’s a cell phone?” asked Ebba.

  Dorrie’s face screwed up with the challenge of trying to describe it. “It’s a… It’s a…” She felt embarrassed as the apprentices waited with bated breath for her answer. C’mon, Dorrie, she thought to herself. You use one almost every day!

  Instead of answering, Dorrie decided to ask her own burning question. “So do apprentices learn how to sword-fight and stuff?”

  “Of course,” said Millie, as though Dorrie had asked a particularly stupid question. “You can’t serve as a lybrarian unless you’ve mastered a combat skill.”

  Dorrie’s heart gave a glad leap, remembering the way the man and woman in the Gymnasium had made their swords positively dance. “Who teaches you?”

  Sven mashed his peas into his mashed potatoes with artistic flair. “Mostly, the resident lybrarians.”

  “Their main job is to turn the regular old librarians who come here every year into true lybrarians,” said Saul.

  “If they can,” said Mathilde.

  “But we can train alongside them,” said Ebba.

  “And learn what exactly?” asked Marcus.

  “How to pick locks,” said Kenzo.

  “How to snatch a magazine out of the middle of a stack of periodicals with the speed of a cobra,” added Sven with just as much pride.

  “It’s very thorough training,” said Saul.

  Sven put down his fork and began to count off on his fingers. “There’s cataloguing, deception and impersonation, publishing law, stealth and illicit entry, library organization, unarmed combat, research skills, armed combat, book repair, fire and explosives—”

  Mathilde took a bite out of a large apple. “I think they get the idea.”

  Dorrie did. Sven’s list had filled her with a giddy excitement that threatened to lift her right off the bench.

  Kenzo seemed not to have heard Mathilde. “Patron relations, horsemanship,” he said, now counting on his toes. “Water training, espionage, escape and concealment, meteorology, geography, field survival—”

  “Stealth and illicit entry?” crowed Marcus. “Prime cut! This place is now my official personal paradise!”

  “We shouldn’t be telling them all of this stuff about us,” Millie cut in harshly. “They really could be enemies.”

  Dorrie felt her face go hot as a sudden silence descended on the table.

  Mathilde looked hard at Millie over her apple. “And you should do a little reading in Martine’s Handbook of Etiquette and Guide to True Politeness. Didn’t Mistress Wu ask us to treat them as guests?”

  Millie’s angry gaze swept around the table, avoiding Marcus and Dorrie. “I’m just looking out for the Lybrariad’s safety. If Francesco was here—”

  A sudden gust of wind blowing through the door of the Sharpened Quill made them all look up. Mathilde yelped and slid down in her seat, as though someone had suddenly yanked her feet down through a hole in the ground.

  Dorrie watched a woman her own size stump sensibly toward the food table. She wore a white blouse with a high collar, a shapeless gray bell of a skirt that matched the color of her hair, and a string of pearly pink beads. An enormous pair of cloudy, gold-rimmed eyeglasses covered half her dewlapped face. Even from across the room, the eyes behind the glasses seemed to crack and spark with pale blue all-seeing fire.

  “Have something overdue, Mathilde?” asked Saul, reaching across Kenzo’s plate for the water pitcher.

  “Something lost, mo
re likely,” said Izel, as though very sorry she had to be the one to share that fact.

  “Well, don’t all stare at her!” said Mathilde, disappearing entirely beneath the wide planks of the table. Dorrie and the others turned back to face each other.

  “Who is she?” asked Marcus.

  Saul poured himself some water. “That’s Mistress Lovelace. She runs the Library’s circulation desk. If a lybrarian wants a sari to wear in India? Weapons, hats, maps, footwear, coin of the realm? He has to get it from her.”

  “He or she has to get it from her,” Mathilde hissed from below. “Mistress Lovelace can probably smell me.”

  “Guilty terror does have a certain scent,” Saul said, taking a bite out of a chicken leg.

  Ebba grabbed Dorrie’s shoulder. “Oh, I was supposed to give you something.” She dug in her satchel. “Here.” She pulled out two rectangles of stiff, creamy paper and handed one each to Dorrie and Marcus.

  “What is it?” asked Dorrie as the microscopic writing covering the little card resolved into something she could read.

  “Library card,” said Saul. “Mistress Lovelace is very particular about issuing them promptly to guests and new residents.” He glanced over at the director of circulation. “She’s quite particular about just about everything, really.”

  Millie began to angrily cram her newspaper into her satchel, as if the issuing of library cards was some sort of final outrage.

  Dorrie looked more closely at the card. On the blank line in the middle of the card reserved for a borrower’s name, someone had written “Unknown Entrant No. 1” in a firm, cursive hand in violet ink. Three jam-packed typed paragraphs of a particularly tiny type filled up the rest of the card. Dorrie read the slightly larger typed words that ran around the four edges of the embossed card like a border: “Marking, staining, tearing, breaking, or otherwise causing damage to lent items is punishable by Library statute with fine or indentured servitude, and the circulation director will prosecute for all offenses.”

  Dorrie understood a little better now why Mathilde was under the table. She looked up at the apprentices. “I don’t think I’d have the nerve to take anything out.”

  “You already have,” said Marcus, plucking the card Dorrie held out of her hand and tossing her the other one. On the back of the new card were alternating columns marked “Lent” and “Returned.” In the first box under “Lent,” the same firm hand had written: “Blue dressing gown with fur cuffs and collar” and a date.

  “She’s not mean,” said Ebba. “She, just, well…she doesn’t make exceptions.”

  “Could you at least tell me when she leaves?” Mathilde said coldly from beneath the table.

  “Could be a while,” said Saul. “She’s just settling down for what could be a good, long chitchat.”

  “A one-sided chitchat,” purred Izel.

  “Why one-sided?” asked Dorrie, looking over at the small, deeply tanned man who sat across from Mistress Lovelace.

  Saul looked serious. He stuck out his tongue and made a scissoring motion with his fingers just below it. “Someone cut out the riding master’s tongue.”

  Dorrie felt instantly sick. “That’s awful.”

  A young woman with an armload of books had elbowed her way over to the apprentice table. She handed a folded-up piece of paper to Ebba. “Message for you,” she panted before moving on.

  Ebba unfolded it, and her brow furrowed. “Francesco’s back.” She looked up at Dorrie and Marcus. “The director of security. He wants to see you.”

  Another uncomfortable silence took hold.

  “Bad luck that,” Mathilde finally said from beneath the table.

  Dorrie felt her mouth going dry. “I thought we were supposed to meet with Hypatia.”

  “I guess she’s still not back,” said Ebba, staring at Francesco’s message.

  Kenzo cocked his head to one side. “Millie said that Francesco will probably want to maroon you out on the other side of an archway. Maybe in Outer Mongolia.”

  “What!” Dorrie and Marcus said together. Dorrie’s stomach lurched. From her close reading of the Passaic Public Library’s entire collection of novels featuring pirates, she knew just what “marooned” meant. Being left behind somewhere with no way to return home.

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Ebba, scanning the contents of the note. “Maroonings have only happened very rarely. Only when someone’s found out about Petrarch’s Library who shouldn’t and might do it harm and…” Her words came to an awkward, stumbling stop.

  A chill crept its way down Dorrie’s spine.

  Kenzo shrugged. “Outer Mongolia’s not the worst—”

  “I know you’re not enemies,” said Ebba, giving Dorrie a brave attempt at a smile. “He’ll see that. It’ll be all right.”

  Mathilde eased herself out from under the table, her gaze sweeping across the room. “You show them the way to his office and I’ll try to find Mistress Wu.”

  “I’ve got a baaaaad feeling about this, Chewie,” muttered Marcus.

  CHAPTER 9

  ACCIDENTAL KEYHANDS

  Ebba left them in front of a heavy, wooden door set in a curved stone wall with a torch flickering on either side. “His office is through the door and up the stairs.”

  Dorrie, her teeth on the point of chattering, nodded dumbly, as a man dressed in lederhosen roller-skated past them. Earlier in the day, she would have enjoyed guessing his home place and time, but now the word “maroon” blinked on and off in her head in red-drenched neon letters. If the director of security thought they posed a danger to Petrarch’s Library, would he just decide to toss Dorrie and Marcus out into Attila the Hun’s lap or into a medieval city full of Black Plague, never to return?

  “I’ll help look for Mistress Wu,” said Ebba, her eyes wide and distressed.

  When Ebba had skittered out of sight around a corner, Dorrie grabbed hold of Marcus’ T-shirt. “Should we run away? Try to hide until we can get back through that hole?” With no small horror, Dorrie realized she had no idea in which direction the room with the swimming pool and the hole lay.

  Marcus pulled at his hair as if the tension on it would help him think better. “We haven’t done anything wrong. We’ll just explain.”

  Dorrie shivered. “Yeah, but what if he doesn’t believe us?”

  “I’ve got to see Egeria again!” bellowed Marcus.

  Dorrie stared at him, boggled. “Marcus, we might never see Mom and Dad and Miranda again if we do the wrong thing!”

  He pressed his fingertips to his temples. “Can I just have a minute to think here?”

  The door swung open with an arthritic groan. Dorrie found herself face-to-face with a large man with stooped shoulders dressed in what looked like an old-fashioned police officer’s uniform. A black egg-shaped helmet sat rakishly on his head. For a moment, sucking on a toothpick, he simply looked at them, while Dorrie’s heart thumped with more and more force.

  Finally, he doffed his helmet, one corner of his mouth crooking upward in a grin. “Mr. Gormly I am, and you don’t look all that threatening to me, whatever the boss says.” Dorrie thought she saw the man wink and felt a little rush of gratitude. Mr. Gormly led them up a narrow wooden stairway that wound round and round. She couldn’t help but think that in fairy tales, no good ever seemed to come to people at the top of towers. She felt for Marcus’s hand behind her. Remarkably, he let her squeeze it hard and even dig her nails into it a little.

  Mr. Gormly led them into a gloomy circular room with one thin slit of a window. Heavy wooden file cabinets lined the walls. A man Dorrie supposed was the director of security sat writing at a small, scarred table. A dark moustache drooped thinly over the ends of his upper lip in waxed curves, and the graying hair on his head was pulled back into a tight ponytail. A black patch very much like the one that Rosa had worn in Passaic for fun covered o
ne of his eyes. On the table lay a sword that looked a whole lot like the one Dorrie had borrowed from Tiffany and dropped somewhere in Petrarch’s Library. Beside the table leaned her bag.

  After a long moment, he stood, his craggy face grim, a long sword hanging at his side. His one visible brown eye bored into Dorrie’s. “Who sent you?”

  The dispassionate, measured manner in which he spoke made Dorrie’s insides go icy. She had the distinct feeling that he wouldn’t hesitate to throw her out the very skinny window if he felt she was a threat to Petrarch’s Library.

  “Nobody sent us,” stuttered Dorrie.

  “How did you make that hole?” Francesco demanded in his clipped, cold way, dangerous icebergs floating between the words.

  “We didn’t,” said Dorrie, her voice a squeak.

  Francesco stepped around the table, his heels pounding dully on the carpet, and halted in front of Dorrie and Marcus.

  Without a muscle on his face moving, Francesco seized Dorrie’s hand.

  “Let go of her,” cried Marcus, hauling on Dorrie’s other arm.

  “Hey!” shouted Dorrie, struggling to free herself as Francesco stared at her fingertips intently. Francesco let her go but only, thought Dorrie, because he’d finished scrutinizing her hand. Her terrified thoughts stampeding, Dorrie lunged for the sword on the table and pointed its quivering tip at Francesco. “Let us go! We don’t want to be marooned!”

  Francesco, looking utterly unfazed, stared stonily at her, his one visible eye visibly narrowing.

  “Two words, Sister,” said Marcus in a strangled voice, as Francesco changed the position of his left hand ever so slightly. “Stage. Combat.”

  Her breath rasping, Dorrie licked her lips, fighting to keep the sword steady.

  “Dispensing the best of Petrarch Library’s hospitality, are we?” said a voice from the doorway.

  Keeping her sword pointed at Francesco, Dorrie whipped her head around. The man with the enormous nose whom she’d seen sparring in the Gymnasium now lounged in the doorway staring at Francesco. He looked unaccountably amused. “It’s definitely a marooning you’ve decided on, have you?”