Kenneret rejoined the court, still holding Charlie’s coat. Behind her, two nobles were taking bets on how many blows the prince would land before the librarian gave up.
Her uncle slid into a spot beside her. “Is it wise, Kenneret, allowing this?” he whispered into her ear.
She glanced over at him. Gorgeously dressed, as usual. His signature yellow silk and seed pearls. He was watching keenly as Charlie and the librarian stood listening to the rules being laid out by the sword master. She saw Charlie say something as the librarian shrugged, a response that seemed to make Charlie even more angry.
“I’m not going to stop it now,” she told her uncle.
“The librarian has already proven to be disrespectful,” her uncle went on. “And now this—fighting a duel with your brother. You will certainly have to order him to leave.”
“He only has two days left before he leaves anyway,” Kenneret answered.
She might have said more, except that Charlie and the librarian were lining up. The sword master spoke a word, stepped back, and the fight began.
A moment later, it ended.
There was a flash of blades, a yell from Charlie, and her brother’s sword landed on the stone floor with a clatter.
Alex stood opposite him, still holding his own sword. “There,” he said, looking almost bored. “Are we done?”
Charlie stood staring at him, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Then he bent and snatched up his sword. “No!” He lunged at the librarian.
There was another flurry of bladework, shouts of excitement from the onlookers, and this time Charlie’s sword went skidding across the floor and a fountain of blood erupted from his nose.
As Charlie sopped up the blood with the sleeve of his shirt, Kenneret broke away from the courtiers and her uncle and went to join him.
The librarian gave her a defiant look, as if he thought he was about to be dismissed.
Which he was.
Until she noticed that her brother’s eyes were sparkling with excitement.
“You’re . . . you’re ab-abazing,” Charlie said to him through a nose full of blood. “Bagnificent. Where did you learn to fight like that?”
The librarian shrugged and stayed stubbornly silent.
Charlie turned to her. “Kennie, let hib stay, just so he teaches be the sword every day.”
Alex glared at him. “I’m a librarian, not a sword master.”
“All right, all right,” Charlie bubbled. He swiped at his bloody nose again. “I’ll sweep and dust and whaddever you say, just teach be once a week.”
The librarian rolled his eyes and then stepped closer to Kenneret and spoke in a low voice, so only she and Charlie could hear him. “You gave me your brother as an assistant, Your Majesty,” he said. “Did you realize that he . . .” He glanced aside at Charlie. “Is it all right if I tell her?”
“You guessed?” he asked.
“I’m not an idiot,” Alex answered. “It was obvious once I thought about it.”
“Thed yes,” Charlie said, still dabbing at his nose. “Tell her.”
The librarian caught Kenneret’s eye and nodded at her brother. “He doesn’t know how to read.”
“What?” Kenneret exclaimed, and then lowered her voice again. “Of course Charlie knows how to read. How dare you suggest—” But then she realized that Charlie was nodding his head vigorously. Drops of blood from his nose spattered on the stone floor at his feet. “Really, you don’t?” she asked him.
He snuffled up some blood and then swallowed. “I really don’t, Kennie,” he said thickly. “I’ve tried and tried, and I just can’t. The words crawl around too much. I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t. Don’t tell Uncle Patch.”
No wonder he’d looked so desperate and unhappy; no wonder he’d kept getting himself tossed out of school. Oh, Charlie, she wanted to say. I’m sorry.
But the librarian was standing right there, gazing speculatively at her brother.
“What?” Kenneret prompted.
“I think . . .” the librarian began, and then shrugged. “Given what’s been happening with the books, having an assistant who can’t read . . .” He gave a decided nod. “He might be very, very useful.”
To her astonishment, her brother let out a crack of laughter. “Useful!” he shouted, and gave the librarian a slap on the shoulder that made the other boy stagger a few steps.
“Ow,” complained the librarian, rubbing his shoulder, but grinning at Charlie, who smiled with bloody teeth back at him.
Boys. She would never understand them.
And then Uncle Patch broke into their little circle. “Most impressively done, Librarian Farnsworth. It seems you have been trained in the sword.”
Kenneret was interested to note that the librarian’s face, which had been lit up with happiness, went suddenly still and watchful. “Yes,” he answered.
“And now you have taken on my nephew as your assistant,” Uncle Patch said smoothly. “Yet you have only two more days before you are dismissed, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Alex said. “That’s right.” He glanced toward the door of the practice room, as if planning his escape. “It means I don’t have time to stand around talking to any of you.” Ignoring Uncle Patch’s look of mild surprise, he held out his sword to Charlie. “Library. First thing in the morning. We have a lot to do and not much time to do it in, so don’t be late.”
As Charlie took the sword, the librarian turned and left the practice room—in a hurry, without looking back.
Her uncle gazed after him. “I am worried about that boy,” he said, in a voice dripping with concern.
“Are you?” Kenneret asked. Her uncle didn’t often show the world anything but a smoothly smiling face. His worry must be real.
“I have had reports,” he said. “I have been told that he barely stops working to eat or sleep. And yet the library, I hear, is a complete disaster.” He pasted on a bland smile and then took Kenneret’s hand to lead her out of the practice hall. “Clearly, my dear Kenneret, Alex Farnsworth is incompetent. The library is too much for him to manage properly. You will simply have to insist that he leaves when his trial period is over.”
“Hmm,” Kenneret said, not exactly agreeing. It was odd, she thought, that her uncle was so interested in the librarian that he’d been receiving reports about him.
As far as she knew, Uncle Patch had never even stepped into the library before.
15
It had been a near escape. Another minute, and the queen would have kicked him out of the palace there and then. Fortunately Charleren had been a good sport about their fight. Alex would have tried to make the prince look better, to draw it out a bit more, but he didn’t have time. Two days, and that was it. Really only a day and a half, now, to deal with something that was a much bigger problem than anyone else realized.
And when he got back to the library, he found that his pages had delivered a letter.
It was from one of the assistants to the librarian in Far Wrothing—the librarian who had written asking about the marked book she’d found.
To the Royal Librarian,
I regret to inform you . . .
Oh, no. Alex fell into the nearest chair. Had his warning gotten there too late? With his elbows on the reading table and his hands gripping his hair, he read the rest of the letter.
I regret to inform you that Librarian Hockett has most unexpectedly died. There was nothing suspicious about her death; she simply fell asleep at her desk while reading.
“Gah! You idiot,” Alex mumbled. She hadn’t fallen asleep, he felt sure of it. She’d been reading, yes, but the marked book had been set in her library like a trap.
He’d never met Librarian Hockett, but her death hit him hard. He’d tried to warn her. Maybe his letter had arrived too late. Frowning, he read on.
In your most alarming letter you asked about L.B.
Surely, Royal Librarian, you know more than any of us about the L.B.s, and you know
exactly what happened sixty years ago.
Alex gritted his teeth. “If I knew,” he growled at the letter, “would I be asking?”
At any rate, the less said about these things, the better.
I will be assuming Librarian Hockett’s duties here.
Sincerely,
Maren Rumsey
And she hadn’t sent the marked book as he had asked. The book that had, he felt absolutely certain, killed Hockett. How many more would die if he didn’t stop this?
Idiot. He crumpled up the letter and hurled it across the room. One of his pages swooped down, picked it up, and dropped it in a garbage can.
He remembered what Librarian Hockett had written in her letter to him.
I rather fear that the presence of this marked book means that one of the L.B.s is hidden here in my library, though I have not yet been able to find it.
Blast it. Another librarian secret that he might never figure out.
One thing he felt certain of—there was an L.B. in the royal library. It was marking books with its symbol, setting those books like traps for anyone who read them.
Wait. She had said it was hidden. Lord Patch had pretty much admitted that he was searching for something hidden in the royal library. Was it one of the L.B.s? And if it was, what did he want with it, especially if it was as dangerous as Alex suspected?
Well, Lord Patch wasn’t going to tell him what he was up to. All Alex could do was try to find every one of the marked books before his time was up.
He didn’t bother with sleep.
He spent the night hours clearing the room he judged to be the most secure. It was down a passage off the fourth-story balcony, a place he guessed was at about the center of the library. The room was hacked out of the cliff itself, four rock walls with bookshelves bolted into the stone, and a door made of heavy wood banded with iron and closed with a bolt and two padlocks that had only one key, which Alex kept in his pocket.
As he continued searching the library, he found five more books with the symbol burned into their covers. Because he knew how dangerous they were, he managed to keep from reading them—though it was definitely risky, for they almost caught him more than once. Wearing heavy leather gloves, and carrying each book with a pair of tongs that his pages had found for him, Alex brought them to the fortified room, chained each book to a shelf, and locked the door behind him.
Wearily he climbed the spiral staircase to the fifth level. All of the books he passed were still. Sleeping, maybe. It was the middle of the night. The air was icy cold.
And then he heard a thumping sound coming up the winding staircase; something banged against a railing, and then against a door frame, and came rattling along a row of books, which rustled and bumped in protest.
As he turned, his pages ghosted up, dropped something long and narrow at his feet, and faded away. Another page came closer with a light-well.
Alex bent and picked up the present. A leather belt and scabbard. And in it, a sword. Drawing the sword, he held it at arm’s length. It was a narrow, keen-edged blade made of tempered steel by the finest weapon-smiths in faraway Reese. It fit his hand and was perfectly balanced. The pages had seen him fight yesterday. They knew he could use it. That they had given it to him meant they thought he would need it.
They were right. “Thanks,” he said to them, and strapped the sword around his waist. Time to track down another marked book.
Taking the light-well from the page, Alex made his way down a passage, around a corner, to what seemed like a dead end. To either side were shelves of thick encyclopedias. In front of him was a blank rock wall. One of his pages drifted up to his shoulder and hung there, waiting for his orders.
“Where?” he asked. His voice sounded muffled in the thick silence.
The page edged closer to the bookcase on Alex’s left. He held up the light-well, and saw a single letter appear in ink on the white surface of the page.
P
He nodded, understanding. Taking a deep breath, he reached out to the encyclopedia that was marked on the spine with the letter P. With chilled fingers, he pulled it, leverlike, away from the shelf. As the thick book leaned toward him, the entire wall of books opened inward—it was a secret door.
Stale, dry air gusted out of the hidden room. Alex stepped into it, holding up the light-well. It flickered, barely penetrating shadows that seemed dense, solid . . . waiting. His feet scuffed through dust. In the silence, he heard the sound of his own heartbeat, a steady thumping that he could almost feel in his bones.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
His breath came faster. The marked book had to be in here somewhere. Carefully he held up the flickering light-well to see the books on the shelves of the hidden room. He brushed away dust and cobwebs to read the titles on the spines of each one.
OSTEOGRAPHIA: ANATOMY OF THE BONES
SUCCINCT DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MUSCLES AND BONES OF THE HUMAN BODY
TREATISE ON PHYSIOGNOMY
These were books on anatomy. The human body. Bones and muscles and nerves . . .
And hearts.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
It wasn’t . . . his . . . heartbeat.
A rustling sound came from the shelf behind him. Whirling, he held up the light-well. In its faint glow, he saw a book face-out on the shelf. Its title was printed in gold. The Human Heart. Below that, scorched into the bloodred leather of the cover, was the mark.
It pulsed in the heartbeat rhythm. Then the beat of it slowed.
Alex felt his own heartbeat slowing to match it. Slower. His breath came short and black spots floated in front of his eyes. The book—it was trying to stop his heart—to kill him.
He tried raising his arms, but they were too heavy. The light-well fell out of his hand, bounced once on the floor, and rolled into a corner. Shadows advanced, pulsing with the heartbeat of the marked book. They closed in around him.
Alex clenched his teeth. “I . . . am . . . a librarian,” he said. He forced himself to take a deep breath. Dying in battle was one thing, but his pa would be furious if he let himself be killed by a book.
A second later, the book shot off the shelf, aimed at Alex’s head. He flung himself to the floor, and it slammed into the wall behind him.
“Nice try,” he gasped, getting back to his feet, and with a ruffle of its pages, the book whirled and came back at him. Alex ducked, but not fast enough—the book bashed him in the arm, knocking him back into the shelves. Steadying himself, Alex snatched his sword from the scabbard. The blade gleamed in the light. With a shrieking-ripping sound, a page tore itself from the heart book and came at him, flashing through the air like a knife. He parried it, and then another, and the book came at him again, open this time. He caught a glimpse of an engraving of a heart with words written in bloodred ink writhing all around it. Knocking aside another arrowlike page, he lunged at the book, but it darted back, out of reach. The heart engraving pulsed, and he felt his own heart being squeezed. He gasped for breath. The heart’s beating pounded in his ears. Darkness closed in around him. He heard a tearing sound, and another one of the book’s pages arrowed toward him, and this time he was too slow, and felt a line of pain open along his cheek, just below his eye.
Then the book shot toward him.
With the very last of his strength, Alex raised the sword and flung it. Like a spear, it skewered the book, pinning it to the shelf behind it. The engraved heart, pierced through by the sharp point of the sword, gave one last echoing beat and went still. Bloody ink oozed from it, staining the page red and dripping onto the floor.
“I,” Alex told it fiercely, “am a librarian.”
In one stride he bounded across the room and jerked the sword out of the book. Before it could do anything else, he wiped the red ink off the end of the sword and sheathed it, pulled the woolly hat off his head, and shoved the book into it. It heaved and struggled as he wrapped his arms around it and hurried from the room. “Page!” he shouted as
he stumbled into the darkened passageway. Seven worried pages appeared before him, one holding a light-well. “Close the door behind me,” he ordered, and several of the pages fluttered to obey. Two more appeared carrying lights, leading him down the spiral staircase to the passage that led to the fortified room.
Shoving the struggling book under one arm, he pulled the key out of his pocket and opened the padlocks. As the door swung open, the other marked books chained to the shelves rattled and thumped.
“Stop it,” Alex muttered. He went to one of the shelves that was bolted to the rock wall. He had a place ready. He pulled the book out of his hat and thrust it into a book-sized metal box. Slamming down the iron cover, he locked it, wrapped a chain around it, then secured it with the chain to the shelf.
He backed out of the room, locked it up again, and leaned against the wall, feeling weak at the knees. That had been close. Too close.
With chilled fingers he checked the cut on his face, blotting up the blood with his coat sleeve. Cheekbone. He was lucky it hadn’t been his eye—he needed to be able to see to read. Wearily he straightened and started down the winding stairs.
Reaching the main floor, he realized that morning light was filtering through the grime-encrusted windows. He needed breakfast, and then to do his training—with a sword this time—and then he’d start hunting for the next marked book. He felt gritty, dusty, and fairly certain that the next one was going to be even more dangerous. He had to be ready for anything. “Page,” he croaked, and four pages clustered around him. “Tea,” he ordered, and trudged into his office, where he sat at his desk.
As he reached to pick up a book to read while he waited, the sleeve of his coat pulled back, and he saw the bracelet of words that encircled his wrist. With chilly fingertips he rubbed the letters. They were still as dark against his skin as they had been the day the mysterious Red Codex in his father’s library had marked him.
Wait.
Marked him?
He remembered something he’d said to the queen when he’d been arguing with her. I didn’t choose to be a librarian . . . a librarian is what I am.