The Dragon Lantern

by Alan Gratz

  “Mr. Rivets!” Archie called. “We got it!”

  “I am relieved to hear it, Master Archie,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “We never got a chance to use the gyrocopters though,” Fergus said.

  “I am relieved to hear that as well,” Mr. Rivets said.

  Hachi snickered, and Archie smiled.

  “I see how it is,” Fergus told them. “Laugh now. But one day one of my gizmos will save your life, and you won’t be laughing then. You’ll be saying, ‘Oy, Fergus, you’re a genius!’”

  One of the steam-powered, titanium Mark IV Machine Men who ran the front desk at the Cahokia Arms stepped into their little circle, and all three of the kids took a wary step back. They had had a bad experience with that model once and were still a little Mark IV–shy.

  “Pardon me for interrupting,” said the Tik Tok in the singsongy, music-box voice all machine men had. A small rectangular plate hammered onto his chest said his name was Mr. Bell. “I have a pneumatigram for Miss Emartha.”

  “That’s me,” Hachi said. She pulled off the combination oxygen tank/oil lamp/gyrocopter backpack she wore and pushed it into Fergus’s arms.

  Mr. Bell handed her the message. “And may I say personally, Miss, that it is an honor to have one of the Makers staying with us.”

  “Um, thanks,” Hachi said. Her father, Hololkee Emartha, had owned and run the Emartha Machine Man Company, as had generations of Emarthas before him. Now that her father was dead, Hachi owned it. She was a millionaire heiress, and wherever she went, Emartha Machine Men treated her like a god. It made her distinctly uncomfortable.

  Archie caught the Mark IV Machine Man by the arm before he returned to the desk, almost pulling him over by accident. The stunned Tik Tok took a moment to collect himself.

  “Sorry,” Archie said. Sometimes he forgot his own strength. “Mr. Bell, could you send up to Mrs. Moffett’s room and ask her to come down and meet us, please?”

  “Of course, sir. Right away,” Mr. Bell said.

  “Crivens,” Hachi said, staring at the message. Hachi had taken to saying Fergus’s favorite meaningless epithet whenever she was truly surprised by something, which wasn’t too often. Whatever was in that pneumatigram must be earth-shattering.

  “What is it?” Fergus asked.

  “It’s a message from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. I hired them to find Madame Blavatsky.” She looked up from the pneumatigram. “And they did.”

  “Twisted pistons,” Archie said. For most of her life, Hachi had searched for the identities of the people who had attacked her family’s village in Florida when she was an infant, killing her father and ninety-nine other men in some kind of ritual sacrifice that to this day no one could explain. The only person she knew for sure had been at the Chuluota massacre was the lektrical wizard Thomas Edison. He’d been her last and only clue, until something he’d said about “Batty” Blavatsky and Chuluota right before he died gave her new hope that she could eventually track down and punish all of her father’s killers.

  Fergus’s eyes went wide. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I know,” Archie said. “This is huge!”

  “No,” Fergus said. “I mean, I don’t believe you hired the blinking Pinkertons! Have you forgotten that just a few weeks ago they were hunting us down like criminals?”

  “And have you forgotten that they actually found us?” Hachi said. “They can do more to track somebody down with their army of agents than I can, and a lot faster. Besides, having them out searching for Blavatsky gave me time to help Archie find this whatever-it-is that has whatever-it-is-to-do with who he is. But now it’s my turn.”

  Hachi headed for the door.

  “Wait! What about the lantern?” Archie called. “We have to give it to Mrs. Moffett!”

  “You give it to her,” Hachi said. “I’m going to the Pinkerton office to find out what they know. Level 373.”

  Hachi tossed the key to the bag’s lock to Archie. He fumbled it, and by the time he’d bent down and picked it up, Hachi was almost out the door.

  Fergus took a step to follow her, then turned apologetically to Archie. “I’d … better go with her,” Fergus said. “If I don’t, she’s like to jump in an airship and take off without telling either of us where she’s off to.” He shrugged out of his backpack and left it with Archie before heading for the door. “We’ll meet you back here at the lodge after we find out what’s up!”

  Archie wanted more than anything to run and join his friends, but he had to get the lantern back to Mrs. Moffett first. He had to know what it had to do with who he was and where he was from.

  Another titanium Mark IV Machine Man from the hotel came up to him. The plate on his chest said his name was Mr. Key.

  “Sir, I regret to inform you there’s been a water leak in your rooms. We’ve had to move you.”

  “A water leak?” Archie asked.

  “I’ll see to this, Master Archie,” Mr. Rivets said. “You wait here for Mrs. Moffett.”

  Mr. Rivets wasn’t gone a moment before Mrs. Moffett stepped out of the hotel elevators.

  Philomena Moffett, the Septemberist council’s lead scientist and the current chief of the society, was a tall, thin, impressive woman who seemed to float as she walked. She looked prim as always, with her long black hair pinned up and her icy blue eyes peering down at him through narrow tortoiseshell cat eye spectacles that came up to points at the corners, like wings. Today she was wearing a dark blue long-sleeved dress that fit her like a second skin from the waist up, and from the waist down billowed out in acres of fabric over a large bustle at the back. From the buttoned collar at the top to the hem that swept the hotel carpet at the bottom, she was cosseted and cocooned like someone afraid to come into contact with the world. Even her slender hands, which she held just above her waist, were covered with matching blue gloves.

  Mrs. Moffett’s voice was quiet, but assured as always. “You have the lantern?”

  Archie smiled. “We got it. Finally.” He slipped the key in the lock and opened the bag, sliding the lantern out just enough for Mrs. Moffett to see it. Archie could feel the thing vibrating deep inside him again, and he shivered.

  The Dragon Lantern glinted in Mrs. Moffett’s glasses.

  “Well done,” she said. She reached out her gloved hands for it, and Archie handed it over. Frankly, he was glad to be rid of the thing.

  “What does it do?” Archie asked. “And what does it have to do with me and … and what I am?”

  Mrs. Moffett tore her eyes away from the lantern. “What? Oh. All in good time,” she said.

  “But you promised it would explain things,” Archie said. “You said if we got it for you, you’d be able to get answers for me.”

  Mrs. Moffett looked around the hotel lobby furtively, like there might be Pinkerton spies behind the potted plants. “And I will. Whatever I promised, I’ll do. But first things first: I need to get this to the safe at the bank. They’ll keep it for us until it’s time to leave.”

  “I’ll come with you. To protect you,” Archie said.

  Mrs. Moffett laughed. “You, protect me? How?”

  Archie frowned. Mrs. Moffett knew exactly how he could help—he was super strong and practically invulnerable. He was perfect for protection duty.

  “No,” Mrs. Moffett said before he could argue with her. She looked over her shoulder at the elevator. “You stay here. Get cleaned up. Rest. I’ll meet you back here at the hotel, and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  Despite his misgivings, Archie felt hope rise in him, drowning everything else out. When he and his parents had come back from defeating a Mangleborn in Florida, they’d gone straight to Mrs. Moffett for answers. Who was he? What was he? Where had he come from? Why was the Society keeping track of his progress? What did they know, and what were they hiding?

  But Philomena Moffett was as much in the dark as they were. She had only been the head of the Septemberist Society for a year, and records of S
eptemberist involvement in Archie’s life had been covered up or destroyed. The only clue she had been able to find was a record of someone within the Septemberist Society removing and using the Dragon Lantern twelve years ago, right around the time Archie had been born. More than that—like who had done it, and why—she didn’t know. But she had promised Archie they would find out together. The Dragon Lantern was the place to start, and now that they had it, Archie didn’t want to wait to uncover its secrets. He wanted to turn it on and see what it did now. But that’s what adults always did—they told you to wait whenever you wanted to get on with something.

  “Okay,” Archie said. “I guess it’s not going anywhere. Oh—and Hachi and Fergus are okay,” he said. “They just had to run an errand.”

  “Good. Fine,” Mrs. Moffett said. “Stay here.” She was already headed for the front door.

  “Master Archie!” Mr. Rivets called, ticking up to him. “Master Archie, what are you doing?”

  Archie shrugged. “Nothing. Mrs. Moffett said to wait here while she put the lantern in the bank.”

  “You’ve spoken to Mrs. Moffett?” Mr. Rivets asked.

  Archie frowned. “Of course I talked to her.” He pointed to Mrs. Moffett, who was just leaving the building. “There she goes.”

  Mr. Rivets’s worry subroutine knitted his brass eyebrows. “The person leaving through the front door is not Mrs. Moffett.” Mr. Rivets pointed to the opening elevator. “That is Mrs. Moffett.”

  Archie blinked. Stepping out of the elevator was the exact same person he’d just been talking to. She wore the same dark blue bustle dress, wore her hair pinned up in exactly the same way, and looked down on him with the same piercing blue eyes through identical tortoiseshell spectacles. She was exactly the same person he’d just seen leave the hotel by the front door.

  With the Dragon Lantern he’d given her.

  Archie looked back and forth between the front door and the Philomena Moffett coming from the elevators.

  “Thirty days hath September,” this new Mrs. Moffett said to him.

  “Seven heroes we remember,” Archie said robotically, giving the answer to the Septemberists’ secret pass phrase. He was still looking back and forth between Mrs. Moffett and the empty front door.

  “Is everything all right?” Mrs. Moffett asked in the same quiet but assured voice. “Do you have the lantern? Where are Hachi and Fergus?”

  “I just gave it to you!” he said.

  A dark cloud formed on Mrs. Moffett’s forehead. “I assure you, Archie, I have just arrived. Are you saying you had the Dragon Lantern, and you gave it to someone else?”

  “Oh, slag,” Archie said. “Slag, slag, slag, slag, slag.”

  “Language, Master Archie,” Mr. Rivets reminded him.

  “It was you! I swear it was you! She looked exactly like you! She sounded exactly like you!” Archie said.

  “And you used the Septemberist pass phrase?” Mrs. Moffett demanded.

  “I—no! Why should I? I know you! It was you! Who else could it be?”

  “I could scream,” Mrs. Moffett said, her soft voice shaking. “But no. Not here. Not now.” She closed her eyes and stood quietly where she was, but Archie could tell from the way she clenched her fists and took in long, deep breaths of air that she was seething. It was like her boiler was overpressured and her safety valve was venting off steam so she wouldn’t explode. He’d never seen Mrs. Moffett so angry. It scared him.

  “I’m sure I saw you,” Archie said. “I talked to you.”

  “No, you didn’t, Master Archie,” said Mr. Rivets.

  Archie and Mrs. Moffett turned to the machine man.

  “What?” Archie asked.

  “The person you were speaking with was not Mrs. Moffett,” Mr. Rivets said. “I only saw her as I returned from the front desk, but the person you gave the Dragon Lantern to was a young Asian girl about your age with the ears and tail of a fox. I’m afraid she has stolen the lantern.”

  3

  Archie ran to the rail outside the Cahokia Arms and looked back and forth along the broad sweep of gangplanks on their level that ringed the Cahokia Man. Mr. Rivets and Philomena Moffett joined him moments later.

  “She’s got too much of a head start,” Archie cried. “We’ll never catch her!”

  “We will if she looks just like me,” Mrs. Moffett said.

  “There she is,” Mr. Rivets said. He pointed to a place farther along the gangplank, right where it disappeared behind the giant statue. Archie frowned. The only person there was an Illini man on the way to work with a newspaper tucked under his arm.

  “That man?” Archie asked. “He doesn’t look anything like Mrs. Moffett.”

  “I assure you, Master Archie. I see no man there. It is a young woman with a fox tail. And she has the lantern in her backpack!”

  Archie shook his head. No matter how hard he tried, all he could see was a Cahokia businessman.

  “She must have some way of making us see what she wants us to see,” Mrs. Moffett said. “But it doesn’t work on machine men.”

  “Come on, Mr. Rivets!” Archie cried, taking off at a run. Mrs. Moffett ran the other way, toward the cable car platform. Good. If the thief went up or down, Mrs. Moffett could cut her off.

  Archie was halfway round the gangplank when he realized that Mr. Rivets was lagging too far behind. Mark IIs were built for power, not speed.

  Just like me, Archie realized.

  Archie ran back toward his Tik Tok.

  “Sorry, Mr. Rivets, but you’re moving too slow, and I need your eyes,” Archie said.

  “I don’t understand—” Mr. Rivets began, but before he could finish, Archie picked up the thousand-pound machine man and started to run.

  “Master Archie! I knew you were strong, but I had no idea!” Mr. Rivets said.

  The truth was, Archie didn’t know how strong he was either. Strong enough to pick up Edison in his iron body and toss him into a pit with Malacar Ahasherat. Strong enough to lift a Mark II Machine Man and run with it. But what was his limit? Whatever it was, he hadn’t found it yet. Mr. Rivets slowed him down about as much as the long coat and backpack he still wore.

  A twelve-year-old boy running with a machine man in his arms was quite a sight, and everybody for five levels with a view of him stopped and pointed. The businessman Archie was following stopped to look at what everyone was pointing at, and for the briefest of moments the man wasn’t a man anymore. It was a girl—an Asian girl in a white dress, wearing fox ears and a fox tail, staring at him in wide-eyed amazement. But how…? Archie blinked, and the girl was a businessman again, running away.

  “I saw her, Mr. Rivets—I saw her! The girl you saw! Just for a second when she turned to look at me!”

  “If she has the ability to somehow project images into your mind, as Mrs. Moffett suggests, it would appear that she must concentrate to do it,” Mr. Rivets said. “Seeing something that startled her broke her concentration for the merest of moments, allowing you to see her as she really is.”

  The girl in her businessman disguise took a gangplank toward the cable car platforms, and Mrs. Moffett appeared in her way. The girl/businessman pulled up short and looked back and forth between Archie and Mrs. Moffett. She was trapped. They had her!

  The girl, still disguised as a businessman slid underneath the walkway railing, grabbed the gangplank, and swung herself down to the level below.

  “Slag!” Archie cried. He leaned over the railing, but the businessman was gone.

  “There,” Mr. Rivets said.

  Archie saw her. A Pawnee woman with a baby bundled up in a papoose. She was hurrying toward the cable car platform in the other direction. Mrs. Moffett was running for a downtown cable car, but she was going to be too late.

  “Hang on, Mr. Rivets. I’m going to swing you down.”

  “Master Archie, I think this an ill-advised course of action.”

  “Got any better ideas?”

  “The lack of a better idea is
not a valid reason for embracing a bad idea, sir,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Archie said. He lifted his mechanical valet over the rail and held on to him by an arm. It felt no different to Archie than dangling a stuffed animal over the edge, but the rail he was leaning on groaned in complaint. Looking down like this, Archie realized just how far down it was to the Cahokia Man’s feet. He might survive that fall, but Mr. Rivets wouldn’t. Still, they had to stop that girl. He had to have the Dragon Lantern back.

  “On three, Mr. Rivets.” Archie swung Mr. Rivets back and forth. “One … two…”

  “And what exactly am I supposed to do on three, sir?” Mr. Rivets asked.

  “Three!” Archie said. He let go of Mr. Rivets’s hand, and the machine man fell toward the gangplank below. Crash! Mr. Rivets landed on his backside, smashing a hole in the wooden planks of the walkway.

  “Hang on, Mr. Rivets!” Archie yelled. “I’ll swing down!”

  Archie leaned out over the rail and remembered how terrible he was at jumping around like a circus performer. Oh slag, Archie thought. Where was Hachi when he needed her? This was what she was good at! If Archie missed, he would fall seventy-five stories, and the girl would get away for good.

  “Wait! I’ve got a better idea!” he called down to Mr. Rivets. Archie lifted his right leg and stomped.

  Smash! His super-strong foot split the wooden planks below him, and he fell through. It was what he had meant to do, but he hadn’t expected to drop so fast.

  “Slag!” he cried.

  Clang! He landed right on top of Mr. Rivets, knocking him the rest of the way through the hole he’d made and falling with him to the level below that.

  “Slaaaaag!” Archie cried again. Crunch! He and Mr. Rivets smashed into the wooden gangplank, shattering wood and splitting ropes. The walkway threatened to give away underneath them again, but Archie scrambled to his feet and pulled Mr. Rivets to his.