by Alan Gratz
“Yeah. About you working for Edison,” the girl said. So she had been listening after all.
“Look, I had nae idea what he was doing. I still don’t. I’m good with machines. I always have been. So my parents back in Carolina, they asked around, and a friend of theirs knew somebody up in Iroquois territory who knew Kano, and…” Fergus choked up when he said his friend’s name. “It’s my fault he’s dead. If I hadn’t said anything—”
“You didn’t kill him,” Archie said. “Edison did.”
Fergus sniffed and shook his head. “Kano took me on as an apprentice, working for Edison in his lab. He and Mrs. Henhawk were like family to me. I’m just fourteen. I been on the job for three months. I was all excited because Edison was working with lektricity, when nobody else wanted to touch it.”
“What’s lektricity?” the girl asked.
“The energy in lightning,” Fergus said. “Powerful stuff. More efficient than steam, if you know how to handle it, like Edison does. More useful too. Made them bright lights burn. Made the Archimedes Engine work too. Edison was using the Archimedes Engine to regulate the lektricity, send regular charges down into the ground. But I have no idea why.”
Archie knew why, and he knew all about lektricity and why nobody wanted to experiment with it. But this was no time to get into all that.
“What are you doing here?” Fergus asked him. “Why did you melt down the tower?”
“Well, I didn’t mean to,” Archie said. “But it stopped Edison, so that’s good. But I didn’t even know what he was doing until I followed my parents here. They went down into the puzzle traps.”
“What, you mean down into them caves? Underground?” Fergus said. “Oh.”
“What?”
“Well, it’s just that Edison sent lots of folks in there before we set up the tower, and they never come out.”
“My parents are different.”
“No, they’re not,” the girl said. “If they went in that hole, they’re dead. You’re better off accepting that right now and moving on.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Archie said, his voice rising. “They know how to get through the traps. They’re still alive. I’ve seen them.”
“Not for long,” the girl said. She fingered her beads again. “You should have shot Edison with that aether pistol instead. At least then you could have killed the man who killed your parents.”
“Who are you?” Archie demanded. “And if you want him dead so bad, why didn’t you kill him?”
“I was trying to, until somebody dropped a seven-story tower on me!”
“Oy. Would you two mind holding it down?” Fergus said. “I’m trying to die in peace over here.”
The door to the box opened. Mr. Shinobi stood silhouetted against two of the lektric lights Edison’s men had salvaged, along with the generator.
Archie and the girl backed away as the black Tik Tok came inside and picked up Fergus. Archie hated himself for his cowardice. Theseus wouldn’t have just let an enemy take one of his friends.
“Stop,” Archie said. “I won’t let you take him.” He took a step forward, his fists clenched.
Mr. Shinobi flipped the short sword up out of its arm and held it to Fergus’ neck. It still had blood on it from where the Tik Tok had run it through Kano Henhawk. The machine man didn’t have to explain—if Archie took another step, it would slit Fergus’ neck.
“It won’t do it,” the girl said. “It won’t kill him. Edison needs him. He said so.”
Mr. Shinobi pushed the sword into Fergus’ neck, just enough to draw blood.
“It will! It will!” Fergus said.
Mr. Shinobi backed out of the crate and closed the door. The girl ran to it and pushed, but the Tik Tok had already dropped the wooden bar that locked them in. She kicked at the door in frustration.
“‘I won’t let you take him,’” she said, mimicking Archie’s voice. “I don’t know why it even bothered pulling out its sword. It’s not like you could do anything about it.”
“So? You couldn’t either.”
“Could too.”
Archie wondered what a teenage girl could possibly do to a walking death machine, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue with her anymore. He found a wide space between two of the wooden slats on the crate and watched what was going on outside.
Edison had Mr. Shinobi lay the boy out on a stone altar in the middle of the clearing and bind him to it. Watching through the slats beside him, the girl began to mutter to herself again. This time Archie could hear what she was saying: “Talisse Fixico, the potter. Chelokee Yoholo, father of Ficka. Hathlun Harjo, the surgeon…” It was a string of names and descriptions, but he had no idea what it meant or why she was doing it.
Archie tuned her out as Edison’s men brought over a small table with two jars on it. One was empty. The other was filled with a black, tar-like liquid. His men attached rubber hoses to the jars.
“This is the blood of the Arkiteuthis elektricus,” Edison told Fergus. “The lektric squid. It is found only in the arctic waters north of the Japans, halfway around the world. I acquired it at the same time as I acquired my meka-ninja, Mr. Shinobi. As invaluable as Mr. Shinobi is, ichor of Arkiteuthis elektricus is even more rare and expensive. As far as I know, this is the only vial of it in the United Nations, perhaps all of the west.”
Fergus cried out as Edison’s men—men Fergus had once worked with—slid needles into his arms and attached the rubber hoses to them. One of the men activated a small steam engine that worked as a bellows, and the empty jar began to fill with Fergus’ dark-red blood. The other jar, the one filled with the thick black liquid, started to lower.
Edison was replacing Fergus’ blood with the blood of a lektric squid.
Two more workers brought giant metal gloves with wires attached to the fingertips. Edison held up his arms like a surgeon, and the workers slid the gloves on.
“I had hoped not to have to do this, Fergus,” Edison said. “I’m not really sure it will work. The last person who volunteered for the transfusion went mad and tore her own skin off, and this is all the ichor I have left. But now that the Archimedes Engine is destroyed, I need something to replace it. I’m afraid I must take the chance.” He nodded to his assistants, and they fired up another generator, this one humming with an energy different from steam power. Tiny arcs of lektricity crackled along the wires to the oversized gauntlets Edison wore on his hands.
“Icthy rimick, ab ru-mous gor’mary,” Edison chanted. “Malacar Ahasherat, Queen of the Swarm, I call on your power. Create in this human vessel the means to open your prison! Icthy rimick, ab ru-mous gor’mary. Icthy rimick, ab ru-mous gor’mary. Icthy rimick, ab ru-mous gor’mary.”
A ghostly green energy collected around Edison’s lektric gloves, burning like an ethereal flame in the twilight. He aimed them at the stone altar, and the green flames engulfed Fergus. They didn’t seem to burn him, not like real fire would, but they were doing something. As the black blood filled Fergus’ veins, the green energy lifted him, his bonds the only thing keeping him from rising up off the slab.
“Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie,” Edison cried, his eyes alight with the roaring green flame. “And when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing!”
“He’s crazy,” Archie said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Kick the wood.”
“I tried that,” said the girl.
Archie jabbed at the wall with his toe. Crack! His foot punched through.
“I did it!”
“Must have been a weak spot,” the girl said. Archie bent down to try and pry the broken wood away, but the girl stopped him. “Wait,” she said. “Mr. Lion, I need you.”
The little brass toy she had hidden away burst from a pocket in her dress, fluttering in the air between them. It was a little wind-up lion with wings. The wings beat madly, almost comically, making the toy wobble in the air as it hovered, like a bumblebee. Archie gaped at it. He’d never in h
is life seen clockworks so small. So advanced. There was nothing so incredible in even the best Tik Tok shops in Philadelphia, but a Tik Tok it was. He could even see the little key sticking up out of its back, turning slowly as its mainspring wound down.
The lion clicked and chattered at the girl with little roar-roar-roar sounds. “Not now, Mr. Lion,” the girl said. “Go find the others. Raise the bar so I can get out. And bring my bandolier.”
The little lion flitted off through the hole Archie had kicked in the wall.
In a few moments Archie heard the scrape of wood on wood—the bar to their crate lifting away. The door creaked open, and five little brass toys, all of them different animals with wings, flew inside. One of them, a little gorilla, carried the girl’s bandolier.
“What are they?” Archie asked. “They’re amazing!”
The girl slipped the bandolier on and whistled, and the little toys hid themselves in the leather pockets.
“Good-bye,” the girl said.
“Wait! We have to save that boy, Fergus.”
“You save him,” the girl said. She drew a dagger from a hidden place in her dress. “I’m going to kill Edison.”
7
The girl took off across the dimming glade, her skirts flying. Archie thought about calling her back, but it was too late. The black Tik Tok had already seen her. It pulled a long, two-handed sword from somewhere in its back and sliced at her, but the girl ducked and parried, her dagger clanging off the thing’s body.
Archie blinked. Maybe the girl could do something to the walking death machine.
Speaking of Tik Toks, where was Mr. Rivets? Archie looked around for him. Mr. Shinobi had thrown the Dents’ machine man off into the darkness. Archie remembered the sickening crunch of clockworks. Was Mr. Rivets broken? There was no other reason he would leave Archie behind.
Archie didn’t have any more time to think about it. Fergus’ body was straining at its bonds, the green flame lifting him and crackling all around him. The girl, amazingly, was keeping Mr. Shinobi busy, and the rest of Edison’s assistants had run scared.
It was just Archie and Edison now.
This was what he had always wanted, wasn’t it? To be a hero? The Theseus of his own League of Seven? It made him sure he should do something, but it didn’t make him any less scared.
Archie waited until Mr. Shinobi’s back was turned, then sneaked around the small circle of light to the other side of the stone altar. Edison’s eyes were wide with whatever he was seeing through his lektro-magic. He didn’t see Archie at all.
“Icthy rimick, ab ru-mous gor’mary,” Edison chanted. His lektric gauntlets crackled with sparks. Fergus’ body fought against his bindings, but he wasn’t awake. Archie didn’t know if he was dead or just unconscious, but it didn’t matter. He had to get him out of there.
Archie put a hand out to test the flames. They weren’t hot but cold, like plunging his hand into an icy lake. Archie took a deep breath and pushed his hands into the green flames.
Immediately Archie was somewhere else, like in his dreams. This time he was in a great swamp like the Florida Everglades. But this wasn’t any Florida Archie knew. Black wires dangling from tilting wooden poles sparked with lektricity. Crumbling skyscrapers—buildings taller than any in New Rome or Standing Peachtree—stood like shattered stumps, their top halves lying beside them in piles of shattered glass and twisted steel. Fires smoldered in their hulks, dark-orange glows that lit the smoke-filled sky like a dozen funeral pyres. In the water all around him, Archie saw the bloated bodies of dead people.
A storm swirled overhead. A bolt of lightning split the air—krakoom!—and Archie saw a giant sitting atop a suspension bridge like it was a throne. At first glance she looked human, a giant so big her head touched the clouds. Then Archie saw the spiny bones that stuck through the skin of her arms and legs, the locust wings tucked away on her back. She sat like a mantis, long arms bent, hands held in front of her, serenaded by the rising and falling cicada call of insects and human screams.
Malacar Ahasherat. The Swarm Queen.
The Mangleborn turned her head slowly in Archie’s direction, like she knew he was there. Her face was human, but her eyes were big, black, and shiny, like a fly’s.
JANDAL A HAAD, she said without moving her mouth, the words thundering in Archie’s mind.
Archie pulled his hands out of the fire and reeled. He was panting, sweating, even though his hands and arms felt like ice. He stared at them as though they didn’t belong to him.
He shook his head, trying to clear it. Those words …
Lektricity surged into Edison’s gauntlets, and the green flames surrounding Fergus burned brighter. The girl was saying names again as she fought the Tik Tok, shouting them now: “Claiborne Lowe, twelve times a grandfather. Pompey Yoholo, seventh son of a seventh son. Woxe Holatha, the banker!” She was still holding her own against the Tik Tok, but she was slowing.
Archie had to get Fergus out of there, and he had to do it now.
He closed his eyes and plunged his hands back into the flame. The image of the Swarm Queen on her throne came again, but he pushed it away. Screamed at it. Held up an imaginary shield to keep him from staring into the Gorgon’s eyes. His real eyes still squeezed shut in the real world, he groped for Fergus. Untied his ropes. Yanked his floating body free.
The green flame whooshed and went out like a gas lamp, and Archie and Fergus hit the ground. Edison staggered back, his eyes still elsewhere, the lektric gauntlets crackling angrily. With no one there to turn off the generator and set him free, he was trapped in his own machine.
Archie shook off the shivering terror of the Mangleborn and grabbed Fergus, dragging him away. Something black and snakelike crawled across Fergus’ skin and Archie jumped back, but it wasn’t something on Fergus’ skin, it was something in it. A shifting, changing labyrinth of black lines like moving tattoos.
Fergus groaned as the black tattoos drew and redrew themselves on his skin, but at least that meant he was alive. Archie grabbed him again and dragged him into the darkness beyond the lektric lights. But then what? How far could Archie run into the swamp at night, dragging Fergus behind him? And where would he go? The Hesperus was anchored out there somewhere, but he didn’t even remember which way he’d come into the clearing.
Whoom. A bright carbide light flooded the dark glade from above. It moved from Mr. Shinobi and the girl, still locked in battle, to Edison crawling for the generator, his big wire-covered gauntlets still sparking with lektricity, and then finally swept over to where Archie and Fergus lay in the grass. Archie put a hand up to shield his eyes from the light, and something smacked him in the head.
The elevator basket!
That’s where Mr. Rivets had gone—to fetch the family airship! Archie hefted Fergus inside and climbed in after him, grabbing the talking horn that led to the ship above.
“Mr. Rivets! You came back!” Archie said.
“But of course, Master Archie. My only regret is that I took so long. Without my Airship Pilot card in, it took quite some guessing.”
Archie felt the basket begin to rise. “No! No! Mr. Rivets, not yet,” he called into the talking horn. “We have to rescue that girl. Swing us around!”
She was still fighting, but she had cuts on her arms and legs and her dress was torn and ragged. Her little brass toys fluttered around the Tik Tok, distracting it. One of the animals, the gorilla, had yanked open a panel on the machine man’s back and was banging on the clockwork gears inside.
“Get on!” Archie called to her. “Let’s go!”
The girl looked at Edison lying helpless on the ground. The elevator basket swung closer. The meka-ninja lunged at her and she ducked, but its sword grazed her neck. She put a hand to the cut and came away with blood. She stood staring at it. She had a dozen cuts all over her, but this one left her frozen.
Mr. Shinobi leaped at her just as the elevator basket hit it. Thwack! The meka-ninja went flying off into the darkness.
Archie threw the door to the basket open. “Get in!”
The girl came to life enough to stagger into the elevator basket. She collapsed next to Fergus, her clockwork animals fluttering around her worriedly, and Archie screamed for Mr. Rivets to take them up. The black machine man jumped out of the shadows, its sword slashing a cut in the floor of the elevator basket as it leaped at them, but they were already out of reach. Archie watched over the side as the Hesperus lifted away into the dark Florida sky, Edison and his meka-ninja staring after them.
8
Fergus lay on the folded-out medical bay in the Hesperus. Mr. Rivets, his Surgeon talent card engaged, was just finishing the delicate work of stitching together the nasty gash at the back of Fergus’ leg. Archie watched with a slightly queasy interest. He’d never in his life had a broken bone, or even a cut that needed stitches. The Seminole girl sat on the other side of the small round cabin with her back to them, winding her clockwork animals. Out the airship’s front window, the gibbous moon glowed bloodred in the sky, just as it had ever since the Darkness had fallen on the Old World, long before any of them were born.
“If you would be so kind as to hand me those bandages, Master Archie?” Mr. Rivets said.
Archie obliged. “Why do you think he’s wearing a dress, Mr. Rivets?”
“Kilt,” Fergus murmured. He sat up with a start. “Kano!”
“He’s dead,” the girl said in her curt, raspy voice.
“Aye, I remember now,” Fergus said. He buried his head in his hands, and Archie frowned at the girl’s callousness.
“What’s happened? How did we get here?” Fergus asked. “Last thing I remember, that infernal Tik Tok was tying me down to a stone table. No offense,” he said to Mr. Rivets.
Mr. Rivets straightened. “None taken, sir. That abomination is a discredit to the service.”
Archie told him about the lektric gauntlet and the green fire, and how he’d pulled Fergus out.
“I owe you then, mate,” Fergus said. “You saved my life. Not that it’s worth saving.” Fergus put a hand to the back of his leg and pulled away smarting. “I can’t lift it.”