The League of Seven

by Alan Gratz

  “I’ve closed the wound as best I can, sir, but I’m afraid the tendons have been cut. There is nothing that can be done to repair them,” Mr. Rivets told him.

  “Will I—will I be able to walk?”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid not. Not without some means of assistance.”

  Fergus looked devastated, and Archie felt devastated for him. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose the use of a leg. To know he would never walk normally again. Just the idea of it frightened him.

  Fergus choked back tears. “I thank you for what you’ve done … Mr. Rivets, is it? Much appreciated.”

  Mr. Rivets touched a hand to his brass hat. “All part of the service, Master Fergus.”

  “There’s more,” Archie said, though he was loath to. “I don’t know why he was doing it to you, but Edison—”

  Fergus’ skin flashed again with the black lines Archie had seen on him in the glade, and Fergus cried out. “Crivens! What was that?”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Archie said. “I think it’s from the lektric squid blood.”

  Fergus looked ashen, remembering what Edison had told him. “That stuff—that stuff’s inside me now?”

  The black lines shifted and rearranged themselves. Fergus held his arms away from himself, staring, then pulled his shirt up to see the rest of his body. “Is it all over me? Is it on my face too?”

  “Yeah,” Archie said. “What I don’t understand is how doing that to you was going to help Edison free a Mangleborn.”

  “That word,” the girl said. “You used it before, like you knew what Edison was doing. What does it mean?”

  “The Mangleborn? Oh.” Archie wasn’t sure he should tell them. “They’re—twisted pistons! Did that Tik Tok do that to your neck?”

  The girl had a long ugly scar on her neck, stretching almost ear to ear. She turned away quickly, pulling the scarf back up to cover it. Archie closed his eyes and cursed himself. Of course the Tik Tok hadn’t done that. You didn’t get a scar like that in a couple of hours. Whatever had happened, whenever it had happened, it must have been as awful as the cut on the back of Fergus’ leg. And the mental scars must have been worse. That nick Mr. Shinobi had given her back in the swamp, when she’d frozen—it must have reminded her of that long-ago trauma. Just like Archie’s clacking outburst.

  “Smooth, mate,” Fergus told him.

  “Edison,” the girl said when her scarf was back in place, bringing Archie back to the matter at hand. “The Mangleborn.”

  Archie cleared his throat. He looked to Mr. Rivets for guidance, but the machine man said nothing. Archie hated it when adults kept secrets from him, so he decided to tell them the truth.

  “The Mangleborn are ancient, giant monsters imprisoned underground who want to get free and rule the world.”

  Fergus laughed out loud until the pain in his leg made him suck wind and stop. “Wait a mo’,” he said when the pain subsided. “How come I’m the only one laughing here?”

  Archie wasn’t laughing because he knew the Mangleborn were real. If he hadn’t believed the drawings in his parents’ old books, he certainly believed now, after his dream of the Swarm Queen sitting in the burned-out ruins of a city.

  For whatever reason, the girl wasn’t laughing either. She looked lost in thought.

  “The Mangleborn are real,” Archie said. “They’ve been around since the dawn of time, before humans. They’re … they’re not right. Like things from nightmares, made real. That’s why the ancients called them ‘Mangleborn.’ They look wrong, like they’ve been through a mangle. Scrambled. Parts that don’t belong together. One has skin like a frog and a tongue as long as a freight train. Another has horns like a bull and cloven feet,” he said. “And they feed on lektricity. That’s what Edison was doing with that lightning tower. He was trying to raise Malacar Ahasherat, the Swarm Queen.”

  “You’re not joking,” Fergus said.

  Archie shook his head.

  “And lektricity—you’re telling me in the history of the world nobody’s just stumbled onto it until now. Experimented with it. Found a way to use it.”

  “Quite the opposite,” Mr. Rivets said. “The Greeks and Romans knew the secrets of lektricity well. As did the Atlanteans before them.”

  “The Atlanteans!” Fergus cried. “From Atlantis. The city that sank beneath the Atlantis Ocean in the stories, you mean. This gets better and better.”

  “Why do you think Ancient Rome fell?” Archie asked.

  “Overexpansion into the Americas, economic inflation, reliance on barbarian mercenaries in the Roman Legion, and the rise of the Germanic tribes in the Old World,” the girl said.

  The boys turned to stare at her.

  “Well that’s what I heard,” said the girl.

  “It—no,” Archie said. “I mean, the real reason Rome fell was because they built lektric generators and covered the world with lektricity and woke the Mangleborn again.”

  “And you know all this pretend history how?” Fergus asked.

  Archie had already told them too much—but after what they’d been through, he thought they deserved to know. He glanced at Mr. Rivets, who apparently agreed.

  “Master Archie and his parents are a part of a secret society that has fought the Mangleborn for generations,” Mr. Rivets said. “They have also worked in secret to keep the world from rediscovering the practical uses of lektricity.”

  “Worked to keep people from…” Fergus’ eyes went wide. “There was a fire. At Edison’s lab. Last month. We were just about to create a battery—a chemical storage jar for lektricity. But the lab burned down. We lost everything. Did your secret society do that?”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Mr. Rivets. “Men like Edison, once identified, are watched. Their work suppressed.”

  “But you don’t know for a fact they did it?” the girl said.

  “The Society is, as I said, miss, a secret. Only a few of its members know all its agents; most know only two or three others besides themselves. Beyond Mr. and Mrs. Dent and the governing council in New Rome, I myself am aware of only two active Septemberists.”

  “Septemberists?” Fergus asked.

  “Yes, sir. That is what members of the group call themselves.”

  “That’s why we went down there,” Archie said. “My parents are researchers for the Septemberists. They know all about the Mangleborn from old books, and they watch the stars for signs that the Mangleborn are getting stronger. Like this one.” He got quiet as he thought about his parents at Septemberist headquarters, those awful bugs on their necks. “They just didn’t know how strong.”

  “Sorry, White,” Fergus said. “Giant monsters trapped in the earth is a tough sell.”

  “‘White’?” Archie said.

  “No offense, mate,” Fergus said. “But don’t tell me it’s the first time you’ve heard it. Not with that snowball on your head. Guess I didn’t notice it before in the dark.”

  Archie didn’t understand.

  “Yes, Master Archie,” Mr. Rivets said. “I neglected to mention it after your rescue as there were more pressing matters to attend to with Master Fergus, but … perhaps it’s best you see for yourself.”

  Mr. Rivets pointed to a polished metal mirror on the cabin wall. Archie went closer to look.

  “My hair—my hair is white!” Archie cried.

  “I’m afraid I’m at a loss to explain it, sir,” said Mr. Rivets.

  “It happened after you put your hands in that green flame,” the girl said. “It was brown before. White after.”

  Archie ran his fingers through his hair. It was white as steam. All of it. White to the skin. His eyebrows too. Mr. Rivets might not have understood, but Archie did. Seeing the Mangleborn, hearing it inside his head had done this to him. It had touched his mind. Jandal a Haad. He remembered the words now. The same words the Septemberist council had spoken to him. He had no idea what they meant, but they scared him to the bone.

  “We h
ave to go back,” said the girl.

  “What?” Archie asked. He was still staring at his white hair and thinking about the Mangleborn’s terrible voice flooding his thoughts. Assaulting him.

  “And do what?” Fergus asked.

  “Kill Edison,” she said. “Kill this monster.”

  Archie tore his eyes away from his white hair. “You can’t kill the Mangleborn, or else somebody would have done it. That’s why they’re in prisons.”

  “Then just Edison,” the girl said. “I need to finish what I started.”

  “Why? What did Edison do to you?” Archie thought it might be the scar, but when would Edison have cut her? And why? But the girl didn’t say. She just sat there with her arms crossed, staring at him.

  “This is a job for the Septemberists,” Archie told her. “There’s one person we know in New Rome who’s a member of the Society. We’ll let him know my parents are still alive, and what Edison’s been doing.”

  The girl gave Archie a tired look. Fergus coughed and looked away.

  “They are alive,” Archie told them. “I’ve seen them. I know.”

  “If we’re going back to New Rome, I want to go to Jersey first,” Fergus said. “I need to see Kano’s wife, Joanne. Tell her what happened.”

  “If you’re not going back to Florida, I’ll go back alone,” the girl said.

  “We don’t have time for that,” Archie told Fergus. “And there’s no sense going back alone when you’ll just get killed,” he told the girl.

  She stood suddenly. “There’s a wasp on the ceiling.”

  Archie and Fergus looked up. A solitary hornet crawled up near the gaslight chandelier.

  “So what?” Archie said.

  The girl glared at them. “Didn’t you just say Edison was trying to raise something called ‘the Swarm Queen’?”

  “It’s just one wasp,” Archie said, and then he froze. He had thought the front windshield was black because it was dark outside, but now he could see that wasn’t it at all.

  The Hesperus was covered with wasps.

  9

  The wasp on the ceiling was joined by another two, then another five. Soon the airship cabin was buzzing with them.

  “The wasps are coming in through the air circulation system!” Archie cried.

  “Actually, sir, they appear to be Vespa crabro,” Mr. Rivets said, examining one that was trying to sting his brass hand. “Hornets, not wasps.”

  Fergus leaned back on the medical bay bed, swatting the hornets away from him. “I don’t care what they are. They’ve got stingers and I can’t run. Help!”

  “There’s nowhere to run to,” the girl said. She batted hornets away as more came in through the air ducts. Soon they would be covered in the things. “Circus, showtime!” she said.

  From the pouches in her bandolier burst her five winged wind-up animals—a lion, gorilla, giraffe, elephant, and zebra. The girl pointed at Fergus. “Keep the wasps off him!”

  “Hornets, miss,” Mr. Rivets corrected her.

  The flying animals swooped into action, biting, clawing, stomping, and kicking the insects around Fergus. He leaned back on his elbows and watched them work with the wide-eyed appreciation of a tinker, all thoughts of mortal peril suddenly gone.

  Archie wanted some help too. The hornets were all over him. He pulled a blanket from one of the sleeping hammocks and swung it at them, but there were too many.

  The girl pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall and aimed it at him. “Duck,” she said.

  Archie hit the deck just as the fire extinguisher’s chemical bath soaked the insects above him. They fell all around him, writhing and dying on the floor.

  The chemical bath was a good idea, but it couldn’t take care of all of them. Archie’s eyes searched the cabin. There had to be something else they could use to fight the swarm! The only time he’d ever killed wasps back home was in the late fall, when it got so cold they stopped flying and slowed down long enough so he could smack them with a shoe.…

  “Cold air. Mr. Rivets! We need to go higher! Take the Hesperus higher!”

  “If you would just insert my Airship Pilot card, Master Archie, I shall endeavor to do so.”

  Archie muttered a few words his parents would ground him for and scrambled for the talent card chest across the cabin. The girl was still pumping juice out of the extinguisher, but more wasps were coming in by the minute. Archie disengaged Mr. Rivets’ Surgeon card, swatted a swooping hornet with it, and quickly replaced it with an Airship Pilot card from the case. The machine man immediately strode to the steering console, brushed some wet, wriggling hornets out of his way, and brought the airship under control.

  “The extinguisher’s running out!” cried the girl.

  “I got an idea—I got an idea!” Fergus said. Wincing in pain, he hopped across the cabin, the girl’s flying circus protecting him the whole way. Fergus slammed painfully into the wall and pulled away a brass panel, revealing a network of ducts and fittings and tubes.

  Archie swatted at more hornets. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m just … rerouting … a couple of things,” Fergus said. He grunted as he worked, trying to keep himself balanced against the wall on his one good leg. Archie ducked to keep away from the swarm and ran to Fergus. The tinker was taller than Archie, just like everybody else, but Archie was still able to hold him up. Fergus worked faster, disconnecting one hose and switching it out with another.

  “There!” he said.

  Smoke poured out of the ventilation shafts.

  “You broke it!” Archie said, already starting to cough.

  “No. I’ve seen beekeepers do this back home in the Carolina mountains. Smoke calms bees.”

  “Hornets, sir,” Mr. Rivets said.

  Hornets, wasps, bees—it didn’t matter what they were. The smoke was working. The insects stopped attacking and hovered around Mr. Rivets, away from the smoky vents. The only problem was that Fergus was smoking himself and Archie and the girl out too.

  “We can’t breathe this smoke for too much longer,” Archie said, coughing. He looked out the front window and saw the familiar bloodred moon in the night sky. The Hesperus was up high enough that the rest of the hornets had fallen away!

  Archie ran to a porthole and wrenched it open. The smoke and the hornets were sucked outside, replaced with the thin, frigid air of the upper atmosphere. The girl ran to Fergus and helped hold him up while he switched the pipes back to normal, and when the last of the smoke was gone Archie closed the porthole, slamming it shut so hard the glass cracked.

  “We did it,” Archie said. He collapsed to the floor like a switched-off machine man, and Fergus and the girl flopped down beside him, absolutely exhausted.

  “Smart thinking on the fire extinguisher,” Archie told the girl.

  “Taking us up where it’s cold was a brass notion,” Fergus told Archie.

  “Pumping smoke in the cabin is what saved us,” the girl told Fergus.

  “Those little clockwork gizmos of yours saved me,” Fergus said.

  The girl whistled, and her circus flew back to their places in her bandolier.

  “Shall I bring us down, Master Archie?” Mr. Rivets asked.

  “No. Keep us up here for a while, just in case those wasps come after us again.”

  “Hornets, sir.”

  “How far d’ya think we’ll have to go till that Swarm Queen can’t send insects after us no more?” Fergus asked.

  “I do not know, sir. The Swarm Queen’s influence over the phylum Arthropoda means that as she gains strength, her mastery over insects everywhere will only become stronger.”

  “Clinker,” Fergus muttered.

  “I shall vent some heat in from the engines for you,” Mr. Rivets told them. “But at this altitude the cabin will still tend to be cold.”

  “Whatever you can do, Mr. Rivets. Thank you,” said Archie.

  “Might I also inquire, sir, where it is we’re going? At present, we are holding stati
on over Port Hibernum.”

  Archie looked at the two other people shivering on the floor with him. Apart, they were weak, wounded, and alone. Together, they had stopped a mad scientist, survived a killer Tik Tok, and overcome a swarm of hornets. They were good together.

  “I think we should go to New Rome,” Archie said. “All of us. Together.”

  “I’m in,” Fergus said. “As long as we stop in Jersey first. I have to tell Mrs. Henhawk her husband is dead.”

  Archie nodded. “What about you?” he asked the girl.

  She stared at the floor for what seemed like an eternity, the only sound in the cabin the soft tick of Mr. Rivets’ clockworks and the low drone of the Hesperus’ twin DaVinci aeroprop engines.

  “All right,” she said at last. “As long as we come back. With rayguns. Big ones.”

  “We’ll come back with an army,” Archie told her. “Mr. Rivets—New Rome. Best possible speed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Archie and the girl pulled each other up off the floor, then helped Fergus to stand.

  “Hachi,” the girl said.

  “What?—I don’t—Is that a Seminole word?” Archie asked.

  “It’s my name,” said the girl. She climbed into one of the hammocks and turned to the wall to go to sleep.

  “Is it me, or did we just make a new friend?” Fergus stage-whispered.

  “Blow it out your blastpipe,” said Hachi from under her blanket.

  Fergus winked at Archie, and they climbed into their hammocks to sleep.

  * * *

  Archie woke with a yelp. He was sweaty under his blanket despite the chill in the air.

  “Master Archie?” Mr. Rivets asked from the steering console. “Is everything all right?”

  “I just—I just had another dream about my parents.” He remembered bits and pieces of it—his parents, still controlled by those bugs in their necks, were in another brass room. A different brass room than before, without picture frames all over the walls.

  Across the cabin, the dark shape of Fergus stirred in his hammock. “Archie?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”