The League of Seven

by Alan Gratz

  “Fifteen, sixteen, betwixt and between,” Hachi said.

  “Fifteen, sixteen, come out clean,” Archie said. “Oh, slag. We’re supposed to go down into those gears.”

  “I told you the whole place is clockworks,” Fergus said.

  “We’ll be crushed!” said Archie.

  “Not if we’re quick,” Hachi said. She saw the open tooth coming and crouched, ready to leap.

  “Nae nae nae! Not this time,” Fergus told her. “Those two gears are different sizes. The hole we saw before won’t be the same this time. We’ve got to time the ratios just right.”

  “There has to be a trick to it,” Archie said.

  “Aye. We just have to have a basic understanding of clockworks. And be fearless, I suppose. Now … jump!”

  Archie hadn’t been expecting that. He was almost too late jumping in behind Fergus and Hachi. He slipped in just as the gears closed around them, making a neat little rotating room.

  “A little more warning next time!” he told Fergus.

  “Now!” Fergus said, and again they were leaping into the free space where a gear had been forged with a missing cog. Hachi helped Fergus with the jump, putting an arm around his waist and helping support his dead leg. Archie hated not being able to help, but he had enough to worry about on his own. They jumped again, and again, Archie’s leaps always sloppy and uncoordinated. One gear nipped at the Great Bear’s pelt, but he pulled it away in time.

  Fergus led them into another gear that was up and down, not side to side, and they had to slip out before they were dumped into the dark machinery below. Their next jump took them to another big sideways gear like the one they had landed on at the beginning, and they all took a minute to catch their breaths.

  “We have to be nearly there,” Archie said. “How far do you think we’ve gone down?”

  “Ninety feet? A hundred?” Hachi guessed. “The stairs alone were something like four stories.”

  “Here’s another set of numbers,” Fergus said. He was standing near the edge of the gear. “Still fifteen and sixteen.”

  Archie flopped back onto the gear and closed his eyes, trying to muster the energy he would need for the next series of jumps.

  Jandal a Haad, the Swarm Queen whispered in his head. Before Archie could repeat his mantra and focus his mind he was lost in another dream, the cavern inside the ancient puzzle traps dissolving around him.

  * * *

  Archie stood in a broad field. It was twilight, but the world was on fire—the grass, the trees in the distance, the wrecked hulks of clanker tanks and armored airships, everything burned. Raygun fire crackled in the distance, and the ground was strewn with the bodies of warriors from a dozen nations—Iroquois, Cherokee, Powhatan, Sioux, Muskogee, Yankee, and more. Archie panted, holding a twisted, shattered trunk of a tree that was impossibly huge in his hands. There was no way he should have been able to lift it, but he could.

  On the horizon skulked the enormous, unnatural silhouettes of Mangleborn. Three of them, lumbering by, the earth shaking with every step they took.

  Wham. Something smashed down on Archie’s head and drove him into the ground, making a boy-sized hole in the earth. The force of it kicked him back up before he fell again with a thud.

  “Sorry, Archie!” said a voice he didn’t recognize.

  He crawled to his feet. Arranged behind him were six people, all around his age. A thin, tattooed girl dressed like a pirate in tall black boots and a weather-beaten old coat, holding a glowing green harpoon. A masked Mexicano boy with an odd-looking turquoise aether pistol and a tin star on his vest. An Afrikan boy looking out of the enormous eyes of the ten-story-tall steam man that had pounded Archie into the ground. A shadowy girl crouching on the steam man’s shoulder.

  And beside them, standing together, were a boy in a kilt with black lines on his skin, his clenched fists crackling with lektricity, and a thin, scarred girl with a wave cannon in her arms and brass toys fluttering around her head.

  Fergus and Hachi.

  “Don’t apologize,” said Hachi. “Just kill him.”

  * * *

  Archie woke screaming, swinging his fists. Destroy them. He had to destroy them all!

  “Archie, Archie!” Hachi said. She leaned over him, slapping away his fists. “Archie, snap out of it! Remember your mantra!”

  Archie felt sick, like he might throw up. The vision, the spinning gear, the cold, damp air of the underground cavern—it was all too much. He hacked and coughed, his head ringing like a hammer on an anvil.

  “Get him to the center where it’s not turning,” Fergus said. Archie felt hands drag him to a place where the world, mercifully, stopped spinning. Hachi held him while he came back to his senses. Fergus passed by every few seconds, still standing on the gear that moved around them.

  “What did you see, Archie?” Hachi asked. “You said our names.”

  “You didn’t see it?” Archie asked.

  “No. Just you. The Swarm Queen’s just talking to you now. What was it?”

  Archie squeezed his eyes shut, tears streaming down his face. He shook his head. He couldn’t tell them. It couldn’t be true. It hadn’t happened yet. It wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

  “Don’t give in to it, Archie. Stay strong. You’ve got something to live for. Remember that.”

  “S-save Mom and Dad,” Archie said, fighting the urge to throw up again.

  “That’s right. Deep breaths now, and keep saying that to yourself.”

  Archie did as Hachi told him. Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad.

  But why had he seen those other people? Six of them.

  Seven, including him.

  The League of Seven.

  He wasn’t their Leader. He was their Shadow. And they were fighting him.

  “Are you ready?” Hachi asked him. She helped him to his feet, and he took a tentative step onto the moving gear. He didn’t feel too sick.

  “We can wait,” Fergus said. “We’re perfectly safe here for the moment.”

  “My parents aren’t,” Archie told him. He had to focus. Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad. “I’m ready,” he told them.

  Fergus led them to the edge, and they waited for his signal to jump.

  “Now!” Fergus said.

  They dropped into the empty space between two cogs, then into a parallel gear, a tight fit for the three of them. Then down again, and a quick jump into another sideways gear. This one was a long wait. It felt wrong to Archie, like they had missed their jump. He was antsy. He could feel Malacar Ahasherat poking and prodding his brain like steam trying to force its way out of a boiler. Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad, he told himself. The gears around him ground on, and Archie couldn’t help but feel that the complex didn’t belong to the Romans at all but to the Swarm Queen—a great living machine built to swallow Archie whole.

  “Now!” Fergus yelled again.

  Archie shook himself back into the present and jumped, but something grabbed him and yanked him back. The Great Bear’s pelt was stuck under the edge of the gear!

  “Archie, jump!” Hachi yelled. The space between his gear and theirs was going away. “Jump! Jump! You have to jump now!”

  Archie tried to jump again, but the pelt wouldn’t come loose. If he slipped out of it, left it behind, he could make it. But Archie needed it! Without the Great Bear’s pelt he was useless!

  “Archie!” Hachi cried. “Now! Now! It has to be now!”

  Archie yanked as hard as he could. The pelt ripped free! He turned to jump, but the gears were closing. The space was too small. Too tight. He put his arm through, touched Hachi’s outstretched hand, but had to pull it back before it was cut off.

  The gears turned, the space closed, and Archie was alone.

  * * *

  “Archieeeeee!” Hachi cried.

  Fergus pulled her away. “You can’t do anything for him! He’s gone now. He’s gone!”

  “Up! I’ll climb up on top! I can pull him
out—”

  “You can’t go up top. You’ll be crushed. It’s built to keep us in, don’t you see? And the next jump’s coming up any second now.”

  “No! We’ll stay here. He’ll come back around.”

  Fergus spun her around to make her look him in the face. “Hachi! We have to keep moving forward. Do you understand? If we stay here, we’ll be dead like him. The rotational speeds are different. If we don’t take our one chance, we won’t get another. Hachi, are you listening to me?”

  Hachi batted his hands away and tried to turn, but there was nowhere to go.

  “I’m sorry, Hachi. I’m truly sorry,” Fergus told her.

  The gap in the next gear began to open up.

  “We can’t give up. We have to go now. We have to keep moving or we’ll be dead too,” he told her. “Three, two, one—”

  Screeeeeeeee! Fergus felt the gear grind beneath them, slowing down. Trang! Something big and metal snapped and clattered into the clockworks. Sprang! Chink! Krunk. Fergus knew the sound of a dying machine when he heard it. Something somewhere had broken or jammed or come loose, and the entire machine was falling apart, piece by massive piece.

  Wham! The gear they were on buckled and the floor dropped away. Fergus fell, still clinging to Hachi. They slammed into a tilted gear and slid. Down, down, down they tumbled, left, then right, then straight down again as another falling gear took out the floor beneath them. It was happening so fast they couldn’t see the next drop before they took it, plummeting as the great machine crumbled and disintegrated around them.

  Whoomp. They hit a dirt floor. Wrenk! Crunk! Shing! Fergus grabbed Hachi and covered her protectively as an enormous gear crashed down on top of them.

  Poom.

  Fergus looked up, surprised he wasn’t dead. The gear was wedged in above them, one end at their feet, the other propped on the cavern wall behind them like a lean-to tent. Pieces of the great machine clattered down on it like rain.

  “Out, out!” Hachi cried. She half pulled, half dragged Fergus from under the gear as the weight on top of it finally made it snap. Ka-thoom. Dust and debris spilled out of the space where they’d been like an avalanche, knocking them both to the ground again.

  Fergus was battered and bruised, and wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’d broken a few bones. He checked to make sure Hachi was still breathing, then collapsed beside her, closing his eyes against the pain.

  * * *

  Suddenly Fergus wasn’t lying on the floor in the puzzle traps anymore. He was standing in a dark field sometime in the future. What he was seeing hadn’t happened yet, he knew, but it would. It felt real—as real as if Fergus were actually there.

  There were bodies all around him. A boy with a tin star and a shattered raygun. A dead girl slumped over a branch in a nearby tree. A giant steam man ripped apart at the seams. A Karankawan pirate with a flaming green harpoon stuck in her chest.

  And Hachi. Her clockwork circus smashed to pieces beside her broken body.

  There was only one other person standing. Archie. Archie had done this. Killed everyone. Killed Hachi. Fergus knew it. Archie came closer, a wild, distant look in his eyes, and somehow, impossibly, he lifted one of the broken steam man’s enormous brass arms over his head to bash Fergus with it.

  Fergus felt his fists spark with one last charge of lektricity, but he let it go.

  “Archie, mate. I can’t do it. I can’t kill you,” Fergus told him.

  “You should have,” Archie said, and he slammed the giant metal arm down on Fergus like a hammer.

  * * *

  Fergus jerked awake. He’d only closed his eyes for a second. Beside him, Hachi was blinking too.

  “Did you see it?” Fergus asked her.

  “Archie,” she whispered. “He killed everyone. He killed you. I was the only one left to stop him.”

  Fergus frowned. “Nae. I was the only one left.”

  Something clattered behind them, pushing its way out of the rubble at the base of the broken machine. It lifted a heavy metal beam out of the way and tossed it aside with a roar. Whatever it was, it was big and bad and coming their way.

  “Hachi,” Fergus said. “Hachi Hachi Hachi Hachi—”

  She pulled Fergus to his feet, and they watched as rocks tumbled and a gear rolled out of the way. Hachi drew her dagger and Fergus summoned what lektric spark he had left, even though he feared neither one would be enough.

  The thing worked itself free and pulled itself up out of the rubble, but it wasn’t big at all. Bad, maybe, but not big.

  It was Archie.

  “Crivens,” Hachi whispered, and she took a step back in fear.

  31

  Archie saw Hachi take a step away from him like she was scared. He didn’t blame her. He was scared of himself. Who was he? What was he?

  Jandal a Haad, the Swarm Queen’s voice whispered. The Stone Man.

  Fergus frowned at Hachi’s fear and limped over to Archie.

  “It’s a miracle,” Fergus said. “A blinking miracle. That bearskin saved your life again.”

  Archie shook his head. He felt hot tears carve canyons down his dusty face. “No,” he said. “No, you don’t understand.” He held the pelt up for them to see, but they still didn’t get it. “It’s not— Mom? Dad?”

  Archie’s parents stood at the far end of the man-made cavern Archie had seen in his vision on the airship, the room with the great iron buttresses and the huge stone well. They were here. Archie had made it. The top seal on the crypt was already open, as was another beneath it, but a third seal was opened just a few inches wide—just enough for lektricity from something below to crackle out of it, like it was ready to erupt. But all Archie cared about were his parents. His mother was still pushing buttons and turning dials on the great machine that kept Malacar Ahasherat’s last seal in place while his father pounded on the clockworks robotically with a bent pipe.

  “Mom!” Archie cried. “Dad!” He dropped the Great Bear’s pelt and ran across the room to them. “Mom, Dad,” he said, but they didn’t hear him—or couldn’t. They had smiles on their faces and glazed looks in their eyes from the bugs in their necks. “Hachi! Hachi, we have to get these things off them.”

  Hachi hurried over.

  “We have to keep them separated, or they’ll try to stop us,” Archie said. “I’ll hold my mom. Fergus, you hold my dad.”

  Fergus put Mr. Dent in a headlock. Archie’s father acted like he didn’t notice, and kept banging away on the machine with his pipe. Fergus braced himself. “Got him,” he said.

  Archie took his mother’s hands. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to her, then nodded to Hachi.

  She cast Archie a wary look, then slid her dagger under the bug on Mrs. Dent’s neck. Slurch. Archie’s mother screamed as the bug came out, and Fergus struggled to hold Mr. Dent, who tried to turn and stop them. Hachi pulled the bug out and squashed it, then quickly moved to do the same for Mr. Dent.

  Archie’s mom collapsed in his arms, and he sank to the floor with her, cradling her as she sobbed. Archie had never seen his mother cry like this before, had never seen his parents so weak, and it scared him.

  “Mom, it’s all right. I’m here now. I came back for you. We’re going to get you out of here,” Archie told her.

  “No,” his mother said through her tears. “Shouldn’t have come, Archie.” She tried to lift herself, but she wasn’t strong enough. Archie realized it must have been days since either of them had eaten or slept. “The Swarm Queen…,” his mother rasped. “Archie—you have to get out of here…”

  “It wants you,” his father said, still sobbing. He had fallen to the ground beside his wife, absolutely exhausted. “Malacar … Ahasherat … wants to use you.”

  “Use me? For what?” Archie said. His skin grew cold. “What am I?”

  “We don’t know,” his mother said. She put a shaking hand to his face. “My beautiful boy. We don’t know what you are.”

  Archie slumped back against the c
onsole. There were almost no other words his mother could have said that would have hurt him more.

  We don’t know what you are.

  “The Septemberists brought you to us as a baby,” his father said. “Asked us to raise you.”

  Archie reeled. Adopted. I’m adopted, Archie thought. Everything he’d known—his family, his life, the foundation of his world—it was all a lie.

  “We didn’t know … we didn’t know you were…”

  “Didn’t know I was what?” Archie said, panic creeping into his voice.

  His mother drew her hand back from his face, her eyes wide with fear. “Something else,” she said.

  Jandal a Haad, said a voice in the pit. They all heard it now. The ground rumbled.

  “Seventeen, eighteen, the prisoner queen,” Hachi said. She looked nervously at Fergus. “Nineteen, twenty, bar her entry.”

  “Archie, go. Go now. Run,” his father told him. “Leave us. Save yourself.”

  “No! I can’t. Just tell me what I am!”

  “You’re our son,” his mother told him.

  But he wasn’t. Not really. He was something else. Archie looked from face to face, seeking answers no one seemed to have. Who was he? What was he?

  Jandal a Haad. Made of Stone.

  Hachi grabbed Archie by the shirt and shook him. “Are you with us? Archie, are you with us?” she asked.

  Archie nodded, shaking himself out of it. Remember your mantra, he told himself. Save your parents.

  But they weren’t really his parents, were they?

  “Fergus! Can you close that seal?” Hachi asked.

  “See if I can’t!” he said. He started flipping switches and turning dials on the console.

  “All right,” Hachi told Archie. “We’re getting your parents out of here.”

  Archie helped her pick up his mother. She felt like she weighed nothing. She was so tired she had already passed out, her arms swinging listlessly as they carried her. They were three steps toward the rubble pile when something metal clattered in the shaft where the great machine had collapsed, and they froze.