Dactyl Hill Squad

by Daniel José Older

  “We bumped into him earlier,” Magdalys said. “But he was with the cops, not these guys …”

  Cymbeline cast a wary eye toward where Riker and his raptor lurked along through the shadows of Forty-First Street. “The Kidnapping Club. I’ll explain later. For now, get one of those cartridges and pour some powder into the flashpan.” She turned back to the attacking dinoriders, shotgun raised, while Magdalys scrambled in the bag, pulled out a little paper packet, and then held up the gun with trembling hands. The flashpan was the little chamber above the trigger that the hammer brought the flint down onto. She tore open the packet.

  “Not too much powder,” Cymbeline said without looking down. “You need most of it to pour down the muzzle.”

  Ka-BLAM!! Cymbeline’s shotgun screamed, and Magdalys nearly dropped the bag of powder. A sharp ping sounded: the ball ricocheting off the armored back of one of those ankys.

  “I can help,” Amaya said, crouching beside Magdalys. On any other day, Magdalys would have been shocked by this, but after seeing how Amaya jumped away from that burning debris and was ready to clock Cymbeline when they surprised them in the records room … pieces were beginning to fall into place about this quiet girl with long black hair.

  “Good.” Cymbeline shuck-shucked the shell away and took aim again.

  “Here.” Amaya took the bag, poured a few grains of black powder into the flashpan, and then lowered the frizzen over it, keeping it safely packed away. “Pour the rest down the barrel.”

  Magdalys did as she was told, holding the edge of the packet against the mouth of the barrel so she wouldn’t spill any while the brachy crashed along through the streets.

  Ka-BLAM! Cymbeline’s shotgun roared again. This time, a man’s voice hollered in answer, and Magdalys heard the crash and tumble of a body falling onto the cobblestones. Was he dead? She stared down the dark street.

  Ka-piiiing! A musket ball ricocheted off the armored plating around the brachy’s saddle a few feet from them.

  BLAM!! Cymbeline took one shot, then another, then shuck-shucked the shells out.

  “Now the ball goes in,” Amaya said, retrieving it herself and popping it into the muzzle. “And then the —”

  “Ramrod,” Magdalys said, pulling the slender metal shaft out from beneath the barrel and shoving it into the front of the pistol. “That part I know.”

  BLAM!! Cymbeline let off another shot. An anky squealed and veered into a lamppost, hurling its rider through the air. “There we go!” Cymbeline yelled. “Gotta aim for the face.”

  Magdalys cringed. She knew the dino’s rider was directing it to attack her, but she couldn’t help but feel for the poor beast anyway.

  “Flint in place,” Amaya said, wrestling a little black shard into the hammer. “And we’re good to go.” Magdalys stared at the loaded pistol in her hand for a second.

  “Heads up,” Two Step yelled. The last ankyrider had pulled alongside them; he swung a club with nails sticking out. Magdalys raised the pistol, her hand shaking, cocked it back, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell and sparks danced out of the chamber with a fizz! Then it felt like her fingers were being shoved through a meat grinder as the gun let off an ear-shattering BANG! and smoke poured out. Magdalys stumbled backward into Amaya, who steadied her.

  When the smoke cleared, the rider was still galloping along beside them. He’d lowered into his saddle, cringing, and now looked up, realized he hadn’t been hit, and raised the spiked club again.

  “I missed!” Magdalys said. A tiny part of her was relieved she hadn’t killed someone; the rest screamed with terror that they were all about to die because of her bad shooting.

  The rider brought his club down on the brachy’s thick hide as a bucket flew past him and clanged onto the street. The brachy howled, swerving away, but the club stayed fast and the rider held tight, swinging off his mount. He scowled beneath a thick gray mustache, pulled a dagger from his belt, and shoved it into the brachy. Magdalys didn’t have time to reload and Cymbeline was busy trading shots with Riker. She gripped the pistol by the muzzle and brought it down as hard as she could on the man’s face.

  “Garg!” he grunted, but his grip held tight. Then Magdalys flew backward and the city around them spun into a wild blur. The panicked brachy was turning. No! Magdalys thought, trying to steady herself. She saw the rider she’d just pistol-whipped fly off to the side and crash into a building wall, then slump beneath it and lie still. Cymbeline was already shoving her way to the front of the brachy’s saddle as she loaded more shells into her double-barrel.

  Sha-piiing! Another musket ball dinged off a streetlamp near them. The brachy reared to a halt and hooted his terror into the night. Mapper and Two Step were still helping each other up when Magdalys hurried past them to where Cymbeline was steadying her double-barrel for a shot. Up ahead, Riker’s raptor had raised itself to full height. This one wasn’t like the bedraggled old dino they’d squared up with outside the theater. This creature was almost twice the size and clearly well taken care of. Finely groomed purple and black feathers sprouted from its slender arms, and each razor-like claw on its feet had been shined and sharpened.

  “Give up, Cymbeline,” Rich Riker called. “As city magistrate, I demand you hand over the children to the custody of the State of New York.”

  “You mean the Kidnapping Club,” Cymbeline spat.

  Riker smiled. “In fact, you are technically the one kidnapping. These are wards of the state. Now that their home has oh so sadly been destroyed” — his smile widened — “it’s up to the state to make sure they are properly cared for.”

  Riker’s foul grin left no question in Magdalys’s mind. He had been responsible for the Asylum burning down. He’d probably made sure Mr. Calloway was killed too. And he was surely after whatever other orphans had escaped, if he hadn’t already snatched them up. And now he wanted custody of her and her friends? Rage seethed in her heart as she glared down Fifth Avenue. She felt Amaya stand beside her, knew that the others had stood now too, were behind them and wondering what would happen.

  “You’re not selling these kids into slavery,” Cymbeline called. Then, under her breath: “I can’t get a good shot off from this far away.”

  Magdalys handed Amaya the pistol, heard her start to prepare it. “Then we’ll have to get closer,” Magdalys said.

  Cymbeline cocked an eyebrow. “Huh?”

  “Get ready.” Magdalys closed her eyes. Reached out for the brachy with her mind. Forward, she urged. Run! The brachy stirred beneath them. His worried trill sounded through Magdalys’s mind. I know you’re scared, she cooed. So am I, believe me. But the only way we’re gonna get out of this is by going all the way in. Now … She felt the brachy’s whole attention on her, its fear transforming into something different, hope maybe.

  CHARGE! Magdalys thought with everything in her.

  There was a pause and the city seemed to hold its breath. Then the brachy leapt forward, breaking into a full gallop without so much as a windup.

  “Whoa!” Cymbeline yelled, raising her shotgun. In the street ahead, the raptor raised and lowered its clawed feet uneasily, and Riker lifted his rifle, eyes wide. “What are you — ?” But the brachy was already bearing down on him. He pulled tight on his reins, swinging the raptor off to the side, and then dug his stirrups hard, urging it into a pounce.

  The raptor leapt just as the brachy charged past, and Cymbeline and Amaya were ready for it. Both their weapons blasted at the same time, one shot tearing into Riker’s arm and the other sending the raptor sprawling backward with a shriek.

  “Nice shot!” Cymbeline yelled. “Magdalys, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it!”

  In the dusty cloud behind them, Riker scrambled to his feet, clutching his wounded shoulder. His eyes met with Magdalys’s as he pulled out a pistol and stood over the writhing raptor. He put the muzzle to its head.

  A single shot rang out in the burning New York night as the brachy galloped away.

  “
IT SHOULD BE here,” Cymbeline said, sliding down from the saddle. It was the first time during this whole terrible night that Magdalys had heard her sound worried. “I guess the riots have thrown everything off. Still …” She squinted at the East River; the crescent moon above danced its broken light across the black ripples. Magdalys followed Cymbeline’s gaze. Brooklyn was a dark mass on the other side, speckled with a few flickering lanterns along the shore. Further back, steeples rose above gaslit streets.

  Safety, Magdalys thought. There were no riots or burning over there, not that she’d ever heard of. She could see it, but it was still so far away.

  “We’ll have to wait some,” Cymbeline said. She turned away from the water, her face tense. “I don’t like it, but I don’t know what else we can do. I’ll take first watch.” She loaded a few shells into her shotgun and cocked it ready, striding toward the small footpath through the shrubbery they’d come in from.

  The brachy had carried them for almost an hour through the riot-torn streets of Manhattan. At first, Magdalys had just sent him along a random series of turns in case Riker or any of his Kidnapping Club tried to follow them. They’d passed a huge battalion of policemen, looking worn-out, some badly injured, but nightsticks drawn and clearly marching back into the fray. Pretty soon after that, Cymbeline started giving directions, guiding them gradually east and south toward the river.

  And now it was time to part. The huge dinosaur couldn’t cross the river with them — it would be too conspicuous to ride around Brooklyn — and there was no way to go back into that nightmare. Everyone dismounted, patting his massive flanks and thanking him before gathering around Cymbeline. Magdalys waited till they’d all gotten off and then gazed over at the brachy’s battered hip. The gunshot looked pretty superficial, from what she could tell. The bleeding had stopped and the wound wasn’t deep. A nasty bruise had blossomed around the scraped area where the ankyrider had tried to board them, but otherwise the fire brachy seemed to be okay. She rubbed his scaly skin lovingly. “You alright, big guy?”

  Arrrreeoooommph, the brachy hooted. It sounded like it might’ve been a yes, Magdalys thought, trying to ignore the part of her that was still in total disbelief about talking to dinos.

  “You need anything?”

  The brachy leaned his massive neck forward into the darkness, and then Magdalys heard a splashing and gurgling from the river. He swung his big face back toward her a moment later and she jumped out of the way as a massive splortch of dinosaliva-tinged river water gushed over his wounded skin.

  Ar-ar-ar-ar, the brachy’s voice chortled inside Magdalys. He was laughing, she realized with a smile.

  She slid down off the saddle, landing with a splish in a dark puddle, and wrapped herself around one of his great big tree trunk legs. “Thank you for saving our lives,” she whispered.

  The brachy hooted a loud song into the air and then rumbled off toward the city.

  “This way,” Cymbeline said as Magdalys joined the rest of them. Up ahead, there was a rickety old building by the water with a sign that said BREUKLYN FERRY PORT. “This is the old docking bay,” Cymbeline explained. “It got replaced by a fancy one downtown, but we still use this sometimes to smuggle goods back and forth.”

  But there was no ferry to be found. Not even the telltale torches on the far shore to at least let them know it was on its way back.

  A few battered old chairs formed a semicircle by the water, and Magdalys, Two Step, Sabeen, Mapper, and Amaya pulled them close to each other and huddled close. Marietta and Halsey stood by the ferry port, talking quietly. It sounded like Halsey might be crying again, but Magdalys wasn’t sure.

  “Here,” Amaya said, taking the files out of her satchel and passing them around. “Find yours.”

  A chorus of oohs and aahs rose as Mapper, Two Step, and Sabeen pulled open their folders. Magdalys held hers closed in her lap. She looked over at Amaya, who was doing the same.

  A few moments passed while everyone read. “Whoa,” Two Step said. “My parents. They were killed trying to escape a plantation. After they’d left me with someone to smuggle me up north.”

  “Wow …” Little Sabeen said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Two Step shook his head, wiped a tear away. “I had no idea. I mean I didn’t think … they were alive, but … I don’t know …” He wiped his eyes again but the tears kept falling around his red knuckles and down his cheeks.

  Magdalys scootched next to him and put an arm around Two Step’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Mapper said, “actually, it probably won’t. That was the wrong thing to say. Sorry, man.”

  “It really was,” Amaya said.

  “I said I was sorry!”

  “It’s fine,” Two Step said. “I mean, it’s not, but not because of what you said. I’m just happy I’m here with you guys and we’re all still alive, even if … yeah. What’s y’all’s docs say?”

  “Nothing, basically,” Mapper said, holding up an almost blank sheet of paper. He shrugged. “But I knew that. Got rounded up from the streets and shoved in the Asylum by one of those creepy charity ladies. I never knew my parents. What about you, Sabeen?”

  “I don’t remember anything about mine either,” Sabeen said. “This says my mom was a …” She squinted at the paper, read the words slowly: “Public woman. She died of yellow fever. And for my dad it just says unknown.” She looked like she might cry, then seemed to gather herself, turned a firm gaze to the river.

  “You’re not gonna open yours, Amaya?” Magdalys asked quietly as the others talked more about their files.

  She shook her head. “I already know what it says. I just needed it for legal reasons.”

  Magdalys wanted to ask her who on earth she was, this strange, slender girl who seemed to know everything from battle tactics to acrobatics, but she restrained herself. If Amaya wanted to tell her, she would. Clearly she’d kept her own secrets for this long, why would she start divulging now?

  “What about you?” Amaya asked. She turned to Magdalys with a gentle smile on her face and suddenly seemed much older than everyone, even the Crunks and Marietta. Magdalys could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen Amaya smile. “Go head, open it.”

  She’d grabbed hers, Montez’s, and Julissa’s and Celia’s, because one day she’d see them all again, she knew she would, and the files would be a welcome gift, a strange shard of memorabilia from this broken time, and maybe they’d all laugh about what they’d been through, all those years apart. Now her heart rattled into overdrive at the thought of opening them. Amaya put a hand on Magdalys’s, steadying it. Together they opened the file.

  Given name: Magdalys Roca (Margaret Rocheford)

  Born: January 4, 1851

  Place of origin: Matanzas Province, Cuba

  Delivered to the Asylum by: Harrison Weed, of 893 Mulberry Street, Manhattan, New York

  Mother: Caridad Saenz Lopez Salazar

  Father: Señor Pablo Gibraltar Monserrat Roca

  And that was it. Neither alive nor dead, free nor enslaved. Just names on a piece of paper and some province of Cuba Magdalys had never heard of. And this strange man named Weed. His name showed up in the files of her sisters and brother (they all had the same father but four different mothers, Magdalys noticed), confirming what Magdalys had suspected: The mysterious tobacco-smelling, mustached man was Harrison Weed. And whoever he was, had not only stolen Magdalys’s sisters away from her, but also dropped off Magdalys herself. He was the only link she had to her parents, then.

  Mulberry Street.

  Fine. Now she had one stop on her way out of New York. She’d find out whatever she could from this Harrison Weed, and then she’d make her way down south to Montez. One way or another, she would do it. She just had to figure out how.

  “The ferry!” Halsey Crunk yelled, startling everyone. “It’s the ferry! Cymbie! Come quickly!”

  Magdalys looked up from the files. Two dim lantern
s danced across the water toward them like fiery ghosts. A long, curved sauropod neck cut a slender silhouette against the dark blue sky between them.

  “Terribly sorry bout that,” a voice called out in a thick Irish accent. “Got a bit held up dropping some cargo in Queens, you know, and then what with the riots and all we was a tad cautious on the return.”

  “It’s alright!” Cymbeline called, running up to the shore. “We’re just glad to see you. Come on, everyone, quickly now!”

  The huge sauropod pulled up along the shore. A wooden platform had been constructed along its back, and the ferryman stood at the front of this holding a long rod that dipped into the river. “All aboard, then, laddies!”

  Two Step and Sabeen boarded first. Mapper and Amaya went next, then Magdalys, and finally Halsey, Marietta, and Cymbeline. The planks were slippery, and it felt like at any moment the whole thing might just fall apart and leave them to sink beneath the surface. Or the sauropod might decide to dive beneath the surface, and well, that’d be that. Instead, the ferryman made some clucking noises and pushed them away from the shore with his rod. Magdalys thought of the other orphans, now refugees, and sent up a tiny prayer that they were safe somewhere. Then the ferry sauropod let out a gentle hoot and they were off, gliding smoothly across the black waters of the East River, the burning streets of Manhattan behind them and the darkness of Brooklyn ahead.

  IT HAD PROBABLY just been a few hours, but by the time Cymbeline led them up to a rickety wooden door beneath a sign that said THE BOCHINCHE, Magdalys felt like they’d been walking the whole night.

  Sleepy, darkened clusters of houses had given way to empty stretches of wilderness that had become winding streets, and then they were trudging up, up, up a long hill. Everyone stayed pretty quiet; the echoes of all that had just happened lingered like angry ghosts. As they approached the summit, dark shapes flitted across the sky above them, letting out occasional hoots and squawks in the night.