The League of Seven (29 page)

“Hachi wouldn't tell me much about her coming here, besides waking in the smashed-up airship,” Fergus said. “She seems different somehow though. Looser.”

“I actually saw her smile,” said Archie. “It was weird.”

“You were with her, Mr. Rivets. What happened?” Fergus asked.

“I'm afraid I couldn't say, sir,” Mr. Rivets said.

Archie tensed. The repetition of the stock phrase Tik Toks used when they were forced to keep a secret made him think about his parents and John Douglas' scrapbook all over again.

Fergus laughed. “Share a candlelit dinner under the stars, did you?”

“I'm afraid what transpired on our sojourn to Standing Peachtree must remain between myself and Miss Hachi, sir,” Mr. Rivets told him. “But you are welcome to ask her yourself.”

Mr. Rivets nodded at the window, where Hachi was climbing inside.

“Hey! I'm getting dressed here!” Archie said, quickly hiding behind Mr. Rivets.

“Please,” Hachi said. “You're like a little brother to me, Archie.”

Fergus guffawed while Archie pulled up his pants.

“Do a lot of climbing in and out of windows while you were here, did you?” Fergus asked, grinning.

“Not to meet boys, if that's what you mean,” Hachi told him. “It's a
girls'
school. With a very early curfew. If we wanted to meet boys, we had to sneak down to the secret passageway in the basement that led to the tavern.”

That shut Fergus up. He had apparently assumed the secret passageway was a lie told by Tooantuh to mislead the Pinkertons. Now, clearly, he was picturing it as real—and picturing Hachi and Tooantuh meeting up down there. Hachi gave Archie a sly smile, enjoying Fergus' confusion. Whatever
had
happened on that walk with Mr. Rivets, Hachi did seem like a new person. Or at least a softer version of herself.

“We need to talk about what we're doing next. Where we're going,” she said.

“We keep going to Florida,” Archie said.

“Florida,” Fergus agreed.

Hachi nodded. “But we lost everything in the crash.”

“Not everything,” Archie said. “I still have the Great Bear's pelt.”

“But we have no rayguns,” Hachi told him. “Nothing to fight with. And I really liked that wave cannon.”

“Aye,” Fergus said. “And we even lost them kooky metal hats Tesla gave us, the ones to keep the beastie from driving us mad.”

Archie shifted uncomfortably. He hadn't said anything about it, but the loss of the hats was the most worrisome for him. The new vision he'd had, the one with the Great Bear, was different. The Swarm Queen wasn't showing him his parents anymore. She was showing him other things. Memories. Visions.

She was talking to him.

“We don't need the hats,” Hachi told them.

“No?” said Archie. “But how are we going to keep Malacar Ahasherat out of our heads? She could make us crazy.” He saw the Great Bear again, fighting his friends. “She could make us turn on each other.”

“Come with me,” Hachi said, and she climbed out the window again onto the roof.

Fergus shrugged and followed as best he could with his one good leg. Archie grabbed the Great Bear's pelt and joined them. If he fell again, he wanted to have handy what had saved him last time.

“I'll just wait here then, shall I?” Mr. Rivets asked.

Hachi was already halfway along the roofline. She took a turn along another roof and skirted around a chimney like she was walking along a sidewalk. Fergus limped along, putting his weight on his straight leg as he balanced on the high roof. Archie tried walking, then slipped and fell, straddling the roofline. If he could have hugged the roof he would have, despite the sandpaper-like shingles. Instead he crawled along on his hands and knees. He was going to be a bloody mess when he got to wherever they were going, he was sure.

Archie got to the chimney and stood and hugged it, even though his arms weren't wide enough to go all the way around. A moth fluttered away from the bricks right into Archie's face, and he spat and coughed, almost losing his balance again. A hand caught him—Hachi—and pulled him around the chimney to the other side, where there was a commanding view of the city over the treetops. High overhead, a bloodred waxing gibbous moon hid among the thin gray clouds.

“We couldn't have kept talking in the room?” Archie asked. He had little bits of gravel stuck to his hands and knees, but, miraculously, none of it seemed to have gone deep enough to cut him.

Hachi settled in beside Archie and Fergus on the rooftop. “I used to climb out here almost every night,” she told them. “To practice my mantra.”

“Your what?” Fergus asked.

“My mantra. It's an Old World word. It's something you say or repeat over and over again to focus your mind. We don't need Tesla's tin hats. We just need mantras.”

“That thing you say all the time,” Archie said. “Those names.”

“Yes,” Hachi said. “They … they remind me why I fight, and give me the strength to do what must be done.”

“But surely that's not enough to keep the beasties out of our heads.”

“You know I share a connection with that monster in the swamp,” Hachi told them. “I have … I have ever since I was very little.” Then, haltingly, she told them the story she had told Mr. Rivets by the fire. She told them about the strangers, about her father and mother, about her mother's town. Afterward they were all quiet for a long time.

“I've had dreams and visions of the monster since I was little,” Hachi told them. “I had to learn to block them. Push them out. My mantra does that. And it helps me remember.”

“What do we do?” Archie asked quietly. “Memorize yours?”

“No. What matters is that you believe in something,
want
something so strongly that it overrides everything else. It has to be something personal. What is it you most want? Why do you seek the Mangleborn's destruction?”

“That's easy,” Fergus said. “It's my fault Kano and lots of other people have died. If I hadn't had blinders on, I might have seen what we were doing was wicked. I put science before conscience, and I'm not going to do that again. Ever.”

“Make it simple. Something you can remember easily.”

“Yours isn't simple!” Fergus said.

“No, but I spent years learning it. You two don't have that kind of time. Think of something you can tell yourself over and over again to keep your mind on what you have to do. Something you don't have to think too much about. It should be easy for you, Archie.”

Archie knew what she meant—the whole reason he wanted to go back to Florida, needed to confront the Swarm Queen again, was to free his parents. That's all he had to tell himself: Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad.

But so many things were eating at him. Distracting him. Why was Malacar Ahasherat singing to him of past Leagues? Why did the Shadow in the Cherokee circle dance scare him so much? How had he fallen ten thousand feet from an airship and survived? And the biggest question of all, the one he thought of now whenever he thought of his mom and dad: What secret about John Douglas' scrapbook had they ordered Mr. Rivets not to tell him?

“You can't ignore what's right for anything,” Fergus said to himself. “That's mine. You can't ignore what's right for anything.” Beside him, Hachi closed her eyes and whispered the names of the hundred slaughtered men of her mother's tribe again.

Archie took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind.
I have to save Mom and Dad,
he told himself.
It doesn't matter what the secret is. “
Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad.” Instead of wondering what they did and didn't know, what they were and weren't telling him, he focused on the things that connected them, the things he loved about them: the picnics on blankets on the floor of the family observatory, the vaudeville shows and Philadelphia Athletics lacrosse games they'd seen together in the city, the winter nights reading
The Adventures of Professor Torque and His Amazing Steamboy
aloud by the fire. This was the mom and dad he wanted to save. The mom and dad he needed to save. They were his entire life. If he could just keep those images in his head, he could stand up to Malacar Ahasherat—in the real world, and in his head.

“Save Mom and Dad,” he whispered. “Save Mom and Dad. Save Mom and Dad.”

Other voices joined their whispered mantras—jeering, yelling voices from far down the street. A mob with torches and oscillators and axes was headed their way.

Fergus nudged Hachi, and she broke from her trance. “The Pinkertons are back!” he told her.

Hachi stood. “Some of them, yes. But it looks like they've brought friends. We've got to get inside and warn Ms. Ambrose.”

“What? Why? Who is it?” Archie asked.

“The Pinkertons have whipped up a mob of Cherokee,” Hachi told them, “and they're coming to attack the school.”

 

26

The door to the room flew open as Archie, Hachi, and Fergus climbed back inside. It was Ms. Ambrose, looking pink and flushed again.

“Ms. Ambrose! There's a mob outside!” Hachi said. “They're coming for the school!”

“I know, dear. We've already been targeted for letting in anyone from any tribe, and I'm afraid the ball tonight brought us too much attention.”

“It's the Pinkertons,” Hachi said. “They've stirred them up.”

“They must have figured out your friend sent them on a snipe hunt,” said Fergus.

“We're barricading the front door to hold them off,” Ms. Ambrose said. “We'll send you along through the tunnel to the Buck Head Tavern. They may have men there, but you'll stand a better chance of escaping if—”

“No!” Hachi said. She dashed out the door, leaving the headmistress spinning in her wake.

“Where is she going? What's she—we have to get you to the tunnel,” Ms. Ambrose said.

“You don't really think we'd leave you in the lurch, do you?” Fergus said, hurrying to join Hachi.

“It's our fault they're coming here!” Archie said, following close behind.

From the balcony overlooking the great hall, they saw Hachi undoing all of Ms. Ambrose's orders. She had the girls moving the furniture away from the front door and piling it against the interior doors instead.

“What are you doing?” Ms. Ambrose cried, hurrying down the stairs. “You're going to let them in!”

“They're going to get in anyway,” Hachi told her. “This way we can control where they go.”

Ms. Ambrose nodded for the girls to do as Hachi said, and they went back to moving tables and chairs.

“You have rayguns?” Hachi asked Ms. Ambrose. The headmistress, usually so in control, stammered and spun about as though trying to think what to do.

“Ms. Ambrose! Rayguns? Aether pistols? Oscillators? Anything?” Hachi asked.

“Yes. Two. In the safe upstairs. The combination is—”

“I know the combination!” Hachi said, already on the run. “I cracked the safe in my second year!”

Archie met Hachi on the stairs running down as she was running up.

“Archie, archery.”

“What?”

“Archery! The school teaches archery!” she yelled before she disappeared down the hall.

Archie found a bewildered girl in a nightshirt on the landing. “Are you in the archery club?” he asked her. She shook her head, a little lost. “Do you know someone who is?” Archie pressed her. She nodded. “Find them. Tell them to bring bows and arrows. Do you understand? It's important!”

The girl seemed to wake up and she nodded, hurrying off.

“I need some ladies' underpants,” Fergus said. Two or three of the girls nearby stopped and stared at him. “For the static! The charge!” he said, his face burning red. “Seriously.”

A tall, pretty Cherokee girl in a white nightshirt took Fergus' hand and pulled him off toward the dorm rooms.

The room around Archie was busier than the Pennsylvania Pneumatic Post Office. Girls in various stages of dress ran here and there, but Archie didn't know what to do. Finally Hachi came sprinting back down the hall with two rayguns in hand: an aether pistol and an old oscillating rifle.

“Hey! Should I have one of those?” Archie asked.

“Not if we actually want to hit anything with them,” Hachi told him. “Meghan!” she called. A girl a few years older than Hachi glided over, her nightdress flowing like a cape. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail behind her heart-shaped face.

Hachi tossed her the aether pistol. “You're in charge of the other side of the balcony. Don't shoot until they're all the way inside.”

Meghan activated the aether pistol's aggregator, and the raygun hummed. “
In cauda venenum,
” she said with a little giggle.