The League of Seven (8 page)

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.”

“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.”