The Dragon Lantern Read online

  The old man held up a small handful of newspaper, cut to the size of Pawnee money, and gaped at it. He’d clearly thought he was holding a wad of real cash.

  “Here, wait!” he cried. “Stop that man!”

  It was too late. The door to the airship closed, and the Bear on the Wind lifted away.

  “We have to catch that airship!” Archie told Clyde.

  “I got just the thing,” Clyde said. He put his fingers in his mouth and blew a piercing whistle. “Buster!” he yelled. “Here boy!”

  “He can’t hear you this far away,” Archie said. But muffled cries rose up with a flock of birds on the other side of town, and the big brass head of Buster the steam man lifted up over the rooftops.

  “Here boy!” Clyde called again. “Buster, come!”

  Buster stood to his full ten-story height, towering over even the tallest rooftop in the city. In a few loping, thundering strides Buster was on top of them, bending down to “lick” Clyde. The gate agent squeaked and fell back on his butt.

  “Good dog!” Clyde told Buster. “Good boy! Now let us inside.”

  Buster opened his mouth, and Clyde hopped into the small room that had once been Custer’s cabin. “Come on, Archie!”

  Archie climbed in with far less grace and followed Clyde up the ladder to the bridge as Buster stood again to his full height. The airship rose to Buster’s eye level right outside and turned away.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Clyde said. He slipped into the control chair, told Buster to heel, and grabbed the little cabin that hung beneath the Bear on the Wind’s gas balloon with the steam man’s giant hand. The airship bobbled like a child’s balloon, but Buster held on tight. The passengers inside watched out the windows of the airship cabin with wonder, horror, and surprise. Buster barked with his whistle, scaring most of them away from the windows.

  Clyde talked into a speaking trumpet near his head, his voice booming outside. “We’re not letting you leave with the fat man!”

  “He may not be a fat man anymore,” Archie told him. “I mean, she might not be a fat man anymore.”

  “Only he might not be a fat man anymore,” Clyde said through the speaking trumpet.

  Below them, somewhere on the ground, an alarm rang out.

  “What’s that?” Clyde said. Buster’s head turned. Far below them, smoke rose from a building, and bricks and debris were scattered in the street, as though it had exploded. “It looks like a bank robbery!” Clyde said. “See if you can magnify the window.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” Archie said. “We have to bring that airship down!”

  Click-click-click—the magnifying lenses fell into place. Buster must have done it somehow, because it wasn’t Archie. Through the window, larger than life, they saw a Tik Tok unlike any machine man Archie had ever seen before. He was tall and thin and made of brass like Mr. Rivets, but he looked more human. His arms and legs were human-proportioned, his chest was flatter and less round, and his face—his face was still riveted, but it looked like a man’s face, not the stylized, almost cartoony faces of the Mark II and Mark IV Machine Men. And he wore clothes! Not brass, bolted-on imitation clothes like Mr. Rivets, but real cloth clothes—brown leather pants, a white shirt, a long black jacket, and a brown cowboy hat.

  In his hand, this extraordinary Tik Tok held a raygun, and he was pointing it at people, even though machine men were programmed not to hurt humans.

  Clyde gasped. “Jesse James!”

  “Who?” Archie asked.

  “The FreeTok outlaw, Jesse James! Custer’s chased him for years!”

  A FreeTok! Mr. Rivets had told Archie about FreeToks. They were Self-Determinalists—machine men who refused to do the work they were programmed for and ran away to live in their own cities. Why this one was robbing a bank in Ton won tonga, Archie didn’t know, and he didn’t care.

  “We don’t have time to stop a bank robber,” Archie said.

  “But that’s not a bank,” Clyde said. “It’s the Emartha Machine Man store! Jesse James doesn’t steal money—he steals Tik Toks! Archie, Jesse James just stole Mr. Rivets!”

  15

  “Welcome, seekers,” Madame Blavatsky said. “Welcome … to the spirit realm.”

  “Should we hold hands?” Fergus asked.

  “Not yet,” Blavatsky said.

  Helena Blavatsky sat to the right of Hachi, eyes flickering in the light from a group of candles in the center of the table. Candles, but no candelabra, Hachi was amused to notice. To her left was Fergus, surreptitiously studying the table and chairs for the mechanical devices he was sure Blavatsky would use to pretend to contact the “spirit realm.” She nudged him to remind him to focus, and he opened his palms and gave her a little shrug as if to say, “What?”

  Directly across from them sat Marie Laveau, as young tonight as she had been two nights ago during the adventure in the throne room. Hachi had an idea how she achieved her miraculous change, but knowing for sure would require more time to investigate—time she didn’t have, and didn’t want to take.

  Beside Fergus, straight across from Blavatsky, was Queen Theodosia. Tonight she wore a simpler gown of blue velvet with yellow trim, and no crown. Theodosia was plain and unattractive, but was also supposed to be quick-witted, well educated, and intelligent. She had never married, but rumor had it she had once had an affair with a Karankawan chief. Perhaps he had loved her for her mind. Or her power. Hachi certainly had no ill feeling toward the queen, except for her harboring Blavatsky.

  “We five are gathered here tonight in the hope that we might contact King Aaron, conqueror and first great king of Louisiana, and father to our dear Queen Theodosia,” Blavatsky said.

  “Do we hold hands now?” Fergus asked.

  “No,” Blavatsky told him, and Hachi kicked him under the table.

  “Let us begin,” Blavatsky said, closing her eyes.

  Hachi stared at Helena Blavatsky, the woman who had stolen her own father from her, and in the process, stolen Hachi’s life. Blavatsky’s arrogance and self-assuredness were back, as though she hadn’t almost killed them all two nights ago. Back too was Queen Theodosia’s faith in her—perhaps only due to the promise of speaking to her long-dead father again. That, at least, Hachi understood. She might have spared Blavatsky an hour or two more for the promise of speaking to her own father.

  But in the end, Hachi would have her revenge.

  “Spirits of the aether, Hidden Masters of the past,” Blavatsky said, drawing symbols in the air, “move among us. Be guided by these signs and the light of this world and visit us.”

  Hachi saw Marie Laveau frown. It was Laveau’s job tonight to make sure Blavatsky didn’t bring to life any more inanimate objects or do something worse before they could nab her. From the look on Laveau’s face, Blavatsky was off to a bad start.

  “Now we hold hands,” Fergus said.

  “No,” Blavatsky said in an angry whisper.

  Hachi glowered at her. The plan, once they were all holding hands in a circle, was for Hachi to pull away and for Fergus to pass a small lektrical current through the human chain—just enough to knock everyone else out. As frustrated as Hachi was with Fergus making what they planned to do so obvious, she was just as eager to get on with it as he was.

  “Beloved King Aaron, Founder of the House of Burr,” Blavatsky called to the air, “Special Protector of New Orleans, Emperor of the Mississippi, and Ruler over Louisiana and All Her Parishes, we entreat you with gifts.”

  Blavatsky nodded to Theodosia. The queen raised a hand, and out of the shadows like an apparition came General Andrew Jackson. Jackson was Hachi’s part of the plan. Outside the circle, he wouldn’t be shocked unconscious—and they weren’t sure lektricity would do anything to a dead man anyway. When everybody at the table was passed out, it was Hachi’s job to take the zombi down.

  General Jackson’s half-mummified hand passed the queen a box of cigars, and she placed them on the table.

  “Father’s favorites,�
�� Theodosia said.

  Blavatsky drew more symbols in the air. “Spirits of the aether, Hidden Masters of the past, move among us,” she said again. “Be guided by these signs and the light of this world and visit us.”

  A warm breeze blew through the room, rustling the curtains. It was almost time. To focus herself on the job to come, Hachi silently repeated the mantra she’d recited thousands of times since she was a child:

  Talisse Fixico, the potter.

  Chelokee Yoholo, father of Ficka.

  Hathlun Harjo, the surgeon.

  Odis Harjo, the poet.

  “Spirits of the aether, Hidden Masters of the past, move among us!” Blavatsky cried. “Be guided by these signs and the light of this world and visit us!”

  A vase of flowers on a nearby table crashed to the ground. The candles flickered. The windows rattled like it was storming outside. General Jackson’s wild white hair stood on end.

  Iskote Te, the gray haired, Hachi continued.

  Oak Mulgee, the machinist.

  John Wise, the politician.

  Emartha Hadka, the hero of Hickory Ground.

  “This isn’t right!” Marie Laveau called out. The wind was roaring in the room, and she had to yell. “This isn’t King Aaron! This is something else!”

  Blavatsky didn’t listen. “Now! Join hands!” she cried.

  Marie Laveau didn’t look happy about it, but she knew the plan. She took hold of Blavatsky’s hand and Queen Theodosia’s hand. Yes! The circuit was complete! Now for the jolt of lektricity, and this would all be over. Hachi waited for the sound, waited for the flash, but it never came.

  Fergus wasn’t holding Queen Theodosia’s hand! He was too busy looking around for the fan and the wires he was sure Blavatsky was using to fake the séance.

  “Fergus! Take Queen Theodosia’s hand!” Hachi yelled.

  “Oh! Aye!” he said. He reached for the queen’s hand, and there was a bright flash and a FWOOSH, knocking them all back. Hachi leaped out of her chair to her feet, but Fergus went sprawling on the floor. She looked quickly around the table. Blavatsky and Laveau were down, but moving. Queen Theodosia was awake too, but still sitting. General Jackson had caught her chair before she fell.

  Hachi shot a glance at Fergus, but he shook his head. “It wasn’t me,” he said into the roaring wind. “I never got the chance!”

  But if it wasn’t Fergus who did that, then what…?

  The candles suddenly blew out, and the wind disappeared as quickly as it had begun. Somebody laughed—a deep, booming laugh that didn’t belong to anybody in the room—and Hachi got a chill.

  “No,” she heard Marie Laveau say. “No, it can’t be.”

  “What is it? What’s happened?” Hachi asked. “Is it King Aaron?”

  The laughter came again, hearty and mean. “No, girl. Not a king. A baron.” It was the voice of a man, a big man, and Creole from the sound of him.

  The lights came on. Fergus! He’d gone for the gaslights in the room and turned them up. Hachi scanned the room, looking for the man who had laughed, but all she saw were Blavatsky and Laveau on their feet, and Theodosia, a hand to her chest, still in her chair. Fergus was the only man in the room, besides the dead General Jackson.

  “A-ha! Now I see where I am,” Blavatsky said, but it wasn’t her voice. It was the man’s voice Hachi had heard in the dark. Blavatsky held up her arms and looked herself over. “A woman! I haven’t been a woman in a long, long time. But then, I haven’t been anybody in a long, long time.”

  “Baron Samedi,” Marie Laveau said. Her voice was cold and wary, and Hachi knew that whatever this was, it was bad.

  “The one and only!” Blavatsky said in her man’s voice. “And what is your name, my pretty?”

  “Marie Laveau.”

  Blavatsky laughed again, long and loud. “Ha ha ha! Of course it is! Marie Laveau! We meet again for the very first time, eh? Eh?” Blavatsky laughed like she’d just made a joke, and slapped her knee. “Oho! You brought me cigars!” she said, spying the box on the table. “You must have known! You know how long it’s been since I had a cigar?”

  Blavatsky took a cigar from the box, bit off the end with her teeth, and spat the end across the room with a laugh.

  Hachi and Fergus moved to Laveau’s side while Blavatsky lit her cigar on one of the gaslights.

  “What is it?” Fergus asked. “What’s happened?”

  “The loa of Baron Samedi. What the locals would call a voodoo spirit, but what you would call an aspect of the Mangleborn in the lake. There are whole families of them, all belonging to le Grande Zombi, and each with their own personalities and perversities. But they have to have a human body to ride. This one’s riding Blavatsky. Samedi must have been drawn here by that farce the other night.”

  “Oh crivens,” Fergus said.

  “So where’s Blavatsky?” Hachi asked. That was all she cared about.

  “Buried in there, somewhere. But while Baron Samedi’s riding her, she can’t talk to you. If you want Blavatsky, you’re going to have to get rid of Baron Samedi first.”

  Samedi threw open the door to the room and walked out, puffing on his cigar.

  “Done,” Hachi said. She pulled out her knife and started to follow him.

  Laveau caught her. “No—don’t. If you kill her while Samedi’s in there, you’ll drive him out, and he’ll be banished from this world for a dozen-dozen years. But Helena Blavatsky will be dead forever, and you’ll never get your answers.”

  “Then what do we do?” Hachi asked.

  Laveau’s eyes narrowed. “There are other ways to get rid of a loa.…”

  16

  Archie rode with Clyde in the cockpit of Buster the steam man, watching mile after mile of cornfields drift by. Steam-driven threshers cut wide paths through the corn, which was collected by big floating balloons tethered behind them. The corn was stored in huge domed silos that matched the domed wood-and-thatch farmhouses that dotted the landscape. This was Wichita country, where corn was king.

  And this was where the outlaw FreeTok had taken Mr. Rivets.

  The fox girl had been in their grasp. Buster could have held the airship she traveled on while Archie went on board, and with the help of a Tik Tok from town he could have gone through the passengers one by one until he’d found her. The Dragon Lantern and its secrets would finally have been his again. But Archie had told Clyde to let the airship go. They knew where it was going: the Moving City of Cheyenne. They could catch up to it later. Right now, he had to get Mr. Rivets back.

  Mr. Rivets was family.

  The FreeTok bandits—there were more of them, a whole gang, led by the one called Jesse James—had a vehicle that outpaced any steam mule or cable car ever built. It outpaced their giant steam man too. That was how they had avoided Captain Custer, robbing machine man stores and stealing the Tik Toks from towns and farms, then disappearing quickly into Wichita territory, where the United Nations Army was forbidden to go.

  “I don’t know about this, Archie,” Clyde said as they walked past a Wichita village where families ran inside and hid from them. “Technically, I’m still a private in the UN Army, and Buster here’s a United Nations Steam Man. I’m a one-man invasion force. A big one-man invasion force.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Archie said. “About you and Buster. Clyde, have you ever heard of the Septemberist Society and the League of Seven?”

  While Buster marched along, scaring Wichita farmers into their homes and tornado shelters, Archie told Clyde all about the darker world beneath this one, the world he and his parents had sworn to keep hidden. He told him about the Mangleborn, and all the ancient civilizations they had destroyed, and the people who worshipped them and wanted to free them with lektricity. He told him too about the Leagues who had defeated the Mangleborn in the past, and the one he thought was coming together in the present.

  “I think you’re one of us,” Archie said. “One of a new League of Seven. There were only three of
us so far—me, Hachi, and Fergus. I kept telling them we’d find more, and I think you and Buster are the fourth.”

  “You said this Hachi girl, she’s the warrior, and this Fergus guy, he’s the maker. And you’re the shadow,” Clyde said, casting Archie a sideways glance. “What’s that make me and Buster?”

  “Well, everybody calls you the Chief, right?”

  “The big hero? The leader? Me? Aw, I don’t know about that,” Clyde said.

  It pained Archie to say it, because he’d always dreamed of himself as the leader of a new League of Seven. The Theseus. The Galahad. The bright, shining example for all mankind. But that wasn’t who he was.

  “I think you are. I think maybe you have a greater calling than being a soldier in the UN Army, and that you don’t have to obey their rules anymore. Or anybody’s.”

  “Mrs. DeMarcus always used to say ain’t nobody above the rules, and I figure that’s the truth. Maybe it’s even more important now that I’ve got Buster.”

  Which is why you’re the hero, Archie thought. And why I’m the shadow.

  Buster rocked suddenly, and gave a whistle like a whimper.

  “Whoa!” Clyde said. The controls moved without him, swinging the steam man around.

  Behind them was a steam-horse-mounted Wichita Cavalry regiment and a Wichita aether battle tank, its twelve-inch raycannon glowing red and ready to fire again.

  Word had finally caught up to the Wichita Army, and the Wichita Army had finally caught up to the giant United Nations Steam Man in their territory.

  Buster whistled a bark, and Clyde warned him to heel.

  “Buster’s raycannon is bigger than theirs,” Archie told him. “You could take them out easy.”

  “I ain’t gonna do that,” Clyde said. He put his hands in the air, and Buster did too. “We’re the trespassers here. They got every right to shoot at us.”

  “But we can’t just quit!” Archie said.

  “I don’t mean to,” Clyde said. He pulled the exterior speaking trumpet to his mouth. “This is Captain Clyde Magoro, of the United Nations Steam Man Colossus.”