The League of Seven (25 page)

“It didn't,” Hachi told him. “There were ten sticks of dynamite in there. I had them on under my clothes when I came aboard that first day in the swamp.”

Mr. Rivets' surprise subroutine raised his eyebrow. “You stored ten sticks of dynamite on board the
Hesperus
, miss?”

“They were for that thing in the swamp. I thought I was going to get to try and use them again, but not now.”

Mr. Rivets helped her up. “And I'm afraid all the weapons Mr. Tesla gave us are gone too.”

“What about your talent cards?”

They found Mr. Rivets' talent card chest in a nearby tree. The cards themselves lay like crumpled brass leaves among the real red and yellow leaves scattered on the ground.

Mr. Rivets held up the only one undamaged enough to use. “My Chef talent card.”

“Great. Very useful. What have you got in right now?”

“My Airship Pilot card, miss.”

“Well, we haven't got one of those anymore,” Hachi said. “Chef it is then.” She disengaged the Airship Pilot card from Mr. Rivets' slot and replaced it with the culinary card. “You can cook me up a soufflé when we stop to camp for the night.”

Mr. Rivets looked around at where they had crashed. They stood at the edge of a dense wood filled with half-bare trees. A crow cawed at them, and something small scurried under the bed of leaves.

“Or perhaps, given our surroundings, miss would settle for ‘Squirrel Surprise'?” Mr. Rivets said.

Hachi smiled in spite of herself, then gasped as she tried to take a step and collapsed. Mr. Rivets hurried to help her back up.

“Just before the
Hesperus
went down, miss, we were approximately twenty miles from Standing Peachtree, as the airship flies. Given your present condition, I think it would be better if you allowed me to carry you.”

“I don't like being carried.”

“Master Archie never liked to take baths, miss, but that didn't mean I allowed him to refuse.”

Hachi wanted to argue, but she couldn't. There was no way she could walk any real distance with her ankle like this, and it would heal faster if she stayed off it. They couldn't do anything until they reached Standing Peachtree anyway, and it would take them a day of travel to get there—more if they stopped for the night. Reluctantly, she climbed into Mr. Rivets' arms.

“There we are, miss,” Mr. Rivets said, immediately setting off to the southwest. “I promise not to tell anyone you allowed yourself to be carried.”

As though there was anyone to tell
, Hachi thought. Archie was dead—there was no denying that. She and Fergus had watched him fall. Fergus had seen him hit the ground. And Fergus, he was probably dead now too, doing something stupidly heroic like absorbing too much lektricity from Edison's cannon to buy Mr. Rivets time to pilot her to safety. Fergus had just started to grow on her too. Both of them had.

That familiar pang of grief came back again, and she fought it.
It's what I deserve. I can't have friends. I can't have friends and still do what I have to do.
She put a hand to the long scar on her throat without thinking.
I should never have let them take me away from Florida. I should never have let them become my friends.

Hachi slipped her bracelet off and thumbed through the beads one by one.

Talisse Fixico, the potter.

Chelokee Yoholo, father of Ficka.

Hathlun Harjo, the surgeon.

Once again, she had been the only one to survive. Why her? Why did fate hate her?

Odis Harjo, the poet.

Iskote Te, the gray haired.

Oak Mulgee, the machinist.

The first time, there had been nothing she could do. But since then she had trained every summer. Spent her parents' fortune. Dedicated her life to becoming the perfect fighting machine.

John Wise, the politician.

Emartha Hadka, the hero of Hickory Ground.

Harmer Thlah, the wicked.

All that time, all that money, all that
training
, and she hadn't been able to save her friends. Still hadn't destroyed her enemies.

Hahyah Yechee, the sheriff.

Thomas Stidham, the horse breeder.

Arkon Nichee, friend to many.

She was a failure. That's all there was to it. She had failed to kill Edison. Failed to kill the thing imprisoned under the swamp. Failed to save her friends.

Claiborne Lowe, twelve times a grandfather.

Pompey Yoholo, seventh son of a seventh son.

Woxe Holatha, the banker.

This was her punishment: to live while everyone else around her died. Unless she could break the cycle. Go back to Florida, to the land of her parents and her parents' parents, the home of her people, and do what she should have done that night twelve years ago:

Die
.

Ficka Likee. Petolke Likee. Ockchan Harjo. Micco Chee. Sower Sullivan. Cosa Yoholo. Artus Harjo. Abraham Emathlau. Tuscooner Thlah. Noble Kinnard. Chofolop Fixico. Stana Haley.
On and on she recited their names, counting them off on her beaded bracelet as Mr. Rivets trudged on through the woods.
Nocose Stidham. Gristy Perryman. Nehar Larne. Tall Pot Yoholo. Konip—

“Miss Hachi.
Miss Hachi,
” she finally heard Mr. Rivets saying. “My mainspring has run down. Miss Hachi, do you hear me? I have wound down. Miss Hachi—”

Hachi blinked and realized they had stopped. Night had fallen, and she was shivering. How long had she been counting out the names?

“Yes. I'm sorry. Of course,” she said. She slipped from Mr. Rivets' arms and limped around behind him to turn his key.

“Many thanks,” Mr. Rivets said, straightening. “I worried I might run down completely before you heard me.”

Hachi was still disoriented. She'd been so focused on her mantra she had neglected the here and now—a dangerous thing to do. She needed to rest. To regroup. To pull herself together.

“Why don't we stop here for the night?” she suggested. “There's an outcropping of rocks over there that should give us some shelter if it rains. I'll need a fire to keep warm though.”

“Very good, miss. I'll just see to some firewood,” Mr. Rivets told her. “And then, perhaps, a dinner of roasted mushrooms stuffed with onions and chopped pecans? I saw everything I need as we walked. It would be no trouble at all to—”

“No, don't go,” Hachi interrupted, surprising herself as much as the machine man. “I—I'd like you to stay close, if that's all right. I'm not very hungry anyway.”

“As you wish, Miss Hachi,” the Tik Tok said, and he moved off to gather wood nearby.

Hachi hated admitting she needed company right now, and she cursed her own weakness. But the feeling of loneliness and failure was just too overwhelming. Her family, her friends, her relatives, her clan—just about everyone she had ever known and loved was dead and she had failed to help them. Right now, even a machine man was welcome company. She called what was left of her circus out, and they did tricks for her in the air while he was gone.

Mr. Rivets soon had a fire crackling, and Hachi warmed herself by it, declining again his offer to cook her a feast from the forest. With his Chef card in, Mr. Rivets seemed to view the world as though it were one great pantry with which to cross-reference the recipes in his database.

“I'm sure I saw some kale nearby, miss,” he tried again. “I could sauté a little with some garlic…”

“No thank you, Mr. Rivets.”

Hachi thumbed through the beads on her wrist, picking up where she had left off as she stared into the flames.

Konip Fixico. Chular Fixico. Tallassee Tustunnugee. Long John Gibson. Talkis Yoholo.

“Pardon the interruption, miss,” Mr. Rivets said.

“I'm really not hungry, Mr. Rivets. I'll be fine.”

“Yes, miss. I was just going to inquire as to the names you've been repeating. Is it a poem? A cypher? A mnemonic device of some kind?”

“I—how did you—can you read my mind?” Hachi asked.

“No, miss. You said them out loud all afternoon as we walked. And you muttered them before, on the
Hesperus
.”

Hachi hadn't realized anyone else could hear her. How many times had others heard her saying her mantra when she thought she was thinking it to herself?

“I thought I was just saying them in my head,” she said.

“If I may, miss, that is not surprising. I spoke to you a number of times while we traveled, pointing out a variety of fruits and berries I could use in recipes, but you were unresponsive—except for the continuation of your list of names and their associations.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't realize.”

“It's quite all right, miss. But I am curious—unless it is a personal matter, of course.”

It
was
personal, more personal than anyone could know. Hachi's natural instinct was to tell Mr. Rivets it was none of his business—or anyone else's, for that matter. But suddenly she saw that she was only keeping the names a secret because it was easier for her. Because it hurt to talk about them. If she really wanted to honor these people, if their memory was worth dying for, wasn't it worth sharing with as many other people as she could before she too was gone?

Mr. Rivets sat clicking and whirring across the fire from her, watching her with a little tilt to his head. Could she tell him what she had never been able to tell Ms. Ambrose back at school? What she'd never even told Tooantuh in their quietest moments?

“They're the names of all the men from my mother's tribe,” she told him. “I—they—” She hardly knew where to begin. Her mother had told her the story many times, but Hachi had never told it herself. “All I remember is the lightning, and the green flame, like the fire Edison conjured the other night in the glade. But my mother told me the rest. When I was a year old we went to Chuluota, near the glade where you found me. While we were there, a group of strangers came to town. Some of them were Yankees and some were First Nations, but all of them were servants of the Swarm Queen. That was the name my mother's tribe had for it. The darkness that lived beneath the swamps.”

“Malacar Ahasherat,” Mr. Rivets said. “The Mangleborn that took Archie's parents.”

Hachi nodded. “No one knew the names of these outsiders, or why they had come to Chuluota, but they—they killed every man in the town. One hundred of them. Every man over the age of seventeen.” She paused, looking into the fire. “They killed women too, but my mother says the strangers didn't really care about them. The women of my clan were shot or slashed to drive them away so the strangers could deal with the men. One of them picked me up and dragged a knife across my neck.” Hachi put a hand to the long scar beneath her face, her eyes still on the fire.

“How did you survive?” Mr. Rivets asked.

“My mother. She took me up in her arms and held a hand to my bleeding neck and ran—ran through the night to the next town, where a surgeon sewed me back together.”

Mr. Rivets let her sit in silence for a few moments, then asked, “What did they want with the men? The servants of Malacar Ahasherat who attacked your town?”

“When the warriors from the next town went to Chuluota the next day, they found the bodies. Every man of my mother's tribe had been killed. From what the warriors could tell, the strangers had laid the men of Chuluota on an ancient stone altar, one by one, and slit their throats. That same stone altar Fergus was on, in the glade. The strangers drained their blood, then threw the empty bodies off into the swamp. One hundred of them. They worked some kind of magic like Edison did the other night, with lightning and machines and green flame and blood. That's why I share a connection to the monster. I was there. I've had dreams of her since I was twelve months old.”

Freckles the giraffe laid her long neck on Hachi's arm.

“After that, no one returned to Chuluota,” she said. “There were too many ghosts. My mother took me back to Standing Peachtree, but she died soon after of a broken heart. But not before she taught me the names of every last man who had died, and something to remember him by. Including the last one: Hololkee Emartha, my father.”

“Hololkee Emartha?
The
Hololkee Emartha?” Mr. Rivets asked. “Former chairman of the Emartha Locomotive and Machine Man Company? The richest man in the United Nations?”

Hachi nodded.

“Hololkee Emartha,” Mr. Rivets said reverently. “
The Maker.
”

“He inherited the family genius for engineering. He made these for me,” she said, meaning the clockwork animals in her lap. “My circus. When I was born.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “He made them for my crib. To sing and dance in the air above me. Now they're all I have left of him.”

“Hololkee Emartha lived in Standing Peachtree, where the corporate headquarters are for the Emartha Locomotive and Machine Man Company,” Mr. Rivets said. “What were you doing in Florida?”

“Visiting my grandmother,” Hachi said. “My mother was born in Chuluota. The town that once existed there. We shouldn't even have been there that night.”

“And they never caught the people who murdered your mother's tribe?”

“No. I spent every spare minute—every night and weekend and summer I had away from school—teaching myself to fight, to be the best warrior anyone had ever known, so that one day I could punish the men and women who destroyed my family. And all the time I searched for the people who had been there that night. Last month, I finally found one. One of the people who killed my father. My mother. Her tribe. One of the people who ruined my life.
Edison
.”