The League of Seven (2 page)

“Because it's just under the statue of Hiawatha on Oyster Island, right?”

Mr. Hull adjusted a dial. “I'm afraid I couldn't say, sir.”

Archie smiled. That's what machine men said when they'd been ordered to keep a secret. Mark IIs were fundamentally unable to lie. It was built into their clockworks. Instead, they just said “I'm afraid I couldn't say.” It had been worth a shot though.

True to Mr. Hull's word, the SS
Seven Seas
soon surfaced in a gaslit cave. This port was far smaller than the Hudson River Submarine Landing, but still big enough for two other small submersibles to bob at the unadorned and empty dock. Mr. Hull pulled them up alongside, and Archie helped him tie off the boat before following his parents up the stone steps to the great hall of the Septemberist Society.

Archie loved the great hall. It was round and tall, with domed steel arches to hold up a ceiling carved out of rock. Leading out of the room were seven doorways, one of which led back the way they had come from the submarine landing. All around the hall, in between the seven doorways, stood seven stone statues—one for each member of the Ancient League of Seven. Wayland Smith, the Norse tinker who invented the raygun, with his hammer. Maat, the Aegyptian princess with her talking staff, who brought justice to the world. Daedalus, the Greek scientist who taught mankind how to fly in airships. Anansi, the Afrikan trickster who stole the Mangleborn gauntlet. Hippolyta, the Amazonian warrior, whose arrows had taken down legions of Manglespawn. Heracles, the hulking, half-naked Greek with his club, whose dark, angry fury had brought the League to its knees—but saved it too. That statue had always frightened Archie, and still did. But last there was Theseus, Archie's favorite, the Athenian hero with the curly locks and the neat tunic and the short sword, who had brought this League of Seven together and led them to victory over the Mangleborn.

It wasn't the original League of Seven, of course. The original League's names and faces had been lost to time. There had been more Leagues before the Ancient League and more since, but they were always seven, and always the same: a tinker, a law-bringer, a scientist, a trickster, a warrior, a strongman, and a hero. Seven men and women with incredible powers from all parts of the known world who joined forces to stop the Mangleborn from enslaving humanity. Different Leagues had saved the world over and over again, but few people knew that. Only the Septemberists remembered—
septem
for “seven” in Latin, September having once been the seventh month, and named in their honor—watching for signs that the Mangleborn might escape the elaborate prisons the Ancient League had built for them, and waiting for a new League of Seven to be born.

“Archie, we'll be meeting with the chief and her council in their chambers,” his father told him. “You and Mr. Rivets wait out here. Mr. Rivets, I don't want him getting into any trouble.”

“I shall do what I can, sir,” Mr. Rivets said. Before they'd left the family airship in Hackensack territory, Mr. Dent had replaced Mr. Rivets' Airship Pilot talent card with his Protector card. Or, as Archie liked to call it, the “Babysitter card.”

Mr. and Mrs. Dent went through the door next to Theseus, which led to the council chambers.

“Odd,” Mr. Rivets said, the clicking of his internal clockworks echoing faintly in the tall round room. “I would have expected someone to greet us. Mr. Pendulum, at the very least.” Mr. Pendulum was the head Tik Tok at Septemberist headquarters.

“If a Mangleborn is rising, they're probably all in the council chambers worrying about it,” Archie said. “So … can I have it?”

Mr. Rivets tilted his mechanical head. “Your father directed me to keep you
out
of trouble, Master Archie, not to abet it.”

“Aw, come on, Mr. Rivets! Don't be clinker. It's just a toy.”

“Language, Master Archie,” the Tik Tok scolded, but he opened a door on his brass body disguised as a vest pocket and revealed a toy raygun stowed inside. Archie snatched it up. It was made to look just like a real aether pistol, but when you pulled the trigger all it did was rev and spark.

“I'll be Theseus! You be Lesool Eshar, the Deceiver in the Dark.”

“As you wish, Master Archie. I shall endeavor to be monstrous, gigantic, and cruel. Roar.”

Archie clicked the trigger a few times at Mr. Rivets, peppering him with an imaginary heat ray as the toy gun sparked, then ran through the door beside Heracles. Sometimes he would visit the workshop through the door beside Wayland Smith to marvel at the Society's latest gadgets. Another time he had explored the archives through the door beside Daedalus, but he got enough of libraries and books at home. Once he had even sneaked into the weapons room beyond the statue of the warrior Hippolyta and gaped at the arsenal of aether pistols and oscillators and wave cannons stored there until Mr. Pendulum dragged him out by the collar. But it was the catacombs underneath the Septemberist headquarters that he really loved playing in.

Like the statue of Heracles that guarded their entrance, the catacombs had always creeped Archie out a little, but fascinated him too. The catacombs were where the Society stored all the bones from the monsters they had fought over the centuries. Not the bones of Mangleborn like the Swarm Queen or the Deceiver in the Dark. Mangleborn were immortal—or at least no one had figured out how to kill one yet. The bones in the catacombs were Manglespawn. Creatures descended from the Mangleborn. Monsters that did their masters' bidding. The Septemberists could handle Manglespawn. Usually. But to deal with the Mangleborn, the Septemberists needed the superhuman powers of the League of Seven.

Archie ran through the maze of crypts, ducking and hiding and shooting at pretend minions.
Kzzz kzzz kzzz
. He was Theseus—but not in the labyrinth fighting a man-sized minotaur. That's not what had really happened. Archie's parents had taught him the real story. He was Theseus, fighting the twenty-story-tall Mangleborn Lesool Eshar, the Deceiver in the Dark. A giant with bull horns and cloven feet who could make you see things that weren't real—like make you think you were in a dark, claustrophobic labyrinth when you were actually in the wide-open grasslands of Afrika. The minotaur was the popular version. The safe version. The truth—that there was a race of misshapen giants imprisoned inside the earth and under the sea—was a little too much for most people to handle.

People didn't want to know there really were monsters in the world.

“Theseus!” Mr. Rivets' voice boomed in the underground passageways. “Theseus! I come for you!”

Mr. Rivets made a pretty good Mangleborn in their backyard adventures. He was tall, for one thing, almost six and a half feet from his brass spats to his painted black bowler hat. He was heavy too—almost a thousand pounds—so that his clockwork legs made an impressive
chi-koom chi-koom chi-koom
sound when he walked. Where any illusion of a monster broke down was in his face, with its shining glass eyes and brass handlebar moustache shaped into a smile.

Archie crept through the dark tunnels, lit here and there by flickering gaslights. Shadow flames played on the stacks of crypt-like boxes set into the walls. Archie kept his toy aether pistol raised, ready to jump out at Mr. Rivets as soon as he heard the soft tick-tock of his clockworks. Water dripped slowly from the ceiling nearby as he held his breath, listening.
Drip. Drip. Drip
.

Scritch
.

Archie leaped around the corner. “Ha-HA!”

But it wasn't Mr. Rivets. It was … something else. Something black and shiny and big, bigger than Archie, with too many legs and too many eyes and a curled, segmented tail with a thick stinger at the end. It hung on a thick nest of white web that covered the corridor in front of him from floor to ceiling. It wasn't a giant spider or a giant scorpion or—were those human hands under there? It wasn't a spider or a scorpion or a person but something in between. Something unnatural. Something monstrous.

Something Manglespawn.

“Oh, slag.”

The thing looked up at Archie with its dozens of eyes, and he realized he was still pointing the toy raygun at it. He lowered it, his hand shaking. He wanted to step back, to turn and run, but he was too scared. His feet wouldn't move.

At the base of the web, near the floor, a small ball of webbing shook like something inside it was trying to get out. Archie watched as a little stinger like the one on the big daddy-Manglespawn tore through the web ball, and a baby Manglespawn clawed its way out. It landed upside down on the stone floor, righted itself, and scrabbled toward Archie.
Scritch scritch scritch scritch
.

Now Archie's feet moved.

He stumbled back away from the thing, but it was fast. Faster than he was. He turned to run and clanged right into the brass chest of Mr. Rivets. The Dents' machine man lifted Archie into the air like he weighed nothing at all and stomped a metal foot on the black bug.
Splurch
. Green-black blood spurted on the stacked crypts.

An egg sac shivered on the web, and another black stinger poked its way through. Then another. And another.

“Run,” Mr. Rivets said. He let Archie go, and Archie ran. He sprinted back through the crypts, running as fast and as hard as he could without paying any attention to where he was going. He didn't know how far or how long he'd run before he realized he was lost. Slag it all, where was he? He had to get upstairs and tell everyone there was a Manglespawn in the catacombs! He stopped. Spun. There! That crypt, there—he recognized it. He knew where he was. Four turns later he was running up the stairs, into the great hall, past the statue of Theseus, and into the offices where the Society's leaders worked.

No one was there. Not even Mr. Pendulum.

Just beyond the offices, the double doors to the council chamber were closed. Archie wasn't allowed in there.

Slag it—this was an emergency!

Archie burst into the council chamber. “Manglespawn! There's a Manglespawn—in the catacombs!” he said, breathing hard.

The Septemberist council sat at a big, round table with the Society's all-seeing pyramid eye emblem carved into it. There were seven of them, one representing each of the seven guilds within the Society. Archie knew the lawyer Frederick Douglass with his wild, frizzy hair, sitting in the law-bringer's seat; General Lee, wearing the dark blue jacket and Hardee hat of the United Nations army, sitting in the warrior's seat; and of course he would have recognized the famous actress Sally Tall Chief in the trickster's chair and the lacrosse star John Two-Sticks in the hero's chair anywhere, even if they hadn't been Septemberists. The others he didn't know so well, except for Philomena Moffett, who was the head of his parents' guild—the scientists—and the current chief of the Septemberist Society.

Not one of them turned to look at him.

Archie ran up to the table. “Did you hear what I said? There's a … a thing in the basement! A monster, with little monster babies. Mr. Rivets smushed one, but there were more of them hatching, and—”

The Septemberist council finally looked at him then, and Archie shuddered like a braking locomotive. The council members turned their heads slowly, all at the same time, like they were all one. But that wasn't the creepiest thing. The creepiest thing was, they were smiling. All of them. Great big stupid smiles, like they were pretending to be happy. Like they were smiling through some great pain. Even the woman in the shadow chair was smiling, the ugly New Rome gang leader they called Hellcat Maggie, who kept an eye on the slums. Archie had never once seen her smile. Now she was smiling so wide he could see her teeth were filed down into points.

“Jandal a Haad,”
they all said, all at the same time. “They brought the Jandal a Haad.”

“Who did?” Archie asked. “What's a Jandal a Haad? That thing in the catacombs?”

The Septemberist council stood up, all at the same time, and turned toward Archie. He didn't know what was going on, but something about this was totally clinker. He took a step back as Mr. Rivets ticked into the room, his brass feet stained green black from squashing the bug things.

“I have sealed the catacombs, Master Archie,” Mr. Rivets said, “but I fear my efforts may not be enough to contain the creature.”

“The Jandal a Haad will stay,” the council said as one. “There is something in the basement we would like you to see.”

“Master Archie?” Mr. Rivets said.

Archie backed toward Mr. Rivets, never taking his eyes off the advancing council members.

“Where are my parents?” Archie asked.

“They've gone already,” Philomena Moffett said through her fake smile. “You're to stay here with us.”

“They wouldn't leave without me,” Archie said. “What's going on here?”

“There's something in the basement we would like you to see,” the council said again, still advancing.

“Yeah. I saw it already,” Archie said. “Run, Mr. Rivets!”

Archie took off for the submarine landing at a sprint. If his parents were leaving, that's where they'd be. But they would never leave without him. It didn't make any sense. None of this did. What was wrong with the council?

“Mom! Dad!” Archie called as he ran. “Mom! Dad!”

He came through the arch at the top of the steps that led down to the submarine landing, and there were his parents—following Mr. Hull onto the SS
Seven Seas
.

“Mom! Dad! Wait!” Archie called. He went down the steps three at a time, twice almost falling and breaking his neck. What were his parents doing? How could they be leaving without coming to find him first?

Archie caught his mother by the arm as she reached for the ladder up to the
Seven Seas'
hatch.