The League of Seven (30 page)

“Go, go,” Hachi told her, and Meghan was off.

“Friend of yours?” Archie asked.

“She was my Latin tutor.”

Ms. Ambrose hurried up to them. “We're ready downstairs.”

“And I think we're ready upstairs. I've told everyone what to do,” Hachi said.

“Not me!” Archie said. “What do you want me to do?”

Hachi looked like a parent whose five-year-old asks to help fix the family airship. “You can…” She looked him up and down, and Archie knew she was struggling to find any job for him that would be in the least bit useful. “You've got the pelt. You can go in and drag people to safety who've been hurt.”

Crash!
The big double doors downstairs lurched with the force of the mob, but held. For the moment.

“Hannibal is at the gates!” Ms. Ambrose announced, her authoritative tone restored. “Prepare yourselves, girls!”

The room cleared, girls disappearing into whatever places Hachi had told them to hide. The doors rattled again, and the bar across them cracked. Archie slumped at the top of the stairs. The battle of Lady Josephine's Academy for Spirited Girls was about to be fought, and he was relegated to field nurse. Some hero he was turning out to be.

The doors surged and cracked. One more push and the mob would be through. Ms. Ambrose came to the rail to address her charges.

“Remember the motto of our immortal founder Lady Josephine, girls!
Flectere si nequeo superos, Achaeronta movebo.
‘If I cannot move heaven, I shall raise hell.'”

The doors shattered to pieces, and the mob of Pinkerton agents and Cherokee stormed into the great hall with murder on their faces.

“Ladies,” Ms. Ambrose cried, “raise hell!”

The archery club popped up from behind the rail on the balcony, arrows notched and bows drawn, their nightshirts making them look for all the world like Amazon warriors in tunics. They loosed a flurry of arrows to the screams and cries of the mob below. The mob retaliated with a blaze of raygun fire that blew chunks off the railing.

“Lacrosse team!” Hachi yelled. “Close quarters, attack!”

Screaming past Archie down the stairs came two dozen girls in wire masks and plaid skirts, their lacrosse sticks raised high. They flew into the stunned mob below, knocking away rayguns and torches and delivering a few good licks to men's heads and crotches. With the mob engaged on the ground, the archers popped up from behind the balcony again, firing at the attackers when they had a clear shot. Hachi and Meghan did the same with their rayguns from opposite sides of the room.

Archie saw a girl struck with the butt of a raygun and he was off down the stairs, the pelt draped over his head like a furry ghost. He grabbed the dazed girl up by the arms and dragged her to the stairs as the fight raged around him, rayguns
blaaating
, arrows
ffffffffting
, lacrosse sticks clacking. An oscillator blast caught him in the back—
bzaaat!
—and he staggered. He felt the heat on his skin, but he wasn't dead. He wasn't even hurt. The pelt worked! It
must
have been the pelt that had saved him from his fall!

Archie dragged the girl to safety, where she was immediately tended to by some of the girls who hadn't been sent in to fight. Wading back into the battle with more confidence now, Archie let the raygun blasts and axes and torches hit him as he saved more of the fallen girls. With the Great Bear's pelt, he was invulnerable. If only a warrior like Hachi would wear it, she would be invincible!

Hachi's barricades kept the mob contained, but they were gaining ground. Soon they would be up the stairs and into the balconies, and from there they would be into the dorm rooms.

Fergus hobbled up with the beaming Cherokee girl on his arm as Archie pulled another student from the fray. “I've got a bit of charge!” he said. He rubbed his fingers together, and they crackled with lektricity. “I could stun the lot of them, I think, if only I could hit them all at once.”

“The founder's statue!” Archie said. “If we tipped it over into the middle of them, Fergus could—”

“No,”
Ms. Ambrose and Hachi said together. “Nobody knocks Lady Josephine down,” Hachi told them. Ms. Ambrose nodded curtly.

“All right then,” Fergus said. “How attached are you to the chandeliers?”

Ms. Ambrose and Hachi looked up as one and seemed to agree that the chandeliers were expendable. Ms. Ambrose stepped up to the balcony rail as Hachi aimed her aether pistol.

“Ten Thousand!” Ms. Ambrose yelled. “Return to Greece!”

Somehow the girls still fighting below understood this meant retreat, and within moments they were backing up the stairs, still under attack from the mob. Hachi wasted no time.
Bzaaat
.
Bzaaat
. The chains holding the chandeliers snapped and their gas lines exploded, blowing upside-down craters in the ceiling. The chandeliers fell two stories and smashed to the floor, pinning the men at the front of the attack and forcing the others to climb over them to get upstairs.

Archie saw Fergus limping down the stairs and knew he would never make it in time to catch the men on the chandeliers. Fergus seemed to realize the same thing, and he jumped on the banister and rode it down instead, his kilt flying. He hit the bottom of the rail and toppled off into one of the chandeliers with an
oof.

“That's him! That's the one Edison wants!” a Pinkerton in the crowd yelled. One of them reached for him, but Fergus grabbed both chandeliers first.
Fzzzzzzzzzt
. Yellow-blue lektricity danced across the metal light fixtures, catching what was left of the mob in its death grip. The invaders kicked and thrashed, but Fergus held on until the last of his lektric charge had crackled away and all the attackers lay stunned. One or two had escaped Fergus' blast, but the archers in the balconies chased them off. The Battle of Lady Josephine's Academy for Spirited Girls was over. The home team had won.

Archie, Hachi, and Ms. Ambrose hurried down the stairs, followed by half the school. Fergus slumped against the base of Lady Josephine's statue, bruised and spent.

“Raise hell,” he said with a grin as Archie and Hachi helped him to his feet. “I like that. It's a good motto.”

To everyone's surprise—Fergus' most of all—Hachi gave him a kiss.

The doors banged open again and a new wave of men came pouring in. A First Nations man in a black uniform led the charge, an ivory-handled aether pistol in his hand. The archers in the balcony drew their bows.

“Nae, don't!” Fergus cried. “This'll be the cavalry, then.”

Ms. Ambrose put a hand up, and the Amazons in the balcony held their fire. Sheriff Sikwai took a quick look around at the bodies on the floor and the girls in the balcony and holstered his gun.

“Get these men out of here and lock them up,” he said. The deputies behind him stowed their weapons and started to drag the moaning bodies away.

“Sheriff,” Fergus said by way of hello. He limped forward and put his hand out. The sheriff narrowed his eyes at him for a moment as if trying to decide if he knew Fergus.

“Fergus MacFerguson,” Fergus said.

“I know who you are,” the sheriff said, finally deciding to shake Fergus' hand. “I think.”

Fergus frowned at that, but Ms. Ambrose was already there, offering the sheriff her hand. “Amelia Ambrose, headmistress. You're a bit late to the party, Sheriff.”

“So I see. Sorry. We've had riots like this all over town tonight. We came as soon as we could, but it looks like you and your girls can take care of yourselves.”

“We had a little help,” said Ms. Ambrose.

Sheriff Sikwai nodded, staring at Fergus again. Archie looked to Fergus for some clue about why the sheriff was so interested in him, but Fergus seemed as mystified as anyone.

“All right then,” the sheriff said, finally turning back to the headmistress. “We'll clean up for you. And I'll leave a couple of men at the door for the night.”

“Thank you, Sheriff. My girls will sleep better for it. If I can get them to sleep at all.” The balconies and stairs were filled with chattering girls animatedly reliving the battle.

“Oh, one more thing,” Sheriff Sikwai said. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. It was a letterpress flier with a hand-drawn likeness of Fergus' face—black tattoos and all. Across the top the word
WANTED
appeared in all capital letters. “I don't suppose any of you have seen this boy, have you?” Sikwai asked.

The four of them stood stunned. Of course they'd seen him. Fergus was standing right there! Ms. Ambrose opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn't find words.

“The Pinkerton Agency delivered this by pneumatic post tonight. I expect they delivered one to every other sheriff in these parts too. Says here this boy's wanted for destruction of property, theft, and murder. Also says he's traveling with accomplices.” The sheriff turned the flier around to read from it. “A boy with white hair, and a Seminole girl with a scar on her neck.”

Fergus, Archie, and Hachi exchanged horrified looks.

The sheriff shook his head. “I don't know. Me? I look at this picture”—he looked up at Fergus again, his eyes narrowed like before—“and I just don't see a criminal.”

“Neither do I, Sheriff,” Ms. Ambrose said, cottoning on at last. “But we shall watch out for him, nonetheless.”

“You do that,” Sheriff Sikwai told her. “And you,” the sheriff said, staring pointedly at Fergus, “you keep feeding the good wolf.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sheriff rounded up his men, and they herded the last of the dazed mob out the door.

“Your last name is MacFerguson?” Hachi asked him when the sheriff and his men were gone.

“Never mind that,” Archie said. “Destruction of property? Theft?
Murder?
”

“I did bring that airship down, and there were a fair number of Edison's goons on it,” Fergus allowed. “And I suppose Edison sees me as his property, in a way. Or what's inside me is, at least. Which I stole by running away.”

“I don't think I should be hearing any of this,” Ms. Ambrose said. “That sheriff's done you a great favor in giving you a chance to run.”

“And letting us know more people will be after us,” Hachi said. “We'll have to leave right away.”

“Hachi Emartha, you must stay,” Ms. Ambrose said. “We can protect you.”

“No, you can't,” Hachi told her. “And I'll just run away again.”

“But your family has been so worried about you. Your aunt—”

“My aunt only wants me out of the way so she can take over my family's company.”

“What company?” Fergus asked. “Hang on. Your last name is Emartha? As in,
the Emartha Locomotive and Machine Man Company
?”

Reluctantly, Hachi nodded.

“At least let us send you off with some food,” Ms. Ambrose said. “Do you have any money? And we'll need to fetch your Tik Tok for you.” The headmistress waved over another teacher, and students were sent off at a run.

“The Emartha Machine Man company that has skyscrapers in ten cities?” Fergus said.

“Not now, MacFerguson,” Hachi told him.

“Thank you all,” Ms. Ambrose said, shaking hands with Archie and Fergus. She hugged Hachi. “It was good to see you again.” They separated, but Ms. Ambrose kept her hands on Hachi's shoulders. “I wish you had stayed with us and graduated, my dear, but even so, I know Lady Josephine would have counted you one of the academy's greatest successes. I know I do.”

They hugged again, and Ms. Ambrose let her go. “I pray you find peace, Hachi—but I can at least rest well in the knowledge that you have found good friends.”

 

27

Standing Peachtree's Union Station was still lousy with Pinkertons, so Archie, Hachi, Fergus, and Mr. Rivets slipped out of town to catch a train in the little Yankee village of Decatur instead. There was only one Pinkerton agent there, and Freckles the wind-up giraffe distracted him while Hachi laid him out cold with two quick kicks.

They found an empty compartment in a Pontiac sleeper car on an
Iron Chief
bound for Orlando, Florida, and Mr. Rivets kept watch for them while they slept. After everything that had happened, Archie expected to be awakened in the night by hired detectives or Edison goons, or maybe even a swarm of locusts. But when Mr. Rivets woke him gently the next morning, it was only to tell him the train had arrived at their destination.

Orlando was equally anticlimactic. There were no Pinkerton agents waiting for them at the depot, no mobs with torches and pitchforks, no hideous monsters. Just a dusty lane with a falling-down hotel, a small general store, and a combination horse stable/airship park/post office. Mosquitoes buzzed in their ears, and the air smelled of rotten citrus and horse manure.