The Dragon Lantern

by Alan Gratz

  Ren pointed to a door on the left. “The lantern’s in here,” she said.

  Archie turned into a dark room. A metal door slammed shut and bolted behind him, and gaslights suddenly came up. The Dragon Lantern was in the room, all right, but that wasn’t all. Archie was in a square room exactly like the one where he’d sat with the Daimyo Above the City, but the samurai guards here wore white, not black, and there were just as many black meka-ninjas as there were humans. On a cushion on a raised platform beside the Dragon Lantern was the same man as above too, with the same black hair and same green glasses, but now wearing white robes. The Daimyo Above the City was the same man as the Daimyo Under the City—and Ren had brought Archie right to him.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s in my nature.”

  “Welcome to the city under the city, Mr. Dent,” the daimyo said. “I asked Kitsune to bring you here without a fuss so I could speak to you again. She assures me you’re quite capable of destroying everyone and everything down here.”

  “‘Kitsune’?” Archie said. She’d told him her name was Ren.

  Kitsune shrugged as if to say, “It’s in my nature.”

  “What do you want with the Dragon Lantern?” Archie asked the daimyo.

  The daimyo waved a disinterested hand. “It’s not what I want, but what I can get for it. Arcane items such as this are highly prized in kaiju-ruled Cathay. This one will make me a very rich man.”

  Archie took an angry step toward the daimyo. A room full of meka-ninjas and samurai guards might have scared everybody else, but not him.

  “Ah ah ah,” the daimyo said, holding up a finger. “Attack me, and Kitsune’s father dies.”

  A meka-ninja emerged from behind the dais with a ragged, bearded Japanese man in one arm and a short sword in the other. So—Ren or Kitsune or whatever her name was hadn’t been lying about her father, at least. Archie had seen Thomas Edison’s meka-ninja kill quickly and efficiently at a single brief command, and he stayed where he was.

  “I’m not her father!” the man in the meka-ninja’s arms cried.

  The daimyo ignored him. “You see, Kitsune and I have an arrangement. She does whatever I ask, and I do not kill her father.”

  “I’m telling you—I’m not her father!” Kitsune’s father said again.

  “Now you and I will have the same arrangement,” the daimyo told Archie. “You will stay here, as my guest, and do … favors for me. Errands. And in return, I will not kill this man.”

  Kitsune’s father struggled in the meka-ninja’s grasp. “You’re making a mistake! I’m not her father!”

  “I’ll never work for you,” Archie said.

  “Then I can kill this man?” the daimyo said.

  The meka-ninja raised its sword to Kitsune’s father’s neck.

  Archie’s blood boiled. He couldn’t let the daimyo control him the way he controlled Kitsune. Wouldn’t let him. How many lives would he hurt—how many deaths might he cause—just to save the life of one man? But he was a hero. Heroes didn’t let innocent people die for any reason.

  Hero? a voice whispered inside his head. You’re no hero. You’re a monster. Clyde would take that deal—accept a life of slavery and crime just to save the life of one man. But not you. You’re the shadow. You’re the one who can trade one life for a thousand, and never blink.

  It’s in your nature.

  “Go ahead,” Archie said. He took a step forward. “Kill him. And then I’ll kill you, and everybody else down here.”

  The meka-ninja drew its blade up tighter, and a thin line of red blood rolled down the man’s neck.

  “I’m telling you! Please! I’m not her father!” the man begged.

  “He’s right,” Kitsune said. She stepped up alongside Archie, and the anger and bloodlust in him subsided as he tried to figure out what she was playing at. “He’s not really my father,” she said.

  “Yes! Yes, I told you!” the man said. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you for three years!”

  The daimyo stood. “Do not test me, girl. I will kill him!”

  “Fine,” Kitsune said. “His real name is Nori Shizuka. He used to keep children in dark little prisons like yours before selling them into slavery until I stopped him. You wanted to control me, and I wanted a punishment that fit his crime, so I pretended he was my father so you would throw him in your dungeons.”

  “Yes, yes,” Shizuka sobbed. “Finally, the truth. It’s all true. I have been a terrible man, and I have paid for my sins.”

  “Not enough,” Kitsune told him.

  “But—then—why do my bidding if this is not really your father?” the daimyo asked.

  Kitsune smiled. “For fun. But then I found something even more fun to do.”

  “What?” the daimyo asked.

  “Bring this boy and his friends here to destroy you.”

  “Kill them!” the daimyo commanded, and chaos erupted. At the same moment the samurai and meka-ninjas leaped at them, the roof exploded, half of it caving in, the other half lifted out by a giant brass hand. Sings-In-The-Night dropped through the hole onto a samurai’s shoulders and lifted him away. Archie batted one of the meka-ninjas across the room. Kitsune made another samurai swing his sword at a phantom.

  Buster’s head appeared in the hole in the ceiling, and he whistle-barked.

  “Like Mrs. DeMarcus says, better late than never, huh?” Clyde’s voice boomed.

  Archie stuck his fist through a meka-ninja and ripped out its clockworks. “I thought you were captured!” Archie yelled back.

  “Please,” Clyde said. “There were only five of them.”

  Sings-In-The-Night flew by, picking up a meka-ninja and smashing it against the wall. “I’m going after the lantern!” Archie told her. The daimyo had the lantern in his hands, and Archie wasn’t going to let him get away.

  But the daimyo didn’t run. Not at first.

  First, he opened up the lantern and flooded the room with its light.

  26

  Archie ducked away from the Dragon Lantern’s light, but it didn’t do anything to him but make his skin warm. It did something to some of the samurai guards in the room, though. As the light fell on them, they screamed, their bodies twisting and contorting in ways human bodies weren’t supposed to twist and contort. One of them sprouted bat wings and a spiked tail. Another’s head grew fur and rabbit ears while his bottom half melted into goo. Spider legs erupted from the stomach of a man beside Archie.

  All of them screamed.

  Archie had seen enough horrors in his short life to turn his hair white, but this was something else entirely. Most of the samurai were mutating, their bodies breaking and melting under the Dragon Lantern’s light. Archie, Kitsune, and Sings-In-The-Night weren’t affected.

  Maybe because they already had been.

  “Clyde! Clyde, stay out of the light!” Archie yelled.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice!” Clyde said. The light didn’t do anything to Buster, of course, who still happily pulled meka-ninjas from the hole he’d dug and whipped them around like string bones, but Archie didn’t want to test it on Clyde.

  Kitsune stood mesmerized, watching the samurai transform into monsters under the lantern’s light.

  “So that’s what it does,” she whispered.

  A samurai with a shark’s mouth in his stomach came gurgling at her, and Archie snatched her out of the way. As he set Kitsune down again, his hand accidentally came away with a white pearl necklace she wore.

  Suddenly Archie’s hand was on fire. He waved it to put out the fire, but then there was a snake in his hand. Then it was crawling with bugs. Illusions, he realized. Kitsune was making him see all those things, trying to get him to drop the necklace.

  “If you want it back, you could just ask,” Archie said.

  “Give it back!” she demanded. She grabbed for the necklace, but Archie yanked it away.

  “I will, if you make me a promise.”

  “What?” Kitsune said.
Another monster samurai came at them, but Buster snatched it away in his giant brass hand.

  “Join us. Join the League. It’s—I’ll explain later. But we’re good guys. We do good things. We help people. And so do you. I’ve seen you. You led me to that abandoned warehouse in Cahokia before you blew me up so no one else would get hurt. You saved all those people from the fire in the shop in Cheyenne. And that man—Shizuka. You stopped him from selling children as slaves.”

  “Fine. Yes!” Kitsune said.

  “Yes, you’ll join us?”

  “Yes,” Kitsune said. “Now give it back!” The fight raged around them, but all she cared about was the necklace. It must have really meant something to her.

  “One more promise,” Archie said, holding it back. “You tell me who you really are, and where you really came from. The truth.”

  “Right now!?”

  “No. Later.” He held the necklace where she could see it. “Promise.”

  “I promise,” she said.

  Archie started to hand her the necklace, then pulled back. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “I may be a liar, but I keep my promises,” she told him.

  Archie gave her the necklace back, and it disappeared inside her white robe.

  “So. What now, boss?” she asked.

  “We get that Dragon Lantern back,” Archie said. But the daimyo and the lantern were gone! He’d wasted too much time!

  “There’s a secret passage under the dais,” Kitsune said, leaping up onto it. “That’s where he went. We just have to find the trigger that opens it.”

  Archie slammed his fist down through the wooden platform and ripped up the planks, revealing a hidden staircase.

  “Or you could just do that,” Kitsune said.

  “There are people being held prisoner in the tunnels!” Archie called to Clyde and Sings-In-The-Night. “Get them out! We’re going after the Dragon Lantern!”

  “Who? You and the girl who stole it?” Clyde said.

  Kitsune scampered down the stairs, and Archie followed. The staircase led to a lower series of tunnels, and whether Kitsune really grew up there or not, she knew the way well enough to guide them. Archie had to trust that she wasn’t lying to him again, but he didn’t have any other choice.

  “I fell from the sky,” Kitsune said as they ran.

  “What?”

  “You wanted to know where I came from. I fell from the sky.”

  “Where?”

  “The rice fields of Beikoku, near Yakima, in the shadow of Mt. Tacoma. An old farmer and his wife said they saw me fall from the sky, and they rescued me and raised me as their own daughter. They always hid me away, afraid I’d be persecuted as a monster because of my ears and tail, and one day they heard someone coming and sent me to the basement. When they didn’t come back for me, I crept back upstairs. They were dead. They’d been killed by Paiute digger pirates, driving one of those big tunneling machines they have. I swore then and there I would use my powers to protect the innocent and punish the wicked.”

  Archie followed her down another dark corridor.

  “Is any of that true?” he asked her.

  “I promised I’d tell you the truth, didn’t I?” she said.

  “Yes,” Archie said. “But you didn’t say when.”

  Kitsune gave Archie a sly grin. It was just as he thought—all lies.

  They were climbing through a busted-out hole in a brick wall when they heard something metal jangling in the next room. Kitsune put a finger to her lips. The daimyo stood in front of a rusted iron door, running through the keys on a big ring with shaking hands. The lantern sat on the ground at his feet.

  “Boss, you need any help?” Kitsune said.

  The daimyo wheeled on them, a raygun in his hand. Archie cursed inwardly, sure Kitsune had tricked him all over again. But the daimyo lowered his raygun and relaxed.

  “Oh! Taro! It’s you,” he said, his eyes looking over their heads. Archie looked behind him to see what the daimyo was looking at, but there was nothing there but wooden barrels. Kitsune, Archie realized. She must be making him see us as someone else. His taller samurai guards.

  “Were you followed?” the daimyo asked.

  “No,” Kitsune said. “Those monsters the lantern made—they took care of the kids.”

  “Good, good,” the daimyo said, clearly still shaken by what he’d seen. “Wait—Taro, you were one of the ones I saw turn into a monster!”

  Kitsune looked at Archie with wide eyes and nodded at the daimyo. Archie frowned back. What?

  “It’s you!” the daimyo said, and he shot Archie with the raygun.

  “Ow!” Archie said. He grabbed the raygun and crushed it with one hand. With the other, he flicked the daimyo in the face with a finger. The daimyo’s head snapped back and slammed into the iron door, and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  Kitsune did her wide-eyed nod again. “This means hit him!”

  “Well, I’m sorry!” Archie said. “I don’t read fox girl sign language!”

  “Once somebody sees through the illusion, I’ve got to be ready to hit or run. With just me, it’s usually run. But with you around, now we can do some hitting.”

  “So do we haul him back?” Archie asked. “Turn him in to the authorities?”

  Kitsune picked up the daimyo’s keys. “He is the authorities. I’ve got a better idea. Just let me find the key to this door.”

  Archie moved her to one side and punched the door off its hinges.

  “Or you could just do that,” Kitsune said. “Pick him up. I’ll carry the lantern.”

  “Uh-uh,” Archie said. “I’ll carry them both.”

  The iron door led to a smaller tunnel that came out in the busy outdoor docks of Ametokai’s submarine port. Unlike New Rome, Ametokai wasn’t exactly on the ocean. It was a hundred miles inland on Puget Sound, where the water wasn’t as choppy and impassable on the surface as the Great Western Sea beyond. Submarines of all sizes and colors bobbed in a long line stretching in either direction, and crowds of Tik Toks and human porters and passengers pushed past each other trying to get to their ships.

  “Let me do the talking,” Kitsune whispered to Archie. She whistled to catch the attention of a loitering sailor with a tall furry hat and a long clay pipe. He gave a wary look around, then joined them.

  “You the boarding master for the Potemkin there?” Kitsune asked.

  “Might be,” the sailor said in a thick Russian accent. Just like the daimyo, he looked over their heads, like he was talking to someone taller. Archie wondered what exactly Kitsune was making him see.

  “Where you headed?” she asked.

  “Siberia.”

  “Gone long?”

  “Five years.”

  “Got a volunteer for you.” She nodded to Archie. Did she want him to punch the guy? No—her eyes went to the daimyo, and he understood. He handed the daimyo’s unconscious body to the boarding master. He hefted him, having more trouble with his weight than Archie did, and started to walk away to his ship.

  Kitsune caught him by the arm. “Hold up,” she said. The sailor frowned, dug in his pocket, and stuffed a wad of bills into her hand. Kitsune counted it as he left.

  “Fifty bucks a head. That’s the going rate,” she said.

  “You’re a mean one,” Archie said.

  “Only to people who deserve it. I think he’ll enjoy Siberia. I hear the summer there is beautiful. All four days of it.” She nodded at the lantern. “So. I guess now I know why you were so desperate to get hold of that thing.”

  “Well, I thought I was getting it to bring back to someone, but now I’m trying to keep it from her,” Archie said.

  “Who?”

  “Me,” Philomena Moffett said.

  Archie spun. Mrs. Moffett was right behind him! Her tentacles were hidden under her skirts again, but Archie knew they could whip out at him at any time. He held the lantern tightly in his arms as Mrs. Moffett circled them.

&nb
sp; “Oh, you’re good,” she said. “Can you see it, Archie? She’s made you look like two of the daimyo’s samurai, down to every last detail. But I know it’s you under there. I watched you before she created the glamour.”

  “How did you find us?” Archie asked.

  “It wasn’t too hard,” Mrs. Moffett said. She looked beyond the submarine docks toward the city, where Buster was trading punches with Ametokai’s Metal Samurai Gunray. “So. Are you going to give me the lantern, or do I have to take it from you?”

  Archie put the lantern in Kitsune’s hands and got ready to fight. “I’d like to see you try.”

  “So be it,” Mrs. Moffett said. Her chest swelled, and she clenched her fists at her side and screamed. It was like being hit with a raycannon, only it was sound waves, not aether. WOMWOMWOMWOMWOM! Mrs. Moffett’s sonic scream ripped up the wooden docks and sent crates and barrels flying. Kitsune went with them, tumbling end over end until she crashed into a crane and slumped, unconscious, to the ground. Archie held his ground, though, the sound waves pounding him like a giant steam man’s brass fists.

  Mrs. Moffett’s scream died away, and Archie stumbled, trying to keep his balance. All around them, the panicked people on the docks fled.

  “Impressive,” Mrs. Moffett said, picking up the lantern. “Nothing has ever been able to stand up to my sonic scream. Not mountains, or rivers, or trees, or the armor plating the scientists built to test me at the Forge. Nor the scientists, in the end. But you, Archie Dent, you’re different, aren’t you? The Boy Made of Stone.”

  “I know what they did to you was awful,” Archie said. “Sings-In-The-Night told me. But that’s no reason to—”

  Mrs. Moffett screamed again. The sonic waves blasted Archie into the hull of a submarine with a loud clang, leaving a dent. Mrs. Moffett’s sonic scream was a violent force she wielded like a fire hose, ripping the submarines from their moorings and knocking them into each other. Archie held on to a wooden piling, but felt even that starting to splinter. He was just about to slip off when a giant brass hand slammed down into the dock, knocking Mrs. Moffett off her feet.

  Clyde and Buster! And Sings-In-The-Night, flying alongside! Mrs. Moffett turned on them and screamed again—WOMWOMWOMWOMWOM!—staggering the enormous steam man and sending her former friend tumbling through the sky. She kept her scream on the steam man and Buster stumbled backward under the force of it, his brass plating wobbling and groaning. If he didn’t get away, Mrs. Moffett’s scream would vibrate him to pieces.