The League of Seven

by Alan Gratz

  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.

  “Mom, wait! Where are you going?”

  And that’s when he saw it. A thick black bug, like the little baby Manglespawn that had hatched and come after him in the catacombs. It sat on the back of his mother’s neck, beneath her swept-up hair. Its insect legs wrapped around her neck, like it was holding on, and its scorpion-like tail was buried deep inside her. His dad had one on the back of his neck too, half-hidden by his high collar.

  Archie’s parents turned their heads around together slowly, and he saw the same awful smile on their faces that he’d seen on the faces of the Septemberist council. His skin crawled like he had those bug things all over him, and he let go of his mother.

  Whatever that thing was in the basement, it had already gotten to his parents. And the rest of the Septemberist council too.

  2

  Mr. Rivets climbed aboard the SS Seven Seas and closed the hatch just as the Septemberist council emerged from the arch at the top of the steps. Archie could see their smiling faces from the cockpit of the submersible.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Hull!” he told the machine man at the controls. “Hurry!”

  “Readying a submersible for departure is a strict and complicated procedure, sir. To rush the process would endanger you and the other occupants.”

  Archie watched the smiling Septemberist council walk down the steps toward them at the same maddeningly slow pace they had come at him in the council chambers. Just walking after him was scarier than if they had chased him at a run. It was like they knew they were going to get him, and didn’t have to hurry.

  “Don’t you have any kind of emergency override or anything?” Archie asked Mr. Hull.

  “Master Archie?” Mr. Rivets said, joining them in the small cockpit. “What’s wrong with Mr. and Mrs. Dent?”

  “The same thing that’s going to be wrong with me if we don’t get out of here!” Archie said. The Septemberist council was at the bottom of the steps. Archie couldn’t hear them through the thick glass of the bubble windows, but he could see their mouths moving. They were probably still telling him there was something in the basement they wanted him to see.

  Mr. Hull kept flipping switches and turning dials, but they weren’t going anywhere. The council would be on top of them any second! Archie scanned the console and recognized the switch that controlled the mooring clamps. He knew he wasn’t supposed to, but—slag it. They had to get out of here, now. Archie flipped the switch. KaCHUNK. The submersible let go of the dock and bobbed on the water.

  “Sir!” Mr. Hull protested. But Archie wasn’t finished. He flipped the switch to release the ship’s ballast, and the SS Seven Seas rocked as it burbled and sank beneath the water’s surface. Archie let go the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as they left the Septemberist council smiling on the dock.

  “Sir!” Mr. Hull said, struggling to make up for all the steps Archie had skipped. “This is highly unsafe!”

  Archie staggered as the submersible hit the rocky bottom of the cavern, but Mr. Hull soon had them to rights.

  “You are not a licensed submersible operator! You are not allowed to manipulate the controls!” Mr. Hull told him. “I’m afraid I must ask that you leave the cockpit at once.”

  “In a minute,” Archie told him. He reached around Mr. Rivets, took a long look at his parents in the passenger compartment, sitting there with the same empty smiles on their faces as before, and slid the cockpit door closed.

  “Mr. Rivets, Mom and Dad—they’ve got bug things on their necks!”

  Archie told the Tik Tok what he’d seen and how the Septemberist council had acted when he’d run in and told them about the Manglespawn.

  “Do you think they have those bug things on them too?” he asked.

  “I think it highly probable,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “But what are they doing to them? The bug things, I mean.”

  Archie heard Mr. Rivets’ clockworks ticking as the machine man thought. �
��The only similar experience I have had was in service to your great-great-grandmother, Willoughby Dent, when we encountered a Manglespawn in the forests of what was then known as the Massachusetts Colony, the year the Darkness fell.”

  Archie blinked. He sometimes forgot just how old Mr. Rivets was, and how many Dents he’d served, all of whom had been Septemberists. Mr. Rivets was a walking, talking Septemberist Society archive.

  “In that circumstance, the Manglespawn had the ability to control the behavior of human beings by laying eggs in their stomachs,” Mr. Rivets said. “Rather a messy business.”

  “Ugh,” Archie said. “So those bugs are controlling them?”

  “The Manglespawn in the catacombs would be the central brain, I would think,” Mr. Rivets said. “Communicating telepathically through the creatures on your parents.”

  “Telling them to do what?”

  “That I could not say, sir.”

  “We have to try to snap them out of it,” Archie said.

  “Agreed,” said Mr. Rivets.

  Archie opened the door to the passenger cabin. His parents still sat there, smiling.

  “Mom? Dad? Can you hear me?” Archie asked. He stood right in front of them, waving his hands in their faces. He poked them. Nudged them. Snapped his fingers. Nothing. Archie pulled Mr. Rivets aside.

  “We have to pull those things off them,” Archie said.

  “Doing so may be dangerous,” Mr. Rivets said. “In 1802, on an expedition with your grandfather—”

  “I don’t care about any of that right now!” Archie said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rivets, but I want you to take them off. That’s an order.”

  In theory, Archie was just as much Mr. Rivets’ master as his parents were. He was human, and Mr. Rivets was a Tik Tok servant. In practice though, Archie’s parents made Archie do whatever Mr. Rivets said, not the other way around. That gave Mr. Rivets a lot of latitude as to which commands he would accept from Archie, and which ones he wouldn’t. He didn’t, for example, go jump in a lake as Archie had once told him to do when Archie was ten.

  Archie heard Mr. Rivets’ clockwork brain clicking as he considered the command. Finally Mr. Rivets nodded. “As you say, Master Archie.”

  Archie was relieved, but scared too. “Mom first,” he said.

  “Beg pardon, Mrs. Dent,” Mr. Rivets said as he turned her head. It sent shivers through Archie to see his mother sit there and be posed like a rag doll.

  And then Archie saw it again. The bug on his mother’s neck. It was black and shiny, with a segmented body like a spider. It throbbed, in and out, in and out, like it was another part of her. Like it was another organ.

  Mr. Rivets bent forward to examine it. “You were right, Master Archie. This appears to be one of the same creatures that came after you in the catacombs. If so, that would mean its not-inconsiderable tail is buried some way into your mother’s neck. Perhaps all the way to her spinal cord. That may be how it is able to achieve control over her.”

  Archie closed his eyes. Sometimes he wished Mr. Rivets could lie. Or at least not be so honest.

  “Just get it off her,” Archie said.

  Mr. Rivets raised a brass hand, maneuvered his fingers with clockwork precision to an inch on either side of the bug on Mrs. Dent’s neck, and snapped them closed on it.

  Mrs. Dent flailed like a puppet, making Archie jump. Her legs lurched and her arms jerked, but Mr. Rivets held fast. Was she in pain? Were they hurting her? She looked like it, but she didn’t cry out. Archie wanted to yell at Mr. Rivets to stop, but he wanted the thing off his mother more.

  Archie’s dad turned to Mr. Rivets, that slagging smile still on his face. “Mr. Rivets, go to your rewinding station.”

  “No, Mr. Rivets! Don’t let go!” Archie cried. “Get it off her!”

  Mr. Rivets ignored Archie’s father and did as Archie said. He pulled the thing away, its little legs wriggling, its tail sliding farther and farther out of her neck. Impossibly farther. There was so much of it buried inside of her, it had to hurt. It slurched as it slid out, and a trickle of black-red blood oozed from the edge of the hole. Archie thought he was going to be sick.

  “No!” Mrs. Dent screamed at last, making Archie jump again. She sobbed as she screamed, a sound that wrenched Archie’s heart right out of his chest. “No! Can’t be here. Have to run, Archie! Don’t let them—”

  The thing was almost all the way out of Mrs. Dent’s neck when Mr. Dent reached around Mr. Rivets, lifted a small brass flap on his back, and switched him off. The tension immediately released from the springs inside Mr. Rivets, and the machine man went limp. His hand released the bug, and his arms and head lolled uselessly.

  “Mom! No! Mom!” Archie cried. Mrs. Dent slumped forward on the bench, and Archie caught her in his arms. He could hear the bug slurching back into her neck. Mrs. Dent grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket with desperate strength. “Archie! One, two, buckle my shoe. Remember! One, two—” She stopped suddenly and stood, letting go of his jacket. The pain was gone from her face, replaced by a tear-stained smile and a blank stare.

  “Mom! Mom, come back! Please!” Archie said. But she was gone. The thing was back in her neck, its tail buried deep inside her again. Pulling it out had hurt her, badly, but it could be done. If Mr. Rivets could pull out both bugs at the same time, they couldn’t stop him.

  But as soon as Archie had the thought, his father stood and moved to the bench on the other side of the small compartment. It wasn’t far, but it was far enough that Mr. Rivets couldn’t reach them both. They could do it if Archie pulled one of them out, but he didn’t know if he was strong enough—physically or mentally.

  Archie switched Mr. Rivets back on. The machine man whirred and straightened. He peered back and forth at Mr. and Mrs. Dent, and then at Archie.

  “I take it we were unsuccessful,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Archie said, drying his own eyes. “We’re slagged.”

  The submersible arrived back at the Hudson River Submarine Landing, and Archie’s parents stood to leave.

  “Mr. Rivets, what do we do?” Archie asked. He was twelve years old. Wherever they went, he went. “I know they’re being controlled by that thing, but they’re my parents!”

  “And my masters,” Mr. Rivets said. “I think all we can do is follow them, try to discern what plan the Manglespawn has in mind for them, and do our best to prevent it.”

  How? Archie wondered. But he didn’t say it. His parents were already climbing out onto the busy sub landing docks. He and Mr. Rivets had to hurry if they didn’t want to lose them.

  As they made their way through the busy terminus, Archie spied an Algonquin in a New Rome policeman’s uniform. He tugged on Mr. Rivets’ brass arm. “We could go to the police!”

  “And tell them what?” Mr. Rivets said. “That your parents are being controlled by a monster in the catacombs beneath the headquarters of a secret society they have never heard of?”

  Mr. Rivets was right. The police would think he was a blinking flange. And they couldn’t go to the Septemberist Society. They were under the same spell.

  Archie and Mr. Rivets were on their own.

  3

  Archie and Mr. Rivets took a carriage with his parents to the Palisades Airship Park, where the family airship was anchored. The Hesperus was small, as far as airships went, a family-sized aeroyacht that had been in the Dent family for at least two generations. Unlike the huge whale-shaped airships that crossed the continent, the Hesperus was a small cone-shaped metal capsule with steam-driven propellers, suspended from a net full of hydrogen balloons. The Hesperus had been painted bright yellow to match its namesake star’s brilliant evening glow, but decades of sun and use had scratched and faded her. The cockpit and cabin were all one round room, with the ship’s controls and windshield at one end, and basic kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping facilities ringing the rest of the inner wall.

  Archie’s father stood at one end of the round room, his mother at the other, by th
e controls. Without a word, she weighed anchor and stoked the airship’s steam propellers. New Rome slid by through the windshield as the Hesperus rose into the clouds and turned south. To go anywhere in the Hesperus, Archie’s parents usually installed Mr. Rivets’ Airship Pilot card and had him do the navigating. Whatever the bug thing controlling them was, it apparently knew how to fly an airship. Archie installed Mr. Rivets’ Pilot card anyway, so he could tell where they were going.

  “Florida,” Mr. Rivets told Archie. “That would be the terminus of the flight path your parents have set. Unless they mean to take us on to New Spain or Brasil.”

  “Florida. Where Malacar Ahasherat is buried,” Archie said. Malacar Ahasherat was the Mangleborn that Archie’s parents had gone to warn the Septemberist Society about. “The Swarm Queen—isn’t that what they called it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mr. Rivets said. He and Archie were whispering, but it hardly mattered. Mr. and Mrs. Dent acted like the machine man and their son weren’t even there. “Malacar Ahasherat is imprisoned in the swamps at the end of the peninsula. And as her name suggests, the Swarm Queen is master over the insect kingdom.”

  Archie watched the bug thing on his mother’s neck throb. It couldn’t be a coincidence. A Mangleborn with a thing for insects, and now his parents and the rest of the Septemberists had bugs on their necks, telling them what to say and do. Wait—maybe not all the Septemberists. Just the ones back at headquarters!

  “Uncle John!” Archie said. John Douglas. He was another Septemberist, one who wasn’t on the council. He wasn’t Archie’s real uncle—Archie didn’t have any aunts or uncles—but his parents had always called him Uncle John. He came to visit the Dents at their home in Philadelphia a couple of times each year. In all the worry over his parents, Archie had forgotten him. “Mr. Rivets, we have to get in touch with Uncle John. If he hasn’t been to headquarters, he may not be under the Swarm Queen’s control. He could help us.”