The Dragon Lantern (23 page)

“Whoa! Was that a flying girl?” Clyde asked, his voice booming through the amplified trumpet inside Buster. The giant steam man hopped after Sings-In-The-Night, barking at her with his whistle, until Clyde got him to heel. Buster bent down close to Archie and opened his mouth, and Archie climbed inside.

“Check it out!” Clyde said, gesturing at the repaired left eye. “The Tik Toks fixed him up! Repaired his eye, put in new pedals for me—said they made some upgrades to his engine room too.”

“Yeah. They ‘upgraded' Mr. Rivets too,” Archie told him.

“So, we ready to make tracks?” Clyde asked. “Like Mrs. DeMarcus says, there's no time like the present, and no present like time.”

Archie knew they needed to get underway. The fox girl had a head start on them to Cheyenne—if her airship didn't get caught in a cyclone first. But he wanted Sings-In-The-Night with them. She was supposed to be part of their League. He was sure of it. Even if the League she'd been created for was gone now, even if the way she had been created was awful and horrible and wrong, this was right. This was what she was made for.

It was what Archie was made for too.

*   *   *

Buster's whistling woke Archie the next morning, and Clyde called him up to the bridge. Sings-In-The-Night was outside, flapping her black wings to stay level with Buster's eyes. Clyde opened one of the windows, and she spoke to them through it.

“I'll come,” she said. “I'm not sure I can join your League, not after everything that's happened, but there's no life for me here. And I don't want anyone else hurt by the lantern.”

She turned and flew off in the direction of the Moving City of Cheyenne. Archie saw a smudge of black on her shirt and realized she must have spent the night in the burned-out ruins of Beaver Run, surrounded by ghosts.

18

New Orleans was having a party.

All along Canal Street, a row of colorful airship balloons bumped and bobbed into each other. Some of the balloons were shaped into long faces—a crocodile, a jester, a ghost—but most were just decorated in gaudy splashes of purple and green and gold. It was what hung below them that really mattered. In the place of airship capsules and cabins, each balloon carried what parade-goers called “floats”—long, open-topped barges in even more bizarre shapes than the balloons. One, Hachi could see, was made to look like a steamboat. Another was a mermaid with a trumpet, emerging from majestic blue waves. Another, in the shape of a stick with a net at the end, paid tribute to New Orleans's celebrated lacrosse team, the Saints. On the floats stood armies of costumed revelers throwing necklaces and charms to the huge crowds swarming the sidewalks.

“Is this what Mardi Gras is like?” Hachi asked.

“Dis is bigger dan Mardi Gras,” Erasmus Trudeau told her. The Pinkerton agent swung their tiny airship around, and Hachi saw the masses of people filling the side streets, all dancing and singing and drinking. “It's dat Baron Samedi. He put everybody in a party mood.”

Everyone but Hachi. She was feeling distinctly unparty-like. She had just watched Madame Blavatsky be “ridden” by the loa of Baron Samedi right when she was about to get her hands on her. Now, instead of interrogating Blavatsky in some hidden garret, she was getting ready to drop in on a parade float to give Blavatsky an impromptu haircut.

“A true bokor can welcome a loa as easily as she can expel one,” Marie Laveau had told them as they left the palace after the s
é
ance. “But Blavatsky is no true bokor. Without the knowledge or the strength to push him out, Samedi can ride her until she dies. And will.”

What they needed, Laveau told them, was a voodoo doll of Blavatsky. And to make a voodoo doll of Blavatsky, they needed a lock of her hair.

“We just coming around now, Miss Hachi,” Erasmus said.

Hachi clipped a carabiner to the harness she wore and opened the bottom hatch on the little airship.

“You got your barber's shears?” Erasmus asked, laughing.

Hachi patted her knife. “Something like that.”

“Den good luck—and good cutting!”

Hachi jumped out of the airship, the rope attached to her harness buzzing as it ran out of the airship's winch. She shot down past a long, tall balloon in the shape of a rampant bull, and as the winch slowed her descent, she swung onto the deck of a float decorated with empty-eyed skeleton skulls. A zombi soldier turned at the sound of her landing, and she kicked him in the chest, knocking him over into the cheering, singing crowd below.

The float was like a long sailing ship, with a wooden plank floor and short walls at the sides. A network of ropes held its balloon in place above, and more ropes stretched from the prow and the stern to the porters on the street below who pulled it along the parade route. All along the low walls, men and women in skeleton costumes threw baubles to the crowd below, ignoring her.

Hachi gave the rope on her harness a quick tug to let Erasmus know she'd landed, and she felt it go slack. Two more tugs, and Erasmus would throw a lever on the winch, whipping her back up.

“Circus, showtime,” Hachi said. From her bandolier flew the three remaining wind-up animals her father had built for her before he'd died. Each time she saw them, she was filled with a mix of emotions, ranging from happiness and comfort to sadness and loss. “You know what to do,” she told the little gorilla, lion, and giraffe, and they buzzed off into the chaos.

Hachi slipped up behind one of the revelers and put a chloroform rag to her face. “Sorry,” she said as the young woman slumped in her arms. One of the other costumed partiers looked over. Hachi smiled and shrugged. “Too much to drink,” she said. She pulled the woman away and quickly stole her costume, mask, and basket of charms. Looking just like the rest of the revelers, Hachi made her way toward the front of the float, where Baron Samedi, still riding Helena Blavatsky, waved to the crowd.

Blavatsky had changed. Not like Marie Laveau changed, not physically. She still looked like Madame Blavatsky, but now she wore a black tuxedo, a black top hat, and round black tinted glasses. She smoked a cigar all the time now too—and in her other hand she carried a bottle of rum. Baron Samedi was making up for lost time.

Drink up,
Hachi thought.
Playtime's almost over.

Hachi threw trinkets to the crowd as she moved up the float, pretending to be just another of the revelers. Samedi still had his back turned toward her. Hachi was almost to him when she saw Queen Theodosia sitting in a gilded throne near the prow.

“Your Highness,” Hachi whispered. “Your Highness, what are you doing here?”

Queen Theodosia stared straight ahead, as though she was mesmerized. Hachi waved a hand in front of her face and snapped her fingers, but Theodosia didn't budge. Baron Samedi must have put her under some sort of spell. Hachi looked up and was surprised to see the decrepit General Jackson standing behind her. Why hadn't the general defended her against Samedi? Then Hachi remembered: Baron Samedi was the loa of resurrection. No matter who had made them, all zombis answered to Samedi.

Hachi left Theodosia behind. The best way to save her was to get rid of Baron Samedi, and the best way to get rid of
him
was to get a lock of Blavatsky's hair for Laveau's voodoo doll.

Focus, Hachi,
she told herself.

She picked up her mantra where she'd left off the last time and creped forward, her knife in her hand.

Hahyah Yechee, the sheriff.

Thomas Stidham, the horse breeder.

Arkon Nichee, friend to many.

 

One hundred men.

 

Claiborne Lowe, twelve times a grandfather.

Pompey Yoholo, seventh son of a seventh son.

Woxe Holatha, the banker.

One hundred murdered souls, and only Helena Blavatsky knew why they'd been killed. Hachi brought her knife up to the back of Blavatsky's head and held it there. Blavatsky's white neck called out to her to be cut, and Hachi put a hand to the long scar at her own throat. One pull of the knife, and it would be over—Blavatsky would be dead, and her father would be avenged.

But no—Hachi had to know why she'd done it. And she had to get the names of the others too, the ones who'd been at Chuluota with Blavatsky. Her father and the ninety-nine other men who'd been murdered would never be avenged until the last of their killers rotted six feet underground.

Cursing everything, Hachi took a lock of Blavatsky's hair in her hand and sliced it off with her knife.

Shing!
Hachi heard the sound of a blade behind her and spun, yanking twice on her rope. It dangled uselessly in her hand. The other half, still connected to the airship, was held by a stout reveler in a skeleton costume and mask. In the reveler's other hand was the machete that had cut her rope.

The reveler laughed—a deep, booming chuckle—and Hachi knew immediately who it was.

Baron Samedi.

Hachi looked down at the lock of hair she held and saw that her hand was covered with black shoe polish. The hair was somebody else's, painted to look black. Hachi spun the person she'd thought was Blavatsky around and stared into an old, weathered face she recognized from his portrait in the throne room. It was Aaron Burr—Theodosia's father, and the first king of Louisiana—who'd died years ago.

Baron Samedi—the
real
Baron Samedi—laughed again and tore away his skeleton mask.

“Yes, it's King Aaron!” Blavatsky said with Samedi's voice. Blavatsky's face was painted white, with big black circles around the eyes and vertical lines drawn on her lips like the masks on Laveau's assistants. Like the string that sewed the zombi soldiers' mouths shut. “I thought I'd bring the old fool back. A zombi king, for a zombi nation! And he makes a good stand-in for me too, don't you think? Though there's nothing like the original.”

Hachi tossed the shoe-blacked hair aside and stood ready for whatever Samedi threw at her.

“Not talkative, eh?” Samedi said. “What's the matter, they cut out your tongue when they slit your throat? Oh—wait. No. I know exactly what happened,” Samedi said. He tapped his head with the point of his machete. “It's all right here, in this fool Blavatsky's head! Oh yes. I see what they did. Oho!” He laughed long and hard. “Oh, it's too wonderfully terrible. I'm tempted to tell you, just to see the look on your face. That would take the steam out of you!”

“Why don't you tell me, then,” Hachi said.

“Ho-ho! Brave girl. But then you would just kill this body, yes? And I'm not finished with it. No, I think I'll wait—and so will you.” He tugged at the rope, and it shot from his hand back up into the air, leaving Hachi stranded with him on the float.

“Now,” Samedi said. “I believe you came for a lock of my hair, yes? I thought my new old friend Laveau would be cooking up something like that.” Samedi, in Blavatsky's body, crouched low and brandished his machete. “You're a great warrior, Hachi Emartha. But are you good enough to defeat the Loa of Death?”

“No,” Hachi said. “But I'm good enough to trick him.”

Samedi yowled and clapped a hand to the back of his neck, but he was too late—Jo-Jo, Mr. Lion, and Freckles each had a lock of his hair. He swatted at them, trying to catch them, but they buzzed up and away from him into the air.

“Enjoy the rest of your time in New Orleans,” Hachi told Samedi. “It's going to be a short visit.”

Hachi grabbed a rope, looped it around her wrist, and leaped off the prow, swinging like a buccaneer over the heads of the porters to the dragon float ahead of them. Behind her, she could hear Baron Samedi howling out a magic incantation.

Hands caught her on the dragon float, and she fell into their embrace.

“You give him a trim?” Fergus asked her.

Hachi smiled up at him as her clockwork menagerie appeared, clumps of Samedi's hair in their little mouths.

“That's my girl,” Fergus said.

“Where's Laveau?” Hachi asked.

Fergus pointed to the stern, where a girl about Archie's age leaned over the rail. Hachi looked at Fergus like he had a gear loose, but he shrugged. “Tell me it's not,” he said.

The girl turned, and Hachi saw Fergus was right. The girl was the very image of Marie Laveau, only younger still. Instead of the elegant white dress she had worn the night of the s
é
ance, she wore a simple white smock and a gold handkerchief tied over her dark hair, which hung down in the back.

“You changed again,” Hachi told her.

“Samedi's already seen my older faces,” the young Laveau said. “I didn't want him to recognize me too soon.”

Hachi collected Samedi's hair from her menagerie and held it out to Laveau. “This enough?”

Laveau's eyebrows went up. “Plenty. But we'd better get out of here, and fast. That spell he just cast—it's to summon the dead.”