repair the damage. Refresh their life force. Then, and only then, you’d be able to fly out of here.”
Hembry let out a long breath. Reaching into his back pocket, he took out a thick green glass-topped jar. Emily recognized it as the kind she used to put up huckleberry preserves. Hembry unlatched the lid, spat tobacco juice into it, then capped the jar again and stuck it back into his pocket.
“Weevils in your bean plants?” Emily asked. Hembry looked at her, a slow smile spreading across his face.
“Yes’m, I have the misfortune of that blight,” he said. “Ain’t nothing better to get after ’em with than ’baccy-juice. I guess you ain’t from the guv’mint after all.”
“Mr. Jones.” Emily looked at Stanton. “If Mr. Hembry were able to find a Warlock … which would be an utterly astonishing discovery out here in the middle of nowhere … how far could he fly in his Cockatrice?”
“Why, Miss Smith, he could fly all the way to New York City if he had a mind to,” Stanton said.
“Don’t need to git to New York City.” Hembry’s mouth twisted in distaste. “Need to git to Philadelphia.”
“Philadelphia?” both Stanton and Emily said at once. Hembry sighed, reached inside his tea-colored shirt, pulled out a many-times-refolded broadsheet.
“It opens tomorrow,” he said, as Emily smoothed the paper out over her lap.
Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
Emily’s eyes scanned the highlights. Opening May 10, 1876 … President Ulysses S. Grant … the Emperor and Empress of Brazil …
Something on the broadsheet caught Emily’s eye. Looking at Stanton, she laid a finger next to a small line of type at the bottom of the poster.
“Look who’s going to be at the opening of the Mantic Pavilion,” she breathed.
“Sophos Mirabilis, of the Mirabilis Institute of the Credomantic Arts,” Stanton said.
They both looked up at Hembry in unison.
“Mr. Hembry,” Emily said. “I believe we can help.”
Stanton jumped to his feet and took Hembry by the arm. The old man made a protesting sound, but Stanton gave him no time to reach for his shotgun; he pulled the man several feet away from where Emily was sitting. Even at that distance she heard the finger-snap and the word: flamma.
She certainly heard Hembry’s ringing cry of astonishment: “You? A Warlock? What the hell is a Warlock doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Never mind about that,” Stanton said as they walked back to where Emily was. “You need a Warlock. Here I am. I can get your Cockatrice flying again, on one condition. We go with you.”
“What?” Hembry’s voice was a betrayed bray. Frowning, he snatched the straw hat from his head, threw it on the ground for emphasis. “No sir! I ain’t taking passengers. This ain’t a pleasure trip!”
“It isn’t going to be any kind of a trip,” Stanton said, “unless you take us.”
Hembry snorted. He crossed his arms and pressed his lips together as if he was done with conversation entirely. But he did speak again, and when he did, his voice was hushed and his eyes kept darting back and forth as if spies might be hiding in the hairy vetch.
“Listen, you folks don’t know what I’m aiming at,” he said. “Like I say, this ain’t a pleasure trip. This is a rebellion.”
“Rebellion?”
“Yeah,” Hembry said. He reached into his other back pocket, pulled out a plug of tobacco, and took an angry chaw. “I got me a little message for President Ulysses S. Grant and all them thievin’ fat-cat Replug-uglican cronies ’a his. And I aim to deliver that message right there at the opening of that grand goddamn centennial they’all spent so much of my tax money on.”
“What kind of message?” Stanton asked. Hembry lifted his chin.
“A message that honest folk won’t stand for it no more!” he shouted. He gestured around himself broadly. “Look at my land! Used’ta all be planted in corn—corn I used in my own still, for my own customers, just like my pappy did, and his pappy ’afore him. But Grant’s crooked whiskey-ring boys took it all away from me. Busted up my business, sent thugs to skeer my wife and young’uns … I haven’t dared plant so much as a pea for the past five years. So I took my last thousand dollars … the whole of my life’s savings … and I bought this here machine. I’m gonna fly into that exposition, and I’m gonna stand in front of President Ulysses S. Grant, and I’m gonna spit in his eye! If that ain’t my right