Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

CHAPTER 2

Like most towns, Mechanicsburg has located its airship terminals and freight yards outside of the old city walls. There are many fine things one can say about modern airship travel, but on the ground, it does require an inordinate amount of real estate. Luckily, the airship terminal that serves Mechanicsburg is located near a Corbettite rail terminal. If one is of a patient disposition, one may hop a slow freight shuttle directly into the town for free. For the traveler with more money than time, carriages, carts, rickshaws, and horses are available for rent. If one feels like a spot of exercise, it is less than a kilometer by foot to the North Gate. The intervening area is primarily farmland, which does allow one to appreciate the size and grandeur of the surrounding mountains. Some do like that sort of thing.

Due to one of the more fanciful of Airshipman traditions, no ship will ever fly directly over the town itself. This is a shame, as theoretically, the aerial views of Castle Heterodyne alone would be spectacular.

—Out and About the Empire on Ten Guilders a Day —Dame Mòrag MacTavish/Waterzoon Press/ Amsterdam

The air was tense aboard the shocking pink airship that hung over Mechanicsburg. The captain stood quietly, apparently enjoying the glorious view of the mountains on the horizon, but his hands, clasped behind his back, were white knuckled. On the surface, everything appeared ship shape, polished, and crisp, but in his heart he knew that everything about this berth stank like bad balloon wax.

When the Aerofleet Merchant Board had first outlined the job it had seemed like a dream come true. Captain of a brand new ship—from the Stockholm Yards, no less! Conveying a lost heir to her new kingdom, along with her royal sponsors, who would win over the town with a display of loose wealth and largesse. If all went well, there was even the possibility of a permanent commission.

Then the rip panel had been pulled. The town? Mechanicsburg. The girl was a supposed Heterodyne heir, and her noble sponsors were a pair of privileged, overbearing ne’er-do-wells that he would as soon have had jettisoned before the ship warped away from the dock.

In addition, the preparations had been rushed, less than twenty-four hours from oath to float. He hadn’t had the time to properly vet or shake down either the crew or the airship before they’d left, and he’d run them blue doing inspections and drills while on the fly. The old-timers, at least, had appreciated that. The fledglings had been too busy running to grumble.

The supposed heir had boarded ship in Vienna and no one had seen her since. She kept to her cabin—her needs seen to by her sponsors and the flock of silent minions she had brought with her.

The captain smiled humorlessly. Well, he’d done his part. The girl had been delivered safely. They’d touched down right in the main square of the town and she’d been escorted off in style. He’d been ordered to take the ship back up, to hover at an unnervingly low two hundred meters and await further orders.

The gentlemen who paid the bills stood in the main Observation Bay. The tall, equine one—Duke Strinbeck¹⁰—had been watching the girl’s progress through an elegant brass telescope. Finally, he let out a huge gust of breath and lowered the scope.

“She’s in the castle,” he announced.

His companion, a portly, white-haired man who called himself Baron Krassimir Oublenmach, had been striding back and forth, seemingly deep in thought. Now, he positively beamed. “Excellent!”

Strinbeck regarded him with a slight frown, swung the tube up again and idly scanned the town. “I certainly hope so,” he muttered.

Oublenmach grinned. He knew he made his fellow nobles feel uncomfortable. He clapped Strinbeck on the back. Oh yes, as stiff as a board. He could feel that even through his metal gloves.

“Come, come, young fellow, you’re still worried?”

Strinbeck, who had never been much into the whole “fellowship” thing to begin with, pointedly detached himself from his overly familiar companion. “Of course I am,” he snapped. “It’s too soon. I don’t like being rushed.”

To his surprise, the older man took him seriously. In a rare flash of insight, Strinbeck realized that Oublenmach was as worried as he was—but better at hiding his misgivings. “You think Zola isn’t ready?”

Strinbeck waved a hand irritably. “No, no. She’s perfect.” The hand flicked towards the window. “I’m worried about the castle.”

Oublenmach regarded Castle Heterodyne with a frown. “Ah yes, the castle is the unpredictable element, is it not?” He faced Strinbeck and grinned that disquietingly evil grin of his. “But it always will be, sir. No matter how much we prepare. No, we had to move! All that lovely build-up in Balan’s Gap? Old Klaus wounded? Either one of them would have been temptation enough, but both together? Carpe diem!”

Strinbeck irritably snapped his telescope shut and wondered what fish had to do with anything. “But what about that giant Heterodyne girl over Sturmhalten? Even your people haven’t found her yet! Which is inexcusable! I mean, she was bloody enormous!”

Oublenmach began to laugh at the joke, and then his eyes glazed slightly as he realized that Strinbeck was quite serious. “One thing at a time, sir. One thing at a time. Once everything is in place, our girl will effectively be the new Heterodyne. Vox machinae, vox populi, eh?

“Then, when do we capture the other…aheh…no doubt enormous…girl, she’ll just be another pathetic Heterodyne impersonator, and if she does give us the slip as it were and get in, why then, Zola will simply see to it that she’s ‘killed by the castle.’ That is what it does best, is it not?”

“Let’s just hope the castle doesn’t squash our Zola first, eh?”

Oublenmach rolled his eyes. “Oh enough, sir! The dice are thrown and we’ve loaded them as best we could! Think positively, your Grace! The castle will fall to us! The Doom Bell will ring, and Europa will—”

Oublenmach’s voice was rising with excitement, but Strinbeck cut him off with a sigh. Oublenmach was so enthusiastic that Strinbeck cringed whenever he had to endure a prolonged conversation with him. Right now, Oublenmach was positively exhausting. “Yes, yes! A new era for everyone. Do spare me the glorious blueprint. I’m going to have a bit of a lie-down.”

Oublenmach dismissed him with a wave. This was the sort of casual impertinence that caused Strinbeck’s jaw to tighten in fury. Soon enough, you jumped up peasant, the duke promised himself for the thousandth time.

Once the duke had left, Oublenmach turned to the captain, who’d been standing woodenly behind them. “Captain Abelard, I assume your drop-reels are properly engaged.”

Abelard was used to getting questions from nervous passengers about the state of assorted equipment, but this was a surprise. The drop-reels were a rather unnerving method of exiting a low-flying ship. Not the sort of thing you’d expect a ground-hugger to even know about.

“Of course, sir.”

“Excellent. Show me.”

There was no polite way to refuse. Oublenmach was paying the bills and it was patently obvious that there was nothing otherwise occupying the captain’s time. Thus a short while later, he was treated to the sight of the small man examining one of the cunning little devices with a practiced eye.

“You look like you know a bit about drop-reels, sir.”

“Oh, indeed, indeed,” Oublenmach called out cheerfully. “Saved my life any number of times.”

As the captain digested this intriguing bit of information, he was caught by surprise as the little man slapped the cable release, causing the drum to begin unspooling.

“What the devil are you doing?”

Oublenmach had donned a pair of canvas airman’s gloves and swung the drop-reel around, slapping the gripping jaws closed with a snap. “I am giving in to foolish fancy, sir,” he said gaily. “Too much back-room plotting ruins a man’s digestion, it truly does, sir! When I pick a man’s pocket, I like to do it to his face, and I’ll not steal an Empire any differently!”

Before the captain could stop him, he swung out and hung from the control rods. “If poor Josef asks, I’ve gone for a drink! Au revoir!” And with a laugh, he twisted the grips and dropped out of sight.

The captain swore and peered downwards. He then grunted in surprise. Annoying fellow he might be, but Oublenmach handled the drop-reel like an expert. As the captain watched, he disengaged at exactly the right moment and touched down lightly even as the reel spool began yo-yoing back up the line. He then waved a perfect signal-corps “safe aground” sign before turning and sauntering off.

It was a reflective captain who stowed and locked down the reel before making his way back to the bridge. He had thought that their assigned height had been a symptom of this whole poorly thought-out affair. Too low to hide but still high enough to fall hard. But he was reassessing that now. He was convinced that Oublenmach’s departure, as spontaneous as he had tried to make it appear, had been part of the man’s plan from the start and that the duke was in for an unpleasant surprise. What else was he misjudging?

He glanced out the window in time to see one of the freakishly odd birds of Mechanicsburg squawk at the sight of the ship and veer off. “We’re still pink,” he grumbled. “Let’s not forget that.”

He ran an eye over the bridge trying to see it with fresh eyes, and what he saw was not good. On a milk run like this, the bridge crew should be relaxed. Making idle chatter. Checking out a new town was always a source of entertainment, with crews observing the ebb and flow of the street traffic and making bets as to the locations of the best taverns and sporting houses.

But there was none of that here. The entire watch was on edge. With a practiced eye, the captain scanned the crew and found the center of the storm. It was Kraddock—and that was worrying all by itself.

Mr. Kraddock had started as a “rigger rat” when he was nine and claimed that he could still count the number of times since then that he’d actually touched ground. He’d fought skywurms in the realms of the Polar Ice Lords and seen the Great Western Wall of Fire. He’d survived air pirates, storms, hypothermia, blowouts, and the skybends, yet here he was at his wheel, fretting like a dirt-foot.

With a sigh, the captain stepped up behind the man. It was a sign of Kraddock’s level of distraction that it wasn’t until the captain leaned in and quietly asked, “A problem with your wheel, Mr. Kraddock?” that the old fellow snapped into a textbook picture of attention.

“No, sir!” he barked. “Wheel is secure, sir!”

The captain came around so that he was looking the man in the face. Oh, he was worried about something, all right. “Well what is it, then? Come on, out with it, old-timer.”

The wheelman grimaced and tried to avoid his captain’s eyes. “Well, Captain, I don’t like to second-guess orders. ’Specially with an officer that’s been around like yourself, sir. Not my place, you know? But… we’re in Mechanicsburg airspace.”

And that said it all right there. A lot of the newer crewmen were listening in, without trying to look like they were. No doubt they’d already got an earful of stories about the place. Outside the windows, in the light of day, the town looked positively picturesque. But Kraddock—and the captain—knew that that was just a new coat of paint on a sleeping dragon.

The wheelman saw the look in the captain’s eyes, and felt emboldened. “A lot of the old hands…we…we don’t like it. Sir.”

But this was a bit too close to participatory democracy for the captain’s taste. He stiffened. “The Baron has proved that Mechanicsburg airspace has been safe for close to twenty years, Mr. Kraddock,” he said loudly.

Kraddock nodded vigorously. “Oh, yessir …but…”

Abelard knew he’d regret asking. “—But?”

“But, beggin’ your pardon, Captain, but everyone knows it… We’re kind of…conquerin’ it, ain’t we?”

And with a start, the captain realized that, like Kraddock, he was terrified at the thought of what they were involved in. He’d just tamped it down so far that he hadn’t even known it.

But it had been twenty years… “Yes,” he admitted. “Just like the Baron did. So?”

Kraddock hesitated. The captain rolled his eyes. It was too late to tell him to hold his tongue now. The best way to deal with this would be to lance it and let it all spill out. “You may speak.”

The old wheelman nodded. “The Baron, yes. But… he was…an old friend of the family, as it were. And if he’s ruling the place, he’s doing it with a mighty light touch on the wheel, if I may say so, sir. Whereas, our…young lady…” He took a deep breath and his voice dropped to a whisper. “She ain’t really a Heterodyne.” He paused. “Is she?”

Captain Abelard made it a practice to never lie to the crew. On the other hand, he knew when to stop talking. He pulled down the General Address speaking tube.

“All hands—” he said crisply, “are to keep a weather eye out. Immediately report anything odd to two officers!”

A sigh of relief blew through the bridge. Strategically, nothing had changed, but they knew that their captain was taking things seriously. Kraddock saluted sharply and stood a bit taller. “Very good, Captain.”

Abelard returned the salute and, with a measured calm, sat in the command chair. He felt a little better, but not much. For the thousandth time, he wondered why they had made the damn balloon—

“Pink,” Gilgamesh marveled. He leaned full against the stone of the windowsill and stared. “It’s pink.”

Dr. Sun entered the room, a tray-laden nurse following several steps behind. “Have you seen—”

“I see it, Sifu.”

The old man came to his side and gazed up at the hovering dirigible. “It is very—pink.”

“Yes, I see that too.” Gil swung away from the window. “I want the city sealed. I want a full squad of clanks sent up to the castle, and I want a full report on what’s happening.”

Sun nodded agreeably. “You will not go yourself?”

Gil shook his head. “No. I need to stay here with my father.” He glanced toward the hospital bed where Baron Wulfenbach lay. “NURSE—!” He pointed his walking stick at the woman who had entered with Dr. Sun. She paused beside the Baron, a full hypodermic in her hand.

“What is that?” Gil’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing was ordered for this patient.”

The nurse gave him a matronly smile. “Don’t worry, young man, this is just a vitamin that we give all—”

“Do not move. Sun?”

The old man’s voice conveyed his fury. “She is not one of my people.”

“Too late!” The woman screamed in triumph as she brought the syringe down towards Klaus. “Die, tyrant!”

Before Doctor Sun could move, a bolt of electricity spat forth from the tip of Gil’s stick, catching the woman full in the chest. She was knocked back hard, bursting into explosive flames before she hit the far wall.

Gil strode to his father’s side, brushing off bits of flaming debris. “My father appears to be unharmed,” he told Sun. “That was lucky.” He began a deep breath of relief but was surprised to find himself jerked about and staring into the face of Dr. Sun. The old man was furious.

“What the devil did you just let off in my hospital?” Sun roared at him, giving him a solid shake.

Gil held up his cane. It was a light, ornate swagger stick such as any fashionable young man might carry, but the blue glass bauble at the top was lit with a fading glow-heat pouring off it.

“Just a little something I’ve been working on, Sifu. A lot of it is Agatha’s, but she was working from my designs. I’ve managed to solve most of the remaining problems. I was a bit worried about effect spread, but…”

His vision blurred as he was given another shake. He realized that Sun was staring at him with a stone-cracking gaze. He wound down.

“Pretty neat, don’t you think?” he finished weakly.

Sun pinned him with his gaze for another second and then spun to the charred corpse on the floor. “An assassination attempt! In my hospital! Who would dare?”

Gil checked some of the dials on the medical machinery. “Now that they know my father is helpless? Many would dare.” He shoved the dead woman aside with his foot. “She’ll be but the first.” He glanced at the now-coated walls. “I think we’ll need a mop.”

Sun rang for an orderly. “She certainly wasn’t a professional,” he sniffed.

Gil snorted. “No, she wasn’t. She was too slow.” Sun bit his lip as he considered this. Gil continued, “The professionals will wait. They’ll let a few overly enthusiastic amateurs go first to see what happens.” He kicked one of the larger charred lumps under the bed. “We should leave my father here. Let the assassins enter and then…disappear. Keep it a mystery. Keep them guessing.”

“What? Keep your father here? In the same room as a corpse?” The doctor was appalled. “…Although… she is cauterized…” Sun frowned and slowly combed his hand through his beard. A knock at the door made them jump, but it was only an orderly. Sun met the man at the door, purposely blocking his view. He requested a broom, a dozen blankets, and several cartloads of ice. “At the very least we can sweep her up and put her in the closet,” he said cheerfully as he shut and locked the door again. “There is still a fair amount of her I can use.”¹¹

He stood over the remains of the dead woman and looked at Gil with a raised eyebrow. With a sigh, the acting ruler of the Wulfenbach Empire rolled up his sleeves and began to clean up his own mess.

Sun shook his head. “I wonder why—”

“Why?” Gilgamesh interrupted as he shoved the closet door closed, “Because Wulfenbach troops turned the people in her village into owls—”

Sun blinked. “You what?”

Gil waved a hand. “—Or we might have deposed her favorite mad prince or hung her lover for piracy or banished the Heterodyne Boys or poisoned the well or raised the price of herring…” Gil wound down and took a deep breath. “The reason isn’t important, Sifu. Neither is the truth. What is important is this: she was just the first.”

The old man nodded. “Then you had better clear your mind and be prepared.” He headed out the door. “As should we all. We must transfer as many patients as we can—”

Doctor Sun was about to close the door behind him when Gil stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “Sifu—when you come back? Don’t forget to knock.”

Sun nodded, and the door shut between them. Gil took a quick turn around the room, examining the vents and tapping at certain points upon the floor and ceiling. Satisfied, he again checked his father’s machinery and finally allowed himself to once more stare out the window at the airship that floated above the town.

“That can’t be Agatha,” he muttered. “Unless they tried to fake us out by switching ships…” He dismissed this with a wave. “No, they’d want to hide, and I told Wooster to get her to England…” He gnawed on his lower lip.

“Wooster is good. If he’s somehow failed and she’s here…if that’s her up there…then something terrible must have happened to him.” Gil thought about this for a moment and his face darkened. “And if it hasn’t—it will.”

Agatha, Wooster, Zeetha, and Krosp followed the old man down the causeway. Wooster was furious with himself. “This old fellow is the one who gave us directions outside the city gates.”

Agatha nodded. “He was also sitting next to me at the café.”

Zeetha bit her lip. “Why didn’t we notice—”

The old man’s amused voice floated back towards them. “Because I did not want to be noticed.” He smiled. “It’s a knack.”

He led Agatha and her friends away from the Castle and through the streets of Mechanicsburg. They followed him warily—he refused to say anything more until they were “somewhere more private,” which they all agreed was wise, but unsatisfying.

Everywhere people were clustered on the streets and in doorways, talking with a great amount of gesticulating and hand waving. Voices were raised in argument and wonder. As far as Agatha could determine, the out-of-towners seemed inclined to believe the newcomer was the real thing, a genuine Heterodyne, returned at last! The natives were perfectly willing to concede that this might be true, in which case, any item purchased on this momentous occasion would obviously become a treasured memento. Thus, all of the merchants seemed to be doing a roaring business, with trays of souvenirs—or indeed anything that bore a “Made in Mechanicsburg” label—evaporating as fast as the delighted merchants could haul them out from their back rooms.

After a while, Agatha noticed that even though most people in the streets couldn’t take three steps without being solicited for their opinion, the locals checked themselves when they caught sight of the old man by her side and smoothly intercepted anyone who headed his way.

Thus, it was within a bubble of calm that the group turned onto a small drawbridge decorated with legions of grotesque little monsters in red-painted wrought iron and crossed to a barren islet in the center of the river that wove through the town. Something struck Agatha as odd, and she paused to look about. Though the rest of the town was a textbook example of high-density urban design, there were no structures on the island itself except for the bridge platform that crossed it. Agatha peered over the chest-high walls but could see nothing except patches of scrubby lichen. A small metal sign bolted to the stones warned them not to leave the path.¹²

There was no other traffic here. Agatha stopped and faced the old man. “I think this a good place for us to talk. Who are you, sir?”

The old man regarded her for a moment, then leaned back upon a railing. “That is what I intend to ask you, Miss.”

Ardsley shook his head. “I do not think we should reveal—”

Agatha overrode him. “But I do. I think he knows a lot. We know nothing.”

She took a deep breath and stood tall. She looked the old man in the eye. “I am Agatha Heterodyne. My parents were Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish.”

The old man smiled and nodded agreeably. It was disappointingly anticlimactic. “Interesting.” He paused. “Where are they?”

Agatha blinked. There were a number of possible answers to that question, most of them awkward: (“My mother? Well, her consciousness appears to be lodged in my head…”) but she decided to keep things simple for the moment.¹³

“I don’t know. I last saw Uncle Barry eleven years ago. I was raised in Beetleburg by…well…you’d know them as Punch and Judy.”

This caused the old man to raise an eyebrow. “Not a hidden monastery in the Americas? That’s different,” he allowed. “Did Punch ever mention a Master Heliotrope?”

Agatha frowned. “No, because he couldn’t talk.”

Now both eyebrows went up. “Not many people know that.”

Agatha leaned in. “They probably also don’t know that he got the hiccups after getting an electric shock.” The old man was silent. “I know you’re testing me. I can keep this up.”

An odd expression swept across the old man’s face. “But—it’s impossible,” he whispered.

“Yeah, I think it’s pretty weird myself.” Krosp’s voice was loud in his ear.

That snapped the old man out of his reverie and he turned on the cat that stared up at him with a smug gaze. “Don’t you try to boggle me, Mister Talking Cat. This is Mechanicsburg and you are by no means the oddest thing in this town!” Krosp looked slightly disappointed but the old man didn’t notice.

He had already turned his attention back to Agatha. There was a new gleam in his eye. “But you, my lady—you are something quite special.”

Agatha blinked. “You…you believe me?”

The old man tapped a fingernail against his teeth. “Not yet,” he admitted, “but I will listen.”

With that he swept off his flat cap, revealing a pattern of odd scars upon his head as he bowed. “I am Carson von Mekkhan. Former seneschal and keeper of the keys to Castle Heterodyne. Welcome home, my lady.” He straightened up and his gaze sharpened. “If my lady you be.”

Wooster had started at the old man’s name. “Von Mekkhan…von Mekkhan was the name of the seneschal. But—he died in the attack upon the castle. The family is extinct.”

“You’re remarkably well informed, young man.” Carson’s face grew older. “Yes, I died a bit that day…” He straightened up. “But the Masters always considered that a poor excuse. For the last several years I have been going under the name of Carson Heliotrope.”

Wooster waved a hand. “The records clearly show—Lady Heterodyne, this can’t be the seneschal!”

Carson pointed with his bony forefinger. “And I know, personally, that this young lady cannot be who she says she is!”

He then regarded Agatha with uncertain eyes. “But.” he continued slowly, “I’m an old man and I’ve lived in Mechanicsburg my entire life. One thing I’ve learned is that just because something is ‘impossible,’ doesn’t mean that it cannot happen.”

Agatha frowned. “Yet you say you don’t believe me.”

Carson grinned an evil grin. “This is a town built by science, my lady. Mad science, I’ll concede, but science still. I’ll entertain the idea that you are an impossible thing, but belief requires proof.” His grin faltered. “You… you don’t have any proof on you, do you?”

Agatha thought about the locket at her throat. It contained pictures of Bill and Lucrezia, but no doubt so did a thousand others for sale less than a hundred meters from where she was standing.

“Nothing concrete, sorry.”

The old man clearly didn’t seem to know if he should be disappointed or relieved. “Well, you could still be useful,” he mused.

Agatha raised her eyebrows questioningly.

“You don’t act like the usual bogus Heterodyne heir,” Carson explained. “You’re too low-key.”

He offered Agatha his arm and the little group continued onward. They crossed another bridge and entered a neighborhood that displayed no tourist paraphernalia. The shops and cafés displayed markedly cheaper prices, and while everything still had a feeling of slow decay, the people here were more personable.

Krosp glanced upwards at the hovering dirigible. “Ah, so the one who entered the castle—”

Carson interrupted him. “No, she doesn’t fit either. We get fake Heterodynes through here every year or so, sometimes more. Fewer these days than we used to, but they still come. They’re either con artists or deluded, messianic crazies.” He sighed. “The tourists love it, of course, and that’s good for business. The townspeople…” He checked himself and continued on a different tack.

“But the one now in the castle—she’s different. She has an armed staff. She has an airship. She has funding.” He prodded Agatha in the arm. “She is being managed.” And at this, Carson’s face grew dark. “And that means someone is trying to take over my town.”

At this point, they stopped walking, and with a sigh, Carson indicated they should enter a small shop. Agatha glanced at the name over the door: The Sausage Factory. However, when they entered, she was surprised to find not a butcher’s shop, but a café. It was large and well lit with high, arched ceilings and the walls and furnishings were covered in decorative woodwork carved in the Art Nouveau style.

The gold and red tiled floor was crowded with small round tables covered with crisp white tablecloths. Cozy booths with tall wooden backs and scandalously carved privacy screens lined the walls. Along the back ran an elaborate glass-fronted counter, behind which were a number of intriguing machines as well as shelves crammed with bottles and row upon row of porcelain mugs in a variety of sizes. Within the counter were long glass shelves displaying assorted pastries and cakes, pies and quiches, sweet cheeses and blocks of halvah, and marzipan molded into trilobites and other festive shapes.

An amazing smell hit them as they walked through the door, combining the odors of fresh baking, warm butter, chocolate, nutmeg, cinnamon, and fresh coffee.

Zeetha stepped through the door and stopped dead. She took a deep, appreciative sniff, and declared, “I am living here now.”

One of the waitresses, a plump girl with a dazzling smile, laughed. “Sorry, Mademoiselle, but there’s a waiting list.”

Krosp’s face settled into a frown. “I don’t smell any meat. Or even plants. What kind of restaurant is this?”

Carson snorted as he shepherded them between the tables towards the back. “It is a coffee shop. They started in Amsterdam quite a while back, but this is the first one in Mechanicsburg. This is where the business of running the town is done these days.” His tone was disapproving—it was evident that the old man was unimpressed at this turn of events.

Wooster casually scanned the room and frowned. “I don’t see Burgermeister Zuken here.” At Agatha’s look of curiosity, he explained, “He’s the head of the City Council.”

Carson snorted. “That fool? I should hope not!” He stopped next to a large booth that was tucked into a corner. Sitting alone at the table, an oversized china mug in his hand, was a tall, elegantly dressed young man. His hair was meticulously cut in the latest style favored by the dandies of Prague and he was dressed like a minor city functionary, a set of silver city seals adorning his lapels. It was obvious by looking at their faces that he and Carson were related.

“This is the fool you want,” Carson declared sourly. “My grandson, Vanamonde.”

The young man’s mouth quirked upwards in a semi-smile as he gently deposited his cup in its saucer with a quiet “clink.” “Am I now part of the tour, grandfather?”

“You could be,” the old man said in a low tone. “You never leave this table!”

Vanamonde looked surprised. “But why should I? The seats are comfortable. Everyone knows where to find me, and lovely young women bring me coffee all day long.”

At this he looked up and gave Agatha and her friends a warm smile. “Which you simply must try!” He waved to the other seats in the booth. “Please do sit down. Don’t wait for my grandfather to do the polite thing, he rode with the Jägermonsters in his youth and never quite got over it.”

Carson scowled but slid into the booth beside his grandson. The others filled the opposite bench. Instantly two of the waitresses swooped down and placemats, cutlery, and an astonishing selection of little pastries appeared before them; everything from warm, buttery croissants, to elaborate concoctions of custard, cream cheese, glazed fruits, and chocolate. Zeetha immediately began eating as many of these as she could and showed no signs of stopping. The second time the tray had to be replaced, she assured the obviously delighted pastry chef that she was “just getting started.”

The waitress returned with tall silver pots that contained a rich black coffee. Only after this had been poured out and various condiments had been circulated along with a bowl of cream for Krosp, did Vanamonde lean back and place his fingertips together.

“I assume you’re here about the heiress,” he said to Agatha, conversationally. Agatha opened her mouth, but then merely nodded. The young man nodded back and began laboriously adding yellow crystals of sugar to his coffee with a tiny silver spoon. “She is a mystery, but her main backers appear to be a pair of gentlemen of fortune. One is a Baron Oublenmach, a disreputable character who purchased his barony with money accumulated through a long career that has included everything from confidence work to light piracy. The other is His Grace, Josef Strinbeck, a deposed Duke of Lithuania and an idiot.

“Their craft is a Flash-class ship fresh out of the Stockholm yards and paid for in cash by the way. Dutch gold, obviously laundered.

“It employs that new chameleon skin technology that wowed everyone at the St. Petersburg airshow last fall. They can make it any color they want. So—that ostentatious pink? That’s quite deliberate.

“They clearly have an agenda, but they’re rushed. Personally, I believe that they are part of some larger organization—and that they have set things in motion before everyone was ready.

“As for their cat’s-paw—the young lady, who was dressed in Vienna but educated in Paris—she has entered the castle, but is, at the moment, still held up in the Courtyard of Regret. She has been handing out gold coins, which—” he consulted a small scrap of paper before him, “—assay out as 95 percent pure.”

He stirred his coffee, tapped the spoon against the rim twice, and took a sip. “And that,” he said, carefully not looking at his grandfather, “is what I have discovered within the last hour, while never leaving this table.”

The old man rolled his eyes and grunted. Vanamonde turned a charming smile upon Agatha. “And may I have the pleasure of your acquaintance?”

Carson leaned in. “This is the Lady Agatha Heterodyne. Daughter of Master William and the Lady Lucrezia.”

Vanamonde stared and only came to his senses when he realized that his hand had slipped and was now dribbling coffee into his lap. He slammed his cup down with a clunk and a splash, which only added to his distress. “There are two of them?” he blurted out.

The old man smiled toothily and passed him a napkin.

“No,” Agatha said calmly but firmly. “There’s her, and then there is me. I am the real thing.”

Vanamonde stared at her. “But…a girl…”

Agatha looked at him steadily, but her eyes narrowed. “I promise not to get any cooties on you.”

Vanamonde reddened. “That’s not the point,” he sputtered.

At that moment one of the servers appeared, pot in hand. “Need anything, Van?”

The young man waved at the rest of the table. “More coffee! Please!”

The waitress efficiently refilled everyone’s cup and then paused when she saw that Agatha’s was untouched. “Is everything all right, Mademoiselle?”

“Oh, yes,” Agatha smiled. “It’s fine, thanks.”

After the waitress moved off, Zeetha leaned in close from within a small cloud of powdered sugar. “A problem?”

Agatha reddened slightly. “I’ve never had coffee,” she whispered. “Lilith said a young lady shouldn’t drink stimulants.”

“We’re trying not be conspicuous,” Zeetha pointed out. “Drink your coffee like a warrior.”

Agatha sighed. “Yes, Zeetha.”

She gingerly sipped the hot liquid and almost spit it out. “Ew,” she whispered. “Is it supposed to taste like this?”

Wooster looked upon her with the sympathy of a devoted tea-drinker stranded in the land of the heathen. “Cream and sugar help,” he suggested. Agatha added copious quantities of both.

Meanwhile Van and his grandfather had their heads together. “No, really,” the younger man was asking, “why are they here?”

The old man deliberately tipped some of his coffee into his saucer and added cream and sugar before sipping it delicately. Van tried to ignore this. He knew he was being baited.

The old man smacked his lips loudly. Van closed his eyes. “The girl has made a claim,” Carson stated. “If she is legitimate, she is our liege.”

Van’s eyes flicked over to Agatha as she was gamely draining her cup. “Oh, please.”

Carson shrugged. “If she isn’t, she will still be useful. Strinbeck is a buffoon but Oublenmach is more of a schemer. If he’s out in front here, it means he’s making a big play. Strinbeck means the Fifty Families are involved somehow. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were troops on the way.”

Van sat up. “Troops?”

Carson nodded. “Oh, I’m sure that they’ll be from someone or another who is ostensibly determined to be the first to recognize the new Heterodyne and will only be here to help support her during what will no doubt be a ‘rocky period of transition for the town.’” He cocked an eye at his grandson, who nodded slowly.

“Rocky for us, I imagine, if we don’t support her.”

“That’s my guess. With the Baron down, the Empire will hesitate. Thus, having our own heir will confuse things. Muddy the waters a bit. Slow things down.”

“Cold.”

Both men jumped back as Krosp’s voice emerged from under the table. “And afterwards,” the cat continued, worming his way onto the seat between them, “once the Baron’s back in control, it’d be easy enough for you to get rid of Agatha.” He rubbed his paws together. “I think I like you people.”

Van blinked. “But, your friend—”

Krosp twitched his whiskers. “No, no, it’s okay. You still think she’s a fake.” He smiled. “I know better.”

Van realized he was clutching his coffee cup defensively and set it down with a thump. “Yes, I do think she’s a fake.”

Krosp leaned in and gave Van’s cup a quick sniff. “You’ll learn.” Another sniff. “Pretty soon, too.”

Both men glanced at each other. “Oh?”

Krosp batted at the mug with his paw. “This coffee you gave her. I’m familiar with some of the alkaloids in there…strong stuff?”

The younger man looked offended. “It’s my own personal blend. Naturally, I emphasized its rejuvenating and brain-invigorating properties—”

Carson interrupted, “Once it sits for twenty-four hours, we use it to strip paint. Why?”

Krosp sat back, satisfied. Both men became aware of a faint, high-pitched vibration. They glanced around and saw Agatha, empty cup in hand, quivering. The sound came from the vibrations of the cup hitting the saucer with a sound reminiscent of a dentist’s drill.

“I think,” Krosp drawled, “that you’re about to find out that Lilith was one smart lady.”

A feeling of uneasiness spider-walked down Vanamonde’s spine. He leaned towards Agatha. “Mademoiselle? Are you—”

Suddenly Agatha was looking at him. Looking at him so intensely that he felt pinned to his seat. He didn’t see her move but suddenly her mug was on the table before him. “This stuff is kind of interesting but I don’t see what the big deal is.”

Van blinked. Agatha was talking quickly, almost too quickly to be understood.

“Well, my usual coffee engine is broken so we’re using the backup machine—” He realized he was talking to an empty seat.

“A-HA!”

Van spun about to see Agatha standing on top of the counter, gleefully examining the interior of the café’s coffee engine, parts of which were also littering the area. The mechanic Van had called in (out of desperation, since the device was almost spark-like in its complexity) looked up in annoyance at the interruption. Agatha picked up a condenser. “Yes! I see! A simple double boiler with a rather clever condenser and percolation system that recycles the steam! Ha!”

One of the waitresses, a stout woman with a no-nonsense air to her, who had been striding towards her, an iron ladle gripped in her hand, suddenly found herself nose-to-nose with Agatha, who demanded: “Do you carry any information on the coffee extraction process?”

The woman blinked. “Uh—We have a book for sale by the cashier. It’s only—”

Agatha stood by the cashier now. There was a buzz of turning pages. “Ha!” She snapped the book closed. “This is but a simple exercise in chemistry!” The terrified cashier now found herself in Agatha’s spotlight glare. “Where is some raw coffee?”

The girl froze. But Agatha had been standing still for as long as she could. “Never mind I shall find it myself!”

A tearing sound came from behind the counter. There was Agatha, her hands buried in an open sack of coffee beans. She pulled a fistful up to her nose, breathed deeply, and then frowned. “Interesting! The end product doesn’t taste anywhere near as good as the smell would lead one to expect.” She swung about and gave the stout woman a grin. “I can fix that!”

The older woman shook herself. “Now, that’s enough of that! You get out of there!”

Agatha stepped closer to her and fixed her with a stare. “I need parts!” She deftly plucked an order pad from the countertop along with a pencil and pressed it into the woman’s hands. “Write this down!”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Who—” Agatha’s smile vanished and her voice harmonics changed. “Write. This. Down!”

The woman swallowed and put pencil to paper. Agatha began to speak.

On the other side of the room, Vanamonde’s jaw dropped. “Did… did she just give a direct order to Rinja and…and not get smacked? But she couldn’t—”

Van’s babbling was cut off by his grandfather, who administered a sharp dope-slap to the back of his head. “She certainly could!” The old man sounded worried now. “Listen to her! Can’t you feel it? This girl is a Spark!”

Vanamonde went pale. He swung around to Agatha’s companions, who regarded him with a smug innocence. “You didn’t tell us she was a Spark!”

Wooster looked at him over his cup. “We told you she was a Heterodyne.”

Zeetha delicately nibbled a cream-filled éclair. “Naturally, one should assume that a Heterodyne would also be a Spark.”

Krosp licked the last drop of cream from his bowl and snagged another container. “It’s not our fault you didn’t believe us.”

Suddenly Agatha was there. “Here’s your book back.” The book appeared in Van’s hand. It was warm. “I can tell you wrote it even though you used a false name.”

“I—you can?”

“Oh yes, word choice, sentence structure—anyway, all the spelling corrections are marked in red.”

Carson snorted. A slip of paper was thrust into Van’s other hand. “And here is a list of things I require, please.”

Van looked at it blankly. “Of course, my lady.” Agatha vanished. Van shook himself. “Wait—What did I say?”

Carson’s smile soured. “What our family has been saying to Sparks for generations. We wouldn’t have survived, if we hadn’t.”

Van glanced at Agatha’s friends and dropped his voice. “But…you could say that about anyone in Mechanicsburg.”

“I am leaving!” Herr Mitrant—the mechanic who had been attempting to repair the café’s coffee engine—now stood before Van. The stout little man was furious. “I am a Master Artificer!” He pointed at Agatha, who was rooting about in the man’s toolbox. “And this girl is…she’s…she’s touching my tools!”¹⁴

“And they are superb!” You could actually hear spaces between Agatha’s words now. Herr Mitrant made a grab for the wrench she was examining. Agatha let him grab the wrench, but he suddenly felt his wrist clasped in a grip like iron. “You can tell a craftsman’s abilities by his tools, and yours speak well of you. Show me your skill!” She pointed to the defunct coffee engine. “Disassemble those boilers!”

Herr Mitrant opened his mouth, a look of offended rage on his face—

“When we rebuild them, they’ll go from cold to boil in eight seconds!”

The man paused. “Eight seconds? You can do that?”

Agatha grinned. “It’ll be fun!”

An odd look crossed the man’s face, and finally, with a jaunty “At once, Mistress!” he was off.

Carson nodded grimly. “That’s right, boy, anyone.”

Krosp opened one of the small packs that Zeetha had been carrying and began pulling out his coat. Obviously, he felt the time for subterfuge had passed. “I get it. A whole town of minions waiting for a Master.”

The old man slumped into his seat and took a pull from his mug of coffee. The look he gave it made it clear that he had hoped for something stronger. “Pretty much,” he acknowledged. “And one of our jobs is to keep outsiders from realizing that.”

Vanamonde leaned in. “Grandfather,” he said seriously, “this is getting out of hand.”

The group at the table looked up. Everyone in the café was busy now. Patrons were clearing an area—shoving aside tables and chairs. Several of the shop staff were running back and forth from the storeroom in the back, presenting Agatha with a bizarre array of items for consideration. More worrying was the procession dashing in and out of the front door, bringing back tools, equipment and… more people.

A glassblower was dragged in, protesting vehemently—until Agatha showed him some hastily scrawled plans. Minutes later, assistants were hauling in armloads of glass tubes and rods and an oxyacetylene torch sputtered to life.

With a clang, a coppersmith dropped a load of brewing kettles on the floor. Carson and Vanamonde recognized shop assistants from nearby grocers and chemists. With a smell of ozone, old Staikov, the electrician, showed up with a double bandolier-load of battery jars.

The waitresses were moving constantly, serving coffee and snacks to the various workers, and the roar of conversation was taking on the same sort of coordinated hum one occasionally hears from well-organized beehives.

At the center of it, seemingly everywhere at once, was Agatha: exhorting, explaining, diagramming, praising, and then moving on to the next group. She paused and caught the eye of one of the waitresses. “Say, could I get another cup of that coffee?”

Carson and Vanamonde screamed in unison. “NO!”

Agatha considered them briefly and then, with a nod, moved on.

Suddenly, magically, there was an empty space in the center of the shop, materials neatly radiating outwards—every section overseen by a cluster of eager helpers. Agatha stood in the center, then spun about slowly, examining where everything was. She nodded once, selected a wrench, and began to build.

Watching Sparks as they work—apparently warping the laws of physics as they go—can be difficult for most sane, sober people to watch. With a wince, Zeetha turned away with a troubled look on her face. She buttonholed the elder von Mekkhan.

“This—” She waved a hand, to take in the entranced crowd of townspeople assisting Agatha. “Tell me this isn’t some kind of…of mind control? You know, like slaver wasps?”

Carson snorted grimly. “You do the Masters a disservice. They didn’t need slapped-together filth like the wasps to inspire the townspeople. Control like this is crafted over time. You are seeing the end result of generations of effort.

“For close to a thousand years, the people of Mechanicsburg have served the House of Heterodyne, the most depraved, unstable, crazed maniacs in the world, and in return, they shaped us.

“As long as we pleased the Masters, life was good. Mechanicsburg was the Heterodyne’s home from which they would sweep out and periodically despoil half of Europa.”

The old man waved his hands as if to encompass the entire town. “I don’t know how good an eye for geography you have, my dear, but we are uniquely protected here by our mountains and our chasms. No one has ever managed to take Mechanicsburg by force, although certainly many, many powers have tried. The Masters wouldn’t allow it.”

He sighed and sat back. “And so we fed them and equipped them and made sure they had a hat on when it rained and waved them off to terrorize someplace else and grew fat and secure on the spoils they brought back. Some of us even went along for the trip.” He saw Zeetha’s face and shrugged. “You disapprove? Oh, I understand, you yourself—” he gestured towards her swords, “are obviously from some proud, warrior culture somewhere that hones its fighters and insists on things like honor and self-reliance. It’s hardly unique. But I’m curious—who carts away your night soil? Your rulers? No, I thought not.

“As for the townspeople here, we are not Sparks. No, we are the sons and daughters of those who served Sparks. The ones who were loyal. The ones who were useful. The ones who were lucky. The ones who survived. As a result, it is…easy for us to get caught up in the Masters’… enthusiasms.”

He looked at Zeetha with a touch of defiance. “I don’t expect someone who isn’t from Mechanicsburg to understand, but there is a lot of pride here. We served the Heterodynes, and we were good at it.” He looked out across the bustling room. “It’s what we did. What part of us needs to do. A lot of folks desperately want a new Heterodyne. Any new Heterodyne. Without one…” He thought about the signs of decay he had seen in the town and sighed.

Krosp looked skeptical. “But it’s been how long? Surely the younger generation won’t—”

A dead rat slapped onto the table in front of him. Startled, the cat looked up but saw no one. A small sound dragged his eyes downward. Hidden under a sinister-looking wide-brimmed hat, a cunning pair of eyes barely cleared the lip of the table. “My family,” the boy muttered out of the side of his mouth, “has been serving as grave robbers to the Masters for over a hunnert years. I heard there was a new master, so I dug up a dead rat cuz that was all I could find.”

Krosp stared the rat and tentatively batted at it with a paw.

“T’ain’t poisoned,” the boy assured him. “Trapped last night and interred this morning, so it’s fresh, and—” the boy leaned in while glancing about furtively, “there’ll be no questions asked about this one, he’s from out of town.”

Krosp picked the rat up, sniffed it, and bit off the head. “You’re hired.”

The boy squealed and dashed off, clutching what appeared to be a sandbox shovel.

“Don’t encourage them,” Carson hissed.

Krosp raised his brows. “Why not? Seems to make them happy enough.”

“For the moment, yes. Usually when some joker comes through town claiming to be the long-lost Heterodyne heir, I try to keep him quiet, get him into the Castle as soon as possible, and he gets killed. Nice and simple.

“But it’s not so tidy if the townspeople get their hands on him.”

He waved a hand at the crowd surrounding Agatha. “They look like a nice bunch of folks, don’t they? But they’re descended from a long line of brigands and cutthroats and they don’t like to be the ones played for fools.

“Trying to con these people is a very bad idea. When they break out the torches and pitchforks they know how to do it up right and, let me tell you, it’s hell to clean up afterwards.” He sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “Not to mention that it attracts the wrong sort of tourist.”

Krosp swallowed the last bit of rat and licked his chops thoughtfully. “It also attracts the attention of the Baron, it’s more work for you, and it’s bad for business.”

Carson gave a sardonic smile. “Smart cat.”

Krosp’s ears twitched and he frowned. “The mood in the room… it’s different.”

Carson sagged. “She’s a Spark. The people enjoy working with Sparks. They’ve been having fun. But by now, a lot of them will have heard that, supposedly, she’s a Heterodyne. That changes everything. Now they’re watching her. Judging her. Now she had better be the real thing.”

Agatha stepped back and examined her creation with a critical eye. It was a ramshackle construction. She saw one of the people nearby looking at it dubiously.

“Oh, this is just the support,” she explained as she rolled up her sleeves. “Now we hook everything up together.” With that she picked up a coil of copper tubing and began threading it through a small opening. As she did so, Agatha started to hum. The sound grew, filling the room and causing the townspeople around her to freeze in wonder. It was a bizarre, eerie melody that bored into the listener’s head and made it impossible to look anywhere else.

Carson looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “She…she’s heterodyning,”¹⁵ he breathed.

Krosp looked interested. “What? The music thing? She does that all the time. Is that what it’s called?”

Vanamonde stood entranced. remember this. Before the Masters disappeared…” He swung around and clutched at Carson’s sleeve. “Grandfather, maybe she really is—”

Agatha straightened up and wiped her brow. In the sudden silence she held a hand up behind her head. “Hepler wrench!”

“Yes, Mistress,” the crowd roared and easily two dozen wrenches appeared for Agatha to choose from.

Krosp grinned at Carson who had collapsed into his seat. “Convinced yet?”

“NO!” The old man shook himself and sat up. “Not until the Castle accepts her control.” He watched the room, which was full of a renewed sense of purpose. “But she’s bought herself the time to get there,” he admitted.

Krosp shrugged. “Then the sooner she gets there, the better.”

“The cat is right,” Wooster stated. “If the people on that pink airship are as organized as you believe, then they’ll have spies in town.” He gazed out at the chaos that filled the room and continued to spill out onto the street. “They’ll hear about this soon enough and then Miss Agatha will be in danger. We must move quickly.” That said, he sat down and deliberately poured himself another cup of coffee. “However, I doubt we’ll be able to get her out of here before she is done ‘fixing’ your coffee engine.”

Vanamonde looked relieved. “Thank goodness, do you know what that thing cost?”

Carson ignored him. He studied Wooster. “You’ve been around Sparks then?”

Ardsley nodded as he sipped his coffee. “Oh, yes.” He examined Agatha with an educated eye. “As long as she’s in the middle of something, I really wouldn’t recommend trying to move her.”

The old man sat down and nodded. “I agree.”

There was a sudden odd sound and one of the large copper pots shuddered and imploded down into a small chunk of metal. The crowd cheered.

“How long?” Van asked.

Carson considered this. “Something like this? I’d say a strong Heterodyne would take about two hours to truly warp the laws of nature.”

Krosp flicked an ear. “I thought you weren’t convinced.”

Agatha picked up the chunk of metal and saw Zeetha snickering. “I meant to do that,” she said, and tucked the chunk into a space that accommodated it perfectly. A row of lights lit up.

Carson shivered. “I’m getting there.”

A coded series of taps sounded on the hospital room door.

“Come in.”

Dr. Sun gingerly swung the door inwards and then stopped in surprise. Gil was busy fighting with two men who were flailing away with, as it happened, flails.

“Huh,” the old man looked interested. “You don’t really see proper flails much these days, much less trained flail-fighters.”

“I have news for you,” Gil said sardonically. “You’re not really seeing them now.” With that he elegantly disarmed both fighters while running his sword through the one on the left.

The man on the right screamed and pulled a knife.

“I can come back if you’re busy,” Sun remarked frostily, tapping his foot.

“Not particularly,” Gil said. He skewered the man’s hand. The knife flew upwards and Gil snagged it at the top of its arc. He frowned in disappointment. “Hmf. I was hoping it was one of those Sturmhalten Sewer knives.” He tossed it aside and looked at Sun. “You have news?”

Sun tipped his head back towards the hallway. “I have a soldier here with an interesting report.”

“Send him in,” Gil said, “I’ll be done in a moment.”

“Wrong,” his opponent roared. He held up a small device in his uninjured hand. “Kill me and this dead-man switch will release and blow you and your bloody Baron to bits!”

A large sea-green hand closed over the upraised fist. “Vell, ve kent haff dot.” A tall Jäger in a crisp white uniform then casually ripped the assassin’s arm off. As the man screamed and collapsed to the ground, the Jäger swiveled about and gave the startled Gilgamesh a perfect salute. “I haff not yet giffen my report,” he explained.

He looked down at the shrieking assassin and with a booted heel, gave a savage stomp, crushing his throat.

Gil swallowed. Thanks to the Baron’s efforts, much of the Jägermonsters’ casual cruelty and disregard for human life had been knocked out of them (or at least been better hidden). This fellow seemed untouched by the Baron’s behavioral modification efforts. A sudden realization hit him.

“A Jäger? Here in Mechanicsburg?”¹⁶

The creature looked down at him and sneered. “Captain Vole. Mechanicsburg Security Division. I iz not a Jäger, sir.”

Gil was used to having to humor a great many self-delusional people amongst the Empire’s command staff, but there were some things that could not remain unchallenged. “How do you figure that?”

The creature spat. “Der Jägers iz veak. Dey cannot let go of der oldt dead masters. I heff renounced der Jägertroth.”¹⁷

Gil blinked. “You can do that?”

Sun stepped in. “It wasn’t his idea.” The tall Jäger looked away as Sun continued, “They threw him out. It was an unprecedented move.”

Gil nodded slowly. “And your loyalty to the House of Heterodyne?”

Vole snapped his head back. “Pah. Non-existent, sir.”

“Fascinating. Your news?”

“Yes, sir. Dere iz now, in der town, a second gurl claiming to be a Heterodyne.”

Gil felt a tightening in his chest. “A second girl…is she also attempting to enter the castle?”

“No, sir.” Vole shrugged. “She iz in a coffee shop.”

“A coffee—what is she doing in a coffee shop?”

“Hy’m told she iz makink coffee, sir.”

A touch of annoyance crept into Gil’s voice. “Making coffee.”

Vole grinned. “Dere haff been three explosions so far, sir.”

The surety struck Gil like a bolt of his own lightning. “Agatha!” He turned to Dr. Sun. “It’s her! It’s got to be her!”

The old man frowned. “Wait. This is the genuine Heterodyne girl you said was ‘already taken care of’? But now you look pleased that she’s here.”

Gil realized that he was, in fact, grinning like an idiot, and his pulse was racing. He took a deep breath. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be pleased.”

Sun looked wary. “Oh?”

Gil continued, “Father is convinced she’s dangerous.”

Sun glanced over at Klaus’s array of medical devices and the bandaged man they served. “Well, all the evidence does suggest—”

“That is why I sent her to England.”

Dr. Sun had worked very hard over the years, perfecting a reputation for heroic unflappability. He was usually very good at it. Thus, it was a shame for Gil that he had his back to him at that moment.

“You did what?¹⁸ You sent a genuine Heterodyne heir to England?” It seemed something of a counter intuitive move.

Gil shrugged. “You remember my man, Ardsley Wooster? He was a British agent. I had to use him to get Agatha out of Sturmhalten. Allowing him to take her to England seemed like the best motivation.”

Sun stared at him. Gil began to feel somewhat anxious under that unflinching stare. He tried to explain: “I wasn’t going to let them keep her, of course. I told him that if they didn’t keep her safe for me, I’d destroy them, okay?”

Dr. Sun was one of those Sparks who liked to believe that he trod rather firmly upon the path of sanity. He did this by maintaining a rock-steady focus upon the administration of the Great Hospital and only unleashed his own considerable talents when he was devising new medicines or treatments. He tried to avoid the politics of the Empire, but even he was familiar with the tensions between the two great powers. He knew well enough how much even a casual threat by the young Wulfenbach could affect the entire continent. He took a deep breath.

Gilgamesh made a soothing motion. “But if she’s here, why then, it’s a moot point.” He smiled at his old teacher disingenuously.

Sun raised an eyebrow—then began elaborately folding back his sleeves, a sight which caused Gil to go pale. “It’s been a while since I gave you a thrashing,” the old man remarked conversationally, “but under the circumstances, I’m sure your father would approve.”

Gil desperately waved at the bodies of the assassins on the floor. “Is this the right time, Sifu?”

Sun smiled. “Do give me some credit, young Wulfenbach. Rest assured that the pain will stop the instant I am finished making sure you understand.”

“Understand what?”

Sun pursed his lips. “Ooh, this might take some time.”

Gil took a step back, wide-eyed. Fortunately for him, he was spared this particular lesson. It was interrupted before it could begin by a giant mechanical ant which came smashing through the wall. It waved its antennae and declared mechanically: “Death to the despoiler of East Kruminey!”

Sun looked startled. “East what?”

Gil flicked a finger and the tip of his cane began to glow with a bright blue light. “It’s not really important.”

“I suppose not,” Sun conceded.

The tall Jäger, who had been following the conversation with great interest, stepped forward. “Allow me—”

Gil waved him back and shot a bolt of electricity at the ant’s head. Surprisingly, it absorbed the charge and discharged it back at him from its antennae.

“Interesting,” Gil grunted. He spoke to Vole. “No, I’ll handle this. I want you to bring the Heterodyne girl here. The one in the town.”

Sun looked alarmed. “No! Wait!”

Anything else he was about to say was cut off as another bolt of lightning shot from the mechanical ant and narrowly missed him but came perilously close to the insensate Baron.

“Go!” Gil yelled as he leapt onto the device’s thorax.

Vole saluted and slipped out the door before Sun could interfere. If this girl truly was a Heterodyne, the ex-Jäger most definitely wanted to meet her.

Back in the Sausage Factory, the now finished coffee engine gave a final “blurk” and released a great gout of savory steam. Several electrical discharge points gave a last crackle as the whine of a dynamo dopplered down the scale. An orange light began to flash. Everyone in the café realized that they were holding their breath and they all released it at the same time.

Agatha picked up an ornate china cup, held it under a silver spout, and threw a switch. A stream of black liquid sensuously poured out. The aroma that spread had everyone breathing deeply. It was the aroma of fine coffee, redolent with undertones of cinnamon, chocolate, and possibly, a soupçon of diesel oil. But there was more to it than just the aroma itself. Every person who smelled it found themselves remembering a frosty morning or an inn alongside a rain-soaked road or a quiet café in that indeterminate time between night and dawn when the city was just beginning to awaken and one could imagine that you were one of the few people left on Earth. Their mouths filled with the memory of the coffee that they had sipped then and how it was the perfect thing in the perfect place at that perfect time and how it restored one’s faith in one’s own humanity and reaffirmed your place in the world and gave you the strength to go on and do something amazing. Everyone who smelled the aroma that spread from the coffee in Agatha’s hand knew—they knew—that this coffee would be even better.

“It’s ready,” Agatha said brightly.

Carson ran a connoisseur’s eye over the device that loomed over the tables. “Not bad,” he conceded.

Vanamonde raised his head from beneath the table where he’d hidden when Agatha had turned the machine on. He looked like he’d been pole-axed. “But how did she…” He fished a watch from an inner pocket and checked the time. He then held it up to his ear to be sure it was still running. “But it’s impossible!”

Krosp shrugged nonchalantly, though Van noted that the cat had been sequestered under the table right beside him. “Never seen a real Spark in action before, eh, kid?”

Agatha sniffed the cup and then faced the crowd and gave them a small salute. “Well, here’s to Science!”

Instantly Vanamonde was before her, his hand covering the top of the cup. Agatha’s lips stopped millimeters away.

“Wait,” he said, as he deftly slid the cup from her hand. “As your seneschal, I should try this first, my lady.”

He glanced over to his grandfather and muttered quietly, “If regular coffee set her off, who knows what this stuff would do?” He was astonished to see a tear appear in his grandfather’s eye.

“Whatever happens to you, m’boy, try…” the old man said in a shaky voice, “try to remember that I’m so proud of you right now…”

Van blinked and examined the no-longer-quite-so-tempting cup in his hand. For form’s sake, he gave it a delicate sniff. “Excellent aroma.” He looked up and saw that everyone was watching him closely. With a feeling of trepidation, he took a delicate sip—

Light. Pure golden light burst upon his consciousness. The light one gets from a glorious clear sunrise at ten thousand meters in the sky with the fresh wind in your face. There was music—enlightening music—that filled his frame and made him want to dance and synchronize himself to its rhythms like a glorious symphony set to the tick of a metronome in tune with all of existence that gathered you in and showed you your place in the universe and how astonishing that it existed at all and how much more wondrous it was that you were there to appreciate its existence and realize that you were a part of it and that there was work to be done to make everything better and that you had an important part to play and that this was how it should be and you knew that nothing would ever be the same again because you now knew that the world and everything in it, all its glories and foibles, its madmen and saints, its agonies and its ecstasies, were necessary and that what we called “life” was how one surfed the edge of creation and that it was a glorious game and you were as good a player as anyone else and thus this moment and everything in it was—

“Perfect,” Van whispered, tears rolling down his face. A red-gold vision resolved itself in front of him. The Heterodyne. Of course it was she. Everything he was and that his family had been for generations recognized her as the thing that had been missing from his life and in that moment of realization he became forever and irrevocably hers.

The vision looked worried and languidly waved a hand before his face. “Does it taste okay?” She bit her lip. “Are you okay?”

Vanamonde’s mind tried to pull itself together. There was so much that needed doing, of course. Lists and schedules bloomed in the organized corridors of his mind. Everything would have to be reorganized. He began assembling a list of the various lists he would have to prioritize… But wait, the Heterodyne was still looking at him. How embarrassing. She’d been waiting for over an hour for him to answer.

“It’s perfect,” he assured her.

She nodded encouragingly.

Oh, how could he explain? He had to explain. He had to do whatever he could to make her life easier and more interesting. He took another hour or so to correctly formulate his response.

“The taste is a perfect blend of all the tastes and essences that make coffee what it is. A perfect blend—And yet I can discern each and every one, perfectly.”

He realized that he was still clutching the cup and saucer. And the coffee in it was still hot! After so many hours! Astonishing!

“Even the way the liquid adheres to the inside of the cup—indicative of the way it flows along the taste buds—is aesthetically perfect. It reveals the mathematical perfection of the cup itself!”

He realized that he was declaiming now. His voice ringing out with the force of the pure truth he spoke. “The delicate smoothness of the china, with its own inherent temperature, which mitigates the otherwise extreme heat of the coffee itself—It is a thing of tactile and functioning beauty! Perfect!”

Now he was on top of a table and everyone was staring up at him. Yes! They must listen! This was cosmic truth itself! “And this! This perfect saucer!”

Carson sidled up to Agatha. “Lady?” He looked worried.

Agatha glanced back at Van as he began licking the saucer, his eyes rolling back into his head at the sensation upon his tongue. She gave a weak smile. “I can fix that,” she assured him. She looked down at the still-full cup that she had eased from Van’s hand. “Probably.”

There was a crash, and one of the light fixtures exploded. The crowd shrieked and dropped to the floor.

Vanamonde allowed himself to drift downwards, like a perfect snowflake.

In the doorway, smoking pistol in hand, stood Captain Vole, along with a squad of what even Agatha could identify as bullyboys. “Hy seek de vun who claims to be der Heterodyne,” he roared.

Agatha smiled at the sight. A Jäger! She began to step forward only to feel Carson holding her back with an iron grip. “Don’t move,” he whispered urgently. “Keep quiet!”

The tall monster soldier strode into the room. His gaze swept the huddled townsfolk on the floor, then took in the assorted mounds of tools and equipment and lingered on the tall, hissing coffee machine in the center of the room. He nodded in satisfaction.

“Hy know dot she iz here,” he stated conversationally. “Step forvard now, gurl—” Smoothly he spun the gun in his hand and placed the barrel against a waitresses’ forehead. She froze. “Or,” Vole continued, “Hy vill begin shootink dese fools.” He waved to include the rest of the crowd. “Hy giff hyu to three.” He paused, and cocked the gun, “…Two…”

“Stop!” Agatha stepped free of Carson’s hand. “I am the Heterodyne!” She marched up to the startled Jäger and poked him in the chest. “How dare you burst in like this and threaten these people! Stop this at once!”

The effect of this dressing-down upon the tall Jäger was dramatic. His face paled and his eyes widened. He took a step back and studied the girl before him while he rubbed his jaw. “Hyu… Dot voice,” he breathed. “Dot schmell… Hy ken feel it…” he patted his chest in wonder. “Here. Ken hit be true? Hyu really iz—?”

Agatha smiled up at him. “Yes,” she assured him, “I am.”

The Jäger’s eyes went cold and his gun came up. “Vell den. Dot changes efferyting!”

Without really understanding why, Agatha instinctively hurled the cup of coffee into the Jäger’s face and dodged as the gun went off centimeters from her ear.

The monster soldier shrieked in rage as he shook the coffee out of his eyes. “Dem hyu!” Again the gun came up. “Now hy vill not just keel hyu—” he screamed, “Now hy vill keel efferyvun! Hy—” Vole paused, and a thick pink tongue ran across his upper lip. He looked surprised. “Dot iz verra gud coffee.”

The large drop-steel monkey wrench Agatha swung at him caught him squarely across the back of his head. Vole blinked. “Vit a nize kick!”

A second blow drove him to the floor, unconscious. “Glad you like it,” Agatha said, panting. She looked up at the frozen seneschal. “Herr von Mekkhan,” she glanced at the rest of the crowd. “I’m putting these people in danger just by being here. It would be best if I got into the castle. Quickly.”

The unmistakable sound of weapons being cocked caused every eye to swing back towards the front door. There stood Vole’s companions. It was obvious that they had been chosen for their willingness to cause damage, as opposed to the Wulfenbach Empire’s usual high standards, but while slow, they had finally registered their leader’s trouble.

“I think you’ll come with us, Miss, you are under arrest.” He indicated the prone Jäger with the tip of his rifle. “Captain Vole seemed to have a grudge against you, but I don’t. Not yet. Our orders are just to bring you in. Whether it’s alive or dead is at our discretion. So let’s all be discreet, hey?”

This unexpected display of civility and tact was spoiled by a paving stone hitting him between the eyes. Within an instant, bricks, bottles, and other debris showered down upon the remaining two soldiers, followed by a swarm of townspeople.

“Stop!” The mob froze and stared at Agatha. “They didn’t shoot. Don’t kill them.” For a long couple of seconds nothing happened and then a tall man in a leather apron swatted a younger man on the back of his head. “Back to the shop! Get thirty meters of Number Three rope!” He glanced at Vole. “And four of Number Six chain.” The young man left at a run and the crowd laid the unconscious men out. A team began dragging the still-comatose Jäger out onto the street. Others began sweeping through the café, collecting up tools and materials.

Agatha turned to Carson. “This will only get worse. Get me to the castle. Now.”

The old man nodded. “It looks like I’d better.” He turned to one of the café’s waitresses, who was gently leading out a serene Vanamonde. “I’ll have to ask you and the rest of the girls to keep an eye on my grandson.”

The girl smiled. “Of course, sir. We’ll get him home.”

Van clapped his hands together and squealed. “Of course they will! They’re perfect!”

The old man sighed. “With any luck this will wear off soon,” he muttered.

The girl nodded. “I certainly hope so. He’s creeping me out.”

Agatha and Carson strode off. Krosp trotted alongside, while Zeetha and Wooster brought up the rear, scanning the area for trouble.

What they saw was not trouble, but evidence that trouble was on its way. Everywhere, spreading out from the now closed café behind them, shops were suddenly pulling their wares in from the street and pulling down their shutters, to the growing consternation of the tourists.

Seeing a growing crowd ahead, the old man steered them to a narrow flight of stone steps and they found themselves striding atop an ancient wall. This was obviously once part of some fortifications, but as Mechanicsburg had grown, it had been incorporated into the inner structures of the town. There were a lot fewer people here, and von Mekkhan took a deep sigh.

“Normally, I would just take you straight to the front gate,” he said thoughtfully.

Agatha peered over the wall and saw a squad of Wulfenbach troops jogging along one of the streets below. “But that’s not a good idea now.”

Carson nodded. “It’s not just Wulfenbach. The false Heterodyne’s people will be looking for you as well.”

Krosp leapt to the top of the wall and looked around with interest. “As seneschal, you must know all the doors. Even the secret ones.”

“Of course, but it won’t do to underestimate these people. If they think you’re here, I wouldn’t put it past them to have even the secret doors watched.”

Wooster frowned. “They don’t sound like they’re terribly secret,” he remarked.

Carson looked slightly embarrassed. “You can buy tourist maps that list most of them.” Under Agatha’s incredulous stare, he shrugged. “Sane people don’t try to get into the Castle.”

They turned a corner and before them loomed a gigantic tower. It stood almost ten stories tall, a squat, circular structure built of native rock, encrusted with the occasional decorative panel, rusty spike, and the ubiquitous trilobites. After the castle, it was probably the tallest structure in Mechanicsburg.

Atop this was a vivid red, pagoda-like structure from which hung an immense bronze bell, easily six meters tall. The surface of the bell, along with the huge chains that held it aloft, were covered in a thick green patina of age, except for a large bas-relief skull, which sported a large gilded trilobite set into its forehead.

“The Doom Bell,” Carson declared proudly. “Only to be rung when a new Heterodyne is born, an old Heterodyne dies, or the Heterodyne returns from abroad.”

“So I guess you’ll have to ring it for Agatha when you’re convinced she’s the real deal,” Krosp remarked.

Carson looked startled and then a growing expression of worry crossed his face. “We…we might…” he conceded. “Oh, dear.”

That sounded like a subject that should be explored at a later date. “So what do we do now?” Agatha asked.

Carson snapped out of his musing. “What we do is send you in through the front door.”

“What? But you said—”

The old man waved a hand dismissively. “The trick is to make it seem like you don’t want to go in.”

In the Great Hospital, Gilgamesh was slumped in a chair. He had a slightly sick look upon his face and he was breathing heavily. A small sound jerked his head up and an instant later he was by his father’s side.

He scanned the array of monitoring instruments and nodded in satisfaction even as the Baron’s eyes fluttered slightly and then snapped open. Gil took a deep breath, adjusted his clothing, ran a hand through his perpetually disheveled hair, and stepped into his father’s line of sight. He was surprised at how gratified he was when, at the sight of him, the Baron noticeably relaxed.

“I see you’re awake, Father.”

“…” The Baron opened his mouth but nothing came out. Gil reached over and held a cup of water to the old man’s lips. The Baron sipped and in short order emptied the cup. He slowly ran a tongue over his lips and tried again. “I must be,” he whispered. “Dreams don’t hurt this much.” He closed his eyes. “How long?”

“Two days.”

Klaus absorbed this. “Damage?” he asked.

Gil didn’t need to consult the chart for this. “Seven broken ribs. Severe fracture, right leg. Fractured clavicle. Some crush injury, but the kidneys appear unharmed. First and second degree burns on upper back and lower arms. Third degree on lower back. Four broken fingers, three broken toes. Sprained and bruised muscles throughout, major and minor lacerations, and a concussion.”

Klaus’s mouth twitched. “Hmph. I’ve had worse.” His eyes examined the room before him. “We’re in Mechanicsburg.” Gil nodded. Suddenly Klaus’s eyes sharpened and he twisted his head slightly towards his son. This caused him to grimace. “Balan’s Gap?”

Gil took a deep breath. “Contained.” Klaus opened his mouth but Gil continued. “In addition to the forces already in place, I reinforced them with the 13^th Chemical Division, the 2nd Armored Infantry Battalion, and the 117^th Interceptors. I placed the Seismic Rangers and Chained-Fire Horsemen on picket, and the Heliolux Airfleet is maintaining communications.” He finished—and waited.

Klaus paused…and closed his mouth. Gil felt the same elation he had experienced when he had passed his first doctorate exam. With great effort, he kept his face blank.

“Lucrez—”, his father rolled his eyes towards him and again licked his lips. “The Heterodyne girl. Is she here?”

Gil nodded. “I believe so, although there is also an imposter.”

Klaus wearily closed his eyes. “Nothing is ever simple where that family is concerned,” he whispered. “Where is she?”

“She has entered the castle. I believe she is part of a larger plot taking advantage of your injuries. She has minions, equipment, up to and including her own airship. This tells me she has powerful backers.”

Klaus frowned. “And she managed to coordinate all this while traveling in a circus across the Wastelands? She’s more dangerous than I’d thought!”

Gil blinked. “Oh, no. Sorry, Father, that’s the imposter. Agatha is still in town. She’s making coffee at a café.”

Klaus stared incredulously at his son and then his great head sank back onto his pillow. “Oh dear,” he muttered. “I am still dreaming. And it hurts.” He sighed. “How unfair.”

Gil rolled his eyes. “Father, about Agatha—”

A hint of the old steel entered the Baron’s voice. “She is the Other.”

Gil spread his hands. “Coffee?”

Klaus rolled his eyes. “The flesh she wears is different, but she is Lucrezia Mongfish! I talked to her! She didn’t even try to deny it! There is no mistake!” Klaus saw the emotions flickering across his son’s face and tried to reason with him. “You must understand. This girl you care for is not what she seems. She was aboard Castle Wulfenbach for what? Less than two weeks? I knew her for years. She’s a consummate actress. Ruthless, manipulative, and convinced that she is destined for greatness.” He closed his eyes, exhausted. “You must believe me,” he whispered.

Gil refilled his father’s cup and helped him to drink. As he did so, he spoke. “Father, I agree that there is a lot to consider. The preliminary reports from the teams inside Sturmhalten Castle are extremely worrying. Rest assured that I am aware that there are serious questions about her and everything that has happened since we found her.”

Klaus and cocked a shaggy eyebrow. “—But?” he whispered.

Gil cleared his throat. “The very trait that allows Sparks to apparently warp the laws of physics seems to affect probability and statistics within their vicinity as well. Every visible action will be open to misinterpretation and their motives can easily be misconstrued.”

Klaus looked startled. Gil leaned in. “Your words, Father, used to explain a rather catastrophic incident in your father’s laboratory when you were eleven, if I remember correctly.”

Klaus glared at his son. “I was lying. I knew the cat was there.”

Gil tried to look shocked.

Klaus’s eyes narrowed. “You are trying to change the subject. Even if she wasn’t the Other, this girl is a Spark and that makes her dangerous enough. You do know that every single woman I have ever known who has possessed the Spark has tried to kill me?”

Gil crossed his arms. “I think that’s just you, Father. How many women that you’ve been involved with without the Spark have tried to kill you?”

An odd look crossed Klaus’s face. “I… I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” he muttered. “This girl—”

Gil made a chopping motion with his hand. “Father, I’m not going to argue about this now. I sent the Jäger to bring her here and then I—we—will examine her. Until then, you should rest.”

Klaus’s eyes widened in surprise. “The Jäger…Vole? Captain Vole? You sent him to fetch your Heterodyne girl?” Gil nodded, and a great weariness filled Klaus’s face as he closed his eyes. “Well, that should solve everything. It’s what I would have done myself.” He took in a deep breath. “I seems I have misjudged you. Well done, son.”

A chill skittered across Gil’s heart. There was something he wasn’t getting here… He leaned in. “Is this another test?”

The Baron twitched and a small pained sound escaped from his mouth. “Please,” he whispered. “Don’t make me laugh.” He took another deep breath. “No,” he announced. “There will be no more tests, my son. The time for such things is over. Now give me your report. What has been done?”

Gil stared at his father for a second—his mind racing—then he straightened up and organized his thoughts. “Castle Wulfenbach is not yet here. I have closed the city gates and established a perimeter. I am reinforcing the garrison. I was trying to do it subtly, with troops rotated out of Balan’s Gap, which has also allowed us to secure the main road. Tourists and non-residents are being urged to leave. No one can enter except for vetted residents. The garrison here was never very large, and the false Heterodyne neutralized the Black Squad when she entered the castle. We’re…still trying to locate them.

“With the remainder, I’ve reinforced the gates and entrances we know about, but I doubt we’ve found them all. I’ve put out a call, but we have no air power here, and thus I haven’t been able to bring down the imposter’s airship. Since it has no weapons to speak of, I haven’t made it a priority. I have the remainder of the troops patrolling the streets and guarding the armory. I thought about activating the Mechanicsburg militia, but since we’re dealing with an actual Heterodyne, I thought that could be a bad idea.”

Klaus nodded at this. “Why are you still in here? Surely there are better command posts?”

“Word of your state has spread,” Gil said frankly. “I feared assassination.”

Klaus snorted. “Any attempts?”

Gil glanced to the side. “A few. Nothing worth mentioning.”

Klaus absorbed this. “The work of your imposter’s people?”

Gil shook his head. “I… don’t think so. They’ve all been very disorganized, just random enemies taking advantage of the situation. To a degree, I believe the imposter’s people are also taking advantage of circumstances but they’re much more organized. They are following a plan.” He leaned against the window and stared out at the town below. “Killing you would seem to be a necessary step, but it’s been long enough that I have to conclude that our imposter’s people haven’t tried to do it.”

Klaus frowned. “That does seem sloppy.”

Gil nodded. “And I haven’t seen sloppiness anywhere in this. No, if they want the Empire…” Suddenly Gil felt his eye drawn to the brooding pile that was Castle Heterodyne. An errant thought trickled through his mind. “If they…want the Empire…”

Klaus had long been able to recognize when the people around him were being clever. He knew when to be silent and when to prod. He waited a second and then cleared his throat.

Gil spun about. “But what if they don’t?” He stared at his father. “What if all they want—at least for now—is Mechanicsburg?”

With a bound he was at the door to the room. He pulled it open with a jerk, startling the two troopers stationed outside. “Get Captain DuPree in here,” he ordered. “Now!”

He then spun about and went to his father’s side. As he spoke, he made a last check of the medical machinery and then began to perform a similar check upon his walking stick. “I’m afraid I must go after all, Father. When the main attack comes, it will not be here.”

“Explain.”

Gil waved towards the airship that could be seen floating above the town. “These people had a false Heterodyne all prepared. She was trained. Rehearsed. They could conceivably have known about Agatha, but you being injured? They couldn’t have planned for that.” He gave his father’s hand a gentle squeeze. “We’re not even a part of this yet. This isn’t a direct attack upon the Empire, it’s an outflanking maneuver. They’re after legitimacy.”

Klaus interrupted. “Claiming to be a Heterodyne won’t get them that.”

Gil nodded. “Not directly, no, but…” He paused to organize his thoughts. “You’ve imposed order, Father, but before you did that, ours was always a minor house. Before the Empire—”

Klaus snorted. “It was all chaos. Everyone was fighting everyone else. Fools.”

“Yes, but before that? Before the Long War?”

Klaus looked startled. “Before? Why—you’d have to go back to the Storm King, but even—” A thought struck him. “Oh! The girl!”

Gil pounced. “The Heterodyne girl!”

Klaus stared at him. “Ridiculous! That’s practically a fairy tale! Who would—”

“Everyone,” Gil declared flatly. “They have a pet Heterodyne heir, and fairy tales have a great deal of power because everyone has heard them! If they do this correctly, Europa will submit to them and cheer while they do it. But in order to do it right, they need to take Mechanicsburg!”

Klaus nodded. It was obvious that this news invigorated the wounded man. The fact was that Klaus enjoyed a well thought-out bit of insurrection. It gave the troops something to do, allowed him to do a bit of fighting, and occasionally spotlighted some genuine grievances within the Empire. This one seemed to be particularly well thought out and Klaus was already eager to begin cracking it.

“The first thing I should do—”

But Gil had been ready for this and he pitilessly smacked his father sharply upon the chest, causing the Baron to gasp in shocked surprise and pain.

“You must rest! At least for now. I will deal with this.”

Klaus angrily opened his mouth. Gil raised his hand and Klaus flinched and then grudgingly nodded. “Very well.”

Gil took a relieved breath.

“But there is one last thing,” Klaus said, and seeing the look in his son’s eye, he raised his voice. “And it’s important. The Heterodyne girl. Your Agatha, not the other one. She has a companion. She is a girl with a pair of unusual swords and long green hair.”

“Green?” Gil looked intrigued.

Klaus nodded. “Bright green. Be careful. She is a formidable fighter.” Klaus hesitated, which was uncharacteristic of him. His eyes shifted sideways. “There is a very good chance that she has been sent to Europa to kill you.”

Gil blinked in surprise. “Kill me? What did I do?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Klaus roared. The force of his anger shocked Gil and even seemed to surprise the Baron himself.

Gil’s eyes narrowed. “Father, what did you do?”

For the first time, Klaus gazed directly at his son. Pride filled his face. “I kept you alive.”

Gil was nonplussed and the Baron closed his eyes and settled back into his bed. “And now, as you yourself have said, I need to rest.”

Gil stared at the supine man and then, as it would look bad if he strangled him, settled for waving his arms in the air. “Confound it, Father!” he howled.

Klaus cracked an eye open. “And you have work to do.” He closed the eye again. “I will explain anything and everything when you return.”

Possibly nothing else could have silenced Gil as effectively. “Everything? Even my…” his breath caught. “Even my mother?”

Klaus nodded wearily. “Anything you want.” He sighed, “But especially your mother.”

This was a bombshell. Gil had often asked about his mother but Klaus had always refused to answer. As he became better at reading people, Gil realized that the subject affected his father deeply and the mere mention of it would disturb the great man for days at a time. To finally have an explanation…

Gil took a deep breath. “Then rest up, father, I have many questions.”

The corner of Klaus’s mouth quirked upwards slightly. “Don’t I know it,” he whispered. Again his eye opened but this time the look he gave his son was soulful. “But for pity’s sake—DuPree?”

Bangladesh DuPree was also one of the few people who had little or no fear of the Baron. When he was healthy, Klaus found this refreshing, in a guilty pleasure sort of way. But the idea of being trapped in the same room with her, where he would be subjected to her endless, cheerful running commentary on life, the functioning of government, and how everything would look better if it was on fire, had him seriously considering ways to knock himself out.

Gil smiled. “Oh, you have my sympathy, but she’ll keep you alive.”

This was certainly true, if only because Bangladesh was a highly functional homicidal maniac who never worried about what she called “the small stuff.” It worried Gil that he had yet to fully figure out what DuPree considered to be “the Big Stuff,” This was because whenever he thought he had an idea about what it might be, DuPree set it on fire.

“But my will to live…”

“For what it’s worth, her jaw has been wired shut.”

Klaus brightened immediately. “Good heavens. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He then felt a touch of paternalistic concern. “Is her jaw really that damaged?”

Gil suddenly focused on the machines near his father’s head.

Klaus frowned. “Gilgamesh?”

The young man shrugged. “Well, I never actually said that her jaw was damaged at all.”

An odd sound brought his eyes back to his father, who was grimacing. “It really does hurt when I do that,” Klaus confessed.

Gil refrained from supplying the obvious medical response.

There was a light, rhythmic tapping on the door. After a moment, it swung open and Dr. Sun peered around the doorjamb. When no one shot at him, he stepped through, followed by a dark-skinned woman with long glossy black hair, wearing a crisp white captain’s uniform. Her eyes glared furiously at Gil over a complicated bandage and wire apparatus that covered the lower part of her face.

Gil clapped his hands and gave every indication that he was pleased to see her. “Ah, DuPree! How are you feeling?”

Beneath the bandage, it could be seen that her jaw tightened. DuPree settled for raising a finger at him.

Gil tsked. “I keep telling you, Captain, it’s ‘thumbs up.’”

Her eye twitched.

“Perfect! Now I’m leaving you here to guard my father.” Instantly her face grew serious. Gil continued, “Your orders are simple. Kill anyone who enters this room except for Dr. Sun or me.”

DuPree went still. Her pupils expanded. Gil nodded at her unasked question. “I mean anyone. Men, women, children, service animals—anyone.”

She began breathing faster and her hands darted about her person, checking the numerous weapons she had hidden about her person. “You can use any weapon you like,” Gil continued coldly. “Just keep my father from harm.”

DuPree stared at him and then suddenly wrapped her arms around him in a fierce hug. Gil endured this for several seconds and then gently pried himself free. “But,” he dropped his voice and whispered to her, “put your trash in the corner and don’t let my father see it. I don’t want him upset.”

With that he strode out.

DuPree looked after him quizzically and then shrugged. She stepped up to Klaus, who seemed to be sleeping. Turning about, she glanced into the corner of the room that was hidden from Klaus’s view. She gasped. There was a small pile of corpses spilling out of the closet.

She stared after Gil with renewed respect. Setting him on fire just might be a challenge after all.

_______________

¹⁰ His Grace, Josef Carmelita Strinbeck, was from a minor kingdom in Lithuania that had been overrun by unsettlingly large wind-up toys. You might think these circumstances would cause him to be mocked by his fellow royals, but variants of this absurd story were all-too-common amongst displaced nobility. Too many of the wrong sort of person found these events hilarious to begin with. Among the Fifty Families, to be anything other than properly sympathetic and solicitous when hearing the story of a fellow royal’s overthrow by Sparks, no matter how ludicrous it sounded, was considered extremely gauche. As for the Duke himself, he was—by all accounts—snide, supercilious, and a born martinet. It had often been said that it was only his family connections that had stood in the way of his becoming an incredibly feared headwaiter.

¹¹ Make no mistake, Dr. Sun was a Spark, specializing in the more outré branches of medicine. This was by no means the first inconvenient corpse he’d had to step around while he worked. Usually on another corpse.

¹² Tiny Monster Island is one of the more boring Mechanicsburg landmarks. Unless, of course, one is foolish—or unfortunate—enough to leave the path. Then it becomes very exciting indeed.

¹³ Ironically, we now know from Carson von Mekkhan’s journals, that if Agatha had taken the time to explain every improbable, bizarre event that had led her to Mechanicsburg, he might very well have believed her on the spot. The family history of the Heterodynes has never made for dull reading.

¹⁴ At this time, many trades still learned their skills starting at a very basic level. Most mechanics, carpenters, artificers, and other skilled tradesmen were expected to actually build, craft, and forge their own tools. A tradesman’s tools were precious things indeed. They were never lent out, their loss was a crippling blow, and their owners were usually buried with them. Now Klaus liked to move with the times, and the Empire was responsible for great strides in converting the Empire’s industrial base from hand made items to mass production, but he felt that there was a great lesson to be learned by the old traditions and thus he insisted that potential factory owners had to physically help construct their factories.

¹⁵ In a world filled with mad science, heterodyning occupies a special place. It is a peculiar vocal tick that appears to be unique to the Heterodyne family. According to its practitioners, it cancels out ambient noise, making it easier to concentrate on the task at hand. If this is true, it means that the person heterodyning is able to instantaneously analyze all incoming noise and organically generate its harmonic opposite subconsciously, without engaging the brain’s higher mental functions. As academics who have devoted their careers to trying to understand the Lady Heterodyne, we can assure you that the more you think about it, the creepier it gets.

¹⁶ When the Jägermonsters were absorbed into the Baron’s forces, one of the conditions was that they stay out of their former home, Mechanicsburg. It was thought that they retained too many memories, loyalties, and associations with the place, and if they were ever to be rehabilitated, it would be best to remove them from a place where their assorted cruelties and atrocities were enshrined on various public monuments and featured in children’s books.

¹⁷ The Jägers are remarkably close mouthed about the process that made them into Jägers, a secret of the Heterodynes that they appear ready to carry to their graves. However they talk quite freely and at great length about what it means to be a Jäger. The Jägertroth is the blood vow that one made before the Jägerification process was begun. It involves serving the Heterodyne family above all else, being willing to die for them (any number of times), and an acknowledgement that this vow is binding beyond the limits of time, space, death, and the perceived three dimensions. It is, according to all accounts, a pretty big deal.

¹⁸ At this point in history, the Empire of the Pax Transylvania controlled much of the continent of Europa. Thus, one would hardly be expected to believe that one little island nation to the west could cause any serious problems. You would be quite wrong. Due to England’s extensive trading fleet, loyal colonies, cosmopolitan citizenry, and, of course, Her Undying Majesty, Queen Albia, powerbrokers around the globe refused to call a winner in the event of a straight-up war. Diplomatic relations between the Baron and England had started out cordial enough. Indeed, the British had been instrumental in helping the nascent Empire clear out some of the more entrenched nests of Revenants, Slaver Wasps, and Pirates in Western Europa. However, as the Empire had continued to expand in power, territory, influence, and market share, relations had cooled considerably. Luckily, both Empires were governed by genuine geniuses, who knew enough to stay out of each other’s hair.