by Kaja Foglio
Zeetha swallowed. “He’s bringing all that just to get at Agatha?”
Gil sat back and snorted. “No, he’s bringing a hell of a lot more than that. According to the time signatures, this was the work of ten minutes. I assure you that for the Other, he’ll bring in everything in a hundred kilometer radius, if not more.”
Now everyone stared at him. Gil shrugged. “He believes he has cause.” He leaned forward and stared back at them. “And let’s be honest here, he does have cause.”
Van’s eyes narrowed. “So you think we should just let him—”
“You still don’t understand,” Gil interrupted. “It’s not a case of you letting him do anything. If all you’ve seen are the official reports about what happened at Balan’s Gap—” Van was flustered enough that he allowed himself to look guilty, confirming another of Gil’s suspicions. “—you don’t know a tenth of what’s happening there. If Agatha doesn’t surrender herself peacefully, the Empire is going to come in and cauterize this place.” Gil sat back and took a sip of coffee. “Frankly? The best thing you can do is evacuate the town.”
Vanamonde drew himself up. “We serve the House of Heterodyne. We will not desert her.”
Gil frowned. “The Heterodynes have been gone for years. You can’t tell me…” His eye was caught by Mamma striding out onto the stage. “What’s this?”
Van fished out a large silver pocket watch and looked startled. “Is it that late already?” He stood up. “It’s time for us to take this conversation somewhere more quiet.” All around them, servers were efficiently scooping up mugs and plates, some still full, dumping them into narrow three-wheeled carts and heading for a bank of swinging doors as quickly as they could.
Mamma waved her hands. “Hokay lads, leesen op! Efferboddy knowz dot dere’s beeg tings afoots, yah? Ve gunna hav to get beck to vork.”
There was a guffaw of laughter from the room. Mamma smiled. “Bot not yet. So iz time for heveryboddy to blow off sum schteam, hey?”
Gil realized that he was sitting alone. He stood up and spotted Vanamonde, Zeetha, and Krosp quickly weaving through the crowded room towards the doors. He wasn’t sure why, but something told him to take off after them. Around him, the Jägers at the tables were still and silent, leaning forward with a palpable air of anticipation.
On stage, Mamma made a show of fishing a glittering silver whistle out from her ample décolletage. She held up a clawed finger. “Vait for de vistle, now!”
If anything, Van increased his pace through the crowd. Gil noted that he was obviously worried about something.
Gil caught up to the three. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Mamma raised the whistle to her lips and blew a single clear, pure note.
Van flinched. “It’s the evening bar fight.”
Pandemonium erupted around them. Jägers howled and leapt about, swinging, clawing, and smacking Jägers that they had been laughing with just seconds ago (although, to be fair, they were still laughing).
Gil had been caught in several bar fights around the Empire and had to admit that this had to be the jolliest he’d ever been in. A Jäger tumbled back screaming with laughter, with another Jäger latched onto his ear with his teeth. Jollity aside, it was definitely time to go.
Suddenly a furry bundle of claws enveloped his head. After a second, he realized that it was a panicked Krosp, who, as cats are wont to do in times of danger, had scaled the tallest thing in sight. “Evening bar fight!” the cat yowled. “They do this every day?”
Van ducked beneath a thrown chair. “They’re Jägers! What did you expect?” He staggered as a tankard bounced off his head. Gil caught his arm and kept him from falling to the ground. Van nodded his thanks and pushed forward. “Just be glad it’s not Thursday,” he shouted back. “That’s poetry slam night.”
The inevitable finally happened and a Jäger was thrown towards them. Gil grabbed the creature in midair, swung him about, and let him slam into another churning pile of combatants.
Van went white and clutched at his arm. “Don’t do that again! At the moment, we’re still considered noncombatants!” Suddenly he paused and glanced around. “Where is Miss Zeetha?”
All it had taken was a single misstep and Zeetha had found herself separated from the others. Initially she had been all-too-willing to leap into the fracas but had quickly discovered that she was garnering undue attention as an exciting novelty.
“Woo!” yet another admiring monster yelled at the sight of her. “Fight mit me, varrior gurl!” A boot to the face knocked him into another melee, but Zeetha found herself getting pushed backwards towards a corner, which was bad news.
Suddenly, she felt no pressure on her back.
She turned and stared. She had been pushed into a small pocket of calm. At a corner table sat a slim, rawboned man. His hair was a golden brown, twisted in the back into an airshipman’s queue and extending forward in a pair of lovingly maintained muttonchops. Incongruously, he was wearing a Wulfenbach airshipman uniform. Apparently while the fighting had raged all around him, he had, with a rather sleepy-eyed look on his face, been quietly nursing an enormous tankard of beer, smoking his pipe, and, Zeetha realized, with an uncharacteristic jolt of annoyance, gazing appreciatively at her as she fought.
“Hey!” she yelled. The man blinked, and shifted his focus up to her face. “Wake up, you fool! We’re cut off! Aren’t you paying attention?”
The fellow removed his pipe. “If you want to make any headway towards the door, you’ll need more than just your fists,” he advised her.
A large Jäger with flapping ears reached for her, and Zeetha gave him a right cross that caused him to spin twice. When he stopped, he was facing in a different direction, and with a laugh, he launched himself into another fight.
“Well I’m not going to use my swords in here,” she declared, “Agatha wouldn’t like it.”
The man nodded and took a pull from his tankard. “Of course not. No weapons. You want to keep it friendly.” He unfolded himself from his chair. “Hold on.” He then snagged the chair he’d been sitting on and threw it into the face of a Jäger who had been about to tackle Zeetha from behind.
Zeetha looked puzzled. “You just said: No weapons!”
Although his eyes remained half closed, the man looked surprised. “That wasn’t a weapon, that was a chair,” he explained.
Zeetha grinned. “Then give me a chair!”
The man smiled slightly and handed her one. “Aye, aye.”
Zeetha took the chair, and sweeping it back and forth, began clearing a path towards the kitchen doors. The man’s eyes followed her and he smiled. Then a slight frown crossed his features and he glanced longingly towards his beer. As he pondered, another Jäger flew through the air and smashed into his table, reducing the tankard to dripping shards.
With a philosophical shrug, the man put his hands in his pockets and slouched off after Zeetha, who was slowly progressing through the room. If Zeetha had watched him she would have been struck by how the man never was where you thought he was. Fists, bottles, tables, and casks flew towards him but somehow he never was there when they arrived.
When he caught up to her, he cleared his throat. “So, uh, what brings you in here?”
Zeetha’s chair disintegrated as she broke it over a stout Jäger wearing a fancy pickelhaube. “Oh, you know, I came with some guys.”
“You need to find them?”
“Yeah, I’m supposed to make sure one of them doesn’t get into trouble.”
The airshipman glanced about at the seething chaos and seemed to accept this statement at face value. He picked up a new chair. A barrel sailed past his head. “Smart guy?” he asked as he handed it to Zeetha.
Zeetha considered this. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Found ’em. Is he the one with the cat on his head?”
“Probably.” She paused. “Wait—how did you know they’re smart?”
“They’re not fighting a bar full of Jägers.
”
“Ha!” Zeetha laughed. “Good one!” Then both of them realized what he had said. “Wait a minute, what are you implying?”
The airshipman turned, and the look in Zeetha’s eyes caused him to break out in a cold sweat. A long dormant survival instinct awoke within him. He smiled disingenuously. “Miss, you look so extraordinarily dangerous that I wouldn’t think of implying anything I couldn’t directly observe.”
To her astonishment, Zeetha found herself blushing. “Do I really look dangerous?”
“Absolutely. Now let’s get you back to your friends.”
Zeetha nodded and then analyzed the entire exchange. “HEY!”
But the airshipman was wasting no time. Zeetha frowned. He wasn’t pushing or shoving, and, in fact, never seemed to actually hit anyone, but they were now moving at a respectable clip and Jägers melted away as he approached.
From near a doorway, Van detected a different pattern in the melee, and pointed. “Here she comes.”
Gil recognized the hallway as the one he’d entered by. He looked back towards the room he’d awoke in. “Wait, I need—”
From that very room, Dimo, Ognian, and Maxim emerged. “Here iz hyu zappy stick,” Dimo sang out.
Ognian carried a small sack. “Here iz de sctuff hyu had in hyu pockets!”
Maxim presented the pièce de résistance. “Und hyu hat!”
Gil stared at the hat with loathing. “I do not need—”
Krosp interrupted him in a low voice. “The hat. The special hat. The hat the Jägers made to show you how impressed they are with you. The Jägers who saved your life and are devoted to Agatha. The girl you want to impress. The girl who doesn’t trust you, but does trust the Jägers. That hat?”
Gil instantly took all the loathing that he had reserved for the hat, doubled it, and now directed it at the cat, who, disappointingly, did not burst into flames but simpered at him. “Helping,” he purred.
“…I’ll take the hat,” Gil said leadenly.
Disconcertingly, every Jäger within earshot paused in their fighting and cheered. “YAY!”
Van turned to Krosp. “An excellent call, Krosp. That was very diplomatic.”
Krosp grinned maliciously. “It makes him look like an idiot.”
Thanks to the lull in the action, Zeetha and her escort were able to push through the last few meters relatively easily.
It was obvious that the airshipman was uncomfortable. “Here are your friends. I’m off.”
For some reason, this seemed to make Zeetha even more annoyed. “So go already.”
“You! Wulfenbach airman!” Gil’s stern bark caught them both by surprise. “You’re with me.” Before the airman could say anything, he found the improbable hat thrust into his hands. “Carry this.”
The airman’s eyes narrowed. “Who…”
Gil grinned. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m Gilgamesh Wulfenbach.”
For the first time, the airman’s mask of imperturbability cracked. He turned to the others. “You’re…he’s just sending me out for a crate of balloon juice. Right?”
“I’m afraid not,” Van said.
Maxim pointed proudly. “Iz on hiz hat!”
The airman dragged his eyes downward and examined the legend on the front of the hat. When he looked up, he appeared to have aged several years. However, he snapped to a loose approximation of “attention” and gave a salute. “Airman Third Class Axel Higgs reporting for duty, sir.”
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Higgs.” Gil paused. “Higgs…Oh! You’re the one who rescued my father!”
Higgs looked surprised. “Um…could be,” he admitted warily.
Gil took his hand and shook it. “I want to thank you. There’s a promotion somewhere with your name on it.” Higgs looked uncomfortable. “Oh, well…”
Suddenly, Gil’s gaze sharpened and his hand tightened. “Wait a minute, I heard you were seriously injured.” He stared at the man for a second—
Dimo gave a roar of a laugh. “He shoo vas!” He punched Gil in the arm, “Joost like hyu vas ven ve brought hyu in here!”
Gil considered this. “Oh, yes, I suppose so. But why—?”
At that moment Mamma Gkika stepped up. Behind her, the fight continued. She tucked an errant lock of hair back behind a long elegant ear. “Iz hyu folks leafink? Vell please come again!”
She turned to Airman Higgs. “I’m glad to see hyu iz feelink better, sveethot. A gurl likes to pay her debts, yah?”
Higgs shuffled his feet. “I told you that you don’t owe me anything, Ma’am.”
Mamma tilted her head to the side. “Vell, I suppose dot’s a leedle more true now den it vas yesterday.” She turned to Gil.
“Hyu account is schtill op in de air, young man. Hyu gots a lot uf credit for slappink dose guys down mit de lightning.” She leaned in and gave him a hard look. “But if hyu cause Miz Agatha trouble, den der vill be a reckonink.”
Gil looked her in the eye. “Of course I’ll cause her trouble. But I’ll do my best to protect her.”
Mamma’s cheeks dimpled as she laughed and patted his cheek. “Oh, dis vill be so interestink,” she crooned. Then she straightened up. “Hokay, get out uv here!”
Gil turned back to Higgs. “Anyway, you’re assigned to me, now. Come along.”
Higgs sighed. “Yes, sir.”
As they moved off, Zeetha sidled up to him. “So, what did you do for the Jäger lady?”
Higgs kept his eyes straight ahead. “Nothing much. She’s makin’ more of it than she should.”
Zeetha would have continued but they came to a steep set of stairs, almost a ladder, that disappeared up into the darkness. They scrambled upwards for what Gil estimated was close to twenty meters before they came to a wooden hatch that Van opened by throwing a lever set into the wall. The hatch swung up and over on silent, well-oiled pneumatic hinges and they clambered up into—
“A wine cellar?” Gil looked around in astonishment. “How deep underground are we?”
“Deep.” Van selected a lantern from a well-supplied shelf. “And we’re still two levels down.”
Gil nodded slowly as they passed rack upon rack of bottles. He noted that it wasn’t only wine stored here. They passed alcoves neatly stuffed with what appeared to be assorted food stores. Mechanicsburg was still well prepared in case of siege.
“Is this sort of thing common around here?”
Van raised an eyebrow.
Gil waved a hand. “These extensive cellars. I mean, we’re still finding underground passages in Balan’s Gap, and I spent a lot of time in the Paris Undercity,44 but does every city have stuff like this? I grew up on an airship. We didn’t really have a basement, per se.”
The Jägers laughed. “Vell, dey’s not all as extensive as ours,” Dimo said thoughtfully.
“Or else Europa vould have collapsed after a hard rain!” Maxim chimed in.
Gil raised his lantern and looked around. “Are there monsters?” He looked back at the Jägers. “Present company excluded, of course.”
Dimo laughed again, “Ho, yaz! But dey all vork for de Heterodynes. Ain’t dot right, Franz?”
This last was asked at a shout, and Gil realized, with a start, that the giant statue they were walking beside was not a statue, but instead, a living creature. Zeetha and Krosp realized it at the same moment. Both jumped and then looked annoyed at having done so.
The monster’s great head swung slowly towards them. Its skin was cracked and pebbled and covered in a grey coating of dust. Enormous nostrils blew out a gust of air redolent with flammable hydrocarbons, and a pair of sleepy green-gold eyes opened slightly. Gil noted a tarnished brass dial set into its nose. The needle flickered at the far left, and there was a trilobite symbol set into the space between its brows. The rest of the enormous body was hidden in the shadows.
“Yeh, yeh.” The gravelly slow voice roiled over them. “Heterodynes forever. Now shottop. I’m trying to get some sleep here.”
Gil stared at the creatu
re with awe. “I didn’t think there were any dragons left,”45 he breathed.
The dragon slowly shifted his attention to him and again sighed. “Until de Heterodyne returns,” he muttered as his eyes closed, “you iz correct.”
The sound of deep breathing filled the cavern.
At the next stairway, Dimo stopped. “Dis iz as far az ve goes,” he said to Gil. “Hyu iz on hyu own now.”
Zeetha looked disappointed. “You’re not coming? Why not? We could use you.”
Dimo shrugged. “Ve iz not supposed to be in de town until de Heterodyne iz back officially. Den dey rings de Doom Bell. Until dot happens, ve gots to stay underground, vere ve’s technically not in de town.”
Zeetha looked skeptical. “But didn’t you go through the town to get here with him?” She pointed at Gil.
Dimo winced but it was too late. Ognian and Maxim’s eyes had widened and they looked at each other in obvious distress.
“She iz right!” Ognian said with a troubled voice. “Ve broke de solemn oath ven ve brought Meester Gil in through de Sneaky Gate!”
“But de regular tunnels vas too far,” Maxim said, “and he vas too injured!”
“Ve had no choice! But ve gafe our vord!”
“Now our honor is foreffer shattered!”
“Ve kin only redeem ourselves mit honorable death!”
“Yez! Svift, painful, honorable death!”
Ognian drew a wicked looking knife from inside his coat. Its blade glittered in the lantern light. “Hyu knife, brodder,” he intoned.
Maxim’s own knife appeared. A tear ran down his face. “Right here, brodder!”
Simultaneously, they reached up and placed their knives at each other’s throats. They closed their eyes—
Dimo cleared his throat. “Ve didn’t actually get caught, hyu eediots.”
The two Jägers stared at him owlishly for a moment and then with a relieved sigh, repocketed their blades.
“Scary,” Oggie muttered.
“Yeh,” Maxim agreed. “Dot vas a close vun.”
Gil and Zeetha exchanged glances.
Dimo strode over and clapped Gil on the shoulder. “Goot luck, Meester Gilgamesh! Ven hyu sees Miz Agatha, hyu takes care uf her until ve gets dere, hokay?”