by Kaja Foglio
Agatha shrugged. “Let’s get the Castle repaired and I will listen to any scheme—um—proposal that you want to submit.”
The others gasped. This was largesse on an unexpected scale.73
Agatha couldn’t put it off any longer. “All right, I’m going to let them up. Take their weapons and get ready to hold onto Pinkie.”
When the clank finally lifted its paw, Gil raised himself on one arm and looked up at Agatha, an unreadable expression on his face. Agatha’s Spark rage had passed and now she felt slightly ill. It was so hard to see him again. She reminded herself that she still hardly knew him…yet…he had cared for her and she had let him think she was dead…and now, here he was—unexpectedly close with this scheming rival…She knelt next to him and the two stared at each other, silently.
When she spoke, her voice was even and calm. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t cry and let you rescue me, but it looks like I’ve got to be the big bad Heterodyne for a while. I’ve got a lot of people counting on me, starting with someone who’s really sick. That’s why I need you to come with me now, even though I’m really mad at you.” She bit her lip. That would have to do—she didn’t have time for any more explanations right now.
Gil nodded and with a single fluid movement was on his feet offering her his hand. She looked up at him and noticed—for the first time—the ring he wore on a thin metal chain around his neck. Her ring.
The ring he had given her on Castle Wulfenbach. The ring that she had left on poor Olga’s burned corpse. He’d kept it. He…
He spoke. “All right, then we’d better get going.”
Agatha felt relief wash over her. Maybe things weren’t so hopeless after all. She took his hand and pulled herself to her feet. Her heart was pounding. She didn’t let go of his hand. Instead, she pulled him toward her and leaned in until their faces were only centimeters apart. “And later?” she told him, a hint of the Spark still in her voice, “We are going to have a long talk.”
Gil took her other hand in his. He leaned in even closer, glaring down into her eyes. “Yes,” he growled, “Yes we are.”
And then they stood there. He continued to hold her hands and gaze into her eyes. His expression softened. Agatha realized that her breathing was accelerating. “Well…um…good.” She couldn’t move. His eyes were so beautiful—deep and golden brown… “Uh… so that’s settled, then.”
“Um…yeah. That’s settled.” Gil spoke softly, pulling her toward him
Just as she was about to shut her eyes, Agatha glimpsed a sudden motion in her peripheral vision. Her mind’s rosy fog vanished in a flash and she thrust Gil away as hard as she could. They spun away in opposite directions as a burst of mechanical gunfire chewed into the wall next to where they’d been standing.
It was Professor Silas Merlot. He was looking down on them from behind the controls of a heavy walking transport which sported two arm-like guns. “Finally! It’s just too perfect! Now the both of you can die!” he cackled maniacally. Once again, a double stream of metal pounded into the wall, swinging toward Agatha.
“Everybody scatter!” Agatha screamed.
The guns stopped. Merlot deftly slapped a new ammo feed into the intake hopper. “Oh, I don’t care about the rest of them, Miss Clay! But you are going to die!”
Another spray of bullets chased her as she darted away, leaping over furniture and around debris until she slid, gasping, behind the relative safety of a thick stone wall.
Professor Diaz was already there, staring at her with wide eyes. “That was an amazing display of agility, señorita.”
“Thank you, Zeetha! Thank you, Zeetha!” Agatha panted. She looked around frantically. “Where is my stupid death ray?”
Merlot snapped another ammo belt in and then engaged the controls. The machine began to walk forward, Merlot laughing wickedly. “You can’t hide forever!” he called.
With a thump, Gilgamesh leapt onto the back of the walker—scrabbling toward its driver. “She doesn’t have to!” he shouted.
“Guh. How Romantic,” Merlot sneered. He smoothly pulled an efficient looking little zipgun from his pocket and fired a shot into Gil’s shoulder—knocking him back off the machine.
Then he spun and yanked the controls about, just in time to unload both gun barrels into the huge, clawed tiger-clank, which was leaping toward him. The bullets caught the mechanical beast at point-blank range, blew it back against the wall, and pinned it there while they ripped it apart.
At last, the guns ran dry, and the clank finally collapsed to the floor with a crash.
Gil’s groan filled the silence as he stirred on the floor. “Gil!” Agatha called—fear in her voice. “Get out of there!”
Merlot let out a giddy laugh as he reloaded. “Oh my, so many potentially interesting experiments present themselves! Is killing his only son and heir a fitting revenge upon the man who sent me here? Or is he too much of a coldhearted despot to care? We shall see!” He swung about to face Agatha. “But I do find it amusing that you care, Miss Clay. It would be fascinating to find out how much. But…it is the fascination one has when dealing with any monstrously dangerous creature. And if this place has taught me anything, it is caution—so I shall just have to satisfy myself with your immediate death!”
He slammed the controls forward, and the walker stumbled. Apparently the left leg had seized up. Merlot swore. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” He threw open a hatch cover and attacked the mechanism inside with a screwdriver and pliers.
Behind the wall, Diaz eyed Agatha. “Our Doctor Merlot is an intense and bitter little man, yes? But what is his grudge against you?”
Agatha shook her head. “I don’t know! I never knew! He was just one of my teachers at the University!”
Diaz held up a hand, his expression knowing. “Ah, say no more. I too, have had students.”
On the other side of the wall, Merlot was raging as he fussed with the machine. “It was all you! Everything that went wrong was because of you!
“Doctor Beetle’s notes were in some sort of fiendish code. The Baron assigned a team of the finest cryptographers to examine them. I never expected them to crack it—I never could!”
Agatha risked a look from behind the wall. Gil was still out in the open. She could see her weapon lying in the middle of the floor where she had left it. It was across the room but she would have to try to get to it while Merlot was working.
“But they did! They found everything! Beetle knew who you were! Knew who your construct guardians were! Knew who your real parents were! I had always wondered why he kept an incompetent fool like you around!”
Agatha motioned to Diaz to keep silent. Then she left her hiding place behind the wall and crept softly across the room. Merlot’s voice became more shrill and hysterical as continued to rant.
“It was all there—and I had never known! And I—I had expelled you! I tried to find you, but you had vanished. The Baron was going to crucify me!
“So I burned it all. Beetle’s notes, every one of his secret labs that I could find, the entire hall of records, and all the cryptographers—
“And I still wound up in here! Is that unfair or what?”74 He slammed the cover closed and the walker shuddered forward. “But now!” he shouted. “Now, I will—NO!”
Merlot had seen her. And she was still too far from the weapon. Agatha made a dash toward her death ray, but a volley of bullets smashed into the stones in front of her, and she jumped back, lost her footing, and fell, directly in the path of the walking machine.
Merlot was savoring his victory. “At last!” he cried. He swung the tips of the walker’s guns around until Agatha could look directly into their barrels.
She was gathering herself for a desperate leap between the walker’s feet when Gil slammed into the side of the machine so hard that the foot nearest him briefly left the ground.
Agatha stared up at him as he stood between her and the machine. One of his sleeves was caked in blood and raw fury was o
n his face. “You shot me!” he roared. “And it hurts!” He took hold of the walker, and, through sheer strength, lifted it a few inches off the ground before flinging it to one side.
He then staggered and clutched at his shoulder. “Oh. Oh dear.” His voice was weak. “…and that hurt, too…”
The second Gil tossed the machine aside, Agatha leapt to her feet and dived for the death ray. She spun back to Gil in time to see him sinking to his knees.
“I…I seem to have overdone it…” he whispered. His eyes were losing focus and he looked like he was about to faint.
“No!” Merlot frantically slammed at levers as he tried to right the machine. One of the gun barrels was smashed. “No! No! No! I’ll not be cheated again!” He gave a cry of triumph as the walker rolled to its feet, then swung the remaining gun back toward Gil—
But Agatha stood in his path, her death ray purring ominously. “You warped, nasty little buffoon!” Her voice had once again taken on the full tone of an angry Spark. “You’re blaming me for all that? Fool! You deserve everything you got!”
The audacity of this gave Merlot pause. Students, even Heterodynes, were not supposed to speak to their professors like that. “How dare you?”
“Idiot!” She was shouting at him now. “Do you know why you couldn’t find me? I was on Castle Wulfenbach! I was already the Baron’s prisoner, but he didn’t know who I was. If you’d told him before I escaped, you probably would have been rewarded! You killed all those people for nothing!
“So if you don’t stop this stupidity right now, I will have no qualms about putting a hole the size of the Castle in you!”
Agatha was panting with rage. She saw the truth of her words percolating through Merlot’s enraged brain. It was apparently too much for the man. His face went blank. “No,” he whispered. Then he yanked back on the controls and the cannon began to spin as he screamed inarticulate defiance. Agatha heard the Castle’s calm voice cut through the shrieks: “Oh dear.”
A block of stone easily four meters on a side slammed straight down from the ceiling. There was a flash of blue light and a contained explosion that sent a shudder through the floor.
“We can’t have that,” the Castle finished.
The prisoners gawped. “Castle?” Agatha asked in disbelief.
“Impossible!” said Tiktoffen. “This is a dead room! I know it!”
The Castle gave a ghoulish titter. “Hello, Professor. Surprised? I found a group of nice young people—not any of yours—just wandering around. They were ever so helpful, and they were able to repair several previously inaccessible areas.”
It sounded pleased with itself. Agatha felt cold. Were Zeetha and her other friends also in the Castle? They had been with Gil when she saw him outside…
“Of course, my lady, I was only able to direct their repairs because of the work that your young man had already done.”
Agatha started. “Gil!” He’d been hurt…she turned to find him, and froze in shock. Gil lay on the ground, sitting up slightly with his head pillowed on Zola’s bosom. She was kneeling behind him, holding him against her with one hand on his bare chest. With the other, she was pouring something out of a small vial onto a nasty looking bruise on his shoulder. She was admonishing him in a tone that Agatha found unnecessarily familiar. You’d think he was her pet or something…Agatha ground her teeth in fury.
“Don’t move, you fool,” Zola was saying. “You always try to move around too soon after you get hurt.” She paused as she stroked the skin next to the bruise. “Huh. It looked like he shot you point blank, but this doesn’t look that bad…”
Agatha briefly considered blowing them both to dust. Then she caught herself and slowly set down her weapon. She doesn’t own him and neither do you, she told herself silently. She hardly knew him. She had no right to be angry…it was just the Spark in her that made her think so strongly of things—and even people—as “hers.” Agatha swallowed hard, and moved to stand at Zola’s side. If she loomed again, just a bit, she thought, it was only because she was the Heterodyne…it was hardly even her fault if she was a little intimidating, really.
“How is he?” she asked Zola, coolly.
Zola looked up at her, paused, and then answered carefully. “Um… not that bad, actually. The shot must have been deflected somehow.” She dabbed tenderly at Gil’s sweating brow with a pink handkerchief. “But he’s really out of it. I think he’s in shock.”
Agatha nodded. She felt like her heart had stopped beating—like she no longer even inhabited her body. She spoke like some ancient spirit long separated from the concerns of the living. “Mmm. You seem to…care for him.”
“What? Yes, of course! He’s always been there when I needed him! He’s saved my life dozens of times!”
Agatha glowered down at Zola, who had the sense to ease Gil carefully off her lap and scoot back on her heels slightly. “And now that you know who he really is?”
Zola didn’t even hesitate. She stared at Agatha, wide-eyed and sweetly terrified, while she answered. “He…Well…I guess it makes sense that he had to hide it…”
Agatha nodded. She liked terrified. “All right then.” She spoke clearly and slowly, with a controlled tone that still marked her as every inch a Spark. She wanted to make sure Zola was paying attention. “Listen carefully. You are now mine. Your only job is taking care of Gil.”
Zola started to protest but Agatha overrode her. “I have a lot of things to do. If I have to drop everything in order to make a girly fuss over him, we could all wind up dead.
“So you make sure nothing happens to him, don’t even consider giving me any more trouble, and stay where I can see you. If you can manage that, I might be persuaded to let you both live when this is all over. Do you understand me?”
Zola only stared at her goggle-eyed and gurgled.
Agatha blinked. “What was that?”
Zola gave a loud wordless moan.
“I am doing my best to be calm, but—”
Zola’s face was turning red.
Then Agatha realized that she had her hand around Zola’s throat. She let go with a start and flushed. She wondered what she was becoming, here in this place.
Zola gasped as she drew in a huge breath of air. “Yes! I understand! I’ll do it!”
Agatha retrieved her death ray and turned back to the Castle prisoners, who had been watching with evident approval. This was already taking far too long. She needed to sort them out fast and get back to Tarvek. She pulled herself together and gave her audience a cheery smile. “Well!” she told them. “I feel better now that’s all sorted out. Back to work. Show me this ‘Castle killer’ machine.”
A dark-haired man, whose lower body had been replaced by a set of six mechanical, insect-like legs, stepped forward with a smart clack.
“Ah, ‘Fra Pelagatti’s Lion’!75 Right this way, Lady Heterodyne. I am Professor Caractacus Mezzasalma.” They approached the device, a thing of warm, shining metal adorned with blue glass globes.
“This is it,” Mezzasalma said. “Capable of generating a low-pulse ætheric ‘roar’, punctuated by short bursts of trans-dimensional dissonance harmonics.” He stepped back and watched Agatha closely.
She nodded. “Hm. All right, I’ve got it.”
Mezzasalma blinked. “You…you what?” His metal feet made a syncopated clicking sound upon the floor. “Young Wulfenbach took only thirty minutes to figure it out—but you—you’ve just glanced at it. How can you possibly—?”
Agatha raised a hand to forestall him as she selected a stout monkey wrench from a nearby bench. She raised it behind her shoulder and, with a powerful swing, shattered the largest of the blue glass spheres.
“To be fair,” she said as she turned back to the horrified man, “what I was after was a lot simpler.”
“YAY, MISTRESS!” the Castle cheered.
Agatha tossed the wrench back onto the bench. “Oh, quiet, you.” She pointed to a section of the mechanism. “But really, it did
n’t look like it would have worked anyway.”
Professor Diaz picked up a long shard of blue glass, “Oh, well, some of the parts are missing…” he admitted. Regretfully, he tossed the shard into a waste barrel. “We’ve sent some men to get them. But the theory was quite sound!”
“Ah,” the Castle interrupted. “Those parts, they were in the cistern?”
“Why, yes.” Diaz said.
“The one with the giant electrified squid clanks?”
Diaz waved a hand. “Tch. Those are deactivated.” He froze. “Oh.”
The Castle chuckled. “Oh, I do feel good today!”
Diaz glowered. “Those parts…it is good we won’t be needing them, yes?”
“Actually,” Agatha said. “I am going to want those parts.”
“What? What?!” The Castle was outraged. “Why?”
“Don’t worry. I…have my reasons. I don’t suppose any of those people they sent survived?”
“Now you’re just being unreasonable,” the Castle huffed.
Doctor Mittlemind stepped forward with an eager grin. “Oh! Do allow me to assist, Mistress.”
Agatha was surprised. “You’re volunteering to go get them?”
“But of course!” He then swept out an arm and pulled Fraulein Snaug to his side. “Even though I am incarcerated here, I still have my best minion! Fraulein Snaug, go fetch those parts!”
Snaug closed her eyes and whimpered in resignation. “Yes, Doctor.”
Agatha spoke up. “Castle, not only do I not want you to hurt her, I want you to help her get me those parts.”
“Hmf. How dull.”
“Cope.”
Snaug’s eyes shone as she gazed at Agatha. “Wow! Thank you, Mistress!”
Agatha waved a hand. “It’s nothing.”
Mittlemind gave a conspiratorial chuckle. “We are alike, you and I.”
Agatha eyed him with alarm. “Er—and how do you figure that?”
“I too tend to be overly softhearted.” He beamed.