by Kaja Foglio
Professor Mezzasalma strutted up to her side and shrugged self deprecatingly. “Well…a circuit is like an elegant lady, spot–weld her enough and—” He caught sight of the angel for the first time. “What the hell is that?”
As the machinery crackled, the angel looked up and nodded approvingly. “I will speak with your ‘Lady Heterodyne.’ Release her from this array and I will judge her worth.”
Tarvek made a placating motion. “Not yet. She’s sick. We’re treating her right now. If we decouple her before we’re finished, she will die.”
“That’s done it,” von Zinzer sang out. “The readings are flattening aaaand…There! That’s it! She’s dead as a doornail!”
He looked up to see Tarvek glaring at him. “What?”
“Ix-nay on the ead-dey!” Tarvek hissed. Of course, it was too late.
The angel turned its head towards Tarvek. “Wait. You’re telling me that this girl was the last of the family, and you fools have just killed her? Before my very eyes, no less?”
“Oooh, sorry about that…” von Zinzer whispered, his eyes widening.
Tarvek smiled desperately. “Well, only a little.” He took a deep breath. “Look, it’s very simple. Yes, she’s technically dead, but it’s a kind of rolling death thing, so she’s dead, yes, but still dying, so you can’t really say that she’s all the way dead, which is important, because—”
Von Zinzer slammed Tarvek out of the way. The girder smashed down hard enough to crack the stone floor where he’d been standing. Tarvek sighed. “Yeah, okay, I could’ve put that better.”
Mezzasalma screamed at him. “Get it away from the machines, you idiot!”
“Moloch! Don’t just stand there cringing!” Violetta added, “Get Lady Heterodyne ready for the final stage!”
Tarvek was trying to dodge the Muse’s two-pronged attack. “And you!” Violetta shouted at him, “We’re going to need you to help revive her.”
Tarvek spun, dodging a sweep of the bladed hook, which struck a blur of sparks off a pipe. “Oh, sure, no problem. I’ll be right there.”
He grabbed the angel’s weapons and held them at arm’s length as he shouted over his shoulder. “You all are aware that once the revivification process begins, someone else is going to have to do the fighting over here?”
Violetta looked at von Zinzer—
“Forget it,” von Zinzer said flatly.
Tarvek looked back at the enraged clank. “Please. Let us reason together. If you’d just let us finish undisturbed…”
The angel paused. “This miserable excuse for a cognitive engine.” Its metal fist slammed into the side of its own head. “Situational dissidence has exceeded operating parameters.” It straightened up. “Killing you will not solve anything.”
Tarvek let out a sigh of relief. “Good. Then we can—”
The angel continued. “Go to fallback interaction sequence: kill everyone anyway. Masters will sort out remains.”
Again it lashed out with its weapons, but now there was a new purpose to Tarvek’s reactions.
“I was afraid of this,” he told the clank. “It appears that your mental processes have suffered severe deterioration.” He leapt to one side and snatched up a thick pipe. “You may be one of Van Rijn’s masterpieces, and it’s a shame to damage you further, even in self-defense…”
He leapt in and delivered a brutal blow that snapped the clank’s head back and caused it to drop the hook. “But I told you. I won’t let you hurt Agatha.” Another blow and the clank went down on one knee, its internal gyroscopes screaming with effort. “If we’re both lucky, I can take you down quickly, and repair you later.”
The clank looked like it was about to topple, but instead used the momentum to snap the girder around, surprising Tarvek, who had but scant moments to dodge.
Mezzasalma stared in admiration. “He’s doing remarkably well.” He smiled nostalgically. “Nothing like a good Post-Revivification Rush.”
Violetta snorted as she quickly replaced a rack of burnt out tubes. “Otilia is the one that’s doing surprisingly well. The Muses were toys! They weren’t supposed to be heavy-duty fighting clanks. Otilia had some fancy sword flourishes that she would perform to entertain visitors, but she was built for teaching, not bludgeoning people to death!”
The Professor looked at her, impressed. “You sound like you know a lot about the Muses.”
Violetta looked at him from under lowered eyebrows. “If I had a Belgian chocolate mimmoth for every hour I’ve had to listen to Tarvek blather on about those stupid Muses, I’d weigh a thousand kilos.”92
Mezzasalma looked impressed. “Really?”
She nodded. “Oh yeah, I worked it out once.” She was roused by von Zinzer’s shout. “Agatha’s clean! Let’s go!”
Violetta slammed the lid down on the console and saw that all of the lights were green. She called out, “Tarvek! Hurry up! I’m hitting the switch in three…”
Tarvek stared up at the mechanical angel and desperately held up a hand. “Please! Stop! You have to listen to me! You’re a Muse! I—”
“…Two…
The clank threw its head back and laughed at him. “Stupid little king,” it hissed. “I am not one of your pretty Muses.” It drew itself up.
“…One…”
“Even trapped in this miserable shell, I am Castle Heterodyne!”
Mezzasalma paused in shock. His face went pale. “The Castle?” he breathed. Then he jerked back to action. “Hit the switch! Hit it now!”
Violetta hesitated. “But she…it…when he stops fighting, it’ll kill him…”
Mezzasalma’s fist crashed down upon the switch. “Without the Lady beside us, it will kill us all!”
A fresh surge of power ripped through Tarvek and Gil. Tarvek froze in agony and the clank nodded and raised its girder triumphantly.
“And now, little king rat, you are—”
A wild battle cry split the air. “You are SUUUPER LUCKY!” Zeetha shouted cheerfully as she slammed her foot into the back of the angel’s head, sending it crashing to the floor.
Professor Mezzasalma looked like an irate opera patron who had lost his program. “And who the devil is this?”
“Who cares?” Violetta answered as she got to work. “She’s bought us time! Get to your places!”
Von Zinzer paused, and yelled over to Zeetha, “Hey, you! The clank says it’s the Castle! Give it a kick for me!” He then turned back to Gil’s console and involuntarily sucked in his breath in dismay. “Wulfenbach’s readings aren’t looking too good!”
Mezzasalma smoothly swapped out a series of fuses in-between power sequences. “That would be because he was tapped to help revive Sturmvarous and has not yet had a chance to regenerate his élan vital.93 As long as the red meter stays above thirty-three, he should be fine.”
Von Zinzer observed the needle bouncing erratically between thirty-four and thirty-two and rolled his eyes.
“Probably,” amended Mezzasalma.
Violetta began to look worried. “I need someone to monitor Lady Heterodyne!”
“I can do it.”
Violetta spun in surprise and saw a handsome, dark young man with a pince-nez peering over her shoulder with interest. He introduced himself with a grin. “Theopholous DuMedd. What are we doing?”
Mezzasalma swung over, enmeshed in a web of spitting electrical cables. “Modified Si Vales Valeo rolling resurrection chain between the three of them!” he shouted.
Theo stared at him in shock. “But that…that’s…” He grinned again, a mad fire lighting his eyes. “That’s amazing!”
Violetta rolled her eyes and then flinched as a board spat sparks and a dial-face exploded in a small ball of flame.
Theo flinched. “Sleipnir! We’ve got a fire—I need you!”
“You’d better believe it!” A red-haired girl with goggles sprayed the burning console with a quick blast of carbon dioxide. “I’m on it. Looks like an overloaded junction router.” She glanced
at Violetta. “Do you have any butter?”
Violetta looked at the girl blankly. Sleipnir raised a hand reassuringly. “Never mind, brought my own!”
Violetta nodded uncertainly. “Well, then I guess everything is going to be fine then.” She turned around and found herself face to face with a large white cat wearing a gaudy red coat.
“You’re new to all this, aren’t you,” Krosp asked sympathetically.
“WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?” Violetta screamed.
With a shriek of triumph, Lucrezia pulled herself free from her chair. “Oooh, Yes! Look out world!”
“She’s loose!” Violetta blanched. “But how? I strapped her down with—”
Theo gave a laugh and waved a hand self-deprecatingly. “Oh, I got those. After all, we’re going to need Agatha to—”
“THAT’S NOT AGATHA!”
Theo felt a fist close on his shirt and haul him up and forward. He stared down into Lucrezia’s triumphant visage. “She’s not?”
Lucrezia examined him with appreciation. “Ooooh, aren’t you a cutie,” she crooned. “Hello.”
At the sound of Lucrezia’s voice, Zeetha spun around, turning her back on the clank. “You took her locket off? Coming!” she called, dashing past Airman Higgs. “Deal with the clank!” she told him.
Higgs watched her go and then turned to look at the clank, which was climbing to its feet. He sighed and released a small puff of smoke from his pipe.
The clank saw him and pointed at him with a shaky hand. “You-You-You—” It stuttered as it lurched toward him. “You are all intruders and I-I will squash you into j-jelly!”
Higgs took his pipe from his mouth, absently crushed out the coal with a callused thumb, and slipped it into his pocket while giving the towering clank a sympathetic look. He spoke. “Hey.”
The clank paused in surprise. He continued, “I don’t want to fight you.”
The clank clashed its jaws in fury. “That’s too-too ba-ad!” It raised the girder high and swept it down faster than the eye could follow, shattering the stone floor.
The clank refocused its eyes with a click. The man had been standing right—
From the side, Higgs gave the clank’s elbow a knowledgeable prod. “Tsk. Look here. These joints are out of alignment.”
Gyroscopes squealed as Otilia spun in place, the girder sliced through the air—“DIE!” Otilia screamed—But Higgs was gone.
A fingernail tapped against Otilia’s spinal array. “Huh. Looks like all these load-bearing structures are out of kilter…”
This time the clank moved so fast that it actually connected. The fist holding the girder slammed into the airman’s face, sending him into the nearest wall so hard that it left cracks.
The angel shuddered in pleasure and turned, joints faintly smoking, towards the others. “And now-now-now I’ll kill the-the rest of you—”
“Huh,” a mildly surprised voice came from behind the angel. “But those galvanic relays are still working.” The angel spun back in surprise as Higgs pulled himself from the slight dent in the wall. He brushed his sleeves off thoughtfully. “That’s good,” he said to the clank sincerely. “Be a shame if you got too messed up.”
Lucrezia was gaily laughing as she waved Theo about at arm’s length. “You thought you were aiding my daughter, eh?” She gave him a playful shake. “How very droll!” The laughter cut off as if by a switch. “But now…”
“Wait!” Theo gasped. “You’re…you’re Aunt Lucrezia?”
Lucrezia almost fell over in surprise. “Pardon?”
Theo feebly waved his hands about. “I’m Theopholous DuMedd! Your nephew! Your sister, Serpentina Mongfish? She was my mother!”
Theo’s feet touched the ground. “Little Theo?” She stared up at him and shook her head admiringly. “Oh, how you’ve grown! I haven’t seen you since…”
“You came to my christening!”
Lucrezia gave a fond smile and put a hand to her cheek. “Why… So I did!”
Theo nodded. “And you brought me a clockwork snake!”
Lucrezia went misty-eyed. “Mr. Hissyfit! He used to be mine, you know,” she confided.
“Yes! He tried to eat my father and knocked the bishop into the punchbowl!”
Lucrezia smiled nostalgically and gently took Theo’s face in her hands. “Oh, let me look at you! My, yes! You do take after your father.”
Theo smiled. “Really?”
Her hand clamped around his throat. “Oh, yesss. You know, when we first met, he blew up my favorite lair, and then he had the temerity to leave me behind while he escaped with my sister, dear little goody-goody Serpentina.” Her fist tightened.
“Really,” Theo choked out.
Lucrezia’s eyes narrowed. “And I never liked her much, either.”
Stars slowly swam before Theo’s eyes. “Really?”
Lucrezia’s fist tightened again. “Really.”
The angel clank stared at Higgs, then glanced again at the damaged wall. “You-non-possible-you…” it said haltingly. It focused again on Higgs and new lights came on behind its eyes. “Accessing non-essential core memories…”
A set of lights flashed green. Higgs held up a hand. “Wait…”
Tarvek shivered back to consciousness and rose on one elbow. “What’s happening?” he mumbled.
The clank straightened and stared at Airman Higgs. “I know you,” it whispered. Tarvek coughed, and the clank pointed to him. “You must help me. By the terms of—”
In a single smooth motion, Higgs stooped and grabbed a large hammer off the floor. With a sideways blow, he hit the clank so hard that its top half tore free and smashed into a wall several meters away.
He then dropped the hammer and turned to Tarvek, who was staring at him in terror. “You…” His eyes clicked to the angel’s twitching legs. “How…” He then looked up into the airman’s bland, indifferent face. “Don’t…”
Higgs’s hand moved. Tarvek flinched—and then saw that the man was simply reaching into his coat pocket to pull out his pipe. Higgs continued to silently regard Tarvek as he slipped it into the corner of his mouth. He then pulled it out and pointed at the broken clank with the stem while his eyes never left Tarvek. “More messed up than I thought,” he sighed. “All this fighting must’ve been too much for it.” He put the pipe back into his mouth. “Not really made for fightin’, you know?”
The two men stared at each other for a timeless moment. Then Higgs squatted down until his face was a few centimeters from Tarvek’s own. “Don’t you agree?” He paused. “Sir?”
Tarvek stared up into Higgs’s eyes, and without the man shifting, or even changing expression, Tarvek was suddenly all too aware of the rock by his side, the one that could have fallen and smashed his head; The live wire sparking a meter away, the one that could easily have touched his foot; The great fists of the Muse, still twitching faintly, that could have, all too plausibly, crushed his throat just before it fell apart…
“Goodness, yes,” Tarvek said reasonably. “Why, it’s a miracle that it was still functioning at all!”
Higgs nodded once, almost imperceptibly, as his eyebrows rose with interest. “Is that so? Guess we got lucky.” He straightened and offered Tarvek a friendly hand up. “I’ll tell ’em you said that, sir.”
Meanwhile, Zeetha bounded towards Lucrezia. “Okay, spooky girl,” she sang out. “Time to go back to sleep!”
Effortlessly, using Theo as a blunt object, Lucrezia swatted Zeetha backward into Violetta’s arms.
“Ah…I meant you, not me…” Zeetha mumbled. Then she rallied. “She seems healthy, anyway. That’s good. I guess. Ouch.”
Violetta nodded glumly. “She’s riding the Post Revivification Rush. She’ll be faster, tougher, and stronger for a while. Also meaner.” She peered at Zeetha. “You—I saw you in a circus once, right?”
Zeetha blinked. “Uh…probably…”
Violetta firmly pushed her aside. “Okay, you listen up. This thing inside the Lad
y Heterodyne is a killer. Stage clowning will only get you killed, so you just stay back here out of the way while we sort her out.”
Zeetha’s blinked. Then her eyes narrowed. “Oh, I’ve got news for you. That harpy inside Agatha? She’s only the second most dangerous thing in the room.”94
Violetta nodded. “Well of course. There’s all this half-baked madboy stuff lying around.”
“I am Zeetha! Daughter of Chump! Royal princess guardian of Skifander!”
Violetta rolled her eyes. “Oh jeez—seriously?”
“Silence!” Lucrezia shouted. “I am leaving! If you want this fool to live, you will not impede me!”
“No,” Theo protested. “You can’t!”
“Oh don’t worry,” Lucrezia assured him. “Killing you will be simplicity itself.”
“Um…That’s not actually what I meant…”
Lucrezia shook her head affectionately. “Silly boy.”
“You’re not killing anybody,” Violetta announced. “Because I won’t let you.”
Lucrezia looked at her with contempt. “Oh, just look at you. You’re one of the Order’s Smoke Knights. With your pathetic attempts at misdirection and your silly sleight of hand. But I am Lucrezia Mongfish, and whether you acknowledge it or not, your order serves me.”
Violetta crossed her arms. “Oh this is sweet. Okay, two things: First, like I told you, I no longer serve the Order. And second, I specialize in misdirection and sleight of hand.” She grinned.
Lucrezia stared at her. “…And that’s supposed to impress me how?”
Everyone was staring at her now, and Lucrezia suddenly realized that she was clutching, not Theo, but a Theo-sized bundle of cloth tied up with twine. She screamed and flung it aside.
Theo looked at Violetta with new respect. “Wow!”
Zeetha closed her mouth and tried to look unimpressed. “Not bad,” she allowed.
Violetta made an elegant “after you” bow. “Your turn, ‘princess.’”
Zeetha snorted and strode forward. Lucrezia looked wary. She backed away, shrugging off the harness that bound her to the array. “I know better than to fight you, Skifandrian!”