Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

by Kaja Foglio

  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. A
gatha 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.

  Carso
n 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.