Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

by Kaja Foglio

  He paused. “I gotta tell you, there was something about that girl. I’d’ve trusted her with my life. And then…then she shot her friend point-blank in the back just because he was tryin’ to warn us. She ordered the townspeople to kill us.” Scorp looked ill at the memory. “And they sure as hell tried.”

  He looked up at them now, a fighting man talking to other fighting men. “I’ve been a soldier close to thirty years. I know how to…to read people, you know? I just got the knack. And I have never been as wrong about anyone as I was about her.” His eyes met Othar’s. “I know you don’t got no reason to trust me, Herr Tryggvassen, but I was there and that’s the truth of it.”

  Othar stared at the sergeant and nodded slowly.

  Klaus blinked. There was a change in the man. The constant air of unspoken braggadocio was gone. It…he can’t always be…acting…can he? The thought was chilling. Klaus had always considered Othar a clown. If this was all just a game to him…

  “Assuming this is true,” Othar asked the Baron, “what do you want from me?”

  Inside Castle Heterodyne, Agatha, Tarvek, Moloch, and Violetta squeezed past a collapsed doorway into a large open atrium. Carved faces leered down at them as they picked their way through the rubble and dust.

  Moloch looked back the way they had come. “Wulfenbach should be inside by now. Aren’t we going to get him?”

  “No,” Agatha snapped. “I’m still mad at him.”

  Tarvek, who had been leading the way, stopped and hitched his toga up. “We should go get him.”

  Agatha bit her lip. “I really don’t want to waste any time while you try to ‘sort him out’ for me.”

  Tarvek snorted. “Is that your reason? Trust me, while I’d love to, it would be prudent to defer that particular pleasure. Practically speaking, we’re far better off if he’s here working with us.”

  Agatha regarded him skeptically.

  Tarvek continued, “Think about it. This place is broken. Its governing intelligence is fractured, and most of the sub-systems don’t recognize you as the Heterodyne. The more Sparks we have helping, the faster we can get it fixed, and that can only help our chances of survival. I don’t know much about this fellow but everything I’ve heard says that whatever else he may be, he is a powerful Spark.”

  Agatha’s mouth twitched in annoyance. “I’m not terribly happy about having you here either.”

  Tarvek looked away. “Yes, I got that.” He took a deep breath and looked back. “But I still think we should get him. You can always kill us both later if you must.”

  “No!” Agatha snapped.

  “Your pardon, Mistress,” the Castle chimed in. “But that is an accepted method of dealing with contractors.”

  “No! I want Gil out of here! Alive! Can you throw him out without hurting him?”

  “Not in my current state. He is not in an area I can see.”

  “Don’t be naïve,” Tarvek growled. “You’re obviously new at this, so let me give you some political advice. The only thing that might keep the Baron from leveling this place is the Baron’s son being in here. If you want to deal with the Baron from a position of strength, you’re going to need the legitimacy of being the Heterodyne. To get that, you need a functioning Castle. Gilgamesh Wulfenbach may be an ill-bred dog, but he can help you—if only by acting as a shield while you work!”

  Agatha shook her head. “No! I won’t use him as a hostage. This place is too dangerous. I don’t want another—I don’t want anyone dying on my behalf. Not even you.”

  Tarvek paused. “Why, that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me since I got here.”

  “Treasure it and get out!”

  “I am not leaving. I can’t leave. And, as much as it irks me, I’m betting Wulfenbach won’t just leave either.”

  “I can’t trust either one of you!” she shouted.

  “So what? You don’t have the luxury of trust. But if you’re going to get us all out of this, you…you need to use what you’ve got.” Tarvek swayed slightly.

  Agatha looked at him with a touch of concern. Despite being clad in only a sheet, Tarvek was sweating profusely. “Are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not all right. Violetta!” And with that, Tarvek folded up and collapsed to the floor. Violetta was at his side, swearing.

  “I thought he’d be good for longer than that,” she muttered.

  Tarvek looked up at them. “Have Gaston bring the coach around,” he said earnestly, “I think the eels are rising.”

  Agatha stared, “What’s wrong with him?”

  Violetta extracted a leather roll, which when opened, revealed a collection of small vials. “You were with this fool in Sturmhalten, right?”

  Agatha considered this. “…Technically…yes?”

  Violetta ignored the hesitancy. “Well, I don’t know what happened, but apparently, after you took off, your evil twin—or whatever she is—went and shot him in the back.”

  Agatha gasped. “She did? But I thought he was working with her?”

  “According to him,” she nudged Tarvek with her foot, “that was just to keep you alive.”

  Tarvek nodded. “Imagine everything is made of pigs!”

  Violetta sighed. “Then he gets captured by the Baron and he’s brought to Mechanicsburg and put in the hospital under heavy guard.” She snorted. “Not heavy enough, as it turns out. Here I go and infiltrate the hospital, knock out the guards and what do I find? He’s been poisoned.”

  “Poisoned!”

  Violetta looked troubled. “I think so. There was a dart. I…I don’t know what it was, but I could tell that it came from another Smoke Knight.”

  Agatha looked confused. “Wait a minute, I thought the Smoke Knights were his…are you saying that his own people…?”

  Violetta gave a bark of laughter. “If the Baron had made him talk, half of the Fifty Families would have had to leave Europa. Trust me, these guys take the ‘Secret’ part of Secret Society really seriously. Plus, from what little I heard, he was in trouble anyway.” She glanced at Agatha. “There’s a big plan involving a Heterodyne girl, but I’m betting you’re not the one everyone had in mind. Him throwing in with you, no matter what the circumstances, would send them into a panic.”

  Agatha frowned. “But…it was an accident.”

  Violetta shook her head. “These people don’t believe in accidents.” She patted Tarvek’s head. “And say what you will about this slug, they all know he can weave a plan that looks as natural as the sun coming up.

  “No, they know him and our family too well. Everything they touch becomes a nest of snakes eating their own tails.” Violetta was silent for a moment, obviously remembering something unpleasant. She shook herself and turned back to Tarvek. “So I had to get him out of there. I couldn’t carry him, so I had to give him a dose of Moveit Number Six.” She grinned at Agatha. “He was talking my ear off and feeling no pain all the way over here.”

  Tarvek jerked upright. “We must stop the moon from eating the mushrooms!” Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell back.

  Agatha looked around. “Castle! Is there a medical lab anywhere we can get to?”

  “The nearest medical laboratory is thirty meters behind you, down the hallway to the right.”

  Agatha blinked. “Well. That’s a stroke of luck.”

  Moloch shook his head. “Not really. This place is lousy with medical stuff.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yes,” the Castle confirmed. “When the urge took the Masters to do a little experimentation—say, upon an erstwhile ‘guest’—they didn’t like to have to drag the body very far.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  Moloch slung one of Tarvek’s arms around his shoulders. “I think it shows a bit of respect for the working man.”

  Agatha stared at him.

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “Those old Heterodynes wouldn’t have lugged their own bodies about.”

  “Not if they could help it,
” the Castle admitted.

  They entered a small, but remarkably well-equipped facility. There was a row of stone topped benches, several walls covered in storage cabinets fronted with now-cracked laboratory glass, inside of which were rows and rows of jumbled containers. In the middle of the room was a top of the line medical slab. Although it showed obvious signs of disuse, it was still better than Agatha had dared hope to find.

  “The Red Playroom,” the Castle announced. “Iago Heterodyne’s favorite.”

  Agatha shoved a small pile of rubble off of the slab and indicated that this was where Tarvek should be set down. “Twenty years worth of dust and neglect,” she muttered.

  Violetta shrugged. “Everything is still sealed up in jars and there isn’t a lot of leakage.”

  Moloch wrestled Tarvek onto the slab with a grunt. Agatha and Violetta started examining him. Moloch found a tap and with a herculean twist, got a stream of filthy water going.

  “I can’t use that,” Agatha declared.

  Moloch was wetting down some rags and wiping down a table. “The cisterns on the roof are still working. They filter and aerate the water automatically. The pipes are kind of sludgy when they start running, but give ’em a few minutes and they’ll clear out.”

  A little less than an hour later, Agatha slumped back, and found a stool positioned to catch her. Before them, Tarvek lay still, but now he looked more relaxed and was warmly swaddled in musty sheets.

  “I don’t really think we can do much more for him,” she said flatly.

  Violetta shook her head. “Yeah, I think we got him stabilized, but I won’t know what we’re dealing with until I see some more symptoms.” She looked at Agatha with respect. “He never said anything about you being a doctor.”

  Agatha shook her head wearily. “I’m not. Oh, back at Transylvania Polygnostic I attended lectures. I observed hundreds of operations and other procedures, but they never let me do anything. I never had any hands-on training.” She glanced over at Tarvek. “But even if I had, I don’t think it would be doing me any good now. I never saw anything like this. He’s still got a fever, that dart wound on his arm is draining green, and he smells terrible.”

  Violetta shrugged. “The smell’s pretty normal.”

  Agatha stripped off her gloves. “Well I guess he’s getting what he wanted after all. I’m going to find Gil.”

  Elsewhere in Castle Heterodyne, Gil stared at the barrels of the guns held in the sweating hands of the false Heterodyne’s minions. It was obvious that, after some of the things that they had seen, they would have cheerfully started shooting at anything. Gil had been briefed on the false Heterodyne’s coterie and he noted that there were now less than half of the number he had been told had entered.

  The false Heterodyne herself, resplendent in a pink work outfit, pushed to the fore and glared at him. “Gilgamesh Holzfaller! It is you!”

  Gil blinked. The incongruity of the circumstances had prevented him from recognizing her, but now he stammered: “Zola?”

  This seemed to throw the girl into a rage. She stomped towards him and began furiously punching him in the arm. “You idiot,” she screamed. “I told you! Didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you?”

  Gil frantically tried to understand what she was talking about while blocking her punches. She switched tactics and smartly kicked him in the shins. “I told you to shape up, you dope!”

  To his astonishment, Gil saw tears in Zola’s eyes. “Even back in Paris I could see that you were heading for a bad end! And now—!” She waved her arm about. “Here you are in Castle Heterodyne! Caught like a common thug!”

  “Actually,” Gil remarked, “to get in here, you have to be a pretty uncommon thug.”

  Zola punched his arm again and smiled lovingly up at him. “Well I guess I finally get to help you out for once!” The thought obviously cheered her up immensely. “And I can do it, too! Because…” she paused, “I am the Lady Heterodyne! Surprised?”

  Gil made an effort to close his mouth. “More than you can possibly imagine.”

  Zola clapped her hands. “Ha! And you thought I was just another chorus girl!”

  Gil flashed back to his days in Paris. “No,” he said, picking his words carefully. “I never thought of you as just a chorus girl.”

  Zola looked at him fondly. “Well, maybe not you. You were always so nice. But everyone else did! Little did they know that I had a secret!” She spun about in place and hugged herself in delight. “But now they’ll all see just how wrong they were! When I rule Europa I’ll—”

  Suddenly she stopped, and examined the rest of Gil’s party. “These people don’t look like prisoners.”

  Professor Tiktoffen cleared his throat. “They’re not, my lady. I’ve never seen any of them before.”

  There was a dangerous look in Zola’s eye now. “Gil? What’s going on?”

  Gil threw up his hands. “All right! All right! Zola, you’re not the only one who had a secret back in Paris.” He looked at her. “It was one that I couldn’t tell anyone! If it had come out, it would have caused a lot of trouble.”

  He looked away. “I especially didn’t want you to know. I…I didn’t want you to lose your good opinion of me. It’s just that…” Gil took a deep breath. “I’m a pirate.”

  Krosp fell over sideways. Zola pounded a fist into her other palm. “Of course!” She stared at Gil. “It was so obvious!”

  Gil frowned. “It wasn’t that obvious.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see it! All those mysterious trips! And you always had money!” A knowing look came into her eyes. “And there was that crazy pirate girl you were obviously—”

  “Yes! Yes! I should’ve just put a jolly roger on my hat!”

  Zeetha leaned in. “Say…Captain. Are you sure we should be admitting all this?” Her hand delicately closed on Gil’s shoulder and without seeming to move, delivered a painful squeeze. “And which pirate girl would this have been?”

  Gil managed to pull free without ripping his vest. “You never met her. Sky krakens got her.” He raised his voice, “But it’s all right, me hearties, we’re among friends!” Gil waved to the rest of his company. “Zola, this is my crew! We were in town fencing some machine parts when there was this huge uproar! We grabbed the chance and slipped in here when everyone was busy! I figure there’s got to be something left in here worth stealing!”

  Zola’s eyes went wide. “Looting Castle Heterodyne? Are you insane?”

  Gil looked contrite. “Well, I didn’t know it was yours.”

  Zola shook her head. “No, you idiot! This place is a deathtrap! I’m astonished you’re not dead already!”

  Gil glanced around. “But I’m not, am I? It’s obviously all hype. To keep people out.”

  Zola looked like she wanted to shake him. “I can’t believe you! This is just like that abandoned toyshop off Place Maubert!65 You just waltz into these things without thinking! You don’t even have a plan!”

  “Plans,” Gil rolled his eyes. “And I suppose you do.”

  “Of course I’ve got a plan!”

  Gil sighed. “What is it this time?”

  Zola gave him an unfamiliar look. She nodded. “I’ll admit my plans in Paris never worked out. But this one… No. I think I’ll just show you. And this time, I’ll bet you’re impressed.”

  So saying, the expanded group headed off. Zola consulted an intricate compass as well as a small, leather-bound book. She was obviously thinking. Gil knew her well enough to let her come to a boil on her own. And indeed, soon enough…

  “So, Gil, what do you think about Baron Wulfenbach?”

  This was the last subject Gil had been prepared for. “What, personally?”

  Zola snorted. “No, of course not. His Empire. The way it’s run.”

  Gil tried to consider the question as it would be viewed by someone who was not the Baron’s son. “Better than most, I suppose.”

  Zola frowned. “An odd response, considering how they treat pirat
es.”

  Gil laughed. “Zola, there isn’t a legitimate government in the Western Hemisphere that doesn’t deal harshly with pirates. It’s how they treat their own citizens that’s important. The Polar Lords tax fire. The Gilded Duke hunted peasants for sport. To go against Albia of England’s merest whim is literally unthinkable. I’ve been there, Zola. I’ve seen these things.

  “The Baron demands taxes and deals harshly with peace breakers, yes, but he’s kept the Long War at bay for years. He builds roads, schools and hospitals…” He saw the look on Zola’s face and shrugged. “I raid elsewhere, but I choose to live in the Empire.”

  Zola pursed her lips in annoyance. “I’d forgotten how conversations with you never go like they should.”

  Gil grinned. “Oh yes, all those annoying, inconvenient ‘facts.’”

  Zola spun and shook her finger in his face. “Well here’s a fact you can stick in your ear. The Baron’s Empire is going down.”

  Gil rolled his eyes. “Oooh. I’ll bet that’s the first time he’s heard that…today.” Gil glanced at Zola’s assistants. “And you’re doing this all by yourself?”

  Zola surprised him then. Instead of getting even madder, her face slid into a satisfied smile. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  “No, I’m not doing it all myself.” She paused, glanced back at the others and drew Gil closer. “How much do you trust your crew?” she asked softly.

  Gil spoke equally softly. “They give me lip, but they’re loyal.”

  Zola looked back again. “I don’t know…that green-haired girl seems…possessive.” She regarded Gil coyly. “You and she aren’t—?”

  “No!” Gil didn’t have to pretend to find the idea disturbing. “Absolutely not. I’m keeping things professional.”

  Zola smiled at him a touch wistfully and gently patted his cheek.

  “Oh Gil, you never change.” The look she gave Zeetha had a touch of sympathy to it. “And I’ll bet you’re just as clueless.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She raised her voice. “Monsieur Zero?” One of her assistants raised his head. “Please allow us a bit of discretionary space?”