by Kaja Foglio
Instantly, Zola stopped talking. She took a deep breath. “Thank goodness.”
With a start of surprise, Gil resurfaced from the pit of abstract mathematical conundrums into which he had long ago retreated. “Safe? Safe from what? The fashion police?”
Tiktoffen chuckled. “The Castle. We’re in a dead zone now. Before, there was a distinct possibility that it could hear every word we said.”
A prickle of uneasiness flowed through Gil’s mind. He turned to Zola. “You mean—all that party stuff…”
Zola gave him a patient look. “I want the Castle to underestimate me. Surely you didn’t as well?”
Gil kept his mouth shut and looked guilty.
This delighted Zola, who patted Gil’s cheek. “So here’s what’s going on. For a long time my associates have been trying to figure out how to get control of Castle Heterodyne.”
“Wait,” Gil interrupted. “Who are these associates?”
“Oh, the Storm King’s Loyal Order of the Knights of Jove.”
Gil snorted. “Right. And England’s Knights of the Round Table are right behind them, I’ll bet.”
Zola laughed. “You can’t imagine! They are so old-fashioned! But they’re deadly serious!”
“And you’re telling me that the Knights of Jove have stuck around all this time.”
“Oh yes! They’re a secret society, you know. It’s very exciting. They’ve been seeking out and keeping track of the royal lineage, but the time was never right.”
“Uh-huh. Let me guess. A long line of sots, imbeciles, and—God forbid—females, right?”
Zola laughed again. “As well as at least one reported werewolf.”68
“Well that’s the problem with monarchies, isn’t it? They just never can make ’em like they used to.”
Zola shrugged. “Yes, well, that was before the Mongfish family took a hand in things.”69
Gil was surprised. “Mongfish—like the last Heterodyne’s wife?”70
“Of course. The qualities of candidates aside, for a long time the order itself had…stagnated. It became an excuse for the old boys to get together, drink brandy, and go on about ‘the good old days of yore.’ Completely fossilized. No fire at all.”
Gil bit his lip. Now that he thought about it, he had seen the Knights of Jove on a list of assorted drinking clubs and fringe cabals that the Empire knew existed. Obviously, this list was in desperate need of a reevaluation. “And the Mongfish family?”
“They got the Order whipped into shape, and then, well, they are very gifted, especially when it comes to the biological disciplines.”
Gil nodded. “So I’ve heard.”71
“Well, they just made sure that there was an appropriate heir.”
Gil made a face. Zola shrugged. “Oh, nothing too unnatural, they just insisted on things like arranging marriages that produced family trees with actual branches.”
Gil nodded. Royalty did tend to have its little traditions.
Zola continued. “Anyway, these days the High Council has Sparks working for the Order on all kinds of things—and one of the biggest is this place.” She waved a hand indicating the Castle. “If I’m going to be acknowledged as the Heterodyne, I’ve got to hold the Castle. But it’s broken and insane. It won’t listen to anybody. We’ve had brilliant people working on it for ages, trying to find a way to control it, but nothing has worked.”
She turned and faced Gil. “Well recently, they made this huge breakthrough. The Castle isn’t just one entity.”
“What?” The look on Gil’s face satisfied her. “Yes, I thought a clever boy like you would find that interesting. As best they can determine, it’s split into something like twelve different minds, each of which controls a small section, thinks that it alone is the ‘real’ Castle-mind, and they are all working against each other at cross-purposes.”
“Fascinating,” Gil breathed. His brain was working furiously.
“Isn’t it?” Tiktoffen chimed in. “This is a priceless opportunity!”
“I’m sure,” Zola said dismissively. “But now we’re out of time. I have to take over as Heterodyne quickly. We no longer have the luxury of trying to control the Castle, but we have found a way to kill it.”
“That is a mistake!” Professor Tiktoffen burst out. “We need more time, yes, but we have made progress! With this information we could—”
Zola cut him off. “Yes, yes, I know. I’ve read your reports. ‘A priceless antiquarian thinking engine that could teach us about the very nature of consciousness and rational thought—blah blah blah.’”
“But it is,” Tiktoffen screamed in frustration.
Zola turned and regarded him fondly. “You Sparks are all alike. I promise you, Professor, when this is all over, you can take whatever parts you want and build yourself a chatty little gazebo somewhere.” The smile left her face and her voice hardened. “But today, Castle Heterodyne dies.”
Gil raised his eyebrows. “And you’re going to do this, how?”
Tiktoffen sighed and led them through a thick wooden door. They stepped into a large room filled with people and the sound of activity. The largest group was gathered around a brass pedestal set with blue glass spheres. It was slightly taller than the men who stood beside it and surrounded by a nest of cables and tools. All of the people in the room paused to stare at the newcomers as they entered. With a shiver, Gil realized that several of the more exceptional Sparks that his father had sentenced to service in the Castle were gathered in this room.
Zola indicated the device. “How will I kill the Castle? Simple. With this.”
Gil examined the device and felt another jolt of unwelcome surprise. Many of these parts would have required sophisticated manufacturing processes. He turned to Professor Tiktoffen. “Surely some of these components weren’t manufactured in the Castle. How did you get them in without anyone noticing?”
The professor shrugged nonchalantly but it was obvious that he appreciated the chance to brag a bit. “Patience, mostly. Now, some parts were here already—the old Heterodynes kept all sorts of useful machines—but it was easy enough to slip a little something extra in occasionally with the supply shipments. It wasn’t particularly difficult, since the Baron allows almost everything we ask for anyway.”
Zola now addressed a tall, intense man. “What is our status, Professor Diaz?”
The man scowled. “It is not yet ready, Señorita.”
“That is not what I wanted to hear.”
The professor made an exaggerated expression of dismay with his hands. “¿No? My heart, it weeps.”
Zola narrowed her eyes and her voice grew cold. “It might. What is the problem?”
Diaz snapped his fingers and a minion dragged another prisoner out from a side room. Despite the fact that he had obviously been worked over by someone who knew what they were doing, the man in manacles wore an arrogant smile. A long scar marred his face. “This cucaracha,” Diaz snarled, “has been intercepting the shipments. Not all of them, but he has managed to collect several of the parts that we need.”
The man’s grin widened. “That’s right, girlie. And that means that you gotta deal with me to get them!”
Zola’s expression was cold. “I see.” Smoothly, she took out her little pistol and fired a round through the man’s kneecap.
He screamed and dropped to the ground. Zola strode over to him and kicked his hands away from where they clutched at the wound. She placed her foot squarely on the shattered knee, leaned in, and tapped the barrel against the man’s head. “The question is, just how much of you will I have to deal with before I hear what I like?” She ground her foot down.
“In the cistern,” the man shrieked. “There’s an oilskin bag in the cistern!”
Zola straightened up and waved her hand. The man was dragged off, whimpering.
As Zola holstered her gun, she caught the look on Gil’s face. She looked grim. “My patience only stretches so far,” she said.
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57 After the Incredibly Brief Rebellion (two minutes, thirty-six seconds), Queeg Heterodyne had faced a bit of a problem. Family tradition dictated that the people of Mechanicsburg were not to be indiscriminately slain—but a rebellion had to be punished. His decree, although directly harming none, would ensure that the townspeople suffered torture and misery for generations.
58 Stutter-Step, despite its obvious roots in Jewish Klezmer and African tribal rhythms, was, in fact, invented by a musically gifted construct named Two-Point-Five-Footed Fritz. Who was the house pianist in a Mechanicsburg brothel. Sadly, there are no known portraits of Fritz and thus the origin of his unusual name remains a source of pointless speculation.
59 Double-Fortified Lingonberry Snap was possibly the most potent alcoholic beverage in Europa at this time. It was crafted by a complicated process that involved distillation, freezing, the application of mildly hallucinogenic fungi, and aging in specially seasoned stone crocks (which significantly cut down on the batches lost due to spontaneous combustion). Astonishingly, it was invented not by a Spark, but by a little old man in Switzerland who drank an Imperial Liter of the stuff every day, lived to one hundred and thirty-three, and whose funeral pyre burned uncontrollably for three days.
60 People who refused to listen to technical experts didn’t last long in the armies of the Empire.
61 At this time, Imobilex jugs were state of the art portable containment units used to transport dangerous materials such as unstable chemicals or potential explosives.
62 Empire records for the year in question do not show the Vespiary Squad active in Belgrade, but one of the sergeant’s grandchildren does live there, so the chance that the sergeant was visiting during the incident of the Three Sewer Golems, which was highly publicized at the time, while coincidental, is not at all unlikely.
63 When the Wulfenbach Empire had to take down a rebellious Spark, the official policy was to welcome the defeated Spark’s constructs and experimental subjects into the forces of the Empire. Most of them leapt at the chance to be part of a large organization that actually saw to their well-being. Plus, it offered them a chance to punch Sparks, and get paid for it.
64 Othar Tryggvassen has put forth the revolutionary hypothesis that Sparks are responsible for most of the war, death, and assorted chaos in the world, and wishes to test this by eliminating all Sparks and seeing if the world actually improves. The only awkward part of this is that Othar is a rather strong Spark in his own right, but he has promised that when he has eliminated all of the other Sparks from the world, he will also kill himself. Ironically, many Sparks are conflicted about this, as his hypothesis is compelling, his methodology seems sound, and many argue that it would be a valid experiment.
65 Deep within the Paris Department of Justice, there is a vault full of locked files under the personal seal of the Master of Paris. One of them is labeled “The Maubert Wind-Up Assassin Affair.” It occupies a rather full shelf dedicated to the after-school activities of one G. Holzfaller.
66 At an impressionable age, young Andronicus read a number of scholarly works that talked about a king being a fertility symbol. He thought this was a mighty fine idea.
67 There was an appreciable gap between what fragile, organic humans and cold, crystal intelligences found “funny.” This problem resulted in a great deal of death and destruction until the Spark Simon van Stampfer created the Stroboscope and produced the first electromagnetic kinetic-projection of a cat attempting to catch its own tail. Once a baseline for humor appreciation was established, human/machine relations improved greatly.
68 It happens in even the best families.
69 The Mongfish family, rich in Sparks and steeped in evil as a means to an end, have woven their schemes behind the scenes throughout Europa’s history.
70 Certainly the capper to the Heterodyne’s meddling in the affairs of the House of Mongfish had to be Bill Heterodyne’s wooing and marrying Lucifer Mongfish’s favorite daughter, Lucrezia. At the very least, the holidays were an awkward time for all concerned.
71 Zola is understating things. Cain Mongfish’s masterpiece, A Reasoned Diatribe Regarding thee Methods and Required Madnesses Towards the Manipulation of ye Stuffe of Life and thee Entertaining Consequences Thereof and How Best to Avoid Them is regarded as the seminal work that gathered and codified all of the then-known processes for reanimating, bending, warping, and subjugating life as we know it. Cain died while researching a sequel, which according to his notes was to be entitled How to Promote and Manipulate thee Natural Fealty and Gratitude That Thine Creation Will Express Towards Thou, Their Creator. For some reason, that never works.
CHAPTER 8
After Faustus Heterodyne finished his Great Work, the waters of the river Dyne ran clean—at least beyond Mechanicsburg’s famous “mouth of the Dyne” sculpture through which it leaves Castle Heterodyne and falls to the base of the pinnacle from which it springs. Previously, the waters had been possessed of unusual and generally poisonous properties and had wound through the landscape, killing or mutating man and beast alike.
Once the waters of the Dyne were cleansed and the Castle and its defenses improved, the Heterodyne began the task of fully establishing his town.
Faustus liked the idea of ruling his own city, but—aside from his own band of reavers, the occasional oppressed servant, and the extremely odd camp followers that favored his men—the area was sorely lacking in people. The Heterodyne was forced to create a thriving population from next to nothing. He threw himself into the challenge with a will.
From that point on, across Europa and Asia, indeed, wherever he raided, Faustus was seen consulting what his men jovially called “The Master’s Shopping List.” But it was not a list of stores, treasure, or materials—it was a list of people.
Like a hausfrau at market, the Master of Castle Heterodyne browsed the World and carefully selected farmers, carpenters, engineers, stonemasons, and a half a hundred other professions, all lured or looted to populate the town that was to become Mechanicsburg.
As a result, while there are many other adjectives that can be used to describe the Heterodyne’s creation, the first and foremost one must be cosmopolitan.
—Mechanicsburg: Economic Principles of a Town That Should Not Work by Professor Isaac Horowitz/ Transylvania Polygnostic University Press
Agatha had set out by herself, following the Castle’s directions, and she now found herself toiling up a tilted floor. There were cracks throughout the stonework. She climbed upward gingerly as the cracks became wider. The Castle had assured her that this broken hallway was the quickest, safest way to Gil—but it had been quiet for a while, now. She wondered just how much perverse amusement it was getting from watching her clamber around, puffing with effort. She briefly considered turning back and demanding another, easier route. Then she realized that it could probably always find someplace worse—and more entertaining—to send her.
As she pulled herself to the top of the incline, she realized that she was now standing upon a giant saw-toothed gear. Faintly gleaming in the darkness around her, she saw several more, equally large. Agatha marveled at the sight. She again moved forward, but carefully. She didn’t want to damage anything else.
The Castle broke in on her thoughts with a wracking, metallic cough. “Oh, now this is interesting. I really do have to thank your young man, my Lady. I can now observe several areas formerly closed to me.” It made a sound remarkably like a fussy professor clucking his tongue. “I really do need dusting.”
“What about Gil?” Agatha felt a flash of annoyance at the eagerness she heard in her own voice.
“Ah. He is with our imposter.”
“That pink fake? What’s he doing with her?!”
Gil slammed a hand down on a countertop. “You shot him in cold blood!”
“I’m the Heterodyne,” Zola said in a low, furious voice. She glanced at the prisoners. “People have expectations. I had to!”
“Had to? You didn’t
even hesitate!”
The Castle paused, processing the conversation. “He is complimenting her.”
Agatha felt a pang in her heart. “Really?”
Zola stomped her heel and leaned in. “If I show weakness, these scum will defy me!”
Gil shook his head. “But you didn’t even try anything else.”
Zola rubbed her temples. “I’m not as clever as you,” she muttered, “and I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Generally, shooting people is the last resort!”
“He is impressed with the way she does things,” the Castle said. Agatha’s eyes narrowed. “And she thinks that he is clever,” the Castle continued, helpfully.
“For a normal person, yes! These people are animals! They have to fear us, or else they’ll turn on us!”
“Of course they will!” Gil’s voice was sarcastic. “So how about we just shoot them all now and get it over with? Then we can build a nice doomsday device and wipe out all of Europa!”
“He has asked her out on a date.”
Agatha took a slow, deep breath. “I see.” She blew a lock of hair away from her eyes. “Well, I don’t care what he’s getting up to with the sugarplum airship princess. He can jolly well put it on hold until he’s had a look at Tarvek.” She kicked a fragment of rubble that lay at her feet—hard enough to send it smashing through a nearby window. It seemed to activate something. A warped wooden wall panel juddered aside and a large clank, armed with a rusty polearm, swiveled towards her.
“Die!” it rasped.
An instant later, its head and most of its torso boiled away into super-heated vapor. “I never said he was my boyfriend,” Agatha snarled as she stomped past. “That’s just what the rest of Europa seems to have decided!”
“Er…My Lady—” The Castle sounded slightly worried.
Agatha ignored it. “After all, let’s not forget why I’m risking my neck trying to find the idiot. I’ve already got a perfectly good ‘suitor’ on the slab—assuming I can keep the treacherous, duplicitous weasel alive!”
