Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

She gave Tarvek’s head another smack. “Shut up!” She looked to Agatha with eyes full of weariness. “And then we’re being chased by Wulfenbach troops and our own people and everyone’s shooting to kill and there’s nowhere to go, thanks to those flaming gargoyles, so Bright Boy here, he says,” Violetta mimicked Tarvek’s voice with the skill of long practice, “‘We’ll head for the Castle! They won’t chase us in there!’”

“Wait.” Moloch looked confused. “He wanted to come in here to be safe?”

Violetta grabbed Moloch’s shirt and looked at him imploringly. “Yes! Now do you understand what I have to work with?”

“But why did you listen to him?”

“I panicked! I told you, I’m not very good at this!”

Moloch surprised her by gently patting her on the shoulder. “You’re not dead. In here, that counts for a lot.”

Agatha was eyeing Tarvek with an unnerving glare. “I want to know what all of these agents of yours were doing in my town.” A thought struck her. “Flaming gargoyles… That pink airship! That pink tart! They’re yours?”

Tarvek rolled his eyes. “The pink thing was not my idea.”

Agatha grabbed the front of Tarvek’s toga and leaned in. Her voice took on a dangerous harmonic. “This is all your fault?”

Agatha’s eyes were only inches from his, and it was obvious she was furious. Tarvek’s voice rose to match hers: “No! It’s yours!”

She shook him so hard his teeth rattled. “You’re trying to take over my town and it’s my fault?” Suddenly, a cold metal blade was gently touching her throat.

“Okay, you, back way off,” Violetta said from behind.

“My Lady?” The Castle waited for instructions.

“Alive and unharmed,” Agatha said to the air.

A set of iron rods slammed up from the floor and Violetta suddenly found herself in a very tight cage. It was difficult to breathe. “As you wish, Mistress,” the Castle said conversationally.

Agatha continued to glare into Tarvek’s eyes. “Now. You. Talk.”

Tarvek took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s not exactly your fault, but it is happening because you showed up. Yes, there was a plot to install a false Heterodyne girl. My father and his people have been working on it for a long time.” He sighed. “They were nowhere near ready.” He looked thoughtful. “I guess between your performance over Sturmhalten and the Baron’s injuries, it must have seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Agatha snorted. “Did they really think that the Baron’s son would do nothing?”

Now Tarvek was angry. “I didn’t say they weren’t idiots! I didn’t tell them to go ahead. We know nothing about this son of the Baron’s! I’ve never met him! No one has!” He paused. “Actually, from what you told us at dinner back in Sturmhalten, it sounds like you know more about him than anyone else in Europa.”

Agatha sighed. Her initial anger had mostly passed, but she was still far from pleased. “He’s a bossy, violent idiot who thinks he knows what’s best for everyone, even though he can’t even keep himself in one piece.” She gave Tarvek a pointed look. “You’ll like him.”

Gil was peering between two shutters onto the busy street below. The crowd was dispersing and he was relieved to see that his father’s troops were letting them go.

“Get away from that window, you fool!”

Gil closed the shutters and grinned. He had been astonished to see two of his dearest friends, Theopholous DuMedd and Sleipnir O’Hara, appear out of nowhere in the streets of Mechanicsburg.

Theo and Sleipnir were two of the students that Gilgamesh had grown up with aboard Castle Wulfenbach,⁵² and they had fled, along with several other of Gil’s acquaintances, during the chaos that had attended Agatha’s own escape.

They had used an invisibility device he had given them back on Castle Wulfenbach to whisk him out from under Captain Vole’s nose, leaving his new group of friends behind. Ha. Friends…he had his doubts about that cat…

“Well, excuse me for being concerned. There are people I know down there.”

Theo paused, a bottle tipped upwards. He caught himself just before the drink he was pouring sloshed over the edge of his glass. “Anyone you want us to go get?”

Sleipnir looked up from the device she was tinkering with. “It wouldn’t be any trouble. We can get at least another hour’s use out of your little invisibility lamp dingus here.”

“It’s not a lamp.” Gil’s reply was almost automatic by now. Why did everyone think it was a lamp?⁵³ “No. Leave them be,” he answered. “They’d only insist on coming along, and I don’t want to take anyone into the Castle who doesn’t deserve it.”

Sleipnir tossed a screwdriver at him without rancor. “Nice.”

Gil snatched it out of the air and threw it back. “I am not taking you in with me.”

Sleipnir caught it and slid it back into the loop on her belt. “Of course you are.” Gil opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off. “And the last time you won an argument with me was…?”

Gil frowned, and changed the subject. “What are the two of you even doing here? Theo, you said you were going to search for your father’s lost laboratory.”