Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

Gil again hoisted it into the air while rubbing his injured face. “There is no question as to who built you, you troublesome gizmo,” he muttered.

“Oho!” Zeetha’s voice mocked him over his shoulder. “Are you saying this thing’s creator is…troublesome?”

Gil frowned. “What? No! Shhhh!” He looked around and saw that they were alone. “Where is everyone?”

Zeetha grinned. “Tiktoffen fell asleep with his head on his tool bag. You work your subordinates hard. Everyone else has been asleep for hours.”

Gil blinked. “Oh. I wondered why it had gotten so quiet.”

Zeetha looked at him curiously. “Yes. Don’t you ever sleep?”

Gil waved a hand. “Oh, my father taught me some mental exercises. I’m good for a couple of days when I have to be.” He glanced up. “You?”

Zeetha shrugged. “I’m good. Ancient Skifandrian warrior discipline—hardly ever taught to outsiders.” She was watching him closely as she spoke, mischief in her voice.

Gil considered this. “My father never said where—”

But Zeetha had already moved on. She pointed over at Zola. “Seems like you knew a lot of girls while you were in Paris.” She made a stern face. “You aren’t one of those Don Casanovas, are you?”

Gil had been called a lot of things, but that had never been one of them. “Um…definitely not.”

“So what’s Pinkie’s story?”

Gil shrugged and sat back, idly twirling the little clank on its chain. “She was a dancer.”

Zeetha looked unimpressed. “A ‘dancer’, eh?”

“That’s what it said on her card.”

“Uh-huh.” Zeetha continued to give him a stony look.

“She sings, too,” Gil added, always helpful.

“Ooh, I’m sure she does.”

“She’s also a decent actress and she was very good at looking interested while people talked and bought rounds of drinks. She was always getting mixed up with some Sparky sap she met in the clubs.”

“Ah. So that’s how you met her. You hired a lot of these ‘dancers’?”

Gil looked pained. “Please. I met her on my first day in Paris, when a giant squid burst up out of the sewer and flung her into the café where I was trying to relax.” Gil sighed. “She was always getting involved with some Spark’s idiotic scheme that was going to change the world. That particular one involved raising calamari steak for the restaurant trade.

“A few weeks later, I rescued her from the Comte de Terracciano’s ‘Ultimate Endgame’ chess set, then the unsettlingly large, acid-spitting snails of Professor Yungbluth, and then some overly-dramatic maniac who was living underneath the Paris Opera House.” Gil paused. “That last one wasn’t even her fault, really.” He shrugged. “Well, after that, she was just someone I knew.”

Zeetha stared at him. “Who had to be rescued a lot.”

Gil shrugged. “Well, she wasn’t boring.”

“She sounds annoying.”

Gil nodded. “Annoying I’ll give you. Then one day, she was gone. Bills paid, all her stuff taken away, no forwarding address…” Gil smiled. “I’d seen that happen before with some of the other girls. They finally hook a rich guy from out of town and get married. The last thing they want is people who knew them coming around to talk about ‘old times.’ They just disappear. If you see them, you’re supposed to pretend you don’t know them and they’ll return the favor. So yeah, I thought she’d got married. But apparently, she turned into ‘the Heterodyne.’”

Zeetha nodded. Actresses and other girls who had worked in the circus had a similar code. Then a thought struck her and her eyes went wide. “You…you don’t think she really is a Heterodyne, do you?”

Gil shook his head. “I don’t, but I’m afraid she might. Every single scheme Zola got caught up in, she was convinced that she was indispensable.

“That fairy tale she spun us? Sure, I’ll believe that’s the plan as she knows it, but there’s a lot more going on here and I want to know what it is. I want to find out who’s running her, if only because I fully expect them to try to kill her.”

Zeetha blinked. “Kill her? But she’s their Heterodyne!”

Gil snorted. “Not any more, she isn’t. This plan of hers is in shambles. My father knows about it. I’m betting those fools that I blew up were her ‘attacking army’—jumping the gun by a couple of years, no less, and Agatha is here, in the castle. There’s no way she’ll let Zola take her place.”

A gentle tug on his hand made him look down. The little clank raised its hands over its head and stared at him woefully. “Oh, you’re ready to help? Good.” He lifted the little device up to the hole in the wall. It squeezed itself in and Gil began feeding out its chain as he continued.

“No, it’s over, and while Zola may not know it, the people at the top undoubtedly do. She’s become a liability. She knows things my father will want to know.” He sighed. “Besides, this place is dangerous all by itself. I’m not going to just leave her to die in here. I’m not thrilled about having one more thing to worry about, but I don’t see what else I can do.”

Zeetha drummed her fingers. “She sounds like an idiot.”

Gil shrugged. “Well…yes, but she was never a malicious one.”

“Is that important?”