Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

Agatha briefly considered blowing them both to dust. Then she caught herself and slowly set down her weapon. She doesn’t own him and neither do you, she told herself silently. She hardly knew him. She had no right to be angry…it was just the Spark in her that made her think so strongly of things—and even people—as “hers.” Agatha swallowed hard, and moved to stand at Zola’s side. If she loomed again, just a bit, she thought, it was only because she was the Heterodyne…it was hardly even her fault if she was a little intimidating, really.

“How is he?” she asked Zola, coolly.

Zola looked up at her, paused, and then answered carefully. “Um… not that bad, actually. The shot must have been deflected somehow.” She dabbed tenderly at Gil’s sweating brow with a pink handkerchief. “But he’s really out of it. I think he’s in shock.”

Agatha nodded. She felt like her heart had stopped beating—like she no longer even inhabited her body. She spoke like some ancient spirit long separated from the concerns of the living. “Mmm. You seem to…care for him.”

“What? Yes, of course! He’s always been there when I needed him! He’s saved my life dozens of times!”

Agatha glowered down at Zola, who had the sense to ease Gil carefully off her lap and scoot back on her heels slightly. “And now that you know who he really is?”

Zola didn’t even hesitate. She stared at Agatha, wide-eyed and sweetly terrified, while she answered. “He…Well…I guess it makes sense that he had to hide it…”

Agatha nodded. She liked terrified. “All right then.” She spoke clearly and slowly, with a controlled tone that still marked her as every inch a Spark. She wanted to make sure Zola was paying attention. “Listen carefully. You are now mine. Your only job is taking care of Gil.”

Zola started to protest but Agatha overrode her. “I have a lot of things to do. If I have to drop everything in order to make a girly fuss over him, we could all wind up dead.

“So you make sure nothing happens to him, don’t even consider giving me any more trouble, and stay where I can see you. If you can manage that, I might be persuaded to let you both live when this is all over. Do you understand me?”

Zola only stared at her goggle-eyed and gurgled.

Agatha blinked. “What was that?”

Zola gave a loud wordless moan.

“I am doing my best to be calm, but—”

Zola’s face was turning red.

Then Agatha realized that she had her hand around Zola’s throat. She let go with a start and flushed. She wondered what she was becoming, here in this place.

Zola gasped as she drew in a huge breath of air. “Yes! I understand! I’ll do it!”

Agatha retrieved her death ray and turned back to the Castle prisoners, who had been watching with evident approval. This was already taking far too long. She needed to sort them out fast and get back to Tarvek. She pulled herself together and gave her audience a cheery smile. “Well!” she told them. “I feel better now that’s all sorted out. Back to work. Show me this ‘Castle killer’ machine.”

A dark-haired man, whose lower body had been replaced by a set of six mechanical, insect-like legs, stepped forward with a smart clack.

“Ah, ‘Fra Pelagatti’s Lion’!⁷⁵ Right this way, Lady Heterodyne. I am Professor Caractacus Mezzasalma.” They approached the device, a thing of warm, shining metal adorned with blue glass globes.

“This is it,” Mezzasalma said. “Capable of generating a low-pulse ætheric ‘roar’, punctuated by short bursts of trans-dimensional dissonance harmonics.” He stepped back and watched Agatha closely.

She nodded. “Hm. All right, I’ve got it.”

Mezzasalma blinked. “You…you what?” His metal feet made a syncopated clicking sound upon the floor. “Young Wulfenbach took only thirty minutes to figure it out—but you—you’ve just glanced at it. How can you possibly—?”

Agatha raised a hand to forestall him as she selected a stout monkey wrench from a nearby bench. She raised it behind her shoulder and, with a powerful swing, shattered the largest of the blue glass spheres.

“To be fair,” she said as she turned back to the horrified man, “what I was after was a lot simpler.”

“YAY, MISTRESS!” the Castle cheered.

Agatha tossed the wrench back onto the bench. “Oh, quiet, you.” She pointed to a section of the mechanism. “But really, it didn’t look like it would have worked anyway.”

Professor Diaz picked up a long shard of blue glass, “Oh, well, some of the parts are missing…” he admitted. Regretfully, he tossed the shard into a waste barrel. “We’ve sent some men to get them. But the theory was quite sound!”

“Ah,” the Castle interrupted. “Those parts, they were in the cistern?”

“Why, yes.” Diaz said.

“The one with the giant electrified squid clanks?”

Diaz waved a hand. “Tch. Those are deactivated.” He froze. “Oh.”

The Castle chuckled. “Oh, I do feel good today!”

Diaz glowered. “Those parts…it is good we won’t be needing them, yes?”

“Actually,” Agatha said. “I am going to want those parts.”