Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

Like most towns, Mechanicsburg has located its airship terminals and freight yards outside of the old city walls. There are many fine things one can say about modern airship travel, but on the ground, it does require an inordinate amount of real estate. Luckily, the airship terminal that serves Mechanicsburg is located near a Corbettite rail terminal. If one is of a patient disposition, one may hop a slow freight shuttle directly into the town for free. For the traveler with more money than time, carriages, carts, rickshaws, and horses are available for rent. If one feels like a spot of exercise, it is less than a kilometer by foot to the North Gate. The intervening area is primarily farmland, which does allow one to appreciate the size and grandeur of the surrounding mountains. Some do like that sort of thing.

Due to one of the more fanciful of Airshipman traditions, no ship will ever fly directly over the town itself. This is a shame, as theoretically, the aerial views of Castle Heterodyne alone would be spectacular.

—Out and About the Empire on Ten Guilders a Day —Dame Mòrag MacTavish/Waterzoon Press/ Amsterdam

The air was tense aboard the shocking pink airship that hung over Mechanicsburg. The captain stood quietly, apparently enjoying the glorious view of the mountains on the horizon, but his hands, clasped behind his back, were white knuckled. On the surface, everything appeared ship shape, polished, and crisp, but in his heart he knew that everything about this berth stank like bad balloon wax.

When the Aerofleet Merchant Board had first outlined the job it had seemed like a dream come true. Captain of a brand new ship—from the Stockholm Yards, no less! Conveying a lost heir to her new kingdom, along with her royal sponsors, who would win over the town with a display of loose wealth and largesse. If all went well, there was even the possibility of a permanent commission.

Then the rip panel had been pulled. The town? Mechanicsburg. The girl was a supposed Heterodyne heir, and her noble sponsors were a pair of privileged, overbearing ne’er-do-wells that he would as soon have had jettisoned before the ship warped away from the dock.

In addition, the preparations had been rushed, less than twenty-four hours from oath to float. He hadn’t had the time to properly vet or shake down either the crew or the airship before they’d left, and he’d run them blue doing inspections and drills while on the fly. The old-timers, at least, had appreciated that. The fledglings had been too busy running to grumble.

The supposed heir had boarded ship in Vienna and no one had seen her since. She kept to her cabin—her needs seen to by her sponsors and the flock of silent minions she had brought with her.

The captain smiled humorlessly. Well, he’d done his part. The girl had been delivered safely. They’d touched down right in the main square of the town and she’d been escorted off in style. He’d been ordered to take the ship back up, to hover at an unnervingly low two hundred meters and await further orders.

The gentlemen who paid the bills stood in the main Observation Bay. The tall, equine one—Duke Strinbeck¹⁰—had been watching the girl’s progress through an elegant brass telescope. Finally, he let out a huge gust of breath and lowered the scope.

“She’s in the castle,” he announced.

His companion, a portly, white-haired man who called himself Baron Krassimir Oublenmach, had been striding back and forth, seemingly deep in thought. Now, he positively beamed. “Excellent!”

Strinbeck regarded him with a slight frown, swung the tube up again and idly scanned the town. “I certainly hope so,” he muttered.

Oublenmach grinned. He knew he made his fellow nobles feel uncomfortable. He clapped Strinbeck on the back. Oh yes, as stiff as a board. He could feel that even through his metal gloves.

“Come, come, young fellow, you’re still worried?”