Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

Carson grunted in surprise. “That is different.”

Arella nodded and leaned back against the doorframe. “And she beat Baron Wulfenbach.”

Carson frowned. “What, with a stick?”

“With an army.” Now she had his full attention. “She appeared in Balan’s Gap. Blew up half of Sturmhalten Castle.” Involuntarily, both of them glanced up at the ruined castle that loomed over their own town. “After that, it gets…confusing. But the town was destroyed, or at least overrun with assorted monsters, and during the fighting, the Baron was hurt.” She pointed a finger towards the large white structure crowning a hill in the distance. “He’s here—in the Great Hospital. And…she had Jägers with her”

Carson had been staring at the distant hospital, but this information jerked his attention back to her. “Jägers?” His brain, which had spent too many sleepy days in the sun, was laboriously spinning back up to speed. “A nice touch, that. The generals will come down hard on them when they catch them.” He snorted. “She should’ve just had the Masters along as well.”

Arella nodded in satisfaction as she delivered her coup de grâce. “She did. Along with the Lady Lucrezia, Punch and Judy and even the High Priestess—you know, from the street plays.”

The old man absorbed this—his mouth twitching and the corners of his eyes crinkling with remembered humor. “Master Barry would be furious.”

“He didn’t look furious,” Arella replied tartly. “Of course, they were all three meters tall, glowed, and had wings—”

Carson just stared at her now. “Wings.”

Arella shrugged. “Well, there is some argument about that, but otherwise, everyone who saw them was convinced that it was them.” Arella fluttered her fingers upwards. “And then they all flew away into the sky. Presumably, to come here.”

Carson nodded slowly. “And where is my grandson?”

“He was out all night,” Arella informed him. “Probably because of the excitement.”

To her slight surprise, the old man nodded in approval. “Yes. He’ll be busy, I expect. Very good. Still…”

With a small grunt, he levered himself out of his chair, dumping the cat to the floor. “Arella, my dear, I am going out.”

Arella handed the old man his jacket and cap. “You’re going to the gate?”

Carson nodded as he carefully adjusted his cap to hide the terrible scars upon his bald head. Arella dutifully brushed the back of his coat. “I’ll send down some lunch.” She paused. “Do you really think she’ll come, Poppa?”

Carson heard the faint whisper of longing within Arella’s voice and sighed. Even after all this time, even after we all know better, we still hope. Best take care of this one quickly.

He patted her arm as he turned to go. “I’m sure she will. All the others have.”

He descended the stairs to the street, drew in a deep lungful of the morning air, and took a look around. What he saw brought him up short. For a moment, he panicked, but then he remembered that the Masters were gone. With the familiar pang of loss mixed with reassurance swirling through his head, he took another look, taking mental notes.

It was worse. Worse than he remembered. He tried to think back. How long had it been since he had last inspected the town? Not just walked like a tourist, but looked, really looked, like a man who was responsible for things and would have to explain them to the Masters?

Obviously far too long.

There was litter in the streets. Not great drifts of it, to be sure, but that there was any at all would have caused his father to have a stroke. The façades of the shops were weathered. He saw a cracked window, and with a genuine shot of fear, he noticed that one of the small public fountains was no longer running, the bowl dry, filled with old leaves and a few cracked snail shells. What was his grandson thinking?

He meandered down through the closely packed streets, eyes half-closed…listening.

There was a rising tide of excitement bubbling through the citizenry. They always reacted to rumors of a Heterodyne, but this time it was sharper, fuller. Fanned, no doubt, by the large number of Wulfenbach troops and obvious out-of-towners who were holding forth on various street corners.

He paused outside a busy pastry shop. A few seconds later, a shop girl hurried out with a wicker basket of warm cinnamon butter snail buns, which she handed over with a small curtsy before darting back inside.

The proprietor of a Turkish teashop spied Carson as he turned onto the lane. He filled a blue ceramic mug with the thick campaign tea that he knew the old man favored, closed the decorative copper lid, and placed it into his hand as he passed. Carson, preoccupied, took it with a slight nod and continued on.