Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

Agatha realized that her mouth was hanging open and closed it with a snap. “I’m going to have to think carefully about everything I say to you, aren’t I?”

“It will be fun!”

“I’ll bet.” Agatha stared up at the fire in the sky and frowned. “All right then…Don’t kill anyone. Don’t do too much damage. But…do keep harassing them until they’re…hmm…ten kilometers outside of town.”

“I believe tradition calls for two leagues.”

“What’s that in kilometers?”

“Ah…Let me get back to you on that.”

“What are you doing?” Moloch asked, scandalized. “The Baron…”

“Has his flagship looming over my town.” Agatha stood straighter and a new note entered her voice. “In its heyday, Mechanicsburg was an unbelievably strong fortress. It was one of the reasons the Heterodynes answered to no one. The whole point of repairing the Castle is to reestablish that strength. Clearing the skies is as good a start as any.”

“You…” The Castle sounded surprised. “You’re not angry?”

Agatha’s eyes narrowed. “Did you want me to be?”

“No, Mistress, but…” and here the voice echoed hollowly, “your father and your uncle…nothing I did ever seemed to please them.”

A number of thoughts tumbled through Agatha’s head. First, there was a burst of sympathy for the Castle, a warped intelligence, certainly, but it had remained true, in its way. It was its masters that had changed, changed to the point where it could no longer please them, to the point where they had apparently abandoned it, and it couldn’t even understand why. There followed the worrying realization that she had already developed a strange fondness for the thing. Apparently she was nowhere near as intolerant of evil as her father and uncle had reportedly been. She would have to watch that.

“No,” she said gently. “I am pleased. You did good.”

“Good.” The Castle considered this. “Ah…Perhaps you could phrase it…some other way?”

Yes, Agatha realized, patting a wall, this place was going to be a real “fixer-upper.”

_______________

⁴² Sun Ming Daiyu. MD, PhD. Granddaughter of Dr. Sun. Daughter of the Wulfenbach ambassador to the Court of China. She was raised with Gilgamesh aboard Castle Wulfenbach, where she met Agatha. While not a Spark herself at this time, she was one of those on the short list of people expected to break through at any time.

⁴³ Experience showed that the two were closely interconnected.

⁴⁴ The city of Paris is famous, amongst those who are interested in such things, for its elaborate sewer system. There are also an extensive series of catacombs, quite a number of hidden vaults, a few natural caverns, some subterranean rivers, a thriving ecosystem, and at least one hidden civilization, along with two known enclaves of thieves, one of which runs a famous black market and the other the smugglers’ railroad, all of which is ruled by the Shadow Court. Frankly, it’s a wonder that any people are left to wander the streets above ground.

⁴⁵ Back when they called it “Mad Alchemy,” the creation of dragons was actually fairly popular. There were any number of towns and kingdoms that wanted them as protectors, or mascots, the most famous being the City of London. Inevitably, however, being long-lived, frugal creatures, they tended to amass hoards, which people tended to want to steal from them. Thus, most of the dragons were wiped out. The few remaining alchemists who could create them were annoyed at this and started creating dragons that were much, much harder to kill. But “harder” is not the same as “unkillable,” and after a dragon was finally killed, the knights went after the smart-ass alchemist that made it. And even a philosopher stone that granted immortality did not grant protection from a meter or so of Toledo steel. And thus the secret of making dragons was presumed lost. This is technically untrue, as apparently the real secret to viable, successful dragons was never found, which was: make them philanthropists.

⁴⁶ A legitimate question. Before the Baron enforced the adoption of the metric system, local units of measurement were based on systems designed by such diverse sources as the Romans, Charlemagne, Moorish Spain, the Bible, Greek mathematics, how many steps it took a man to find enlightenment divided by his love of a good woman, and the size of assorted potentates’ feet. However everyone insisted on using the same names. Thus depending on where you were in Europa, a “foot” could be anything from fifteen centimeters to fifty, and it just got worse from there. Especially if you were a cobbler.

⁴⁷ A notation that appeared all too often regarding new airmen. It also tended to close the ledgers on suicides, thieves, crooked gamblers, and practical jokers. It says something that when this verdict was eventually delivered to Duke Strinbeck’s next of kin, none thought to question it.