Maxim woke in the hospital behind Mamma Gkika's bar feeling unbearably thirsty. There was a jug of water on the table beside him, a cup beside it but he ignored that, and he gulped down water before slumping back onto the bed feeling faintly sick. Once his body had absorbed the water and he felt a bit more awake he registered that he was wrapped in bandages and, after cautious prodding, that it still hurt. That shouldn't have surprised him, that having a sword through his middle had left a wound, but he hadn't been seriously hurt since becoming a Jäger and convelesence seemed to belong to another life.

Mamma Gkika arrived shortly after that to have a look at the wound and to clean and poke at it without much regard for his comfort. It was reassuring, in its way. Mamma took care of everyone, but she was only gentle with the dying.

'Hyu iz doing fine,' she said, winding on a fresh bandage. 'Der Generals vant to see hyu dis afternoon.'

Maxim squirmed back against the pillows. 'I haff to?'

She laughed at his plaintive tone. 'Vot eckzectly iz hyu imagining? They may be ol' ogres but they izn't gun eatchu.'

He wasn't expecting anything like that, of course, but he strongly suspected he'd screwed this up somehow and was about to have to explain it to a group of people he found both admirable and terrifying. While still not entirely sure what he'd done, or should have done.

Afternoon came and with it a meeting with, not all of the Generals, but with Zog, Khrizhan and Goomblast. Maxim was definitely thankful not to be facing all eight, although he wouldn't have minded having Gkika there, who was at least familiar if still scary when she chose to be. He related the story as accurately as he could, from following Otilia into Euphrosynia's room to finding Ognian outside.

When he'd finished Khrizhan said, 'Der Kestle didn't interfere?'

Maxim shook his head. 'Not 'til de end.'

Khrizhan and Vog exchanged a glance. 'She iz leaving it,' Khrizhan said, voice a deep, quiet rumble.

'She iz still here. Und still a Heterodyne,' Vog answered.

Maxim remembered Euphrosynia with a metal hand pressed hard against her throat. The Castle had known he was there, that he was following, but she hadn't been breathing. It had been okay with that. Their gaze turned back to him and he asked, 'Am Hy in trouble?' without thinking.

'Vhy?' Goomblast asked.

Maxim looked away, hands clasping, claws pressed against the backs of his hands. 'She told me,' he blurted out. 'Otilia, she said dot she had orders from different pipple at der start.' His gaze flicked back up at them, and he resisted the urge to back away. They didn't look angry though. 'Hy deedn't know vot she meant! She told me dot she vos scared, too, of vot Meez Euphrosynia vould do.' He hadn't been able to put the pieces together, but he'd had the pieces.

'Hyu didn't tell anyvun?' Goomblast asked.

Maxim shook his head. He'd seen her as alien, but not as dangerous. Another monster like the rest of them, more or less; like Snoz and the other tunnel dwellers, different but on the same side.

'Not hyu fault,' said Khrizhan. Maxim looked up hopefully. The Generals were looking at each other, worried but not angry. He had a feeling that they were waiting to discuss things they couldn't say in front of him. 'Hyu is dismissed,' Khrizhan continued. 'Hyu did vell saving der Mistress. Go und find her.'

Maxim saluted them and left, hearing the low rumble of voices break out behind him like distant thunder.


'Feeling better?' asked Euphrosynia. Her room was almost empty, with only a few days before she left everything she intended to take with her was packed and much of it already sent on ahead.

'Yah,' Maxim answered. 'Hyu tek me vit hyu, now?'

'No. Nothing's changed.'

Maxim growled. 'Somevun gave Otilia orders to kill hyu.'

'No, they didn't,' said Euphrosynia. 'She was given orders by Van Rijn to make me safe for the people around me, and from Andronicus to protect me. Neither worded their orders well, but to begin with she must have believed there was no contradiction. Influencing rulers is part of her purpose, after all. But I am not so easily made safe, and my joining Andronicus would make me less so. With her orders in conflict, her built in loyalties not much less so, and her time running out her mental processes jumped to any solution that seemed to fulfil the requirements, even in ways never intended by those giving the orders.' She shook her head when Maxim just looked confused. 'She panicked.'

Maxim nodded. 'Hyu've been tokking to her.'

'Yes. It's a better way to study her than taking her apart and damaging most of what I'm trying to look at through ignorance.'

'Ken I?'

'No. I'm studying her, not chatting with her, and her mental processes are hard enough to chart as it is. You would definitely be an uncontrolled variable, I doubt even you know what you want to say.'

Maxim hesitated, but it wasn't as if Euphrosynia would mind him asking. He just wasn't sure he was meant to care. 'Vot vill happen to her?'

'I'll deactivate her when I leave. Leaving her conscious in my lab with no one to talk to for years would cause too much deterioration before I get the chance to return and study her.' She smiled, reaching for a sheaf of notes on her desk. 'She really is fascinating. Something totally unique…aside from her sisters, anyway. Van Rijn did something unprecedented. A fully sentient clank.'

'Isn't der Kestle der same?'

Euphrosynia shook her head. 'The Castle is a copy of a human mind. Faustus built as close to a mind as he could and then copied himself onto it, organising all the processes he'd set in motion under that consciousness in a way he couldn't have managed from the outside. It changed him, of course, as his mind adapted. But he was aware from the start that he was, in a sense, splitting himself. The copy of his present self which became the Castle would be no less him than the one which remained human. As such while the Castle operates under restrictions, they are restrictions that Faustus chose to operate under. And far less rigid than those applied to Otilia.'

Maxim glanced at the walls. So the Castle had been human once, which should make it far less alien than Otilia. But she had been…she had hadsisters. To the Castle the Heterodynes might be considered family, but Euphrosynia's red and bulging face swam across his memory. It had been willing to allow that. For the first time he wondered whether her leaving would be so bad, whether the Castle could be trusted with her safety. But in Mechanicsburg she would have the Jägers even if the Castle didn't care. 'Restrictions dot let it let somevun strangle hyu?'

Euphrosynia shrugged. 'It's only compelled to act to save the family. We're Heterodynes. We don't want to be saved from ourselves and we hardly lead safe lives.'

Maxim shook his head, hard. 'Dot's different.'

'Less so than you think.'

Maybe. Maybe the problem was that, like the Castle, he wasn't meant to be saving her from herself and he wanted to anyway. 'Vill hyu be careful?'

'I'm hearing that from a Jäger?' she teased.

'Because ve know ve ken be fixed. It vould be different vitout hyu.'

'I know, I know. You protect us, we fix you.' She shook her head impatiently. 'Just because I won't be part of that anymore doesn't mean I won't be fine.'

'Hokay,' Maxim said softly. He didn't want to annoy her when she'd be gone so soon, and he'd already lost this argument.


Euphrosynia left in a carriage drawn by white horses, surrounded by a mounted guard wearing the fleur-de-lis symbol. Except she didn't, because the deep non-sound of the bell rang out and they all fell over, while even the horses looked wobbly and confused. Euphrosynia opened the carriage door and stood up, fur stole ruffling in the breeze. 'Castle.'

'It's appropriate to ring the Doom Bell to see a Heterodyne off,' it said. Since she was outside the walls it had to raise its voice to talk to her, not by shouting but by talking from everywhere at once so that it was completely obvious that all of those watching from inside the walls were completely surrounded by it.

'Are you going to do the same thing every time I'm ready to go?' she asked. 'Because I'm not going to get very far in that case.'

No answer. Maxim glanced over his shoulder. The statue by the bell was holding the hammer casually, still raised. It waved and he looked around to see Euphrosynia gazing at it too.

'No,' she said. Around her the soldiers were starting to pick themselves up. 'I am leaving.'

Still no answer. Jägers and townsfolk were nudging each other, amused and intrigued more than worried. It wasn't unusual for the Castle to be troublesome. This was probably its version of a friendly goodbye. One last battle of wills for the road.

'I order you not to ring the Doom Bell again until I'm out of range,' said Euphrosynia. Then, as the statue sat down and folded its arms, she walked over the town wall and patted it.

'Remember to come back and visit,' the Castle said, and that time its voice came from near Euphrosynia and not from everywhere.

'I will. I'll bring you a weathervane,' she said.

'Bring me something too!' Gradok called, leaning over the wall from his place above the gates.

She looked up and smiled. 'I promise.'

Then she walked back over to her carriage and got back in, waiting until the soldiers around her had stood up and remounted. This time when she rode away nothing stopped her.