Agatha hadn't built any new death rays in almost a week, and Tarvek wasn't sure how he felt about that. It did seem immediately safer, but he'd sort of appreciated the protectiveness, even if it wasn't very practical. She was happier, though. That was good. And she was still helping with his new Muse (well, not exactly a Muse, but he was trying), as were her little clanks, which seemed to have forgiven him.
He wasn't sure what Gil was doing or why he himself was helping raid the kitchens for it. For the second time. But there was a vat making the whole lab smell of raspberries, and now he was in the space just the other side of a kitchen wall, where Gil was listening to the wall without benefit of instruments and peering through some minuscule gap in it, and where they were very definitely not supposed to be ever since they'd been caught in the vault. Tarvek supposed Baron Wulfenbach was unlikely to be keeping state secrets in the kitchens, but still.
"What are we doing here?" he hissed at Gil. Not that anybody was likely to hear them over all the clattering around that was going on in the kitchen.
Gil pressed his eyeball closer to the crack he was watching through.
"Well, at least let me have a look, then. Maybe I can-"
Gil flapped a hand at him imperiously and said, "Quiet."
Tarvek felt as if a hot wire snapped free inside his head. "You can't order me around just because your father's conquering Europe!"
"I ordered you around before I knew that," said Gil, attention still seeming mostly on the kitchen.
Tarvek reached out and hauled him away from the wall, savoring the look of sheer astonishment on Gil's face even as it made him even angrier. "Is that what it was? Did it cheer you up to have me and Agatha doing everything you said?"
"Why shouldn't you do what I say when it's my idea?" Gil hissed. "You never cared before. Or maybe Sparks without connections don't matter enough for you to take that seriously? Was it just safer to humour me, then?"
"You weren't even dangerous then!" Except for having terrible, tempting ideas like wandering around the airship and getting in trouble.
"So it was safer," said Gil, pulling back and pressing his hands against the wall behind him until his knuckles turned white. "Because you could just assume that once we were older I'd fall in line and do whatever you wanted, because you were the one with all the power. And you accused my father of picking up Sparks for his own ends."
"I was worried about you, you idiot!" And all right, yes, he'd thought he could take Gil home with him eventually but not like that, exactly.
Gil faltered for a moment, head dipping, and then levelled a glare at him. "I guess you know better now."
"Yeah." Tarvek slumped back against the other side of the space they'd crept into, glowering back. "I thought maybe you could just be my friend, not somebody else I had to fight with. Silly of me."
"I'm not fighting with you!" Gil snapped, and then rubbed a hand across his eyes. "Fine, I'm fighting with you because you're being really annoying, but what do you think I'm going to do? Duel you for Europa?"
"Don't be ridiculous, nobody's that open about it." Everybody went to war, but they didn't try to substitute single combat with the people they had to live with. Then again, Baron Wulfenbach didn't do things normally once he'd conquered people. Actually he did some of them the way Valois had, but not all of them. "Except your father, I guess, so maybe, who knows!"
"Seriously?" said Gil. "I'm not duelling anyone for Europa. Right now I'm stealing a lobster and if you don't want to help you don't need to be here."
"I don't even know why you want a lobster!" Tarvek protested. He did not especially want to steal a lobster, but at this point there didn't seem to be much else to do. "Fine. If you'd let me see what's going on in the kitchen maybe there would be some point to my coming!"
Gil stepped back with a shrug and leant against the wall. "If you're not going to let me pay attention I guess you might as well."
Tarvek knelt by the aperture and peered through. Smoke Knight training. Distract... they'd have to wait for the cooks to be distracted, or split up. The rest was speed and stealth and- "They're looking away from it! Go!"
Gil was up the wall and over the edge of it almost before Tarvek got the word out. Tarvek scrambled after him and joined Gil to haul the lobster off the countertop - it was almost as big as either of them. He looked back at the wall they'd come from, calculating how to get back up there by the shelves with their burden and whether they could do it before anybody wanted the lobster. Then someone yelled, "Hey!" and Gil seized the whole lobster and just ran for the actual door. Tarvek bit back a yelp of frustration and chased him.
They ended up running full tilt through the corridors, passing the slippery lobster back and forth as it dripped and flailed its banded claws and tried to smack them both in the legs with its tail. They finally got back to the lab, and Gil heaved it into the vat with a splash. They sank down to the floor, overcome with giggles, and Tarvek laughed until he thought he'd choke and couldn't figure out why.
"No, seriously," he finally managed, interrupted by a hiccough, "why did you want a lobster?"
Gil grinned at him. "I'm making a friend."
Tarvek sat up and stopped laughing as if Gil had shut off a switch, and blurted, "Another one?"
"Well, yes," said Gil, looking puzzled. "What did you think?"
He hadn't had any idea what Gil wanted to do with a lobster, and the next second he desperately wished he hadn't said, "You're replacing me with a lobster?!"
Gil started laughing again, and tried to muffle it against his knees. "No. Do you have any idea -" He broke off to gulp down more giggles. "Don't be silly. Aren't you going to be friends with your Muse-thing?"
"I - I guess, but -" He meant to make the clank a person, but so far she was still just an interesting (fascinating, baffling) mechanical problem. "The Muses surprised Van Rijn you know. I don't know what she'll be like. I don't even know if she'll like me."
Gil looked thoughtful. "I guess that's true with my lobster, too." He pulled himself to his feet and bent over the vat. "You can be pretty good at convincing people to like you, though," he added, sounding tense and no longer like he was feeling like laughing. "You got ordered to make friends with Agatha, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Tarvek. Then he scowled, suddenly defensive. "I thought he wanted me to marry her, not - that."
"That's not what I meant. I never thought you'd hurt her. But you just...it was all just a plan or something and how do you think she'd feel if she knew?"
Tarvek stared at him, abruptly lost. "If she knew what, that there are political advantages to getting along with her? She does know that." They'd talked about that. He'd explained the relation between friendship and politics before... although... he wasn't sure, now he thought about it, that Agatha had exactly regarded this as anything more than some eccentric personal worldview. "It's not like I was pretending to like her!"
"She thought you liked her because she was her, not because she was useful!" Gil was still, sort of, keeping his voice down, although not as much as he had been when they'd been behind the wall in the kitchen. He turned sharply away from the vat to face Tarvek. "I thought you liked me, not...some unimportant Spark who might be kind of useful later or needed your protection. But I'm not sure there's even a difference with you now!"
"Of course I liked you! But you can't just like people without important things about them mattering!"
"You like me less now I'm not someone you can control."
"I wasn't trying to control you, you idiot, I wanted to keep you!" Tarvek felt hot all over with embarrassment and plunged ahead anyway, like running down a hill to keep from falling over. "When I thought you didn't have any other connections except Agatha, it meant I didn't always have to wait for them to be more important. When we got into the Vault I thought it would be nice if you turned out to be a relative, but I thought I could trust you, either way, and that's better than family."
Gil dropped down beside Tarvek again and hugged him hard enough to knock both of them over. "Sorry," he said. "Or, thanks? I guess I would have been glad to go with you when I didn't think I was anybody."
Tarvek struggled briefly to sit up again and then gave in and put his arms around Gil instead. "Oh, thanks a lot." He sighed and let his head fall back against the floor. "I wouldn't have told my father who you were. Would've stopped planning to tell you about the Storm King thing, though."
Gil flopped over sideways so he wasn't mostly on top of Tarvek. "I kind of had other things to do once I knew. Have," he said, almost apologetically. "When I've finished school. I wouldn't have told anyone about you being the Storm King if you had told me, either."
Tarvek suspected he'd have had to. The whole point had been to rule Europe, after all. But it was a nice sentiment. And Tarvek might have had to tell him, after all, so Gil would have a chance against everyone who'd want to kill him. "Are you really mad at me for having wanted you to work for me? I mean... even if we hadn't been friends you're brilliant."
"I was kind of mad at you for thinking you were rescuing me from being experimented on," said Gil. "It's just so..." He pulled a face. "Pathetic, really."
"It really happens to people," Tarvek said, feeling rather peeved. "Although I guess you're right and Agatha wouldn't have let it happen to you."
"Otilia wouldn't have let it happen to me," said Gil. "Or my father, or the Lord Heterodyne, they stop stuff like that."
Tarvek had calmed down enough to stop himself from pointing out that Gil's father was in fact one of the people whose intentions Tarvek had been rather worried about. And still was, just not toward Gil, probably. "Okay," he said instead. "Fine. I was just helping Agatha rescue you from annoying people. Not that you ended up needing that either, I guess."
"I appreciated that," said Gil. "Even if that was a bit pathetic too." He closed his eyes and threw an arm over his face. "I didn't really feel like...I mean, I know it was pity the first time you came after me...it wasn't with Agatha, she was just curious and nice...but then I got to show you stuff and if I was scared around people because I didn't know what to do with them when half the time it felt like they were right about everything being wrong with me you were scared of other stuff and I never felt like you were really above me even if you did. But being under your protection forever because I needed it when you didn't really need anything from me? That's pathetic, and you're acting so different now I just wonder if you saw me like that, or wanted to."
Tarvek tried not to tense up when Gil said he was afraid of things. It was true, and it wasn't unreasonable for Gil to have wanted to have a... counter-advantage, to know one of Tarvek's weak points. Even if it was uncomfortable to realise Gil had been thinking of it that way. "I was so mad at them," he said. "They were supposed to be learning to be good rulers and they were just... spoiling everything." Gil had let go of him, so Tarvek sat up, arms looping around his knees, and looked at Gil not looking at him. No, peeking from under his arm now, Tarvek could just see the glimmer of eyeball. "Maybe I wouldn't have needed you," he said. "But I... wanted a real friend. You've been acting different since you found out, you know."
Gil blushed. "I never wanted to care about their stupid bloodlines. But it was still easier to know I was secretly just as good as them if they found out."
"I meant you didn't act like you wanted me around anymore."
"Because I was trying to keep it secret and you're really good at finding them out," said Gil. "I thought if I didn't make it obvious I wasn't letting you find out you'd just get kicked off after all."
Tarvek eyed him. "It's not that I don't like having you say what you mean," he said, "but you have got to learn to lie better."
Gil moved his arm so Tarvek could see him roll his eyes. "And then you didn't believe me when I told you as much of the truth as I could anyway."
"One of the most important characteristics of a lie is that it's more plausible than the truth," said Tarvek. "Which really should have been easy in that case. I'm still having trouble believing you're from Mars. Let alone that your father apparently thinks I could get in touch with assassins there."
"Yeah, I don't think so either," said Gil, shrugging at the vagaries of parents. "If you wanted to assassinate me you wouldn't have to go to Mars to get it done, anyway."
"Er," said Tarvek. "No. You know not to eat things with green food colouring, right?"
Gil blinked at him slowly. "You'd assassinate me with green food colouring?"
"I wouldn't," Tarvek said patiently. "But it's a relatively easy way to disguise... do I need to teach you how not to get assassinated?"
Gil sat up. "...probably, yes," he said, after a moment's thought. "I was never important enough to assassinate before." He sighed, a little rueful. "And now you're looking after me again."
Tarvek dropped his face onto his arms. "I don't want you to die," he said, rather muffled. "I'd miss you. I should warn you, though, I don't know all the tricks yet. On the other hand my family probably wouldn't try to kill you now unless it was somebody who thought they could get the Baron to kill me and pick their candidate as heir instead."
"Your family is really worrying," said Gil.
"I know," said Tarvek. "You made a really nice change."
"I think anyone would," said Gil. "If you teach me what to look out for, maybe we can stop each other getting assassinated."
Tarvek turned his head and managed a smile. "That would be good."
"Hey, Tarvek." Tarvek turned to see Seffie, in one of the one piece suits the Baron provided, hair pulled back into a braid, looking up from what had apparently been an animated conversation with Sleipnir. His cousins had started turning up, the Baron and the Lord Heterodyne had apparently decided to collect them, and Tarvek was wary but hadn't spent much time in the school beyond sleeping lately. He paused, bracing himself, and she grinned. "Well done."
"What?" he said.
"Getting the Baron to support you! No one else even thought to try it, although I guess circumstances forced your hand there. It's the best chance we've had yet, I'm writing to Grandma about it when the Baron decides we can send letters again."
"He'll want to use me," said Tarvek, quietly.
Seffie rolled her eyes at him. "Well, of course. But he'll keep you alive for the next decade if you're a good pawn, and by then you'll have pieces of your own. Come on, I know you're a kid but this is obvious."
"Are you supporting me?" he asked incredulously. "Your brother…"
"This calls for some degree of subtlety," said Seffie. "Or at least the ability to shut up and play nice. You dealt with him nicely, I'll keep an eye on him until Grandma gets back to us."
"Uh, wow," said Sleipnir, grinning and leaning on Seffie's shoulder. "You guys are really politically minded, huh? Am I going to be killed for listening in on secret plots here?"
"This isn't secret," said Tarvek. Like Seffie had said, it was obvious. He rubbed a hand over his head. "…Thanks, Seffie."
"No problem. Keep up the good work."
Gil was poking at his tank, which now smelt fishy in addition to raspberryish, when the Baron came into the lab. Gil looked up. The Baron scanned them all and said, "Actually, I need to speak with Tarvek."
Tarvek felt suddenly as if his whole abdomen was buzzing. Was he in trouble for helping Gil raid the kitchens? He left unhappily, trying to tell himself that didn't even make sense, and wound up in the Baron's office, sitting across the big desk from him.
The Baron didn't exactly look angry. Or even disapproving. Mostly just... grave and rather doubtful. Tarvek began to believe this wasn't about the kitchens a few seconds before the Baron said, "How much do you know about the conspiracy?"
Okay. That was much worse.
"Not much, sir," Tarvek said, which was...not exactly a lie, depending on what you defined as "much". He knew which people had visited and then spent hours in laboratories with his father. No one had actually told him anything though, he didn't know.
The Baron gave him a long look and then closed his eyes briefly, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose. "That is not a particularly helpful response."
"I'm sorry." Tarvek fixed his gaze on the edge of the desk. "I don't know what you want from me." I don't know what you're going to do to them.
The Baron sighed. "A little cooperation, perhaps. Barry and I are reasonably confident we've identified which players are likely to be in possession of more of Lucrezia's technology. This is most likely a subject on which you should be kept up to date, if you're capable of focussing on politics now." He sounded as if he didn't like the idea. "But any evidence you could provide without first seeing our conclusions might be helpful."
Tarvek flicked his gaze up at the Baron nervously. That was somewhat reassuring. Even if he didn't want to, the Baron was willing to keep him informed of where dangers might lie and give him some chance of avoiding them. Which probably went the other way too, what they didn't know was capable of killing them too, that was the whole point of a conspiracy. He should be on the Baron and Lord Heterodyne's side, now, they were the ones supporting him politically. Only they were just using him. So had his family been. He took a breath. Okay, he needed to use them, too. It was like Seffie said. If they thought he was theirs they'd protect him until he was old enough to have power of his own (even if they tried to kill him then in order to make way for Gil). And if he was providing information he was useful to them, and could also control some of the information they got. "I really don't know much, it's not as if anyone told me. But I know some of the people who Father talked to." He could tell on some of the ones who had rival heirs, it would get them out of the way before they tried assassinating him (only he felt sort of sick now, they were still family).
"Oh, I can believe they didn't tell you," said the Baron. "I might believe you spent less time eavesdropping at home if Agatha hadn't complained about your sister doing it in lieu of simply asking to sit in on our negotiations." He slid a blank sheet of paper across the desk to Tarvek, who picked up a pen and tried to hold it lightly enough that his hand wouldn't shake, staring at the page. He still hadn't started writing yet when the Baron said, "Are you worried about them?"
Tarvek stared at the page, not sure if he was allowed to be. There were sides, and he couldn't be on everybody's. He sort of wished Agatha was here, because she was on his. "I just don't really know," he said, quietly. "Eavesdropping's not as easy as all that, and I know who spoke to my father but I don't know it was about...that."
The Baron leaned over the desk and plucked the pen out of his hand, then laid it down in front of him. "Not a fair question, perhaps. I suppose it speaks well of you if you are, but I couldn't precisely blame you if you're not." A rather weary sigh. "Now that he's calmed down somewhat, Barry is taking Jägers to destroy any wasps and explain the situation to Lucrezia's other assistants. If they cooperate, they will not be harmed and they will not be publicly accused."
"You're not going to kill them all?" Tarvek's voice was shaking slightly with relief.
The Baron rubbed a hand over his face. "Not unless they're spectacularly stupid about this, which I think and hope is unlikely."
"Probably not," said Tarvek, after thinking about it for a moment. "They'll want to hold onto the wasps, in case they can find a voice match, but most of them wouldn't die to do it. Some of them might take their vows to Lucrezia more seriously." He leant forward as a more alarming thought came to him. "They might try to kidnap Agatha, even if they don't have...even if they can't..." He swallowed. "She's a voice match and they might think they can make her say things she doesn't want to."
The Baron looked at him sharply. "To control the revenants regardless of Lucrezia," he said, sounding disgusted. "Of course. And anyone who was in Sturmhalten could tell them. We'll keep her more closely guarded."
Tarvek nodded. He'd been more worried about Agatha than the revenants, he'd hated to see them ordered to their deaths but didn't think anyone could make Agatha do that to people. "I can give you some names," he said. "As long as you're not going to kill them." He didn't have any reason not to want them stopped.
"We have more than enough problems without provoking a series of succession wars and destabilising most of the regions your family controls," the Baron said irritably. "Even if they thought that was a good way to prepare Europe for you."
"I don't think they were terribly well organised," said Tarvek. He chewed the end of the pen for a moment and then did write down some names, feeling confused and guilty about the ones it was an advantage to him to send people against, but they'd done the exact same things as the ones where it wasn't. After considering his list for a moment he added a few more notes by names like took vow seriously, very interested in wasps and, uncertainly, likes Heterodyne Boys stories. Then he put the cap on the pen and shoved the paper over to the Baron with a feeling weirdly like turning a test paper in.
The Baron's eyebrows twitched upward, maybe around the time he got to that last note. "Thank you," he said. "I'll warn Barry about Snarlantz." He passed Tarvek another page, then, this one with twenty-six names that included all of Tarvek's list, and notes in both the Baron's handwriting and Barry Heterodyne's about what they thought was going on. "Not terribly organised?" Tarvek glanced up in time to catch a thoughtful look. "You don't think the chaos was planned?"
"Which chaos?" Tarvek asked. "If you mean the Other then I'm pretty sure Lucrezia planned it and did it all herself, anyway. If you mean this...I don't think they knew who they wanted to come out on top, or all wanted the same thing, and..." He stopped before saying most of them were being trained to kill each other, and that he had doubts about that as a good way to keep a group cohesive. He probably didn't want the Baron to know he was a trained assassin (semi-trained, maybe semi-hemi-trained, he was only eight, but he knew how to poison someone anyway).
"I suppose I could believe a lack of coordination rather than malice in the aftermath," the Baron said.
"I don't know," said Tarvek. "But they were attacking each other, so probably." People had attacked Sturmhalten too, even though it was one of the places not weakened by the Other's attacks and built as a fortress in the first place. Tarvek hadn't been old enough at the time to realise how stupid the attackers had been, although he didn't remember really being afraid they might get in either. It had just been a weird time when nothing from the outside came in.
"Mm. At the time I returned I may not have been paying much attention to the details."
Tarvek could believe that. Whatever anyone thought about the Baron's strategy, it had had a certain simplicity to it. Do Not Come Over Here. With enemies being defined as anyone who decided to ignore that. Not keeping an eye on what your enemies were actually doing wasn't the best idea though, in Tarvek's opinion.
The Baron evidently caught his expression, when he'd been trying not to have one, and snorted. "You look disapproving."
Tarvek shook his head quickly, trying not to look scared either although he couldn't help shrinking back from the desk slightly. "No, of course not. Sorry."
The Baron rolled his eyes. "I wasn't offended."
Tarvek gave him a dubious look, and then realised that wasn't better than looking disapproving, and looked at the ground instead.
"Tarvek..." The Baron said his name on a sigh. "You're not going to be punished for speaking up."
Tarvek wasn't quite sure he believed that. On the other hand he wasn't sure what the Baron would gain by telling him it was okay to say things and then punishing him anyway. "Do you care what I think?" he asked.
"Yes." The Baron folded his arms on the desk. "I would, generally speaking, much prefer to know what you are thinking."
Tarvek blinked. He hadn't really thought about generally rather than...well, politically, maybe. About this. As a general rule he never knew what anyone in his family was thinking, and it was much easier to deal with Agatha and Gil who were more obvious about it. Usually. And much harder to deal with Gil when he wasn't. "I was thinking that it's not a good idea to stop paying attention to what your enemies are doing," he said cautiously. "Even when you think you can make them stop and do what you want."
"Ah." A wry smile. "A fair point. Although I hadn't so much stopped as not started yet. I had to begin by re-establishing a defensible region within Wulfenbach."
"Oh, that makes sense. It's not as if you could keep an eye on anything from Mars," said Tarvek, relaxing. An explanation, and not an angry one, nor did the Baron seem to be concealing any anger.
"If I could have done that-" The Baron stopped and shook his head. "Well, never mind. At any rate..." He regarded Tarvek as if he were a mildly worrying puzzle. "I cannot train you if we don't talk to each other."
"You're training me?" It was perhaps not the most tactful way to phrase that, and Tarvek hurried on with, "Aren't we already learning, um, politics and stuff?" It was a school for the children of rulers, and he had been assuming the Baron would consider that enough. Certainly enough for a figurehead, although he seemed to at least respect Tarvek would need to know how to navigate current events for his own safety - Tarvek clutched the paper with its names, crumpling it slightly - and he didn't think the Baron was inclined to add the other sorts of training people in Tarvek's family got.
The Baron's eyebrows rose slightly. "Yes, and yes. The school curriculum provides a basis, but it's predominantly geared toward local rule with an awareness of the wider picture. You will need to concentrate on the latter." A slight grimace. "I hadn't planned to inflict it on Gil this soon, but given the circumstances, you'll need to be much more directly involved, starting now."
"I don't think information is something you inflict on people," said Tarvek, feeling a little stunned and uncertainly hopeful...it just seemed so unlikely, but the Baron was taking this seriously, taking him seriously.
The Baron's mouth twitched. "That probably depends on the information, but I meant the politics."
"...I never thought of that as inflicted on people, either," said Tarvek, although it would be truer to say he'd never thought of politics as a choice. It just...was, and if you weren't involved enough to be running it, that meant someone else was running you.
"You wouldn't, would you," the Baron said wryly. "Just as well."
"You didn't have to take over Europa," said Tarvek, and then blushed, startled at himself.
The Baron eyed him rather sourly. "I didn't do it for enjoyment. People were dying."
Tarvek shrank back, feeling rather thoroughly rebuked. He was used to people wanting to take over Europa - and people with better right than a Wulfenbach - but none of them had actually been able to. Even blaming that on the fact that the Baron had got there first - he'd just come back from Mars and started with a tiny and already half-destroyed Barony, it wasn't as if he'd had a whole lot of advantages. He might not like politics, as he claimed, but he was certainly good at what he did. "Sorry, sir."
"Stop cringing," said the Baron. "If I were in the habit of blaming people for their parents' depredations I would never have spent twenty years following the Heterodynes around."
Tarvek did his best to straighten up and pull himself together, not particularly helped by the Baron's tone but distracted slightly by the comparison. He'd never really thought of...well, he had thought of the Heterodyne Boys as the products of a predatory line, of course, he'd been proud that his family had once been there to protect Europa from them. But he hadn't thought of it as recent. There were the Old Heterodynes and the Heterodyne Boys, and the fact that there must have been an Old Heterodyne right before the Heterodyne Boys got a bit lost. He wondered if it would be possible to talk to Barry Heterodyne about...about what to do when your family was evil? (They weren't, exactly, no, they were, if they'd meant to do that to Agatha, he didn't know anymore.) He wasn't sure he'd ever dare to try. "Sorry," he said again, not sure what else to say.
The Baron pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, as if the conversation might be giving him a headache, and then flattened his hands on the desk. "I want you both principled and competent. I should hope you'd expect the same of your regent."
Tarvek made himself breathe slowly. Okay. He would play the game. He had to. "I don't have any doubts about your competence, sir." Especially not considering the Baron had just bolted royal legitimacy onto his own reign for at least the next ten years.
The Baron arched an eyebrow. "Just about my principles?"
Tarvek managed not to pull back or look away, but couldn't stop himself blushing. The Baron's principles included taking over Europa illegitimately and generally not justifying it with more than the fact that he could. "No, sir."
The Baron rolled his eyes. "I'll meet with you again tomorrow morning. It's probably time to get you back to the lab." He glanced at the clock. "Or to pry the other two out of it. You should eat lunch somewhere that doesn't smell like... whatever Gil is doing."
"That would be good," said Tarvek. "He's still obsessed with lobsters."
"At least he isn't trying to attach them to anybody," said the Baron. "Maybe I'll keep seafood off your menu for a while."
Tarvek wondered whether this was because the smell of Gil's experiment could be taken to have put them all off it or in case Gil tried to do experiments on his dinner. Either way, when they went to lunch it included neither seafood nor jam and he was thankful for that.
It was after some thought that Tarvek decided maybe he should really talk to the Lord Heterodyne about family. He'd been nice before, even if he'd been rather terrifying in the chapel, and there really wasn't anyone else he could talk to. On the other hand the Lord Heterodyne was coming and going a lot and when he was on board he was often either talking to people or in a lab and too busy to be interrupted, or in his own rooms where Tarvek wasn't about to try and interrupt him. In the end Tarvek decided to take a leaf from Agatha's book and asked Otilia to make an appointment for him.
"What did you want to talk to him about?" Otilia asked. Tarvek looked down, because he was fairly sure he was making an appointment to ask a really impertinent question and also that Otilia wouldn't approve. The hand coming to rest on his head made him look up. "Never mind," said Otilia. "I shall ask. What you want to talk about can be between the two of you."
Tarvek spent the time until she returned wondering whether she hadn't questioned him because he was her Storm King now. Even if she mostly wasn't acting like it, and he wasn't sure whether he was relieved or disappointed that she still treated him as one of her students. When she did return she told him, "The Lord Heterodyne says he will see you. Come with me."
That was disconcertingly fast, even though it wasn't actually any faster than when she'd made one for Agatha. She took him to the Lord Heterodyne's rooms after all, but at least he shouldn't be interrupting anything unexpectedly this way. Although when the door opened, the air smelled a little bit like honey and a little bit like Miss DuLac's perfume. "Come in," said the Lord Heterodyne. "Thank you, Otilia." He shut the door behind Tarvek and looked at him with complete attention. "What did you want to-"
At this point they were interrupted by a three-foot, six-legged, stripy creature with a great deal of fuzz racing up with its antenna waving. For some reason, the Lord Heterodyne had - as the Baron explained - decided the best approach to dealing with giant wasps involved bees. In order to make bees that were a) large enough to help without having internal difficulties and b) easier to train and get to respond to humans they had been crossed with dogs. The result was colloquially known as a beegle. Tarvek had never seen one before, but he assumed the correct response was to hold still and let it pat him with its antennae. It had mandibles but didn't seem to want to bite.
"I, um." Beegles were probably useful for a number of things, but they weren't proving good for Tarvek's train of thought. Especially when this one seemed to be trying to lick him with a proboscis. "Is it being friendly or does it think I have honey?"
The Lord Heterodyne grinned. "Friendly and inquisitive. She'd smell it if you had honey. She's been trying to groom me all day." He scooped it - her - up; the large compound eyes didn't move, but the antennae patted over his head and then he got licked too. "She's new. It helps to have them socialize with humans within the first few days." He carried the beegle over to a couch and gestured for Tarvek to sit. "What did you want to see me about?"
Tarvek sat down next to the Lord Heterodyne and looked down at his hands. "Is it okay if I ask you a personal question?"
"Sure, go ahead." Oddly casual, but not flippant. He didn't - exactly - sound guarded, but maybe a little surprised.
Tarvek didn't look up. He wasn't sure asking this was a good idea, but he wasn't sure what he'd say now if he didn't ask, and when the words came out they were quiet and rushed. "What do you do if your family is evil?"
"Oh. Tarvek..." The Lord Heterodyne swallowed audibly and then, to Tarvek's shock, put an arm around his shoulders and shifted him closer. The beegle spilled into Tarvek's lap. It was warm but much harder than a dog, probably because of the exoskeleton. "You try to do better," he said. "That sounds like a pat answer, I'm afraid, but I... don't mean to make it sound easy."
"I don't even know if I know what better is." Tarvek buried a hand in beegle-fuzz and resisted the urge to lean against the Lord Heterodyne. "I know some of it was wrong, a lot of it." He hadn't thought the wasps were that bad. People were meant to do what their lords said, the wasps were just a way to make sure of that, but the Lord Heterodyne had been so angry.
"I heard you've been arguing your principles to most of the school. And doing rather well at it."
"But I learnt those principles from them!" Tarvek said, gesturing wildly with the hand that wasn't clenched in beegle-fur. "They...they said we should take care of people below us and the wasps were just...just a way to make people behave, if we used them, to make them do what was for their own good."
The Lord Heterodyne stiffened - Tarvek felt it in the arm still across his shoulders - and then let out a slow breath and relaxed his muscles, though Tarvek suspected that was a very superficial relaxation. "I see. And was it?"
Tarvek shivered, seeing the corpses again with their slashed throats and dead eyes. "No," he whispered.
The Lord Heterodyne hugged him closer, which was confusing. "I don't actually believe it would be right anyway," he said. "People tend to have ideas of their own about what's good for them. Planning to take people's will away is usually not a good sign regarding anybody's intent. And if they do start out meaning well, it's not likely to last."
"But the Baron tells people what to do. And people can still be ordered into battle without wasps. Only I guess they can run away if they were just told to." He remembered the townsfolk cowering in front of grinning, but not attacking, Jägers as soon as they'd been allowed to surrender.
"At least in theory. There's a difference between obeying out of loyalty, or respect for authority, or even fear and obeying because part of yourself has been turned against you and you have to. There's less of a difference, I admit, between the last two. Coercion is never ideal, but some methods of it are... dirtier than others."
Tarvek had obeyed his father out of fear before. It would have been a lot worse to not be able to disobey (to not be able to save Agatha, to be forced to help destroy her) and he had a moment of sick gratitude that wasps didn't work on Sparks. But if he didn't want it done to him, what made it okay to do to anyone else? "I don't want to use them. Not after that." It wouldn't have been up to him, anyway.
"Well, that's a relief." It wasn't said lightly.
"But everything I ever learnt was from people who would." Why was he apparently trying to convince the Lord Heterodyne he couldn't be trusted? Why was he having this conversation? Why did it involve being hugged? "You said I'd been arguing my principles well, you wouldn't have said that if you thought I was wrong about them." He looked up at the Lord Heterodyne, wondering if he was right about that.
"Plenty of people argue, and argue well, things I don't agree with," said the Lord Heterodyne. "But I did mean it favourably. It matters to you to do what's right and to convince other people they should too. I think your heart's in the right place. Taking responsibility and wanting to look after people are good things. You just shouldn't try to control them more tightly than you have to." He looked down at Tarvek and drew a long breath. "If it helps... being wrong about one thing doesn't mean someone's wrong about everything else."
"It does a bit." He relaxed, cautiously, into the Lord Heterodyne's arm. "When...when you were my age...did you get taught how to kill people? I don't mean like fighting lessons, although I guess that's not so different."
The Lord Heterodyne sighed a little. "Yes. That was, um, preferable to being instructed on how to torture prisoners."
"Oh." For some reason that was the point where Tarvek actually did relax, turning his face into the Lord Heterodyne's side. It was a weird sort of relief that he wasn't...corrupted, wrong, that other people had been taught even worse things and still been able to be good. "It was assassination with us."
"...Somehow I'm not exactly surprised." The Lord Heterodyne ruffled his hair lightly before snuggling him closer. "We'll do our best, obviously, but it's still likely to be useful to you to know what to look for."
"I'm not complaining about being taught how not to get assassinated," said Tarvek. He sighed. "I'm teaching Gil that part."
"That's... also probably going to be useful," the Lord Heterodyne said wryly. "Thank you."
Tarvek blinked up at him and then smiled. "I could teach Agatha but I don't think anyone wants to assassinate her."
"...I hope not, but we might revisit that at some point."
Tarvek nodded. He didn't think anyone was likely to find a reason for assassinating Agatha, but maybe when she was a bit older she should learn a few things just in case. Now that he'd had his question answered, as much as it probably could be, he suspected he should politely leave and let the Lord Heterodyne get on with whatever he'd been doing. Which had probably been important. Only it was nice here, he was warm and had a softly buzzing beegle on his lap, and he felt...safe. For the first time in weeks. Even if he wasn't sure this was a wise way to be feeling, around the Baron's closest ally, he still didn't want to go.
The Lord Heterodyne looked down at him for a moment and then said, "Do you want to stay a while? This is nice, and it's good for Banshee to get to know more people."
"Yes, please," said Tarvek. "Is that really okay?"
"Yes, of course." The beegle - a part of Tarvek's mind was now trying to analyse how a hound's baying would come out of a rather insectoid mouth - punctuated this assurance by dabbing him with its proboscis again. "I'm glad to have you."
