"Tarvek." His father rested a hand on Tarvek's shoulder. "This is very important."
They were waiting for the Heterodyne and the usurper Baron Wulfenbach. He could hardly forget it was important. Tarvek only said, "Yes, Father."
"We have a long and, shall we say, storied history with the Heterodynes. You must win over the Mistress's daughter. Reveal nothing and-" He fell silent as their guests came into sight. Walking, for some reason, though they did walk surrounded by Jägers. The little girl was barely visible among all the legs. She was probably why they were running a little late.
"Wilhelm." Barry Heterodyne - it was odd thinking of him as the person from all the stories, especially without the other Heterodyne Boy, Tarvek decided - came smiling up the steps to shake Prince Aaronev's hand. Putting things on a more informal footing even though this was Prince Aaronev's city. Well, they'd been at university together and he was a Heterodyne. Baron Wulfenbach offered a more formal but shallow bow, and his father returned a nod. Anevka curtsied gracefully. The Lord Heterodyne continued, "It's been a while. We were surprised to get your letter." A sweeping gesture, smile falling away at the right moment. "I'm glad to see Sturmhalten survived the wars so well."
"We were most fortunate," his father said gravely. Fortune had had nothing to do with it. "And of course I wrote to you. I am fascinated by your plans. The benefits to Europa could be immense."
Tarvek glanced at Agatha, still surrounded by people's legs, and offered a bow of his own. "Pleased to meet you," he said, pitching his voice quietly so he wouldn't be interrupting the adults. "I'm Tarvek."
Agatha smiled brightly back at him. (The nearest Jägermonster looked down and gave them both a rather fangy grin.) "I'm Agatha!" Her voice wasn't quite as soft. "Uncle Barry says you'll be coming to the school. It's great, I think you'll really like it."
Winning her over didn't look as if it would be difficult, precisely, although if she was this friendly to everyone then simply being another friend of hers might not be enough to please his father. "I'm sure I shall," he answered. Then, eagerly, because he couldn't help asking, "Is it true you have a Muse teaching you?"
"Madame Otilia," Agatha agreed. "She's very stern but she's been lots happier since Uncle Barry and Baron Wulfenbach put her back in the right body."
Tarvek had a moment of wondering why, and how, a Muse would be in the wrong body. Then a slightly longer moment of internal panic and forcing himself not to look up at his father to see if he'd heard that. Not that Tarvek knew the details, but he'd heard consciousness transfer devices being mentioned recently, and in the context of making sure the Baron didn't know about them. "How did she wind up in the wrong one?" he asked, finally, between really wanting to know and wanting to know what Agatha knew.
Agatha looked uncomfortable. "Well... my mother, um..." She looked up at the Lord Heterodyne and bit her lip. Tarvek couldn't think of a way to get her not to involve the adults, and it was too late, they'd paused in their own conversation now anyway. "Used to be a villain?"
"Lucrezia transferred Otilia's mind into the body of a new construct," said the Lord Heterodyne. "I'm afraid Bill and I didn't know about that, when we first met the new nurse. Fortunately, she was otherwise mostly intact."
"Truly remarkable," Tarvek's father murmured.
"I look forward to meeting her," said Tarvek. He glanced at the still watching adults. "Perhaps I could go ahead?" He wasn't sure whether, if he was going to talk to Agatha about mind transfer, he should do it where his father could hear what she knew. But his father might also want to talk to Barry Heterodyne and the Baron without being interrupted, and Tarvek could write to him later.
The Baron raised an eyebrow. Tarvek thought he caught a slightly doubtful glance at his father, but it was too fast to be sure. "I don't see why not."
His father did not look completely pleased, but he didn't give Tarvek any warning signals, so perhaps that was only for their guests' benefit somehow. He crouched down and set both hands on Tarvek's shoulders, looking earnestly into his face. "I'll have your things sent up." Tarvek swallowed. Last time he'd seen his luggage, his pet Andy had been draped across it looking hopeful. He wanted to remind his father that he'd asked to have the midmoth returned to Tweedle, if he couldn't take it to Castle Wulfenbach, but he couldn't say that now. "Behave yourself as befits a prince of Sturmhalten. Learn all you can."
"Jorgi," said the Lord Heterodyne. "Would you mind taking him there?"
"Bye!" Agatha added. "I'll see you when I get back!"
He'd sort of assumed Agatha would be sent along with him since she attended the school too, but he'd have plenty of time to talk to her later. "I'll see you," he answered, smiling at her.
He could briefly hear the adults introducing the two girls and then drifting back into politics and empire. Although he couldn't hear any of it very well, because the Jägermonster charged with accompanying him - Jorgi, apparently - talked constantly, cheerily, and familiarly.
They took a short ride on a small, swift airship up to the looming bulk of Castle Wulfenbach, and Jorgi walked him to the school.
Where a real Muse opened the door. Tarvek gazed up at her, still hardly able to believe it, and nearly missed his cue when Jorgi introduced him. He bowed a little hastily. "Madame Otilia. It's an honour to meet you."
"Master Tarvek." She smiled at him. "An honour and pleasure to meet you." She really sounded like she meant it. How had van Rijn made her able to sound so sincere? "I was told you would be joining our school."
"I've read so very much about you." The Muse of Protection. She was glorious.
The smile was fainter this time, more formal, but it still felt weirdly real. "My sisters and I were aware of our fame."
"You're amazing," he said. Blurted. It wasn't a properly calculated compliment at all. He could hardly think - no, he could, he was, but it was mostly awe and analytical appreciation, and details like circumspection and breathing were getting a little lost.
"I'm afraid the Sparks here are not allowed to study me, since being taken apart is not conducive to being able to teach them," she said, and her tone was still soft but...was that sarcasm? Bitterness?
"I wouldn't want to do that," he said earnestly. Well, he'd like to see how she worked, but the idea of breaking her the way so many of them had been lost was horrible. "I want to find all of you and put them back together." And oh, no. He'd never said that to anybody, even Violetta. He had got too carried away. It was dangerous to tell people what you really wanted.
Her smile softened and she rested a hand on his head, cool metal fingers ruffling his hair for a moment. "Perhaps I could make an exception, then," she said gently. "For now, let me introduce you to the rest of the class."
Tarvek swallowed and nodded. That felt... nice. And an exception? Really? Did that mean what it sounded like? "Yes, Madame." He had better pull himself together for this. It should be all right, he told himself. Even adults were likely to have a slight lapse over a Muse now and then.
The other students all gave Otilia their undivided attention when she turned to them, which was only natural, and then converged on Tarvek once he'd been announced to them. It was a really remarkable collection, with hostage children from nearly all the top families within Baron Wulfenbach's rapidly expanding area of influence and a few students from shockingly farther afield, like the Iron Sheik's son. If Baron Wulfenbach and the Lord Heterodyne kept on as they had begun, this would be the best possible place to form connections and figure out what his own generation would be doing. Lucrezia Mongfish's own nephew Theo DuMedd seemed to reign supreme - that might be because Agatha was away, but he was all of twelve, openly bright, and presented himself as personable and utterly relaxed. Tarvek covertly studied how he did it, but nearly gave up in shock when Theo suggested sneaking into the laboratory early over lunch.
"I'm surprised you're at school this far from home," he found himself saying to the Sheik's son Z, after considerable thought. What he wanted to know was whether Z was there as a hostage or if the Iron Sheik had an eye on the potential to watch the ruling families of Europe.
Z grinned easily. "The Baron is an old friend of the family. My father thinks the experience will be good for me."
"The Baron has created an excellent school." The curly-haired girl sounded stiff about it, as if she was quoting. "And, of course, a Muse as a teacher-"
"That's very impressive," Tarvek agreed, trying to fit her to any of the portraits he'd been instructed to memorise. "Ah, you must be Princess Zulenna."
She raised her eyebrows, looking pleased and as if she didn't want to be surprised that he had identified her. "Of Holfung-Borzoi," she said. "The Lord Heterodyne invited us to ally. He and his brother built defences for my family years ago."
"I hear they were really good at that," Tarvek said, because pointing out that they'd done that for a lot of villages would just be rude.
As it turned out, a few of the older students did slip away early from lunch, and Tarvek waited worriedly until everyone filed into the teaching lab and the handful of people already in it were merely scolded for their impatience and then a bit grudgingly complimented on setting things up for the younger pupils. It was a good lab, with work surfaces at different heights and supplies everywhere. The teacher, Mr. Argyll, was a construct. He (they?) had two heads and, for some reason, nine tentacles extending from all around his shoulders and upper chest instead of arms. Both heads seemed to know what they were talking about, though, and Tarvek slid into the lesson easily.
He was quite enjoying himself until he glanced up in time to see someone drop a pellet into the solution of a wild-haired boy his own age - Gil Holzfäller, orphan, Tarvek recalled from the earlier introductions; someone else had supplied the second part. Before Tarvek could say anything indignant about adulterating an experiment, it proved to do worse than that: the purple solution turned pale pink and started fizzing all over the bench, which was certainly not supposed to be the next step.
Gil hurried to mop it up, with more haste than care. Tarvek, his mind's eye filled with visions of corroded flesh and melted workbenches from his father's cautionary tales about laboratory safety, turned down his burner and went to make sure it was done properly. He kept a wary eye on his own work area in between calculating how to neutralise everything they'd used and guess what had been in the pellet. Gil gave him a baffled and deeply suspicious look, which was understandable - at least the suspicious part - but Tarvek felt put-upon anyway.
By the end of the laboratory period, Tarvek still felt put-upon, but he didn't blame Gil for it. Instead of the competitive sabotage Tarvek's cousins engaged in, Gil's lack of family connections made him fair game for teasing and pranks from everybody, and the rules seemed to be different. Trying to steal each other's results was one thing; modifying an experiment or setting booby traps was a good test of both parties' skills, though it did get tiresome at times; but simply spoiling procedures or notes did nothing to advance science at all. And all the efforts were so clumsy. Gil's attempts to protect his work were even worse.
They were ruining it, Tarvek thought fiercely. He'd liked it here already. He'd liked them. Better than his cousins. But a good ruler had a duty to his people. Andronicus Valois and the princes in Sturmhalten hadn't let the old Heterodynes do whatever they liked to their people. Valois had even stopped the renegade Sparks from causing trouble, for a while. He'd have had the Baron at his court, working on... on the first big dirigibles or something. A good ruler, or somebody who was going to be a good ruler, tested himself against actual rivals instead of picking on somebody who couldn't pick back just to do it.
The final straw all around was when King Dunsany's daughter bumped Gil when the teacher's back was turned, managing to jog his arm so that the chemical to be added dropwise all went in at once and knock a solvent over onto his notes. Gil stepped back from the rising cloud of fumes, took one anguished look at his notebook, and then raced off.
"Master Gil," Mr. Argyll said sharply as Gil shoved past him, "where are you going?"
"To cry for his mummy," suggested a ten-year-old who thought he was witty.
Tarvek, who had watched his own mother die, pressed his pen down so hard that the nib broke off in a blot. "I think he got a faceful of fumes when Princess Sleipnir ran into him and spilt half his materials," he said, a little too loudly. As the teacher saw what had happened to Gil's workbench and began to look alarmed at the silvery cloud rising from it, Tarvek added recklessly, "I'll go check on him, shall I?" and ducked out, leaving everyone else to deal with containment.
He managed to keep up an air of purposeful certainty until he went through the door Gil had used and found himself in a storage room. He stepped out of sight of the door and looked around, puzzled. It was a small room, full of the dusty dry throat-catching smell of chemical powders. Well kept, no actual dust to smear and leave a trail. But Gil wasn't in here, so there had to be another way out.
Tarvek spent a minute searching briskly for secret passages, listening uneasily to the sounds from the classroom outside and hoping not to be interrupted, and then stopped. Thought. There had to be a way out, but why would the Baron build a secret passage to the chemical storage room off a teaching laboratory? This wasn't an old family home with the interstices holding as many passageways as its owners had been able to fit without making it unstable and sometimes a few more. Castle Wulfenbach wasn't finished. The school sat on the edge of a blob of livable areas among a lot of... framework.
So if he tried this side of the room, and instead of proper secret passages he just looked for a way through a recently built wall...
Tarvek slid one of the panels gently aside and was encouraged to find that it didn't grate loudly. He wriggled through, got his legs safely onto a girder, and pulled the panel back into place after him. Then he sat back on his heels and considered his situation. He swallowed. Solving the problem had been interesting, but now he was sneaking around Baron Wulfenbach's airship and everybody had seen where he went. Maybe he should have spilt something else before he left, to keep them busy.
The engine noise and occasional distant clangs were punctuated by a quiet sniffle, somewhere in the dark off to his right, and Tarvek remembered what he'd set out to do and moved quietly toward the sound. He got as far as seeing the one irregular shape in the dim light before realising that he didn't know any rules for this kind of conversation. Great. He cleared his throat slightly and began, "Gil?"
"What do you want?" said Gil, sounding prickly enough that his voice was the vocal equivalent of a curled up hedgehog.
"Ah-" Tarvek usually had a better answer to that question. "Are you okay?" He seized on his excuse to the teacher and added, quickly, "The fumes from that reaction could have been bad, especially with the volatile solvent mixed in. If you got any in your eyes you should really flush them with water or preferably buffered saline as soon as possible."
Gil moved around to peer at him, eyes visible as faint glimmers in the darkness. "It's fine. I'm not going back to rinse them."
"All right." He'd seen Gil pull back, after all. He didn't believe there was actually any risk. "But you probably should, whenever you do go back in. Just in case. Of any irritation." And so it wouldn't show that he'd been crying. Now what? He'd expected Gil to be in another part of the school, not out in the sprawling dark. "I don't know where you expect people to think you are. There's no place to hide in that storeroom."
"Everyone knows where I am, they just don't know where I am," Gil said, and then apparently realised that made no sense and shook his head. "They know I know how to get around out here. There's no point in trying to follow me."
Tarvek considered pointing out that he'd followed him. But if Gil had gone farther he doubted he could have picked up the trail. "Don't you get in trouble for that?" And how much trouble was he going to be in?
"I don't care," said Gil defiantly. "We're not meant to come out here, but everyone does. It's interesting." He twisted around properly, uncurling and dangling his legs over the edge of his walkway to regard Tarvek solemnly, no longer hunched up defensively but not ready to trust yet either. "I might get in trouble for leaving a lesson though. You might too if you don't go back."
Tarvek forced himself not to hunch his shoulders, even if a small part of his mind was wailing that it was only his first afternoon there and how could he have got into trouble already? He didn't ask what the Baron - well, the teachers, more plausibly - would do to them, either. "I told the teacher you'd had a faceful of chemical fumes and I was going to check on you. If you go in soon and wash your face right away then we might both be fine."
Gil scrunched up again. "I told you I don't care. Being in trouble won't be worse than having to put up with all of them for the rest of the lesson anyway."
Tarvek's heart sank. "Are you sure?" he asked before he thought properly about it.
"Cleaning grease traps is pretty horrible, but at least grease traps don't mean to be horrible," Gil answered.
"Grease traps?" Tarvek asked blankly.
"Um. Things in sinks and stuff for catching grease in water you pour away. In the kitchens, and from when people grease the engines. And in the labs too, but other stuff than grease gets caught there so we aren't made to clean them."
"I know what a grease trap is," Tarvek said, slightly nettled. "I was just surprised."
"I didn't think nobility had to deal with grease traps. Until they come here, anyway," Gil said. He grinned, suddenly, a white flash of teeth. "I don't think Zulenna knew what one was until she had to clean one for the first time. She made such a fuss."
"My father is very strict about laboratory safety. I've been drilled on where anything hazardous can wind up, or had better not." Tarvek hesitated. "Are we talking about ones for individual sinks, or the big tanks?" Even the little ones could get pretty disgusting, if you had to open one up when it hadn't been emptied for a while.
"The little ones," said Gil. "I think the big ones actually might be worse than going back."
"I guess that isn't too bad." And if sneaking out into the unfinished areas was really not unusual, maybe he could make up for this one time by being very diligent. "Is that really all they'll do to us?"
Gil tipped his head on one side. "If you get caught by Jägers they sometimes threaten to do some really weird stuff, but they don't mean it. And if I'm with Agatha they just pretend they haven't seen us, it drives the Baron nuts." Then, somewhere between curious and starting to worry, "What does your family do if you sneak off?"
If he's with Agatha?! Gil spent enough time sneaking around with the Heterodyne girl that the Jägers had skipped catching them multiple times? The other students were picking on a Heterodyne companion in her absence? Tarvek rearranged the implications in his head a couple of times while he answered, "Well, it's hardly the same. Sturmhalten doesn't exactly have humongous construction areas like this. But I'm expected to be... wherever I'm expected to be. And I assumed Baron Wulfenbach's people would be rather strict about it all." About hostage behavior, but he supposed an orphan couldn't exactly be a hostage.
"The Baron's nowhere near as strict as he seems," said Gil. "Otilia's strict, but she hates punishing us. It is scary if you really upset her, though."
That was... interesting and unexpected. "I wouldn't want to upset her. She's a Muse." Tarvek sat down and let his own feet dangle. Getting back promptly was obviously a lost cause, so he might as well be comfortable. He seriously doubted Gil was going to tackle him, so the ability to move fast wasn't as essential as it could be. "I know they were meant to teach, but it's still so weird for her to be here."
Gil nodded. "She used to be a construct," he said quietly, not whispering but confidential anyway. "She was the Heterodyne's nursemaid, Lucrezia moved her brain somehow. She was looking after me before the school started and then she turned out to be a Muse. I wasn't sure if she'd be different, but she's just calmer about things mostly." Gil swung his legs. "Everyone's excited about her now, though."
That fit with what Agatha herself had said. Apparently the knowledge was more widespread than Tarvek had thought, but then, she hadn't acted like it was a secret. "She was looking after you before the school?" Tarvek's thoughts went to the lost Heterodyne heir - there was supposed to have been a boy. Maybe Barry Heterodyne was hiding him? But then why let everybody know about the girl? Could he make the Jägers not let on? Anyway, he'd have been younger.
"I was the first one here," Gil said, sounding unsure whether to be proud of that or not. "I guess the Baron just found me somewhere, but that was before he started taking hostages. So for a while it was just me. He was probably planning to take more children already, or he would have left me with someone."
"The nannies my family hires aren't nearly that interesting," Tarvek admitted. Experimentally, he tried to imagine Baron Wulfenbach finding a small child and deciding to keep it.
"The Baron hires lots of interesting people," said Gil.
"Does he?" If Gil felt like telling...
"Like all the people from Beetleburg," said Gil. "They're not famous though. Except for Punch and Judy."
"There are a lot of people from Beetleburg?" Interesting but not famous people from Beetleburg? Tarvek felt he had missed a step. At least Punch and Judy made sense, what with the Heterodyne involvement. What had the Baron done, hired away half the university?
"Like our science teacher," said Gil. "I think they were all Punch and Judy's friends."
"Oh." Probably not from the university then. At least, not the faculty. "I think the science teacher needs more eyes. Or an assistant."
Gil sighed. "It would probably help," he muttered.
At least Gil didn't think Mr. Argyll was ignoring it on purpose. Tarvek didn't either, but it would have been a plausible guess. "I'm used to having more instructors at a time. My cousins and I mess with each other's work, but that's - that's also part of the lessons. Our instructors would never let us get away with some of what they were doing. Nobody learns anything that way. And it's-" He broke off.
"...Agatha wants to boobytrap everything but I don't really want to fight them," said Gil. "Some of them are okay. Sometimes. Sleipnir's pretty nice until the others start."
No good offering elaborate revenge on her, then. Tarvek wasn't really excited about the idea either. "They shouldn't be like that," he said, even though ranting about the ideal behaviour of a ruler in Castle Wulfenbach might not be smart. "If they're going to be in charge eventually, they're supposed to be better than that." A sigh. "Protective traps, maybe," he suggested after a moment, looking for a compromise. "No poison or blades, but something to... dye them purple, maybe, so it's obvious they tried and you beat them. That's if you're not there. If it's in lab you'd need more of a warning, or something to slow them down, but even for a Spark in his own lab, it's tricky to make an experimental setup impervious to interference while you're working on it." He hesitated and glanced back over his shoulder. The laboratory period shouldn't be over yet. Maybe... "Or, well, you can get someone to watch your back." Sometimes. If you gave them a good enough reason.
Gil let out a snort of laughter and then covered his mouth, but when he looked up he was still smiling. "You and Agatha should really get along," he said. "But I don't want you to boobytrap my stuff either." He considered Tarvek for a moment. "Were you offering to watch my back?"
Tarvek was determined to get along with Agatha regardless, but this was probably a really good sign. And he felt weirdly happy about making Gil smile. "If you'll watch mine," he said, mostly for form's sake - though, even if Gil wasn't that wary yet, he could probably learn. "Actually for today I was thinking I'd ask if you wanted to work with me." Assuming nobody had messed with his workbench, but it would probably be obvious if they had. "There isn't really time to start over, so hopefully we'd be allowed."
"That would be nice," said Gil, suddenly sounding almost shy about it. "Thanks."
Tarvek let out a relieved breath and smiled at him. "Okay. So, we go in, and straight to the wash station, and I'll ask the teacher about working together." Hopefully then they wouldn't be in too much trouble. And he'd found out a lot already about the students here. Maybe it was a good thing he'd had a chance to observe them without Agatha here, after all. And lucky that he'd gone after Gil. That could help with befriending Agatha.
(He thought he liked talking to Gil. And the Heterodyne girl tried to look after the student who got bullied, even if she was three years younger. She sounded like she might be one of the good ones, when she was queen someday.)
The science teacher didn't yell at them when they got back, and they didn't get sent to clean grease traps.
Tarvek decided it was a pretty good afternoon.
She couldn't say Sturmhalten had been boring, exactly - it was a new place and their piano sounded amazing - but Agatha was glad to be back at the school anyway. She got there just as everybody was starting in for dinner, returned greetings happily, and got Theo to lift her up for a few seconds so she could spot Gil and Tarvek. They were together, which was convenient, and Tarvek's pet (a giant mimmoth, or perhaps a not quite so miniaturised mammoth) apparently scented him because it let out a trumpeting squeal and started galumphing around people. She darted after it. "Hi! Tarvek, I brought your - what do you call that?"
Tarvek crouched down and petted it, looking delighted, and it patted at his face with its trunk. "A midmoth. My cousin made him for me. His name is Andy. I didn't think Baron Wulfenbach would let me have him at the school."
"He said he couldn't see why not, unless it was likely to explode," Agatha said. Tarvek looked rather shocked at the idea. "Oh, and your father and sister are on board for dinner, and you're old enough to go join them if you want but you don't have to," she recited dutifully.
Tarvek looked uncertain and thoughtful for a moment and then nodded. "Thank you. I'll stay here. Would you like to sit with us?"
"What was Sturmhalten like?" asked Gil, offering the midmoth a hand to sniff and then grinning when Andy wrapped his trunk around it.
"I was planning to. And it's really pretty, but -" She gave Tarvek an apologetic look. "I don't think Tarvek's sister is as much fun as Theo. Maybe she doesn't like littler kids as much."
Tarvek's look also turned apologetic. "I should have stayed. I thought they'd bring you back here when I went."
"Uncle Barry said it was good for me to get to know our neighbours," Agatha said, as they found seats. Andy curled up under Tarvek's chair with an air of expecting snacks. "I'll have lots more time to get to know you." She settled in between them and looked up at them both. "Did anything interesting happen here?"
Gil and Tarvek looked at each other and Gil said, "Not really."
"Okay." That was too bad, but sometimes it didn't. "You want to play with the dragon later?" Tarvek seemed nice; maybe he'd like to meet it too.
"Yes," said Gil, smiling. "You can come with us," he added, to Tarvek. "I didn't get a chance to show you around earlier."
Tarvek's expression was very uncertain. "Sneaking off again?" he asked, lowering his voice.
Agatha beamed encouragingly at him. "Gil finds all the best places."
"Okay," said Tarvek. Then added, "You have a dragon?"
"It's a clank. We found it in Gradok Heterodyne's lab from when he was a kid. Uncle Barry took out the flamethrower so it was safe to have on an airship." After a moment's thought, she added, "I guess I have Franz, but he lives in Mechanicsburg."
"The Great Dragon of Mechanicsburg is called Franz?" said Tarvek.
"Uh-huh. He's really nice. Uh..." Agatha ducked her head a bit sheepishly. "Except he used to eat people, apparently."
Tarvek looked awkward. Gil jumped in to say, "He let us ride on him. The clank dragon is a lot of fun but too small for that. Um, obviously. I'd like to build one that's big enough, though."
At that Tarvek stopped looking awkward and looked enthusiastic. "Could I help? I've worked on clanks at home, sometimes. Although not dragons."
Gil lit up. "We ought to get one if all three of us are trying."
"Maybe after dinner? Or were you going to show me your dragon then?" Tarvek asked.
"We can look at that one and all the notes," Agatha said. "And go - hmm, we probably don't have time to try and build a dragon and go exploring."
"We should go exploring if we can," said Gil. "Because we can work on the flying dragon with adults around."
"That's true." She wasn't sure if anybody expected them to succeed in building a flying dragon they could ride, but it was allowed.
They ate fast and slipped away from dinner a little early, while Madame Otilia was still busy. Agatha felt her eyes on them, and Tarvek actually turned to look back. Agatha tugged on his arm, and he followed them, but it felt like he was hanging back a little. Agatha made a side trip to get Gradok's little dragon and its harness while Tarvek took his midmoth to make a nest or something, and then she met the boys in the recreational mechanical lab, with the dragon tucked firmly under her arm. From there, they wormed under a shelf, Gil moved a panel aside, and they were out into the rumbly unfinished parts of Castle Wulfenbach.
As soon as they were around the first corner, Agatha stopped to check the harness - she didn't think Castle Heterodyne would be impressed, but she didn't want to have to chase the little dragon all over the whole dirigible, so she'd made it one first thing out of reinforced cable - and turned the dragon back on. It immediately flew to the limit of the harness and then made an indignant little noise and dived back to display its claws to her.
"Is it sentient?" Tarvek asked, leaning over to try and get a look at it while staying out of reach of its claws.
The dragon flopped down on its back in Agatha's lap, waving its feet at her imperiously until she caught one and started taking the claws out to replace the original lockpicks. "I think it's smart like a cat."
Tarvek knelt down and shuffled closer. "It's remarkable," he said. "I wonder how its mind - I suppose it would be a bad idea to try and look -"
"You can look," said Agatha. "Just not when it's on. I think things might fall out if it took off while it's open."
Tarvek nodded and sat back. "Does it obey you?" he asked.
"Not really," said Gil.
Agatha sort of felt like she wanted to be grumpy about that, but it was true and anyway, it was Gil. "The Castle says when Gradok built it, he had to chase it all over." She looked around and down over the edge. "I let it loose inside the school one time without its lockpicks and it didn't get out, but it got into pretty much everything."
"That's interesting," said Tarvek. "Most Sparks would start out with making sure a clank obeyed them, but Heterodyne creations -" He stopped and looked a bit embarrassed at bringing it up.
"Have a lot of personality?" Agatha said, grinning.
Tarvek relaxed and smiled back. "Something like that."
"Uncle Barry says that sometimes. Not always like it's a good thing." She finished the last lockpick, dropped the replacement claws into their pouch, and patted the dragon's tummy before it zoomed upward again.
"Maybe he means the Castle," said Gil.
"They don't get along very well sometimes," Agatha admitted.
"Um," said Tarvek. "Do either of you read much history?"
"Not really," Agatha said, a little confused. "I didn't have a lot of books before the school. Just the ones Uncle Barry bought when we were travelling, or wrote down."
Gil looked uncomfortable. "Me neither. I'm working through the school library."
"My family's town is right outside the area the Castle can reach with torchmen," said Tarvek. "It was built as close to Mechanicsburg as it could get without being destroyed. The Castle would probably still like to do that, if it could."
Agatha blinked. "I didn't know it could send them that far," she said, intrigued. She wasn't exactly sure how far Sturmhalten was, but she knew it would have taken a lot longer to walk than it had in airships. You couldn't see it from Mechanicsburg. "Why did your ancestors want to build right at the edge of our lands?"
"We were serving the Storm King," said Tarvek proudly. "Your ancestors weren't like your uncle, they were really dangerous. The Storm King was protecting everyone, so he had to keep them inside their own lands where they couldn't attack anyone. We were the closest, because we were needed on the pass, the other castles keeping them in were further away."
"Oh." Okay, she could see that. She liked Castle Heterodyne, but it could be really mean, and Franz used to eat people, and Uncle Barry had told her that their ancestors had mostly looked after Mechanicsburg but weren't usually very nice. It made sense if that meant they'd attacked people outside it. "So the Storm King was kind of like Baron Wulfenbach?"
"No!" said Tarvek, looking like he'd bitten into a bad nut. "The Storm King had a right to rule Europa."
"How come?" Gil asked. "I'd heard of the Storm King, but besides him and the Heterodyne Boys I thought it had mostly always been a lot of little kingdoms and things trying to conquer each other."
"He had agreements and things," said Tarvek, tipping his chin up a little haughtily. "And he was a King."
Agatha exchanged a puzzled look with Gil. "The Baron and Uncle Barry have agreements," she said. They'd just made one with Tarvek's father. "Isn't that why you're here?"
"Kings - and princes - usually outrank barons," Gil offered. "I don't think Sparks usually bother about that though."
"The Storm King wasn't a Spark," said Tarvek. "In the fifty families the Spark's still not the only thing that matters."
"I know," Gil said, making a face. "It's always who your family are."
Tarvek frowned at him. "Sparks care about that too, as soon as it's their family inheriting."
Gil looked away, then said, "But I don't think the Storm King's father ruled Europe, either."
Gil was starting to look upset and Agatha wasn't sure if Tarvek knew why. "Anyway," she said to Tarvek, "Uncle Barry said your father wrote to them, so I guess he doesn't think it's a bad idea. If the Storm King has heirs who are supposed to be protecting Europe, they obviously need help, so I think they should do that too."
Tarvek looked surprised and then smiled. "Maybe they will." He looked at Gil and added, "Sorry. We were meant to be exploring and I got distracted."
Gil took a deep breath and smiled back. "No problem. Let's go."
Agatha twitched the dragon-clank's tether so that it dived back down toward them and then lunged away again impatiently. Gil grabbed her and steadied her, and they set off to see what the Baron had built lately.
Tarvek followed them, head jerking up to every muffled sound vibrating through the girders around them. The big, empty space carried sounds, so they were quiet, bare feet pattering along walkways with barely more noise than a mimmoth. All of them were careful, jumping and holding their breath when a panel tipped slightly under Agatha's heel and dropped back into place with a clatter, but for Agatha and Gil it was a fun sort of wariness, scares followed by hands flattened over their mouths to muffle giggles. At times Agatha thought Tarvek was really afraid - once he froze so sharply she found herself remembering her uncle, still like that with his hand holding her tight against him - and she wondered if he was enjoying this at all.
Then Gil jumped easily across a gap between webs of girders and leaned back for Agatha, when she was just too short to reach, and Tarvek grabbed one of her hands tightly, so she could let go with the other and lean out far enough to grab Gil. They scrambled over, joined into a chain, the dragon's harness tangling her fingers and Tarvek's together, for several breathless moments keeping each other from falling. Then they were all clinging to the new scaffolding, and when Agatha grinned up at Tarvek he was smiling just as hard as she was.
"This wasn't here at all last time we came through," she whispered as they started toward the nearest walls.
"I know." Gil looked back, eyes alight. "They're building out between the labs over there-" He pointed left for Tarvek's benefit. "And the living quarters that way. I couldn't tell what they were putting in, last time, but there are some really big rooms and I saw them bringing up really enormous lamps."
"Lamps?" asked Tarvek. "Like ones for really big rooms?"
"I guess. They were shaped funny. All flat. We can probably find them; they can't be that hard to-" Gil broke off abruptly at the distinct ringing of an adult-sized boot on the catwalks.
Tarvek went utterly still again, except for his eyes darting around. Agatha looked toward the sound, off to their right, and wondered if they shouldn't have gone for deeper shadows.
Another footstep, and another, and a figure came out from behind a corner of the new walls. Agatha relaxed. It was a Jäger. He tilted his head, sniffed twice, and then looked straight at them and grinned so his sharp teeth caught the light.
Agatha grinned back and waved.
The Jäger made a gesture somewhere between a wave and a salute and walked on without stopping. Once he was gone Tarvek let out a strangled sounding gasp and Gil looked at him with concern. "I told you the Jägers ignore anyone with Agatha," he said.
Tarvek still looked rather pale. Agatha took his hand again. "I am the Heterodyne, you know," she said, a little jokily because it wasn't exactly true until she came of age, but she thought the reminder might help.
Tarvek squeezed her hand and managed to smile at her. "Right. And he really won't tell anyone?"
She shook her head. "If we were gone long enough people started to worry, I guess he'd come back to look for us. But I think everybody's calmed down a lot about that." Even Madame Otilia. Actually, Madame Otilia seemed calmer about a lot of things since she'd stopped being Madame Von Pinn.
"They know you do this?" said Tarvek. "Not just the Jägers, I mean, but your uncle and Baron Wulfenbach?"
"Um," said Agatha. "Kind of. The first time I went, we were just visiting, and they noticed we were gone and came looking." And Uncle Barry had told her she'd have to follow the school rules if she was going to attend, she remembered uncomfortably. But as long as they didn't damage anything or worry people she thought it was okay. It wasn't like the grownups tried very hard to keep them in, and it was so interesting out here.
"Oh," said Tarvek, looking a little uncertain again, although no longer as shaken as he had been.
"Baron Wulfenbach said our music box was pretty good for being made out of lab parts," Agatha added. "You can see it if you want, but the sound quality on the later ones is better."
"Here we go!" Gil whispered excitedly. Agatha and Tarvek both looked up at him. They were in among half-built walls now, and Gil grabbed Agatha's other hand and towed them around a corner to a maintenance door next to what did, indeed, look like the back workings of a really big flat lamp. After clambering around and puzzling over this for a bit, they reeled in the dragon, which made short work of the lock and then sat on Agatha's head (which really wasn't comfortable) as they went through.
And stopped and huddled in the corner next to it, because on one side of them was the big lamp and on the other was a coloured glass wall.
"What in the world?" Gil asked, sounding baffled.
"There are stained glass windows in Mechanicsburg," Agatha said, feeling very confused herself, "but not indoors."
Gil peered through a bit of pale yellow glass. "Well, we can't go through here, there's people. They'd see our shadows. Let's go find a different one."
Instead of opening the door again and going out, Tarvek shifted aside so Gil could reach it, and didn't take his eyes off the glass. "That's beautiful," he whispered. "It must look even better from the other side."
Gil looked at him for a moment, then said, "There were a bunch of the lights. If we find an empty room we can look at the glass from inside."
Tarvek stared longingly at the glass for a moment longer - Agatha tried not to be impatient, because it was pretty but she'd rather see one she could actually look at properly instead of staying squished in a corner because there were people using the room on the other side of it - and then followed them out. They found an empty room on the third try and wandered around it a few times, looking at the stained glass and trying to guess the room's purpose from the flooring. But Tarvek was too nervous about somebody coming in to enjoy that as much, and Agatha and Gil had to admit he had a point, so they went back up to climb around investigating the lamp and look at the indoor window from behind.
"They are usually meant to be seen in sunlight," Tarvek said, sitting in the cool spot behind one of the mirrors that made sure most of the light was thrown into the room. "I don't know why they're building them indoors."
"Most of the exterior windows on the dirigible are meant for people to see out of, I think," said Gil. "Maybe Baron Wulfenbach wanted some anyway because he likes them as much as you do."
Tarvek looked somewhat doubtful about that - perhaps he was just having a hard time imagining Baron Wulfenbach admiring a stained glass window.
Gil shrugged, and they moved on, because even behind the mirrors the lamps were awfully warm. Agatha was sweaty all over and it was just as well they'd be made to take baths when they got back.
The big rooms with stained glass windows gave way to finished labs that Agatha and Gil had seen already. They didn't meet up quite evenly, because the rooms were different shapes and there was a lot of support equipment on the lab side. Agatha thought it might be time to go back. Tarvek hadn't seen the labs, but they were more likely to have people in them, so he probably didn't want to see them right now, and she was getting tired.
She was surprised when Tarvek slipped away into an opening she hadn't even paid attention to and then peeked out of it, glasses slightly askew and looking excited. "Come in here!"
They did. There wasn't anything inside, just a space, but it was a nice space. The flooring extended into it, and it was big enough for all three of them to spread out a bit, but it was too low and narrow to be a room meant for grownups.
"You found a secret room," Agatha said, pleased. "I mean, you found an accidental secret room."
Tarvek looked a little flushed and, suddenly, much more relaxed. "I thought maybe we could make a... a redoubt here."
Gil looked at him. "It's not a fort..."
Tarvek flushed a bit more. "A figurative one. Where we could... could put things we didn't want found. Or come to work on them. Or talk. If you wanted."
Gil brightened. "That sounds like a good idea." He looked up at the ceiling centimeters above his head and laughed. "At least until we get taller."