The morning before the coronation the children had their dressing supervised by Otilia, who helped quite a bit with Tarvek's somewhat complicated regalia. His clothes were white and gold, and he had been admonished not to risk getting them dirty, although it hardly needed saying. He had no intention of being anything less than pristine. Anevka, representing the other side of their family, was in red and dusky lavender with a geometry-defying version of the Sturmvoraus crest securing her coiffure. Agatha was wearing a dress of green crushed velvet, with a very full skirt that swished when she walked, to her delight. Otilia had stopped her from spinning around in the dressing room to see the skirt swirl around her. Gil was wearing dark teal, with a Wulfenbach sigil in gold at his throat. He was holding his head up mostly to show it off, but it did give him a strangely regal air.
Otilia left them to join the other Muses, who would be going a bit later than the main group, and get ready herself with strict instructions to stay in the dressing room and, if possible, stay still until the Baron and Barry Heterodyne came to collect them for the airship journey to the ground.
It was almost time to go. It seemed to have been almost time for an awfully long time. Where were the adults, anyway? And Agatha's cowlick was still standing up at the crown of her head. Tarvek nervously smoothed it down again.
It popped right back up, of course, and Agatha squawked. "Stop that!"
"Sorry!" Tarvek put his hands firmly behind his back. "It just... won't lie flat." He'd actually been growing his own hair out for the past few months in the hope of getting the foundation for a more dignified cut. It had kind of worked. Gil's was hopeless; he had apparently inherited the Baron's hair, which was suited for the classic madboy look and remained stubbornly fluffy even when oiled. Agatha's was actually very sleek except for that one bit, which Tarvek was currently finding highly distracting.
"I know. It's fine." Agatha frowned at him, then offered magnanimously, "But we can try to hold it down if you like. There's clips and things."
"Try this one." Anevka, who had been sitting off to the side looking like an illustration of patience, picked out a barrette with little swirly malachites on it.
Tarvek bit his lip, then carefully smoothed down the cowlick (again) and fastened it to the rest of Agatha's hair with the barrette. There. That was-
-The barrette landed on the floor with a soft clatter as the cowlick sprang back up.
"Okay," said Gil, "how did you do that?"
"I didn't do anything," Agatha said.
Tarvek frowned and tried again, watching closely. He must have given it too much wiggle room, because the hairs just above the barrette had a definite springy curve to them that gradually grew, sliding free until they straightened out all at once. The barrette stayed where it was for a moment and then slithered gently down her hair until the hinge got hung up. The weight of the barrette swung down from that point, and Agatha yelped.
Tarvek freed the barrette and put it back in, and then another, smaller, one in front of it to hold down the springy curve. The tiny little bit in front of that started to grow, and Tarvek hastily put a small clip on that just as the barrette at the back sprang free. A moment later the two remaining clips slid out as well, as the cowlick triumphantly freed itself.
"Agatha, your hair is an escape artist," Gil said, laughing.
"Maybe if we tied it to something?" said Tarvek.
Anevka looked up again in some alarm at this. "Oh, dear."
"I guess," Agatha said, starting to sound interested. She positioned herself between the mirrors to try to see what was going on. Tarvek gauged the angles and tried to stand where she could watch, but wasn't sure it was working very well. "Do you mean with ribbon or the hair itself?"
"It would be better to calibrate the pressure correctly, but it seems to have a very narrow range of tolerance. If we actually tie the hair to the clip, it might both prevent sliding under low pressure and reinforce the clasp against springing open at high pressure," Tarvek began, warming to the subject.
"That's never-" Anevka began.
"That sounds like we should start over and build something that works properly in the first place," Agatha pointed out. Anevka sighed and sat back.
"You do that." Tarvek began combing her hair smooth again in preparation. "I'll try tying it in!"
Three minutes later, Gil was helping Agatha build a rather complicated hair clip and discussing the possibility of adding small balloons to alleviate the added weight. Tarvek had knotted the hair from her cowlick and two ribbons around five barrettes and was starting to feel frantic because it seemed as if every time he got part of it weighted down, it shifted the forces on some other piece of hair and allowed that to spring up. But he almost had it-
He saw the door open, in one of the mirrors, and Barry asked, "What in the world?"
"Um," said Tarvek, calming down and looking rather guiltily at Agatha's new hairstyle. It might be flatter, but it wasn't precisely an improvement.
"We were trying to build a new kind of hair clip," Agatha said cheerfully, then frowned as she moved her head. "Um, ow?"
Barry rubbed a hand over his mouth. "I think the prototype may need a little more development."
"It's not even symmetrical," Tarvek said sadly. And there were bits of hair that had got away from him popping out or crisscrossing the barrettes. Possibly he should have listened to Anevka, although she was being tactfully silent and not even visibly biting her tongue.
Barry sat down behind Agatha to start trying to pick the knots out. He had the ribbons loose and holding the uninvolved hair out of the way by the time there was another rap at the door, and Donna said, "What's keeping - oh, I see."
Tarvek looked up at her sheepishly and was rather startled by her gown. The designer had opted for something between artistic dress and a sari, contrasting with the more structured fashions that prevailed in Paris and most of the Empire, and she was wearing soft flowing layers of sheer silk in brilliant pink and flame colours. Barry caught sight of her in the mirror and simply stared for a moment, looking gobsmacked.
After a moment he got up and turned around to take her hands. "You look amazing." He leaned in to kiss her decorously, then added ruefully, "How are you at untangling hair?"
"More experienced than you," Donna said, amused. Her own hair was half up in a knot - secured by what looked like a thin dagger, and probably really was a sheathed one - but flowed down from it over her shoulders. "Let me see."
"Personally," said the Baron, as Donna peered into Agatha's hair and started taking apart the second barrette, "I think this is getting worryingly reminiscent of what happened with Otilia's wings."
"I don't mind if you cut it out," Agatha said, starting to sound irritated.
"That's not really ideal here," said Barry.
"Oh, we'll have to cut some of it," Donna said calmly. "It shouldn't show much."
Tarvek asked, trying not to sound strained, "What happened to Otilia's wings?" They'd been fine last time he saw her!
"Barry and Dr Beetle managed to wrap themselves in several metres of silk," said the Baron, absently.
"But-" Tarvek began.
"I'm sure it can't be recent," Anevka said, lightly patting her own hair into place again as if it might have moved.
"It was before you came to the school," Barry said. Donna waved him out of the light and he stepped carefully around to her other side. "The fabric on her wings was rather damaged when we found her body, and we got a bit… entangled... trying to replace it."
"Fortunately Otilia herself seemed mostly amused," said the Baron. "How are you doing, Agatha?"
"It was more fun trying to build a new clip," Agatha said with a sigh. Gil poked at their attempt, and Tarvek grudgingly admitted that it was prettier than his ad hoc solution and might have worked rather well if they'd solved the weight problem.
"I'm almost done," said Donna. She extracted another one and a half barrettes, then snipped free the hairs that had tangled in the hinges. "There. You can hardly tell. Or did you want any of those in?"
"Maybe we'd better just leave it loose," Barry suggested, sounding mildly alarmed.
"It's fine loose," said Agatha, flicking it back over her shoulder. Her cowlick bounced up, Tarvek ignored it.
"Good," said Barry, stroking her hair himself, more affectionately than to put it in order. "Because it's time to go."
Tarvek checked the clock one last time and drew a relieved breath. They weren't really late. The outflier to take them to the ground might make a slightly less stately descent, that was all, and everybody making the public entrance was together now. Barry wore nearly his usual brown, actually a very muted bronze, but of course several degrees more formal. He and Agatha would be pointedly in the audience, the Heterodynes offering the Storm King friendship and alliance partly by trying very hard not to steal the show. Right now he was standing between Agatha and Donna and looking immensely fond of everybody in the room.
The Baron, who played a somewhat larger role in the ceremony, was wearing the same deep teal as Gil along with a sweeping charcoal grey coat and loomed like a stormcloud rolling in over the ocean. "One last thing," he said. He handed them daggers in ornamental sheaths, leather and gold with vines twining around their symbols. "These aren't toys," he said. "And the blades are poisoned. Don't draw them unless you have to, but if anyone does get close enough to grab you, stab them hard."
"What poison did you use?" Tarvek asked. His matched his boots perfectly, but it still felt strange to go openly armed.
"A new one," the Baron said, sounding like he was trying not to smile. "I'll go over the formula with you later." He ruffled Gil's hair, which would have exasperated Otilia but had in fact no observable effect. "Ready?"
Tarvek looked at Gil, who seemed as comfortable as ever and had gone from strangely regal to outright full of glee when he looked up at his father, and Agatha, who had the quickest temper of the three and somehow looked completely natural with the dagger at the side of her skirt. "Ready."
They could have gone straight to the palace by airship, but the entire point was for there to be a show. So they landed outside the city and took the carriage waiting for them. It was gold and white, pulled by four white horses in gold harness, and looked like it might turn into a pumpkin at midnight. Klaus was giving it a slightly dubious look that meant he considered it silly, too showy — and showy in the way that wasn't his own personal version, which he denied having a flare for — but Tarvek looked enchanted.
Tarvek had pride of place, of course: the carriage was roofed but open, and constructed carefully to direct everyone's attention straight to his seat. The rest of them were visible but far enough back not to obscure him. (The designer had left room next to him for Gil and Agatha, but Barry was keeping Agatha on his lap. There were enough people trying to plan their wedding already. Anyway, considering the inheritance issues, honouring Anevka seemed only reasonable.)
"Klaus," Barry said under his breath as they paused for the city gate, "you already have a reputation as a grouch. Are you trying to add to it?"
"Yes," Klaus muttered.
Barry resisted the urge to clap a hand over his eyes. "I should have known," he hissed.
Klaus looked away from him, now clearly trying not to laugh, which might not make him look much less grumpy to anyone who didn't know him well but entertained Barry anyway.
The gates swung open and the crowd lining the streets sent up a shout.
Gil was sitting very straight and solemn, but he didn't try to hunch away from the crowd's gaze the way Barry remembered from Mechanicsburg. He kept his head up like he knew he belonged here, now, and maybe even the solemnity was more an attempt at what he thought the situation called for, because for a moment Barry saw him catch Donna's eye and both of them were trying not to grin.
The crowds here weren't the dignitaries who would be attending the coronation proper. Some of these were the people who lived here, most were somewhere between tourists and pilgrims. People who had taken time away from their farms and workshops, spent hard earned money to chase a little bit of a dream. People who believed, or wanted to, in everything the Storm King story promised. They cheered and waved, and pressed as close to the carriage as they could get and Tarvek waved back at them, bright eyed and awed, looking somewhere between happy and overwhelmed.
The expression reminded Barry a little - maybe a lot - of early days with Bill. When The Heterodynes are coming! had just stopped being something people cringed at, and the first time they'd realised people they'd never met were eager to see them. A connection he had stopped feeling with Mechanicsburg since the day he realised his mother was miserable. Intoxicating joy and exultant obligation.
The wind flung the spray from one of the many fountains across the road - and the open carriage - and Gil brushed droplets off his eyelashes. Tarvek barely seemed to notice. They'd dry quickly; the weather was warm for early spring and the sky was cloudless blue, perhaps not quite thematically appropriate for the Storm King but perfect for the people gathered outside.
The sun shimmered through the fountains and refracted from the Palace of Enlightenment ahead in a blaze of colour. (The palace, built as a place of welcome rather than a fortress, was nonetheless sturdier than it looked because it had also been built as a place to collect Sparks. Even so, it had been a near thing to get all the broken windows replaced in time.) The whole city was awash in rainbows you could touch, and everybody knew that meant hope.
Tarvek had been to see the Palace of Enlightenment once before. He knew all the history. Its construction, the Court and Sparks it had housed, the official Enlightened Laboratory Safety Procedures (a hobby of his father's - of course, none of the main labs were in the Palace itself, but it was said they'd been posted everywhere anyway). Its languishing during the war and the period afterward when discontent and fracturing alliances had forced Valois to spend more time in Paris, where much of the traditional machinery of government had remained throughout his reign, mostly to avoid the excitement. The conflicts there that had budded in his absence and flourished after his death... who had left in a huff, fought there, tried to keep it for themselves, laid claims of inheritance, tried to loot it, carried off furnishings and artwork they might even have a claim on "to protect them"...
The Palace wasn't a fortress, but Valois hadn't been stupid, and the city's defences had been designed by more Sparks than Mechanicsburg's. It had also been passionately cared for and defended by the Knights of Jove. It had stayed standing. On the other hand, it had been the site of a lot of wrangling and a tempting target, and it had also been made largely of glass. So Tarvek was in a position to appreciate the restoration.
It was widely believed that Barry Heterodyne had scoured Europa to find the glassmakers. Tarvek could hear people whispering about it as they passed. Tarvek knew that the scouring had, in fact, consisted mostly of setting every glassmaker in Mechanicsburg to the job and asking the Baron and Lady Gertrude Schallen if they recommended anybody. They'd both had a list.
"I should tell them you-" Barry began.
"This was your idea," the Baron said under his breath. "Don't go arguing with them about the story now."
They got safely past the first few guests and found Seffie waiting for them in the first of the various chambers given over to preparation. She whisked Anevka off, "just for now, I'll have her back to you for the ceremony", and the two of them quickly put their heads together. The excited whispering was either some plan they were cooking up or a dissection of the fashions guests were wearing. Barry and Agatha left to find their place in the audience and, in Barry's case, do the early socialising with guests.
Tarvek, Klaus and Gil, having shed most of their party, were let in to greet the Muses, who'd come more directly. Tinka was there, with Moxana, Otilia and Zene, Mnemosyne standing beside them. All of them turned to look as he entered the room and Tarvek was sorry to have missed their reunion, as well as Tinka meeting Mnemosyne. Then Tinka was across the room and falling into a court curtsey, skirts swirling out around her as she bent her knees. "My liege."
"Tinka," he breathed. She was so beautiful, so perfect. She tipped her head up out of its dip, blue eyes bright, and as she stood from her curtsey she somehow swept him up with her and twirled. I bet she didn't do this with Valois, Tarvek thought, looking down at her face. How could she look giddy? The Muses' expressiveness remained a mystery to him. He found himself laughing, sliding down in her arms to wrap his around her neck. "I'm going to find all your sisters and fix them," he confided breathlessly. "I will, I'm learning already, I helped fix Zene and everyone will help fix the rest, and then you'll all be together and with me and it will be perfect. I'm going to fix everything."
"Yes," said Tinka. "Yes, my King. It will be wonderful."
When she put him down, Tarvek reached out for Mnemosyne, drawing her over by one hand. "You've already met Mnemosyne," he said, feeling he should introduce them anyway.
"Yes," said Tinka. "She's adorable."
"Tinka has been very kind," said Mnemosyne, looking up at him. "She has been telling me about the circus."
"Did you enjoy hearing about it?" Tarvek asked.
"Of course." Mnemosyne enjoyed hearing about everything. With a primary function of gathering information, she took a quiet pleasure in just about any experience or in hearing about it. Sometimes Tarvek worried that she didn't seem to have preferences, other times it was enough that she was happy. For now he hugged her against him, still too elated to really worry about anything. Mnemosyne was wonderful, and his in a way that even the Muses weren't.
"I'm glad you get on with them," he said.
That was all there was time for. Mnemosyne was left with the Muses, mostly because she was valuable enough to need the protection and even more vulnerable than they were. Gil and Tarvek were shunted to another small dressing room, told to take the chance to use the bathroom since it would be a long ceremony. Tarvek returned from that to find biscuits in the dressing room, probably for the same reason, and no sign of Gil. He was nibbling one not very enthusiastically (breakfast had been fairly recent) when Gil slipped back through the door, looking excited and grinning.
Gil grabbed Tarvek's wrist and tugged and, when Tarvek opened his mouth to protest, clapped his hand over it and tugged harder. Tarvek gave in and followed — no one was meant to be collecting him for a little while yet, although he wondered how bad it would be to be late for his own coronation. Gil tugged him back to the door of the room the Muses were in, checking the corridor for servants or dignitaries first, and practically shoved Tarvek against the keyhole.
"— stayed on Castle Wulfenbach if I had known," someone finished, in the slightly too perfect vocal inflections of a Muse.
A soft chiming. "As if I knew myself." Otilia. "A sweet child, to answer your question. Overawed at being taught by a Muse — some of them are, although I suppose I know why he was now. He wants to repair our sisters, I suspect he feels like that about most of Valois's legacy. Something to resurrect and repair. He romanticises it all, of course, but it's not a terrible way to start."
Oh, they were…talking about him. The Muses talked about their Kings behind their backs? Gil had crouched down against the door, ear pressed to the crack as Tarvek's was to the keyhole, eyes bright with mischief.
"And as a King?" asked Tinka.
"He's a child," said Otilia. There was the sound of fabric rustling and Tarvek pictured her raising and lowering her wings in her version of a sigh. "…He'll listen to us more than Valois did, I believe, but he's not entirely unlike him. I said he was sweet, but he's stubborn too. If he thinks our advice is something he has to follow, that we're using him as a pawn — or a conduit for ruling through — I don't think he'll accept it. Even from us."
Valois hadn't listened to them? Tarvek knew he was blushing at hearing himself discussed, and he wasn't sure whether he should feel flattered at that assessment, although he sort of did. A lot of people had thought they could use him as a pawn. It was nice that Otilia didn't.
"And from the Baron?" asked Tinka.
"That will either bring more peace to Europa than I expected to see again, or destroy any chance of it and probably both of them," said Otilia, and suddenly she sounded portentious, more like a Muse than Tarvek had ever heard her. He looked down at Gil and saw that his eyes had gone wide. "Moxana?"
A gentle chime, not the one that was Otilia's laugh. Tarvek wondered if Moxana was showing a card, wondered which it was.
"Really?" Tinka said. "You think it's all right then?" Tarvek let out the breath he'd been holding just as Gil did the same and they caught each other's eyes and smiled at themselves. "And the Heterodyne Girl?"
"Really, one thing at a time," protested Otilia. "She's five."
This time the chiming was laughter, and not from Otilia.
"Ahem." The throat-clearing managed to be quiet, stern, and a little bit incredulous all at once. Tarvek started a bit guiltily and looked around to find the Baron beckoning them away from the door. "There you are." Still quiet, even as they turned away, as if he didn't want to give away the eavesdropping to the Muses. "What was that all about?"
"They were talking about you two," Gil said irrepressibly.
Tarvek glanced backward as they approached a corner and had just time to think Brilliant, we got caught sneaking off to eavesdrop on people again before the Baron's hand descended on his shoulder and - painlessly turned him to the side? Tarvek spent a few bewildered seconds sorting this out and then looked up. "I did know the wall was there."
"You didn't look it," the Baron said drily. "For all I know they might not mind your listening in. I should certainly think you can consult them openly if you choose, although at last check, Otilia explicitly preferred not to resume being an advisor."
"I didn't know you'd asked her to," said Tarvek in surprise.
"I didn't exactly. She'd just been able to resume her actual identity; Barry and I asked what she did want to do. But she was rather emphatic about it to Beetle."
"Maybe that's why she likes you," Tarvek said, which got him a curious look. "She sounded like Valois didn't listen to them much." He doubted it had occurred to Valois to ask if she'd like to do something different, especially if she hadn't had a chance to try it yet. It might not have occurred to him or the Baron if she'd always been doing the same thing, either.
"Did she." The Baron was silent for several steps and then asked, "What else did they say?"
Gil smothered a laugh, and the Baron shot him an annoyed look, but not very.
"About the two of us?" Tarvek asked, and waited for the short nod, because it was a little bit delightful to realise the Baron was curious over being talked about, too. "Otilia thinks it could either be great or a total disaster."
The Baron gave him a long look. "I admit, I was expecting something slightly less obvious."
Tarvek ducked his head, fighting not to smile. "Well, she asked Moxana. And apparently Moxana thinks we'll do all right."
The coronation took place in the grandest hall of the Palace, with rainbows glittering all over the audience. Cut-glass doors swung open at a touch and Tarvek looked at all of them, at the Muses and Mnemosyne arrayed waiting in front, and he strode down the centre of the hall while all the onlookers turned to watch.
Gil, the Baron and Anevka kept pace just behind him, flanked by six of the Knights of Jove.
"I need to pick an honour guard." Tarvek frowned. "Besides you," he added to the Baron. "It ought to be some of the Knights."
"Are there any of them you actually want to honour?" Barry said, which wasn't where Tarvek had expected that objection to come from.
"They didn't all want to work for Lucrezia," said Tarvek. "We can probably find at least half a dozen who didn't do any worse than go along with what they thought they had to."
Tarvek went straight ahead, looking up: Zene and Tinka were uncharacteristically still, but looking as if this were a captured instant; Moxana sat and Mnemosyne stood serenely; and Otilia's wings were spread as if to guard all of them. Her gown and her wings today were bright silver. He halted at the table that held the Lightning Crown, heart jarring in his chest with anticipation.
The Baron and Gil turned to stand well to his right side, Anevka to his left, at the ends of the dais.
Otilia spoke. "Long years ago, we were made for a King."
"He arose in a time of chaos," said Zene, "and raised from it harmony."
"Both by kindness and by force of arms he brought peace," continued Tinka, "to the lands of his birthright and beyond them." Tarvek saw, from the corner of his eye, the Baron glance sharply up at her.
"Andronicus Valois was the defender of Europa," Otilia resumed.
Zene. "But his heirs did not all continue in the legacy of peace."
"The line was lost." Tinka bowed her head.
"Through chance, through corruption, through fear of foes, for many years no clear heir stood above the rest," said Otilia.
Tinka's head came up then, blue eyes alight with unexpected mischief, and she stretched out her arms and raised them slowly, palms upward. "Until a conqueror and a Heterodyne found the child who had been hidden."
"Until the child himself uncovered the evils the Other had placed to subvert his town," Zene added.
"We gather to hail Tarvek Sturmvoraus as the heir of the Storm King," Otilia said, voice ringing, and together Zene and Tinka said, "Rejoice!"
The seven Popes came up and arrayed themselves on the other side of the table, in order of installation, between the crown and the throne. Tarvek knelt. They each blessed the crown - more and more elaborately until the last, who laid a hand on the crown but looked into Tarvek's eyes and simply said, "May you reign wisely and long. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
They filed away and returned to their seats. Tarvek stood and went around the table, facing the people.
The crown glittered in front of him, light sparking off the electrum.
"By the grace of God and the voice of Europa-"
"Naturally everyone wants to crown you," said the Baron, sounding as if he had had more than enough of the subject before they started. "I assume you're not inclined to let any of your relatives do it."
"I'm not inclined to try to manage the rest of the Popes if one of them did," Barry put in drily. "I think that may be beyond my diplomatic skills."
The details of Andronicus Valois's coronation were less than helpful. The opera's ceremonial acclaim did represent, in highly condensed form, a reality in which Valois had been blessed by the Popes (there were only five then) and encouraged by the nervous rulers of several variously sized "empires". But Valois had reigned in Provence before he'd begun his campaigns and while the local bishop was actually quite nice and probably wouldn't make trouble over it, the point wasn't to proclaim Tarvek the king of France.
"Maybe Otilia," said Tarvek, but he was frowning. That didn't feel right.
"I'm not sure she'd like it." The Baron drummed his fingers on the desk. "And the logic seems oddly circular, although you could make a case for acknowledging rather than conferring."
"I recuse myself for weird historical implications," Barry said. "Honestly, I think Klaus is the obvious candidate."
"No," Tarvek said, almost before Barry had finished speaking. They both looked at him in surprise, and he bit his lip and met the Baron's eyes. "Sorry. But that's got the same problems as letting any of my family do it, only worse."
"I do not-" the Baron began, scowling.
"Want me as a puppet. Right." Tarvek tipped his chin up. "And if you crown me, on top of everything else, who's ever going to believe that? It's a little too true that you're making me Storm King, it's just going to be a mess if the symbolism is saying that instead of that I'm supposed to be."
"Do you have a suggestion?" asked Barry.
Tarvek took a deep breath. "I can do it myself."
The Baron leaned back in his chair. "Yes," he said, "I think you'll have to."
Tarvek inhaled, picked up the crown - heavier than it looked, with all the openwork; much too light for the weight of a continent; it made his hands tingle - and set it on his own head. "-I am the Storm King."