Marital Difficulties
"Raus." Lady von Bek-Minct's husband's deep, flat voice echoed down the long-neglected corridor, followed by the slam of a heavy door, a squeal, and the sound of breaking dishes.
Lord von Bek had come back from wherever he'd gone a much-changed man.
Scowling, the tall, angular middle-aged woman stepped aside as the dripping maid scurried past blubbering.
"Let the fool play with his toys until needed – there is enough time to find Ravenblade before the Conjunction." Klosterheim said, bottomless eyes two dark pits in the light that streamed down from the single unglazed cruciform arrow loop as if he stood upon a crucifix.
Lady von Bek-Minct stared icily down her long, pointed nose at her advisor in his rusty black cleric's robes. "And the von Bek famly fortune?"
"Your debts are not my concern!" Klosterheim snapped. "Cultivate patience, my lady, or lose all!"
All? All? She glared at the nail studded oak and iron door of the armory. Dear Madame Blavatsky, often chided Lady von Bek-Minct for her lack of patience, but when the casino debts of Monte Carlo came calling despite the Kaiser's war, pretty promises about reshaping Reality to her will were now the last thing Lady von Bek-Minct cared about.
Klosterheim, whom dear Helena had personally sent to be her helpmate in matters spiritual, had best get things under control and soon!
Little Jars of Screws
Entering the maze on the trail of the little tank, my mind replayed parts of my journey on the silver-black sea.
Distract me from the pain. Tell me of your great grandfather, the dragon hissed in the space behind my eyes. What did Al tell you of u— of Zodiac?
Queasy, I'd grumbled, so many twinkling crimson stars among black branches overhead, "Once upon a time, there was a little girl who realized early in life, even if she had the right hair, the right clothes, the right toys, or the right face, nobody would like her anyway because she was weird. So, she pleased herself. The end."
Tell me about Al.
There was the sharp sound of leather upon human skin.
…Al!
"What the… What does my great-grandfather have to do with, with—" I sat up, waving my arms, improvised craft tipping violently. Catching myself before I slid off, I added, "With some batshit German stage magician? With tanks? With poppies and Nazis and Poland and China dolls?"
There is a long, long silence in the dark somewhere behind my eyes, then: Zenith who was once Odalric came back from his first thousand years upon the Moonbeam Roads a different creature.
"Whoop. Di. Do." The EXIT door heaved, taking me with it, "We all have bad days. I'd like this one to end right no– blarch!"
…("Oh God")
Stomach empty, I sat up blotting my mouth on my work apron, "What do I have to do to get out of here?"
Do as I ask, and I— he, might let you go.
"Might. Great." Rolling onto my back, I'd pillowed my head on my arms, strange treasures heavy in my apron pocket, searching my memory for what little I had left of Al, a blacksmith in an age of automobiles.
Of his workshop in the basement.
Of jars of screws and nails, of paintbrushes and broken furniture awaiting repair, a lathe in the corner, the sound of great-grandmother Agatha's footsteps on the worn green and black checked linoleum floor overhead. The clank of the oven door as she took a cherry stollen out of the oven to cool on the windowsill.
Of sitting upon Great Grandpa Al's workbench, legs swinging, cherry stollen crumbs on my face.
Of handing him tiny brass cogs, telling him whatever it is that a four-year-old tells a seventy-year-old who is repairing a broken clock while eating stollen as a metallic green fly beat itself to death on a little dusty window.
Of Great Grandpa Al showing me something he called a theater program, Cardinal's game murmuring on the old Philco radio.
Of the strange long white-haired woman on the tattered cover who had red eyes and wore a top hat. "No, no… schatzi, not a lady. That's Zenith. He's dangerous to people like you and me." Great Grandpa Al had said very, very quietly in his thick German accent before limping away to slip the strange paper into a stack of old Popular Mechanics magazines.
Of learning that later that week, Great Grandpa Al carefully placed his false teeth upon his workbench beside his little magnifying glass and then collapsed. Great-grandmother found him face down and cold upon the painted concrete floor when she brought him his insulin.
Of stealing that magnifying glass after the funeral because he told me the day he showed me the theater program that soon it would be mine and to never, ever lose it.
Because were I ever unlucky enough to meet this Zenith person, I would need it.
"I've a new story to tell you, old dragon." I stared up at the black branches and crimson stars. "But you'll have to explain it to me."
Accompanying the Machine
As Britain's electric tanks pushed the Kaiser's army back into the Fatherland and Tsar Nicholas, Rasputin executed and foolish German wife cast aside, drove the Red army from Holy Russia, Zenith, once Odalric, placed his violin beneath his chin, steadied the bow, and surveyed his workshop with satisfaction.
Crimson eyes behind mirrored lenses half- closed, counting the time under his breath, Zenith accompanied himself on the phonograph in a composition he'd written somewhere in a desert, runic tattoos swirling hidden up his forearms, around his biceps, colliding between his shoulder blades beneath his loose silk dress shirt and soft collar. Understanding the theory behind his dream but lacking the skill to manifest it, he ordered Alwin the blacksmith, a Red army refugee with unruly red hair and a polio twisted leg, to move into the castle armory's long-cold forge.
Because they needed to eat, the obsolete prince ordered Agatha, the little man's wife, who was very, very pregnant, to keep house for them until his dream of da Vinci's war machine became reality.
He remembered when, little electric runabout inexplicably broken, he'd sat in the farrier's cottage behind the empty stables watching the man's wife cook, because: "Mein GOTT, my lord, don't touch that! Everything in this forge is red hot, deadly sharp, or both!"
Exiled to the kitchen, he'd watched plump and very pregnant Frau Schmidt nervously waddle back and forth between the well-scrubbed worktable and the big iron stove. When the munitions factory whistles and church bells rang at noon down below in Mirenberg, she timidly pushed a meager plate of kartoffelpuffer, sauerkraut, and black-market sausage across the scarred table to him before standing beside her husband as he ate their meal, little hands twisting and untwisting her shabby poppy-embroidered apron.
This feast was followed by a simple cherry stollen lashed with cream and a tiny, chipped glass of schnapps.
It was simple, honest food, and it was delicious.
Indifferent to having partaken in flour, meat, and sugar stolen from the Kaiser's army, Lord Odalric contentedly smoking a borrowed meerschaum load of equally contraband tobacco, casually pulled a fine porcelain plate from an intersecting reality rimmed with green and black diamonds, Harlequin grinning in the poppy-bordered center, and presented it to Frau Schmidt.
From now on he, their landlord, would dine here, and not the castle's shabby dining room with his wife and her odious advisor.
And that he would eat from this plate and this plate alone.
At noon.
Sharp.
Every. Day.
Little Frau Schmidt's cooking didn't leave him dozy or nauseous like the meals prepared by his wife's Paris-trained chef.
The uproar his little act of rebellion caused had been quite gratifying.
The obsolete prince grinned, changing tempo in the cavernous space, Stradivarius in duet with itself. Now two little mice lived in his workshop; two little mice expecting a third. Herr Schmidt to create the parts of his dream, Frau Schmidt to create the identical meals he required.
Zenith was certain this time he'd succeed at making da Vinci's war machine work (with his own improvements, of course) without the interference of Lady von Bek-Minct, her aggravating advisor, or his well-meaning cousin, Sir Seaton Begg.
Begg, intellectual sparring partner that he was, was the biggest, pompous busybody Zenith had ever met traversing the Moonbeam Roads.
Especially where preserving the British Empire was concerned.
A Cat in a Hat
"Now wait a damned minute. He would have been a small child in 1903!"
…those who walk between worlds, time, place, and self are echoes of echoes of echoes – it was a Whistler who met the Angel of the Perverse in some other Paris and painted his portrait one month before his death, his final masterpiece—
"And this Begg person?" I remember interrupting, "What about him?" Something huge just below the surface of the silver water moved beneath my EXIT door, towards the black horizon.
The dragon that was everywhere and nowhere at once paused for an eternity as a small black and white cat spun past me in watever it was's wake using a very unusual hat for a boat…
…the Begg who ordered Zenith to place our, his, soul in Klosterheim's body using his father's sword cane, pinning him in place forever, was a different Begg from the Begg who witnessed his self-sacrifice - I assure you that they were the same Begg.
"Whatever... and the Dark Empire? Was that also Klosterheim's doing? Sounds like it from what you've told me of him!"
Begg, in his many iterations, by preserving his beloved British Empire at any cost, created that cheap imitation of the Bright Empire. The Balance will level itself in a single flash of fire and blood – it is not your concern. The dragon said disdainfully from the shadows.
"Oh, yeah. Bright Empire/Dark Empire. How fucking original. Something tells me, had you not been so sick as a child, you would be even more of a monster than you are now." I grumbled.
Touché. The dragon did not sound offended. Now we bargain.
"No," I remember saying, locking eyes with the red stars overhead, "Complete disclosure, first, or no deal."
For the Revolution!
"We liberate this place in the name of the People!"
Zenith, ears ringing, chuckled blindly up at the ceiling of his armory workshop, glasses knocked askew by the explosion, opium cigarette sent flying.
It was a rare event that anything was claimed, "In the name of the People!" in the albino's immediate presence, but only because he made a point of avoiding any theatre as staged by people who, lacking the right pedigree and prerequisite inbred hereditary insanity, relied upon a thin veneer of grand ideals concealing a thick layer of greed to become king.
Not that Zenith cared: traversing the Moonbeam Roads he'd learned early such ambitions needed munitions. Munitions he was happy to supply for a price even if he sometimes stole those munitions from himself.
In those cases, Zenith was always careful to leave behind a signed receipt.
He was, after all, a von Bek.
Von Beks did the Devil's work.
It was the family business.
Business which sometimes took the form of property damage, redistribution of wealth, justice at last, arbitrary executions, and considerable bribes until the next liberator, be it some ranting Bolshevik with a beard and a bomb or some South American applicant for the leadership of some jungle hellhole. Even Sir Seaton Begg, in his many editions, when ensuring that Great Britain flourished throughout the ever-expanding multiverse regardless, unwittingly used the albino's discreet services— Zenith's ears, the ringing having subsided, informed him that his wife was behind the explosion; he'd know that stomp anywhere!
Treffer, the albino thought. Treffer, you boring kuh. I didn't think you had the imaginat— a fashionably pointed woman's boot abruptly connected with his ribs.
Hard.
More kicks, followed by someone who reeked of garlic, sweat, and vodka tying him seated against a pillar after finding a pulse in the side of his neck.
Bound, Zenith stifled a grin as that same someone clumsily straightened his broken glasses. No matter, the fissure in Reality pulsing invisibly in the center of the family armory was unharmed. All he had to do was be patient. Then he'd slip through it and set up shop somewhere more convenient.
Zenith studied his captors through the one remaining smoked lens. His wife, by giving up on hereditary monarchies and venturing into Marxism, had outdone herself. Trotsky, Lenin, and if he wasn't mistaken, Dzhugashvili the thief, Stalin… Zenith had done business with more than one version of the hairy little divinity school dropout turned bank robber, each iteration of the cobbler's son possessing the finesse of a grenade dropped in a toilet… "Well, done, kuh. Well done!" he murmured under his breath.
There was a burst of Russian, "Pizda! You said, this would be refuge from the Whites. It is a pig stye!" Trotsky gestured around him, goatee bristling, face purple, "The Revolution needs ammunition, funds… and you expect us to hide in… this… THIS?"
Balding head glinting, Lenin agreed, shabby brown suit and ragged goatee peppered with splinters of the von Bek armory door.
Obviously, the Revolution had liberated Mirenberg Castle in the name of the People expecting treasure as well as luxury.
And been very, very disappointed by what it found.
How tragic.
"Gold!" Stalin raged. The short man with the big mustache, also peppered with door splinters, gestured angrily around him, "Jewels, paintings– I see none!"
Seems my darling wife rolled the dice and came up snake eyes. Too bad. Schadenfreude overcoming caution, Zenith grinned behind his white, curtaining hair as his domineering wife attempted to bluff her way out of a situation rapidly turning against her. Zenith let his head loll sideways so he could scan the smoke and dust-filled room. Where's Klosterheim?
"Liar!" Stalin raised a large paw. Comrade von Bek-Minct's head rocked backwards.
Zenith smirked. What little treasure remained, was long gone for his education, his upkeep– Kaiser Bill and his futile bid for respect got the rest including Zenith's horse. He tested the rope binding his wrists behind him. Were there a market for dust and moths, Comrade von Bek-Minct and her former friends would be very, very rich.
A thin stream of gasoline trickled past.
How very interesting.