Agatha H. And the Clockwork Princess (49 page)

Anevka stared at him and then slammed her hand down upon the desk. “My father is dead! I cannot
believe
you are unaware of this! The town has been in mourning for hours!”

Selnikov reddened. “I was busy. Until quite late in the evening. I left orders that I was not be disturbed for any reason.” The look on his face said that he regretted that particular order now.

Anevka considered him. “That’s right, dear
Lady
Selnikov is in Paris, isn’t she? Well I hope you enjoyed your little dalliance, and you’re damned lucky that you weren’t required.”

Selnikov glowered, and took another drink. “Your brother?” he asked brusquely.

“My brother has denounced me to the Geisterdamen loudly and extensively. He ordered the guards to catch me, and immediately pledged fealty to this Holy Child and The Lady. He even shot at me as I was escaping.”

Selnikov stared at her. “Good Lord.”

Anevka nodded with a touch of pride. “Yes, he was
very
convincing. They will trust him. He will do his work, as we will do ours, and everything will work out beautifully.”

She glanced out the window, and saw that the eastern sky was beginning to glow with the pre-dawn. “But now I
must
insist upon a change of clothes. It simply will not
do
to topple the Empire in our pajamas.”

Several hours later, Prince Tarvek stumbled into the lab that now housed Moxana, as well as the deactivated Tinka. He collapsed into a chair and gazed at her in exhaustion. “Sweet lightning,” he confessed to her, “That woman is going to
kill
me! I’ve
got
to get some sleep.” He waved a hand. “She only stopped working because I refused her more stimulant. I… I’m worried it might damage her—well… that body.” He paused, and shook his head in despair. “I don’t even know if Agatha is still in there. I haven’t seen her for hours, and Lucrezia’s control of the body seems to be absolute. The machine she’s working on is almost finished.”

He scowled. “This will be trouble. The actual Lady Lucrezia is too much of a wild card. I probably should have killed her when I had the chance, but this opportunity was just too…”

He looked at the implacable face of The Muse. “This
will
work—won’t it?”

Smoothly, the seated figure fanned out a large deck of cards face down, and gestured to Tarvek that he was to select one. Tarvek gingerly picked a card. He turned and examined it, a frown crossing his face. The picture showed a glowing funnel cloud bearing down on, or possibly being generated by, an intricate little device of unknown function. The number at the top read “XXX.”

“
The Whirlwind
,” he said flatly. “‘Great power at great risk.’ Or alternatively, ‘beware of things underground.’ Or possibly, ‘expect an unexpected friend.’ Or even ‘learn a new piece of music.’” He flipped the card back onto Moxana’s board with a sigh. “Thank you, oh Muse of Mystery.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I suppose I’ll just have to…”

He paused, as faint strains of… was that music? It
was
music, of a sort, and it was getting louder—or closer…

This latter proved to be the correct guess, as around the corner came a flowing tide of light. It was a horde of tiny machines. Tarvek realized that they looked similar to the small clank Agatha had worked on.

They were all producing a soft orange glow, and they were all humming a variant of the weird atonal melody that he had last heard from Agatha herself. And now, at the crest of the tide of machines, Agatha herself appeared. Her feet hidden by the adoring devices. To the electrified Tarvek, she appeared to be gliding towards him upon a seething river of light. Somehow, he could instantly tell that this was in fact Agatha, and not Lucrezia. With that realization, he tore his eyes away from her and focused on the machines at her feet.

“Your little clanks,” he breathed, “They’re reproducing the heterodyning music. Brilliant!” He listened briefly. Tarvek considered himself a rather good musician, and he realized—“The music is a little off from the stuff you produce yourself. Understandable, of course, but the effect upon your mind must be—”

Agatha’s hands whipped out and Tarvek found himself caught up, his face centimeters from hers. Up close he could see that she was under considerable strain. Sweat was pouring down her face, and the pupils of her eyes were reduced to pinpoints.

“She’s winning,” Agatha rasped in a guttural voice. “I need your lab.”

“Yes!” Tarvek gasped. “Yes! Of course!” He succeeded in pulling himself free of Agatha’s grasp. “What are you going to do?”

She looked at him bleakly. “The only thing I
can
do.”

Meanwhile, Agatha’s rescuers found themselves trudging through the sewers of Sturmhalten for yet a third time. Their situation was improved however, in that this time, they had been supplied with guides, a pair of dour plumbers, who reluctantly admitted to knowing the sewers “as well as anyone.”

They were also accompanied by one Herr Veilchen, who freely admitted to being an assassin in the employ of the Royal Family. The only ones who didn’t feel nervous around him were the Jägers, who cheerfully tried to engage him in technical discussions about the best way to kill people in increasingly bizarre situations.

“I cannot believe how big these damn sewers are,” Krosp groused for possibly the hundredth time. “The town isn’t
that
big.”

“You gotta remember,” Sturvin, the first plumber said, “Balan’s Gap used to be bigger. This is where the Western Coalition managed to hold back the old Heterodynes. There were a lot of armies bivouacked here for almost a decade before the Storm King whipped everyone into shape. The only reason the whole thing held together was because they had a proper sewage system.” You could tell that this was a man who believed that his field of specialization was single-handedly responsible for dragging mankind down from the trees. In this case, perhaps a bit too
far
down, but you still had to admire his enthusiasm.

Lars carefully stepped over a bubbling green puddle. “So how did you two get to be such experts on the secret passages down here?”

Sturvin snorted. “We’ve worked down here for twenty-seven years, man.”

The shorter plumber, Kalikoff, joined in. “When you’re being chased and you need a place to hide, you learn what to look for.”

Lars looked uneasy. “Chased? By what?”

“Duh—the usual. Giant cockroaches. Sewer serpents. Ghouls. It’s a
sewer
. With tunnels connecting to the
catacombs
. What do you expect?”

Lars shivered. “Most sewers don’t have any of that stuff.”

Sturvin blinked in surprise. “What?”

Kalikoff looked at Lars skeptically. “Really? No albino squid?”

“No!”

The small man frowned. “How about rats? Everybody’s
gotta
have them giant glowing rats.”

Lars shook his head. “No. Little rats. Sixty centimeters. Tops.”

The two plumbers looked at each other. Sturvin frowned. “That is one messed up ecosystem, man.”

Kalikoff shook his head in agreement. “So in these other sewers—if they don’t have this stuff, what do the
big
monsters eat?”

“What am I
doing
in here?” Lars screamed.

Zeetha patted him on the arm. “You’re here to rescue Agatha, hero.”

Lars closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Right! Yes! Agatha! Beautiful girl held captive by depraved prince. Yes. Third act. Curtain going up.” He took another breath and smiled at Zeetha. “Okay, I’m good.” Krosp rolled his eyes.

Maxim turned to Herr Veilchen. “Hyu know de layout uv der kestle. Vere do dey keep all dere beautiful gurl captives?”

The assassin considered this. “Yes, of course, you’ll want to rescue your friend first. I should have expected that. My priority is the shutting down of the lightning moat, but I don’t see a conflict. Once we get inside, I will direct you to the dungeons, and then proceed on my own.”

“Und vat if she iz not in der dungeons?”

“Then I expect you’ll cause enough havoc looking for her that I’ll have no trouble at all.”

Maxim laughed. “Hyu gots
dot
right.”

The cloaked man considered him for a moment. “I must confess to being surprised at the involvement of Jägermonsters in this matter. Is this Agatha of interest to the Baron?”

Maxim made a show of dismissing this idea. “Heh. Mizz Agatha, she help uz out avhile ago. She safe our lives. Ve gots to pay her beck. Hyu know how it iz.”

“Hmm, I see.” Veilchen answered like a man who did indeed know how it was, but only on an academic level.

“Besides,” Maxim continued, “Hit looks like dere might be sum goot fighting in dis. Dem Geistergurls iz pretty fast.”

Veilchen waved a hand. “Oh, I try to avoid unpleasantness like that.”

Maxim looked surprised. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. It’s much more satisfying to kill without a fight.”

Maxim stared at him. “Oh.” Was all he said.

“Quiet!” This was delivered in a strained whisper from Kalikoff, who held up a hand to stop the group.

“What is it?” whispered Krosp.

“Listen,” Sturvin muttered, “There’re voices coming from the tunnel up ahead. Weird voices.”

This was not the first time this had happened. Zeetha frowned. “But I thought you said these were the secret tunnels.”

Sturvin shrugged. “Guess the Prince decided to share after all.”

Kalikoff crossed a passage off on a map. There were a number of other passages marked in red. “This was the last of the routes that the princess suggested.”

Veilchen leaned in. “But you know of others, don’t you? Tunnels that can get us directly into the castle.”

The plumbers looked at each other. “Well, yeah,” Kalikoff replied, “But you don’t want
those
.”

“Why not?”

“Those are in the Deep-down. That’s where the
worst
monsters are.”

Veilchen looked interested. “Really.”

“Yes.”

“Monsters.”

“Yes.”

“Scary monsters.”

“Yes!”

The assassin leaned in close. “Worse than
me?
”

Kalikoff stared at him for a second, swallowed and began releasing a set of bolts off of a nearby hatch. “Okay, down we go,” he muttered.

Maxim looked at Veilchen with admiration. “It iz a pleasure to vatch hyu vurk!” he said sincerely.

Veilchen looked perturbed. “I can honestly say I’ve never heard
that
before.”

With a sense of extreme caution, the party slowly clambered down a slime-encrusted ladder. The sewermen found a shelf full of lanterns and expressed a glum satisfaction when they were discovered to be still functional. The map was again consulted, a direction was picked, and off they went.

Zeetha found herself next to the taller of the plumbers. “So—if this place is so full of monsters, how is it you still know your way around?”

Sturvin sighed. “Well, we ain’t been in the Deep-down for years, but it weren’t always like this. We just started getting more and more of the big monsters, and there were a sight few too many deaths down here. Finally Prince Aaronev had us close it all off.”

He paused. “But ten, fifteen, years ago, before it got bad…” he smiled at the memory. “Well, it was an event if we had one of the Prince’s experiments escape down here.”

Kalikoff chimed in. “Heck, yeah! All the young bucks swarming around down here with torches, trying to impress the girls. And afterwards, when it had been caught and hauled up, why there’d be a celebration! A big bonfire, and lots of drinking in the streets! The Prince would make a speech, and hand out a reward to the feller who actually killed the thing.”

Sturvin nodded. “Used to be kind of fun.”

Kalikoff grinned. “And the girls would run around kissin’ everyone in sight! Didn’t even seem to mind the smell.”

Sturvin dropped his voice conspiratorially, “Our old Guild-master used to say that the Prince cooked one up and let it go intentionally every couple of years just to liven things up some.” He sighed for days gone by. “But these days—”

From a pool before them, a monstrosity that seemed to consist of nothing but eyes, tentacles and teeth erupted upwards in a geyser of filthy water. It screamed in triumph, whipped out a set of bright green limbs, grabbed a startled Kalikoff, and vanished, pulling the screaming plumber down into the murky depths.

Sturvin looked at the rest of the party, which was frozen in shock. “—
These
days, it ain’t no fun at
all!
”

There followed a timeless period of running, screaming, crashing into various things and finally, with a grand sense of inevitability, tumbling over a precipice, and falling into an even deeper, darker pit.

Some time later, various groans filled the darkness. Eventually these groans turned into complaints. This was encouraging.

“Ug. What did we land on?”

“Hy lended on rocks. Hyu lended on me.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Who’s got a lantern?”

“Er… dropped it.”

“Terrific.”

“Hey—Herr Sturvin, aren’t there supposed to be phosphorescent crystals or fungi or something down here?”

“Oh,
those
. Yeah, we sold ’em.”

“Figures.”

“I have a firestarter.”

“Great! Who’s got the lantern?”

“…Look, I’m really sorry about that.”

“Hey—wait… There’s some kind of moss on these rocks.”

“Moss? Naw, it’s too dry.”

“So what do you call this?”

“Huh. Okay, light it up.”

There was the scrit-scrit-scratch of the firestarter, a gentle “fwomph” and Lars found himself holding a genially grinning skull with a head of burning hair. Reflexively, he shrieked and dropped it. It fell and went out, but before it did, everyone could see that they were in a cell, carpeted with mummified bodies.

In the privacy of the darkness, everyone gave vent to some screaming. Once equilibrium had been somewhat restored—

“Hokay! Der goot newz is dot der bodies vas not scattered.”