Agatha H. And the Clockwork Princess (45 page)

Through this controlled chaos came the Baron’s secretary. DuPree and Boris had a professional understanding. Boris disapproved of DuPree because her methods, while undeniably effective, were unnecessarily messy. But he acknowledged that she was an effective tool.

In the spirit of fairness, it should be pointed out that, when the subject came up, Bangladesh freely admitted that she also thought of Boris as a tool.

Mostly, they just tried to avoid each other.

Boris’ presence here was unexpected. Whenever Klaus came along on a deployment, he turned over his considerable executive powers to his secretary. Boris usually wasted no time in using these powers to deal with the pressing bureaucratic business of the Empire without having to spend time waylaying the Baron.

“Hey, Boris!” she called out gaily. “Where is Klaus hiding? Tell his exalted crankiness that we are almost ready to ship out.”

Outwardly, Boris ignored this over-familiarity, but with satisfaction, DuPree noted the small twitch in his left eye.

“You may tell him yourself, Captain.” Boris pointed towards one of the enclosed observation decks that lined the walls. “He wants to see you at once.”

Several minutes later, Bangladesh strode into the room. Dozens of people were vying for the Baron’s attention. Klaus had the disconcerting ability to follow multiple conversations at the same time, and thus the noise level of the room approached that of a dull roar. Klaus himself was easy to spot, towering as he did above most of the other people present.

When the Baron saw her, he imperiously held up a hand to stop the other conversations and waved her over. Suddenly, there was a palpable edge in the room. Bangladesh realized that everyone was scared and nervous. Usually she was the cause of this, but now, there was something else… these people thought that something terrible was about to happen—

Without warning, Klaus’ arms snapped out and grabbed her. One enormous hand easily trapped both of Bangladesh’s hands straight up over her head. The other scooped her up and held her securely under his arm. “Quickly!” he roared.

Bangladesh had time for one startled thought.
“I never saw it coming.”
But instead of the expected blade, several small creatures were thrust at her. They looked like some sort of weasel, with short orange fur and thin, intelligent faces. This was so surprising that she didn’t even struggle as they sniffed inquisitively at her. She noticed other things now. There were odd little devices surgically attached to the creatures’ heads and they had no less than six short legs, tipped with delicate paws.

The handlers were more of the green-cloaked soldiers she had noticed in the hangar bay. At this point, all of the creatures gave a small squeal, and everyone relaxed. One of the handlers, who Bangladesh noted with a start of surprise, had the skull-piece of a Slaver warrior attached to his cloak, pulled his animal back, and the others did the same. “She is clean, Herr Baron.”

Klaus gave a nod. “Give us some room please.” Instantly, a large circle of emptiness was created as everyone drew back from the expected explosion. Klaus gently placed Bangladesh on her feet, paused, and then withdrew quickly enough that her stiletto barely sliced the edge of his sleeve. Then to the astonishment of everyone, including Bangladesh herself, Klaus bowed in apology. “Forgive me, your Highness.”

Bangladesh was always thrown whenever Klaus deigned to remember that she was a Queen
⁵⁸
. She took another half-hearted swipe with her knife, but the moment had passed. “Don’t ever do that again!” she snarled. “What’s with the weasels?” she demanded.

Klaus straightened up, collecting the Captain’s hat from the floor as he did so. He presented it to her as he waved over the head handler, who approached warily. “They are known as ‘Wasp-eaters.’” The little creature in the handler’s hand obviously realized that it was being talked about. It looked at Bangladesh and smirked.

“We developed them to hunt down Slaver Wasps, but unexpectedly, it appears that they can also detect when someone is infected with a wasp.”

Bang was unimpressed. “What, in case you don’t notice the whole shambling, twitching revenant act?” She snorted. “Yes indeed, mighty useful.”

Klaus rolled his eyes. “Yes, that was my initial reaction as well.” He paused. “Until recently.” He made a small sign to a group at the far door. This was opened, and the indignant person of Count Blitzengaard strode in.

“Herr Baron!” He began sternly, “I must vigorously protest this…this invasion!” He no doubt would have gone on for a good deal longer, but the wasp-eater nearest to him had snapped to look at him, then opened its mouth wide and hissed. The Count stopped dead and stared at the creature in astonishment.

Several other handlers had drifted close, and their charges reacted similarly. “What the devil are
those
things!” the Count cried out. Two more handlers darted forward and before the Count knew what was happening, his hands were secured behind his back. “What are you doing?” he roared.

“I’m afraid you must come with us now, Sir.”

The Count stared at Klaus with wide, fearful eyes. “But I’ve done nothing wrong! I am a Royal Courier! No one is allowed to interfere with—We have Diplomatic Immunity! By your own decree!”

Klaus nodded. “You are correct, my dear Count. I assure you, we will do all we can to cure you.”

“You must—!” The Count’s brain belatedly analyzed Klaus’ statement. “Cure? Wait!” But by then, he had been carried out the far door.

Klaus glanced at Bangladesh. Her face was a mask of amazement. There were many bad things you could say about Captain DuPree
⁵⁹
, but she was second to none when it came to assessing threats.

“You mean he’s—”

Klaus nodded. “Infected by Slaver Wasps. A ‘revenant’ under the command of The Other. Yes.”

“But he… he looks perfectly normal.”

“Yes.” Klaus lowered his voice. “As do the one hundred and seventy others we have uncovered aboard Castle Wulfenbach so far.”

Bangladesh shook her head in denial. “But The Other is dead!”

Klaus shrugged. “It’s possible that we’re just discovering old infections.” He paused, “But I was never sure. Did she die? Or did she just stop? There was no way to tell.”

“But the Heterodyne Boys—” DuPree paused. The Pfennig dropped. “Wait…
‘She’?
”

Klaus nodded. He placed one of his hands upon the Captain’s back, something few other people would have dared to do, and indicated that she was to walk with him. They left the observation platform and took an otherwise empty catwalk out towards the flagship. Below them the embarkation proceedings were reaching a crescendo. Finally Klaus began to speak.

“You know that I’ve standing orders to bring me The Other’s creations.” Bangladesh nodded. She’d transported a few of them. Those were some of the few times she’d felt nervous. There were things a Captain did not want on her ship.

Klaus continued. “I’ve studied them. The internal logics are familiar to me. Now these devices are very advanced, but their underlying principles are similar to those I saw years ago in the work of Lucrezia Mongfish. They were so similar, that I had long entertained the notion that Lucrezia was, in fact, The Other. This was despite the fact that, as gifted as Lucrezia was, she had
never
displayed this level of skill. It was almost impossible to believe she could have advanced so
radically
in just a few years.” Klaus paused, and directly faced Bangladesh.

“But now I find that there is a daughter. Sired by Bill Heterodyne, no less. Styles do tend to run in families, and any offspring of those two—”

“Whoa! Whoa!” Bangladesh interrupted. “The daughter—That was the girl who was here. But she’s dead now. I saw—”

Klaus overrode her. “You saw what you were
supposed
to see. You were tricked. The girl is alive.”

Bangladesh thought back to the charred corpse they had exhumed. “Really? You’re sure?”

Klaus nodded. “Yes.”

Bangladesh shook her head in admiration. “Wow. She sure
looked
dead.”

Klaus stared at her for several moments. He was at a loss for words. Bangladesh did this to him occasionally. Unluckily, it was never a condition Bangladesh herself suffered from.

“So she’s The Other’s daughter.” She thought about this for a minute. “Big deal.”

Klaus shrugged and resumed walking. “I fervently hope that is the case.”

Bangladesh frowned. “You
hope
so? What else could she
be
? Klaus, what are you so worried about?”

Klaus turned and looked the puzzled woman in the face. “She could be The Other.”

Bangladesh scratched her head. “Neat trick. She doesn’t look like she was old enough to even be born back then.”

Klaus nodded, and took a deep breath. This was going to be complicated, which was never Bangladesh’s strong suit. “DuPree, do you remember where you first saw this girl?”

The Captain nodded. “Sure. That big weird hole in the sky.”

“That’s right. From your description of the incident, I believe those were… windows into… the future.”

DuPree looked blank. “The future?”

Klaus plowed ahead. “Time. She will be able to manipulate time. She was looking at you from sometime in the future. Do you understand what that means?”

Bangladesh opened her mouth. She paused and then closed her mouth. Klaus was encouraged.

“What you saw might have been just a window. But what if it was a Gate? She could discover how to do this ten…
twenty
years from now, and
still
be the one who destroyed Castle Heterodyne nineteen years ago!”

He dropped his hands to his sides and looked at the Captain with raised eyebrows. It was then that Bangladesh shocked the Baron more than she ever had, or indeed, ever would again.

“But if I saw her… looking at us from the future…Then she’ll still be running around in this future. If we’re going after her now, then we’re going to
lose
.”

Klaus shrugged wearily. “And thus our predicament. I just don’t know enough about the nature of time. Maybe she isn’t The Other. Maybe The Future you observed can be changed. Maybe we do lose because you observed it.” He spread his hands wide. “Maybe everything that has happened was some huge misunderstanding and we don’t have to fight her at all. The problem is that while we know what it was that you saw, we did not see it in context. We do not know the larger story.”

They approached the great airship. An airshipman who was winding a cable saw them and almost broke his back with the speed with which he untangled himself and snapped off a crisp salute. They moved along to the Captain’s quarters.

Bangladesh’s private suite was the standard size, two rooms, one little more than a large bunk surrounded by storage cabinets, and the other a ready room, notable for its generous size (almost twelve square meters) and the large set of floor to ceiling windows that covered one wall. This held the Captain’s desk and dining table, and was again lined with racks and storage spaces. The ceiling overhead was covered with rope nets that on longer expeditions held bales and packages.

By tradition, Klaus should have taken the Captain’s cabin, but as always, he insisted on sleeping with the other officers. No one blamed him for this.

Most Captains preferred to keep their quarters simple. Bangladesh, however, preferred a decorating style that Gilgamesh had once described as “Debauched Barbarian Princess.” He had meant it as an insult, but once Bangladesh had learned what “debauched” meant, she had worked hard to live up to it.

The first surprise was the color. Everyone always expected red, but in fact, the room was painted a dark emerald green. This allowed any added red to really stand out. Which was a big help during clean-up. Most of the available wall space was taken up with mounted weapons, guns, knives, swords, all lovingly polished and oiled and ready to be grabbed. There was a great deal of ornamentation, every edge was filigreed with gold paint, and almost all of the fixtures were gold. The chains that held the hurricane lamps, the hooks that held clothing, every visible strut and rivet gleamed in the light. Those decorations that weren’t gold, were bones. They always turned out to be the bones of animals and monsters, but Klaus felt compelled to keep checking. Whatever they were, there were a lot of them. They had been cunningly fashioned into pieces of furniture, drinking vessels, chart holders, clothes hangers and lampshades.

The curtains gathered away from the windows and across the Captain’s bunk were a luscious shimmering silk, with an intricately batiked design of skulls.

As always, the sight of the place gave rise to mixed emotions in Klaus. There was no denying it was tasteless, gaudy and ostentatious, but it did stir fond memories of his long lost wife.

While Bangladesh stowed her gear, Klaus continued. “Dr. Beetle’s notes were very well encrypted, but my team finally cracked them. Unfortunately, many of them were lost in an ill-conceived fire, but some of the material we were able to salvage was about the Heterodyne girl.

“Barry and Agatha arrived in Beetleburg around twelve years ago. Shortly thereafter he disappeared, leaving her in the care of the constructs, Punch and Judy.”

He sighed. “Other notes clearly show that Beetle believed that she would be able to control Slaver Wasps. He planned to use her. Against whom is unclear, probably myself.”

Bangladesh leaned back against the table. “I thought you and Beetle were, I dunno, friends. Beetleburg’s listed as a friendly port. If you knew the Heterodynes so well, why didn’t Barry tell you any of this?”

Klaus looked troubled. “That is the most disturbing part. Because of the fire, there is a lot that is only hinted at, but there’s one place where he mentions that Barry Heterodyne claimed that
I
worked for The Other.”

Bangladesh snorted at the idea.

Klaus shrugged. “But the notes don’t say
why
. This does explain why Beetle didn’t confide in me, or why Barry, Punch and Judy hid from me.” He paused. “You would think they’d have
known
me…” He startled Bangladesh by slamming his hand down upon the nearest table, causing the objects thereon to leap several centimeters into the air. “Confound that fool and his fire!” he growled.