Vanamonde leaned in. “Grandfather,” he said seriously, “this is getting out of hand.”
The group at the table looked up. Everyone in the café was busy now. Patrons were clearing an area—shoving aside tables and chairs. Several of the shop staff were running back and forth from the storeroom in the back, presenting Agatha with a bizarre array of items for consideration. More worrying was the procession dashing in and out of the front door, bringing back tools, equipment and… more people.
A glassblower was dragged in, protesting vehemently—until Agatha showed him some hastily scrawled plans. Minutes later, assistants were hauling in armloads of glass tubes and rods and an oxyacetylene torch sputtered to life.
With a clang, a coppersmith dropped a load of brewing kettles on the floor. Carson and Vanamonde recognized shop assistants from nearby grocers and chemists. With a smell of ozone, old Staikov, the electrician, showed up with a double bandolier-load of battery jars.
The waitresses were moving constantly, serving coffee and snacks to the various workers, and the roar of conversation was taking on the same sort of coordinated hum one occasionally hears from well-organized beehives.
At the center of it, seemingly everywhere at once, was Agatha: exhorting, explaining, diagramming, praising, and then moving on to the next group. She paused and caught the eye of one of the waitresses. “Say, could I get another cup of that coffee?”
Carson and Vanamonde screamed in unison. “NO!”
Agatha considered them briefly and then, with a nod, moved on.
Suddenly, magically, there was an empty space in the center of the shop, materials neatly radiating outwards—every section overseen by a cluster of eager helpers. Agatha stood in the center, then spun about slowly, examining where everything was. She nodded once, selected a wrench, and began to build.
Watching Sparks as they work—apparently warping the laws of physics as they go—can be difficult for most sane, sober people to watch. With a wince, Zeetha turned away with a troubled look on her face. She buttonholed the elder von Mekkhan.
“This—” She waved a hand, to take in the entranced crowd of townspeople assisting Agatha. “Tell me this isn’t some kind of…of mind control? You know, like slaver wasps?”
Carson snorted grimly. “You do the Masters a disservice. They didn’t need slapped-together filth like the wasps to inspire the townspeople. Control like this is crafted over time. You are seeing the end result of generations of effort.
“For close to a thousand years, the people of Mechanicsburg have served the House of Heterodyne, the most depraved, unstable, crazed maniacs in the world, and in return, they shaped us.
“As long as we pleased the Masters, life was good. Mechanicsburg was the Heterodyne’s home from which they would sweep out and periodically despoil half of Europa.”
The old man waved his hands as if to encompass the entire town. “I don’t know how good an eye for geography you have, my dear, but we are uniquely protected here by our mountains and our chasms. No one has ever managed to take Mechanicsburg by force, although certainly many, many powers have tried. The Masters wouldn’t allow it.”
He sighed and sat back. “And so we fed them and equipped them and made sure they had a hat on when it rained and waved them off to terrorize someplace else and grew fat and secure on the spoils they brought back. Some of us even went along for the trip.” He saw Zeetha’s face and shrugged. “You disapprove? Oh, I understand, you yourself—” he gestured towards her swords, “are obviously from some proud, warrior culture somewhere that hones its fighters and insists on things like honor and self-reliance. It’s hardly unique. But I’m curious—who carts away your night soil? Your rulers? No, I thought not.
“As for the townspeople here, we are not Sparks. No, we are the sons and daughters of those who served Sparks. The ones who were loyal. The ones who were useful. The ones who were lucky. The ones who survived. As a result, it is…easy for us to get caught up in the Masters’… enthusiasms.”
He looked at Zeetha with a touch of defiance. “I don’t expect someone who isn’t from Mechanicsburg to understand, but there is a lot of pride here. We served the Heterodynes, and we were good at it.” He looked out across the bustling room. “It’s what we did. What part of us needs to do. A lot of folks desperately want a new Heterodyne. Any new Heterodyne. Without one…” He thought about the signs of decay he had seen in the town and sighed.
Krosp looked skeptical. “But it’s been how long? Surely the younger generation won’t—”
A dead rat slapped onto the table in front of him. Startled, the cat looked up but saw no one. A small sound dragged his eyes downward. Hidden under a sinister-looking wide-brimmed hat, a cunning pair of eyes barely cleared the lip of the table. “My family,” the boy muttered out of the side of his mouth, “has been serving as grave robbers to the Masters for over a hunnert years. I heard there was a new master, so I dug up a dead rat cuz that was all I could find.”
Krosp stared the rat and tentatively batted at it with a paw.
“T’ain’t poisoned,” the boy assured him. “Trapped last night and interred this morning, so it’s fresh, and—” the boy leaned in while glancing about furtively, “there’ll be no questions asked about this one, he’s from out of town.”
Krosp picked the rat up, sniffed it, and bit off the head. “You’re hired.”
The boy squealed and dashed off, clutching what appeared to be a sandbox shovel.
“Don’t encourage them,” Carson hissed.
Krosp raised his brows. “Why not? Seems to make them happy enough.”
“For the moment, yes. Usually when some joker comes through town claiming to be the long-lost Heterodyne heir, I try to keep him quiet, get him into the Castle as soon as possible, and he gets killed. Nice and simple.
“But it’s not so tidy if the townspeople get their hands on him.”
He waved a hand at the crowd surrounding Agatha. “They look like a nice bunch of folks, don’t they? But they’re descended from a long line of brigands and cutthroats and they don’t like to be the ones played for fools.
“Trying to con these people is a very bad idea. When they break out the torches and pitchforks they know how to do it up right and, let me tell you, it’s hell to clean up afterwards.” He sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “Not to mention that it attracts the wrong sort of tourist.”
Krosp swallowed the last bit of rat and licked his chops thoughtfully. “It also attracts the attention of the Baron, it’s more work for you, and it’s bad for business.”
Carson gave a sardonic smile. “Smart cat.”
Krosp’s ears twitched and he frowned. “The mood in the room… it’s different.”
Carson sagged. “She’s a Spark. The people enjoy working with Sparks. They’ve been having fun. But by now, a lot of them will have heard that, supposedly, she’s a Heterodyne. That changes everything. Now they’re watching her. Judging her. Now she had better be the real thing.”
Agatha stepped back and examined her creation with a critical eye. It was a ramshackle construction. She saw one of the people nearby looking at it dubiously.
“Oh, this is just the support,” she explained as she rolled up her sleeves. “Now we hook everything up together.” With that she picked up a coil of copper tubing and began threading it through a small opening. As she did so, Agatha started to hum. The sound grew, filling the room and causing the townspeople around her to freeze in wonder. It was a bizarre, eerie melody that bored into the listener’s head and made it impossible to look anywhere else.