“But my will to live…”
“For what it’s worth, her jaw has been wired shut.”
Klaus brightened immediately. “Good heavens. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He then felt a touch of paternalistic concern. “Is her jaw really that damaged?”
Gil suddenly focused on the machines near his father’s head.
Klaus frowned. “Gilgamesh?”
The young man shrugged. “Well, I never actually said that her jaw was damaged at all.”
An odd sound brought his eyes back to his father, who was grimacing. “It really does hurt when I do that,” Klaus confessed.
Gil refrained from supplying the obvious medical response.
There was a light, rhythmic tapping on the door. After a moment, it swung open and Dr. Sun peered around the doorjamb. When no one shot at him, he stepped through, followed by a dark-skinned woman with long glossy black hair, wearing a crisp white captain’s uniform. Her eyes glared furiously at Gil over a complicated bandage and wire apparatus that covered the lower part of her face.
Gil clapped his hands and gave every indication that he was pleased to see her. “Ah, DuPree! How are you feeling?”
Beneath the bandage, it could be seen that her jaw tightened. DuPree settled for raising a finger at him.
Gil tsked. “I keep telling you, Captain, it’s ‘thumbs up.’”
Her eye twitched.
“Perfect! Now I’m leaving you here to guard my father.” Instantly her face grew serious. Gil continued, “Your orders are simple. Kill anyone who enters this room except for Dr. Sun or me.”
DuPree went still. Her pupils expanded. Gil nodded at her unasked question. “I mean anyone. Men, women, children, service animals—anyone.”
She began breathing faster and her hands darted about her person, checking the numerous weapons she had hidden about her person. “You can use any weapon you like,” Gil continued coldly. “Just keep my father from harm.”
DuPree stared at him and then suddenly wrapped her arms around him in a fierce hug. Gil endured this for several seconds and then gently pried himself free. “But,” he dropped his voice and whispered to her, “put your trash in the corner and don’t let my father see it. I don’t want him upset.”
With that he strode out.
DuPree looked after him quizzically and then shrugged. She stepped up to Klaus, who seemed to be sleeping. Turning about, she glanced into the corner of the room that was hidden from Klaus’s view. She gasped. There was a small pile of corpses spilling out of the closet.
She stared after Gil with renewed respect. Setting him on fire just might be a challenge after all.
_______________
10 His Grace, Josef Carmelita Strinbeck, was from a minor kingdom in Lithuania that had been overrun by unsettlingly large wind-up toys. You might think these circumstances would cause him to be mocked by his fellow royals, but variants of this absurd story were all-too-common amongst displaced nobility. Too many of the wrong sort of person found these events hilarious to begin with. Among the Fifty Families, to be anything other than properly sympathetic and solicitous when hearing the story of a fellow royal’s overthrow by Sparks, no matter how ludicrous it sounded, was considered extremely gauche. As for the Duke himself, he was—by all accounts—snide, supercilious, and a born martinet. It had often been said that it was only his family connections that had stood in the way of his becoming an incredibly feared headwaiter.
11 Make no mistake, Dr. Sun was a Spark, specializing in the more outré branches of medicine. This was by no means the first inconvenient corpse he’d had to step around while he worked. Usually on another corpse.
12 Tiny Monster Island is one of the more boring Mechanicsburg landmarks. Unless, of course, one is foolish—or unfortunate—enough to leave the path. Then it becomes very exciting indeed.
13 Ironically, we now know from Carson von Mekkhan’s journals, that if Agatha had taken the time to explain every improbable, bizarre event that had led her to Mechanicsburg, he might very well have believed her on the spot. The family history of the Heterodynes has never made for dull reading.
14 At this time, many trades still learned their skills starting at a very basic level. Most mechanics, carpenters, artificers, and other skilled tradesmen were expected to actually build, craft, and forge their own tools. A tradesman’s tools were precious things indeed. They were never lent out, their loss was a crippling blow, and their owners were usually buried with them. Now Klaus liked to move with the times, and the Empire was responsible for great strides in converting the Empire’s industrial base from hand made items to mass production, but he felt that there was a great lesson to be learned by the old traditions and thus he insisted that potential factory owners had to physically help construct their factories.
15 In a world filled with mad science, heterodyning occupies a special place. It is a peculiar vocal tick that appears to be unique to the Heterodyne family. According to its practitioners, it cancels out ambient noise, making it easier to concentrate on the task at hand. If this is true, it means that the person heterodyning is able to instantaneously analyze all incoming noise and organically generate its harmonic opposite subconsciously, without engaging the brain’s higher mental functions. As academics who have devoted their careers to trying to understand the Lady Heterodyne, we can assure you that the more you think about it, the creepier it gets.
16 When the Jägermonsters were absorbed into the Baron’s forces, one of the conditions was that they stay out of their former home, Mechanicsburg. It was thought that they retained too many memories, loyalties, and associations with the place, and if they were ever to be rehabilitated, it would be best to remove them from a place where their assorted cruelties and atrocities were enshrined on various public monuments and featured in children’s books.
17 The Jägers are remarkably close mouthed about the process that made them into Jägers, a secret of the Heterodynes that they appear ready to carry to their graves. However they talk quite freely and at great length about what it means to be a Jäger. The Jägertroth is the blood vow that one made before the Jägerification process was begun. It involves serving the Heterodyne family above all else, being willing to die for them (any number of times), and an acknowledgement that this vow is binding beyond the limits of time, space, death, and the perceived three dimensions. It is, according to all accounts, a pretty big deal.
18 At this point in history, the Empire of the Pax Transylvania controlled much of the continent of Europa. Thus, one would hardly be expected to believe that one little island nation to the west could cause any serious problems. You would be quite wrong. Due to England’s extensive trading fleet, loyal colonies, cosmopolitan citizenry, and, of course, Her Undying Majesty, Queen Albia, powerbrokers around the globe refused to call a winner in the event of a straight-up war. Diplomatic relations between the Baron and England had started out cordial enough. Indeed, the British had been instrumental in helping the nascent Empire clear out some of the more entrenched nests of Revenants, Slaver Wasps, and Pirates in Western Europa. However, as the Empire had continued to expand in power, territory, influence, and market share, relations had cooled considerably. Luckily, both Empires were governed by genuine geniuses, who knew enough to stay out of each other’s hair.
CHAPTER 3
Your Majesty, it is with great chagrin that I must again report our failure to assassinate the Heterodyne.
Considering the importance of the assignment, I followed your Majesty’s advice and sent in not one team, but two. The second was led by none other than Don Giorello of Venice, whom you may recall, having served your Majesty so admirably in the affair of the burning windmill.