Zola took a deep breath. To finally be here… She squared her shoulders. This is where it got dangerous. A second look around the area and this time she noted a plethora of paint and chalk marks. Hastily scrawled signs and sigils warned of the thousand and one traps that lined the hallway.
She turned to her Tall Men and almost screamed in frustration. They had actually spread out and were examining the nearest walls with interest.
“Freeze, you fools!” Sensibly, they did. Even behind their goggles, she could see their eyes desperately swiveling in her direction.
“Now listen to me,” she said, foot tapping. “This is probably the best-mapped area of the Castle, but it is also one of the most dangerous. You must follow my lead.”
She pointed downwards. “Avoid any area of the floor marked in white. It is a trap that will kill you.”
She pointed upwards. “Do not stand beneath any area on the ceiling marked in red. It is a trap that will kill you.”
She caught one of her men gazing in fascination at a wall sconce depicting a golden lady entwined with some sort of cephalopod. “Do not touch any metal surface. It is a trap that will kill you.”
The man guiltily lowered his hand. “Are you trying to frighten us?”
Zola ground her teeth. “Of course I am! This place is dangerous! It is twisted, and diabolical and worst of all—”
Too late she saw another of her men reaching for a gold coin glittering innocently upon the floor. “NO!” she screamed, but it was too late. A trapdoor split open beneath him, sending him screaming into the darkness. There was a pause, and then the trapdoor rose back into place with a hiss. The coin glittered enticingly in the darkness.
Involuntarily, they all took a step back. Zola swallowed. “A—And worst of all, this place likes to think that it has…a sense of humor.”
They all kept close to her after that, as she headed deeper into the castle.
Professor Hristo Tiktoffen trudged down the Hall of Nasty Iron Springs.19
He moved with a distracted look on his face as he sorted through an enormous notebook, generously interleaved with additional notes and maps. Most of the prisoners that inhabited Castle Heterodyne had learned to walk very carefully indeed, and it was not uncommon for them to take several minutes to decide where to next place their foot. Tiktoffen trod confidently, to the awe of those around him. It was whispered that he and the Castle had reached…an accommodation.
He came to a large metal door and, with a small grunt, shoved it open, revealing a large cavernous space. Within, cyclopean gears were frozen mid-turn, teeth and gear shafts dull beneath years of accumulated dust and grime.
He heard a faint, rhythmic tapping coming from behind a wall of interlocked gears larger than millstones. Tiktoffen cleared his throat. “Fraulein Wilhelm?”
The tapping stopped and a shock of delicately shaded pink hair appeared between two enormous gear teeth. Its owner peered cautiously at the professor, then grinned and dodged around the machinery to stand before him.
Tiktoffen gave her an avuncular smile and checked his notes. “Anything for my books today?”
Sanaa Wilhelm absent-mindedly scrubbed at a spot of grime on her orange coverall as she pondered. “I think so, Professor.” She closed her eyes in concentration. “I was summoned to the north wall of the Room of Lead. I reconnected fifteen copper cables behind the third panel. That was at four thirty-six exactly.20 There was a sort of a hum…and then nothing.”
Tiktoffen’s eyebrows rose. “Four thirty-six?” He shuffled through his stack of papers, muttering to himself. Suddenly he gave a small cry of satisfaction.
“Yes! Tark was in the Gallery of Razors—” He double-checked his notes. “—And yes! They flexed at four thirty-six!” He made a small notation on one of the sheets and tucked his pencil away with a glow of satisfaction. “Ten points for you!”
Sanaa’s eyes lit up in pleasure. “Ten? Thank you!”
Tiktoffen was already flipping through his notes and waved a hand. “De nada. We’ve been looking for the Razor’s power for over three years.”
Sanaa got a faraway look in her eyes. “Ten points,” she said to herself, just to hear it. “Wow! That’s worth at least two months off my sentence! So to get out of here, I only have to get—Ow!”
As fast as a striking snake, Tiktoffen had lashed out and clipped the side of the girl’s head. “Fool!” His jovial face had hardened instantly. “Never total your points out loud!”
Involuntarily, both prisoners glanced upwards towards an invisible presence that they knew loomed silently around them. Tiktoffen leaned in and addressed Sanaa in an urgent whisper. “When you’ve got enough to get out, I will know.” He tousled her hair affectionately.
At that moment, Tiktoffen heard a familiar metallic panting. Through the doorway came a man in his thirties, unprepossessing in every way—except for the sharp-toothed mechanical mask permanently fastened to his lower face that had earned him the name “Snapper.” When he saw Tiktoffen and Sanaa, he slowed a bit, but made up for it by waving his hands in agitation.
“Professor!” he called. His voice sounded hollow through the mask.
Tiktoffen gave a perfunctory smile. The man before him was one of the more unpredictable of the Castle’s current residents. He was also uncannily smart, which was why he was still alive. This also explained why it had taken the Baron’s people over two years to track him down, despite his striking appearance. “Snapper,” he said. “What is it?”
The man’s mechanical teeth ground together in excitement. “There’s a Heterodyne in the Castle!”
Immediately, Tiktoffen was all interest. A new “Heterodyne” crashing through the Castle always revealed so much information. He snapped open his notebook in anticipation. “Did he come in through the Red Gate?” He turned another few pages, searching. “They promised to send the next one in through the Red Gate,” he muttered. “I’m sure there’s a deadfall we missed…”
Snapper waved his hands again. “No, sir! She made it into the Octagon! She’s alive!”
The Professor looked at him blankly. “She?”
Snapper nodded vigorously. “And she’s brought in minions!”
With that the older man took off at a dead run down the hallway. No, he thought to himself. It can’t be! He skidded to a halt in a doorway. It was.
The Octagon was a large common room where the prisoners could congregate after they finished their shifts. It was directly off the kitchen and dormitories, and it was one of the few places where they had managed to replace the maddening red emergency lights with bulbs of a normal color. It was also in one of the permanent ‘dead zones’ in the Castle, and so was a popular place for the prisoners to relax. Some even chose to sleep there, just in case.
Many of the prisoners were there now, with more arriving every minute. The tables had been shoved against the walls, and in the center, a girl was getting undressed.
She was of middling height, and—once the ridiculously elaborate ball gown she wore over everything was stripped off—wearing a sensible pair of trousers and a simple leather singlet. Disconcertingly, they were still pink, but they were obviously working clothes. When she saw the professor, she gave him a cheerful smile that only highlighted the coldness of her eyes.
“Good morning, Professor Tiktoffen.”
Tiktoffen stared at her in dismay. “Mademoiselle Zola! It is you! I can’t believe it! What the hell are you doing here? Don’t tell me you fools got sentenced here!”
Zola laughed airily. “Of course not! We came in on our own.” The watching crowd gasped. She looked around the Octagon and was obviously unimpressed. “Well? Are you ready to leave this place?”