“Oh? And how is the Baron any different?”
“Well…for starters, he doesn’t chop off a lot of heads.”
Zola rolled her eyes. “Ha, ha. But what happens when he dies?”
This was unexpected. “Um…”
“His son takes over. So tell me how that’s any different from the Fifty Families, Mister High and Mighty?”
Gil waved his hands. “Wait—this is about the Baron’s son?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about him?”
“I know he’s got the same first name as me, which has made things awkward once or twice… But other than that? Not much, no.”
Zola shook her head. “Where have you been? Yes, the Baron has a son. He’s kept him hidden away and no one knows who the mother is. The Baron has said that he’ll hand him the Empire when he dies. So what do you think will happen then?”
Gil thought about this. “I don’t know. What do people say will happen?”
“It could be the reign of a Neo Caligula!”
Gil frowned. “Oh, come on. Surely it couldn’t be that bad?”
Zola shrugged. “Well that’s the point. No one knows. He’s an enigma. He was revealed four months ago—and then nothing until Beetleburg.”
“Beetleburg?”
“Surely you heard about that. The tyrant of Beetleburg was messing around with a Hive Engine, so the Baron shut him down. Well, this Gilgamesh was there, and by all accounts, he was a complete lunatic. According to witnesses, he killed Beetle by throwing a bomb at him, and Klaus had to chase him down through the streets of the town with clanks and Jägermonsters no less. They say he was practically chewing the furniture.”
Gil listened to this with growing horror. This was an understandable interpretation of that day’s events. “No,” he admitted. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Zola nodded triumphantly, “And the Baron’s had him locked away on board Castle Wulfenbach ever since.”
Gil looked at her bleakly. “There’s got to be more to it than that.”
Zola shrugged. “Perhaps, but that’s what people have seen and heard. The Baron has never cared excessively what people thought about him; he was so powerful that he could just ignore them. That might have worked if he had heirs that were more like him, or even better, no heirs at all. But now that people think that the Empire is going to be given to a crazy person…”
“All right! I see your point.” Gil thought quickly. “So, this plan of yours… Let’s see if I can work out the basics. We have a Heterodyne girl…”
Zola preened. “That’s me!”
“And then…a Storm King shows up.” He smacked his head. “The old prophecy! Sure! They get married! Peace and free beer for everybody.”
Zola clapped her hands. “Oh, I knew you’d see it! You were always so smart.”
Gil didn’t feel particularly smart at the moment. “But… You can’t really think the Baron will allow you to just waltz in and do this?”
Zola looked smug. “You know how to boil a frog, don’t you? You do it slowly. I’ll get settled in as the Heterodyne. Surely there will be nothing wrong with that? Just one of those ‘internal rule’ things that the Baron can’t be bothered with. Even better, I’m not a Spark! I’ll be a safely boring Heterodyne. I’ll busy myself with civic improvements, trade negotiations—my Mechanicsburg will just be good little client state of the Empire.
“A year or so from now, the Storm King’s heir will be ‘discovered’ by a charming old man in Wurms whose hobby is heraldry. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to make an amazing discovery in a used book shop our people run. The College of Heralds will reluctantly agree with his analysis, but the heir-apparent will modestly refuse to accept the crown.
“That will change when Mechanicsburg is attacked by an army of clanks while he is, coincidently, here visiting a wounded friend in the Great Hospital. He will send out a call for help that will be answered by surrounding kingdoms, and he will defeat the invaders. I will ask to meet him, of course, and it’ll be love at first sight!”
She fluttered her eyelashes at Gilgamesh and sighed. “It’ll be so perfectly romantic that we will capture the hearts of all of Europa. Then we will settle down and rule this little town so well that we will be the envy of the Empire and other kingdoms will beg us to move on to bigger things, which we will reluctantly do, and within ten years—sooner if the Wulfenbachs do something foolish—we will have all the Empire and no one has to die at all.”
Gil considered this. He had to admit that he had never really looked forward to being handed the reins of the Empire, but…
He cleared his throat. “Except for young Wulfenbach, of course.”
Zola rolled her eyes, “Well of course. We’re not stupid.”
Gil sighed with regret, “Yes, I suppose that was to be expected.”
Zola frowned. “Oh please, who will even care?”
At that moment there was a strangled scream from Professor Tiktoffen. “Everyone,” he shouted as he ran towards the door. “Out of this room!”
But as he approached the doorway, a massive steel shutter slammed down. “Welcome.” The voice was barely a whisper. “Repairs…here.”
Tiktoffen slumped to the floor. “We’re doomed,” he whimpered. “We’re all going to die.”
Zola strode over to him and kicked him in the leg. “What is happening, Professor?”
Tiktoffen didn’t even flinch when her foot connected. “We’ve been pressganged,” he said leadenly. “I didn’t know where we were. The door we just came through, it’s never led here before.” He gestured towards the shadows and the others realized that the lumps they’d been stepping around were actually desiccated corpses.
“This is one of those rooms where things are too damaged, but the systems in charge won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer. Anyone who comes here isn’t allowed to leave.”
Gil looked at the machinery that lined one of the walls. “Then we’ll just have to fix it.”
Tiktoffen snorted. “This isn’t a broken rudder, young man. This needs a stronger Spark than we’ve ever had in here.”
Gil smiled. “I like a challenge.”
Agatha jerked awake as something sharp poked into her fundament. She was sprawled face down on a workbench. Someone had tossed a musty canvas sheet over her and there was a brisk breeze blowing. The sharp object was revealed as a toasting fork and it was being wielded by Moloch, who was cowering behind a makeshift barricade of assorted sheet metal. “Wake up,” he growled. “C’mon, I thought you were in a hurry. It’s getting light out.”
This got Agatha moving. “It’s what? How could you let me sleep?” It had been nearing midnight as she had put the finishing touches on. She glanced down and found herself clutching a cobbled together little device of some complexity.
From behind his barrier, Moloch flinched. “You said you weren’t going out after Wulfenbach without some kind of defense and then you built a death ray. You conked out on the table, and then, every time I tried to wake you up, you pointed it at me!”
Agatha flushed. Her foster mother, Lilith, had always complained that it took heavy machinery to hoist Agatha from her bed on cold mornings. Luckily, her foster father was a mechanic. But threatening someone? That sounded a bit over-dramatic.
“I threatened you with this?”
“You totally did.”
Agatha looked at it again. “Well I’m sorry this little thing worried you.” At that moment, a strong gust of cold air blew hair into her face. Agatha blinked and turned in surprise. The source was a rather large hole that had apparently been melted through the castle wall. A little way off, she saw another hole through one of the castle towers. She squinted and thought she could just make out a circular chunk taken out of one of the looming mountains that encircled the town.