Diaz held up a hand, his expression knowing. “Ah, say no more. I too, have had students.”
On the other side of the wall, Merlot was raging as he fussed with the machine. “It was all you! Everything that went wrong was because of you!
“Doctor Beetle’s notes were in some sort of fiendish code. The Baron assigned a team of the finest cryptographers to examine them. I never expected them to crack it—I never could!”
Agatha risked a look from behind the wall. Gil was still out in the open. She could see her weapon lying in the middle of the floor where she had left it. It was across the room but she would have to try to get to it while Merlot was working.
“But they did! They found everything! Beetle knew who you were! Knew who your construct guardians were! Knew who your real parents were! I had always wondered why he kept an incompetent fool like you around!”
Agatha motioned to Diaz to keep silent. Then she left her hiding place behind the wall and crept softly across the room. Merlot’s voice became more shrill and hysterical as continued to rant.
“It was all there—and I had never known! And I—I had expelled you! I tried to find you, but you had vanished. The Baron was going to crucify me!
“So I burned it all. Beetle’s notes, every one of his secret labs that I could find, the entire hall of records, and all the cryptographers—
“And I still wound up in here! Is that unfair or what?”74 He slammed the cover closed and the walker shuddered forward. “But now!” he shouted. “Now, I will—NO!”
Merlot had seen her. And she was still too far from the weapon. Agatha made a dash toward her death ray, but a volley of bullets smashed into the stones in front of her, and she jumped back, lost her footing, and fell, directly in the path of the walking machine.
Merlot was savoring his victory. “At last!” he cried. He swung the tips of the walker’s guns around until Agatha could look directly into their barrels.
She was gathering herself for a desperate leap between the walker’s feet when Gil slammed into the side of the machine so hard that the foot nearest him briefly left the ground.
Agatha stared up at him as he stood between her and the machine. One of his sleeves was caked in blood and raw fury was on his face. “You shot me!” he roared. “And it hurts!” He took hold of the walker, and, through sheer strength, lifted it a few inches off the ground before flinging it to one side.
He then staggered and clutched at his shoulder. “Oh. Oh dear.” His voice was weak. “…and that hurt, too…”
The second Gil tossed the machine aside, Agatha leapt to her feet and dived for the death ray. She spun back to Gil in time to see him sinking to his knees.
“I…I seem to have overdone it…” he whispered. His eyes were losing focus and he looked like he was about to faint.
“No!” Merlot frantically slammed at levers as he tried to right the machine. One of the gun barrels was smashed. “No! No! No! I’ll not be cheated again!” He gave a cry of triumph as the walker rolled to its feet, then swung the remaining gun back toward Gil—
But Agatha stood in his path, her death ray purring ominously. “You warped, nasty little buffoon!” Her voice had once again taken on the full tone of an angry Spark. “You’re blaming me for all that? Fool! You deserve everything you got!”
The audacity of this gave Merlot pause. Students, even Heterodynes, were not supposed to speak to their professors like that. “How dare you?”
“Idiot!” She was shouting at him now. “Do you know why you couldn’t find me? I was on Castle Wulfenbach! I was already the Baron’s prisoner, but he didn’t know who I was. If you’d told him before I escaped, you probably would have been rewarded! You killed all those people for nothing!
“So if you don’t stop this stupidity right now, I will have no qualms about putting a hole the size of the Castle in you!”
Agatha was panting with rage. She saw the truth of her words percolating through Merlot’s enraged brain. It was apparently too much for the man. His face went blank. “No,” he whispered. Then he yanked back on the controls and the cannon began to spin as he screamed inarticulate defiance. Agatha heard the Castle’s calm voice cut through the shrieks: “Oh dear.”
A block of stone easily four meters on a side slammed straight down from the ceiling. There was a flash of blue light and a contained explosion that sent a shudder through the floor.
“We can’t have that,” the Castle finished.
The prisoners gawped. “Castle?” Agatha asked in disbelief.
“Impossible!” said Tiktoffen. “This is a dead room! I know it!”
The Castle gave a ghoulish titter. “Hello, Professor. Surprised? I found a group of nice young people—not any of yours—just wandering around. They were ever so helpful, and they were able to repair several previously inaccessible areas.”
It sounded pleased with itself. Agatha felt cold. Were Zeetha and her other friends also in the Castle? They had been with Gil when she saw him outside…
“Of course, my lady, I was only able to direct their repairs because of the work that your young man had already done.”
Agatha started. “Gil!” He’d been hurt…she turned to find him, and froze in shock. Gil lay on the ground, sitting up slightly with his head pillowed on Zola’s bosom. She was kneeling behind him, holding him against her with one hand on his bare chest. With the other, she was pouring something out of a small vial onto a nasty looking bruise on his shoulder. She was admonishing him in a tone that Agatha found unnecessarily familiar. You’d think he was her pet or something…Agatha ground her teeth in fury.
“Don’t move, you fool,” Zola was saying. “You always try to move around too soon after you get hurt.” She paused as she stroked the skin next to the bruise. “Huh. It looked like he shot you point blank, but this doesn’t look that bad…”
Agatha briefly considered blowing them both to dust. Then she caught herself and slowly set down her weapon. She doesn’t own him and neither do you, she told herself silently. She hardly knew him. She had no right to be angry…it was just the Spark in her that made her think so strongly of things—and even people—as “hers.” Agatha swallowed hard, and moved to stand at Zola’s side. If she loomed again, just a bit, she thought, it was only because she was the Heterodyne…it was hardly even her fault if she was a little intimidating, really.
“How is he?” she asked Zola, coolly.
Zola looked up at her, paused, and then answered carefully. “Um… not that bad, actually. The shot must have been deflected somehow.” She dabbed tenderly at Gil’s sweating brow with a pink handkerchief. “But he’s really out of it. I think he’s in shock.”
Agatha nodded. She felt like her heart had stopped beating—like she no longer even inhabited her body. She spoke like some ancient spirit long separated from the concerns of the living. “Mmm. You seem to…care for him.”
“What? Yes, of course! He’s always been there when I needed him! He’s saved my life dozens of times!”
Agatha glowered down at Zola, who had the sense to ease Gil carefully off her lap and scoot back on her heels slightly. “And now that you know who he really is?”
Zola didn’t even hesitate. She stared at Agatha, wide-eyed and sweetly terrified, while she answered. “He…Well…I guess it makes sense that he had to hide it…”
Agatha nodded. She liked terrified. “All right then.” She spoke clearly and slowly, with a controlled tone that still marked her as every inch a Spark. She wanted to make sure Zola was paying attention. “Listen carefully. You are now mine. Your only job is taking care of Gil.”