Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

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.

Carson looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “She…she’s heterodyning,”¹⁵ he breathed.

Krosp looked interested. “What? The music thing? She does that all the time. Is that what it’s called?”

Vanamonde stood entranced. remember this. Before the Masters disappeared…” He swung around and clutched at Carson’s sleeve. “Grandfather, maybe she really is—”

Agatha straightened up and wiped her brow. In the sudden silence she held a hand up behind her head. “Hepler wrench!”

“Yes, Mistress,” the crowd roared and easily two dozen wrenches appeared for Agatha to choose from.