Agatha H. And the Clockwork Princess (43 page)

Meanwhile, aboard the flagship of the Wulfenbach airship fleet, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach faced his current opponent.

The last three months had seen a startling change in the young man. He was unshaven. His clothes had obviously been lived in for days, if not weeks. They were tighter as well. While he had never been out of shape, he had obviously been working hard in the interim, and his chest and arms had begun to resemble the proportions of his father. His hands had acquired new bruises and scars. More importantly, there was a grim and increasingly distant quality to his eyes that was worrying to his man servant, Ardsley Wooster, as he stood safely up out of the way on an overhead catwalk and watched the fight.

Below, in a large, empty machinist’s bay, a chunky, crab-style clank clattered forward. It had obviously seen better days, its shell was battered and coated with a patina of rust. Several of its multi-jointed arms were already out of commission, and the armor plating had been peeled back in several spots.

However it still moved with a vicious speed and purpose, and the remaining knife-edged arms wove through the air with a determined malice.

Gil easily avoided several attacks, and then darted forward and thrust a long steel spike directly into a mass of exposed tubing. There was a bright blue flash, a gout of green fluid, and the clank collapsed to the deck, spraying a shower of gears across the floor.

Gil turned away. Wooster dropped gracefully from the catwalk and hurried over to a large metal dome, which when lifted, revealed an enormous stone tea pot as well as various condiments.

Wooster prepared a large mug for Gil and then turned with it in his hand. His smile faltered, and then gamely returned. Gil hadn’t moved from where he’d stepped after delivering the
coup de grace
to the attacking clank.

Ardsley peered into his face. Gil looked lost. Ardsley gently but firmly insinuated the mug into Gil’s hand. After a moment, Gil registered its presence with a slight raising of his brows, and took a long, slow sip before he dropped into a chair.

Wooster leaned in. “Impressive, sir. Although I believe that one actually had time to look worried.”

Gil shrugged. “It was too slow. Even after I reworked it.” Wooster shivered. Gil’s voice was even more disturbing than his appearance. Over the months, it had deepened and the disturbing, infrasound harmonics that warned listeners that its owner was enmeshed within the grip of the Spark were almost always present. He tried again. “Indeed, I don’t know why you bothered.”

This actually provoked a response. Gil looked at Wooster and frowned. “It’s one less killer loose in the Wastelands. Grantz brought another one in yesterday, yes? I’ll take a look at it tonight.”

Now, Wooster couldn’t argue with the concept behind Gilgamesh’s actions. The younger Wulfenbach had returned from his expedition to find the Heterodyne girl, determined to “clean up the Wastelands.” He had even received the blessing of the Baron, who had seen the wisdom of letting his son work off some of the rage boiling away inside him by tackling a task large enough to absorb a Spark’s sustained fury. Thus, he had allowed Gilgamesh to retain several of the extraordinary figures that Klaus kept on the Wulfenbach payroll.

In a world filled with monsters, there inevitably were people who enjoyed the challenge of taking them down. The ones who learned how to do this effectively without having to be taken down themselves, found that the Baron was an excellent provider of weapons, transport, ammunition, intelligence and health insurance. Grantz was a fine example. While Gil had never met him, he always managed to drag back a steady supply of feisty monsters and rogue clanks who suffered from a minimum of damage.

What bothered the Englishman was Gilgamesh’s follow up. “Taking a look at” the things retrieved from the Wastelands usually meant examining them, patching them up, repairing them and them beating them to their knees in single combat. The creatures that survived certainly became much more tractable, but Wooster could see that Gil’s finer qualities were being burned away at an alarming rate. He had gone so far as to try to talk to the Baron, but the Master of Castle Wulfenbach had himself been locked away in one of his laboratories for the last several months, and had been incommunicado to someone of Ardsley’s pay grade.

Wooster had seriously considered adding knock out drops to the young master’s next cup of tea, but the last time he had tried that, he’d awoken two days later with a headache and a red rubber clown nose stuck to his face. The students aboard the Castle took their pranking seriously, and incompetence was harshly mocked.

Wooster sighed. “Very good, sir. Perhaps you’ll actually manage to damage yourself this time.”

He was startled when Gil looked directly at him and growled. “And who would care if I did?”

The act of speaking seemed to unlock something within him, and he slumped forward in his chair.

“All of the other students have either run off or got shipped back home. My father’s been locked in his lab for the last few months.” He looked up, and Wooster saw how despondent the young man before him was.

“I can’t leave, of course. I’ve got no one to talk to. I can’t do anything.” He looked at the sparking heap of clank. “Can’t do anything
important
, anyway.”

Ardsley was at a loss. He had never seen Gilgamesh like this. Even when he had first been revealed to the Fifty Families and the world at large, he had seemed to regard the rash of subsequent assassination attempts as an exciting challenge, and had confided to Ardsley that, “He didn’t take it personally.”

“You still have me, sir,” he ventured.

Gil glared at him fiercely enough that Wooster stepped back in alarm. “You?
You’re
only here—” With a jerk, Gil stopped himself. He dropped his head and a small chuckle escaped him. Wooster was extremely nervous now. This was one of those situations where prolonged laughter would be a reasonable cause to evacuate the dirigible. But when Gil looked back up, Ardsley relaxed. Gil looked calmer than he had in days.

“I’m sorry, Wooster.” He took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. Ardsley could see the muscles on his arms start to relax. “I know I must make your work difficult for you.” Ardsley gave a noncommittal shrug.

Gil took a deep pull from his mug and rotated his neck, producing a disquieting series of pops and crackles. “And I do appreciate having you here. Having someone I can trust…”

This was getting embarrassing, for a variety of reasons. Ardsley briskly picked up the pot and refilled Gilgamesh’s mug. “Of
course
you do, sir.” From long experience, Gil knew to hold his mug motionless as Ardsley efficiently topped it off with just the right amount of cream and sugar to maintain his preferred taste. “
I
know how you take your tea.”

Gil rolled his eyes at this, but said nothing as he sipped. Wooster took a few extra seconds to neatly wipe down his spoons. He spoke carefully. “And I am concerned for you, sir. Ever since… Miss Agatha died…” Gil had closed his eyes now. “I had not realized that the two of you were so… close.”

This was the first time he’d felt comfortable enough to broach the subject. The servants aboard the castle had been buzzing about it for weeks, of course. Even while in the infirmary, Captain DuPree had laughed about it within everyone’s hearing. Wooster had been unsure about what aspect of it the Captain had found funnier, the idea that Gil had been knocked out by his fiancée, or that he had thought he’d had a fiancée in the first place.

Ardsley had met Gilgamesh while they were both students in Paris. Thus, he was aware of the unusual history that the Captain and Gilgamesh shared
⁵⁵
.

It was only after a rather brutal sparring session (where Gil had taken her down in two out of three falls), that the Captain had agreed to stop talking about it altogether.

Gil looked sad. “We weren’t,” he admitted. “But we would have been.” He looked over at Wooster and impatiently waved him over to another chair. Ardsley knew better to argue when Gil was in one of these moods. He sat, and because it was expected, poured himself a mug of tea. While he did this, Gil idly balanced his full mug on his index finger. As he talked, he absent-mindedly bounced it from finger to finger. Wooster was almost
certain
that this was just something Gil did to keep his hands busy, and not in fact, meant to terrify him. This didn’t help.

“Do you know,” Gil volunteered, “I had resigned myself to bachelorhood?”

Wooster almost choked on his tea at this. The dynastic implications of this simple statement could shake Europa. He was also concerned as a friend. “Don’t be absurd. You’re still young.”

Gil looked down from the great height of his twenty-two years and rolled his eyes.

Wooster frowned, “And, if you’ll forgive me, sir—in Paris, you had quite the reputation for being able to secure the company of…” Wooster tried to smile innocently, “any number of young ladies
⁵⁶
.”

Gil looked at him evenly. “Yes, I’ll never hear the end of
that
.” He paused. “Ardsley, do you know how
boring
it is to be with someone who doesn’t understand a thing you’re talking about?”

Ardsley flashed back to a rather one-sided conversation he’d had with the newest scullery maid, fresh from the countryside, about the proper placement of various forks. It had not ended well. “I believe I do, sir.”

Gil looked him in the eye. “That’s how I feel
all the time.”
He paused. “I’d always hoped I’d find—not just someone to marry—but a real partner. I’d read about female Sparks all my life, but even in Paris—” he shook his head in disgust, “Paris, for pity’s sake, forget about finding a female Spark, or any girl I could just really talk to. About things I was working on, or ideas, or—”

Gil ran down at this point and sat slumped forward for several moments. Then he slowly sat back, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. “But Miss Clay—” he grimaced, “Or Heterodyne, or whatever… she had The Spark.” He looked at Wooster a touch defensively. “And she liked me. She did.” He closed his eyes. “And I liked her.”

Wooster felt that he should state the obvious. “She ran away, after giving you a slight concussion.”

Gil shrugged. “I’m not saying it would have been an
easy
courtship. But I believe—”

They were interrupted by the far door being slammed open. A high-pitched squeal announced the arrival of Zoing. The miniscule construct waved its blue claws frantically from within its concealing coat.

From long practice, Ardsley could sometimes actually understand parts of what the excitable creature said, but not this time. It was hooting and piping so quickly that he was completely at sea.

Gil however, listened intently and nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent, Zoing, well done.” He turned to Ardsley and a genuine grin crossed his face. “Time to work!”

Without pause, he followed Zoing out the door. Hurriedly, a concerned Wooster followed. “Seriously?” he demanded as he tried to keep up with Gil’s long strides. “Between marathon sessions in your lab, and your excessive dueling with assorted monstrosities, you’re already driving yourself to an early grave!”

They passed a large boiler that had several red lights blinking ominously across its front. As he passed, Gil casually flipped two switches and gave the side a thump. All the lights changed to green. “Well I certainly can’t stop now,” he said reasonably. “The next few days will be critical. Should I let them die just so I can get some sleep?”

Wooster frowned. “If your father finds out that you have them—”

“I don’t give a damn!” Gil interrupted fiercely. “And you should have thought of that before you helped me hide them.”

Wooster grimaced. He’d thought about little else for days. Gil continued, “Besides, with any luck, we’ll be done and have them out of here before he even—”

“Master Gilgamesh! The Baron demands that you attend him! Now!” Expressions of shock and guilt raced across Gil’s face before he damped them down and smoothly turned to face the Lakya that had appeared at the end of the hallway.

He was not reassured by the creature’s appearance. Ever since Agatha’s escape and death, the Baron had been subtly dispersing the Jägermonsters throughout the vast Wulfenbach Empire. As a result, the Lakya had been given more and more of the day-to-day duties that the Jägers had been entrusted with aboard the castle. This had resulted in an increased superciliousness amongst the dapper constructs.

There was no evidence of that now. The Lakya before Gil looked almost frantic, and was obsessively rubbing his hands together in a frantic dry washing motion that any casual observer of the footmen would have known was only a few steps below actual panic.

Gil tried to marshal his thoughts. “But—”

The hand washing increased in intensity. “Now! Right now!” The Lakya chattered its teeth together. “I have never
seen
him so angry!”

Gil tried again. “Um…with me?”

A frantic nodding. “
Especially
with you!”

A peculiar calm settled upon Gilgamesh. For years he’d imagined what would happen to him if he failed to measure up to his father’s never-ending tests. Surely the reality couldn’t be worse. Probably. He nodded. “Very well.”

He turned to Ardsley and put a hand on the distraught man’s shoulder. “Wooster, go on to the lab without me. Work with Zoing. Keep everything stable for as long as you can. I…” He swallowed. “I may be gone for some time.”

Despite this acceptance, it was still a pale, nervous face that shortly peered around the slightly opened blast door to Klaus’ laboratory. “Father?” he ventured.

“GET
IN
HERE, YOU
IMBECILE!
” Klaus roared.

Gil quickly threw the door open wide and was hit with a wave of moist heat. The lab was like an oven. Even his father, who was a stickler for formal dress most of the time, was clothed in little more than rolled up shirtsleeves and a foundryman’s leather overall. Gil tried not to stare. His father was sweating, which combined with his unshaven face and the circles under his eyes, gave him a terrifying appearance.