Фил Фоглио - Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg

And there were other things, there among the books. Scrolls, stelae, and stone tablets inscribed with languages dead or unknown. Enigmatic artifacts from every corner of the Earth. Strange, silent clock-like devices, and globes with odd markings.

A mismatched collection of display cases was scattered throughout. Tantalizing shapes lay obscured by a thick layer of dust coating the glass lids. A row of gigantic oak flat mapmaker files held a multitude of drawers, each labeled with names out of history or, in some cases, what Agatha had assumed was mythology

. Clusters of small devices and exotic statuary covered every flat surface. The most mundane object was a frayed, but still opulent, oriental carpet that covered the only open spot on the room’s floor.

Agatha and Tarvek stared at it all in wonder.

“Oh my,” Agatha whispered.

“Oh yes!” Tarvek conceded. “One of the most infamous libraries in Europa.” He gestured expansively. “And it’s all yours.”

“That’s all very well,” Agatha replied, “but where do we start?” She turned slowly in place. “I don’t see anything that looks like a control panel.”

“Oh, I haven’t got a clue,” Tarvek admitted. “But while we’re searching, we won’t be bored.” He snapped his fingers. “The Castle should know.” He gently rapped on the clank head tucked under Agatha’s arm. “Hello?”

Agatha shook her head. “I think it’s shut down. Probably to preserve the memory cores.”

Tarvek sighed. “That makes sense, but it certainly makes our job more difficult.”

“That’s true, but . . . ” Agatha stopped and looked about. “Wait. The supplies we sent ahead. They aren’t here yet.”

“The stuff you sent with your little helper clanks? Something must have happened to them. That’s bad. They were carrying a lot of important equipment.”

“We couldn’t have carried it ourselves.” Agatha frowned. “But with the Castle shut down, I wouldn’t have thought there was anything here that could give them that much trouble.”

“I am perfectly willing to believe there are dangerous things besides the Castle itself running around this place.”

Agatha shook her head. “Something like that might incapacitate a few of them. Maybe. But all of them? Maybe they just got lost. In which case they’ll find us eventually. We still have the head; that’s the only irreplaceable bit.”

“But how do we hook it up without any equipment?”

“At this point we don’t know what we have to hook it up to.” Agatha blew a lock of hair out of her face. “I guess I was expecting some kind of obvious interface, like we found down in the crypts.15 But there’s nothing. Nothing here at all.”

“But this is where it told you to come.”

“Yes. It said that when I got here, it would give me a map of where it needed to be repaired.” She paused and looked at the map cases. Then she shook her head. “No, that makes no sense. How could an old map made before the Castle was damaged show where it needs to be repaired now?” Agatha began walking in a tight circle. “Down in the crypt, the Castle I spoke to prided itself on the strength of its defenses. It was meant to be inaccessible. Even to me. Considering that, I’d think the existence of a permanent, detailed map of its interior and its defenses would be seen as an unacceptable weakness.”

She slowly sank to the floor and rubbed her fingers over her temples. “If only we could get it to talk again. Just for a minute or two.”

“Damage . . . sustained.”

Agatha blinked. “What?”

Tarvek looked at her blankly. “What what?”

She held up a hand.

“Damage sustained.” The words were muffled.

“Can you hear that?”

“No,” Tarvek whispered.

“I can,” Agatha muttered, “so it’s closer to me, but what . . . ”

“Damage sustained.”

Agatha slowly smiled, and hopped to her feet. “Help me roll up this rug.”

Tarvek had questions, but he kept them for later. He began rolling the carpet along with Agatha. The floor underneath was not stone, but a thick slab of dark glass. As the carpet was removed, small lights began to appear in the depths below.

“There’s something still active down there,” he said in surprise.

“I think I understand now,” Agatha said. “The Castle is strong. And one of the reasons is because it doesn’t have a centralized brain, per se. I think the whole Castle is the brain.”

Tarvek considered this. “Yes, that does make sense. It explains why it fragmented the way it did.”

“Uh-huh.” She allowed Tarvek to proceed with the carpet while she stared down at what was being revealed. “Did you see this room? The way it’s built? I think the Heterodynes thought the library was the most important part of the Castle. It seems like the most reinforced and secure place in the entire building. Which means that when I used the Lion,16 I didn’t kill everything.”

Tarvek finished rolling up the carpet, turned, and gasped in wonder. A ghostly outline of Castle Heterodyne flickered to life in the air before them. As they watched, more and more details were added until a complete wireframe rendering of the entire Castle appeared. Red lights wobbled on within the sketch. Then, starting in what Agatha recognized as the Great Movement Chamber, waves of disruption slowly began radiating upwards and outwards, scrambling the delicate lines as it grew. Agatha grabbed Tarvek’s arm and pointed to a floating set of numbers that slowly advanced as they watched. “That’s a date and time signature,” she said with excitement. “The date that Castle Heterodyne was attacked!”

The numbers clicked forward, each advancement accompanied by growing waves of destruction sweeping over the model before them. “It’s a recording of the actual event,” Tarvek said, awe filling his voice. He glanced down. Within the glass-covered pit was a large sphere, its surface bejeweled with ever-changing lights. “That’s your map. One that can be updated on the fly. During attacks it would be invaluable.”

Agatha was staring at the model. “But it wasn’t attacked.” She pointed to the epicenter of the largest disruption. “If these were explosions, and they certainly behave like mathematical models of explosions, they all started inside Castle Heterodyne.”

They paused as the great central tower began slowly leaning sideways. They found themselves unconsciously holding their breaths until it came to rest in the position the real tower occupied today.

Tarvek nodded slowly. “Everyone always said that the attack on Castle Heterodyne was the first attack by the Other. But every subsequent attack on a Great House was completely different. There was an initial aerial bombardment followed by ground attacks by revenants and slaver wasps.” He turned to Agatha, a troubled look in his eye. “My family, and a few other inner members of the Council, knew Lucrezia was the Other, but she always claimed her attacks were retribution. She claimed other sparks had attacked Castle Heterodyne first.” He turned back to the model and studied it closely. “There were inconsistencies with her story, even from the beginning, but she was eliminating dozens of powerful, upstart spark families, so they were all too happy to aid her.”

He glanced back at the model Castle, in time to see the great northern tower crack apart from the main structure and slide down the hillside. Once it came to rest the structure and lights within it faded and eventually vanished. A few seconds later it again flickered into existence and the cycle repeated. “Now I’m wondering: if the Heterodyne Boys hadn’t stopped her, would there have come a day when even the Order would have found themselves on the receiving end of those bombardments?”