Agatha H. And the Clockwork Princess (7 page)

“Sorry!” the beleaguered cat wailed.

The trainer froze. She stared at Krosp. “Did you just talk?”

The cat’s eyes swiveled to Agatha and then back to his captor. “Yes?” he ventured.

She briefly considered this, and shook him again. “Not good enough!” She declared. “But when
I’m
done with you—”

Master Payne stepped in. “Professor Moonsock! Release the cat! They are leaving us.”

The Professor glared at the large man, but she instantly let go. Krosp landed on his feet, then dashed behind Agatha’s skirt. “We’re leaving?” he asked.

Agatha nodded. “I… I’m sorry about your mimmoths, Professor. Um… Goodbye, Herr de la Scala. And, um,” she looked back at the two mechanics, “thank you for the offer.”

She then turned to the Pix, who was looking away with her jaw set hard. The girl had been rude and unfriendly, and yet, Agatha felt an odd sense of disappointment. She found didn’t want to go without saying something. “Goodbye Pix. You… you really are a good actress.”

She turned towards the woods and blinked hard. “Let’s go, Krosp.” Without a look back, she marched off into the surrounding forest, Krosp trailing behind.

The others watched them go. Guilt showed on many faces, but not Pix’s. She stared at the ground woodenly as the pair departed.

Abner kicked a stone at his feet. “That was cold. The least you could’ve done was given her a kind word,” he said to her back.

Pix whirled on him and Abner stepped back as he saw the tears flowing from her eyes. “Oh? Why?” she snarled, “She’s doomed! Didn’t you hear? She’s in the Wastelands alone! I… I liked her! She seemed… I don’t know, like someone I could have
talked
to! But I don’t
care!
I don’t want to get near Wulfenbach or anybody like him! No matter how nice, or smart, or, or
interesting
she is, she’d bring him and his monsters right down on our heads. You
know
she would! So she can’t stay here and now she’ll die. Well I’ve seen
lots
of people die and friendship and kindness never helped
them.”

Abner looked sick, “But that’s so—couldn’t we—”

Pix punched him in the chest. “You are such an
idiot!”
she screamed and stamped off.

Abner stared after her, holding his hand to his chest as he struggled to catch his breath. Despite his attempts at conversation, Pix had never said much about her life before the Circus. He had already suspected it hadn’t been a happy one—Pix had been alone when she joined, with no friends or family to leave behind. Now, he wondered what had happened to her, that her reaction to Agatha had been so fearful, and so vehement.

Payne also watched her go. He patted his apprentice on the back. “The Countess will give me hell about this,” he rumbled. “But Pix is right, if a bit overdramatic. Now, let’s move out.” When next he spoke, his voice boomed out over the entire camp. “And we move
On Stage!”

All across the camp, people exchanged worried looks. Many glanced nervously at the sky. Traveling “On Stage” was
dangerous.

Agatha realized that she had to stop moving, at least for a little while. She had come to the edge of the woods, and the ground ahead of her was a wide field of broken stone. She had marched over the previous hill on automatic-pilot, but this rough ground would require more attention than she currently felt capable of mustering. With a deep sigh, she sat on a boulder and contemplated the rocks ahead. They looked sharp.

Krosp gingerly settled next to her. Agatha realized that he’d been trying to talk to her, but she had been walking in a fog, and nothing had registered. He tried again. “Well. That could have gone better.”

Agatha gazed blankly up at the sky and sighed again. “I know you said that people would look after their own, but I never thought we could harm people just by
talking
to them.”

Krosp frowned. “They
did
seem a bit jumpy…” he waved it away. “But we were planning on avoiding people anyway.”

Agatha nodded. “I know, but the way they were talking about the Wastelands… and they’re people who actually know their way around out here… Krosp, I don’t know if we can
do
this alone.”

Krosp twisted in place to gaze back the way they had come. Even in the midday sun, the forest behind them looked dark. He slumped slightly. “I don’t see that we have a lot of choice.”

Agatha stood up. “No. No choice at all, really.”

At that moment, a hellish noise rolled through the woods. Loud mechanical grinding and thumping sounds were mixed by the wild, thin shrieks of horses and the confused shouts of people.

Leaping to her feet, Agatha ran back through the woods. Krosp ran behind her, shouting at her to wait. They quickly arrived at the crest of the hill and stopped, brought up short by what they saw. Master Payne’s circus was on the move at last, but it had definitely chosen the wrong direction.

A large, crab-like clank was breaking noisily through a last bit of forest and lumbering towards the wagons. Agatha had heard of such things—machines of war abandoned or lost in the Wastelands. This one had most likely been lying dormant for years. Its metal surface was rusted and pitted. Lichen and small bushes grew from cracks in its carapace. One of its mechanical fore-claws had been torn off some time in the past, but this did not stop the clank from wrecking havoc with the remaining stump of jagged metal. Exposed and damaged wiring crackled at the torn joint.

The wagon drivers had seen it approaching, and were attempting to disperse, but between the spring-swollen river and the walls of the valley, there simply wasn’t enough space for them to turn easily en masse.

To make matters worse, the clank’s rusty mechanism ground against itself painfully, producing ear-splitting grinding and shrieking noises. The noise was driving the horses into a frenzy. Drivers were yelling and swearing, cracking their whips furiously. Others risked being trampled as they hung onto bridles and tried to physically drag the horses about. Two wagons had already tipped over, and as Agatha watched, another went down, dragging its horses onto their sides, where they thrashed and screamed trying to break free.

As the old contraption cleared the trees, a great cracked lens, set into the face of the clank, began to glow. With a flare, a focused stream of green flame shot out and set a trapped horse aflame. The panic increased, and the wagons trying to escape rammed themselves into an impenetrable tangle.

The clank lurched toward the terrified people. “Wow.” Observed Krosp. “That’s not good.” He frowned. “Wait. Don’t they have any
defenses?
They’re scattering like geese!”

Suddenly, a lone cart drove wildly away from the group, straight along the road toward the attacker. The clank, apparently attracted by whatever moving object was closest to it, paused as the cart swept past it and away down the road. It then swiveled about on its six legs, shot out a billow of smoke, and began to pursue the escaping wagon. Agatha realized that the road would lead both cart and clank directly beneath the ridge where she and Krosp stood.

“That must’ve been what was out in the woods.” She said. “What’ll we do?”

Krosp looked at Agatha like she’d lost her mind. “It’s coming this way! What
we
do is run!”

Agatha gripped her gun. “No! I’ve got to help!” So saying, she leapt over the edge of the ridge and skidded down the rocky slope toward the valley floor. While the incline wasn’t dangerously steep, she found that she was traveling faster than she had expected—and the weight of the gun she held in both hands made for some challenging problems in applied momentum.

When she reached the bottom, the wagon was hurtling towards her. Its canvas back had been charred by a close shot of the clank’s green fire, and smoke poured from the remaining covering. In the back of the wagon, Agatha saw Olga, huddled down low, gripping a strut.

The wagon slowed as the horses reached a rise in the road. The clank raised its intact claw up high, then swept it down hard. At the same time, Agatha raised her newly-built gun to her shoulder and fired.

The claw smashed onto the back of the wagon, causing it to collapse and sending the rear wheels spinning off to either side. The passengers flew from the damaged vehicle, flailing in midair. An explosion erupted from the back of the clank and its rearmost right leg blew free. The giant machine rocked wildly for a moment, found its balance, and then spotted the wagon’s driver on the ground. The man was groggily beginning to sit up when he turned to see the great clank looming over him. He screamed as it prepared to grab him with its rusty claw.

Agatha ran forward, trying to get between the man and the clank. If it followed the closest moving object, perhaps she could lure it away… but as she darted in front of the man, the clank took another step, and she was knocked to the ground. She looked up and realized that she had fallen directly beneath the device.

It was a terrifying moment. The great clank squealed above her and its heavy legs pounded the ground around her as it shifted its weight. Agatha swung her gun straight up and fired it directly into the clank’s undercarriage. The resulting blast took her breath away and she gasped as she scrambled to her feet.

The clank wobbled and staggered to the side. Agatha barely avoided one of the huge legs as she reached the man on the ground and hauled him to his feet. He stared up at the smoking device that lurched drunkenly above them.

“It’s still going!” he marveled.

Agatha yanked him out of the way of a falling bit of metal. “I hit the main engine.” She could hear the increasing distress of the mechanism. “It’s finished, it just doesn’t know it yet.”

Olga was still crumpled where the wreck of the wagon had thrown her. Agatha ran toward her with the man close behind. “You!” Agatha shouted as she ran. “Olga! Get up!” The crab clank, smoke pouring from its carapace, was slowly swiveling towards them. “Get up! Get—Ah!” The two runners jerked to a halt. As they came close they could see that Olga had landed head-first on a jagged patch of exposed rock. She was quite obviously dead. The man dropped to his knees. “Olga!” he moaned, “oh no!”

Suddenly a sound behind them made them turn. There was the clank, smoke and sparks now pouring from its joints, its gigantic metal claw descending towards them.

“LOOK OUT!” Agatha shouted. At the last second, she shoved the distraught man aside.

Agatha screamed as the claw closed, and the great lens flared. A green flash of energy lanced from the eye of the clank, igniting its captive’s skirt, hair and flesh in a ball of greasy flame. It dropped its victim and began to turn—

But the repeated firing of the clank’s heat weapon had been too much. The resilient, Spark-created energy source that had powered the damaged machine through its final rampage finally gave way, and the crab clank exploded. Flaming machine parts flew through the air, as the great metal legs slowly crashed to the ground like falling trees.

Krosp raced toward the wreckage, shouting for Agatha. At the same moment, a group from the circus wagons appeared, running up the road toward the man who was staring, horrified, at the charred figure at his feet.

CHAPTER 2

Hark to the laughter of a Spark—

All Good Folk be home by dark.

—
Folk Rhyme

H
is memories of that day were, for the most part, blurred. So much time had passed since then—and so many, many things had happened in that time. Still, that day’s final scene would remain sharply etched in Klaus’ memory forever. It was a scene he had replayed a thousand times in his head—the last time he had ever seen her.

Where had he made his mistake?

The room itself was an intimate chamber set high in a corner tower of a castle in the mountains—somewhere in the tangle of little kingdoms that sprawled north of Mechanicsburg. The view over the surrounding town was breathtaking, a panoramic sweep that carried the eye out across the wide valley and all the way to the encircling, snow capped mountains. Although it was late, countless lights twinkled below, echoes of music and laughter floating through the tower’s leaded-glass windows.

The celebration had been going on all day. It would still, he was sure, be going strong when dawn came. The day before, the people of this town had been the terrified slaves of the Chatelaine of Red Glass, but that had all ended when Bill and Barry, the legendary Heterodyne Boys, accompanied by Klaus, Lucrezia Mongfish, and Zzxzm, the sentient magnet
⁹
accidentally crashed their airship into the ornamental fountain of Ruby Glass Castle. There, they discovered the hidden caverns beneath the town, and the terrible secrets they contained.

It was now forty-eight hours later. The Chatelaine’s army of luminescent fungus men had been destroyed, every hapless captive freed.

The Chatelaine’s death had been cause for rejoicing and celebration throughout the town, but it had cast a pall among the Heterodyne party. Bill and Barry always wanted to
reform
their enemies, not kill them. They would happily battle rampaging monsters with electrical grenade throwers or earthquake machines, but they were convinced that anyone, given a chance, could change their ways and work together to make Europa a better place. Whenever they failed, whenever a Spark was killed, they saw it as a personal failure. When the townspeople first realized they were free, the Heterodynes had silently tolerated the inevitable cheers and back-slapping; but when the music and beer had begun to flow, they had quietly slipped away. Klaus had tried to talk to them as they left, but Barry had pushed past him, growling: “I will accept that sometimes a villain has to die, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take free drinks for doing it.”

It had taken hours for the rest of the Heterodynes’ friends to escape the parties, and when they finally returned to the Castle, they had not been terribly surprised to find only a note waiting for them. Bill and Barry had gone on ahead, off to deal with a runaway knitting automaton in a neighboring town.

Klaus understood the Heterodynes’ feelings, but he had seen the spore-chambers. And
smelled
them. Lucrezia had lured the Chatelaine inside with her shadow puppets, and he had unhesitatingly thrown the lever on the great glass furnace. Some things were best cleansed by fire.