Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle Read online

  Critical Acclaim for Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius

  “Filled with folgian touches—Borscht-belt comedy accents, things that go sproing, adorkable sentient machines, and laugh-a-minute slapstick—Agatha H. is a tremendously fun addition to the Girl Genius canon.”

  —Cory Doctorow, award-winning author of Little Brother and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

  “The Hugo Award-winning Foglios present their popular gaslight fantasy comic in novelized form, maintaining the zany energy, witty repartee, creative characterization, and innovative world-building of the original.”

  —Publisher’s Weekly

  “This volume by the creators of the Eisner Award-nominated webcomic Girl Genius (Volumes 1-9) is a fantastic reintroduction to the Girl Genius world and will definitely capture new fans. It will appeal to fans of the steampunk genre who like their books riddled with mad science and adventure, along with a liberal dash of humor.”

  —Library Journal

  “Simply said, Girl Genius has everything I look for in a story.”

  —Patrick Rothfuss, bestselling author of The Name of the Wind

  “!…the Foglios appear to have been liberated by the [webcomics] format—and that sense of buoyant imagination and unbridled fun runs through every page.”

  —The Onion A.V. Club

  “…ridiculous, and funny, and a little bit sexy.”

  —Portland Book Review

  “Phil and Kaja Foglio’s awesome new fantasy … pushes the boundaries of steampunk past the polite boundaries of pseudo-Victorian and into full-on techo-madness!”

  —Matt Staggs, Suvudu.com

  Fans of the series will enjoy another trip into Agatha’s world, and it is not too late for new readers to jump aboard.”

  —City Book Reviews

  “I will confess to being a big fan of Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius”

  —Charles Stross, author of Halting State and Rule 34

  “…a madcap comic adventure combined with steampunk and some well-used fantasy tropes.”

  —EscapePod

  “… bursting at the seams with creativity, humor, and outright weirdness … an infectious and incredibly fun read.”

  —Sarah Kuhn, ign.com

  “If Jules Verne had written comics, he wouldn’t have written Girl Genius. He would have been jealous of it, though.”

  —Comics Buyer’s Guide

  “Girl Genius is brilliant. It really is. It’s fun and funky and unlike almost anything else, and it’s Phil and Kaja Foglio doing what they do best.”

  —Eric Burns, Websnark.com

  Other Books by Phil and Kaja Foglio:

  Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess

  Agatha H. and the Airship City

  Girl Genius Graphic Novels:

  Volume 1: Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank

  Volume 2: Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City

  Volume 3: Agatha Heterodyne and the Monster Engine

  Volume 4: Agatha Heterodyne and the Circus of Dreams

  Volume 5: Agatha Heterodyne and the Clockwork Princess

  Volume 6: Agatha Heterodyne and the Golden Trilobite

  Volume 7: Agatha Heterodyne and the Voice of the Castle

  Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones

  Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm

  Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse

  Volume 11: Agatha Heterodyne and the Hammerless Bell

  Volume 12: Agatha Heterodyne and the Siege of Mechanicsburg

  Volume 13: Agatha Heterodyne and the Sleeping City

  Other books and graphic novels by Phil Foglio:

  Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire

  Buck Godot: Psmith

  Illegal Aliens (with Nick Pollotta)

  NIGHT SHADE BOOKS

  NEW YORK

  Copyright © 2014 by Phil and Kaja Foglio.

  The ongoing adventures of Agatha Heterodyne can be found online, where they are updated every Monday, Wednesday & Friday at www.girlgeniusonline.com.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Start Publishing LLC, 609 Greenwich Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10014.

  Night Shade Books is an imprint of Start Publishing LLC

  Visit our website at www.start-publishing.com.

  Cover art by Tom Kidd

  Cover design by Owen Corrigan

  Print ISBN: 978-1-59780-524-7

  To Our Dear Mothers, Ottillie & Rose, whom we often drove to despair, and no doubt, still do.

  PRELUDE

  “As we passed through the last of the great Iron Gates and approached Mechanicsburg for the first time, the Bishop was struck anew by the grandeur of the surrounding cliffs, the majesty of the encircling mountains, and the awe-inspiring fury of the River Dyne as it roared far beneath the Bridge of Thorns.

  As we crossed toward the town, he rhapsodized at such length that I feared it would take a double dose of poppy-juice tea to settle him in for the night.

  The more strategically inclined Captain Van der Vheer pointed to the same features and glumly explained why, for the last thousand years, the Valley of the Heterodynes deserved its reputation as unconquerable.

  I am already resigned to never leaving this place, but I take some small comfort that, at the very least, my last memories of Earth will be filled with some of God’s finest landscapes.”

  —Excerpt from the journal “The Building of the Red Cathedral, or Why God Now Hates Us” by Brother Martanus, “The Unkillable.” Located in the Papal Library of Banned and Forbidden Books, Avignon, France.

  CHAPTER 1

  Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,

  Welcome to Mechanicsburg!

  There’s no finer city from

  Saint Petersburg to Rome.

  Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,

  The loveliest we’ve ever heard of,

  Jewel of Europa and

  The place where we call home.

  How mighty are her mighty walls,

  How shiny are her clanks,

  How beautiful her mountains tall,

  And for her snails we all give thanks.

  How glorious her Hospital

  Which helps folk far and near,

  Bill and Barry Heterodyne

  Built it for us here.

  Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,

  Welcome to Mechanicsburg,

  We thank you so for visiting,

  With every erg and ohm.

  Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,

  The greatest burg we’ve ever heard of,

  Jewel of Europa and

  The place where we call home.

  —“The Mechanicsburg Tourism Song,” Tom Smith

  Arella Heliotrope climbed the stairs to her family apartment, her mind buzzing with news. She opened the hidden locks on the front door and peered inside. “Poppa?” she called. The sitting room had been tidied in a rather haphazard manner. Couch cushions were lined up wrong side out, the great salvaged clank head that had been repurposed as a fire-front had been left with jaws agape, books had been stuffed onto bookshelves with no regard to order. Arella sighed. The old man did try to stay useful. She wished he would go out but more and more, he just stayed in the apartment. He was not taking retirement well.

  She walked past walls lined with family mementos: portraits of old Heterodynes, monsters, ancestors, and nervous-looking dignitaries.

  The apartment itself was more spacious than its exterior would suggest. It actually o
ccupied the top floor of what, observed from the street, would appear to be three conjoined yet separate buildings. Even from the beginning, the family had sought to keep a low profile.

  “Poppa?” she called again. He wasn’t in the library, a room lined with meticulously oiled leather-bound volumes containing everything one could wish to know about Mechanicsburg and its former rulers.

  He wasn’t napping in his room. With a small pang of guilt, Arella saw that the votive candle before the portraits of her husband and his mother had melted down. She replaced it with a new votive, setting it securely into the cut-glass safety lantern.

  “Poppa?” Arella continued on to the kitchen where she set her purchases down on the counter, trying to avoid a scattering of dirty bowls and small drifts of flour. She scowled. “Poppa?”

  “I’m on the balcony,” the old man’s voice called out.

  And indeed he was. Carson Heliotrope rested, ensconced in a large comfortable chair. The cat, Electrode, so named for its ability to store up static electricity, lay sprawled in his lap. The old man put down the book he was reading and smiled at her as she stepped out the back door.

  “I got us a pork pie for supper, and some fresh onions.”

  Carson looked pleased. “Wonderful! I have some bread rising.”

  Arella had noticed the covered loaf pans arranged upon the balcony railing. “You shouldn’t have!” She remembered the disarray she’d seen in the kitchen. “Really.”

  The old man waved a hand in dismissal. “Ha! Did it anyway.” He cast an eye over the side of the balcony. Below, on the normally sedate Avenue of Schemers, there was an excessive amount of traffic and a suspicious number of people clustered together, conferring. His voice was deliberately casual. “Any news?”

  Of course, Arella realized, he knows something is up.

  “Yes, indeed,” she reported. “They say a new Heterodyne heir has—”

  But Carson had lost interest, waving at her to stop. “Ah. Enough.” He sighed as he picked up his book.

  Arella hesitated and then spoke slowly. “I don’t know, Poppa… this one sounds different.” The old man noisily turned a page. “It’s a girl, for starters.”

  Carson grunted in surprise. “That is different.”

  Arella nodded and leaned back against the doorframe. “And she beat Baron Wulfenbach.”

  Carson frowned. “What, with a stick?”

  “With an army.” Now she had his full attention. “She appeared in Balan’s Gap. Blew up half of Sturmhalten Castle.” Involuntarily, both of them glanced up at the ruined castle that loomed over their own town. “After that, it gets…confusing. But the town was destroyed, or at least overrun with assorted monsters, and during the fighting, the Baron was hurt.” She pointed a finger towards the large white structure crowning a hill in the distance. “He’s here—in the Great Hospital. And…she had Jägers with her”

  Carson had been staring at the distant hospital, but this information jerked his attention back to her. “Jägers?” His brain, which had spent too many sleepy days in the sun, was laboriously spinning back up to speed. “A nice touch, that. The generals will come down hard on them when they catch them.” He snorted. “She should’ve just had the Masters along as well.”

  Arella nodded in satisfaction as she delivered her coup de grâce. “She did. Along with the Lady Lucrezia, Punch and Judy and even the High Priestess—you know, from the street plays.”

  The old man absorbed this—his mouth twitching and the corners of his eyes crinkling with remembered humor. “Master Barry would be furious.”

  “He didn’t look furious,” Arella replied tartly. “Of course, they were all three meters tall, glowed, and had wings—”

  Carson just stared at her now. “Wings.”

  Arella shrugged. “Well, there is some argument about that, but otherwise, everyone who saw them was convinced that it was them.” Arella fluttered her fingers upwards. “And then they all flew away into the sky. Presumably, to come here.”

  Carson nodded slowly. “And where is my grandson?”

  “He was out all night,” Arella informed him. “Probably because of the excitement.”

  To her slight surprise, the old man nodded in approval. “Yes. He’ll be busy, I expect. Very good. Still…”

  With a small grunt, he levered himself out of his chair, dumping the cat to the floor. “Arella, my dear, I am going out.”

  Arella handed the old man his jacket and cap. “You’re going to the gate?”

  Carson nodded as he carefully adjusted his cap to hide the terrible scars upon his bald head. Arella dutifully brushed the back of his coat. “I’ll send down some lunch.” She paused. “Do you really think she’ll come, Poppa?”

  Carson heard the faint whisper of longing within Arella’s voice and sighed. Even after all this time, even after we all know better, we still hope. Best take care of this one quickly.

  He patted her arm as he turned to go. “I’m sure she will. All the others have.”

  He descended the stairs to the street, drew in a deep lungful of the morning air, and took a look around. What he saw brought him up short. For a moment, he panicked, but then he remembered that the Masters were gone. With the familiar pang of loss mixed with reassurance swirling through his head, he took another look, taking mental notes.

  It was worse. Worse than he remembered. He tried to think back. How long had it been since he had last inspected the town? Not just walked like a tourist, but looked, really looked, like a man who was responsible for things and would have to explain them to the Masters?

  Obviously far too long.

  There was litter in the streets. Not great drifts of it, to be sure, but that there was any at all would have caused his father to have a stroke. The façades of the shops were weathered. He saw a cracked window, and with a genuine shot of fear, he noticed that one of the small public fountains was no longer running, the bowl dry, filled with old leaves and a few cracked snail shells. What was his grandson thinking?

  He meandered down through the closely packed streets, eyes half-closed…listening.

  There was a rising tide of excitement bubbling through the citizenry. They always reacted to rumors of a Heterodyne, but this time it was sharper, fuller. Fanned, no doubt, by the large number of Wulfenbach troops and obvious out-of-towners who were holding forth on various street corners.

  He paused outside a busy pastry shop. A few seconds later, a shop girl hurried out with a wicker basket of warm cinnamon butter snail buns, which she handed over with a small curtsy before darting back inside.

  The proprietor of a Turkish teashop spied Carson as he turned onto the lane. He filled a blue ceramic mug with the thick campaign tea that he knew the old man favored, closed the decorative copper lid, and placed it into his hand as he passed. Carson, preoccupied, took it with a slight nod and continued on.

  As he approached, Carson ran a practiced eye over the wall surrounding the main gate of the town. Constructed of a wide variety of materials, the thirty-meter-tall walls were a mosaic of stone, brick, and chunks of metal arranged into a solid line of defense, broken only by the great gate before him. Even there, he saw signs of neglect. A crack had appeared below one of the deactivated catapults. It was probably only cosmetic, since the hodgepodge façade hid an inner wall that had broken the armies of empires, but to allow even the appearance of weakness! If the old Masters had seen such a thing, it would’ve been mortared with his blood.

  The great doors themselves were constructed of riveted iron and festooned with carvings of skulls and demons, with ranks of gargoyles leering down to glare at approaching travelers. Many were clutching the gilded trilobite that was the sigil of the Heterodyne family, rulers of Mechanicsburg.

  Carson strode through the vast central gate, keeping to a raised walkway on one side of the passage. The usual cart traffic rumbled by. When he cleared the portcullis the gloom of the gate tunnel gave way to bright sun, and he paused a moment, blinking.

&nb
sp; A young man who had been industriously sweeping the walkway removed his hat as soon as Carson appeared. “Master Heliotrope!” the boy called. “It has been a while since you’ve been by.” He indicated a small stone bench that had been set into the stone railing that lined the roadway up to the gate. “But I had a feeling you might be here, and I have just finished tidying your bench.”

  Carson smiled as he settled onto the sun-warmed stone. “You are a good boy, Kars.” He took a sip of his tea. “And how is your mama?”

  Kars looked pleased. “Very well, sir. Thank you.” Carson nodded.

  “Do remember me to her.” He ran an eye over the traffic. “Anything unusual today?”

  Kars paused and leaned upon his broom. The two of them looked out across the landscape. A well-constructed road led from the gate, crossed the river, and disappeared off between two of the cliffs that encircled the valley. The road was lined with advertisements, touting various taverns and inns, as well as the numerous attractions that helped draw in the waves of tourists who came to see the home of the legendary Heterodyne Boys.

  These days most of the town’s visitors arrived by way of the airstrip across the river, but today the old road was noticeably busier than usual. Carson could see, even from here, that most of them were troops. This was even more unusual, as the Wulfenbachs habitually used airships for military transport.

  “Forces from Balan’s Gap?”

  Kars nodded. “Mostly walking wounded. And they say they’re establishing overland supply lines.”

  Carson frowned. Mechanicsburg was the closest town of consequence, but the Empire had the largest air transport fleet—

  The old man bit his lip. Of course. This must be a very troublesome Heterodyne claimant indeed for the Empire to send troops, even if they were trying to be circumspect about it. At least the merchants will be happy. Prices were no doubt being raised even as he idled here.

  Carson leaned back and closed his eyes. Kars waited a moment, but when nothing else was said, he nodded, and taking his broom, moved to the other side of the roadway.