“Have my priestesses gone blind?” Lucrezia screamed. She turned to Tarvek, “Or even your sentries! How could they have not seen them coming?”
“They weren’t there a minute ago,” Vrin declared.
“There’s always a bit of high altitude cloud cover that forms over the mountain at this time of the day. They must have known that.” Tarvek muttered. “They could drift in with it, and then drop fast.”
Lucrezia looked at him in amazement. “What—All of them? Flying in close formation? Within the clouds? That’s extremely dangerous! Why would they do that?”
Tarvek looked at her and his face was grim. “It’s part of the standard procedure for quarantining a Slaver-infected town! That’s no Questor—that’s the Baron himself up there and he’s brought an army! He knows!”
Meanwhile, on a low rooftop, a grate was pushed upwards, and Krosp poked his head out. “It’s clear!” he announced, and then he was pushed upwards by the flood of the others.
For several minutes, all they did was breath deeply, savoring the clean air.
As they were doing so, the Professor braced himself for the inevitable grilling. He was not disappointed.
“Zo!” Ognian gently punched him in the arm, “Hy gots any great-great-great grand cheeldrens yet[71]?”
The Professor sighed. “No.”
The Jager frowned. “Hmf. Married?”
“No.”
“Got’s a gurl?”
“No.”
Ognian gnawed on his lower lip. “Vants a gurl?”
“Yes.”
Ognian’s eyes narrowed. “Iz hyu steel on der road? Iz hyu steel lookink for dot ‘perfect story’?” He snorted. “Get a job!”
The Professor snarled back. “Still looking for a Heterodyne, old man? Get a life!”
The Jäger bared his teeth. “Hyu vait und see, hyu young punk! Hy vill!”
The Professor rolled his eyes. “Shyeah. Fine. I’ll get married, when you find a Heterodyne.”
Ognian stood there with his mouth open. Then he gave the most alarming grin his hapless descendant had ever seen. “...Really?”
At that moment shouts and screams from the courtyards below caught everyone’s attention.
It was Krosp who glanced upwards. The sight of the approaching armada caused the fur to stand out from his body. He whirled and called out, “We have to find Agatha!”
Another watcher sat upon another castle roof and stared at the skies. It sat silently, except for a faint ticking. Its single eye slowly and methodically swept back and forth. An airship swam into view. The eye paused, and focused with a small whine. The emblem upon the side, the winged rook, sigil of the House of Wulfenbach was examined, and matched against an image stored within. The small clank leapt to its feet and began to chime.
The sharp, clear tones were far louder than one would expect from a mechanism of this size, carrying far across the castle rooftops. After a minute, it paused. There was no response. The little clank looked upwards at a square keep that loomed in the center of the castle, but it saw no activity. It chimed again, astonishingly, even louder. Again, there was no response.
The device tapped its miniscule foot impatiently, and then scuttled forward. It slid under the nearest door, and found itself upon a staircase that wound upwards and downwards from where it stood. Unhesitating, it leapt up the nearest riser and began the laborious climb.
After several stories, it saw a window, the sill occupied by a lounging cat. The cat saw the small movement and instantly focused its attention on the device. It stared in fascination as the device approached, its muscles tensing, when the clank snatched the fluttering tail and gave it a quick bend.
The cat instantly rocketed off, the backwash of its departure sending the small mechanism skittering across the floor.
Grimly, it picked itself up and hauled itself onto the windowsill. It looked down upon the roof of the keep. To its obvious distress, the roof was empty. It was at a loss as to how to proceed, when it heard several people approaching while arguing. One of them was the man it was supposed to avoid. The other was the Mistress! But she had said to avoid her as well, until this task had been completed. But if the task was impossible to complete, surely it would be acceptable to report this?
The programming conflict swirled about its miniscule mind, as it ducked behind a drape and listened.
“But what does he know?” The Mistress asked.
“Stop asking me that! I don’t know! I do know that this changes everything! He’ll tear this place apart! He’ll find my secret labs! The tunnels!”
“That thing my daughter was building! Do we need to deactivate it?”
“Don’t worry about that. She wanted it moved up to the roof. It’s still in my lab. It’s harmless.”
“But what does he know?”
The voices faded as the small group moved off. The small clank peeked from behind the drape and seeing no one, leapt to the ground. Tarvek’s lab then.
“I’ll bet ten.”
“Double.”
“Three muses.”
“Four sparks.”
“Damnation!”
“Pay up.”
Master Payne leaned back in his chair and reached inside his waistcoat. A look of surprise slid across his features as his hand felt around inside an obviously empty pocket. “My purse is gone.”
Opposite him, a hard-bitten Captain of the Prince’s Guard lowered his brows and deliberately removed his cigar from his mouth. A severe look came into his eye.
“Are you telling me...” he paused, “Sir—That you cannot pay your gambling debt?”
Payne looked at him owlishly for a frozen moment, and then chuckled appreciatively. “Nasty touch.”
The Captain grinned and took a sip from the drink beside his elbow and smacked his lips. “Aye, we get a passel of new recruits with that one.”
Payne picked up the cards and examined them with professional interest. “Always said you can learn more about cheating from an old soldier...”
The Captain blew a plume of smoke. “Well, we get shot if we’re caught,” he said philosophically. “That sharpens the mind right quick.” He saw Payne counting the cards, grinned, and pulled one out from his cuff. “Must say, I thought you’d do better than just stuffin’ muses up your sleeve.”
Payne paused slightly and a small expression of embarrassment flitted through his beard.
“Sir!” He said with offended gravitas, “You wrong me! I am but a simple entertainer. But wait—” His hand came up from underneath the table clutching a battered military wallet. “What is this, tucked into this wallet that you have so obviously dropped?”
The soldier’s drink slammed onto the table and he frantically patted himself down in vain. “You devil! When did you—”
Payne ignored him and studied the documents he’d extracted from the wallet. “Oooh, a love letter from your commander’s wife! Mighty spicy, I must say, sir! And this—my goodness! It’s a layout of Sturmhalten’s defenses! And look at this! It seems that somebody’s been selling off army stores to the black market!” He tutted disapprovingly.
His last comment had caused the old soldier’s face to go white. “That’s a hanging offense! I’d never—!”
71
Many Jägers lose touch with their humanity. This should come as no surprise, considering they were recruited from the Heterodyne’s army of reavers, pillagers, thugs and warriors, who were not chosen for their warmth and sensitivity to begin with. What did come as a surprise, was that to some degree or another, over time, they all regretted this loss. Many of them tried to develop interests and hobbies that tied them to normal people. The Jäger, Ognian, took an inordinate amount of interest in his descendants. He maintained records. He kept scrapbooks. He tried to set them up on dates. Thanks to his help, the Professor’s family at the time of our story was dangerously close to going extinct.