Vrin shot to her feet. “Of course! We will prepare a feast for my Lady!” She paused. “Most of the food of the Shadow World is rather disgusting, My Lady, but we make do.”
Tarvek nodded. “They’ve actually learned how to make a rather tasty cheese. We didn’t even know they’d brought cows down there—”
Vrin stuck out her tongue in disgust. “Moo-cows? Those stupid fat things? Ew. We make our ‘cheese’ from the juice of our own cob spiders.”
“Really?” Tarvek, who had eaten a lot of “cheese,” looked ill. “How fascinating.”
Lucrezia gave a snort of laughter and then looked startled.
Tarvek noticed. “Are you all right, my Lady?”
“There is so much that I have forgotten about this place,” Lucrezia murmured. “There is always so much happening, and so much of it is so delightfully ridiculous.”
The Geisterdamen formally bowed, and then darted off. Lucrezia looked after them fondly. She turned to Tarvek. “Vrin does not like you.”
Tarvek shrugged and started to walk. “She has been touchy and suspicious about everyone ever since your machinery was sabotaged. Rather unfairly, I feel, since none of our people were involved.” Lucrezia remained silent. Tarvek continued. “I shall have a suite set up for your use—”
At this point, Tarvek realized that Lucrezia was no longer by his side. He wheeled about and discovered a now naked Lucrezia delightedly examining herself in front of a large mirror. His strangled “glurk!” caught Lucrezia’s attention.
“Oh do forgive me,” she sang out as she turned and looked at herself over her shoulder. “It’s been so long since I...” she paused, and gave a peculiar laugh that sent a small chill up Tarvek’s spine, “Since I was really human, I suppose, that I have to get used to it all over again.” She ran her hands down her sides and nodded approvingly. “Yes, I can work with this.”
She turned back to Tarvek, who was resolutely facing away. Lucrezia smiled. This sort of thing was always fun. She sashayed over to him. “Now you were saying?”
Tarvek nodded. He turned, saw her lack of clothing and spun back, his face flushed. “Yes. Well. There are hidden parts of the castle. I’m afraid that you’ll have to stay out of sight for the next few days. Until after my father’s funeral. We can’t risk having the Baron’s people seeing you yet.”
Lucrezia frowned with mock severity as she oh-so-casually took his arm. She noted that he was sweating slightly. “But surely these are your lands.” She thought about this and continued more seriously. “What do you care about some Baron?”
That stopped Tarvek dead. He turned to look at her and to Lucrezia’s surprise, stayed focused on her face. “You really have been out of touch for a while. Interesting. Baron Wulfenbach means nothing to you?”
Lucrezia stared at him. She tried to stall for time and regain the upper hand by going back and picking up the clothing she had dropped. However, despite the view she provided, she saw that Tarvek was no longer flustered. The young Prince was more formidable than she had first thought.
“A Baron Wulfenbach you say? My, that does take me back. His father meant quite a lot to me, but that was such a long time ago.” She frowned in genuine annoyance now. “I wonder where dear Klaus was keeping his mother? I had thought him the last of his family.”
Tarvek looked confused. “Well, there is a son, yes, but the one we’re talking about—this is in fact the same Klaus Wulfenbach of whom I speak.”
Lucrezia’s jaw dropped. “HE CAME BACK?”
In Tarvek’s opinion, the fear and astonishment he saw in her face was the first honest emotion she had displayed. He nodded slowly. “Yes Lady. A few years after he disappeared.”
Lucrezia reeled. “Only a few—!”
She saw Tarvek studying her and caught herself. She allowed herself a small wistful smile and sighed affectionately. “That man.”
With that she pulled herself back together instantly. Tarvek was impressed. She raised her chin and smiled. “Very well. Klaus is here. How droll. He is but a Baron, how much trouble can he be?”
Tarvek stared at her. He slowly removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Please have a seat, my Lady. This... this may take awhile.”
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.