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The green hair wasn’t unusual. Neither were the swords, or the costume—outfit, Gil supposed; from the build and scars the young woman looked like a warrior far more than any sort of performer. At least, they were no more unusual than the ordinary citizens of Paris that he saw every day; rare enough to be distinguishing features, if he needed to describe the woman to someone for any reason, but not really noticeable.
What was unusual was the delay. There could be a wait, getting into Paris, depending on the time of day and if any nearby city had recently been destroyed and sent its citizens fleeing for shelter, but the lines didn’t usually stop for any length of time longer than a few minutes. The routine questions, and then people were let through (or, very rarely, guided away to a private location for more thorough questioning, or warning, or whatever was needed). But the woman with green hair had been talking to the woman at the entrance counter for at least ten minutes, and the line hadn’t moved. Which, alright, wasn’t that long, but….
Gil slipped past the people ahead of him in line, which earned him a few suspicious looks but no protests as he approached. “Purpose of visit,” the woman said, in a tone that indicated she had been patiently repeating it for a while. “I need to know why you are here. What you intend to do.”
The green haired woman responded with a sentence in a language Gil couldn’t understand, but sounded sort of like the words the Baron occasionally muttered to himself and had said Gil would never need to know. Then, in heavily accented French, “Paris library where.”
“You want to go to the library?” Gil asked. The green haired woman turned to him with a surprised and analytical expression; the woman at the counter just sighed.
“Paris library,” the woman with green hair said again and then, in slightly faster and less (though still very) accented Romanian, “I need to go to the Paris library.”
Well. How convenient. Gil switched back to Romanian too. “There are several libraries in Paris, but first you need to go through customs, and then you can go to whichever you want.”
“Cus-toms.” She said the word as if had never heard it before and was sounding it out. “Customs what is.”
There hadn’t been the usual upswing in pitch when she was trying to ask the customs woman about the location of a library either; that probably meant interesting things about her native language, and Gil really shouldn’t let himself get distracted by science right now. At least it was lingustics; biology would have been much harder to ignore. “The Master of Paris wants to keep track of who is in his city, so everyone who enters has to answer some questions about why they’re here.”
There was a pause while the green haired woman concentrated before she answered. “Find Paris library.”
“She’s here for research,” Gil relayed to the woman at the counter in French.
She sighed again, but nodded and wrote it down. “Occupation?”
Gil turned back to the green haired woman. “She needs to know what your job is. What you, um, do.”
The woman with green hair frowned. “I am a war princess of Skifander.”
Huh. Skifander sounded familiar; probably something the Baron had mentioned, if he’d been muttering in the same language like Gil thought. Gil turned back to the woman at the counter and translated, “warrior.”
The woman at the counter eyed the green-haired woman’s swords, wrote it down, and pulled out another piece of paper. “We may as well get you through now too. Name?”
“Gil Holzfäller.”
Gil’s (re)entrance to Paris went much more smoothly, with only a brief interruption when the green-haired woman asked what his conversation with the woman at the counter was about, though he’d probably have to explain to the Master at some point later that there really hadn’t been anything he could do to further minimize collateral damage from the army of oversized mechanical worms he’d led out of Paris except to bait them out of the city before really fighting.
The green haired woman stopped to stare once they reached the street, although she did step aside to leave the exit clear first. Gil gave her a moment to look around (which she did, apparently awed and excited in about equal measure) before clearing his throat. “What’s your name?”
The woman wasn’t so distracted that she had any trouble bringing her focus back to Gil to answer. “I am Zeetha, daughter of Chump.”
Gil bit the inside of his cheek, and carefully did not laugh at the name. “I’m Gil Holzfäller.” Zeetha looked expectantly at him. “Just that. Er, names work differently here,” her said, because he could hardly add son of Baron Wulfenbach.
Zeetha nodded. “Your mother has a nice name.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that—er, not that it matters….” Zeetha looked curious though, so Gil continued. “Usually, we have a first name—like mine is Gil, it’s what people call me, and it’s just mine. And then there’s the family name—Holzfäller—which is, er, inherited I guess. Kids all have the same family name as their father, who has the same family name as his father, and it goes back like that.”
Zeetha paused, apparently concentrating again; whether she was sorting out the words or the ideas he couldn’t tell. “Your mother’s name do you not have.”
“Sometimes mothers pick the first name, and kids get their mother’s name usually if she doesn't know who their father is. But usually no.”
Zeetha shook her head as if the entire idea made no sense. “Library now.”
“Right. So, there are about two dozen libraries in Paris, plus private collections, plus the Incorruptible Library, and all of them have a specialization, although sometimes they specialize in the basics of everything….”
Zeetha wanted two things, it turned out: to learn everything about Europa, and to figure out where she was relative to her home and how to get back. They started with geography, traced her path back to where she'd landed somewhere in Italy by her recollections of the mountains and rivers she'd crossed, the monsters she'd fought, and the names of a few towns she still remembered. Gil was impressed; he could cross the Wastelands on foot if he had to, he was sure, but it didn't at all sound like fun, and Zeetha wasn't even a spark; she'd done it all with her swords alone. (Gil was pretty impressed with the swords too; some of the clanks and constructs she'd described were known for having impenetrable shells. Zeetha described them as “tough.”)
They moved on to political maps, mostly for Zeetha’s curiosity, which led to explaining the many local and interlocking political systems, and then independent non-political systems like the Corbettites, which reminded Gil he had a class in Effectively Mad Governance about an hour after it ended.
Well, he could probably write this up for credit.
They didn't find anything about Skifander, although Zeetha’s stories were fascinating. She followed him to class (which she wasn't actually supposed to do since she wasn't a student, but anyone who looked about to object looked at her swords and visibly changed their mind), and the rest of the time they studied together. Occasionally they studied the same books and maps, but mostly they were just in the same room, Gil recommending the best sources for what she wanted to learn and answering her questions, and Zeetha reminding Gil to stay focused when he got distracted, frequently with a smack over his head. It was bizarrely nostalgic, since only Tarvek had done that, and only rarely, and only in Paris, while he hated Gil. Gil missed Wooster more, and he'd only graduated the previous semester, and Gil knew he'd see him again.
It meant, inevitably, that Zeetha also became a hero.
The first adventure she was drawn into wasn't really even an adventure, exactly; Gil was sitting in class and taking notes, as were the rest of the students, and Zeetha was paying just as close attention even though she wasn't a student or writing anything down. (Closer, maybe; Gil had doodled ideas for improving engine efficiency in the margins of his notes.)
There was a muffled commotion from the other side of the back wall, which distracted absolutely no one. The other side of that wall was one of the intro mechanics laboratories, and it was stranger for there not to be a few muffled commotions from it every other class. Usually it meant the professor was out due to a much larger commotion earlier in the week and class was canceled.
It was slightly more distracting when a pair of clanks burst through the wall, but it still took a few seconds for anyone to react. Gil looked up, as did Zeetha and most of the rest of the class, and the professor turned around.
“Behold! The glory of a masterpiece!” someone declared from within the body of the larger clank.
The masterpiece looked distinctly cobbled together. Not in the sense that the parts were mismatched—they actually matched rather well, being all the University’s standard supplies—but in the fact that the five legs of each clank seemed to all be slightly different lengths, and each a different design, each one more refined than the next, and the six arms fanning from the position that on a human would be the head and shoulders followed a similar pattern. The clanks were compensating remarkably well thanks to their bent, spider-like design, but even so—“Breakthrough project?” Gil muttered to the student next to him. She just sighed. Zeetha seemed to be the only one excited, staring curiously at the clanks as the smaller one skittered in circles around the larger.
Their professor looked irritated. “Your own class can behold your masterpiece,” he said. “My students are the future rulers of Europa, and I am imparting important wisdom—”
“Silence!” the spark within the clank roared. “All shall behold my masterpiece and—”
Right, that was enough of that. Gil stood up, hopped onto his desk, and then down the further desks to the floor. Zeetha followed by the same path.
The large clank turned to focus on him, the smaller one still skittering in its circles. “You! You appreciate your mastery, excellent, you shall be my chief minion, and—”
“I’ll not, actually,” Gil said. “But if you'd like suggestions for improvements I can—”
“Silence!” The shriek was even more offended this time. The front leg of the larger clank lifted, pointing at Gil, and the clank lurched forward, the smaller one skittering more smoothly in its wake. “How dare you interrupt, lowly minion!”
“I'm not a—” Gil had to break off, dodging out of the way as the larger clank’s leg crashed to the floor just behind where he'd been standing. “—minion, actually,” he finished. “But if—”
He was interrupted, this time, by a screech of tearing metal. Quiet, as those things went, but nonetheless—
Zeetha had cut off all of the smaller clank’s legs, and stabbed both her swords deep into its body. It shuddered, arms flailing; she yanked her swords back out, leaping back to dodge. There was another screech of metal tearing, a bit louder, apparently from inside the clank.
The new spark howled. “You dare destroy my masterpiece! I'll have your head for this, your swords will be the control panel when I rebuild it, and I’ll have your bones for tools!”
While the spark was distracted, Gil scooped up one of the cut off legs, targeted the weakest joint of the larger clank’s legs, and smashed it. The spark howled again. Zeetha lunged in, slicing off another leg.
They worked remarkably well together; in less than a minute every limb had been removed from both clanks, and the spark had struggled out of the remains of her creation, still shrieking indignation. “How dare you, you impudent—”
“Enough!” Gil roared back, and she finally, blessedly, shut up. He continued before she could get over the instant of being stunned—even weak sparks were remarkably resilient in breakthrough—and start talking again. “Do you want to know how to protect the joints so we can't do that again?”
The new spark looked suspicious. “Why would you help? I'm going to crush you as soon as I rebuild—”
Gil grinned. “Why wouldn't I want to see science improve?”
He got her distracted. They didn't move back to the mechanical lab, and Gil’s professor left soon after, dismissing the class. The rest of the class filed out, and Zeetha followed after checking with Gil that the clanks weren't likely to reawaken and become threatening again and that he could deal with them if they did. She returned half an hour later with a book of basic French that she'd been studying for the last few days. By that point Gil and the new spark were deep in the inside of her larger clank, rebuilding it better from the inside out as Gil explained the better alternatives for wiring and how certain elements could work well individually but combine in disastrous ways.
By the time Gil finished university a few months later Zeetha was speaking fluent if accented French. Her Romanian had improved a bit too, although it had been much better to begin with, and Gil had learned some basic phrases of Skifandran. (He was right; they indicated questions with grammar and a particular extra sound, like a verbal question mark, not the upswing in tone that Europan language used.) Zeetha had also gone along on every adventure Gil got caught up in, and made almost all of them far easier to manage, having a second fighter who was at least Gil’s equal on his side, and able to keep him focused. (Not a minion, definitely, even if she was doing the same job a minion would at times. Gil could imagine Zeetha as an old-style royal patron of sparks like the Storm King, but not as a minion.)
They still hadn't found anything on Skifander; the closest they found were records of ancient goddesses that seemed to resemble Zeetha’s descriptions of Ashtara. Gil had become more and more convinced that the Baron had probably been there at some point; Zeetha used the same words as he often did when cursing in frustration. He avoided mentioning that—maybe it was coincidence; maybe the Baron wouldn't want to share anyway—but Zeetha returned with him to Castle Wulfenbach anyway. He had a good enough argument that they'd searched the libraries of Paris already, and the Baron had traveled a lot with the Heterodyne Boys and while missing during the Other War, and might know something; if he didn't his sparks might, and if they didn't Zeetha could always return to Paris.
Plus, Gil really didn't feel like going back alone. Four years and not one of his old schoolmates (who were more than just schoolmates, really; they'd grown up together) had bothered to write; four months and neither had Wooster. He hoped Zeetha found something worth investigating on Castle Wulfenbach—hoped she found a way home, of course, but also hoped she didn't take it immediately. Gil didn't have the best track record with managing to keep friends through letters.
A construct of some sort was waiting when they got off the transport and onto Castle Wulfenbach’s main body; a bit squirrelish, Gil thought, if it had been based on anything at all. It was also looking down its nose at him. “Master Gilgamesh. The Baron wishes to speak to you.”
Huh. It was surreal, hearing his full name—which barely felt like his name at all—spoken out loud, by anyone but the Baron. Gil had known the Baron planned to acknowledge him when he returned from university since before he left for it, and the construct almost definitely didn't know the Baron even had a son yet; his tone made it sound like he thought Gil was in trouble. It still made the impending reveal seem jarringly real.
None of that actually affected what was going on right now. Gil needed to talk to the Baron to plan (or be informed) when and how the Baron planned to reveal him, and Zeetha needed to ask him about Skifander. He nodded. “Alright. Princess Zeetha is coming with me.”
The construct sniffed disapprovingly, but didn't comment. “I am to show you there.”
The Baron’s office could very well have moved a dozen times in the years Gil had been gone, and that was assuming he was in his office to begin with, so that would actually be useful. Gil nodded.
He chatted with Zeetha as they followed the construct, pointing out interesting spots and childhood memories, which the construct ignored, somehow managing to project a disapproving air despite the fact that Gil could only see its back.
“—secondary engine rooms, probably tertiary by now unless they've improved—”
“Where you tried to improve them so they'd shake the ship more?”
“Yeah, those—the school was right above them at the time, it made sense!” Gil protested as Zeetha laughed at him. “It's very comforting, you know, when you're used to it.”
“Is that how you slept through the earthquake?”
“That was a building quake, at most, no one felt it off the block.” The construct had stopped beside a door, though, so Gil let the debate drop as he opened the door.
The Baron was at a table with several of his top administrators, to judge by the various pins and medals, though Gil only recognized Boris (who, of course, had no pins or medals at all). A few of them glared at Gil as he opened the door; the Baron started to look irritated as he looked up, then it cleared. “Ah, Gilgamesh—”
The Baron stopped as Zeetha followed Gil through the door, open shock on his face.
“Ah, Herr Baron. This is War Princess Zeetha of Skifander,” Gil said.
The Baron made a strangled noise, as if he were trying to both say and suppress about a dozen words at once, then said a phrase Gil couldn't understand, but which sure sounded like Skifandran.
Zeetha beamed. “Zur baken Skiff!”
The Baron’s response was a barked demand, of which Gil could only catch the Skifandran word for ‘you’ and what might have been the word for ‘here,’ and accompanied by a fierce glower. Gil wanted to argue, tell the Baron to cut out whatever it was he was doing since Zeetha couldn't possibly have done anything to make him mad, but there was no reason for the Baron to listen to Gil ever, much less in front of his administrators.
Besides which, Zeetha seemed perfectly able to handle herself. She snapped back, short, then offended as the Baron continued to demand something (different, Gil guessed; he still didn't recognize the words but they didn't match the first ones the Baron had used), and the pair descended into a clear argument. Zeetha was probably the person least intimidated by the Baron’s glower in the room, despite being the focus of it
The argument lasted less than two minutes before the Baron relaxed abruptly, leaning back in his chair, and apparently unbothered by Zeetha still looking and sounding irritated with him. In fact he looked almost amused as he added another comment, and—
Zeetha had hugged Gil before; several times, actually, she seemed not to be reserved at all about physical contact. Those hugs had been enthusiastic; they had not been nearly rib-breaking, or involved her actually picking him up and spinning around in a circle before setting him down again. That was, in fact, something that Gil didn't think had ever happened to him; the closest he could remember was a few times when Madam Von Pinn had caught him sneaking out the door, swept him up and set him back down well inside the room. “Uh….”
“Gilgamesh,” the Baron said, “this is your sister.”
“What,” Gil said.
“Sister,” Zeetha said. “A girl or woman who shares the same parents as you.”
“You're mocking me,” Gil said.
Zeetha was still grinning. “I have many years to mock you for.”
“I'm glad you get along so well,” the Baron said, and turned to the watching administrators, whose expressions ranged from patient to bemused. “Everyone, these are my children, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and War Princess Zeetha of Skifander.”