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“Gilgamesh?”
“Yes, Father?”
“Can you work out the problems with this device tonight?”
“I can try, Father. If you’d explain the theory?”
“The basic idea is to promote secondary oxidation….” Klaus relaxed gradually as he explained the false theory. Somewhat more than was warranted, perhaps, but Gilgamesh was a strong spark; Klaus would be surprised if he didn’t work out the problems with the theory. Whether he would dare argue with Klaus was more of a question, but ultimately an issue for the stability of the Empire, and not Gilgamesh’s safety. Something to work on, but Klaus hardly expected that Gilgamesh would fail to protect himself from an enemy as a result of not wanting to challenge Klaus.
The environment was relaxing as well. This wasn’t Klaus’s own lab, but that actually meant he was less likely to be interrupted, and it had been some time since he had been in a lab without having to rush. Boris stood by the side taking notes for Klaus to look over later, surrounded by the jager guards, so he could afford to relax and not be as attentive as he normally would to their surroundings. The lab was a nice one as well; strangely clean (probably because Beetle’s assistants weren’t sparks) but full of quality (if not especially modern) machinery and supplies. Most were familiar to Klaus, though one seemed to be producing a pleasant hum which he couldn’t recall the source of. Perhaps it was some sort of power—
“Miss Clay! Stop that infernal humming!”
Klaus, quite abruptly, stopped explaining.
“Hah?!” The assistant sounded startled. “I… I’m sorry, Doctor, but I was listening to the Baron, and something… something isn’t right, and—”
Gilgamesh looked confused.
“Silence!”
There was silence, if not necessarily because of Merlot’s command. Klaus turned—did not whirl, because that would only scare them and he didn’t need anyone present to be more nervous, the situation might be far more delicate than he’d thought—to look at Beetle’s assistant.
The girl looked embarrassed, becoming more worried. Merlot was angry, and Glassvitch appeared confused and wary. Klaus focused on the girl. He had to search for her name. “Miss… Clay.” How was that her name? If she could— “You were humming?”
Nervous abruptly became terrified as she focused on him. What had she been told about him? And by whom? Perhaps Klaus should see about toning down some of the more exaggerated rumors, if a question got this reaction. Not now. Listen to her. “I—I’m sorry, I just—I was listening, and—I won’t do it again, Herr Baron, I’m sorry!”
“Klaus, surely you don’t object to humming!” Beetle was making a very unconvincing attempt to sound jovial instead of suddenly also terrified. In the edge of Klaus’s vision, Boris raised an eyebrow and took notes.
“Father—” Gilgamesh started, and broke off, sounding confused.
“You must ignore her, Herr Baron,” Merlot said. “She isn’t very… aware of herself.”
“We apologize, Herr Baron….” Glassvitch seemed somewhat unsure what to apologize for. “Miss Clay, perhaps you should go fetch some tea?”
“Of—of cour—”
“No.” Beetle’s assistant froze half a step toward tea, and cast him the same look an intelligent rabbit might give a fire-breathing wolf construct. Klaus kept his eyes on her anyway, and ignored the others. Her blond wasn’t the same as Lucrezia’s, but Barry had had a bit of red in his hair, hadn’t he? And he could see Bill in the shape of her nose, Barry in the shape of her mouth… but where could she have come from? Any of Bill’s or Barry’s traits could be Heterodyne traits, and there wasn’t a shortage of blondes. Perhaps a cousin? She certainly didn’t act like a Heterodyne. “Hum. Again. As you were. …Please,” he added only slightly late. She slowly set her foot back down, looking as bewildered as she was nervous now. Well, it was a slight improvement.
“Klaus, this is absurd!” Beetle cut in. His voice was full of contradictory harmonics; spark, anger, fear. “Surely you cannot be this bothered about a girl humming!”
“Doctor Beetle,” Klaus growled. He still didn’t take his eyes off of the girl. “If you wish to be forgiven for hiding a hive engine from me, then for now you will stay out of my way.”
…He’d intended to be a bit more elegant about revealing his knowledge than that. All Klaus really cared about now was figuring out exactly what the girl was and where she had come from. What he’d said did, at least, imply that forgiveness was possible. And if it didn’t work… Beetle may be an acceptable loss, for this.
Beetle sputtered in shock and anger. “You knew! How did you know?” Merlot and Glassvitch both looked afraid; the girl looked shocked and horrified, her eyes darting over to Beetle before returning to Klaus. She hadn’t known, didn’t like the idea now; that was good.
“Easily,” Klaus snapped. “Now be quiet. You. Miss Clay. Hum.”
She gave him the same terrified rabbit look for an instant before a determined expression crossed her face. She straightened and began to hum.
It was just a hum; a single note, held somewhat shakily. Klaus felt his heart sink, in a way that less than a minute of suspense shouldn’t have justified.
But—
“Father,” Gilgamesh muttered quietly. Klaus resisted the urge to snap at him as well. “What?”
She wasn’t concentrating. Not thinking. If she didn’t know…. Had Bill or Barry ever done it consciously?
Klaus waved at the girl, and the hum trailed off quickly. He repeated the gesture. “Come here. Listen. And keep humming.” He turned to Gilgamesh, felt as if the girl would vanish as soon as he looked away, but heard her altogether too hesitant footsteps slowly approaching, and the same quiet one-note hum. Boris’s pencil was audible as well, but didn’t sound as if he were writing any faster than usual. “Gilgamesh, listen.”
“To you, or—”
“Both.” He waited for the girl to arrive, standing nervously on his other side and darting looks between himself and the machine, before continuing his explanation. “The aetherized copper solution is electrified to speed molecular movement….”
His explanation was perhaps not as succinct as it could have been, but most of his focus was on the girl. She was still looking between Klaus and the machine, but the machine was slowly winning her attention, and the more it did the more notes crept into her hum.
It took only a few minutes for her to begin heterodyning. Klaus broke off his explanation a few seconds after she started and turned to stare at her in what hopefully wasn’t obvious wonder. Her hum broke off an instant later, and she looked nervous again. Gilgamesh, Klaus expected, was still confused, but he didn’t have the frame of reference to realize what had just happened. In any case, he didn’t say anything about it.
The girl was the first to speak. “I—I’m sorry if I did something wrong, Herr Baron….”
“…No.” He managed to say it slowly, rather than the near yell that wanted to emerge. How on Earth had a Heterodyne he didn’t even know managed to do this to him? He wasn’t even sure—well, he was sure she was a Heterodyne, now, even if he didn’t know how. “You were heterodyning.”
She was, once again, bewildered. “I—er—what?” She cleared her throat. “I’m—I’m sorry, Herr Baron, I don’t know what that means.”
“Not many do.” He studied her as carefully as he could manage, but she appeared to be entirely genuine. A Heterodyne who didn’t know she was a Heterodyne, that was—promising, actually, when he remembered the family before Bill and Barry. “Members of the Heterodyne family had a particular way of humming that allowed them to ignore distractions and think better. I was never quite sure if it was learned or genetic.”
“Oh.” She absorbed the information before the implications of the context seemed to hit her. Oddly, when they did she looked distressed. “Oh! But, I—I can’t be, I’m not even a spark, I—” She actually looked like she might start crying. Klaus couldn’t fathom why.
Gilgamesh moved around him, whether to see her better or because he couldn’t resist her distress and had more ideas how to comfort her. “You might just not have broken through yet. Plenty of sparks don’t break through until their twenties, and there have been sparks that broke though as old as fifty-three,” he offered. “Usually, ah, very minor sparks, but it does happen.”
…Not necessarily better ideas to comfort her. Klaus sighed. Perhaps he should see if he could find someone to teach Gilgamesh how not to put his foot in his mouth. Though if growing up among royal children and all their etiquette hadn’t managed to teach him, Klaus wasn’t sure what could.
The girl made a noise. Klaus couldn’t honestly tell if it was meant to be a hiccup, sob, or laugh. “I—I guess I would be a really minor spark, if I was one.” This, Klaus decided, was a line of conversation that needed to end before he had a sobbing unknown Heterodyne girl to deal with.
“…Mistress?” Klaus actually jumped at the question. How had he been so distracted that he didn’t notice a jägermonster approach? Clearly he needed to get this situation settled before any armies snuck up on them all. “Lady… Lady Heterodyne?”
The jäger’s attention was, fortunately, entirely on the girl. Very desperate attention. It looked almost as if Jorgi were being pulled toward the girl with a magnet; he was leaning toward her, eyes fixated on her face and entire body tense as if he were only barely holding himself back from leaping, either to hug her or to snatch her up and run for Mechanicsburg. Probably the latter, but the jäger (all the jägers, once Klaus looked, though the others hadn’t moved from their places yet) looked desperately hopeful enough Klaus wouldn’t put the hugging past them either just now.
The girl gave the jäger… well, at least it wasn’t as terrified a look as she’d initially given Klaus. There was more shock than fear. “Well, I—I don’t feel like a Heterodyne, but if the Baron says so, I—” She shot Klaus a look that was a mix of confusion, fear and doubt before focusing back on Jorgi. “Mistress?”
Jorgi sniffed deeply, relaxed slightly, and slid down to kneel in front of her with more grace than Klaus had thought most jagers possessed. Or perhaps it was just coordination and speed, which jagers certainly weren’t known for lacking. “Hyu schmell right. Ve is jagerkin. If hyu is de Heterodyne, ve is yours.” The fierce tone was probably intended for Klaus, in case he had any ideas about keeping the jagers away from a Heterodyne. Well, he didn’t; not unless they were unreasonable about it.
“…Oh,” seemed to be all the girl could manage to say.
Which was probably the best reaction the jagers would get at this point, if the girl shared the opinion of most townspeople on jagers. Klaus cleared his throat. “Beetle. I believe we should take a break. Have you any rooms suitable for tea nearby?”
There was an answering silence, followed by some awkward shuffling of feet. Even Boris’s pencil paused. Klaus didn’t bother looking around before sighing. “He’s gone, isn’t he.” With everyone distracted by the girl, it wasn’t surprising. Or shouldn’t have been, at least.
A few throats cleared as Klaus turned, and a jager shuffled forward a few steps. “Ve’s sorry, Baron—”
Klaus was actually feeling good enough to snort at him. “For paying attention to the girl who is almost certainly your new Lady Heterodyne instead of a man who wasn’t currently threatening anyone? No, you’re not, and I wouldn’t expect you to be. But this does create a problem.” Merlot and Glassvitch were still present, and looking betrayed in Merlot’s case. Glassvitch merely looked as if he were trying very hard to piece everything together, and making progress but not truly keeping up. Klaus could understand the sentiment. He focused on Merlot anyway; best to distract him before the anger and betrayal had time to build into action. “Doctor Merlot, then. Tea rooms?”
Merlot jumped. “Er—yes. Herr Baron. This way, please.” He led them quickly out of the room, his steps landing a bit more heavily than necessary. Whether that was why the students cleared the halls ahead of him or if they always did Klaus didn’t care enough to bother guessing.
The jägers had all drifted quickly over to surround the girl where she walked behind Merlot and Glassvitch, glaring at anyone who looked in her direction. She was coping remarkably well with being surrounded by monstrous soldier constructs that her mother had probably used stories of to frighten her into behaving as a child, and only appeared somewhat nervous (and somewhat determined to hide it) rather than, say, running away as some of the targets of the glares did.
Klaus, for his part, lingered at the back of the group, Gilgamesh and Boris on either side of him and only the soldier clanks behind. The girl certainly wouldn’t be easily endangered or quietly vanishing while surrounded by jägers, but he kept an eye on her anyway.
She wasn’t Bill or Barry; she wasn’t, and she wouldn’t be, and if she didn’t know she was a Heterodyne she couldn’t possibly know what had happened to them. But—
It still felt like a little bit of the past he’d thought lost might have finally come home.