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Agatha came home in style. Klaus didn't realize she'd taken the chariot until he felt the rumble echo up through the mountain pass to the wall where he'd gone to wait. Then she came into view, a black speck with sparks spraying behind the wheels, thundering toward the gates. He raised his eyebrows.
Master Payne, who had relaxed a little when Klaus revealed he had brought beer to the invasion of his watchpost, tensed again. 'I believe she decided to play up an older part of her heritage for the visit,' he said, almost apologetically.
Klaus snorted. 'Not that old,' he said. 'I've ridden in it.'
Payne looked disconcerted. Klaus very carefully did not smile.
Klaus was not officially in Mechanicsburg. Again. But Otilia had come to see Moxana, and Gil had come to help with Punch and Judy, and Klaus frankly wanted to see how things turned out.
Agatha slowed for the traffic at the gate, which was trying rather frantically to scatter for her, and he got a look at the passengers in the chariot.
Agatha. Four Jägers.
And a sixth whose skin had a distinctive metallic gleam.
Klaus set his bottle down carefully. 'Good heavens,' he said. 'She actually did it.'
Payne leaned over the parapet. 'She did say she was going to ask,' he said faintly.
'Heterodynes,' Klaus said. There was a reason he'd worried about having one running around again. And... any number of reasons he'd missed it. He inhaled, then looked over at Payne and grinned. 'And your lot always think you're exaggerating them. Let's see how she is.'
Agatha herself was managing the clank horses one-handed (technically even that wasn't necessary) and waving to everyone until she pulled the chariot to a halt in an open square. The crowd converged gleefully, although after the horses snapped a few times they got a wider berth, and then Gil and -- the circus actor who played Bill, Lars, that was it -- burst through it from different directions. They managed not to run into each other, barely, and Agatha regarded them briefly before tossing the reins to Carson's grandson and taking one hand from each of them to be hoisted down.
When Klaus remembered to look for Tinka again, she was gone and the Jäger count was down by one.
'Nicely done,' Payne murmured with professional approval.
'They are very good,' Klaus agreed. The Jägers were sneakier than they often got credit for, and he wouldn't particularly care to bet against Gil and Lars having conspired on their greeting.
He and Payne reached the circus not too long after the distractions had managed to spirit themselves out of the crowd. (Or possibly vanish dramatically -- Bill and Barry had been known to have fun with that, and the Castle seemed fonder of Agatha.)
'You could have been a bit clearer about which Prince had taken her,' Agatha was saying to Lars. 'Tarvek was very nice about it -- really, Gil, he felt awful about it -- and mostly handed her over because she wanted to come. Aaronev was... trying to impress me, I think.' Her expression twisted in both distaste and weariness. 'Tarvek tactfully suggested that while he'd love to visit me in future his father was somewhat fixated on Lucrezia and it might be best for me to stay away from Sturmhalten. But I could have figured that out for myself.'
'Did he do anything?' Gil, sounding scandalised. Lars looked anxious.
Agatha shook her head.
'Bringing Jägers probably helped deter him,' Klaus said wryly. Agatha looked over at him. 'I'm not sure you should even encourage his son visiting, but I think we're all grateful you went once.'
'I should at least let him see I'm treating Tinka well,' Agatha protested.
'He didn't,' said Lars.
'That wasn't him!'
'He kidnapped her!'
'He did have reasons,' said Agatha. She bit her lip and glanced towards Moxana's caravan. 'It wasn't just that he wanted to study her.'
Klaus rubbed the spot between his eyebrows. 'I take it she isn't doing well, whatever he was--' Oh. 'Ah. That would have been approximately the time of his sister's laboratory accident.'
'Oh, you heard about that,' said Agatha, sounding a bit relieved. 'Yes.'
'It isn't precisely a secret, although they don't noise it around either.'
'We avoided the town until this year,' Payne said, frowning. 'What isn't a secret?'
'It was a serious accident,' Klaus said drily. 'She now has a prosthetic body.' And if he'd met her since, he might have noticed it being based on a Muse.
'It's very well made,' said Agatha. 'And Tarvek didn't even take Tinka apart to make it!' She slumped, her excitement at good clank work fading. 'That happened later, when Aaronev found her, and for no purpose at all. Tarvek's been trying to fix her but I think... well, some of it seems similar to Moxana's problems. There is real -- I mean, mechanical -- damage too, but it's hard to say which is which.'
'Perhaps being reunited will help clarify that,' Klaus pointed out. With Tinka the first to be whisked away from the chariot, Moxana's caravan had been shut since before the rest of them returned, but he had arrived with Otilia.
'It's strange to see her like this,' said Lars, quietly. 'She sometimes acted a little like that in public, as if she wasn't capable of thinking of more than one thing, and then backstage she'd talk almost like anyone else. I think she found it funny, sometimes. I half expected her to snap out of it once the crowd was gone.'
'Like the Castle,' Agatha said suddenly. Everyone looked at her inquiringly. 'When it was broken, it was very... single-minded. Or each piece of it was. And the worse the damage, the more it focused on very basic imperatives.'
'It's odd,' said Gil. 'The Muses are famous as the first clanks to replicate consciousness and emotion, but the Castle's much older. And not exactly secretive.'
'Yes,' said Klaus, 'but people normally survived talking to the Muses.'
'And then there's these things,' said Gil, suddenly bending down and snatching what looked like a cigarette lighter with legs from behind a clump of grass. It dinged at him indignantly, and he held it carelessly between finger and thumb where its limbs couldn't reach him. 'How single minded are they?'
Agatha laughed. 'It depends. Some of them I make for just one purpose -- like to be a wrench somewhere I can't get to. But they've got more initiative than you'd think. They found my plans and started the modifications to the circus without me. I was really surprised.'
'That does sound surprising, cousin!' Theopholous DuMedd melted out of the shadows, Sleipnir O'Hara right beside him, grinning ridiculously. Agatha whirled.
Klaus said, very drily, 'Oh good, you're not dead either.'
They both looked terrified and then, in plain view, winked out of sight.
Gil buried his face in his palm.
'What just happened?' Klaus demanded.
'Gil had this invisibility device--' Agatha began.
'I thought they were going to India!' Gil spluttered.
Otilia appeared in the doorway to the prop wagon. 'Master DuMedd?' she demanded.
Agatha covered her eyes briefly. 'Theo said he'd try to meet me here. I was wondering where they'd got to. Theo! Sleipnir! It's okay, really, he's not dragging people off or anything.'
'Although no one is to run away to India,' said Otilia, firmly. 'Even if you choose not to return to the school, running away together is rash and improper behaviour.'
'...And Otilia used to be Von Pinn,' said Gil, still hiding his face. 'In case you were wondering.'
There was a brief pause. Klaus folded his arms and resisted the urge to try collaring the nearest promising noise. Nobody was being quiet enough to pinpoint these things properly.
Theo and Sleipnir appeared again, looking sheepish and depressingly wary, and holding Barry's invisibility lamp, which was baffling but did not really provide any reason for the abrupt leap of Klaus's heart. Barry could have misplaced any number of minor inventions. 'Ah,' Theo began.
'So,' said Sleipnir. '...What happened to Von Pinn?'
Otilia emerged fully from the caravan, wings gleaming in the sunlight. 'I have been returned to my proper body,' she said. 'Lucrezia Mongfish decided to experiment with transferring consciousness some time ago.'
They both stared at her for a moment before Sleipnir offered weakly, 'Congratulations.'
Otilia looked amused. 'Thank you.'
Agatha latched on to Theo's arm. 'But where have you two been? I was starting to worry Othar'd found you again. He's trying to wipe out Sparks and I actually let on you were one, I'm really sorry.'
'We, uh, took the scenic route,' Theo said, eyeing Klaus uneasily, which Klaus interpreted to mean that they had found Castle Wulfenbach hovering over Mechanicsburg and assumed none of them should let themselves be found there. 'And apparently missed all the news, since last I checked you were running away from him.'
'She decided to try not running away from me,' Klaus said blandly. 'It's been very refreshing.'
'Things have actually turned out okay,' said Gil. 'Which is a good thing since you're not in India. There was a reason I wanted you out of here.'
Right, Gil had been encouraging people to run away from him.
'We'll fill you in,' Agatha said, then took a breath as if bracing herself for something, which was a little worrying. 'But, ah, right now we should probably let the Muses have their reunion and the Circus get to work on the evening performance. Maybe you could join us if we....' She turned to Gil, suddenly shy and hopeful. 'I was thinking maybe we could spend some time together this evening?'
'Uh, yes, that would be great,' said Gil, looking startled and then pleased. 'We could go to the cheese festival together?'
There was a muffled snorting noise and Klaus looked over to see Sleipnir hiding her face against Theo's shoulder with her shoulders shaking, while Theo shot a deer in the headlights look at Otilia.
'No!' said Otilia, wings rising sharply. Klaus almost expected her feathers to ruffle. 'That is entirely out of the question.'
Gil, understandably, turned to her in bewilderment. Agatha, less understandably, started out looking bewildered and was then suffused with a violent blush.
Lars looked around at them all and finally ventured, 'What in the world are you thinking goes on at the cheese festival?'
At the word 'cheese', Sleipnir emitted a sort of hiccup and a small wail. Agatha shot her a look of furious betrayal.
'Nothing will be going on at the cheese festival,' said Otilia, glaring at Agatha as if she suspected her of something nefarious, but not nefarious enough to require plans to kill her. 'Master Wulfenbach will not be attending.'
Klaus rubbed the bridge of his nose. 'Madame Otilia, do you have any particular grounds for trying to forbid Gil to go to a cheese festival?’ Technically she no longer had the authority to. ‘It really wasn't that alarming even the first time I went.' And that had been before most of the transformations Bill and Barry had wrought on their town.
'Miss Heterodyne did previously make a comment about disrobing him and dipping him in cheese,' said Otilia.
...And he probably should have suspected from Agatha’s blush and Sleipnir’s helpless hilarity that Otilia was objecting to something other than a lethal hazard. Although if anybody had been doing that at the time, Bill and Barry must have considerately steered him away from it. He'd been more easily embarrassed back then.
'Ooh,' Zeetha said, grinning. 'You never told me about that.'
--His daughter, on the other hand, might actually be harder to embarrass than they had been.
Agatha buried her face in her hands while Gil looked at her in surprise and then went red in his turn. 'I didn't mean it like that,' she said, muffled.
'Technically true!' Sleipnir managed. Agatha's fingers parted enough to permit a glower, which Sleipnir utterly failed to heed as she continued, 'You were saying then that you wouldn't have him.'
'Oh, thank you very much,' Gil said, still blushing but starting to sound a little bit amused.
'It's hardly my fault she decided crashing a flying machine meant I was trying to seduce you,' Agatha muttered.
'That sounds like a terrible approach,' said Zeetha. 'Kissing him after a big fight was much more sensible. Very traditional, too. No wonder he lost his head over you.' Otilia regarded her disapprovingly. Zeetha didn't appear to notice.
'That was a little premature, actually,' Agatha admitted sheepishly. 'It wasn't dead yet.'
'Yeah, but you noticed and beat it anyway, so it worked out.'
'We could go out for coffee?' Gil suggested, perhaps suspecting that any further digression on Skifandrian romantic traditions should be forestalled. 'If no one has any problems with that?'
Otilia folded her arms and looked as if she'd like to have a problem with that, but she could hardly deny Gil was old enough to go on a date if he chose to, and at least no one had been metaphorically dipped in coffee. Klaus sincerely hoped.
Agatha swallowed. 'Yes. Actually, you know what, coffee sounds great.' She glared balefully around at their various interested watchers and then sighed and dropped her forehead against Gil's arm. He looked thrilled. 'Okay, okay, great, we're the show before the show.'
Countess Marie made her way up to pat Agatha on the shoulder. 'Well, you have given us some interesting ideas for future performances.'
'I will come to your wagons at night,’ Agatha said in dire tones, without lifting her head, ‘and modify all your special effects.’
By the time Agatha escaped the circus, changed out of her gown for Sturmhalten and went to rejoin Gil just outside a Castle gate that was not on the maps sold to tourists, she was glad Theo and Sleipnir had opted not to join them after all. In fact she was not sure she wanted to see any of her friends, her cousin, or particularly her kolee ever again. Of course on a rational level she knew she'd change her mind soon, but at the moment she could barely look Gil in the eye.
'So. Ah....' She managed to look up, at least, and he looked... a little flushed. She couldn't blame him; she certainly felt that way. 'Thank you for....' Agreeing to the date? Suggesting something that had mercifully destroyed the cheese discussion? 'Coming.'
'You're welcome,' said Gil. 'I mean... it's my pleasure?'
'So,' Agatha began again, wondering if she should have just invited him to a laboratory instead, even though it might not have made her intentions quite as clear, 'I'm assured that the best coffee shop in town is the one where my seneschal practically lives.'
'Must be good coffee if he's that reluctant to leave,' said Gil, flashing her a grin and looking a bit more relaxed now the greetings had been stumbled through.
'It had better be,' Agatha said. 'He bought the coffee engine himself. He's very attached to it.' She offered Gil a slightly sheepish smile. 'I've, ah, actually never tried any yet.'
'Don't you like coffee?' Gil asked, sounding worried about it.
'I meant, I've never tried coffee.' Lilith had told her a young lady shouldn't drink stimulants, although she'd let Agatha have real tea after she was fourteen. Agatha was no longer entirely sure about this stricture. Granted, much of her time since leaving Beetleburg had been spent among people who did not worry about the particular standards of unremarkable respectability that Lilith had maintained, but if it were widely considered inappropriate she rather thought Otilia would have said something. It was looking entirely plausible that Lilith simply hadn't wanted Agatha, in particular, being any more stimulated than the university and her own trammeled mind itself tended to provoke. 'Lilith never let me have any,' she added thoughtfully, 'but she said I stayed up too late at my workbench as it was.'
'Oh,' said Gil. 'You may as well start with the best, then.'
'I'm looking forward to it!' she assured him. 'It does smell amazing.'
Gil was silent for a few steps and then took her hand while looking studiously in the other direction, as if she might not notice her hand was being held if he didn't draw attention to it. His hand was warm in hers, dry and rough with callus.
Agatha bit her lip, trying not to smile, and then decided this was silly and squeezed his hand, tugging until he looked around and she could actually smile at him.
Gil beamed back at her. Her heart felt like it shifted gears, not nearly as smoothly as she might have hoped, and the Castle aHEMed in her ear just before she could walk distractedly out into a cross street. As this was considerably preferable to the more drastic alternative of actually blocking traffic for her, Agatha made a point of looking where she was going the rest of the way.
The delicious smell of the coffee shop was drifting into the street before they reached the door, as was the murmur of its patrons. The latter stopped when they walked in and then resumed with greater intensity. Agatha sighed and tried not to blush, there was no point in trying to stop Mechanicsburg gossiping about her. With the Castle in the loop that was even more than usually literal. Vanamonde was sitting in his usual seat, looking as if he was thinking about nothing more than the coffee he was holding. He took in Agatha and Gil and gave Agatha a nod before tactfully returning to his coffee.
Vanamonde was really one of the best features of Mechanicsburg, Agatha thought gratefully, and he wouldn't mind being called that either. She and Gil took a table, somebody took their order (Agatha felt slightly guilty afterward for not having actually looked at her properly), a man with a toolbelt trudged out and returned carrying parts of something over his shoulder, and Rinja came out herself to bring their coffee and, in light of the hour, a menu describing the shop's more solid offerings.
Agatha thanked her, took a sip, and evaluated the taste as it spread across her tongue and the aroma curled up around her. It was good...
...but...
...it didn't seem to account for the degree of enthusiasm she'd previously heard expressed....
She met Gil's eyes, and he smiled again quickly at her. Her heart jolted, and at first she attributed that to Gil, but he usually smiled at her with more wonder or gloating or something behind the expression and less politeness and in fact her heart was beating much faster than she would have expected and that was odd actually oh of course it was probably the caffeine and words spilled out of her mouth.
'Idon'tthinkIbelievethisisthebestcoffeeinMechanicsburg,' Agatha announced. The concept of tact raced shouting behind, its voice rapidly lost in the distance. She fixed Rinja with a sharp look. 'Whathappened?'
Rinja winced. 'Sorry, my lady. That's what I was about to tell you. We're using the backup coffee engine -- the main one's broken. But we've got someone....'
'Broken?' Agatha was out of her seat in a flash. Something was broken in Mechanicsburg?
'Working on it!' Rinja finished, leaning over the counter, as by this time Agatha had thrown herself on the floor next to the disconcerted repairman.
'Agatha?' said Gil, sounding a little plaintive.
She twisted around and held out a hand to him. 'You should come and have a look at this! The system is ingenious. But I think it can be improved!'
Gil dropped down next to her. 'Oh, I see, the pressure boiler...' He stopped himself and grinned at her, happy but also slightly assessing. 'What did you have in mind?'
Agatha drummed her fingers on her thigh. 'I need more information about the coffee extraction process.' She jumped up and seized a barista, who directed her to a book, which explained the entire process in admirably scientific detail with full attention to sensory description as well as measurements where so many reports neglected one or the other. 'A simple exercise in chemistry!' she announced, dropping down beside Gil again to show him the book. She leaned in to whisper in his ear, 'And clearly this is Vanamonde's work under a false name I must congratulate him next time we're in private but he needs a better editor.'
Gil flicked through the book eagerly. 'I see. So, the first thing you're going to want is a big hammer?'
'Now wait a minute,' Vanamonde said in alarm, abandoning his table to join them behind the counter. 'That's a Bugatti coffee engine--'
Agatha looked up at him with a bright smile. For some reason he took a step back. 'Don't you want it to be a Heterodyne one?'
'I, um...' Vanamonde sighed. 'Yes, my lady.'
'Someone give us a hammer!' Gil commanded, and took one of the half a dozen (why did half a dozen coffee shop patrons have hammers?) that were proffered, offering it to her handle first.
Agatha impulsively kissed his cheek and then swung the hammer. Everyone stepped back for that, then crowded back around to take her orders for new parts and tools. Vanamonde still looked doubtful about the whole thing, but that was all right. It would be even better when they were done. Agatha pushed up her sleeves and really got to work.
When they were done, the coffee engine was, admittedly, six times its previous size. But it could boil water in eight seconds and should be able to do its own roasting, extract every aromatic and flavorful component from the coffee beans, and distill the very essence of that divine smell into liquid form.
She poured a cup and turned to Gil, who was standing very close and breathing deeply, looking almost as excited about it as she was. Come to think of it he might actually smell better than the -- right. Coffee. 'Here's to science,' she said.
'Wait!'
Vanamonde's yelp broke into her concentration, and she turned to him, blinking.
'I should be the first to taste it,' he said, deftly taking the cup and saucer from her hand. 'As your seneschal. We just got you back, you know.'
Agatha frowned at him. 'Yes, you're my seneschal, not a lab rat,' she said. 'What do you think I did to it?'
Vanamonde looked at the revised coffee engine. 'I have no idea,' he said, 'but you were ranting about making it more like coffee than coffee, and you took one sip of normal coffee and were just about bouncing off the walls.'
Gil draped an arm around her shoulder. 'He does have a point. Your reaction to coffee might not make you the best test subject for this one.'
Agatha leaned into him and conceded, 'Vanamonde does have a significantly better established baseline. And I'm sure it's perfectly safe. I mean, it's distantly conceivable that we failed to make superb coffee, but it certainly shouldn't have turned into anything else.'
'Right,' Gil nodded at Vanamonde, who was strangely not looking reassured by Agatha's reasoning. All the same Vanamonde lifted the cup to his mouth and took a sip and the next moment a vacant, dreamy expression came over his face.
Agatha watched him hopefully. '...How is it?'
Vanamonde's eyes focussed on hers again as if from a very long way away. 'Unutterably perfect.'
In fact unutterably seemed to be a slight misnomer, as Vanamonde went on in this vein for some time. Agatha looked up at Gil -- Vanamonde didn't seem to notice her inattention -- and murmured, 'Okay... maybe it's just as well I didn't try it. The trouble is,' she admitted, 'now I really want to.'
Gil looked at the giant coffee machine. 'Maybe we should make it a bit less perfect?'
That seemed sort of like a shame. And it occurred to her that perhaps a connoisseur was not a reliable baseline either. 'Maybe it would be okay? I mean, if you read his book, he does go on... sort of like this....'
Gil looked at where Vanamonde was rhapsodising about a saucer. 'Not quite like this,' he said.
'There is a passage about the theoretically ideal properties of porcelain,' Agatha began hopefully, then watched Vanamonde run his fingers reverently over the edge of the saucer and turn to declare two baristas, the curtains, and the shape of the table also perfect. Then he tried a biscuit and had to sit down again, apparently overwhelmed. Agatha forced herself to consider the possibility that she, too, would find herself raving about the sensory perfection of everything she found pleasant in the vicinity. Such as, for example, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach. The results were possibly not something she wanted to explain to the Baron or Otilia afterward. '--No, never mind, I think you're right.'
They managed to unimprove the coffee engine to the point it merely made what Gil assured her was very good coffee. At which point it was decided it was now safe to serve to the patrons and Agatha's collected minions wandered off to become customers again.
It was getting dark when they sat back down, the inside of the restaurant gleaming brown and brass in the light of gaslamps while outside the pavement was lit by the flickering flames of dormant torchmen. Gil surprised Agatha by sliding into the booth after her on the same side of the table and still more by wrapping his arm around her. Agatha leant slightly drowsily against him.
Gil caught his breath, just slightly, and rested his head against hers for a second. 'Well, that was fun,' he said. 'And I think maybe now we should try for dinner, and hopefully get it without rebuilding everything first -- hey.' He peered around at her face and then grinned. 'You know, when I suggested coffee, I didn't think it would end with you falling asleep on me.'
'But you'd be very comfortable to sleep on,' Agatha mumbled, and then tried to pretend she hadn't. 'Um. I only got a sip in the first place, you know. And I was up early.'
Gil buried his face in her hair, likely to hide a blush, and then pulled away blushing harder. He cleared his throat. 'Think you can stay awake long enough to eat something?'
'Yes. Probably.' Agatha cleared her throat and wondered whether apologising would help or just make things worse. 'Actually, maybe I will have another coffee. A small one. In fact, maybe you should drink most of it.'
Gil mostly smothered a laugh. 'Would you like some of the one I've got?'
A little bit of Gil's coffee did not cause Agatha to redesign anything, although she did tell Gil a considerable amount about the things around Mechanicsburg she'd been working on at high speed. By the time their dinner arrived they'd constructed a plan to improve the cannons with all their cutlery and three cruet sets and Agatha was explaining to Gil why she found the principles of shrinker mines fascinating but would rather not use them.
'It almost seems like they'd be more useful for miniaturisation--' Gil began, and then a startled expression crossed his face. 'I wonder if that's what happened with mimmoths?'
'Oh, no,' Agatha said. 'It's a temporary effect. The mimmoths seem to have been a breeding project.'
'That's quite some breeding project,' said Gil skeptically.
'I think they got a little carried away.'
'Certainly if they wanted something that could go into battle,' said Gil, taking a bite of his fish.
Agatha laughed. 'You haven't seen the mimmoth armour in the museum. Dimo swears they had hundreds of suits of it at one point and that it was terrible trouble getting them all on the mimmoths.' She shrugged. 'You know Jägers, though.'
Gil shook his head. 'You really shouldn't let it get around that your family might be responsible for inflicting mimmoths on Europa,' he said, almost straight-faced.
'Oh, sure, because that's what people wouldn't forgive.'
'The raiding's over, but people still have to fish mimmoths out of their engines,' said Gil, solemnly. 'And your father and uncle atoned for the raiding but they never invented a better mimmoth trap.'
'I could do that!' Agatha said, raising her fork in the air. 'The key is to bait it with alfalfa sprouts.'
Gil gave up and started laughing.
Agatha started giggling as well and buried her face against his shoulder until she could stop. Mmm. 'We should do this again,' she said at last, returning some of her attention to her food (she sneaked a look at Gil as she spoke, though) and picking up a roll to butter. 'Maybe with less involvement from the rest of the town, although I'm not sure I should rule out building something.'
'That would be nice,' said Gil. 'Even with building something. Especially with building something.' He reluctantly unwrapped his arm from Agatha in order to cut up some more fish. 'Maybe we could take a day trip if you have time? Somewhere with less involved citizens.'
'That sounds like fun. I'd suggest one of my labs in Castle Heterodyne, but I think that might be pushing our luck in terms of the Castle staying quiet.'
Gil looked at her. 'One of your labs, huh?'
'Yes....'
'How many would you say you've got in there now?'
'I'm actually not sure. I--'
'Would you say, more than... four different labs?'
Agatha looked up and realized he was grinning. 'Oh, you--' She laughed. 'Probably more than forty-three, in fact. Although I'm not actually using them all.'
'I've got a confession,' Gil said seriously. 'I actually have more than four labs on Castle Wulfenbach.'
'Oh?'
He leaned close and said in her ear, 'I built in some secret ones. At least, they're supposed to be secret. Father might have found some of them.'
'Is he better at finding secret doors than making them?' Agatha whispered back.
'...I don't know. But I'd be happy to show them to you if you want.' Gil sat back far enough to look at her. 'I'd be happy to work with you anywhere.'
Agatha looked down, feeling embarrassed and happy and rather flushed and warm all over. 'I like working with you,' she said, then looked up with a tiny impish smile and added, 'especially when we're not about to die.'
'That actually went pretty well too, though,' Gil pointed out. 'And we didn't die.'
'That's true. And I enjoyed some of it.' Aside from the sheer terror she'd actually enjoyed rather a lot of it. Especially winning. Especially--
It occurred to her that somehow or other she had rather conflicting ideas in her head of kissing Gil after they (thought they had) defeated the Hive Queen. Had she seized him for a bare brief kiss and been interrupted too fast to even know how he reacted? Or had he embraced her and kissed back as if he never meant to let her go? Both couldn't be true. Which had she imagined?
She didn't think, either way, that he seemed likely to have exactly minded it. He was close and warm now, almost too warm in the summer evening but she couldn't bring herself to move away. He was looking into her eyes, waiting, patiently, for her to finish her sentence. That might be easier if she could remember how breathing was supposed to work.
'Especially,' Agatha began again, and then before she could overthink it any further leant up and kissed him.
Gil went stiff and surprised for a moment and then melted against her, kissing back hard, hands closing around her shoulders to pull her close.
She'd had some practice with kissing since that first time. Lars was good at it. Lars had, she understood, had quite a lot more practice himself with both staged and, well, spontaneous kissing. He'd given her the shivers in a good way with his stage voice.
The timbre of that little growl in Gil's throat wasn't something he'd likely done on purpose, and they didn't have a script, and there wasn't a cheering audience, and Agatha wasn't sure she ever wanted to let go.
A hushed susurrus around her, as well as a lack of air, convinced her to surface. She turned her head without letting go of Gil, so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek, and saw bright eyed patrons watching her as enthusiastically as any audience while Vanamonde made frantic hushing gestures on the edge of her vision. In some ways, she thought ruefully, being the Heterodyne was a bit like being on stage all the time.
Now that she'd noticed them, a few people started to cheer, and Vanamonde's efforts to contain their enthusiasm broke down entirely. 'Um,' Gil said.
Agatha turned back and pulled him down to press his forehead against hers. 'Day trip,' she said. 'Definitely.'