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'Oh, I say, Klaus is here early.'

Agatha completed her procedure, and when the hiss of the fuel jet and shriek of metallic adjustment were over, she took out her earplugs and asked the Castle to repeat itself. She'd heard it right.

That seemed worrying. Although on reflection, she was pretty sure she was worrying because the last time she knew of Baron Wulfenbach showing up early to an appointment, it had been Beetleburg.

Agatha rolled her eyes at herself. Well, it wasn't as if she was hiding hive engines from him. But she'd better go see what was going on. 'All right, where is he?'

'Oh, he's gone straight to the Great Hospital.'

...Huh. That had actually been the plan -- for two weeks from now -- but she'd also been expecting Gil. Agatha was very impressed by Dr. Sun's work with vaccines, but she had doubts about the Baron's preemptive approach to dealing with plagues for which no preventive had been developed, which was to have himself and Gil infected under controlled conditions so as to develop immunity or at least a sort of acclimation. Gil insisted this was less risky than waiting for accident or enemy action. Agatha thought he might be biased by family feeling.

She reached the Hospital only to meet a Jäger coming out of the gates, shaking his head and looking grumpy. 'Ah! Sergeant--' She paused, trying to remember if she'd met this one. There were a lot of Jägers.

The irritated look was replaced by a grin. 'Günther, Miztress.'

'Sergeant Günther.' Agatha gestured inward at the Great Hospital and the Wulfenbach airship in the patient delivery landing zone. 'I'd hate to interrupt the doctors if their work is urgent, and you look like you know what's going on.'

'Der Baron vos injured by a shark toothed valking banana tree,' said Gunther.

Agatha blinked. 'A -- oh, dear, I'd heard Dr. Aldrovanda was ramping up his work with carnivorous plants.'

'Yah, der vos a whole forest,' said Gunther, sounding less cheerful about this than Jägers usually did about enemies. 'Und, ov courze, Der Baron is in der kind ov mood vhere he has to tek an axe to dem hisself.'

Agatha looked up, frowning. 'I'd heard he liked to do his own fighting....' But while there were limits to how often this was practical, it wasn't a quality that normally made Jägers sound that sour.

'Yah, vell,' said Gunther, with a meaningful look at the Hospital. 'It din't do him much goot dis time.'

'I guess not.' Agatha looked back. 'How bad is it?'

'Ve didn't qvite manage to kip him in vun piece,' said Gunther, grin returning slightly and meanly. 'But Doctor Sun haff put der missing vun beck on.'

'Oh,' said Agatha. Bleah. 'Good. Well, that certainly explains why he dropped by early. I suppose I usually think of him as being more careful than that.'

'Yah, but he dun't vant to be,' said Gunther. 'So vhen he iz in a mood...' He rolled his eyes. 'Mebbe hyu ken cheer him op?'

Agatha blinked at this idea. 'Well, I can try.' She paused. 'Do you know what he's in a mood about, particularly?'

Gunther rubbed a hand through his hair, almost embarrassed. 'Der old Masters Hy tink. Everyting else is chust Sparks beink Sparks.'

'Oh.' Agatha wasn't sure if she was likely to be particularly cheering, in that case. She thought the Baron liked her reasonably well at this point -- certainly he had extended a good deal of trust in the end -- but if he was upset about lost friends then she might be more of an unfortunate reminder. 'Well, I'll go see him when he's up for visitors.'

Klaus woke to an antiseptic odour and a certain gumminess of eyes and thought that signaled one of Sun's favoured sedatives. That meant the ache across his side where a banana tree had got under his guard probably wasn't anything to worry about. He moved the opposite arm experimentally, decided it didn't seem to have any essential equipment attached to it, and rubbed his eyes before trying to open them.

To his surprise, Agatha was sitting by the side of the bed with a book. 'Oh, you're awake. Water?'

'Please,' he said. And then, after taking the proffered glass and taking a few swallows, 'Has something happened I need to know about?'

She raised her eyebrows and closed the book. 'Well,' she said, 'I got some complaints about you from the Jägers.'

'Oh, wonderful. At least they haven't formed a union yet.'

Agatha grinned briefly, which did not suggest they had been very serious complaints. 'Some of them are worried about the risks you've been taking, which coming from Jägers is a little disconcerting.'

'Coming from Jägers it's really none of their business,' Klaus groused. 'I formed the Empire fighting my own battles.'

She looked thoughtful. 'I think that's part of why they like you, really, but you've managed to worry them anyway. On the bright side, they managed to cut the lost chunk of your torso out of the banana tree before it did much digestive damage. How are you feeling?'

'Surprisingly good for having been partially eaten.' Which wasn't saying much, but he'd definitely had much worse than this.

Agatha snorted. 'Well, that's something. I've been reading up on Aldrovanda's work. I think there might be some interesting medical applications of the giant sundew.'

'What kind?' Klaus asked, intrigued and grateful for something more fun to discuss than whether the Jägers thought he should be fighting.

Agatha lit up and set her book aside for a notebook, about half of which was swollen with bookmarks and things pasted onto the pages. She flipped it open near the end of the used section. 'There's actually quite a variety! To start off, with a few adjustments they could be protectively cultivated on otherwise potable water sources where disease-vector insects tend to breed. Of course, in that case it would be important to make sure no pathogens survived the digestive process before using the mucilage for anything else, but his plant-animal grafting results, while disturbing, actually suggest some potential utility in wound treatment.'

Klaus leant over to get a better look at the notebook -- ignoring a few doodles that looked like Agatha had been slightly distracted from how to treat wounds by how they might have been inflicted -- and read with interest. There were a number of good ideas, including some new techniques for making patchworks that could both improve success and reduce the equipment needed. 'Did you want him?' Klaus asked. 'We picked him up after this rebellion, but it looks like you have more ideas for what to push him to develop than any of my people.'

Agatha sat back, leaving the notebook in his hand, and looked disconcerted. Klaus suppressed a sigh, which his knitting ribs probably wouldn't appreciate -- she would really have to get used to these things. 'Er. Want him?'

'He's a prisoner,' said Klaus. 'Probably he won't be too much trouble, he'd need guarding of course but your Castle can handle that. Generally I give them a lab, some guidance as to what I want from them and the occasional certificate or congratulatory dinner.'

Agatha blinked at him. 'Certificate or--' She stopped, looking like she was trying not to laugh, and cleared her throat. 'Clearly a different level of prisoner than you used to send here.'

'Yes, very. Although I haven't noticed them leaving.' Technically they were free now, as long as they didn't commit any more crimes. Most of them seemed to have opted to stay in Mechanicsburg under the command of Agatha and, less formally, Moloch von Zinzer, who had had a bemusing amount of success at making them behave like semi-decent human beings. 'A lot of Sparks try to take over Europa. What a lot of them actually want is plenty of lab time and some appreciation of their genius. You still have to discreetly remove the occasional doomsday device, and a lot of them consider themselves almost honour bound to betray you given the chance, but they don't look too hard for chances.'

'I think Castle Heterodyne does that,' Agatha mused. 'Discreetly confiscates doomsday devices, I mean. Or the servants do and it cooperates. I don't think I believe my ancestors were prudent often enough to account for the storerooms of unused ones.'

'You see? You wouldn't have any trouble at all,' said Klaus. 'You even have experience with giant carnivorous plants.'

'And the banana trees don't even make people giggly,' said Agatha, then paused. 'Um, at least, I doubt it.'

'I didn't find them particularly funny,' said Klaus.

'I have trouble imagining you around the Nepenthe, either,' said Agatha. 'Okay. If you want to send him here, I'll let you know what we come up with. I was just going to ask if you had a spare plant.'

'I don't hand out Sparks to all my allies,' said Klaus, drily. 'With you I have the advantage that if you decided to attack me toothed banana trees would be the least of my worries.'

Agatha gave him an odd look. 'And better yet, that now you're not trying to keep me prisoner I don't want to.'

'Things change,' Klaus said, rather more darkly than he meant.

Agatha raised her eyebrows. 'If you really thought that was likely, you wouldn't be here. Am I misinterpreting your sense of humour again, or should I go ask Sun to review the side effects on his anaesthetics, or what?'

Klaus leant back against his pillow. 'Sun will just tell you the problem is not with his anaesthetics.'

'He does insist you're irrationally paranoid whenever you're here whether he has you drugged or not,' said Agatha. 'Although clearly not about him.' She propped an elbow on the back of her chair to rest her chin on her hand. 'Oh well. I suppose the bright side is you'll be here when Adam and Lilith are decanted.'

'Has everyone been complaining to you about me?' grumbled Klaus. That was one side of them having a Heterodyne back he hadn't foreseen. 'They can join the chorus when they're recovered.'

'It's generally very affectionate,' Agatha assured him, eyes sparkling. Klaus suspected this was meant to make him feel better. 'And of course I'll talk to them first.'

'Do you think they'll believe you?' he asked sourly.

Agatha straightened in her seat. 'Yes.' You could tell she was a Heterodyne. The force of conviction rippled across him almost tangibly. 'And I think they'll be glad to know.'

'...We'll see if you're more convincing than Barry,' said Klaus.

Agatha shot him an irritated look. 'I don't need to be.'

'Oh, really?'

'Not personally. I have very good evidence.' A wry look. “And I’m fairly sure this was not what they were afraid of happening if you found me. Try not to propose sedating anybody this time and we’ll probably be fine.’

'Sun's more likely to propose sedating me,' said Klaus. But it was fairly reassuring.

Agatha snorted. 'Okay, fine. I'll regard it as an accomplishment if we get through this conversation with everybody conscious.'

Klaus eyed her. 'And here I thought you were supposed to be an optimist.'

Agatha gave him an impish smile. 'And nothing on fire that isn't supposed to be?'

Klaus rubbed a hand across his mouth to hide a smile. 'Not my style or theirs. Are you expecting to lose your temper with us, or have you invited Othar again?'

'I have never invited Othar anywhere, thank you very much,' Agatha said with dignity. 'If he shows up, I'm blaming you.'

The next Wulfenbach arrival was much less alarming, aside from the discovery that Gil's flying machine needed a little more space to land than a normal airship. Agatha was watching him come in for a landing when she said quietly to herself, 'That seems like an awful lot of directional momentum...' and then said very loudly to everybody else in the vicinity to GET OUT OF THE WAY.

As the Jägers put it, she had a really good ranting voice. Everyone scattered. Gil's machine skidded across the ground, detoured careening around a previously landed small dirigible, and fetched up with its nose a few centimeters from the courtyard wall.

Agatha stepped up to it, hands behind her back, so that when Gil vaulted out he landed directly in front of her. 'We might need to bring you down on a cleared road next time,' she said.

Gil hugged her, lifting her off her feet, and Agatha laughed and hugged him back. 'I've got an idea for one that can set straight down,' he said, then held her at arm's length, looking suddenly serious. 'How is he?'

'Back in one piece,' she said, 'and well enough to be restless.'

Gil made a face. 'That doesn't take much.'

'Hah, no, Dr. Sun keeps saying he's astounded I've kept him in one place so long.'

'You've been talking a lot?'

'Some,' Agatha said. 'We've been going over some ideas and results -- I might end up managing Dr. Aldrovanda for him --' She paused and looked down to where her feet were dangling, which Gil had apparently not yet noticed, and wiggled them. 'Um, down?'

Gil looked down and then, somewhat chagrined, set her on the ground. 'Right.'

'So....' Agatha set off toward the doors. 'My parents seem to be doing as well as can be expected... I guess you'll want to look in on them afterward?'

'Yes. Though I'm sure Dr. Sun's kept things going much more systematically than I could,' Gil said.

'You're pretty sure they'll be okay once they're decanted....?'

'There shouldn't even be any significant memory loss.' He rubbed the back of his neck. 'If anything, the, ah, dismemberment itself is likely to be hazy. Which might be just as well.'

Agatha nodded. Then, several steps later, 'I told him I'd convince them he isn't actually an enemy.'

'Well, I hope so. It's going to be really awkward otherwise.'

Agatha huffed and swatted his arm, trying not to laugh. 'It might be awkward anyway. I don't even know what I'm arguing against yet.'

'You can tell them he's not working for the Other convincingly, can't you?' said Gil, looking back at her a little anxiously. 'Even if you don't know why they believe it.'

'If he is, he's doing a terrible job,' said Agatha. 'I keep trying to look at things from their perspective, but I don't know what that is. Except that trusting me with Mechanicsburg is unlikely to be what they were worried about.' She considered for a moment. 'Though I'm not planning to lead with the wasp research.'

'Are you worried that they'll think we wasped you or that you're really easy to subvert?' Gil asked.

'I don't know what they're likely to assume,' Agatha said, irritated. 'The whole time they knew me I was a complete idiot. I remember them joking about what a coincidence it was to have family named Bill and Barry and Lucrezia.' She bit her tongue. Just as well she hadn't been thinking on those lines around the Baron.

'Yeah, but not an easily led idiot,' said Gil. 'I met you right after the locket had come off and you scared the heck out of Boris and a Jäger. If they think you'd just switch over to helping us use wasps they can't know you that well.'

Agatha paused. 'I scared Boris?' She probably shouldn't be pleased about that....

'You definitely had him backing away.' Gil smiled at her, looking almost proud. 'Er. Me too, a bit.'

Agatha smiled back and then looked away, feeling warmer. Now she really did feel absurdly flattered. And more confident. She was almost sure this was irrational. 'I was more imagining they'd think I fell for a trick, that the research plans weren't what he said. But I have been over all the notes. And there is the actual cure, even if it was something of a surprise.' She looked up at him again. 'And there's Skifander. He seems to have been a bit busy.'

'And walking across Europa,' said Gil, looking away. 'I can vouch that he didn't have any control over wasps or revenants then.'

'You remember--' Agatha began, hand stealing into his. Well, he would. She remembered bits and pieces of travelling with Uncle Barry, and she'd been even younger.

He squeezed her hand. 'Yeah. The histories say the wasps and revenants were leaderless by then, easy pickings. It didn't feel like that at the time. I don't really remember being that scared -- I knew my father wouldn't let them reach me -- but he had to fight them off, usually with me on his back. And some of the other people we ran into, even the villages, hadn't been so lucky.'

'I can't really remember Uncle Barry fighting,' said Agatha. 'But I suppose he must have.' She hesitated, suddenly considering a new context for previously unexamined memories -- flashes of light and heat, perceived dimly with her head tucked down against her uncle's chest. '...Or it could be something else I didn't recognise at the time.' She wrinkled her nose. 'By the time I was old enough to remember much, your father might have started calming things down. What did Uncle Barry think he was doing?'

'I don't know,' said Gil, frustratedly. 'I suppose your parents might be able to tell us.'

'I guess we'll find out.' She took a breath and nodded as they passed the guards to enter the Baron's hallway. 'Later.'

'Yes.' Gil let go of her hand and sped up as he headed for the Baron's room.

Agatha heard the Baron greet his son with, 'Ah, there you are,' and paused outside the door to control the urge to snort. When she went in the bed was littered with notepaper, which Gil was already absently collecting and reading over. The Baron had the notebook she'd left with him at her last visit closer to hand.

'If you wanted him sooner you could have asked,' she said.

'A lot of Sparks take any injury to you as an opportunity,” Gil said, folding his arms, “and you know Boris doesn't like making the big decisions.'

The Baron eyed him. 'So you took over?'

Gil stood up straighter, tensing slightly. 'Yes. Isn't that what you've been training me for?'

Another, longer look -- Agatha curled one hand quietly, and remembered Zeetha telling her fists were for hurting other people and not to dig her nails into her palm unless she really thought she needed a reminder and Zeetha wasn't around with a stick. 'Tell me about it,' the Baron said.

Gil took a deep breath and concisely reported some on board rebellions which sounded like they'd been very brief and in some cases, if told less dryly, possibly hilarious. The winged pink mimmoths invading the wine cellar, for instance. He moved on to more serious problems. Unrest in some cities, including ones that had already been angling to leave the Empire now Mechanicsburg had, and finally a few invasions from Sparks who had managed to launch something at a neighbour almost as soon as the Baron wasn't there to make sure they didn't. 'It's under control,' Gil finished.

The Baron looked even more sour. 'Would you actually tell me if it wasn't?'

Gil looked at him incredulously. 'Because you wouldn't find out as soon as you got out of hospital?'

'Sun seems to be under the impression I shouldn't worry,' the Baron said darkly.

'You shouldn't,' Agatha said. 'Because other people are handling things. Other competent people!'

'And he keeps trying to stop them from telling me what's going on,' the Baron retorted.

Agatha flung her hands in the air. 'Gil just did! You don't delegate very well, do you? I mean, you do it, and then you still worry about it.'

He scowled at her. 'Becoming too uninvolved in running your domain is dangerous on several levels.'

'That is not what I was suggesting--'

'Europa would be vastly better off if we were not apparently the only family who ever tried minding our own business!'

Agatha and Gil both stared at the Baron, briefly rendered speechless. Agatha said after a moment, strangling a little on laughter, 'Is that a Wulfenbach policy, Herr Baron?'

The Baron rolled his eyes. 'Until your father and uncle got me in the habit of meddling.'

Agatha cleared her throat a little desperately and caught Gil's eyes. 'Oh. Sorry. I should have gathered from all the adventuring. It was your parents with a policy of staying out of trouble, then?'

A huff, but he wasn't actually scowling anymore. 'Most of my ancestors kept to themselves and avoided both political and military conflict with their neighbors as much as possible. With the exception of intercepting Jäger raiding parties, of course.'

Agatha paused. 'That is one heck of an exception.'

'That was our business,' he said. 'What do you think anyone was settled next to Mechanicsburg for?'

'I didn't know somebody'd put you there, actually,' said Agatha. Despite its Baron's current status, Wulfenbach as a town was not exactly prominent in local histories. Possibly because if you didn't regularly attack your neighbours nobody could think of anything to say about you. 'Although I'm pretty sure you were there since before the Storm King....'

'Oh, yes, people have been trying to keep Mechanicsburg contained for a lot longer than that.' He was actually smiling slightly. 'A Hungarian king gave us land here somewhere around the twelfth century, on the understanding we'd keep the Heterodynes too busy to reach Hungary.'

'Oh, right,' Agatha said, slotting a few gears together mentally. Of course. The Wulfenbach sigil was actually pretty typical of the German nobility in Transylvania. 'You must have been pretty good at it.'

'What, because you don't own Hungary?'

Agatha grinned. 'Because apparently whoever designed our coat of arms was really annoyed.'

He smiled back at her. 'Surprisingly, not attacking your neighbours gives you a lot of resources to focus on the threat you're actually there to deal with.'

'...I've got to ask,' Agatha said. 'What on earth did your family think when you started running around with mine?' Anything like your reaction to the idea of Gil and me? Hard as it was to imagine, Bill and Barry couldn't have started out with the heroic reputation.

'They were slightly worried I'd be reduced to the pieces they'd put me together out of,' he said drily.

'Slightly?' Gil asked.

'By the time they found out about it I'd gone several days in their company with all my limbs attached. Maybe more than slightly, all the same,' the Baron conceded.

Gil's mouth quirked, and he glanced at Agatha. 'Did they get over it?'

'Once they actually met Bill and Barry. They tended to charm anyone who didn't run away in the first ten minutes, eventually people heard enough to stop trying the running away part.' He shook his head slightly, fondly. 'Not that my parents tried running away.'

Agatha made an effort to envision Baron Wulfenbach being raised by people who would run away from much of anything. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’d imagine not.’

Agatha twisted her hands together and then, to make herself stop, went around to check all the settings on the equipment surrounding Adam and Lilith. Again. Even though she had looked at them all before, and in fact Gil and Dr. Sun and Zoing and two nurses were all monitoring them regularly already, and this wasn't her project.

Just her parents.

She wasn't even exactly sure what she was nervous about. They were going to be fine. They'd been out of real danger for a couple of weeks now. They were coming off the sedation very smoothly and should wake up fully without pain, any minute now. Healthier than before. It had become apparent, first from looking at them and then from reviewing his notes, that Gil had put them back together with rather greater skill than the Heterodyne Boys had at first. (Good. Adam always had hated having to recharge himself and deal with the hiccups afterward.) It wasn't likely they were going to be mad at her or think she'd gone bad. She'd done exactly what Lilith told her to do.

Adam's eyelids moved first. Twitched, fluttered. Agatha leaned over and took his hand, and it wrapped around hers, solid and firm and she had tears in her eyes suddenly.

He opened his eyes, focused on hers, and said hoarsely, 'Agatha.'

Agatha squeaked and started back. Adam's eyebrows went up, and she blushed fiercely. 'Sorry. Sorry. I knew he'd fixed your larynx, I just... um....' She bit at the knuckle of her free hand, saw that he looked just a little amused at her, and tried again. 'Hi. I'm glad to have you back.'

'Agatha,' Lilith said from her other side, urgently, 'you were supposed to run!'

She hadn't wanted them to wake up worried! 'I did,' she said, turning to Lilith and taking her hand too. 'We're in Mechanicsburg. Everything's okay.'

Behind her Sun was shooing the nurses out, although Agatha didn't think he'd followed them when the door closed. Gil, loitering by the dials, looked embarrassed, as if he felt he might be intruding on a private moment. Lilith followed Agatha's glance to him and said, 'We didn't tell you to bring Master Wulfenbach with you! How did you bring him with you?'

Agatha cleared her throat. 'He didn't come with me. He revived you back on Castle Wulfenbach. We transferred you here as soon as we got the chance because of Dr. Sun's expertise and because I don't think he'd slept in a month and a half--'

'I did too,' Gil muttered.

'But Agatha,' said Lilith. 'Who is we? How did he get us away from his father?'

And here came the tricky part. Agatha said gently, 'The Baron agreed to it. He actually caught up to me about six weeks in and was... surprisingly reasonable.'

Adam sat up. Gil started forward and then stopped, irresolute, with a glance at Sun, who waved him back. Adam said, voice laboured but clear, 'You let him into Mechanicsburg?'

'He brought me to Mechanicsburg.' Don't argue with scraps of Dr. Beetle's notes. Wait until you find out what they actually think. 'Which is... no longer part of the Empire, but allied.'

Lilith and Adam exchanged a worried look. 'What did he ask in exchange for that?' Lilith asked carefully.

'Continued access to the town --' Agatha glanced up at Sun. 'Especially since Dr. Sun generally treats him and Gil. He's still hiring about half the Jägers on a rotating basis, but that was my suggestion; I thought they'd get bored otherwise. I'm also hosting a lot of his labs for anti-slaver wasp research.' She could not keep from smiling. 'It turns out Dyne water cures revenants. We're working out the necessary dosages for a treatment course.'

Adam might have been able to speak now, but he was clearly struck speechless and so was Lilith. It was a while before either of them spoke and then it was Adam asking, 'You've seen the evidence for that?'

'Well, yes,' Agatha said. 'It's going on here. I do have access to the labs.' She paused. 'Ah -- I don't know if you knew -- they're not all mindless. I'm not sure if we can do anything for those, although we're going to try. But he had a Dr. Brin develop these weasel things to hunt wasps by smell, and it turns out they also identify... people. Who are infected.' She bit her lip. 'It also turns out if I hit the right notes, I can command wasps and revenants. I --' Breathe. 'Was Dr. Beetle expecting that?'

Lilith sat up too and squeezed Agatha's hand gently. 'Master Barry was concerned about it. Beetleburg hadn't been hit, so he hoped there was nothing near it for you to activate.' She closed her eyes for a moment. 'He also told us Klaus had been working with her and would be taking over from her, that he could command them. Or would soon make ones he could command.'

Agatha squeezed back firmly. 'I'm pretty sure Uncle Barry was mistaken,' she said. 'I'm sure he had reasons to think that, although I would really like to know what they were, but Baron Wulfenbach has actually been very consistent about fighting wasps. Gil remembers it from the very start, when he came back. And during the years he was missing, ah....' She looked at Gil. 'Lucrezia sent him to Skifander. Somehow or other. Gil was born there. Along with a twin sister who stayed until recently.'

'Did he and Zantabraxus get together?' Lilith asked eagerly, startling Agatha into laughter, before remembering herself and her suspicions. 'That does explain the timing if he wasn't plotting with Lucrezia,' she admitted more thoughtfully.

Gil’s expression was not helping Agatha get the giggles under control. Her voice was still shaking a little when she managed, 'Yes. Yes they did.'

Lilith shook her head at herself, smiling. 'Yes, well, he was a nice boy and it's hard not to think of him as a friend sometimes.'

'Maybe we won't have to,' said Adam, putting an arm around her shoulder and looking at Agatha. 'Can I see the notes on the wasp research? I doubt I'll understand all of it, but I do manage with Spark journals.' He broke off and coughed.

'Of course.' Yes! Agatha looked around for water; Gil stepped up with it and offered a glass. Adam gave him a measured look and then took it and drank. 'I had to insist on Dr. Brin allowing copies; I don't know what he or the Baron was thinking, keeping information that crucial in only a single set of notebooks -- I mean, he sent summary reports, and I suppose the Baron probably could reconstruct his work from those, but I personally think a full secondary copy and compendium are much more... um....' She trailed off, realising she'd been on the verge of a full-fledged rant about research documentation and her parents were listening with polite interest. 'You know, I think being Dr. Beetle's secretary left its mark.'

'The Castle will approve,' said Lilith. 'It likes to have a copy of everything for the library.'

'I love the library,' Agatha said. 'I mean, there are horrible things in there, but it's amazing.' She patted her pockets until she found one of her little clanks lurking in one with some string. 'Here. Could you go get the copy of Dr. Brin's notes from--' Slightly too late, she remembered the copy was not in its usual place. Oh well. She grabbed pen and paper to write an explanatory note. 'The Baron.' She looked at her parents a bit sheepishly as she sent the clank off. 'I didn't want to lead with this, but he is actually in town.'

'Agatha!' said Lilith, reproachfully.

'The hospital's here!' said Gil. 'He was bitten by a tree! If he wanted to invade he wouldn't do it like that.'

'The Lady Heterodyne has been unusually successful in getting him to hold still long enough to recuperate properly,' Dr. Sun said drily. 'Mostly by showering him in research notes.'

'I cannot believe that's the first time it's been tried,' said Agatha.

'Agatha,' said Lilith. 'Negotiating with Klaus -- the Baron -- is one thing, but visiting him in hospital... I know he can be good company, but friendship is too great a risk.'

Slightly worried I'd be reduced to the pieces they'd put me together out of, ran through Agatha's head, and she said, 'No. It isn't.'

'Master Barry must have had some reason for his suspicions,' said Lilith, looking anxious.

'Yes,' said Agatha. 'I was hoping he'd told you what it was, since it wasn't in what was left of Dr. Beetle's notes. But I have really good evidence against them.'

'Sweetheart,' said Lilith, and then stopped. To Agatha's dismay there were tears in her eyes.

Adam squeezed Lilith's shoulders and said to Agatha, 'You've changed a lot. You know your own mind.'

Lilith nodded. 'You've grown up,' she said. She didn't mention the locket, but Agatha wondered if it was on all their minds. 'Maybe you should tell us the whole story.'

This was, Klaus told himself for the fifth time, ridiculous.

If anyone else asked, the physical therapy to make sure his once-more-reassembled organs were holding together properly, especially the lung, involved working up to more vigorous activity through brisk walks. Well, they probably wouldn't get quite that much detail. He might even tell them governing the Empire could only be borne with some quantity of pacing and it worried Sun if he went for a run through the city streets this soon after surgery. Also true.

However, none of this really required him to prowl through the wing where Judy and -- Lilith and Adam Clay were also in recuperation. He didn't even know what he'd say if they caught him at it. He had considered knocking at their door, but he didn't know what he'd say then either. Ask what they thought of their latest reading material, perhaps. Agatha had informed him that they had a copy of the treaty in addition to Dr. Brin's notes. (She had charmed or browbeaten every Spark under her authority into not only reporting on their work but permitting full, non-coded copies of their records. Klaus had never considered this strictly necessary, but he approved.)

Part of him wanted to defend himself. They should be convinced. Whatever Barry had told them, it was not only false but solidly refuted by the evidence that he had not been working with the Other. More so than any time in the past sixteen years, with Zeetha to vouch for his whereabouts during the war. Part of him... didn't want to see them look at him as an enemy again, even to fight it.

And a great deal of him was disgusted with this indecision. Especially the cowardly side of it, even though there was actually a certain logic to letting them chew over the new information in their own time.

He turned the corner into their hallway again and checked himself as Agatha emerged from their door, shut it behind herself, and then looked straight at him. Klaus suppressed a sigh and tried not to look embarrassed.

'Herr Baron,' she said, coming up to meet him. 'You have good timing. They've asked to see you.'

That was good. Probably good. 'Are they likely to believe anything I say?'

Agatha looked up with sympathy in her eyes, which she seemed to realise was embarrassing, because she almost immediately turned back toward their door. 'I certainly hope so. They still catch themselves up talking about you as an old friend, and -- ah, they're worried you'll charm me into being politically off guard, or something -- but I think they're past doubting that you really were in Skifander and not conspiring with Lucrezia.'

Klaus wondered where they'd got the idea that he could charm a Heterodyne into anything. Pressure her, yes, he was the one with an Empire, although he'd really rather not throw it at Mechanicsburg. Charm was unlikely. 'That's a start,' he said.

'It certainly helps,' agreed Agatha. 'I can't entirely blame them for worrying that you're mainly concerned with the Empire, since that one's actually true.'

'I don't consider you a current threat to it,' said Klaus.

'Thank you very much,' Agatha said. 'I think I begin to see why Gil's proposal was so awful.'

'I'm talking politics, not courting you,' said Klaus. 'My proposal was fine.' And actually made by Zantabraxus, but never mind.

'You're preparing to meet with old friends who are, despite my best efforts, worried about their daughter. Granted, they actually should find it reassuring that you consider working with me to be useful, but you could try to sound a little less provisional and more like you actually like me.'

'Everything is provisional,' said Klaus, which was evasive when he had no particular reason to be. It was true -- the Empire was more fragile than it looked, people's motives changed constantly, everything had to be reassessed. But when had running it alone and without friends come to feel like an imperative and not a regrettable circumstance?

'Play it your way, then,' said Agatha, with an air of and I wash my hands of the consequences that should have been funny, and which he found he did not actually believe in the slightest. Even before she added, 'Do you want privacy or should I come back in and help argue?'

'I see how optimistic you are about this,' said Klaus. He did, if he admitted it, want her to come with him and was annoyed at wanting his hand held, especially by someone young enough to be his daughter. Sixteen years of pulling Europa together by himself and the moment a Heterodyne appeared on the scene he wanted to start leaning on them. And Punch and Judy thought he'd charm her.

Agatha had the grace to look sheepish. 'We're making progress. And I do know they've missed you. Not sure I'm quite over being informed you were a nice boy, but....'

Klaus considered protesting and then considered that he had, in fact, been quite nice. 'I grew out of it,' he said drily.

'Not completely,' she said, trying not to laugh and not altogether succeeding. 'There's a reason they're under the impression that I like you.'

He really shouldn't have been surprised by that. She was friendly to everyone, but it wasn't as if she'd really visited him solely to appease the Jägers. 'So did they, once,' he grumbled, glancing towards the door. 'Whatever did Barry tell them?'

Agatha cast her eyes to the ceiling and clutched at her hair. 'Apparently, he was too distraught to be specific. Which they found convincing enough, because why would he believe something he obviously didn't want to without a good reason?' She tried to smooth down the cowlick at the back of her head, which didn't go, and dropped her hands. 'When you asked if I could be more convincing than Uncle Barry and I said I had evidence? I didn't realise I was actually only going to be arguing against personality!'

'So Barry just scared everyone and then vanished?' said Klaus incredulously. It was the first time he'd wished to find Barry purely in order to shake him.

Agatha folded her arms and looked away. 'He stayed for a little while, I guess without ever going into more detail. He argued with them the night before he left,' she said. 'I couldn't hear what about. He wrote to us three times, once from here, but nobody will admit to seeing him, and the last letter turned up under the door and sounded like he might be losing his mind. Everything else is guesswork.'

All right, now he once again wanted to find Barry for reasons that didn't involve shaking him. 'He should have trusted me.' Then maybe he wouldn't be losing his mind somewhere Klaus couldn't reach him.

Agatha sighed. 'I know.'

At least she believed that. Took it for granted, even. 'I'd better talk to them.'

'Yes. I'm a terrible messenger, clearly,' Agatha said lightly, shaking off the pensive air and returning to knock cursorily at their door before opening it. 'Found him! I'll leave the three of you to--'

'Actually,' said -- Punch, presumably -- 'would you mind staying for a few minutes?'

'Oh.' Agatha glanced back up and over her shoulder at Klaus. 'Sure.'

Klaus followed her in. Punch and Judy looked pretty well healed for how recently they'd come out of the tanks. They also looked suspicious. 'You asked to see me,' he said.

'Yes,' said Judy. 'Agatha's been rather emphatic that we were mistaken about you.'

'I gather you took some convincing,' said Klaus, clenching his fists by his sides.

'Master Barry was very sure.' She glanced over at Punch. 'At this point we are starting to wonder why.'

‘Thank you,' Agatha said under her breath, taking a seat.

Klaus stayed standing up even though it meant he was looming over everyone. 'But you didn't wonder enough to investigate any time in the last decade,' he said.

'She did say starting,' said Punch. That was still a little startling. Klaus trusted he didn't show it. 'Taking over Europe didn't make much of an opposing case.'

'I didn't do it for fun,' he bit out. 'And certainly not for Lucrezia.'

'No. Not with the research you handed to Agatha.'

Was that the only reason? 'You haven't considered the possibility that she might be the Other and I'm in league with her?' said Klaus.

They exchanged a look before Judy said, 'We did consider it.'

Agatha sat up and said, 'Excuse me?!'

Klaus stared at them. He really hadn't expected to find that they didn't think Agatha was beyond suspicion. 'Explain that,' he said.

'Yes, please,' Agatha said, sounding baffled.

Punch sighed, and spoke mostly to Agatha, rather gently. 'Lucrezia's plan was to... copy her mind into you. Master Barry saw the equipment when he took you from the Geisterdamen.' And DuPree had seen Agatha with Geisterdamen, Klaus thought. That should have worried them, too. 'By the time he brought you to Beetleburg, he was sure it hadn't actually been done. You were too unlike her.'

'Oh good,' Agatha said faintly. And then her eyebrows shot up and she asked pointedly, 'So when you found out I'd been in his hands -- twice -- and you thought he --'

Judy winced. 'Obviously we worried. But you're still very much yourself.'

'Really?' Agatha asked, voice rising. 'I certainly feel like I've changed. Without the locket, and with my Spark, and with my own town...! Would you tell her any different or would you pretend to believe you were talking to me?'

'We probably wouldn’t have admitted knowing it was ever a possibility. Agatha.' Punch got up only a little stiffly -- Klaus walked over and shut off the silent alarm that Sun kept attaching to the beds of potentially recalcitrant patients, then moved back to where he could watch all of them, as Punch crouched down by Agatha's chair with one hand on her arm. 'You've grown up, not changed into a completely different person. You're still the girl we always loved. Lucrezia wouldn't know you....' He smiled ruefully. 'And you were never anybody she could possibly make up.'

Agatha gave him a long look and then shut her eyes for a second and took a deep breath. 'Okay.'

Appalling thought. Wondering that about a child. Knowing your parents had wondered that about you. The idea of getting Gil back from a captor and not knowing if he really had Gil.... 'That was actually meant to be a rhetorical question,' Klaus said, clipped. 'But if we have now adequately established that nobody is the Other, or is working for the Other, and you've read the treaty,' then why are you still looking at me like that? 'Why exactly are you still unsatisfied?'

Punch returned to sit on his bed. Klaus bit back the impulse to tell him to lie down and decided he had definitely spent too much time with Sun. 'The treaty is almost too good,' Punch said.

Agatha quietly facepalmed. Klaus resisted the urge. 'That is what you consider a problem?'

'The last time we saw you, you didn't seem all that trusting,' Judy said. 'You've forgotten the idea of too good to be true?'

'I've been satisfied with the bargain,' Klaus said as evenly as he could. 'Treating Agatha as an enemy wouldn't have benefitted anyone--'

'And yet that's how you started,' Judy pointed out.

Klaus scowled at her. 'I treated her with caution when I knew almost nothing about her. I was later persuaded that we shared a number of goals, such as not seeing Europa overrun by wasps again. Being able to trust her offered significant advantages. Yes, I would have preferred to keep Mechanicsburg in the Empire. But I will also admit it's been more cooperative than at any time I was nominally in charge of it.'

Judy raised her eyebrows. 'I still wouldn't have thought you'd want to set the precedent.'

'There is no precedent,' Klaus said brusquely. He'd answered that point a few too many times lately. 'There's no other town I absorbed with terms written assuming its rulers might eventually come back and help me.' -- And that had come out somewhat more bitterly than intended. It was possible he still wanted to shake Barry. At least a little.

'Is that what you were assuming?' Punch asked.

'What else would I be assuming? That they'd return, tell everyone I was a traitor and then vanish?' snapped Klaus.

Punch gave him a long look. 'You thought they'd help you take over Europa?'

'I thought if they were here I might not have to!' Their peace hadn't held up to the Other, but they might have persuaded or shamed people successfully where Klaus's threats didn't work. He'd been sick of second chances but he hadn't actually counted anything from past years as a first one.

They looked unimpressed. 'I hardly think you had to,' said Judy.

'I had to do something.' Klaus would have paced, but there wasn't room. Finding his nose against a wall every few strides was only more frustrating and looked ridiculous besides. 'Beetleburg may have been safe enough. Wulfenbach was in ruins, and I don't mean "about half the automated defences were down". I mean that my people were choosing between revenants in the fields or battle clanks inside what was left of the walls!'

'This is still not a good reason to take over everyone else's towns!' said Judy. 'I imagine they had plenty of problems without you.'

'I don't need to imagine,' Klaus growled. 'I still have lists. Some of them even asked for help, if their top problem wasn't whoever decided to attack me.'

'It is possibly to offer people aid without conquering them,' Judy retorted.

'I can understand with the ones who attacked you,' said Punch, more measuredly. 'But even there you didn't have to keep them. Masters Bill and Barry never would have done.'

'No,' Klaus said. 'They wouldn't even keep the places that begged them to.' They'd have swarmed in and rebuilt Wulfenbach without stopping to think or asking anything in return, if they'd been there. He'd have found everyone safe (not everyone, his parents died when their Castle cracked open, they weren't the only ones) and probably still be discovering new and bizarre features to the defences, instead of the bodies of people he'd invited to move there and told yes, you'll be safe. 'They also didn't seem to mind fighting the same violent lunatic half a dozen times.'

'Generally violent lunatics who were conquering other people's towns,' said Judy. 'And you took Mechanicsburg. I know Mechanicsburg wouldn't have asked. Why? Master Barry might not have spent much time there, but it was always a safe place for him to return to, and he didn't even have that to rely on.'

'To be fair,' Agatha said, while Klaus's fuse was still burning, 'he did give it back.'

'Not the point,' Judy said. 'Especially considering his first reaction to the possibility!'

'I still don't think it's irrel--'

'For some reason,' Klaus seethed, 'possibly the twenty years during which I was under the impression we were friends, I thought if they came back they would come to me.'

'And perhaps for the same reason Master Barry didn't expect to come back and find you trying to take over Europe!' said Judy.

Punch nodded. 'He didn't want to believe the worst of you, but to find you'd taken his home, and abandoned everything you'd seemed to believe in when you were with them... what else could he think? When he had reasons to doubt going in you didn't do much but confirm them.'

'Had doubts,' Klaus said. 'By which you mean he went around telling you all that the entire wreck I came back to was my fault. I abandoned methods that only ever worked for them, yes. I was trying to keep people alive. I was trying to create enough order to live in and I wasn't going to wait for every half-baked Spark or prince to take his next potshot. All Barry had to do to get Mechanicsburg back was ask. If he'd wanted to take the Empire or destroy it, all he had to do was get word to the Jägers. I can't say I expected him and Bill to approve of everything I did, but it never crossed my mind that either one of them would hide.'

‘He didn't expect the Jägers to go with you either,' said Punch. ‘He couldn't -- we couldn't -- be sure that their immunity to wasps had lasted, especially when we'd only been sure it was to the ones that created the zombie revenants.'

'He knew about the other ones, then,' Klaus said grimly. 'I only found out after Agatha shouted at one of them and he somehow decided this meant it was time to unleash Beetle's hive engine.' They'd thought he had enslaved the Jägers. They'd thought, all this time, he was spreading not only the mindless zombies but the conscious slaves. 'I still don't understand his decision,' he went on. For a second he thought Agatha had started humming for some reason, but no, the odd drone was in his own ears, the rush of blood maybe. 'Keeping a child hidden, certainly. But he still could have come to me. Asked me to explain myself. Or if he didn't want to give me the chance,' he gritted out, 'at least after I was dead the whole mess would have been his problem!'

'He didn't want to kill you, Klaus!' said Judy, sounding shocked.

'He should have!' Klaus shouted. 'Are you even listening to yourselves? That's what he believed I was doing, and he let me?'

Both of them looked at Agatha, as if they were considering shielding her. Agatha folded her arms and gave them an I'm not the one he's angry with look.

'Klaus, really...' Judy began, and then faltered.

'He wasn't doing nothing,' said Punch. 'Whatever he was doing, he was doing it slowly, but he was doing something.'

'He wasn't thinking clearly,' said Judy. She looked down at her hands. 'Losing Bill... Even at the beginning he wasn't quite himself as you knew him. And... maybe we should have thought more about that, about what else he might not be thinking clearly about, but we were used to trusting they knew what they were doing when they told us something was wrong.'

Klaus forced his own hands to unclench. He hadn't expected approval. He'd spent sixteen years not asking for anyone's. And Barry wasn't here to be argued with and, from what Agatha said, might not be in any condition to be shouted at if he were. 'I was too,' he said. A small concession in turn. 'If anything I tended to assume they were being optimistic.'

'The treaty with Agatha does look better for knowing how strongly you're against the wasps,' said Punch. 'Maybe you really are trusting her if it's the best way to deal with them, instead of having something in reserve to take Mechanicsburg if you change your mind.'

Klaus's head came up sharply. This, this was why he couldn't work the way the Heterodyne Boys had: he tried to be conciliatory with old friends, to look fairly at why they'd decided they didn't trust him, and he got back that maybe one of the biggest risks he'd taken wasn't secretly a ploy to enslave everyone's minds--

'Adam,' Agatha said in exasperation, 'they don't answer to him. Did you not notice he was bleeding already when we ran into him on Castle Wulfenbach?'

Not the best argument, as it was hardly unusual to have accidents with creations that were supposed to be under control, but in this case applicable. 'It took a great deal of trust, in fact,' said Klaus, 'considering they do answer to her.'

'Well, until they've been drinking the local water,' Agatha amended. 'At which point they don't answer to anybody, which was good for the revenants and unexpectedly exciting in the case of the wasps.'

Punch held his hands up. 'I didn't mean that I expected you to take over with the wasps, I meant that I thought you might have something else in reserve to take over. Finding you so vehemently against the wasps explains why you might risk not having anything in order to have help containing them.'

'...Ah,' Klaus said. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Agatha looking faintly sheepish; well, at least it hadn't just been him. 'I try to maintain contingency plans as a general policy, but the main advantage of having Mechanicsburg as an ally is very similar to the risk. I would expect to win, if I had to, but I wouldn't expect it to be simple.' Dryly, he added, 'I understand one of the benefits of its secession is that if I make a decision Agatha feels she cannot accommodate, she'll feel she has standing to argue the point instead of instructing the Jägers to take over Castle Wulfenbach.'

'That is not how I put it,' said Agatha.

'I'd hope not, sweetheart,' said Judy, looking reluctantly amused. 'Although I do applaud your negotiating skills.'

Agatha opened her mouth, shut it again for a moment, and then said, 'I'm not altogether sure you'd say that if you'd been there, but thanks.'

'I don't know what you think she’d complain about,' Klaus said, somewhat untruthfully. 'You did win your point, and that was one of the most civil negotiations I've engaged in for years.' Tense, yes, but she was by no means the first person to rant at him across the table and she actually was the first to conclude it by informing him in all apparent sincerity that she thought he intended to be reasonable. Compared to this... never mind. He looked back at Punch and Judy... Adam and Lilith... and felt suddenly, deeply weary. And he wasn't recovering from another actual revival. 'And you two, I should probably leave to rest before Sun decides to intervene in the matter.' He hesitated. 'I wish you both the best in your recovery.'

'Thank you,' said Adam.

'Thank you,' Lilith echoed. 'And, Klaus... I do hope to see you again.'

Unexpectedly, he had to swallow before he could answer. He inclined his head to them. 'I expect to be making further visits.'

Agatha said, 'I suppose I should be going too. Dr Sun did say to take it easy,' and got up to hug first Adam and then Lilith as Klaus left.

--Well, that was over.

He hadn't gone far down the hall before quick footsteps caught up to him.

'I doubt Sun would really have run you out,' he said.

'Probably not,' she said, falling into step beside him anyway.

'...That went better than it could have, I suppose.'

Agatha stepped closer and put a hand on his upper arm, not quite on his shoulder. She wasn’t holding onto him or even pressing, it just rested there sympathetically. 'Next time will probably go better still.'

Klaus wondered if he was being that easy to read or if it was just a logical extrapolation from his shouting at them. He inhaled slowly and looked down at her. 'One can hope. Although I might prefer to go back to arguing politics with you.'

'I did have some ideas I never brought up,' she said, smiling.

'I know. I found your annotated copy of the Empire's Laws.'

She actually looked embarrassed at that. 'Ah. I suppose I did leave it lying around.'

'An interesting read. I believe it's been passed around the school by this point.'

Agatha covered her face, clearly torn between mortification and laughter. 'And you let them,' she said. 'I never would have believed you did things like that once.'

'They are meant to be learning the subject,' he said. The fact that she'd been raised by Punch and Judy assuming he couldn't take criticism and had no sense of humor made him want to sigh, a little. On the other hand her reaction lightened his mood more than could be reasonably justified and they were past the point where she might have been mortally offended if he teased her. 'Not when you wrote it, I think, so possibly you should have been more careful about leaving it to be found. But I don't think you need to be embarrassed about the content.' A pause. 'At least, I don't recall any particularly alarming doodles.'

She grinned. ‘I’m not advocating the kind of politics that call for those.' She sighed and added, more wryly but still smiling, 'I'll leave that to the Castle.'

Klaus snorted quietly. 'Even Bill and Barry's politics called for weaponry every so often.'

'True,' she said. 'But I try to keep the thought of what I might have to do to my political opponents for when I'm designing the weapons. Much more satisfying.'

Klaus arched an eyebrow. Judy was going to accuse him of being a bad influence next time. No, wait, that one she might attribute to the Castle. Or perhaps just as fairly to Beetle. 'Snarlantz's co-conspirators,' he suggested. Those should be a rich source of inspiration.

'Oooooh,' said Agatha, grin turning slightly fiendish as she fished a notebook from her pocket.

One advantage of Klaus's height was that he could read over her shoulder while they walked. He did like weapons design. And he had spent a significant part of that long walk back home thinking about what he'd do if he could find whoever was responsible for doing this to Europa, and then had to resign himself for years to the mystery.

By the time they reached his hospital room, they had a diagram of one basic high-energy death ray and were looking at a sonic design related to the Dyne's note that should disrupt slaver communications, theoretically interfere with the compulsion to fulfil past orders, and induce debilitating vertigo, which should interfere with just about anything.