Chapter 1

Klaus Wulfenbach settled into the fugue of the Spark as he sketched out ideas for what to do with the charred remains of Agatha Heterodyne. It would be rather tricky. To reconstitute a viable body from what was little more than bone and burned flesh would require several major advancements in vitalistic SCIENCE! It would be worth it. Implanting the brain of a pliable dupe or mentally transferring in the same would enable him to claim Mechanicsburg with an heir under his control.

The miraculously-revived “Lady Heterodyne” would of course stay on Castle Wulfenbach while Castle Heterodyne remained a maddened wreck. Any heirs of that heir would be under the tutelage of the Empire. Yes, it would do nicely. Not to mention the satisfaction of pulling off such a feat. It would take months of careful attention to the process. Which would mean he had an excuse to hand over control of the Empire so he could have some blessed peace from the pack of spoiled toddlers that composed the aristocracy and leading lights of Europa.

A knock on the door of his office jolted him out of his fugue. Papers nearly fused into diamond when he clenched one massive fist. Closing his eyes, he breathed in and out several times to quell the impulse to throw his desk through the door and the idiot interrupting his work. The Baron rose to his full, imposing height. He stalked over to the door, running a hand through messy white hair, before jerking it open.

Oh, joy.

It was Bangladesh Dupree. The dark-skinned woman in a white airship captain’s uniform with red sweater beneath–the better to absorb the blood she tended to spill–was leaning against the door jamb with all the smugness of a cat in a canary aviary. Just what he needed at nearly midnight after being stolen out of a brainstorming session. Klaus calculated pi to several hundred places while reminding himself that killing her would be a bad idea. Dupree was both among his most maddening yet effective operatives. She had a reason for coming here so late. Possibly it did not involve her burning down a village or three.

Once could hope.

“Dupree,” Klaus ground out. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this late night visit?”

“Heya, grumpy guts,” Dupree replied with an exasperatingly cheerful smile. “I hear you’re really sad that poor little Miss Clay got herself flambeed.”

“Yes, yes, you had your fun.” Klaus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do not tell me that you are here to make more salad tong jokes.”

“Nah. You have to stay fresh.” Dupree polished her nails on her sweater. She studied her reflection in them. “So, while I was heading out while you were brooding over the corpse, I had an idea.”

“A coherent thought passed through your mind,” Klaus said. “How momentous.”

“Hardy har har.” Dupree moved her other hand into view. In it were the handles of an airship sailor’s duffel bag... “So, here’s what I thought: too convenient. The actress with the same hair just perfect for a wrong identity call, the body dressed in the girl’s clothes, and all that.”

Klaus blinked. Very faintly, he could hear whimpering from the bag

“Yeah, you’re getting the same thought too.” Dupree smirked as she swayed the bag side to side. “So I snuck in myself after tracking that circus. And guess who I found at the edge of the encampment practicing Lucrezia’s lines from a Heterodyne Boys play?”

“Those damned carnies,” Klaus breathed. “They actually tricked us into believing the girl was dead.”

“Not ‘us’. You and Gil.” Dupree grinned. “Not me. Found her, nabbed her, dragged her away. Told her how many of her carnie friends I’d kill. She came quiet after that.”

“Are any of them left alive?” Klaus asked, somewhat rhetorically.

“Eh, this time, mission before pleasure.” Dupree smirked. “Although, I hope you don’t mind that she has a few bruises. She still had some fight in her. A touch of that whip and that ‘medical device’ of Gil’s did wonders for her attitude.”

Faintly, a guttural moan came from the bag as someone within it convulsed.

Klaus raised a brow

“Another medical device,” Dupree said. “One of Madame Erzulie’s specials, to keep the product juicy before a sale.”

“Out,” Klaus spat out. He seized the duffel bag.

“Thank me later.” Dupree grinned. “Hey, I figure she needed a little pleasure before you carve up her brain. I’m not completely heartless.”

Klaus slammed the door shut in her face. He calculated pi to several thousand places until he was calm. Laying the bag on his desk, he activated several locks on the entrances to his private office. The ventilation was rerouted to a special filtration system. No sense in a Jaeger getting a whiff of her through the airway system. Privacy and blast shutters were fixed over the windows. A record of the Storm King cycle was put on a victrola. Most importantly, he poured himself a double from the bottle of distilled lingonberry sap kept in his desk for special occasions.

They usually involved Bangladesh Dupree, come to think of it.

He slowly unzipped the bag. Within was a cocoon of cloth soaked in an astringent disinfectant. Annoying as she could be, no one ever accused Dupree of stupidity more than twice. Once was enough for that assumption to prove fatal. The figure within the cocoon struggled helplessly. Slowly, Klaus unwound the packing. Blonde hair tinged with red emerged first. The girl lifted her head out to draw in fresh air through her nose.

Over her eyes was a band of white silk tied about her head with another folded neatly beneath it as a blindfold. Another band of white silk had been tied in a complex airshipman’s knot that had been thrust deep into her mouth; the free ends had been cleaved between trembling lips before being under her hair at the nape of her neck. Fingertips wiggled just below the gag knot. Klaus winced as the brutal position her arms had been forced into. They had been folded behind her back, elbows down and wrists up. Silk rope about her forearms just forward of her elbows forced them to touch; her wrists had been cinched and bound palm to palm by more silken cord that made it seem as if she were at prayer. The wrist cords were secured to a harness of silk rope that had been wound over her shoulders, between and around her full breasts.

The girl helplessly flailed her legs as he eased the cloth swaddling her off her body. Each leg has been folded separately. More white silk bands wrapped around ankle and uppermost thigh secured them without a hint of give. One long white scarf had been wrapped about her hips and the free ends jerked between her bottom cheeks and up through her sex to be tied at the front. Visible between her thighs underneath the crotch-scarf a gold-and-green metal casing gently bulging out in the shape of the base of an egg. Dupree was a gleeful advocate of the work of Madame Erzulie in the field of intimate aids. She had a collection on a shelf in the captain`s cabin of her dirigible that she was all too happy to show off to him when he visited. From the casing and blue pulsing lights, Klaus recognized the vibrator buried deep in the girl as one of Dupree`s more energetic toys.

Aside from her bonds, the girl was completely naked save for the welts and shock marks all over her body.

It was an outrage.

Disgusting.

He has ordered that the girl be merely sedated, not subject to this sort of torture and humiliation.

Black fire and slag, he was stiffer than the Awful Tower. It had nearly been twenty years since he had been near a naked, aroused woman. He had cut himself off from that ever since he had charged through Luheia’s Mirror back into Europa. Those urges had never died. They had merely been buried in the name of Gil’s safety, much as he dedicated his life to an empire he hated. For all her disarray, the girl was as comely as he had commented to Gil when he had assumed she would be a mere summer’s tryst. That had been a mere intellectual interest. Now, the girl’s curvy body covered in a dappling of fear-sweat was of more ... primal interest. There was just a hint of muscle beneath the softness of a young woman who had spent her life as a scholar.

The girl owed him for all the trouble she had caused.

She owed him for all the humiliation and pain Lucrezia had caused him.

That duplicitous whore.

Klaus realized the girl had stopped whimpering.

Oh.

Very slowly, he relaxed the grip about her neck. The girl stayed very, very still. He was suddenly aware that he had been shouting. Well, it had been a stressful few days. He was in private. Still, there was no sense in being wasteful. If he was going to dispose of her, he would have simply had Dupree stab the bag several times and throw it into the nearest incinerator. Klaus leaned back to sip his drink. He resisted the urge to apologize or comfort the girl. There was no sense in allowing himself the weakness of sentimentality. She was a threat to everything he had worked for. There was no denying that. He would have to be harsh with her to ensure the utmost obedience. Any guilt about treating the daughter of his best friend in such a manner might lead to a moment of weakness that would lead to the release of a wild Heterodyne Heir who had every reason to hate him.

The girl lay there like he often imagined Lucrezia might, if he ever found her.

Ah.

This made it easier.

So, so much easier.

It had happened so fast.

One moment, she was sitting beneath a tree at the edge of the campsite Master Payne’s Circus had chosen for that night. They were one day out from Zumzum where she would take the stage for the first time. She could see all of her new friends from there: Lars declaiming the lines from the burning submarine; Zeetha sunning herself atop Baba Yaga’s roof; Krosp napping on the clank-wagon’s windowsill; the rest of the troupe doing various chores as the cook who played Klaus stirred the contents of a cauldron. The next second, a hand clamped over her mouth. A knife pricked the side of her neck. A horribly-cheerful voice told Agatha in no uncertain terms how quickly she could be paralyzed. It told her all the things that she would see done to her innocent friends–her eyelids removed, if need be–if she dared to scream for help.