Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

“Yes, and who do you think got me in there? When I was first sent to Castle Wulfenbach, Gil was already there. He was a total nobody. He had no family. No friends. No nothing. The people on the Castle ignored him, when they weren’t bullying him.

“Well, I thought he might be useful. He seemed pathetically grateful for any kindness, and one can always use people like that…I thought I’d make him my lackey. But he was brilliant—and he was always coming up with really fun ideas.”

Tarvek made a disgusted sound. “I actually liked him. I thought we were good friends.” He glanced at von Zinzer. “I’d never really had any of those, before.”

He continued. “And then, one day he told me that he had found out where the Baron kept the family records for all of the students aboard Castle Wulfenbach—”

Violetta interrupted. “Whoa. Hold on. You’re telling me that you knew this guy by name on Castle Wulfenbach, and it never occurred to you that this guy, with the same name, might be the mystery son the Baron had been hiding all these years?” She smacked him on the side of the head. “Idiot!”

Tarvek flinched. “No! Well, yes, okay, I am an idiot; I’ll give you that. But…We broke into the vault. We found Gil’s family records.”

Tarvek sighed. “You have to understand. On Castle Wulfenbach… in the schoolroom…lineage was a big deal to us. It was one of the major things we students used to torment each other.

“Gil was at the bottom of the pecking order because nobody knew who his people were. The other kids thought he was just ashamed, but he honestly didn’t know anything.

“We figured out how to crack the security on the vault. He was desperate to get in and search. Not knowing was terrible for him. He had all kinds of wild ideas about what we’d find: that he’d turn out to be a lost Heterodyne, or—heh—the Storm King, or a…a Martian Prince or something. Anything.”

Tarvek slumped and was silent for a moment. “I was secretly hoping we’d turn out to be related.”

More silence.

When he continued, he spoke slowly. “Unfortunately, that was not what we found. The records showed that Gil’s father had indeed been a Spark, but he was one of those rustic buffoons you hear about in bad jokes and tavern songs.

“The creature he constructed from farm machinery and pork products terrorized a small village for the two hours it took the Baron’s men to hear about it, show up, and blow it apart. Unfortunately, by that time, the creator and his family had already fallen victim to the thing’s built-in sausage maker.

“All, that is, except for the late Spark’s infant son; Gil. As there was no other family, the Baron placed him with the other children aboard Castle Wulfenbach.

“Well, he wasn’t the only one on the Castle like that, but until then, even the kid whose father built the Perpetual Molasses Fountain ranked higher than Gil, who didn’t even know.⁸¹

“Even so, Gil was devastated. I tried to stop him, but he ran off in tears.”

Tarvek paused again.

“Now, the thing was…the Spark with the sausage monster? We’d all heard that story…”

Von Zinzer interrupted, “They still tell it, back where I come from.”

“I’m not surprised. But I’d never heard about there being a son… and I didn’t believe it for a moment.”

Violetta was slowly nodding in agreement.

“You don’t last long in our family unless you’ve got a good nose for intrigue,” Tarvek said. “I’ve never had the luxury of believing everything I read.

“The story was perfect. All the details were right. There were secondary reports that confirmed everything and orphaned children of careless Sparks were taken in by the Baron all of the time. But…” Tarvek shook his head. “But they were usually placed with trusted vassal families—people who knew to watch them carefully—in case they exhibited signs of the Spark themselves. Gil, on the other hand, was already aboard Castle Wulfenbach. Was already being educated along with future rulers and the children of powerful Sparks. Why? Why did Wulfenbach think he warranted such close supervision?

“I started to dig further, but I got caught. Gil had been caught, too. His running off blindly like that is probably what got us both caught. When I was dragged before the Baron, Gil was already there. He looked awful. It was obvious that the Baron had told him something that had shaken him to his core.

“The minute I had the chance, I tried to reassure him. I told him that I thought the story we’d found was a fake. That I was determined to get to the truth about him, no matter what.

“I was just trying to make him feel better, but I’ll never forget the hatred in the look he shot me. I didn’t understand. What had I said?”

Tarvek closed his eyes, exhausted. Several seconds passed in silence. “Well, I never found out, but now I can guess. That must have been when the Baron told him the truth. He probably also warned him that I was a person that couldn’t be trusted. That was true enough too, really…or that I would try to unearth his real identity.”