Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess

Captain DuPree chose to approach.

She stood for a moment studying his clothing and nodding in approval. It would be hard to slip a knife through all those layers. On the other hand, if she was going to kill the guy in charge, it would be to make a point. In which case, she’d want to be spectacularly flamboyant anyway, so politely slipping a knife between his ribs was already right out. She grinned at the thought. “You look like you think you’re smart. Who’s in charge here?”

Payne looked at Abner. Abner looked back. This appeared to be a trick question, and was most likely just an excuse to use harsher interrogation methods.

“Er... you are.” Payne ventured.

DuPree beamed. “Wow! You’re so smart—” her arm snapped out and snagged Abner by the collar, “I’ll have to slap this guy around instead!” Abner rolled his eyes.

Gil cleared his throat. “DuPree—”

Annoyance flitted over the Captain’s face. She tucked Abner’s head into the crook of her arm.” I’m working here,” she said in tone of strained reason. “Do I come to your lab and tell you how to torture rats?”

Gil thought back to last week. “Frequently.”

DuPree nodded. “Yeah! That’s ’cause I know what I’m doing. Now stand back, and let me prove it.” She roughly hauled Abner upright.

“But what do you want?” Payne shouted desperately.

DuPree paused. With Gil around, certain tiresome, bureaucratic hoops did have to be jumped through. Oh, well. “We’re looking for a girl. Young. Sort of blondie-reddish hair. Healthy. Wears glasses. Caused a lot of trouble on Castle Wulfenbach a few days ago. The Baron wants her.” Abner rolled his eyes imploringly at Master Payne, who shrugged. Bang continued. “Everybody here is going to line up, so we can look them over.”

Payne tried to explain. “But she isn’t here. Besides, I’m only in charge of the circus. The locals won’t—”

“Too many details!” DuPree sang out. “Lesson time!”

She flexed the hand that held Abner and a powerful electrical jolt danced through him. When it cut off, he dropped to the dirt.

DuPree grinned and held up her hand. It was wrapped in a small machine that was still sparking slightly. She touched a dial and waggled her fingers. “This thing is great!” she remarked, grinning sideways at Gil. He angrily snagged her hand and examined it.

“That is a medical device! I made it for you to fix your hand! You aren’t supposed to use it as a weapon!”

DuPree laughed and jerked her hand back. “So I tweaked it. I like it better this way.” She glanced down at Abner, who was jerkily trying to sit up. “Trust me. If I’d just used my bare hands, he’d be in way worse shape.”

Gil opened his mouth. DuPree cut him off. “Look—Is this the girl?”

“Of course not!”

“Is he dead?”

“I said no one would be harmed!”

“If they obey.”

“Give them a chance!” Gil shouted.

Abner had shakily climbed to his feet. DuPree put a friendly arm around his shoulders. “Isn’t this always the way?” she asked companionably, one world-weary subordinate to another. “Management thinking it knows what works in the field? This could take all night.” She dropped her voice and spoke sotto voce, “Honest. If I was here alone, and you people were still just standing around, half of you would be dead. Then the rest of us could knock off early!”

“Everybody line up!” Payne roared. The crowd put their heads down and started shuffling into some sort of order when shouting erupted from the far end.

“Oy!”

“Hey!”

“There she goes!”

DuPree grinned. “A-ha! She tried to hide with the villagers and made a break for it!” A shriek filled the night. “—aaand a clank got her! Yeah!”

Conflicting emotions tumbled across Gil’s face. Slowly his hand reached into his coat. “Amazing,” he muttered. “I didn’t believe—”

He froze as a stubby gun barrel pushed up into his jaw. DuPree grinned lazily. “Oh come on now, you’re not going to try anything stupid, are you?” Gil’s eyes swiveled downwards trying to identify the type of gun. She continued: “Your problem is you’re still thinking ‘fiancee,’ when the word you want is ‘prisoner.’ She won’t like it, but hey—she obviously didn’t like ‘fiancee’ much either.”

“Shut up!” Gil snarled as one of the clanks approached. A frantically struggling female figure was tucked under its arm. “Clank! Put her down—gently.”

The mechanical soldier complied. “So what do you have to say about my methods now?” DuPree asked, smug. In the lights the girl stood, held in place by the clank’s grasp. It was Pix.

Gil blinked. “It’s not her,” he said.

“What?” DuPree whipped around and stared at the captive actress in surprise.

Gil continued, enjoying the moment. “Girl, yes. Red- blonde, yes. Miss Clay? No.”

“She could be in disguise!” But it was obvious that even DuPree didn’t really believe that.

“It’s not her.” Gil repeated.

“But she ran!”

Gil nodded. “Yes, that is puzzling. You’d think we were crazy people with guns, battle clanks, and a great big looming airship. What could have possibly motivated her—” Gil stopped dead.

Bang looked at him closely. She could tell that he’d seen something. “Oh? What is it, bright boy?”

Gil was staring at Pix’s feet. She was wearing a well-worn pair of sturdy shoes. Shoes he had seen before. “Those shoes belong to the person we’re looking for.” He looked Pix hard in the face. “Where is she?”

Pix stared at Gil. Then a light seemed to dawn and she visibly relaxed. “Oh! The madgirl! Jeez. I was afraid you was just out collectin’ blondes!” She swept a hand through her hair and gave him an appraising sidelong look.

“Yeah, we met her on the road yesterday. She wanted to travel with us, but we knew she was some sort of criminal, ’cause she said she was running from the Baron! We didn’t dare try to catch her, ’cause she had this whonkin’ big gun, ya know?”

Pix dropped her voice conspiratorially. “Now we knew there was something out in the forest, ya know? Something big. So we sent her off that way.” She narrowed her eyes. “Well, she went and found it all right, and she drove it right back at us! I guess she was mad ’cause we’d sent her away. But things didn’t work out like she planned, ’cause it turned and grabbed her and completely fried her!” She saw the look on Gil’s face and nodded in satisfaction. “Yeah, she was dead before she knew it, ya know? Like ‘Whoosh!’”

Gil stared at the girl. His mind processed what he had just heard over and over again, trying to find a different meaning to the words. A red haze filled his vision. DuPree looked up at his face and her eyes widened. She stepped back for a better view, a shiver of anticipation running down her spine. This could be entertaining.

All at once, Gilgamesh was looming over Pix, her vacuous, imbecilic face the sole focus of his mounting fury. When he spoke, several people in the crowd jerked to attention. Anyone who had ever heard those harmonics in a madboy’s voice never forgot the experience. “You say she drove a clank straight at you. That was a pretty rotten thing to do.”

Pix nodded. If parts of her brain were screaming at her to shut up, the rest of it was apparently too stupid to listen. “Oh, yeah. Well, we’re just lucky our plan worked so well. Who knows what she would have done if we’d let her stay, ya know? Just can’t trust that kind, I always say.” She seemed to realize that she was talking to “that