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Chapter Text

"Just the two?"

"For now." Lilith gave a stern I-know-what-I'm-doing nod, and the lens-grinder shrugged. This was a university town; he had to be used to odd orders. And Lilith did know what she was doing.

What she was doing was staying hidden. Any trained optician would have noticed the oddity of the prescription.

The lenses were ready two days later, and Lilith set them on the kitchen table to unfold the linen wrapping while Agatha watched, wide-eyed. "What are you going to do with them?"

"I'm going to turn them into new eyeglasses," Lilith explained, and she pulled off her old pair to hold up beside the new lens - the stronger-than-necessary one, that went over her oversized left eye to disguise it. It had given her weeks of headaches getting used to that, enough to make her wonder if letting Barry male just a few superficial fixes would have been worth the risk.

Nothing like Agatha put up with, though.

But Agatha seemed to fine right now, staring in rapt fascination through the two equivalent lenses. Very carefully, she picked up the other news lens - she could hardly stretch her hands far enough - and looked through it at the tiny square panes of the kitchen window, where irregular glass and dripping rain conspired to turn the street outside into a collection of colourful abstract smears. That might be why Agatha was squinting. Lilith waited. It did no good to interrupt children while they were trying to work things out for themselves.

It wasn't long before Agatha put them down again, and now her furrowed brow had the dull-eyed look of an incipient headache. Lilith settled her old glasses in their accustomed place on her forehead, where they wouldn't get in the way. "Agatha? Do you want to help me grind down the lenses tomorrow?"

"Yes please," Agatha said, and brightened up, instantly distracted by the prospect of a scientific project. Getting them from circular to rectangular would be slow, careful work, but it would take neither brute strength nor too much thought. "Is Adam going to make the frames? Can I help?"

"I don't see why not." It wouldn't involve hot steel. Lilith started to fold the lenses back up in the linen wrapping, for safekeeping.

Agatha nodded. "Uncle Barry just bought his glasses," she said. "Maybe when he comes back I can show him how to make them." The prospect of teaching Barry something seemed to brighten her mood too, even with the pinched look still around her eyes, and Lilith tried not to think about how long it had been since Barry's letter from Paris.

--

Agatha was eight before it became obvious she wasn't only squinting because her headaches made bright light hurt; it became obvious when Adam hung up the new 'Clay Mechanical' sign she'd just painted over the forge door, and she asked, suddenly anxious, "Did I make it too small?"

"It's fine," Lilith told her. She wasn't sure about the pink-on-green colour scheme, but Adam liked it and it was certainly memorable. "It's half as wide as the door."

"But it's all fuzzy from down here." Lilith's surprise must have shown on her face, because Agatha went on, "Or is the expected viewing distance closer up? But most of the shops with fuzzy signs have them perpendicular to the wall. So I thought they were for reading close up when you walked down the street. Lilith?"

Lilith let out her breath. "They aren't fuzzy for most people," she admitted.

"Oh."

"Can you see the sign across the street from here?"

"I remember what it says. It says Turnips R Us." Agatha's nose wrinkled; she wasn't very fond of turnips. "But it's all fuzzy from here."

Of course Agatha had an excellent memory; that was how they'd missed it so long. Adam was stepping back off the ladder; he padded over to them, frowning in inquiry.

"We need to take Agatha to an optician," Lilith informed him.

"Why?" Agatha looked honestly confused.

Adam ruffled her hair, then held up his looped fingers to his face in the obvious mime.

"But I can just make them," Agatha protested. "Lilith did."

Well. Not precisely. But if they could work out what lenses to order, it would save money and make Lilith's orders a little less obvious, and it wasn't the kind of project that was likely to send Agatha to bed with a headache. Lilith hated how much of a consideration that had become.

--

"And if you fall down -"

"Put my arms out," Agatha recited, "so the glasses don't get broken and stick in my eyes." She frowned; there was already a furrow developing between her brows. There seemed to be one more often these days. Lilith could only hope it was the effect of adjusting to actually seeing things further than a few meters away, and not a sign they'd gotten the wrong strength of lenses.

"And if your glasses get broken anyway but you're not hurt?"

"Put all the pieces in my pocket and maybe Adam can put them back together." Agatha crossed her arms. "Or I can. They're just wire. I'm going to be absolutely fine," she said, and the stubborn backbone in her voice made Lilith wince. She'd need to break out the hot chocolate this afternoon, she could tell already. "I've been to school lots of times."

Most of last year, ever since it became obvious that she was living here indefinitely, and she'd been the smallest, youngest child in her class since two weeks in. The glasses wouldn't help with that. They might, Lilith hoped, help with the headaches. Memorizing everything on one hearing couldn't be good for the brain.

Adam raised one clenched fist. Right, one more reminder. "And if anyone tries to knock you down, or hurt you, or take your glasses away?"

"Hit them with anything I can grab," Agatha recited. "Just like I did last week with the boy with freckles. Because young ladies should be able to defend their honour."

"Exactly." Lilith let out a breath. The bit about young ladies had been a wild improvisation, but she'd concluded a while back that parenting was a series of wild improvisations stuck together. About the same time she'd realized she had acquired a daughter.

--

Chapter Text

Dupree didn't approve, but Dupree wasn't in charge of him. She was in charge of the Tiger's Eye as of last month and of course she'd decided to spend her first weekend of leave in Paris, annoying Gil, just like old tines. So if Gil decided to let the idiot who'd just flooded the Paris transit lines with yellow sludge go, rather than try to haul him all the way back to the surface to face the Master's wrath, Dupree would just have to put up with it. He'd confiscated her knives.

"You should have just stabbed him," she muttered. Again.

Gil took a deep breath. Probably a mistake, given the way the smell was still trailing behind them. "He's harmless without his centrifuge. Which I wanted to take home and examine, by the way. You didn't have to slag it."

"Yes I did! It was about to explode!" Dupree threw her hands in the air. "Just because you're a Spark doesn't mean you have you be a complete mimmothbrain!"

"I could have handled it!"

"Yeah, but you didn't! And I didn't get to stab anybody. No fun at all. You know what your problem is, Gil?"

"The mad pirate who follows me everywhere?" He couldn't keep himself from growling.

"You think too much."

They sloshed on in sullen silence. Around the next corner a glimmer of yellow announced the return of the electric system, but they were still more or less in the dark, except for the faintly glowing lichens that seemed to be everywhere in the Paris underground. Probably Sparkwork.

"That's not fair," Gil eventually muttered. "It comes with being a Spark."

Most people would snort in derision; Dupree let out a bark of a laugh, like a hunting hound on the scent. "Like madboys are swordproof! Someday someone's going to stick a cutlass right through your liver while you're in a fugue and you won't even notice until your guts are lying there in a heap. Like I was going to do to the nincompoop with the centrifuge back there until you made me -"

The light hit them, and Gil at the same instant punched down sideways, taking advantage of the instant's distraction. "Stop!"

Dupree was on her way down, but she'd lashed out with a flying kick at his knee, and he had to leap back to avoid it. Right into the archway. Ouch. He flung himself over Dupree, trying to get his weight over her, and his foot hit a patch of mud and he tipped over, flailing, still grabbing for Dupree's shoulder with one arm. Her second kick landed, and she shoved on his ribs in a way Gil was almost sure hadn't been meant to give him the momentum for a somersault, but it did. He landed more-or-less upside down on the opposite wall. Dupree had vanished.

Half a second later she erupted from the muck like a horrifying parody of Venus, going for his ribs. The first blow he took, caught off balance; the second he tried to deflect, even as he slid down the wall in a distinctively undignified way, and Dupree yelped and leapt a meter to the side. Gil took advantage of her distraction to push off the wall and flip himself upright again, and they were facing each other, breathing hard.

The electric light turned Dupree's skin a sickly shade of yellow, like a rotten banana. Her grin gleamed. Time to finish this. Gil raised his hands, wide open and harmless. "We don't have to fight," he said, and hoped he could come up with a reason on the spot.

"You owe me one," Dupree growled. But she didn't go for the throat right away; that had to count as a win.

"Right, right." What could he - ahah. "Will you come to Professor Goodwin's freestyle reanimation lecture with me? We've just about got time to wash up."

It's enough to startle Dupree out of her fury, "What? Why would I want to go to some lecture?"

"Because last time he did a horse and it came back a ravening monster and three of us had to fight it back with the folding chairs?" There were folding chairs, always, because Goodwin's lectures were so popular he had to hold them in the tennis hall. The idea had caught at her, Gil could tell. She was bitng her lip, looking aside. He went on, "He's supposed to have some kind of giant lizard this time."

For two breaths Gil thought it might not be enough, but then Dupree crossed her arms. "Alright. You're safe for now."

"Thanks."

"You still owe me a shirt. And trousers. And shoes."

"Absolutely." Gil nudged his damp hair behind his ear. It squelched. "Now can we please keep walking?" There wasn't time for a weeklong bath, but he needed twenty minutes in the shower and a set of clothes that wasn't covered in yellow sludge. It was just lucky the idiot hadn't thought to make it acidic, or they'd be having this conversation in their underwear. If they were lucky.

--

Chapter Text

"Can we just do a gambling tax?" Vanamonde curled his hands around his coffee cup and looked up through his fringe. He'd had a growth spurt sometime lately - it was amazing how fast the boy was growing - and he could lace his fingers together around the cup now. "It'd annoy them, at least."

"Bear in mind they're not the only bookies in town," Carson pointed out. It would be legally tricky to sort out the respectable local-owned snail race betting from the shady characters up at the Castle, counting heads when the prisoners came out. Or didn't.

"Oh. Right." Van wilted slightly. "And it'd be hard to explain to the Burgermeister."

Arella put in, "Not necessarily."

"The Burgermeister has snail slime for brains, right." Carson nodded.

"I meant because it's a revenue source that would be passed on to tourists, Poppa. But I'll be quiet. You go on with your lesson." She folded her hands primly and smiled. She was a clever woman and a lovely daughter-in-law, he couldn't have gotten through the last decade without her, but when she smiled like that Carson wondered sometimes if she was rolling her eyes at the obtuse old man. Well, he wasn't dead. He'd even done the supper dishes, rheumatism or no, and let her fret. At Carson's age you took your victories where you could.

Right. He took a long sip of coffee to gather his wits, and wrapped his hands around the cup for warmth as well; it was well into autumn, and a cold, damp autumn that should have driven the Castle entertainers away, but was just driving them to put up shacks and great ugly braziers like no proper building in Mechanicsburg should need, with the coal-gas vein. And here he was woolgathering again. "Any more targeted ideas, m'boy?"

His grandson was already developing a permanent furrow between his brows. Well, it was a messy job, but someone had to run this place. "Special development zone tax? Like they used in Geno - well, no, we're not trying to build anything else there. Hm." He bit his lip. "The Castle's dangerous, right? Can we insist they buy explosions insurance? Ruinously expensive explosions insurance. Or we just make sure no one will sell it to them, claim they're too close to the potential blast radius." His eyes were alight with an acquisitive gleam.

Carson considered this. There were only three insurance agents in Mechanicsburg, one from each of the big Viennese firms and one English spy; Mechanicsburg folk preferred to live dangerously. But Burgermeister Zuken wasn't a Mechanicsburger.

"I don't know," he finally said. "It might work, but it's a strange enough rule, by Mechanicsburg standards - "

" - the Baton would suspect," Van and Arella chorused. Arella half-smiled. Van groaned, and went on, "If it's a Mechanicsburg kind of idea you want, send in Gkika's barmaids with the stuff off her wall to terrify them all into submission."

Arella was hiding a grin behind her coffee cup. "You have to admit it's a very Mechanicsburg kind of plan," she said.

"True." Carson set down his cup and rubbed his temples.

For once Van was looking young and sheepish. "Sorry, Grandfather. There has to be something we can do, but I really don't have any idea what."

"Don't feel bad," Carson told him. "If I had any better ideas we'd have gotten rid of the whole lot of shady characters by now. We can't even burn down the Last Walk Tavern. Everyone would know it was arson."

They all stared glumly at their coffee.

It was Arella who finally shook her head and said, "Sleep on it. If you and the town council havn't come up with a good idea in two months, I doubt Van can come up with one in one evening."

"Well, he can't do any worse than we are." At least he was coming up with ideas that wouldn't drive away more custom than the bookies did. Carson shoved his chair back. Sleep on it. Fine idea.

--

The next morning he was sitting outside the bakery on Mons Avenue, enjoying a piece of gingerbread and marvelling at the return of unseasonably nice weather, when a file of soldiers in Wulfenbach shakos marched up the street. They'd already attracted a crowd behind them. Carson abandoned the gingerbread and joined the throng; he had no idea why the Baron would send a new regiment in, but it couldn't mean anything good. Especially since the town council got no word of it.

The prisoners should have started their shift half an hour ago. Instead they were still waiting in Bill and Barry Square, standing nervously in neat ranks, the usual guards surrounding them, bayonets stuck up nervously. A crowd had gathered around them, too, muttering about what was going on, someone complaining that her wagon of fresh snails was stuck outside, nobody was going to be ready for the lunch rush at this rate. Carson slid up next to her, ignoring the protest from his knees. "I don't suppose," he said, "they've told anyone what's going on?"

"Not a thing! Just been standing out here! All the guards would say was 'orders'." She shook her head, ringlets bouncing. "I'm supposed to deliver to the Last Walk by seven, Giovanni's going to start screaming - " She broke off, as a trumpet began to blow.

"Attention!" screamed the trumpeter, once the inevitable hubbub doed down. People shpuld know better than to try to get attention with a trumpet, really. "A proclamation from the Baron!"

"What the -"

Carson stomped on her foot. She was wearing steel-toed boots, but she got the message and shut up.

It was a lass with gold braid on her shoulders who was talking now. " - and the heads of all bookmaking establishments," she said, "namely Georgiu Norik of Lucky Mark, Lucinda Harry of Roll For Their Heads, Ricardo D'Omelin of -" All the people Carson would have liked to kick out of town. He listened in growing dismay to a dozen names. "And Giovanni Baptiste of the Last Walk Tavern," the officer concluded, shaking her scroll as if it had personally offended her.

The woman next to him gave a happy little gasp. "That rat bastard."

"Isn't he your customer?"

"I don't mind losing four barrels a week to watch him get -" She paused. "Well, whatever they're going to do to him."

More soldiers were coming out of buildings around the square, shoving reluctant bookies along with their bayonets or, in one case, dragging along by the collar a man who'd fainted. Herding them into the mass of prisoners. The officer cleared her throat. "Since you all take such an interest in the operation of the Baron's justice," she went on with a vicious grin, "you are invited to get a closer look. From inside."

Carson looked up at the statue of Barry and Bill, giving a cheery thumbs-up. They wouldn't have approved, Carson thought, but if they were still here none of this would have been necessary. At least Carson didn't have to worry about attracting the Baron's attention anymore.

--

Chapter Text

"I was in the old Grand Duke's army before. He was a decent enough fellow. Had the sense to figure Belgrade would do better with the Baron, at least. I mean, why did you sign up?"

"For the nice hat," Higgs said, deadpan.

Sergeant Scorp threw back his head and laughed. From the lines around his eyes he did that a lot; he had a face meant for a grandfather. "It is mighty fine. And the shiny - you again? I can't believe this cat," he added. "Fine, you ravenous beast, have another." He pulled the breading off the last of his crispy-fried mimmoths and reached under the table.

"You know ship's cats are meant to hunt mimmoths, right?" Higgs pulled his plate a little closer; he still had three left and he didn't want the creature getting ideas.

"And that's just what it's doing. Come on, who can resist those little whiskery faces? Well, maybe I'm picking up bad habits from the weasels, even Doctor Bren said we should feed them by hand. Keeps 'em friendly." Higgs made a noncommittal noise. "To humans, anyway. Never thought I'd end up working with animals. Thought I'd joined the army to get away from all that."

"You grew up on a farm?"

"Worse. Livery stable." Scorp gave a theatrical shudder. "Airships are the best way to travel, don't you think? No bouncing and naught to shovel between trips."

Higgs tipped his hat. "If I didn't think so I'd have joined the cavalry," he said. He mostly liked airships for their speed, but the man was right about the disadvantages of horses. He'd better keep talking, draw the fellow out. "You know they make ships now that can get from Belgrade to Vienna in five hours?"

"Also very handy." Scorp patted at his old-fashioned mustache with his napkin. "My youngest, he's a navigator with the Twelfth Logistical, he says in twenty years they'll have airships that can get from Vienna to London in five hours. Don't much credit it, myself."

Maybe, maybe not; from what he'd seen of Sparks, Higgs would be more inclined to believe in a giant catapult to fling people across the continent, or a rocket-propelled artificial bird. That wasn't the information he was trying to get out of the man, though. He nibbled on his second-to-last mimmoth to give himself a moment to think. "Can't be. They'd have to get the weight down so far there'd be no way to float the guns, and what would be the point of that? If there's a wasp outbreak you need heavy explosives brought in, right? You can't fight it just with weasels." He squinted at his fork. "Or can you?"

"It's what we bred them for." Scorp sounded perfectly casual and a little proud, and it would have fooled anyone who wasn't fishing for information. But Higgs had been around Sparks enough to know, nothing every achieved exactly what it was created for.

There was something else the weasels did. Something good, something helpful, something he wasn't about to get out of Scorp tonight.

"I suppose it'd be more use on a passenger line," Higgs conceded.

"Sure, but going so fast you'd miss out on the view," Scorp said, with a friendly kind of smile, the kind you could tell was real because it was mostly in his eyes. "You'd be whipping past Mount Tesak before you could work out which way it was pointing today."

The cat had come over to rub against Higgs's ankle, making tiny mewling noises that were probably meant to entice him into giving it food. Probably getting fur all over his trouser leg. White fur, too, there was no way it wouldn't show. Higgs sighed, and tried to nudge it away. "Mount Tesak's easy," he pointed out. "Prevailing winds."

"Spoken like an airman." Scorp sounded amused, at least. "How long have you been flying for?"

"Most of my life," Higgs lied, and added an underestimate of, "Thirty years now. Ten with the Baron." That was true. He'd only signed on once the Baron took Mechanicsburg.

--

They kept talking, until the mess hall bell rang and it was closed for cleaning, and then since they were both on Castle leave while their ships restocked, they went down to the starboard observation deck to see what mountains they could pick out from this altitude.

Krosp considered following them, just in case they got back on interesting topics, but he was full of crispy-fried mimmoth and late for his nap. The odds, he thought, were low. He'd heard enough mentions of the Vespiary Squad to get the idea they did something fascinating involving animals, and now he knew the animals were weasels, and none of this was helping him and Poppa escape.

He slunk out of the mess hall, instead, barely dodging a mop clank as it tried to spray soap all over his tail. It was hard being a cat.

He couldn't move quite as well on four feet as two, but Krosp could move well enough. He slunk down the hall, dodging two dozen feet, one set of hooves, and two wheels belonging to unicycle messengers, before he could duck into the alcove where he'd left a loose vent cover. Hands were so useful for things like this.

Sometimes it was obvious Poppa had known what he was doing.

Sometimes.

--

Chapter Text

The rain was still a bare drizzle, but Payne could make out dark clouds on the horizon, and out here in the plains road maintenance was well below wall maintenance on local princelings' lists of things to spend money on. Already their wagon rims were wet, splashing through the centimeter of water running down the ruts. With the usual exceptions. Baba Yaga had the advantage for once, clomping along on its chicken feet; Herr Gotthard's extra-wide wagon was riding precariously outside the ruts. It was days like this that made airship travel look like a good idea.

Not that they could have fit on any airship they could afford; a travelling show needed more freight than people. Thirty people on fourteen wagons, and one of them was just for props. And none of them properly caulked, they hadn't needed to ford a river for two years, not since the otherwise very irritating Spark who'd been driven out of Loffelburg had gotten tired of the floods and drilled a new channel for the Bruhe with his mecha-moles. It was just a pity about the subsidence. Payne spared a few bitter moments to the memory of the last prop wagon, which had been covered in fascinating colored glass and unfolded to more space than it properly should have and which he'd had to sell to a Loffelburg alderman for half what it was worth, just because getting it out of the sinkhole was going to involve days of work and the use of eight draft horses. It was supposed to be the Wastelands that were dangerous.

If they got stuck in the mud anything big that came through would pick them off like so many birds on a glue-tree.

There were dark shapes all around, hills with trees on them. There was something up there - impossible in this waving landscape to tell how far - that might have the right-angle edges of a house, but last time Payne had through he saw a house, it turned out to be a wrecked war-walker, tilted sideways and half buried in the dirt, as if some flood had swept it under - not a cheerful sight. The one before that had been a house, with a hole through the walls where the emus had broken in to nest; they'd barely escaped without becoming dinner. He ought to send a rider ahead, to find out if it was worth pushing on or if they should set up camp on the next large, flat spot they saw. He ought to. He didn't want to split the troupe.

--

"Well," Marie said eventually. "There's no point going any further in this weather," which was true enough, the water would be almost to their axles even assuming the road beneath it was solid, "and it looks like that's been here for years."

Moonsock squinted at it. Eventually she ventured, in that timid voice they would have to overcome if she was going to be any good on stage, "No clawmarks."

Time to be decisive; they couldn't afford to dither. Especially not in this weather. Payne turned back to the second wagon, where Rivet and Javor were waiting with the awning, and began to pound on the door. It was a flat patch of ground, there was a hill that would break any storm from the east and trees enough to at least pretend to be under shelter. And if there was a wrecked wagon, axle snapped and paint peeling and door sitting just a little ajar, it didn't mean there was any danger left. They'd check it for salvage in the morning.

--

In the morning the rain had gone through its "thundering bluster" phase and settled back to "mildly annoying", leaving only two slow-flowing streams where the road ruts had been as proof they hadn't all hallucinated the noise. The grass squelched when they walked. Payne finished the hot cocoa Marie had somehow miracled up over her little alcohol-burner - he loved that woman so much - and just in case, ordered the rest of the troupe to pack up, while he and Rivet went over the wrecked wagon.

They didn't even need to break down the door, which was hanging on one hinge and on which the blotchy remnants of a blue-and-brass sign were still visible, " - SOR - SKRA'S MAGNIFI - ORAC-". A stick shoved inside got no response. Neither did the end of a torch. Rivet stuck her longest prybar through the still-green handle, Payne stood to the side, and Rivet very carefully, making sure she stayed behind its wooden bulk, opened the door. No bats flooded out. No cloud of colourful, poisonous gas. Rivet held out the bar, and Payne took it to wave in the doorway; they knew too much already about the dangers of the road. Still nothing. He pressed a hand over his eyes and counted to ten, so they'd be dark-ready without any delay, then leaned through the doorway himself.

Scattered boxes, spilling clothes and bits of crockery. A velvet curtain ripped down the middle like the a giant cat had torn it away. Huddled in the corner, two wom -

No. Two clanks. Their faces were pale as porcelain because they were, and they held more still than any human could.

He let out a breath. Fake Muses weren't as popular as they had been ten years ago; Payne had given up on his after Stamatis had gotten his beard caught in the mechanism one too many times and quit in a huff to become a baker. These looked like excellently-made ones, superficially. "Come on in," he called to Rivet. "Clanks."

Rivet was reaching to pick up the one on top, in a ragged pink dress and left in a defensive posture, almost as if she'd braced herself against the tilting wagon, when the clank reached up to touch her hand.

"Hey," she said, startled. "They still have power."

How long had they been sitting here? Would they still respond to voice commands? "What are you?"

The eyes seemed the grow brighter, and the clank on top was suddenly rotating its wrists, the deliberate motions of a clank doing a selfdiagnostic or a fencer warming up before a bout. They didn't make noise. Good sign, that. "I am Tinka," the clank said, voice tinny but very human-sounding. "I require maintenance."

"Well, that we can arrange." Payne tried to keep his voice soothing. It was pure superstition to think a clank would care, but Payne hadn't gotten this far in life ignoring his instincts. "This is Rivet, the finest mechanic this side of the Alps. She'll get you back on your feet. Can you stand up?"

The clank creaked as it set a delicate hand against the wall, and stood up. It was swaying, just a little; its gyroscope was probably sticking after so long in the damp. Or stopped. It turned its porcelain face toward him, eyes glowing, and Payne had the uncanny sense he was being watched by something inside its head. "I require maintenance," it repeated. "And my sister."

"Sister?"

"Moxana."

He hadn't seen the other clank move. But the tiny table it was sitting behind had a playing card sitting on it, where none had been before, and Payne knew most of the tricks for that, and he had seen none of them. Perhaps this Tinka had been distracting on purpose. That was subtler than most clanks could manage; he had to bring them along now, just out of curiosity.

Moving slowly and deliberately, just in case, he picked up the card.

The Wheel. Not the usual illustration, but he was sure he'd seen it before.

--

Marie held out the book. "You were right, dear. At least an approximation."

Because one of the many rumours about the Queen's Tarot is that looking at it too long brings madness, and so the author of Clairvoyance, Cartomancy, and British Intelligence had not only provided monochrome etchings instead of colour plates, but thoughtfully redacted the designs. The shape of the Wheel was still unmistakable. Payne let out a breath. "So how would an ordinary circus have got ahold of that?"

"Well," Marie said, and pressed a knuckle to her chin and apparently took a very intense and sudden interest in the thick rectangle of parchment, painted in soft watercolor in the familiar forms of a more traditional tarot deck's sixth major card, whose frame was carefully attached to the ceiling over their bed. "I can only speculate, of course."

"Speculate away." His beloved wife had speculated last month that adding three specific essential oils to vodka would make anyone who drank it friendly and agreeable, and that combined with the magic words, 'Let's sit down for a drink and maybe I can change your mind', had gotten them their first-ever show in Mrkts.

"An ordinary circus wouldn't have the Queen's Tarot for their fake Muse exhibit. So there must be something extraordinary about them."

"For example?"

"What if they're real Muses?"

Payne blinked. "After all this time?"

"Well, it would be the best way to hide." Marie frowned, with that look of intense concentration she usually adopted in the middle of brewing something. "Anyone looking for a real Van Rijn to reverse-engineer would just laugh if a travelling show turned up with one. Fake Muses were very popular once."

It was - a very plausible hypothesis. Payne found himself staring at the matched set of taipei tiles Sifu Li had given them as a farewell gift, set together in a long, narrow frame beside the door. He made himself look at the book again. The Device winked up at him in brown and beige.

They really were excellently-made clanks, Tinka and Moxana. Very lifelike.

"If that were true," he heard himself say, "they wouldn't want anyone to know. They would be terrified."

"Terrified? Can clanks feel fear?"

Right. Payne exhaled, and clapped the book shut. "The metaphorical equivalent."

Marie threaded her fingers into his, nodding with the even self-confidence of a woman who knew she had her husband by the brain. "So we wouldn't want to say anything to them outright. It would only make things worse."

"Exactly." Well, he had joined the circus looking for adventure, and adventure he'd gotten in spades. "We could still keep them safe. What ordinary circus could possibly have two genuine Van Rijn Muses?"

They weren't exactly an ordinary circus, of course.

Which was exactly why Payne was starting to think they could pull this off.

--

Chapter Text

--

"Not very thoughtful."

"They're probably busy." Gil glowers. Tarvek can't possibly care about the letters Gil's getting, or not getting, from people Tarvek hasn't seen in years. "Why? Don't you get enough letters?"

"Well, forgive me for some friendly curiosity." Tarvek's nose wrinkles, like he smells his coffee going bad.

"I mean, you only have piles and piles of relatives."

"And some of them are even literate. Amazing what you can teach the poor victims of inbreeding. I can do this all day, you know."

"As if it's witty," Gil snaps, and ignores his quiet sense of prodding a bruise.

--

Paris, they say, never rests. And science can't be scheduled; plenty of people have insights falling asleep, and give up on sleep in favour of turning sweetpeas ambulatory, or a lathe at ninety hertz by impossible gearing, or an alembic into an expanding cloud of shards and claiming they meant to.

None of which justified fetching the Master before dawn, and this lab wasn't even exploding.

"Beausoliel?"

"I- " Beausoliel glanced at the wild-haired lecturer, gears shuddering. "She's terrifying! Can't you feel it? I don't know why-"

She cackled. "My Fear Machine works! Let the fools deny me tenure again!"

--

Grantz wasn't used to gibbering. She fought mindless monsters or humans too mad to feel fear, and brought them back in jars to the sound of cheers. She pressed a finger to the stevedore's forehead. "Is he alright?"

"It's the spider," the Black Squad captain offered.

"It'll be gone soon." It wouldn't have fit in a containment tank; she'd had to settle for lassoing its legs together, and it was waving them feebly. "Lab Nine. They have some kind of venom milking machine, don't they?"

The Captain shrugged. "You need help getting it there?"

"Nah. It's only a hundred kilos."

--

"This is not my fault."

Zola looked Gil up and down, giggling. "Need a little help?"

"Yes please." He was trying not to blush, and failing.

He could catch upside-down glimpses of the lair proper. Colette flitted left-to- right. The slime squelched left-to- right. The slime skidded right-to- left, followed by a burnt-out raygun, followed by Colette screaming and waving a table. There was blood rushing to his head, and surely none of the tangle-vines were that high up his thigh? "Ma'am?"

"Shush. I'm busy."

Gil would have banged his head on the wall, if he had a wall handy.

--

They stared at the pile of custardy goo. It didn't get any smaller, or less bilious green, or stop emitting waves of heat decomposition. The vast bulk of the machine loomed over the custard vat like a vulture about to devour a long-dead beast, or a thundercloud readying to strike the mountain fortress of a traditionalist madboy readying some patchwork construct for new life. The tiny brass plate, engraved 'Infinite Dessert', just seemed like a mockery.

Agatha shook herself and meekly asked, "No doctorate for Mueller?"

"Not yet." Beetle sighed. "We'd better recommend him for that exchange semester in Vienna."

--

Chapter Text

--

It took a few days after the destruction before Othar could think clearly again. Sleeplessness and Sparking were a dangerous combination, if almost impossible to avoid, and there were so many things he couldn't afford to think about now.

He had worked through four days of fugue without remembering to be horrified. Quite the opposite. No- fugue, Othar realized with terrifying suddenness, felt wonderful. Addicting.

Which only proved containment was impossible. He had to keep trying the hard way.

He mounted a primitive powersail made from a teakettle and blanket on an abandoned dinghy, and set off across the Baltic.

--

There were places in the Wastelands where no grass grew, where the dirt was the colour of an infected bile duct and you only knew it had been living once from the skeletons. There were lava pits that never cooled. There was even- Dupree had flown over it once- a two-kilometer radius of bedrock scattered with green and brown and pink spheres, like every bush or hut or person had been squeezed into a tiny little ball.

That's the world, and Dupree doesn't see why Klaus gets so upset when she sets things on fire. Burnt fields grow back, eventually.

--

Martellus has fond memories of Dmitri Vapnoople. The man understood monsters. Oh, there was the practical detritus of biology, how to twist flesh and bone to more dangerous shapes, how to appear in the eyes of your creations like a god- but more than that, he understood what made people fear them.

Sparkhounds have the teeth of wolves, the mind of men, and Martellus makes his pack in the hopes that discordant combination will leave their prey too terrified to do anything but run.

If they are loyal, too, like his family could never be- every advantage counts, that's all.

--

The girl was brilliant; it was obvious even beneath the interruptions of headaches. She reminded Beetle of her father. She had the same tendency to throw herself at projects. All those tiny exploding trinkets.

And however close Beetle kept her, some day the Baron would find Agatha. No Spark stayed hidden forever.

Beetle had counted Klaus Wulfenbach a friend, once. Now he lay awake dreading what the Baron might do, if he knew how. He didn't yet. He would, or Beetle would think of some better way to destroy him than the one his thoughts were sinking towards, hideously inevitable.

--

Once upon a time, there were two brave brothers. They fought monsters and freed prisoners and for a while, it looked like they would live happily ever after.

Once there was a woman who wanted to rule the Earth. Plenty of wizards had tried, but she was cleverer than them all. Someday, someone will tell how her story ended.

Once there was a man who came home after years away and found his home in ruins. What happened next is too complicated, and ugly, and human, to be told truly anywhere but history books.

Klaus doesn't much trust stories, anymore.

--