by Frank Beddor
CHAPTER 6
BOARDERLAND: WHERE women could be given away by their husbands to pay debts, and young, rowdy gallants from Wonderland, fresh from the rigors of formal education, came to indulge themselves in roving pleasure tents; where maps were useless because the nation consisted wholly of nomadic camps, settlements, towns and cities, and a visitor might find the country’s capital, Boarderton, situated in the cool shadows of the Glyph Cliffs one day but spread out along Fortune Bay the next.
King Arch’s domain was a sprawling place with large tracts of unpopulated land to traverse between nomadic settlements. Often, it happened that after an evening of revelry a visiting Wonderlander would fall into a heavy, wine-induced sleep and fail to be roused by the packing up of tents and equipages, the folding up of street signs and storefront displays, the snorting of laden spirit-danes. When he woke, he’d find himself alone and unsheltered in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes the tents of the settlement in which he’d caroused the previous night would be visible on the horizon, but no matter how quickly he traveled toward them, they would remain forever on the horizon, an oasis. For further Boarderland companionship, he could only hope that another settlement would cross his path in its ceaseless wandering.
It was a tribal land, and except for clashes, every tribe kept to itself—self-contained and, as King Arch would inform certain of his guests, to a small extent, self-governing.
“I let them do what they wish in trivial matters such as healing rituals and marriage ceremonies,” he would explain. “I even let them choose their own leaders. But only so long as they acknowledge me as their king. And only so long as they abide by my edicts in several other important matters.”
To prevent the Astacans, Awr, and other Boarderland tribes from forgetting these edicts, Arch had had them carved, blasted, scorched, chiseled, and branded into the landscape.
Carved in a great slab of rock alongside the Bookie River: Boarderland men do not cry when watching sentimental crystal-vision programs with their wives. Boarderland men do not watch sentimental crystal-vision programs with their wives.
Blasted into the otherwise smooth face of a Glyph Cliff: Boarderland men can take as many wives as they’re pleased to enjoy, being more intelligent than women of every nation, country, world, and universe known or unknown.
Chiseled into the jetty in Fortune Bay: Boarderland men do not talk about their feelings. Boarderland men do not whine or complain. Boarderland men never show weakness or vulnerability, nor admit to having either.
Branded on sun-bleached rocks amid the undulant sands of Duneraria: Boarderland men are fixed in their convictions, from which no feminine argument can sway them. If a Boarderland man changes his convictions, he does so at his whim, not by the consideration of a wife’s views.
With row after row of military tent-barracks, open-air markets and restaurants, promenades of dry-goods stalls, avenues of housing for intel ministers and other officials, countless servant canopies and its own pleasure-tent district, Arch’s royal entourage was a city unto itself. His palace, always positioned at the center of his encampment, consisted of fifteen interconnected, pastel-colored tents whose billowy walls were made of materials more plush and smooth than any velvet, silk, or velour found on Earth. Having snaked its way across the wind-sculpted dunes of Duneraria toward the Bookie River, then through the Swampy Woods of Chance, Arch’s convoy had made camp within sight of RollingDoubles Mound. And if not for the edict he’d ordered scorched into the side of the mound in letters twice his own height, and which was visible to him now—Boarderland men eat their food with passion and with an urgency that signifies their virility—Arch would have doubted that one of his present guests was a man.
“Delicious,” Jack of Diamonds said through a mouthful of crunchy gryphon wing.
Freshly bathed and dressed, emitting a scent too flowery to be called manly, the scion of the Diamond clan sat between his parents, shoveling food into his mouth with the eagerness of two men.
A servant girl entered carrying a platter of conical-shaped treats, with what looked like tiny antennas poking out of them, their pointed ends charred.
“Try a dormouse snout,” Arch offered. “I think you’ll find them equal to any delicacy you’ve ever tasted.”
Jack bit into one. “Mmm, more than equal.”
“My chef will be so pleased,” Arch said, a hint of disdain in his voice. He turned his attention to the Lord of Diamonds. “Do you think I’m lacking in intelligence, Lord Diamond? Or that I don’t know enough about manipulating people to get what I want?”
“By no means, my liege. But—”
“At this moment, a gang of warriors from the Onu tribe are being entertained in one of my pleasure tents. By the time they leave this encampment, I’ll have them fully convinced that the Maldoids, with whom they have an unstable peace, are planning to attack them. I fail to see how I can lack the intelligence necessary to my position and yet be clever enough to maintain my dominance over all Boarderland tribes by keeping them fighting one another.”
“’Cause as long as they’re fighting one another,” Jack interrupted, popping a dormouse snout into his mouth, “they can’t band together to defeat you.”
Arch leaned menacingly toward the Lord of Diamonds. “Stop insulting my intelligence with your excuses, milord. Your son is returned to you. I have fulfilled my half of our agreement. It’s time you fulfilled yours.”
“Yes, um…there’s a maid of Queen Alyss’ who, I believe, is ripe for manipulation…possibly.”
King Arch smirked at his bodyguards, Ripkins and Blister, who were standing off to one side. “A maid, eh? And you ‘believe’ she might ‘possibly’ be ripe? What helpful information. I almost prefer your excuses.”
“We could better identify a target for you, Your Majesty, if we knew what you wanted the person for,” said the Lady of Diamonds.
Arch looked curiously at this upstart woman, who sat fidgeting in increasingly uncomfortable silence until the king at length addressed her husband: “Expecting your inability, I myself made a reconnaissance mission to Wonderland and have found my quarry—Queen Alyss’ bodyguard, Homburg Molly.”
“But Molly is devoted to Alyss,” said the Lord of Diamonds.
“Her desire to prove her devotion and worth is what I will depend on. Alyss spent a great deal of her strength and resources against Redd. The more time that passes, the stronger she will become. Therefore, I have decided—very selflessly and courageously—that to ensure a proper future for our world, I must take control of Wonderland as soon as possible. And the Heart Crystal.”
“The Heart Crystal?”
It was no secret that the Lady of Diamonds, as well as Wonderland’s other ladies of foremost rank—the Lady of Clubs and the Lady of Spades—wanted to possess the crystal, each believing herself more gifted in imagination than she truly was.
“While I don’t claim to gain any strength of body or mind from the crystal,” Arch explained, “its influence over Earth will prove helpful in my charitable endeavors. It’s a burden to care for others more than they care for themselves. But as my intel ministers have informed me, the only way I can prevent Earth from devolving into utter ruination is to take control of it too.”
Jack had by now finished off the platters of gryphon wing and dormice snout and was indulging in a heap of sliced dingy-pear to cleanse his palate. Anyone watching him would have thought him too intent on filling his belly to pay attention to the conversation going on around him. But Jack was a talented listener, ever sifting through what he heard for information that, at some time or other, in some way, he might exploit to his own advantage. Swallowing down the last of the dingypear, he eyed Blister. Was this the fellow who’d freed him from the Crystal Mines?
“You there,” he said. “Instead of standing around being useless, how about you fill my glass with wine?”
Blister’s expression revealed nothing. “Certainly.”
The bodyguard made his slow, del
iberate way to Jack, reached out to put his hand over Jack’s with the apparent intention of helping to steady the glass as he poured, but—
“Leave him, Blister.” To Jack, Arch said, “Believe me, you don’t want his help.” He snapped his fingers and a servant girl hurried in on silent feet to fill Jack’s glass. “I have already unleashed several regiments of fighters that Alyss and her people should find familiar. It’s merely a diversionary tactic, a ploy to focus their military attentions off into the distance so that the bulk of my forces can enter relatively unopposed into Wondertropolis itself. I can forgive your failure, Lord Diamond, only if you do something else for me.”
Ripkins stepped forward and set an exquisitely carved chest the size of a bread loaf before the Lord of Diamonds.
“I want you to present this little item to Homburg Molly.”
“It’s beautiful,” whispered the Lady of Diamonds.
“Its exterior is nothing compared to what it contains. It’s a small prototype of a weapon I’m developing. A fraction of the strength of what it will ultimately be, but enough to serve my present purposes. Though I warn you all, if you value your lives—”
“Only in so much as they give us power, wealth, and influence,” Jack declared.
“—if you value them for any reason, you will not open that chest. You will leave that privilege to Homburg Molly.” Arch leaned back in his chair, letting himself relax, the end of this pertinent business near. “Tell me, Lord Diamond, what do you think of kings?”
“I think they make the best sovereigns. Much better than queens.”
Arch laughed. “You’re wiser than you look. As a reward for your wisdom, and assuming you don’t prove inept at delivering my weapon into Homburg Molly’s girlish hands, once Wonderland is in my care, I intend to grant you back your ancestral lands to govern as you please.”
“The Diamond Hectariat?”
The king nodded. “The borders of which will be exactly as they used to be before your ancestors and those of the Club, Spade, and Heart clans formed the coalition that eventually became Wonderland. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll even throw in a bit of the Clubs’ former hectariat for you to govern?”
Well, well. That was something the Diamonds hadn’t expected. The hectariat theirs again? They could always scheme to get control of the Heart Crystal later.
Bloated with family pride, Jack emptied onto the table a pocketful of rhyolite crystals he’d filched from the mines. “Is there a wig merchant in this settlement you can recommend, Arch?”
“In Boarderland, men do not wear wigs,” said the king, thinking he’d have this carved somewhere on his nation’s landscape at the next opportunity. “Now listen well, all of you. Here’s my plan…”
After the Diamonds had been escorted out of the tent, Arch dismissed everyone save Ripkins and Blister.
“You know what you’re to do?”
The bodyguards nodded.
“She’ll be unconscious from the blast, but she shouldn’t be too injured. Do not make her more so.”
Their disappointment was obvious—they who usually held themselves so taut had slackened somehow.
“Scent the seekers with this.” Arch handed Ripkins the button that had dropped off Molly’s coat during his interview with Alyss. “You should have no trouble once the Crystal Continuum is out of commission, as Wonderland’s military will be too preoccupied. Remember: Alyss and her forces do not know that I’m the aggressor, so don’t let yourselves be seen. But as I won’t begrudge you having some fun on your outing…should anybody see you, you’re not to let them live.”
The bodyguards shrugged off their disappointment, their usual spirits returned.
“Blister thanks you,” said Blister.
“Ripkins too,” said Ripkins.
Showing proper deference to their king, these rivals to Hatter Madigan’s military prowess took their leave, and before Arch had retired for the night, they crossed the border into Alyss’ realm with nowhere near the cunning they might have, hoping to be seen by as many Wonderlanders as possible.
CHAPTER 7
DODGE HAD left to perform his guardsman duties. Not wanting to be alone, Alyss donned a cloak against the night’s chill and ventured out onto the palace grounds. She probably should have gone to sleep. In his teasing, avuncular manner, Bibwit was always reminding her that, for a queen to be at her best, she should get at least eight lunar hours of sleep a night in order to avoid making an unwise decision due to fatigue. There would be reasons enough for unwise decisions in this life, he explained. Yet here she was, scepter in hand, following a path between the palace and the outer wall that separated the grounds from the rest of Wondertropolis. Geraniums of yellow, lavender, and red bowed as she passed. The branches of hollizalea shrubs unique to Wonderland dipped in respect. The night air carried the melody of “The Queen’s March” softly hummed by sunflowers.
Alyss approached a hedge indistinguishable from those around it, paused to make sure she wasn’t being watched, then stepped into the hedge and—
Vanished.
The roots of the hedge had unlocked a large hatchway camouflaged with furry groundcover. Alyss descended through the opening into a subterranean chamber, the location of which was known only to her most trusted advisers and the select few Bibwit had recruited to secretly move the Heart Crystal here one moonless night.
Ridiculous that I have to act the thief whenever I want to visit it.
There it was, the creative source for the universe, its glow—as always—causing the crystal to seem on the verge of swelling beyond its confines.
Depressing to see it stowed in this underground prison. How can I reinstate the Inventors’ Parade if the crystal must remain hidden away, as it does in order to be kept out of the hands of those who’d misuse its power?
But being in possession of the crystal as well as the scepter from her Looking Glass Maze, wasn’t she powerful enough to defeat any foe? Presumably. But why risk it? She and Bibwit had decided: Better to keep the crystal hidden.
Alyss knew that reviving the annual Inventors’ Parade didn’t rank high in the hierarchy of what was important to Wonderland’s security and improvement. But whenever she remembered the parades of her earliest youth—the Heart Crystal out in the open for all to enjoy, the public lining the streets to see the latest contraptions dreamed up by fellow citizens, the inventors doing their best to show off so that Queen Genevieve might pass their inventions into the crystal, upon which, in some other world, a version of them would come to be—whenever she remembered all of this, Alyss longed to bring back the Inventors’ Parade, hoping it might signify a small return to…well, if not a better time (as Bibwit would surely deny it), then a different time, one in which her parents had been alive.
The hatchway slid closed and Alyss took up her usual position on a viewing platform halfway to the chamber floor, as close to the crystal as possible. Her scepter in one hand, she reached out toward the crystal with her other, to maximize her remote viewing ability. Her imagination’s eye immediately filled with the bright wash of the crystal’s light, which faded by degrees to reveal an old-fashioned dining room with mahogany wainscoting, floral-patterned wallpaper, a heavy wooden sideboard: the dining room at the deanery of Christ Church College, Oxford. Among those enjoying a dinner of roasted hens at the table, she saw herself—rather, she saw her double, whom, by twining her powers with those of the Heart Crystal, she’d created and sent to Earth to take her place in the Liddell family.
Miss Alice Liddell: adopted daughter of the reverend and his wife, former friend of Charles Dodgson, near-wife to Queen Victoria’s youngest son, Prince Leopold, but now enamored of Reginald Hargreaves, who was sitting across the table from her.
Reginald was a student at Christ Church, a country squire who enjoyed tramping about the fields of his Hampshire estate, Cuffnells, much more than being holed up in a room with books and theories. Although he sat between two of Alice’s sisters, Edith and Lorina, his attention wa
s markedly fixed on Alice—which the reverend and Mrs. Liddell, presiding happily over all, did not fail to notice.
How cozy and simple things seem.
Alyss knew better. She had eaten in that room many times, and when in the thick of whatever traumas a day in Oxford had offered up, nothing had seemed simple. But she couldn’t help thinking it—things were simpler there.
She watched, feeling like one of the company even though the scene was silent and she could only guess at the amusing anecdote Reginald had related that set everyone laughing. Alice was laughing the hardest to show how much she liked him. He grinned, not taking his eyes off her even when Lorina asked for his attention, apparently reciting some humorous tidbit of her own.
The easy way they show their affection…
She thought of Dodge, of herself and Dodge, how theirs was a stuttering kind of love, a tentative, timid thing, a—
Tzzzz.
Something’s wrong. The hatchway had opened. The march of pressing business was descending toward her.
“What is it?” she asked as Dodge, Bibwit, and General Doppelgänger came into view.
“The queendom is under attack,” said the general. “By whom we don’t yet know.”
“We know,” Dodge said, a vengeful, dissatisfied look about him, a look that Alyss knew had everything to do with Redd, The Cat, and Sir Justice’s murder.
“Several of our outposts have been routed,” the general continued, “and several more are engaged with the enemy as I speak. I have ordered the deployment of reinforcement decks to prevent any attacks from penetrating farther into the queendom.”
Under attack? Outposts routed? They were waiting for her to say something.
“There are reports,” Dodge said.