by Frank Beddor
“You don’t know where we are?” Redd asked.
Her voice was so quiet that it made the fur between The Cat’s ears stand on end. He hadn’t risked a leap into the Heart Crystal only to die now.
“When I was last on Earth,” he said cautiously, “I must not have come to this city.”
“Tell it to the steel,” Redd snarled, conjuring the end of her stick into a blade, with which she was about to pierce him, when—
“I have only one life left,” he reminded her.
She held the spear aloft, ready to strike. With a grunt of vexation, she lowered it, imagined the blade-end back into a nonlethal nub, and jabbed it against his chest with every other word. “Then you’ll have to be more helpful in the future, won’t you? Because I might not be so lenient a second time.”
The Cat licked his paw and rubbed his eyes.
“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked, annoyed.
“What?”
Redd pretended to lick her hand and rub her eye.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Your Imperial Viciousness, but I look around and everything is clear and hard. Except you. You’re…blurry.”
“You’re not so clear yourself,” Redd snapped. “It’s probably just the lingering effects of the Heart Crystal.”
She had noticed it too: The Cat out of focus while everything around him was clear and distinct. It was the same whenever she looked at any part of her body. She seemed to exist within a soft fuzz, the edges of herself dissolving into the surrounding air. Not until she and The Cat passed a furniture shop on the Avenue de Clichy and she glimpsed her reflection in an oval looking glass did she understand the cause.
“That hack of a painter! His style was too soft! His coloring too gentle!” She exploded the mirror into thousands of fragments with the force of her anger. “I’ll kill him!”
The Cat was all for it, but neither he nor Redd could remember the way to the painter’s studio. Her Imperial Viciousness focused her thoughts, searched for him with her imagination’s eye. But she wasn’t sure where to look; no vision of the painter or his studio appeared. Instead, the eye of her imagination alighted on a crumbling stone staircase half hidden by garbage in an alley behind a charcuterie. The bottommost steps were lost in darkness as unremitting as the grave, a darkness that, for generations, had attracted lesser beings given to Black Imagination—occultists, drug addicts, outcasts seeking a shelter devoid of society’s judgment, thieves and murderers seeking refuge from the police.
“Come,” Redd said. “I’ve found a place for us.”
Descending the crumbling stairs, enveloped by the darkness, Redd and The Cat entered a dank catacomb whose size was belied by the echo of their footfalls. Redd conjured a throne for herself, its seat and backrest resembling a splayed-open rose blossom, its legs and armrests thick, petrified rose vines. Her Imperial Viciousness flopped down into the throne like a woman falling into her favorite chair after a hard day’s work.
“You best remember how to return to Wonderland,” she warned The Cat.
“I remember, Your Imperial Viciousness. The portals look like ordinary puddles. I’ll know them when I see them.”
“Let’s hope for your health that you will. But it’d be no use returning to Wonderland now, when my army is at best scattered and at worst imprisoned en masse.”
Her assassin began to clean himself. “With your strength and power, you could rule as much of this world as you wanted.”
Redd’s nostrils flared with impatience. “I know it’s difficult for you, Cat, but try to use your brain, as small as it is. Why would I want to lord myself over this world when it’s nothing but a weak reflection of my birthplace? Wonderland belongs to me. I intend to get what’s mine.”
“Won-der-land!” echoed a voice in the dark. “How long it’s been since I’ve set foot on her soil!”
A flickering glow bobbed toward them from the distance of a tunnel: a torch, carried by what appeared to be a dead man, as emaciated as he was and having the complexion of a week-old cadaver. He was dressed entirely in black and wore black gloves. In addition to the torch, he carried a violin case. With him was a tall, bald albino with elongated ears sprouting from his head and a map of veins visible beneath semi-transparent skin: a near twin to Bibwit Harte, identical in every feature except that his nose was more pointed and his cheeks pitted with acne scars. Neither he nor his cadaverous companion showed signs of alarm at the sight of creatures as extraordinary as Redd and The Cat.
“Are you from Wonderland?” the albino asked.
Redd knew a member of the tutor species when she saw one. She also knew that the tutor before her must be a criminal—someone who had leaped into the Pool of Tears to avoid prosecution in Wonderland courts and make what life he could for himself in this antiquated world. She might have considered such ex-Wonderlanders sooner. She could put them to nasty purpose.
“What business is it of yours where we’re from?”
“It’s none of my business whatsoever,” the stranger answered. “It’s just that I used to have a few friends in Wonderland. The one I’m most curious about, however, I can no longer with justice call my friend.”
“Justice is overrated,” Redd brooded.
“Quite,” the stranger agreed. “But perhaps you know this former friend of mine? He’s a tutor, as am I, and he likely holds a position of eminence in the queendom. His name is Harte.”
“Everyone knows Bibwit Harte,” The Cat said. “He’s tutored three queens.”
With growing interest, Redd asked, “Who are you that you’ve made an enemy of him?”
“My name is Vollrath. Mr. Harte and I were in the Tutor Corps together many, many moons ago, when Queen Issa was still a newborn princess. We were, the top two students in our class, but for as long as we were in the Corps, Mr. Harte remained first-in-class while I was supposed to be content with second. I am incapable of being satisfied with second place in anything, so…” the tutor’s ears angled back, stiff, as if buffeted by a strong wind, “…not wanting to be forever at Mr. Harte’s heels in the propagation of White Imagination, I began to devote my knowledge and intellect to the service of Black Imagination. And with as much truthfulness as I allow myself—for too much makes one dull, dull, dull—I may say that I became its premier scholar. I offered my services to any Black Imagination practitioners willing to pay me the outlandish sums I demanded, and I lived a life of glorious decadence. But about the time of Issa’s coronation, I became entangled with an overambitious smuggler and it became necessary for me to throw myself into the Pool of Tears. I haven’t been back to Wonderland since.”
A graduate of the Tutor Corps in the service of Black Imagination? A scholar of malice and foe of Bibwit Harte? It was time for Redd to announce herself:
“I am Redd Heart, granddaughter of Queen Issa and eldest daughter of Queen Theodora and King Tyman, both of whom are dead.”
Vollrath immediately dropped to one knee, his head bowed. “I didn’t realize I was conversing with royalty,” he said. “I apologize for my lack of proper respect, Princess.”
Princess. Redd bridled at the word. “You might ask why Wonderland’s heir apparent is in this foul and slummy place. The answer: because my birthright has twice been denied me, once by a traitorous mother who connived with my younger sister (both dead by my hand), and again by an upstart niece who this moment wears the crown that looks so much better on my head than it does on hers. Now get up. And call me ‘Your Imperial Viciousness.’”
Vollrath rose to his feet and put a thoughtful finger to his bloodless lips, about to speak, when—
“Monsieur Vollrath,” the skinny torch-bearer said, “unless you want to be late…”
“Yes, yes, Marcel. Your Imperial Viciousness, if you will deign to tell me, I’d like to hear more about your niece—and of course, what you intend to do to her—but I’m presently on my way to an engagement in a catacomb not far from here. I’d be honored if you and your feline friend wo
uld join me as my special guests. The entertainment is to be provided by a pupil of mine—one who, although not from Wonderland, has talents I think you’ll appreciate. Afterward, we may discuss your niece at our leisure, and if I can be of any service to you whatsoever, I shall not hesitate.”
So Redd and The Cat followed Vollrath and Marcel along a zigzag of cobwebbed tunnels until they emerged into a catacomb well lit by torches. Though large, the crypt was crammed with tables. At one end, opposite a bar made of coffins, a pile of human bones took up most of an elevated stage. In the center of the room, a heavy-set man with an ink-dark mustache was urging on what appeared to be waiters readying the room for an influx of customers.
“Chop chop!” the man was booming. “Chop chop! Sacrenoir’s performance will begin on time or not at all! Marcel, where have you been?”
“Forgive my delay, Master Sacrenoir,” Marcel said.
“I’m to blame for our tardiness,” interrupted Vollrath. “But I’ve just made what I hope will be a profitable association for all of us. This is Her Imperial Viciousness, Redd Heart, and her feline companion, who have just arrived from my former home.” Addressing the Wonderlanders, he said: “This robust gentleman is Master Sacrenoir, a former apothecary from Lyons gifted in a particularly unsavory practice of black magic.”
“A ‘master,’ is he?” Redd said, amused.
Sacrenoir eyed the visitors. “I hope the lack of focus so evident in their persons doesn’t represent what’s within their heads. I need to check on my bones.” The magician hulked over to the stage, where he made a great clatter rearranging femurs and pelvic bones and skulls.
“Master Sacrenoir has never shown much talent for courtesy,” Vollrath said, “especially before a performance. Come, we shall sit at the best table in the house.”
The tutor led Redd and The Cat to an alcove at the left of the stage, separated from the main room by a curtain of heavy black velvet. Within the alcove was a single table.
“We should be comfortable here,” said Vollrath. “We have an unobstructed view of the stage, but if I pull the curtain partway closed, like so, we have complete privacy, as we’re out of sight from the audience. Any refreshments you desire are of course compliments of moi.”
Guests were starting to arrive, and Marcel had hurried over to the catacomb’s entrance to greet them. “Good evening, my pretty friends! Good evening! And how fortunate you are to be at the master’s one and only Paris performance! The event is shortly to begin! You risk the master’s wrath if you don’t immediately take your seats! Also, let’s not forget, there’s a two-drink minimum.”
The guests consisted solely of the wealthy and aristocratic, the women decked out in pearls and embroidered lace, smoking cigarettes through long ebony holders, while the men looked sophisticated in their tuxedos, tapping canes of polished rosewood against polished shoes as they sipped absinthe from narrow glasses. Within minutes, the catacomb filled to capacity. Touched by no human hand, an iron gate clanked shut across the entrance, unnoticed by the illustrious guests packed in at their tables, who were chatting loudly and laughing the hearty laughter of the privileged until—
Ffftsssst!
The room fell dark, the torches miraculously snuffed out as one. A woman screamed. A ripple of titillated laughter passed among the tables. A violin began to play a melody at once languid and stern, the work of no known composer. With the sudden crack of breaking wood—
Voila! A single cone of light illuminated Sacrenoir standing center stage before his pile of bones. In the light’s dusky reaches, black-gloved Marcel could be seen playing his violin.
“Hurrah!” the audience cried. “Sacrenoir, magician extraordinaire!”
They rose to their feet, whistling and applauding and calling out in approval. Sacrenoir put a finger to his lips—Ssshh!—and waited until they had resumed their seats, quiet with expectation.
“It is said that when a person dies,” he began in a voice that seemed to address not those before him, but a numberless multitude as yet unseen, “whichever of his animal appetites are left unsated at the time of his death do not die but live on in the ether, in the very air we breathe, waiting to take up residence in another. I say, let the dead have their appetites back!”
“Give the dead their appetites!” the audience shouted.
Sacrenoir closed his eyes and his lips moved in an incantation impossible to hear over the strains of Marcel’s violin. The bones piled behind him began to shift and creak.
“Oooooh!” someone moaned, in imitation of a ghost, and everyone laughed.
Neither Sacrenoir nor Marcel seemed aware of the audience, the one mesmerized by his own incantation while Marcel’s melody rose to a crescendo, his bow streaking faster and faster on the strings of his violin. The bones skittered and scraped across the stage, arranging themselves into complete skeletons and, as if sprung from their very marrow, rotted burial clothes formed, hanging loose from hips and shoulders. The audience sat rapt and horrified.
The resurrected dead turned empty eye sockets on the crowd, fleshless jaws moving up and down in a grotesque imitation of speech. But the sounds coming from those empty throats and tongueless mouths, and which passed through clicking teeth, were no imitations.
“Hungry,” the skeletons chanted, stepping off the stage and moving among the tables. “Hungry, hungry, hungry.”
One gentleman who’d been gulping absinthe with abandon mumbled that magic was only harmless illusion. He got to his feet and began to dance with the nearest skeleton, reached out to twirl his skeleton-partner and—
“Gaaaaaahghg!”
The skeleton’s jaws clamped down hard on his hand. With a relentless turn of the skull, it tore off three of the man’s fingers and swallowed them and they clattered through its rib cage and fell to the floor. Shouts erupted. In an instant, tables were being overturned, glasses broken, drinks flung into the air, torches knocked from the walls, setting fire to the puddles of spilled alcohol. The iron gate remained locked, the audience trapped. Again and again, the skeletons lurched at them with hungry jaws. Yet the dead were unable to fill their bellies. Every swallow of living flesh passed down through their empty rib cages and splatted on the floor.
“Hungry,” they chanted. “Hungry, hungry.”
Sacrenoir gazed upon the carnage with pride. Marcel continued to play his violin, though his melody was now drowned out by screams and moans. Redd and The Cat remained with Vollrath in their alcove, its curtain pushed completely open so that they could get a better view of things. The last guest collapsed to the floor. Marcel set down his violin and for a time there was only the sound of the skeletons chomping desperately on the wealth of fresh kill, then—
“Bravo,” Redd called out, bored, with a single clap of her hands.
Alerted to her presence, the skeletons turned, started jigging toward her, the snap and clack of their jaws answered by the eagerly chomping roses of her dress. “Hungry, hun—”
The Cat sprung from his seat. With a single swing of his arm, he shattered four skeletons into so many pieces that all of Sacrenoir’s powers could not have put them together again.
“Don’t waste your strength,” Redd yawned.
The Cat stepped aside and watched as, motioning with a finger from where she sat, his mistress sent one skeleton careening into another. She again gestured with her finger and two skeletons slammed together and fractured to crumbs. But Redd was not known for her patience, so she sucked air deep into her lungs, imagined the heat of jabberwocky breath as her own and exhaled, her breath hot enough to disintegrate every bone of every skeleton to dust. And even before she pressed forefinger against thumb to douse the numerous fires burning around the catacomb, Sacrenoir was bowing before her.
“Forgive my former rudeness, Your Imperial Viciousness. I didn’t realize the extent of your powers, to which mine compare as a candle flame to the great fire of London. If you’ll accept of it from such an undeserving wretch as here kneels before you, I of
fer you my eternal allegiance.”
As Redd considered, she turned to Vollrath. The tutor inclined his head and smiled, having expected his pupil to grant her proper respect all along.
“You were right not to subordinate yourself too readily, Master Sacrenoir,” Redd said at length. “I would find no value in the allegiance of a fool ready to give himself up to any old hag of Black Imagination who presented herself. I will accept your allegiance. For now. But if I ever decide you’re useless, you are a dead man.”
“To be killed by you is to be desired more than a life excluded from your service.”
“Bravo,” Her Imperial Viciousness laughed with genuine feeling. “Bra-vo!”
Hardly ten hours removed from the crystal, Redd Heart had found her first two recruits. And if Vollrath and Sacrenoir were any indication, the army of ex-Wonderlanders and talented earthlings she was determined to amass would be a stronger military than the one she’d used to wrench the crown from Genevieve. With the discipline and single-minded purpose she would instill in troops so gifted in Black Imagination, she would not, could not, fail to overthrow her nauseatingly well-intentioned niece.
CHAPTER 19
Doomsine Encampment, Boarderland. Six lunar cycles earlier.
WHEN KING Arch learned that the newly crowned Alyss Heart had ordered the annihilation of all Glass Eyes in her realm, his scheming brain went into hyperdrive. He had occupied Boarderland’s throne for more than half his life by remaining several ruthless steps ahead of his enemies. To what particular use he might put an army of Glass Eyes, he wasn’t yet sure. But to have access to such a military force without anyone knowing he had it was an advantage he could not let pass.