by Frank Beddor
“Mmm.”
He transferred one of the cakes to her plate, ladled out a spoonful of hash for her and filled her glass with winglefruit juice, then served himself and sat down.
“You did all of this?” Alyss asked.
“I wouldn’t even let the walrus help me. And he wanted very much to help.”
“It’s all so lovely, Dodge. And delicious.”
He watched her cut a small piece of cake with the side of her fork and lift it to her mouth. There were lines under her eyes, silhouetted crescent moons cupping the underside of her eye sockets.
“Are you tired?”
“I’m almost always tired.”
He nodded. He had yet to touch his food. “Alyss, do you remember back when we were…I guess I was nine, so you must’ve been six, and we used to play Guardsmen and Maidens?”
“I remember everything.”
“We used to make up a lot of games, didn’t we?”
“I enjoyed them more than I do the real thing…until now.”
“Well…I think you’re old enough now to hear the truth, Alyss. I used to let you win.”
“Ha! You thought that whenever I did win, it was because I’d cheated, I’d used my imaginative powers.”
“It was.”
She smiled. “If it pleases you to think so.”
Dodge shifted the hash around on his plate. “Besides bringing me close to you, the purpose of some of those games was to improve my combat skills so that I’d be able to protect you whenever the need arose, as befitted a palace guardsman. Funny then that now it’s you who are trying to protect me.”
He looked at her. She paused, her glass of winglefruit juice held at her lips.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I survived for thirteen years in your absence with wrath and vengeance in my heart—it might even have been these that kept me alive. I’d rather not be governed by these passions, but you can’t hope to rid me of them by putting yourself between me and The Cat.”
Alyss said nothing and stared at the fire crystals in the hearth.
“You think I was too quick to blame Redd for the Glass Eyes’ attack?” Dodge asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s been confirmed that The Glass Eyes were manufactured in Boarderland. Maybe I did rush to judgment. If so, it was a mistake and I admit it. I’m trying my best not to let revenge dictate my actions, Alyss, but…I don’t know. I can’t promise what’s going to happen if I see The Cat again. I only know that if I am to conquer these vengeful feelings, I have to be the one to do it, not you or anybody else.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize, it’s just…everybody knows I was angry after our parents were murdered. But there was also…something else. I came to believe that I’d spend my life alone.”
“Dodge, I’m—”
“There was nothing to pity in this,” he said quickly. “It was just the way things were. But when I found out you were alive…” he shook his head, “…you have no idea what living under Redd’s rule can do to you, Alyss. It was unbearable.”
“We have all borne things we never imagined.”
“Most of life is unbearable. It’s unbearable but we bear it. That’s what I believe. But right now, Alyss, here with you, I don’t feel it.”
She’d been trying not to cry almost since she’d stepped into Dodge’s rooms, but she could no longer stop herself. “Maybe one day,” she said, “when Homburg Molly is safe and things are peaceful enough that the queendom can run itself, we’ll take a trip together. Somewhere quiet. There’s no reason we can’t do that, is there?”
Dodge didn’t say what he knew to be true: The queendom would never run itself. There would always be some emergency that required the queen’s attention. There always had been. And he knew that Alyss knew it.
“You’re the queen and can do as you wish,” he said. From his inside coat pocket, he removed his packet of letters and handed it across the table. “These are for you.”
“What are they?”
“Letters I wrote to you during Redd’s rule, when I believed you were dead. There aren’t many. I didn’t have much peace for writing.”
Alyss stared at the packet.
“I still think it’s possible that Redd is involved,” Dodge said. “It’d be just like her to do something we’d never expect her of doing, such as leaguing with Arch. What will you do about the Diamonds?”
“Have them taken into custody.”
Dodge rose from his chair and walked over to her. “That’s enough of unpleasant topics for now. Did you enjoy your breakfast?”
“I loved it,” she said, turning her face up to his.
“Good. I hope you’ll forgive me, being just an upstart guardsman and all, but…” He leaned down and kissed her lips.
“I could have you reported for that,” she smiled.
“Yes, you could.”
He lifted her to him and kissed her again, was still pressing his lips against hers when Bibwit Harte, four General Doppels, and an equal number of General Gängers stampeded into the room.
Dodge stepped away from his queen, stood at attention.
“He’s gone!” the Doppels cried. “Hatter’s gone!”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Alyss asked.
“We think he’s on his way to Boarderland—” started the Gängers.
“—to rescue Homburg Molly!” finished the Doppels.
“He wouldn’t.”
“All card soldiers patrolling the demarcation barrier have been notified,” said Bibwit, “but I’m not sure how much good it’ll do.”
The more Alyss considered it, the more she believed it likely: Hatter had gone after his daughter in direct opposition to her commands. I was right not to send him. His emotions are already getting the better of him.
Bibwit, Dodge, and the generals were waiting for instructions. Alyss quickly scanned along the demarcation barrier with her imagination’s eye, seeking Hatter until—
There. He was stepping out from the trees of the Everlasting Forest and approaching the barrier with determined strides. Busy with their luggage and passports, the civilians waiting to cross the border didn’t notice him until he reached into his backpack with both hands and—fli-flink! fli-flink flink flink!—pinned the patrolling card soldiers to the ground like specimens on display for a curious giant, blades piercing their uniforms but not their flesh. The Milliner passed his hand over the control box that was at every official checkpoint; a door-sized opening formed in the impassable weave of sound waves that separated Wonderland from Arch’s kingdom. Without slowing, Hatter M. stepped through it and crossed to the other side.
CHAPTER 25
FOR GENERATIONS, Boarderton had attracted those who felt foreign among their own kind, those wanting to escape the suffocating customs of their birth tribes to enjoy the more varied, expansive life one inevitably finds in a major metropolis. With the exception of Arch’s royal entourage, Boarderton was the only city in the kingdom that consisted of mixed tribes. While a Maldoid would never be caught socializing with a Kalaman anywhere else, inter-tribal doings were commonplace in the capital city, where one didn’t survive long without being tolerant of otherness.
Nowhere was the array of the populace more apparent than in the Sin Bin Gaming Club, a ratty establishment usually located in a ratty quarter of laborers’ tents. On any given night in Sin Bin, a stranger could find Onu mingling with Astacans, Awr tippling with Scabbler, Gnobi engaged in philosophical debates with Sirk. Such Boarderlanders might have been born into warring tribes, but they now belonged to a single tribe: Boardertonians, foremost and above all.
When Hatter set foot in the Bin, representatives from each of the nation’s twenty-one species were there, along with several from the remote regions of Morgavia and Unterlan. Loud and raucous, four-fifths of them were drunk, the remaining one-fifth working hard to get drunk. Hatter wouldn’t have cared if there were twice as
many and they were all hopped up on artificial crystal. He’d have fought the entire crowd for even the slightest chance of securing Homburg Molly’s release.
In the corner, seated on low benches and sharing a bottle of viscous liquor with a couple of Maldoids and a Scabbler: four Ganmedes.
Were they his contacts? Hatter waited but they paid him no attention, so he passed on, made his way around the drinkers packed three deep at the bar to the seating area beyond, where too many tables scarred from the bottles and goblets of former carousals were crammed into too small a space. When he reached the far end of the tent, he started back. A male from the Fel Creel tribe stepped away from the bar and faced him. Hatter had no way of knowing that the tribesman was actually a former Fel Creel who now traveled with Arch as a member of the Doomsines.
The Boarderlander stood with his arms at his sides, his palms facing out. He flexed; the serrated blades of his fingerprints pushed through the skin and caught the light. Hands moving faster than shuttering eyelids, he snatched a cap off a sullen Astacan at the bar and shredded it into countless scraps. The Astacan spun around, ready to fight, but thought better of it when he saw what had become of his cap. He turned back to his drink, and Ripkins thrust his chin at Hatter, challenging.
Fwap!
Hatter’s top hat was off his head and flattened into spinning blades, the Milliner’s arms moving like those of an Earth-ninja expertly wielding nunchucks, his blades zinging up and down and around his body in tight, artful circles, then—
Fwap!
He was again wearing his top hat.
The club’s regulars made room for the fighters, then went back to blearing their senses, accustomed to these sorts of disturbances.
“Hunh!”
Ripkins lurched forward, his right arm extended, and a pair of kill-quills arrowed toward Hatter.
Flangk!
Hatter snapped open his wrist-blades and stepped aside, but the move was anticipated by Ripkins, who had already yanked on the cords attached to the kill-quill’s tail ends. The weapons were tumbling back to him as—fip fip fip fip—he fired off half a deck of razor-cards and—
Moving to avoid the kill-quills, Hatter stepped directly into the path of incoming cards. Wrist-blades or no wrist-blades, he would have been sliced to death if he hadn’t fallen flat to the ground with twice the speed of gravity.
Ripkins leaped for him, was in the air about to come down when—
Shwink!
Hatter punched his belt buckle and his belt sabers sprung open. Ripkins changed direction in midair and somersaulted clear, which gave Hatter time to jump to his feet and shrug open his backpack, its corkscrews and daggers at the ready. Shielding himself with the coptering wrist-blades of one hand, he launched his backpack’s weapons at Ripkins.
“Yah! Yah! Yah!”
But Ripkins’ hands were creating a cyclone in front of him, invisible with speed, shredding air. And whether it was their centrifugal force alone or he was actually catching the incoming blades and flinging them back at Hatter, every blade and corkscrew that threatened him went hurtling back toward the mythic Milliner, who more and more found himself on the defensive until it was all Hatter could do to twirl, spin, duck, and jump to avoid being hit.
“Aaah!”
Hatter charged at Ripkins, his wrist-blades pushed out in front of him. Arch’s bodyguard jerked his shoulder as if to adjust the hang of his coat: A pointed stick the length of a writing crystal slid out the end of his sleeve and into his hand. Pressing his thumb against its nub end, Ripkins extended the stick to the length of a spirit-dane. Hatter, closing the gap between them, recognized the weapon: a telescoping javelin.
“Hngh!”
Holding the javelin horizontally, gripping it with both hands near its midpoint, Ripkins pushed it into Hatter’s wrist-blades and—
Krchkkkrchk!
Both sets of blades jammed to a halt, the ends of the javelin caught within their spin. Hatter’s hands were effectively pinned to the ends of the javelin, and Ripkins held a fistful of kill-quills poised at his jugular.
Hatter nodded, impressed. Then—
“Nguh!”
He shrugged hard, flapping both arms down and away as if he were shaking off water. Ripkins went staggering backward and the javelin clattered to the floor. His wrist-blades gearing back to full speed, Hatter sent his top hat flying into the hookah haze gathered thick over patrons’ heads.
Clink! Clangk! Clonk!
He and Ripkins went at each other, Ripkins starting to have trouble when—
The top hat blades came boomeranging out of the haze, spinning toward Arch’s bodyguard from behind, veering up at the last moment.
Smack!
The flat sides of the blades knocked Ripkins in the back of the head and he tumbled to the ground. Hatter caught hold of his weapon and slammed it down, two of its blades embedding in the dirt on either side of Ripkins’ neck like a pair of open scissors, pinning the bodyguard on his back.
Ripkins grunted, impressed.
Hatter clicked shut his bracelets, took up his top hat blades and, with a flick of the wrist, transformed them back into innocent headware. Ripkins stood, pocketed his weapons, and brushed himself off.
“Where’s Homburg Molly?” Hatter demanded.
Ripkins jutted his chin: Look behind you. Hatter half turned, saw another Fel Creel in elbow-length gloves standing with his hands clasped in front of him, waiting politely. Ripkins slipped back in among the customers at the bar while Blister peeled off his gloves, held up his bare hands, both front and back, for Hatter to see. Like a magician about to perform a magic trick, he showed Hatter the inside of his shirtsleeves—Nothing up my sleeves. Without further preliminary, he pressed a finger against the neck of an unsuspecting Onu.
“Aahaahaahaaaagh!”
The Onu writhed and squirmed. Blister kept the finger pressed against the bubbling flesh of his neck.
“Aaaaaahaaaaaaghrgh!”
Blister at last pulled his finger away, the Onu sopping with sweat and exhausted from pain. He flicked open a knife, lowering its point toward the balloon-skin of the Onu’s swollen neck. Pop! Pus poured out of the wound and the Onu collapsed.
Blister grinned. “For me,” he said to Hatter, “weapons like yours are unnecessary. Although I’m no mediocrity when it comes to using them.”
Hatter again had recourse to his entire arsenal. Top hat blades, wrist-blades, belt sabers, backpack weaponry—all clashed against Blister’s pikes, pickets, and swords. But after an extended combination of slashing and twisting, Hatter found himself on the ground, cornered against an overturned table, Blister’s deadly index finger a chest hair’s length from his exposed heart.
Hatter raised a respectful eyebrow. Then—
Flink!
Out sliced his belt sabers. Blister jumped back, laughing even though his finger was bleeding from a deep cut.
“What do I care if you chop it off? I have thirteen others.”
Again they sparred, Blister sometimes reverting to the more traditional weapons of swords and shooters to fend off Hatter’s aggression, other times relying solely on the threat of his touch.
“Ungh! Ungh!”
Hatter sent two C-shaped blades coptering toward him. The blades caught Blister’s hands, pinioned them to two poles supporting the tent. Hatter let two more blades fly and Blister’s feet were suddenly pinioned, his four limbs extended in the form of an X like a volunteer who has risked his life as the target of a knife thrower.
“Pretty good,” the bodyguard mumbled, as effusive as he’d ever be regarding the skill of another.
Hatter flung his top hat blades. Dink, dink, dink, dink! They ricocheted off Blister’s restraints, knocking them loose, and boomeranged back to him. Blister rubbed his wrists and shoved his hands into their long gloves. His finger was still bleeding.
Ripkins stepped out of the crowd at the bar. “Come with us if you want to save your daughter’s life,” he said.
CHAPTER 26
IN HER tent at Boarderland’s most exclusive retreat, the Lady of Diamonds was flexing her imagination under the guidance of a trainer, or enabler.
“You can’t imagine yourself able to fly and then—poof!—you’re flying,” the enabler was explaining. “But you can imagine wings on your body and, if they’re large enough, you’ll be able to fly by virtue of their motion. Like everything in our universe, imagination has its laws.”
Eyeing the modest swirl of imagination energy before her, the Lady of Diamonds didn’t seem to be listening. She was trying hard not to blink.
“Imagination’s laws have been gleaned from the study of the strongest, most talented imaginationists throughout history. A talented imaginationist can transform an inanimate object into a simple life form, such as a gwormmy. But for more complex creatures, such as doggerels of war or jabberwocky, even the most talented can only create an illusion of them, not the actual life forms themselves. Therefore, when I speak of conjurings, I am referring mainly to inanimate objects, to successfully complete which, you must first envision your chosen object in intricate detail. And this…” the enabler turned a doubtful eye on the Lady of Diamond’s hovering amoeba of imaginative energy, “…is what you should be doing now. First construct the object in your mind. The better you understand the object, the more knowledge you have of it, the more successful you’ll be. Which is why I wanted you to choose something you know well.”
The energy swirl was beginning to solidify, but into what was unclear.
“Good!” said the enabler. “Excellent! Keep concentrating on the jewelry case in your mind and, by dint of your obvious talent, you will transfer what you see into the physical realm.”
“I’ve always told my husband I was talented.”
“Conjuring is nothing more than focus, Lady Diamond. Imagine—ha ha, I amuse myself—but really, imagine that the light of our suns is Imagination. On any given day, the sunlight is all around us, diffused and shining on what it will without any influence from us. Now suppose your imagination is a magnifying crystal that channels the sunlight to a specific point with increased intensity until it creates a flame. The flame is your conjured object.”