by Frank Beddor
Strictly speaking, he was not an Alyssian-more a “Jackian,” only concerned with his own well-being and profit. With Redd’s permission, he procured food for the Alyssians; in exchange, he provided her with intelligence on their military maneuvers-intelligence from which he left out important details, for if the Alyssians were decimated, he would not be quite so rich. His methods were indirect and labyrinthine, but they brought him twice the profit of simpler business arrangements. He would learn when a shipment of cannonball spiders was leaving a factory, and then, using a reprogrammed Glass Eye as intermediary
to protect his identity, he would sell this information to certain unsavory individuals. Once the theft had been carried out, his Glass Eye would inform on the criminals to Redd’s authorities, but by the time the authorities interrogated the criminals and discovered where the cache of cannonball spiders was hidden, Jack would have already removed it and sold it to the Alyssians.
“You think we should agree to the summit?” General Doppelganger asked him. “I don’t see what choice we have.”
“Knight, what do you say?”
“She is not to be trusted. But I will follow your orders, whatever they may be.”
General Doppelganger sighed and-much as a drop of water might divide in half to form two identical droplets-split in two. Generals Doppel and Ganger paced the floor.
There were others who should have been at this meeting. The royal secretary, Bibwit Harte, had been unable to attend; it wasn’t often that he could safely get away from Redd. And Dodge Anders…nobody knew where he was. He frequently went off by himself, no one knew where and no one had ever felt it right to ask. He was such a brooding, private man.
“General Doppel?”
“Yes, General Ganger?”
The generals stood looking at each other for a moment, nodded; they had reached a conclusion. General
Doppel spoke.
“Obviously, we don’t trust Redd either, but we agree with Jack of Diamonds. Our forces are weakening. Before long, Redd won’t have to bother with the pretense of making any deal with us.”
“Then I’ll arrange it,” said Jack of Diamonds, attempting to wrench himself free of his chair. “I look forward to the day when I can sit with you all on some decent furniture. Now if someone…would…help me.”
The generals didn’t mention their contingency plan, to smuggle key Alyssians into Boarderland and make an under-the-table agreement with King Arch to overthrow Redd: receiving soldiers and weapons in exchange for the promise of a male ruler. For now, they decided to keep this plan a secret even from their advisers, hoping necessity wouldn’t demand its implementation.
CHAPTER 27
D ODGE STOOD on the cliff above the Pool of Tears. The water sloshed and lapped in the breeze. Whether it was the wind that caused it or something else, he wouldn’t have admitted, but a tear fell from his cheek into the water below. How he missed his father. How he wished he could still believe in the queendom of Genevieve’s time, the one he had lived in a lifetime ago, when he and Alyss used the palace as their playground. But those years of innocence and indulgence belonged to someone else, another
Dodge, not the man standing here.
He turned to leave, saw something on the surface of the pool: a male figure swimming with difficulty toward the crystal-barrier shore. The trees and shrubs and flowers began to chatter and Dodge charged down a steep, rocky path to the edge of the pool, stumbling, not caring if he fell. The Wonderlander swam using only one arm; no wonder he was having trouble. But even after so many years, Dodge recognized him.
“You’re Hatter Madigan.” “Yes.”
He helped Hatter out of the water and saw that the Milliner was injured. Hatter’s shirt was torn, his right shoulder sopped with blood. Through a ragged hole of tissue and muscle, Dodge could see crumbs of bone. He pulled off his coat and made a tourniquet out of it, to slow Hatter’s loss of blood.
“I’m Dodge Anders. The son of Sir Justice, who used to command the royal guardsmen.” “I remember you.”
“We were told you were dead, that The Cat-”
“It makes no difference if I’m alive or dead except as it concerns the princess. I will not completely fail to fulfil my promise to Queen Genevieve. Princess Alyss Heart is alive. She’s grown into a woman, old enough to return and claim her place as the rightful queen.”
Dodge had long ceased to be surprised by negative twists of fate. But Princess Alyss alive? Hatter
Madigan returned to Wonderland through the Pool of Tears?
“It’s been a long time since anything good happened,” he said, staring at Hatter until it occurred to him that he ought to get the man out of the open, to where his shoulder could be examined in safety.
Dodge decided not to risk a portal run. The Millinery man leaned on him for support as they traveled by that most archaic of Wonderland means: They walked through the Whispering Woods and into the slum of Wondertropolis.
“You won’t recognize this place,” Dodge said.
Hatter did recognize some of the buildings, as dilapidated as they were, but he couldn’t afford to feel sorrow for the changes wrought in the capital city since Redd’s coup. He was exhausted, wanted sleep. He had to stop several times to rest. He could no longer feel his right arm.
“Not much farther,” Dodge said, when they entered the Everlasting Forest.
They came upon Alyssian guards patrolling what looked to Hatter like more forest, indistinguishable from the rest. The guards stopped in disbelief when they saw him, glances roving from Hatter’s face to his bracelets and back. They bowed and stepped aside.
“You’ve turned into a legend,” Dodge explained. “You and Princess Alyss.”
They entered the Alyssian camp through an opening between two mirrors. Alyssian soldiers fell silent at the sight of Hatter. Whispers of the Milliner’s return spread rapidly through the camp. Dodge led Hatter into the tent, where the knight, rook, and General Ganger watched General Doppel hold a chair steady as Jack of Diamonds tried to yank himself out of it.
“Yah! Hi-yumph!”
At the sight of Hatter, a mixture of shock, wonder, joy, and confusion appeared on the faces of the chessmen and General Ganger.
General Doppel spotted him just as-
“Hooah!” Jack of Diamonds lurched out of the chair, massaging his bruised buttocks and cursing the detestable piece of furniture that had held him captive. “You’d have to be the size of a gwynook to fit in that thing!”
Then he too saw the mythic man.
“Hatter Madigan,” Generals Doppel and Ganger said simultaneously. “Get the surgeon,” said Dodge.
The knight hurried from the tent, returned in half a moment with the surgeon, who, although in awe of Hatter like everyone else, did a commendable job of hiding it and going about her business. She touched at Hatter’s wound with a glowing rod to clean it and stop the bleeding, then slipped a U-shaped sleeve of interconnected NRG nodes and fusing cores over his shoulder, giving it time to repair his broken bone, torn ligaments, muscles, veins, and tendons. She removed the sleeve and cauterized a patch of lab-grown skin over the open wound.
Hatter tested his shoulder, moving his right arm in circles. With his strength slowly returning, he explained what had happened after he and Alyss had plunged into the Pool of Tears.
“So Alyss Heart is alive?” Generals Doppel and Ganger breathed.
“This is absurd,” Jack of Diamonds sputtered, having listened to Hatter’s account with growing concern. “Mr. Madigan, I am Jack of Diamonds. Doubtless you remember me. I was a boy before your untimely exit from Wonderland. I mean no offense when I say that I mourn for Princess Alyss as much as anybody, but things have reached a crisis here. We have no time to go chasing after phantoms.”
“I’m supposed to be dead and yet here I am,” said Hatter. “I’m telling you that Alyss Heart is alive and she’s old enough to return and claim her rightful place as queen.” He stood. “I’m going back to get her
.”
“No. Let me go,” Dodge said.
“My duty is to protect the princess.”
“So as to ensure a future worth having for Wonderland, if I remember rightly. But look at you. You’re not exactly at your physical peak.”
Hatter said nothing, only swiveled his arm in its new socket.
“With your skills and experience, you’re more valuable to the Alyssians than I am,” Dodge said. “Stay and help the generals. Prep arations have to be made. Alyss will need an army behind her.”
“Isn’t everyone forgetting?” Jack of Diamonds whined. “We’ve agreed to stop all Alyssian activity.” “If we have Alyss, there may be other options,” Generals Doppel and Ganger said.
Hatter considered: The surgeon’s handiwork aside, it would take at least a day or two for his shoulder to feel normal. A little strategizing and a bit of meditation might do him some good, and the queendom even
more so. He handed Dodge the soggy newspaper detailing Alyss’ upcoming engagement party. “To find the return portal, look for water where no water should be.”
Dodge nodded, paused as he was leaving the tent. “A lot’s happened around here and none of it good. There are things you should know. Ask the generals to brief you.”
There were indeed things Hatter needed to know: The Millinery dissolved, its studies illegal. The Millinery had always been a staunch supporter of White Imagination and it had been too much of a risk for Redd
to leave it functioning. Students and graduates of the place-Caps, Brims, Cobblers, Girdlers-had been ambushed in the night by Glass Eyes and unceremoniously slaughtered. Among them a woman of
ordinary birth who, though not herself a member of the Millinery, had overseen its administrative necessities, and for whom Hatter had cared more than any other.
CHAPTER 28
T WENTY-YEAR-OLD ALICE Liddell flitted gracefully from one group of well-wishers to another, her long silk gown trailing on the ballroom’s parquet floor, her black hair rippling down past her shoulders,
her skin like smooth, unblemished ivory in the light of the crystal chandeliers. The most prominent members of British society were on hand for her engagement party-dukes, duchesses, knights, earls, counts, viscounts, and country squires-and all of them hid their faces behind masks, as did Alice. In the morning, newspapers would print detailed accounts of the masquerade for the benefit of the city’s washerwomen, footmen, tavern keepers, cooks, and maidservants, the lower-class folk who struggled day after day to make ends meet and liked to gossip about a world in which they could hardly believe, a world of such rare privilege and comfort as Alice Liddell’s had become.
“Why, Miss Liddell.” The Duchess of Devonshire stopped Alice on her tour across the ballroom. “Your dress is as stunning as one would expect of you. And your mask too-only, what are you supposed to be, dear?”
Alice’s mask was as featureless as could be: wax paper on a wire frame, with holes punched in it for eyes, nose, and mouth.
“I’m everywoman,” Alice replied. “Neither ugly nor beautiful. Neither rich nor poor. I could be any woman, any woman at all.”
Leopold approached for a dance. He wore a mask similar to Alice’s in simplicity, although not as perplexing to guests. It was a mask of his own face, rendered in oils by a local artist.
“My dear,” he said, offering his hand.
The orchestra struck up a waltz, and the couple danced around the room, the guests leaning against the walls to watch. Along with the many pairs of eyes cast on them, there was yet another-a stranger watching through the window. Prince Leopold was not a good dancer, neither light on his feet nor easy with his turns. Alice was almost thankful; it somehow lessened her guilt for not loving him. Dancing was the only activity in which he appeared less than perfect.
The waltz drew to a close and the prince noticed the queen frowning in a corner of the room. “I think I’d better pay my compliments to Mother,” he said, kissing Alice’s hand.
Leopold took off his mask and set it on a table. The stranger who’d been watching through the window entered the ballroom and, unnoticed, scooped up the mask.
Alice had barely finished refreshing herself with a few sips of wine when she felt a tap on the shoulder. She turned and saw her intended husband wearing his mask, holding out his hand in request of another dance.
“Already?” she said. “But what about the queen?”
The man in the mask remained silent. The orchestra swelled into another tune and he led her out to the dance floor. With an arm around her waist and a hand at the small of her back, he moved her easily this way and that, twirling her here, dipping her there. They were in perfect step with each other, as if they had been dancing together all their lives. The guests couldn’t fail to notice; they cleared a space for the couple and applauded.
Alice realized that whoever she was dancing with, it certainly wasn’t her fiance. “You’re not Leopold,”
she laughed. “Halleck, is that you?” she asked, naming the prince’s friend. The stranger said nothing.
“Who is hiding behind that mask?”
Still, the stranger remained silent. Alice reached up and removed his mask, revealing the face of a handsome young man with almond-shaped eyes, a nose that had probably been broken more than once, and dusty, disheveled hair.
“Do I know you?”
“You knew me once,” the stranger said. He turned his right cheek to her, showing the four parallel scars that shone pink and ragged against his pale skin.
She stopped dancing, startled. “But…?”
She felt a commotion among the guests behind her. Mrs. Liddell and Prince Leopold appeared at her side. She turned, but the stranger had vanished.
“Who was that man?” Leopold demanded.
“So rude. I’m sure he’s nobody,” Mrs. Liddell fretted. She’d never seen the prince so upset. “Tell him, Alice. Tell him that man was nobody.”
“I…I don’t know,” said Alice. “I don’t know who he was. Please excuse me. I need some air.”
She hurried out to the balcony. It couldn’t have been him. The man with the scars. It couldn’t have. He didn’t exist.
CHAPTER 29
T HE CAT swatted at a length of rope hanging from the ceiling of the Invention Hall. All around him early prototypes of Redd’s numerous inventions were on display in spotlit alcoves: a seeker with the body of a tuttle-bird and the head of a gwormmy; a dry, withered shrub that had been Naturcide’s first kill; a Two Card from The Cut, half steel and half flesh, more vulnerable and not as mobile as the card soldiers that eventually made it to production; a preliminary model of the rose roller; a Glass Eye with one long horizontal crystal for vision-intake instead of the more humanoid orbs in two sockets; even an early version of The Cat himself, with smaller claws and (as The Cat himself liked to think) not as
good-looking as the completed assassin had turned out.
He could play with the rope for hours-catching it on a claw, releasing it, snagging it again. He had begun to purr when Redd’s voice reverberated through the hall.
“Cat, come to the Observation Dome at once.”
Usually, a summons from Redd meant bearing a heap of verbal abuse, having his shortcomings shouted into his ear. But this time Redd had sounded different, almost pleasant, as if to surprise him with a treat. And it was about time. He deserved praise and spoils, since he was the one responsible for maintaining discipline among Wonderland’s masses.
The Observation Dome occupied the top level of the Mount Isolation fortress-slick, polished stone flooring with walls of telescopic glass panels that provided a 360-degree view of Wonderland. The Cat bounded into the dome with a meow, but quick as a tail flick his mood darkened. The walrus-butler and Jack of Diamonds were in the room. Why Redd insisted on tolerating Jack of Diamonds, The Cat would never understand.
“I’ve been taking a stroll down memory lane,” Redd said, “and Cat, I’d like you to tell me again how you tore Alyss Heart into l
ittle fleshy bits and hurled them into the Pool of Tears all those years ago.”
Something was wrong. The Cat could smell it. Jack of Diamonds’ grin was more self-satisfied than usual and the walrus hadn’t looked at him once since he’d stepped into the dome, too busy dusting the
crystal-sticks at the center of a long table, sprinkling dust on objects and surfaces as they needed. The walrus had been dusting the same crystal-stick ever since The Cat’s entrance, a mound of dust rising on the table.
“I followed the princess and Hatter Madigan through the Crystal Continuum,” The Cat started. “I tracked them to a cliff-”
A volume of In Queendom Speramus flew at him from the side of the room and conked him on the head. “-ugh! So…I tracked them through woods to a cliff above the Pool of-”
The walrus’s pouch of dust shot toward him. He saw it coming, moved at the last second, and it exploded on the glass panel behind him.