“And now?” She was tired. The protective cocoon, the outsized orb generator-all this imagining required stamina, physical strength.
“I have no idea,” Dodge said. “A lot.”
She opened her eyes and saw nearly a thousand of them. This had better work. She wouldn’t be able to maintain the NRG shield for much longer.
With the sound of a straining girder-eeeeeeeeeeeeeehh-the largest orb generator ever seen by
Wonderlanders dropped from the artificial sky: armageddon for the Glass Eyes in Penniken Fields. WabooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMB!
The force of the explosion knocked Alyss and the others through the hedge that bordered the meadow and served a double function-as decorative planting and as camouflage for the wall behind it. Alyss and Dodge, the chessmen and generals went crashing through the wall and out to the street below. Alyss lost her imaginative focus; the protective cocoon was dissolving as they hit the pavement, making their landing not as pain-free as it might have been.
Stunned, they were still picking themselves up when- Thew, thew, thew, thew!
A whir of S-shaped blades, spinning fast around a common axis, coptered over their heads and sliced through an unnoticed Glass Eye that, from a fourth-story window of the Wondronia Hotel across the street, had been taking aim at them with an orb cannon.
Thew, thew, thew!
The weapon boomeranged back to the gloved hand of its owner, Hatter Madigan. With a flick of the wrist, he returned it to its innocuous incarnation as a top hat and set it on his head.
“I’m ready to return to service, if my queen will allow it,” he said, bowing to Alyss.
“Hatter!” She would have hugged him if she hadn’t thought he’d be bothered by the display of affection. “Pretty good timing.” Dodge smiled. “A little sooner and you would’ve been perfect.”
The eight generals surrounded the Milliner, each insisting on shaking his hand and offering a hearty welcome.
“Your return is a boon to the confidence of our military,” said one General Ganger. “The queendom simply isn’t the same without you,” enthused another.
“Welcome, welcome!” cried a pair of General Doppels. Bleep bleep. Bleep bleep.
“Incoming transmission.” The rook pressed a button on the keypad strapped to his forearm. A
projector-like light beamed out of the nozzle on his ammo belt. A screen formed in the air, visible to all, on which Bibwit appeared, still in the palace’s briefing room.
“Were we not in the midst of a crisis, Queen Alyss,” gushed the royal tutor, “I would tell you that I am as proud as I’ve ever been of any of my students! Such a clever strategy you employed! Such victorious ways! Such wisdom in so young and inexperienced a sovereign!”
“Bibwit?” the queen said.
“Quite right, yes. I shall embarrass you with praise some other time. There are still troops of Glass Eyes
in Wondertropolis, but few enough now to be handled by our card soldiers and chessmen. You must return to the relative safety of the palace so that we can discuss what’s to be done about the woman who is to remain nameless-by whom, I think you know, I mean your aunt Redd.”
“Bibwit…have you seen Homburg Molly? It’s unlike her not to throw herself into a fight where she can show off her skills.”
“It is not at all like her,” the tutor agreed, “but I haven’t seen the girl.”
While Hatter tried to act as if Molly’s whereabouts didn’t mean everything to him, Alyss quickly scanned the palace with her imagination. She didn’t glimpse her bodyguard anywhere.
Probably still sulking because I sent her off. She’ll have to learn not to take things so personally. “Expect us momentarily, Bibwit,” she said.
The tutor’s ears dipped in acknowledgment. The screen faded, the transmission ended.
“My queen,” said the knight, “with your permission, as long as a single one of my chessmen risks death against the Glass Eyes, so must I.”
“I should stay and fight,” agreed the rook.
One glance at Dodge and Alyss could tell that he wanted to stay and fight too. Till every living vestige of The Cat is rent from the world for all time. It was ironic that to keep him from further risking his life and sanity for revenge, she had to tempt him with a greater opportunity to accomplish its end.
“Dodge,” she said, “the Glass Eyes are only foot soldiers, as you’ve said yourself. Redd and The Cat won’t be so easily coaxed into the open. Come with me. Together we’ll devise a plan to flush them out of wherever they are. Return to the palace with me and we can confront them together.”
She held out her hand. The Wonderlanders were silent, and Dodge’s jaw looked diamond-hard as he stared off into the distance. But at last he turned to the woman who was both Wonderland’s queen and his love. He would follow her.
PART TWO CHAPTER 16
Montmartre, Paris. June, 1873
T HE PAINTER awoke from a fitful sleep, his nightmares cut short by the cries of his newborn son, who seemed to be suffering unquiet dreams of his own. Outside, rain thrashed the streets and lightning split the sky. The painter’s wife complainingly went to check on the baby, and the painter himself stared out the window at the few pedestrians making their way through the downpour; with their shoulders hunched and their heads bowed, they looked-to his trained eye-furtive and morose, people bent on illicit errands.
“What are you gawking at?”
His wife was standing at the door of their room with the whimpering baby in her arms. If he’d had any doubt before, he had none now: Her mood was as foul as the weather. What did he propose to do about
the landscape he’d been commissioned to paint with a storm raging the way it was, she wanted to know. How was she supposed to pay for the milk and butter they needed? No wonder the child was bawling all the time with such a useless thing for a father!
To get away from her, the painter locked himself in his studio, where he sat sulking and blinking at his blank canvas. But after what felt like an endless morning, the weather broke: The sky was overcast, the sodden streets blanched by a flat, pallid light.
“It will have to do.”
He packed up his box of paints and brushes and, with a folded easel under his arm, escaped into the streets. The gutters were choked with mud and litter. The rumble of carriages attacked his ears like the roaring of giant beasts, and the faces of those he passed, peering out sullenly from between lowered hat brims and upturned collars, seemed marred by unfriendliness if not outright hostility.
In the Jardin des Tuileries, he placed his easel next to an oval pond, with a view across its surface to a stand of chestnut trees. Normally a quick painter who finished canvases in a matter of hours, this one gave him trouble for some reason. He tried to empty his mind, to forget the morning’s fret and lose himself in the ecstasy of creation. But when he put away his brushes at the end of the afternoon, his canvas boasted little more than the clouds of color that comprised his background tones, in the middle of which he was surprised to see daubs of black paint.
“Let’s have a look at what you’ve done,” his wife commanded when he returned to the apartment. She reached for the canvas. Her lips pursed in perplexity, her brow collapsed. The baby, whom she held absently in one arm, began to cry. “What are these?” She pointed to the spots of black paint.
“I will correct them tomorrow,” he said.
“You’d better or you won’t get paid, and then where will we be?”