“With your powers of imagination, I’m not surprised. Is it Redd?”
“Nothing is confirmed at this point. When do the Ganmedes expect Hatter in Boarderton?”
“In precisely half a lunar cycle. If he doesn’t arrive in time, they will assume you don’t wish to negotiate and Homburg Molly’s fate will follow accordingly.”
Arch ended his transmission without signing off and the holo-screen again aired the real-time scene of deserted Wondertropolis streets. The room was quiet except for the tinkling of General Doppelganger’s medals as he worriedly rubbed at his forehead.
“You don’t believe Arch is an innocent intermediary, do you?” Dodge asked. “No.”
“I doubt Arch cares what Alyss suspects of him so long as she does what he wants,” said Bibwit. “I’d rather go myself,” Alyss fretted.
The scholar shook his head. “That wouldn’t be wise. It could be a ruse to lure you away from
Wonderland, to distance you from the Heart Crystal and thereby weaken your imaginative powers. The queendom is too vulnerable and cannot sustain further attack. You must remain at home, close to the crystal.”
He’s right. But still…
“Hatter,” Alyss said, “you’ve been more silent than usual. What did Arch mean when he said the
Ganmedes believe you are the least likely to jeopardize Molly’s life?”
The Milliner looked at her. His mouth opened and closed. He seemed too affected to answer.
“The girl obviously made inroads in your affections,” said Bibwit. “I remember, it wasn’t so long ago that you claimed halfers were-”
“Homburg Molly is my daughter,” Hatter said.
Dodge nearly choked on the winglefruit juice he’d been sipping. The general, not knowing what else to do, split in two and then recombined. Bibwit’s ears stood straight up, alert.
“When did you learn this?” Alyss asked. “While I was away.”
“But I remember the mother, Weaver, coming to the camp,” Bibwit said. “Do you remember her leaving it? Or her reasons for doing so?”
Bibwit spoke slowly and deliberately, not wanting to offend. “I wish I could answer in the affirmative, Hatter, but the night she disappeared, I’d stuffed my ears with putty and tucked them under my sleeping cap as I always do. It’s the only way I can block out the world’s noises enough to fall asleep. The next morning, she was gone.”
“I will prepare to leave for Boarderland immediately,” the Milliner said, and started toward the door. “Hatter?”
Alyss’ voice had none of the regal distance in it one would expect from a queen. It was soft and apprehensive, the voice of a concerned friend. Hatter paused.
“I hope you know that I care deeply for Molly,” Alyss said, “and that I would never willingly do anything to harm her. But what Arch or his Ganmedes see as security against a foolish rescue operation, I can’t help seeing as a risk. It feels odd saying this to you of all people, but…as this concerns your daughter’s life, Hatter, your emotions might get the better of even your training. I worry that you’d jeopardize everything and anything to rescue her.”
“I have never abandoned my training yet,” the Milliner said. “I will not start now.” “I’ll go,” Dodge offered, but Alyss pretended not to hear him.
“Your past performances give me no cause to doubt you,” she said to Hatter, “but then, as far as you knew, nothing you’ve done before has ever involved your daughter. I don’t want to make a hasty decision. I want to use what little time we have to consider the smartest course of action.”
“Perhaps we should send the knight and rook with a company of chessmen?” General Doppelganger suggested.
“Yes, and you can monitor their progress in your imagination’s eye,” said Bibwit. “If there are Ganmedes to negotiate with, I doubt they’ll refuse to talk with whomever we send.”
Alyss agreed. “If they do, I’ll be close enough to the Heart Crystal to combat them through my imagination. And while they’re occupied with saving their own lives…” she directed her words at Hatter, “…you can then lead a force to rescue Molly.”
The Milliner stood looking at his queen for a long moment. “If that is what you command, Your Majesty,” he said. But something was welling up inside him, something he had never felt before and that at any other time he would have tamped down with all the force of his formidable wilclass="underline" disobedience.
CHAPTER 23
T HE REMAINS of the well-heeled audience were piled in the corner, the waiters taking longer than usual to sweep up the dust that had been the bones of Sacrenoir’s resurrected dead, too often pausing to glance at the man-cat and the ruinous woman in her dress of teeth-baring roses.
“Get to work!” Marcel scolded. “Unless you’d like Master Sacrenoir to treat his dead to a meal of your flesh?”
The waiters tried to focus on their brooms, but hardly a minute passed before they were again sneaking glances at the alcove next to the stage, where a scarlet cloud hung over the table, images flickering within it while the grim woman expounded to Vollrath and Sacrenoir:
“What you’re seeing is the moment my ill-judging mother informed me that I would not be queen,” Redd was saying.
In the cloud, images brought forth from her imagination flared and passed like lightning. A younger, less bitter-worn version of herself railed at Queen Theodora, who apparently didn’t appreciate being talked to in such a manner and walked off, leaving her daughter to steep in futile anger. The scene shifted to
Redd marching up a spiral hall. She had aged, grown haggard from years of disdain, the line of her mouth set in a permanent frown of disgust.
“There I am, festering on Mount Isolation, my home in the Chessboard Desert, heir to a queendom reduced to an heir of insult and outrage.”
She watched herself step out onto a balcony atop Mount Isolation and begin to preach to the mercenary card soldiers and Black Imagination enthusiasts gathered below.
“Those are the nearly useless beings I called a military. It was all I could do to force them into a weak semblance of the army I deserve.”
Again, the scene changed. The walls of Heart Palace tumbled. Queen Genevieve’s card soldiers fell dead as Redd sauntered untouched through the battle of that long-ago day when her sister had been cut down from the throne. The Cat, sitting next to his mistress in the alcove, began to purr. But then the cloud revealed Genevieve’s private quarters, the blades of Hatter’s top hat catching the feline assassin unaware and costing him one of his lives. He saw what he’d not been able to see when it happened, lying there dead as he’d been: Hatter escaping into a looking glass with seven-year-old Alyss Heart, Redd imagining her knotty scepter into a scythe and beheading Genevieve.
“My niece escaped through the Pool of Tears,” Redd told Vollrath and Sacrenoir, “and for reasons I won’t go into, I believed her dead.” The next scenes passed quickly, as if she were growing impatient with the past. “After years of shaping Wonderland to my fickle will, as is my birthright, my niece had the
gall to bubble up through the Pool of Tears, returning through a portal puddle she’d discovered here on
Earth.”
The vast rooms of Mount Isolation took shape around twenty-year-old Alyss Heart, now become a
rebel leader and dressed in the coarse-fibered clothes of the Alyssians. Beyond a half-destroyed wall, the Heart Crystal was visible. Aunt and niece faced each other, razor-cards, orb generators, and cannonball spiders rocketing between them. Alyss shot an energy spear from her finger, snagged Redd on the end of it, and began smashing her around the room. With a heave of imagination, Redd freed herself and closed with Alyss like a fighter ungifted in imagination who physically attacks her foes. Clangk! Scepters