Seeing Redd (19 page)

The book flew up to her hand.
Alice in Wonderland
.

“A-L-I-C-E?” Redd said.

“It's about your niece,” said The Cat. “It's filled with idiotic lies about Wonderland, but it's famous here.”

“Someone wrote a book about my niece?” Redd turned on her tutor. “Did you know about this?”

“I swear I didn't,” Vollrath lied.

She let the book fall open in her hand. She riffled through its pages from first to last with her imagination. To think that Alyss had been immortalized by some Earth scribbler! She slammed the book shut. She tapped a long finger against its cover, under the author's name. “Find this Lewis Carroll and bring him here!”

The Cat hurried off. Sacrenoir and the rest of the commanders loped away to discipline their troops.

Redd scowled in the direction of the palace's Renaissance Court, where her rejected recruits lay dead on the cold hard floor. “At this rate, it will take a lifetime to amass even half the soldiers I'll need.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Vollrath, his ears genuflecting, “a few of us should return to Wonderland to search for your maze while Sacrenoir and others continue to gather an army here?”

Redd knew, despite her many displays of imaginative strength, that her powers had weakened. She would never have admitted it—she was still a hundred times stronger than anyone around—but she was too far from the Heart Crystal. She had to get close to it again, to feel a fresh influx of its energy, and sooner rather than later…

I
N HEART Palace's memorial wing, Alyss was sitting on an exact replica of her mother's favorite settee, gazing expectantly into a looking glass as if hoping to find the wisdom of the ages in its quicksilver.

So many rulers become tyrants, partaking more of Black Imagination than White. Is it because being a queen or king makes you selfish? When everyone around you does as you tell them, never speaks their true minds for fear of upsetting you…How can a ruler not grow increasingly less tolerant of anyone or anything that frustrates her? But mother wasn't like that…was she?

“Queen Alyss.”

She hadn't noticed Bibwit and General Doppelgänger enter the room. How long had they been standing there?

“A curious thing has been discovered,” Bibwit said.

“I'm almost afraid to ask what you mean by ‘curious.'”

“And I'm almost afraid to tell you, my dear Alyss. But it appears that imaginationists who were in the continuum at the time of Molly's—what shall I call it?—her mishap, yes, well…it seems that these imaginationists have found themselves
unable to perform
. We've had reports of conjurers unable to conjure, writers unable to write, musicians unable to play their instruments or compose, and inventors unable to invent. Just as the mysterious NRG that Homburg Molly unwittingly released has rendered the Crystal Continuum unusable, so too has it rendered the abilities of imaginationists.”

“The NRG does seem to be dissipating with time,” General Doppelgänger offered. “Whenever one of my soldiers tries to enter a looking glass portal, the NRG knocks him back, but not as forcefully as it once did. The continuum should shortly be available to citizens. We do hope that some remnant of the weapon that caused all of this will be found once the continuum is viable again, but we're not counting on it.”

Alyss remained silent, staring into the looking glass. Bibwit motioned with an ear and the general took the hint.

“Queen Alyss, if you will excuse me, I must tend to…something. Please accept my congratulations.”

Alyss was startled. “For what?”

But the general's footfalls were already echoing down the hall. Bibwit swiveled his ears away from the door, the better to focus them on his immediate surroundings. He peeked into the looking glass that had so held Alyss' attention. He saw nothing but the room's reflection.

“Have you located him?” he asked.

Hatter
. Alyss had, in her imagination's eye, spotted the Milliner less than half a lunar hour ago, but it had been exactly the same as all the other times: Instead of finding him deep in negotiations with Arch to secure Molly's release, he was tagging along with the king as one of his attendants—at banquets, speeches, gaming events, military exercises. Hatter's behavior was, in the worst sense of the word, curious.

“No,” she lied. “I still haven't found him.”

The Milliner's disobedience had necessitated a change in strategy: She'd had to direct the knight and rook, already on their way to rendezvous with Arch at the Sin Bin Gaming Club, to arrest the Lord and Lady of Diamonds instead, leaving Hatter to try and secure Molly's release as he thought best. Nothing else seemed feasible. Whether or not the Milliner would face consequences for his disobedience depended, to some degree, on what happened with Molly, as well as his attitude when—
if
—he and his daughter returned.

“I've also been searching for Molly,” she said. “In Boarderton and the Ganmede province…”

Bibwit sat down beside her on the tufted bench. “But you don't see her either?”

“No.”

She'd been contacted by Arch soon after Hatter's arrival in Boarderland. “Queen Heart,” the king had boomed, “I am thankful—for Homburg Molly's sake—that you've sent the Milliner to negotiate on her behalf, as the Ganmedes requested. Mr. Madigan is a keen negotiator and I have every confidence that he and the Ganmedes will shortly agree to terms assuring Homburg Molly's release. But why hear it from me when you can hear it from Hatter himself?”

The Milliner had then come online, Alyss hoping for a clue to help interpret his behavior. But looking as blank as a fresh sheet of papyrus, Hatter only corroborated what Arch had already told her—he was negotiating for Molly's release; there was cause for optimism.

He must have known she would look for him with her imagination's eye; which meant he must have known that she had seen him gallivanting about with Arch; which in turn meant he knew that Alyss knew that he was lying about his negotiations. And yet he had lied anyway. Why? Even if Arch had been eavesdropping, with a timely dip of the head or shift of the eyes Hatter could have communicated the precariousness of the role he'd assumed. With a patterned blinking of eyelids, he could have reassured her that all she'd seen him doing, he had done for Molly and the queendom. Had his love for Molly made a deserter of him?

“I think perhaps I too should congratulate you,” Bibwit said.

“Why does everyone keep wanting to congratulate me?”

Bibwit winked and nudged Alyss several times. “Why, indeed. I can understand your not wanting to make a grand announcement of it, Alyss. But I have not lived through untold generations for nothing, and I believe that even if the queendom weren't dealing with its present problems, you would not have chosen to flaunt your disregard of a royal practice that Wonderland queens have abided by since at least the time of my birth.” He winked and nudged her some more, his ears flopping friskily atop his head.

“Bibwit,
what
are you talking about?”

“Although,” the tutor qualified, “if you do plan to marry below your rank, I think you can outrage history even more by choosing lower than a guardsman.”

Alyss blushed.

Bibwit leaned closer and spoke soothingly, sincerely. “Your recent displays of affection have been admirably subtle, my dear, but no longer hiding your feelings from yourselves, it's impossible that you could hide them from the rest of us—or, at least, from me. I congratulate you on your engagement to Dodge.”

“Well, technically, I'm not sure we're—”

“Technicalities are for engineers, Alyss. I approve your choice of Dodge for a husband, even if, technically, it isn't my place to do so. But humor a wise, ancient albino, will you, and don't chastise me for my approval.”

After some time, Alyss said, “Thank you.” Her thoughts had led her back to Hatter, to the possible reasons for his troubling behavior in Boarderland.

It has everything to do with Arch, I know it does
.

Throughout their trial, the Lord and Lady of Diamonds had asserted their innocence, claiming that they had been set up by Boarderland's king. The evidence said otherwise: So damning was it that even the Diamonds' connections in court hadn't saved them from being sentenced to the Crystal Mines for twenty lunar years.

“I doubt Lord and Lady Diamond were as innocent as they claimed,” Alyss said, “and yet…”

“You think there may be some truth in what they alleged of Arch?” asked Bibwit. “That it had been his idea to give Molly the mysterious weapon?”

“Yes.”

“We've discussed this, Alyss. As helpless as it makes you feel, when it comes to King Arch, nothing can be done. It wouldn't be wise to accuse him of aggression against Wonderland, especially when we have only the Diamonds' accusations to support the claim.”

“I know.”

Bibwit smiled—one of those sad smiles suggestive of a lifetime of accumulated knowledge, not all of it heartwarming. “But what you know and what you feel are two different things?”

She nodded.

“It's a hard lesson,” said the tutor, “one of the hardest, to learn that with all of your imaginative powers, there are times when you can do nothing.”

A
RCH HAD long ago found that his best defense against enemies was to guard against what he would do if he were his own adversary. Putting himself in Hatter's place—shockingly reunited with Weaver, his daughter held prisoner—Arch would have made the same choice the Milliner had made; he too would have joined the tribe. But, the king reminded himself, Hatter's joining the tribe should not be mistaken for genuine allegiance. If he were Hatter, he would use it as a means of gaining time to learn what he could of Molly's whereabouts, and to get reacquainted with Weaver. He would do all he was told until such time as he could effect Molly's rescue. Convicting Hatter of his own counterplots, Arch did not allow the Milliner to go anywhere unobserved. Hatter took his meals with Ripkins and Blister and was given a cot in their tent. On the occasions he was granted leave to visit with Weaver, an intel minister was always close by, watching, listening. Was it reckless to let the Milliner converse with Weaver? Arch didn't think so. If anything, the care he himself had shown to Weaver, and the “friendship” that had formed as a result, might confuse Hatter, chip away at his steadfast loyalty to the Heart clan until, for the security of his own family, he became more accepting of Arch as his king. Hatter might go from feigning allegiance to sincerely embodying it.

“Do you know what this is?” Arch asked.

He held the silken thread aloft, stretched taught between his hands. The thread glinted in the light. If the Milliner knew what it was, he didn't say.

“It is silk produced by one of Wonderland's six caterpillar-oracles,” Arch explained. “This one, I believe—it's hard to see in this light—is orange. I know you're familiar with the power of caterpillar silk, Hatter, so there's no use pretending.”

“My hat is, in part, made of them.”

“Yes. Your hat contains threads from the blue and purple caterpillars and it is these that account for the hat's remarkable characteristics as a weapon. You see that I know things you would not expect me to know. The spinster who taught Milliners to manufacture their hats in just such a way, what was her name?”

“Miss Hado.”

“Miss Hado, that's right. Poor Miss Hado. Once Redd took control of Wonderland, she didn't survive much longer than Queen Genevieve. But as determined as Redd was to eliminate Milliners from existence, she was somewhat lax in the disposal of their headgear. Had you managed to avoid Redd's Glass Eyes after her coup, Hatter, you could have gone around to Wonderland's many purveyors of contraband and bought up the headgear of your assassinated Millinery colleagues. You would've had to be quick about it, though, as you wouldn't have been alone. The supply of Milliner hats, never abundant, became more and more limited as Wonderlanders unraveled them, trying to discover how the caterpillar threads worked. No one succeeded in this, I assume, or we would've known it by now.”

“You must have succeeded, Your Majesty,” Hatter said, “or I wouldn't be here.”

Arch toyed with his caterpillar thread, coiling and uncoiling it around a finger. “You will not provoke me into telling more than I wish. I unspool this information to you a small amount at a time, much as one of your caterpillars spools silk out its spinneret. You will be told as little as is necessary for you to perform the task I require of you. Now let's see, what else do I know that might surprise you?”

In trying to surmise the details of Arch's plan, Hatter had concluded that it
had
been an accident. Arch could not have lured Weaver to Boarderland as part of his present scheme. To do that, the king would've had to know about his and Weaver's relationship
before
she left the Everlasting Forest's Alyssian headquarters for Talon's Point. The king would have either had to induce Weaver to abandon Molly at the headquarters and risk a journey to Talon's Point, or he would've had to know, not only that she
would
do such a thing, but
when
she was going to do it. And as clever as Arch was, none of these was possible. Ripkins had stumbled upon Weaver at Talon's Point and Arch, learning who she was, had cultivated a relationship with her in case it might one day prove useful. Which it obviously had.

“I know,” Arch resumed, “that when using caterpillar silk to make a Milliner's hat, the mix of colors and the amount of each color used have everything to do with the powers produced. I know that the stitch in which the threads are bound are equally important. I suppose what I'm saying is that different combinations of caterpillar silk produce different weapons. For example, were you to take a bit of green thread and a pebble-sized wad of yellow thread and weave them together in a butterfly stitch, you'd better be sure to have a zincon-lined container to put them in, because you'll have produced something not unlike what recently upset Wonderland's Crystal Continuum. I also know that each of you Milliners was taught to manufacture your own hat, as it was believed you should give birth, so to speak, to the weapon that would become an extension of yourself.”

“Your knowledge befits your authority, Your Majesty,” Hatter said.

“And every Milliner's hat contained no more than a couple shreds of caterpillar thread. Often they contained no more than one color. Isn't that right?”

“As far as I know. I only have experience with making my own hat.”

“Hatter, what if I told you that I had enough silk from all six of Wonderland's caterpillar-oracles to produce many generations' worth of Millinery hats?”

Hatter said nothing, hoping Arch would answer his own question. It couldn't be that he wanted the foremost Milliner of the age to sit around manufacturing top hats for Boarderland forces, could it? “Are you sure they're not counterfeit, Your Majesty?” Hatter asked.

“I'm sure.”

They sat looking at each other.

“You haven't asked me how I came to possess so much caterpillar silk, Hatter.”

“It's not my business, Your Majesty. My business is for me to do as you command, to prove my loyalty to you and thereby earn my daughter's freedom.”

“I don't know why you insist on believing your daughter's freedom is mine to grant,” Arch said with a scowl. “One thing remains to be done if WILMA is to be fully operational. You'll soon serve your purpose, Mr. Madigan, and then we'll see how far your loyalty to me extends.”

 

The bodyguards' tent was typical of Boardertonian bachelors—the cots covered with quilts of unicorn skin, the furniture all silver alloy and animal hides. Taking up most of the tent was an entertainment matrix, complete with virtual reality booth, 360-degree holo-screens, a game-controller body suit, and enough buttons, knobs, and switches to dizzy even the most technologically savvy.

Hatter was washing up at the water basin, in preparation for a night out, while Ripkins watched him, lounging on his cot with feet crossed and hands clasped behind his head.

“You sure she doesn't have any friends?” Ripkins teased, swinging his feet to the floor and reaching for Hatter's top hat, which rested innocently on the Milliner's cot. He examined its lining as if he were a haberdasher inspecting a competitor's wares. “'Cause I'd give anything to find a meaningful, long-term relationship like the one you and Weaver have. Wouldn't you, Blister?”

Blister, sitting at the dining board amid take-out containers and dirty plates, pinched dead the last leaf of an olive branch poking out of a vase. “No,” he said.

“How do I look?” Ripkins asked, plopping Hatter's top hat on his head.

Hatter spun, slapped at the hat's front brim; it flipped from Ripkins' head to his own. “It looks better on me.”

“You should probably know,” Blister said to him, “we took it easy on you back at Sin Bin.”

“Did you?” Hatter said. “That's ironic, since I took it easy on
you
.” And with that, the Milliner stepped from the tent, out into the Boarderton night.

Weaver was waiting for him outside the Living Room Tavern, so-called because its tables and chairs were as alive as its patrons. Hatter held the tent flap open for Weaver and—

“Ah, the Madigans,” their usual table said as they entered. “Where should I position myself this evening? We have some space by the mullet-hawk buffet.”

Made of hydroponic barks particular to the marshy regions of Boarderland, the furnishings at the Living Room Tavern used the exposed roots at the bottom of their legs to get around, steeping these root systems in tubs of water whenever they weren't catering to customers. Two chairs approached. Crossing paths with other similarly engaged furniture, one of the chairs carried Hatter to the riverfront buffet, which featured thirteen different species of fish from the Bookie River, while the other chair carried Weaver to the salad bar. They then convened at the usual table, which had stationed itself near the mullet-hawk buffet.

“Has there been any progress concerning your daughter?” the table asked.

“Not enough,” Weaver said, with a pointed look at Hatter.

“I'm very sorry to hear it,” said the table. “But I'm sure things will turn out all right, particularly with King Arch aiding you. Now what would the two of you like to drink?”

Hatter and Weaver were again carried into the traffic of crisscrossing chairs and tables to fill their glasses. When they were returned to their meal, their table stayed quiet, respecting their right to privacy while they ate. But Weaver seemed bent on respecting her own privacy, silently forking salad into her mouth until her utensil at last clanked down on her plate.

“I know you've been doing your best and these Ganmedes are being ridiculous in their demands…”

Hatter's face showed surprise.

“Arch keeps me informed,” Weaver explained. “Anyway, I know you're not used to negotiating as much as you are to…fighting, but I think we should at least have daily proof of Molly's well-being, don't you? Especially
because
the Ganmedes' demands are so extreme.”

“I'll arrange it,” Hatter said, not daring to tell her that the only Ganmedes he'd seen were a couple of Arch's tailors and that, as yet, he'd negotiated with no one, not unless he counted his recent meeting with Arch. So while Weaver did her best to be upbeat, talking proudly of Molly's maturity and good looks, and of how nice it would be when the three of them were living as a family for the first time, the Milliner retreated into his thoughts…

Assuming that Ripkins had come upon Weaver by accident at Talon's Point, the question was, What had the bodyguard been doing there in the first place? Spying on the nearby military post? Possible, but not likely—not when there were so many other Wonderland outposts Arch would have deemed of equal or greater strategic value.

“Why're you shaking your head, Hatter?” Weaver asked. “Won't you even consider living in Boarderland? I know you have responsibilities to Queen Alyss and the Millinery, but maybe we could live here part of the year?”

“Maybe.”

Hatter guessed that it had to do with WILMA, that Ripkins had probably been on Talon's Point preparing WILMA to go online. He himself had seen nothing irregular when he'd lived on the Point, but then, he hadn't exactly been on the lookout for caterpillar silk. But why was he even thinking about this? It wasn't as if he could set out on a reconnaissance mission to Talon's Point;
that
would bring Arch's displeasure down on him and jeopardize Molly's life.

“I'm sorry,” Weaver was saying. “I don't mean to whine and crab at you, it's only…I'm so worried about Molly. Our lovely little Molly.”

“I know,” Hatter said. “I know. Me too.”

He had no choice. He had to stay here, trapped between duty to his family and duty to the queendom, at present unable to fulfill either.