The Gray Turncoat was an assassin sent by the Yurkei. He had come very close to killing the King, but his mortal fault was that he underestimated Cheshire. After his failed attempt at poisoning, he spent a month in the towers before he lost his head, which was then sent back to the Yurkei on horseback. Cray pinched Faina’s thin cheek between his grubby fingers. “This one must have done something beyond horrible, but that makes sense from what she was saying when she arrived.”
Dinah took a step closer to Cray. “And what was that?” she asked, her voice low.
“It depends on what you can offer me,
Your Highness
.”
Dinah recoiled as if she had been punched in the chest.
“I may have been raised in the Towers, but I’m no fool.” He looped an arm around her shoulder. “I heard the Princess was homely, but I have to say, you aren’t homely at all. I find you quite striking. Look at that strong chin, those dangerous eyes.”
Dinah heard the metallic swish of Wardley drawing his sword. Cray smiled and pointed his finger at Wardley over Dinah’s shoulder. “You will never get out of these towers without me,” he giggled. “Time is of the essence. The evening watch is coming in, and those Clubs are two times more brutal and suspicious. They will see through you in seconds.”
Dinah clutched the amethyst ring in her dress pocket. The stone was the size of a quail egg. She withdrew it slowly.
“I will offer you this if you tell me what Faina said when she arrived, AND if you get us out alive. It will also buy your silence. It’s worth about ten years’ wages, or enough to buy a cottage in the village.”
Cray’s eyes lit up, the reflection of the gem flashing over his greedy pupils. “Yes. Yes, I will tell you, and make sure you get out of the towers in one piece. But we must leave now.”
He read Dinah’s thoughts before she could open her mouth.
“We can’t take her with us. There is no hope for her. The roots have poisoned her mind and body, and she is more of the tree than she is of this world. Besides, all prisoners deserve their just punishment.”
Before Dinah could object, Wardley took her by the elbow and dragged her toward the door. Cray slammed the cell door shut after them, locking it. Dinah glanced sadly back as Wardley dragged her down the hall. Faina met her eyes and for a moment she saw a peaceful look of finality pass over her features. Then she gave a whimper of pain and surrendered to the roots twisting their way across her face. A maniacal laugh escaped from her bloody mouth and followed them as they ran. Hot tears splashed down Dinah’s face as she shuffled after Wardley. The chains were still clamped over her wrists, and she struggled to keep her balance while they followed Cray through one dark hall after another.
“What is the quickest way to the Iron Web?”
Cray pointed down two levels. “See that iron poker hanging there? Between those two cells, there is a door to the web.”
Dinah’s feet flew as they sprinted down the platforms, spiraling lower and lower. Prisoners called out from their cells, extending their blackened hands to grab at Dinah. Cray motioned to a tattered rope lying on the ground between two cells. “Follow the rope out to the Iron Web. From there, you’re on your own. I have to return to Faina’s cell before anyone notices I was gone.”
From the corner of her eye, Dinah saw Wardley spin, his black Club cape flashing behind him. In a second, he was behind Cray, his sword pressed across Cray’s pale neck.
“You will tell us what Faina said, or you will die here, and I can assure you, no one will ever investigate how a spineless coward lost all his blood.”
Cray gave a squeak. “She didn’t say much, not much of nothing. It’s mostly madness. When she came in, she was gagged, she was! When we took it out, she would just cry and say, ‘She’ll wear a crown to keep her head! She’ll wear a crown to keep her head!’”
Cray began blubbering loudly. Too loudly. Wardley brought the butt of his sword down against Cray’s temple and he crumpled to the ground like an empty sack.
“Put the ring in his pocket. This is safer. He’ll never want to tell someone that he was so easily overcome in his own prison or that he was bribed. Coward.” Wardley spat on his face and picked up the end of the rope. Thankfully, Cray had been telling the truth, and the rope led them to a misshapen door that opened to the bright Wonderland sky. Moving as quickly as they dared without attracting attention, Dinah and Wardley navigated their way over the web back to the Murderers’ Tower. Returning to the path they had arrived on required quite a bit of climbing and backtracking; several times they ended up on an iron walkway that led to a different tower, and one time into open sky.
“A trap for escapees,” mumbled Wardley as they slowly backed away from the steep drop that ended on a rocky outcropping just inside the palace gates. “Let’s not go that way again.”
It took an hour, but finally they were able to find the correct path through the maze and make their way to a low door that led into the Murderers’ Tower. The smell once again overpowered Dinah’s senses. But this time, she didn’t have time to retch. They were sprinting now, this time up the spiral, to where the forgotten door led them to the pool of ice. They could hear the marching of Clubs making their way up the spiral behind them. The next shift of Clubs was coming, and if they didn’t hurry, they would have to explain themselves to an entire deck of Cards. Dinah thought of the crown in her bag. She would grab it if she needed it.
“There, there is the door!” shouted Wardley as they flew past cells and rancid chamber pots. A prisoner’s hand grabbed Dinah’s dress through the cell bars and she was yanked off her feet. She hit the ground hard as the prisoner pulled her toward the cell. Dinah delivered a firm kick to the scarred hand beneath the heels of her boot. She jerked her dress free as the prisoner began screaming. They were almost to the door when Wardley bucked to a sudden stop and jumped sideways into a tiny slot in the wall, pulling Dinah in after him. This wasn’t a doorway, rather, an impossibly narrow storage chamber for clamps and chains. They could both barely fit, and Dinah found herself pressed face first against the wall with Wardley wrapped around her.
“Yoous,” whispered Wardley into her ear, “he can’t see us, or we will be done for. Don’t even breathe.”
His warning didn’t matter; Dinah couldn’t. A single black root, sensing an open presence, was twisting its way up her torso, her breasts, and then onto her face. Something in the tree paralyzed her, and so she could only watch with horror as the delicate tendril reached her mouth and clawed its way inside, choking her. It sprouted a second root that started pushing into her nostrils. She wanted to cry out to Wardley, but she couldn’t. Dinah was part of the tree now, and she would be forever. Visions rushed through her mind—visions of decapitated heads, white cranes, blue smoke, burning wood, pulsating mushrooms, and bright-red blood. And then she was falling, falling forward, falling into the darkness that was warm and comforting. Wardley’s strong arm caught her as she pitched forward.
“Dinah, Dinah?”
She opened her eyes. She was still in the Towers, still in the slot between cells. Wardley held a broken root in his hand, his sword in the other. They watched as it twisted and writhed before turning into ash. Wardley wiped his hand on his tunic with disgust.
“The tree . . . ,” she mumbled.
“You leaned against it,” reprimanded Wardley. “You let it touch your skin, what were you thinking?”
Dinah shook her head. The visions were gone, already retreating back into her brain, already forgotten. “Yoous?” she asked as Wardley steadied her.
“He passed. We’re only one level down from where we need to be. Can you walk?”
Dinah inched one foot out in front of her. “I’m fine.” The longing to escape these towers of death was overwhelming. “We should never have come here, Wardley. I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” Wardley replied. They made it to the same doorway without further trouble, and Dinah marveled at how hidden it was in plain sight, virtually indistinguishable from the roots around it. Their escape hatch waited quietly—its crooked door pouring freezing air into the damp humidity of the towers. Dinah had never seen such a welcome sight. They made their way down the stone teeth, her eyes trained on the skeleton sentry, forever frozen in the ice, forever watching the towers that held him. Dinah let her eyes play over the white holes where his eyes once were, over the gray pieces of skin crusted to the ice. She could feel the terrible vision seeping into her memory, etching its sightless stare there forever.
The thought filled her with terror as they wove their way back under the castle, sliding down the sloping tunnel they had crawled up hours before. She barely remembered the cold and the dark, Wardley leading their way with the glowing pink torch through turn after turn. They silently raced through the Great Hall, finding their way back to the cloak room without a word. It was only when Wardley started pulling off her dress did Dinah blink and realize where they were . . . and that they were safe.
Her lips trembled. “Wardley, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. . . .”
“No you didn’t,” Wardley snapped. “But I tried to tell you. No one can tell you anything, Dinah, not ever, because you’re the Princess and you do what you want. You’re not unlike your father that way.”
Dinah gritted her teeth. “That’s not true, is it?”
“Yes. Obviously.” He pulled off his filthy Card’s breastplate and stuffed it into his oversack. “We’re both filthy. Wipe your face and hands.”
He turned away from her, and Dinah knew this conversation was over. She wiped off the dirt, layers thick, on a bright-red cloak toward the back of the room. The red reminded her of Faina’s blood-stained mouth, and of her cryptic words,
“She’ll wear the crown to keep her head.”
Pity and shame ran through her, so strong it made her tremble as she pulled on her expensive silk gown and put on her jeweled shoes, completely lost in her thoughts. The towers were a stain on Wonderland, a blood stain that spread out from their terrible black roots, and through the centuries the Royal Line of Hearts had used them for evil. They weren’t regular prisons—they were instruments of torture, of horror and wickedness.
As she raised her hands to put her red crown back on her head, she felt her first recognition of
duty
. To be the Queen meant to protect her subjects, even if it was from the practices of the royal family themselves. The Towers were Wonderland’s terrible secret, a monstrosity for the entire kingdom to see and never understand. And when she was Queen, she would tear them down root by sickly root.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Wardley, his brown hair standing out in all directions, a streak of earth lingering on his cheek. Dinah lowered her head before him. “Forgive me for asking this of you. I didn’t truly understand what I was asking.” She licked her finger and brushed it lightly against his face, erasing the dirt from his strong cheekbone. “I will never forget what I saw today.”
Wardley shook his head. “The towers are a monstrosity. All my life I heard rumors and stories about them, but none were as terrible as—” He paused, and Dinah saw his eyes fill with tears. “We should have taken her . . . Faina.”
“We couldn’t,” she replied simply. “We wouldn’t have made it out in time, and they would have known we were there.” She was learning quickly that what was right and what must happen weren’t always the same thing. Dinah heard a quiet shuffling outside the door—the Cards were obviously curious about the suspected passion going on inside the cloak room.
“It’s time,” she said.
“You don’t have the ring anymore,” said Wardley. Dinah turned the handle to the cloak room door, aware that she would never again be the naive girl who entered it.
Her eyes were dark when she turned around. “I’ll take care of it. I have a sapphire brooch twice its size in my chambers.” Her face glowed with determination. Wardley’s breath was loud behind her as the door opened, and she saw a mangled grin stretch the corners of Roxs’s face.
“Enjoyed yourselves, did ya?”
Dinah cleared her throat and his smile quickly disappeared.
Chapter Eleven
Harris was unbearable when he was determined that Dinah learn something. “No, you’re late, you’re late again. You keep coming in late.”
Dinah angrily shoved her books off the table. They landed with a thud at Harris’s feet.
“There are more important things to do than sit here and repeat verbatim the Wonders of Wonderland.” She crossed her arms in a huff. “This kingdom is falling apart, and I’m looking at pictures and reciting rhymes, like a child.”
Harris pushed his glasses up. “What makes you say that the kingdom is falling apart, my dear? The Line of Hearts has never been stronger. Wonderlanders love the King, and—”
Dinah interrupted him. “They don’t love him. They fear him. There is a difference.”
“Fear is not always a bad thing. When you are Queen, you should strive for both. These are things you should think about, child. You will soon be Queen.”
Dinah begrudgingly helped her guardian gather the books from the floor, and watched as he sat down across from her, his bushy white eyebrows wiggling with maddening glee. “Dinah, may I say something?”
Dinah sighed. “You may.”
“Part of being a good ruler is the constant education and finesse of the mind. The past should govern how you will shape your rule. Learn from the mistakes of your predecessors, glean understanding from the history of the Royal Line of Hearts, and understand the lay of your land—and how it came to be so. Now tell me, the Wonders of Wonderland are. . . .”
“The Sky Curtain, the Twisted Wood, the Ninth Sea, Wonderland Palace, and the Yurkei Mountains.”
Harris sat back, satisfied. “You know these well.”
Dinah did know them well. In fact, she had been studying up on her land every evening as she lay in bed. In the two months that had passed since her journey into Wonderland’s depraved prison system, Dinah was reading more than she ever had before, late into the night. She would do anything to keep the memories and dreams of the Black Towers away. Still, no matter how mentally exhausted she made herself, her last thoughts before sleeping would be Faina Baker’s grim face as a black root twisted its way into her mouth. More often than not, her dreams were dark and demented—not unlike the towers themselves—and she would wake drenched in sweat and flooded with panic, clawing at her own mouth.