Bargain price

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.