Bargain price

CHAPTER 30

D RESSED IN her wedding gown, Alice stood before a full-length mirror in the vestry of Westminster Abbey. In less than half an hour she would be married to a prince, raised to the highest ranks of society’s esteem without giving her heart to a man she neither disliked nor loved. But her future seemed as uncertain as her past had once been.

The room began to vibrate with the strains of the organ, but she hardly noticed. She reached out toward the mirror. Her fingers touched the cold reflective surface and she stood fingertip to fingertip with her mirrored image. What more had she expected? For her hand to pass into the mirror? Ridiculous. A knock came at the door. Mrs. Liddell bustled in, holding the skirts of her gown to prevent them from dragging on the floor, and Alice was glad to be rescued from her solitude.

“It’s time, dear. It’s time. I can hardly believe it!” “Nor I,” Alice said, feigning breathless excitement.

She kissed her mother on the cheek and together they walked to the abbey’s atrium, where bridesmaids and grooms-men waited to make their entrance, along with Dean Liddell, who would escort his daughter

down the aisle.

“To think that the next time we speak, you’ll be married to a prince,” Mrs. Liddell sighed. “And you’ll be a mother-in-law to one.”

“It tickles me to be reminded of it! You’ve made me terribly happy, Alice.”

With a last hug, Mrs. Liddell left to take her seat next to the rest of the family at the front of the abbey. The wedding march began, and bridesmaids and grooms-men started down the aisle a pair at a time.

Alice peeked out at the guests. Queen Victoria and her entourage occupied the first few pews on the right side of the church. A buffer of soldiers separated the queen from the rest of the guests, who completely filled the abbey. In the rear of the church, newspaper reporters jotted notes. All were turned in their seats, waiting with anticipation for Alice to make her entrance. But she had wanted to take this opportunity to spy on her guests. Why? Because she was looking for somebody, one face in particular. She’d been wondering if he would show up today as mysteriously as he had at her engagement party. Wasn’t that him, standing in the shadows underneath the left balcony? She couldn’t see his face clearly, but-

Dean Liddell held out his arm for her. She was being such a fool. Why torture herself over a stranger just because he had a few scars on his face? Lots of men probably had similar scars. It signified nothing. Likely, the man at the engagement party had just been a rival of Leopold’s and wanted to show him up with his dancing. She took hold of her father’s elbow.

“Alice, my love,” said the dean, “if it were anybody else marrying into such a public family, I should worry whether they were up to it. But not so with you. I suspect that not only will you continue to make Prince Leopold proud, and hold his love fast, but that you will teach him more about acting as a force for good in the world than I, merely as dean of his college, could have ever hoped to accomplish. He is lucky to have you.”

“Thank you, Father.”

With measured steps, father and daughter started down the aisle. Alice’s face showed no sign of concern, no hint of the consternation that had been plaguing her since the masquerade. One might have assumed that all her thoughts were on the momentous occasion at hand, which was certainly what Prince Leopold believed. Dressed in full military uniform, ancestral sword at his hip, he stood before the high altar with the archbishop. Dean Liddell kissed Alice lightly on the cheek and deposited her at Leopold’s side, then padded to his seat next to his wife.

Leopold smiled at his bride. It was such a shy, awed, pleased, and overwhelmed smile that it fairly overwhelmed her. Alice feared he was making more of her than he ought, that not loving him wouldn’t be the hardest part of their coming years together; it would be living up to his estimation of her. She turned

to face the archbishop. Behind her, pews creaked, throats cleared. The archbishop began to speak, but

Alice hardly heard a word he said.

“If there is anyone here who objects to this union, let him speak now or forever hold his peace,” the archbishop intoned.

Alice had a strong desire to glance toward the left balcony, to where she imagined the scarred man was standing, a man whose name she had with great effort tried to erase from her memory and which she didn’t dare say to herself even now, as if to do so would be to conjure a figure whose nonexistence meant everything to her present and future happiness in England.

She heard herself repeating the archbishop’s words without comprehending their meaning. The vows. I’ve taken my vows. And now it’s Leopold’s turn. She stood listening to the alternating timbres and resonances of the men’s voices.

Then something strange happened. It was as if a gathering storm, moments from breaking, had sucked up all the oxygen from the enormous room, only to unleash itself with that much more vengeance. Alice

would later swear that she had felt it coming beforehand, had felt something before the stained-glass windows on both sides of the abbey imploded as the strangest-looking creatures broke through them and landed amid the shards and crumbs of colored glass. Guests ran screaming toward the exits, trampling

one another in their haste. Others fell to their knees and prayed to be delivered safely from harm.

In the seconds between the shattering of glass and the first casualty, soldiers surrounded Queen Victoria and hustled her through a door normally reserved for the archbishop, who hurried after her with breathless prayers. Prince Leopold put a protective arm around his fiancee, but she shrugged it off, unthinking, and now stood watching the cat-like beast fight his way toward her, swatting soldiers and policemen out of his way, raking their flesh with his claws. She recognized him, as one suddenly remembers a dream hours after waking, and the recognition brought her a troubling relief, for if this thing was real…

She stood defenseless and unmoving amid the mayhem. These were not the card soldiers she remembered. Can’t remember what isn’t supposed to exist.

Leopold and Halleck were battling four of the tall, steel-limbed creatures whose backsides were protective shields engraved with card suits: clubs, spades, and diamonds. Both of the men had studied swordplay, but Alice could see that they’d be lucky to survive. Please let Leopold be all right. Whatever else is to happen, may he-

The Cat took to the air, lunging toward her. Still she didn’t move. She extended her arm, reached out to feel once and for all if this beast was real, when-

I knew it!

The man with the scars came sprinting toward her from the periphery, pushing her out of the way just as The Cat landed and smashed the altar with a downward swing of his thigh-sized arms. And she was running now, her hand in his, the man whose name she would still not voice to herself. He pulled her out through one of the broken stained-glass windows and onto the street. The Cat and card assassins jumped out of the abbey after them. The London street was a blur, a confusion of shouting, screaming people. A card assassin fell onto the train of Alice’s gown, bringing her up short. With a single swipe of

his sword, the scarred man cut the train from the gown, spun around, and severed the leather harness ties that held a rearing horse to its carriage.

“Hey!” the carriage driver protested.

But the scarred man was already astride the horse, pulling Alice up behind him even as he spurred the animal at a gallop through the streets. The Cat chased after them on foot, his powerful legs making him as fast as any of Earth’s four-legged creatures.

The card assassins had come armed with glowing orb generators and, as the scarred man urged the horse this way and that, from streets to sidewalks and back again, zigzagging to make a more difficult target, explosions shook the surrounding buildings. Dizzy with all of this action as she was, it seemed to Alice that her companion had a destination in mind, for if the horse skidded past a certain street, he would steer the animal back to it and they would race along its course, past befuddled pedestrians and cursing carriage drivers.

The man did know where he was going. He had memorized the route he’d taken from his exit portal to Westminster Abbey and was traveling it in reverse. And they were getting close. A few streets still to go when an orb generator rocketed into an empty police wagon not twenty yards away, turning it into a fireball. Their horse reared, bucking them off its back, and they landed on a pile of cabbage in a street seller’s cart. They jumped to the ground and ran, the scarred man pulling Alice, gripping her by the arm.

“Where are we going?” she breathed. “You’ll see!”

He pointed: a puddle. She was embarrassed by what she said next, the first thing that occurred to her as she and this man took a running jump into the puddle, their hands clasped. “I’ll ruin my dress,” she said, and then-

Shoosh!

They were rushing down, deeper and deeper. She lost hold of the man’s hand. This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t be…yet it was. And as she torpedoed up toward the surface, having worked impossibly hard to convince herself that the place about to be seen by her disbelieving eyes didn’t exist, she said the man’s name-Dodge Anders-and water filled her lungs.