Bargain price

CHAPTER 40

“H OW COULD she not have been there?! Where else would she be?!”

Banging the end of her scepter on the floor with every other word, Redd sent long-stemmed, flesh-eating roses slithering around the feet of Jack of Diamonds and the thick-padded paws of The Cat, both of whom had to keep moving to prevent the flowers from climbing up their legs.

“Maybe the Jack of Diamonds isn’t as loyal as you supposed?” said The Cat. Redd turned on Jack. “Yes, perhaps.”

“My queen-I mean, Your Imperial Viciousness-the most important Alyssians were there and could have been done away with if The Cat hadn’t been concerned solely with Alyss.”

“I demanded that he be solely concerned with her!” “But I don’t think she’s as dangerous as-”

“Who asked you!” Redd bellowed. Her scepter lifted into the air, its pointed end poised at the pulsing hollow of Jack of Diamonds’ throat. “You don’t, by chance, have nine lives?”

Jack swallowed, hard. “I have only one, which I devote to you, Your Imperial Viciousness.” “Hmmph.” Redd twirled her scepter like a baton and stood it at her side. “Cat, why is there an empty

box of orb generators in the hall?”

An ammunition container slid into the room, moved by Redd’s imagination.

“Oh, that?” The Cat had been waiting for her to ask. Jack of Diamonds was in for it now. “We found it and many more at the Alyssian camp. I checked their manufacture codes. They were stolen from your factory three and a half lunar cycles ago. The thieves were interrogated and punished, but the twelve containers of stolen weapons were not where they informed us they’d be.”

“Get to the point, Cat, or you will feel one in your guts.”

The feline assassin bowed in acknowledgment. “Your Imperial Viciousness, you captured the thieves because of intelligence received by Jack of Diamonds. You allow the pudgy lord to have dealings with

the Alyssians. How could the Alyssians have come into possession of these weapons if not from him? He knew where to find the thieves, he must have known where to find the weapons.”

“Interesting,” said a thoughtful Redd. “So, my well-fed informant has been taking advantage of the freedoms I grant him by supplying weapons to my enemies?”

“No! Absolutely not!” declared Jack. “Your Imperial Viciousness, this is ludicrous.” “We’ll see how ludicrous it is.”

Again, the sharpened point of Redd’s scepter was at Jack of Diamonds’ throat. But thoughts of Alyss had never completely left her head and, in a blink of imagination’s eye, she saw the princess surrounded by sparkling, effervescent surfaces.

“She’s in the Crystal Continuum!” Redd shrieked. “Smash the looking glasses! Every last one!” Redd’s face, wild with rage, flashed onto the billboards and government posters of Wondertropolis. “Every looking glass in the queendom is to be smashed! Now!”

But the force of her anger beat most Wonderlanders to it. In pubs and stimulant dens throughout Wondertropolis, in the homes of ordinary Wonderlanders, in the gated and patrolled mansions of ranking families, looking glasses exploded. Wonderlanders eager for havoc ran through the streets, breaking windows and anything that could even remotely serve as a reflective surface.

T HEY WERE trapped, marooned. They would be killed for sure: Glass Eyes ahead of them, Glass Eyes behind.

The Continuum, it’s…it’s…disappearing!

With every looking glass in the queendom smashed, the crystalline pathways that made up the Continuum were vanishing. The Glass Eyes advancing upon Alyss and the others were themselves being chased by a void. And the void was gaining.

To be swallowed by nothingness is to become nothing.

At least they wouldn’t suffer; one felt nothing upon becoming nothing.

The void rushed at the Glass Eyes, consumed the rear guards first and moved quickly up their ranks. No more Glass Eyes.

And still the void came fast.

“Anyone have a pocket looking glass?” Dodge asked.

Alyss and the others glanced at him, not understanding. “Quick!”

Bibwit reached into the folds of his robe and pulled out a looking glass no bigger than a tuttle-bird’s wing. Dodge took hold of it. No Wonderlander had ever attempted what he was about to do. There had never been a need.

He held the looking glass at an angle, aiming it so that it reflected a small portion of the Continuum, regenerating it. As fast as the void swallowed up what was behind them, the modest little mirror added the corresponding length of Continuum ahead of them. But now what? Were they doomed to race through the void, safe in this small portion of Continuum-which, had he been at leisure, Bibwit would

have pointed out was no longer strictly a Continuum since it connected to nothing, and without the pocket glass it would not, in fact, continue. Were they destined to be imprisoned in this mobile prism, zipping this way and that through pure emptiness until they perished from starvation, or fatigue caused Dodge to drop the glass?

What’s that? Is it…It is. A way out.

At least one looking glass in the queendom must have still been intact. Ahead of them in the void, a short distance off, was a crystal byway, a dead end. Where it had once connected with the Continuum’s main thoroughfare, it now simply stopped, connected to nothing.

“Dodge!” “I see it!”

With subtle shifts of angle in the way he held the looking glass, Dodge steered them over and they linked up with it. The additional light and increased play of translucent colors were like the dance of life itself. Dodge, Bibwit, and Alyss, General Doppelganger, Hatter-they emerged from the Continuum in the same order in which they’d entered, discovered themselves in a landscape resembling the open belly of a volcano, with clouds of sulphurous smoke drifting lazily into the upper reaches of the sky, and jets of flame spouting from the rocky ground between streams of bubbling lava: the Volcanic Plains.