Bargain price

CHAPTER 44

W ITH THE queendom’s looking glasses obliterated, Redd again turned her anger on Jack of Diamonds. “I grant you a leniency that others don’t enjoy. Why? Because it’s supposed to benefit me. I let you

believe you’re your own boss. In exchange, you’re to provide me with Alyssian intelligence. As queen, I

command the better end of all deals and it doesn’t fill me with glee, Lord Diamond, that you’ve been profiting from treachery.”

“Your Imperial-”

Redd made a shooing motion with her hand and Jack slammed against a wall of the Observation Dome. The Cat’s tail whisked back and forth, happy and playful.

“What am I to do with you?” Redd asked.

“M-maybe you could-” Jack began. The Cat raised a paw. “I know.”

“It was a rhetorical question, fools! You don’t answer it! Since when do I need help making anyone suffer?”

This time The Cat and Jack of Diamonds knew better than to answer.

Redd stepped up to Jack and stroked his wig. She held one of its long curls against her palm, studying it

a moment. With sudden ferocity, she yanked the curl from the wig and tossed it away from her. The lock of hair lay on the floor, growing in size and hairiness. It grew and grew, developing arms and legs, until it stood at twice Jack’s height.

“Lord Diamond, say hello to my beast of a wig.” Redd yawned.

Before Jack could offer a greeting, the beast dealt him a stinging blow to the stomach. He doubled over, straining for air. The Wig-Beast picked him up and tossed him across the room. He landed with a thud worthy of his girth, and with a single bound the Wig-Beast was beside him, lifting him to his feet, holding him upright with one wiggy limb and slapping him with the other.

The Cat purred, a wide grin on his face as he watched Jack of Diamonds suffer, but his enjoyment was interrupted by the sharp-as-a-claw piercing of Redd’s voice raised in anger and disbelief. Redd had turned her imagination’s eye on Alyss. She should have seen nothing-Alyss should have been part of the void-but instead she saw the princess, Hatter Madigan, and the others walking through the charred and molten landscape of the Volcanic Plains.

“Not dead!” she screeched. “Alyss not dead!”

Jack heard the words too, but it took a moment for his addled brain to understand their meaning. Between slugs from the Wig-Beast, he managed to say, “They’re-going to-Looking-Glass-Maze!”

Redd held up a hand and the Wig-Beast halted.

“I must be getting soft, Lord Diamond, if I think you could have said anything worth listening to.”

It was lucky for Jack that Redd had shrugged off the lessons Bibwit tried to teach her in adolescence. Jack was quick to understand that his knowledge of the Looking Glass Maze could save his life. But he would tell her as little as necessary. His future health and safety might depend on his leaking such valuable intelligence to Redd.

“The Looking Glass Maze, Your Imperial Viciousness. By passing through the maze, Alyss will reach her full potential of strength and imaginative power and be able to defeat you.”

“But I have the Heart Crystal! She can’t reach her full potential without that!” “I’m only repeating what I heard from Bibwit Harte, Your Imperial Viciousness.”

He shouldn’t have mentioned Bibwit; Redd bristled. Jack cast a quick glance at the Wig-Beast. It was perfectly still, as if it had never been alive. So far, so good.

“What if I pass through the maze instead of her?” Redd asked.

“Ah, very clever, Your Imperial Viciousness. If you pass through the maze, then you’ll be that much more powerful. I’m sure Alyss won’t be able to defeat you then.”

What Jack of Diamonds knew of the Looking Glass Maze could fit in a gwynook’s third nostril-which was very little. As a boy, he’d often heard his mother recall in bitter tones how Princess Genevieve had passed through the maze to become queen. But she didn’t know that becoming queen was not just a matter of navigating the maze. None of the Diamond clan had been tutored by Bibwit Harte, so none of them knew that only the person for whom the Looking Glass Maze was intended could enter it. But like many young men who grow up as privileged as Jack of Diamonds, he didn’t suspect his own ignorance.

“We’ll see if what you say is true,” Redd said. “Bring me In Queendom Speramus!”

The walrus toddled into the dome. “Here it is, Your Imperial Viciousness. In Queendom-”

The book flew from his flippers, hovered in the air before Redd as she thumbed through its pages, searching for mention of the Looking Glass Maze. She found none. She saw pages torn from the book and her own words in Bibwit’s handwriting.

“Bah!”

She swatted the book and it flew at the walrus, but the waddly fellow ducked and the book hit the floor and skidded out the dome and down the hall.

“I’ll get it, Your Imperial Viciousness,” said the walrus-butler, and hurried after the book, never able to leave Redd’s company fast enough.

Redd strolled up to Jack, all the more frightening for her nonchalance. “And now, my unworthy servant, you are going to tell me where the Looking Glass Maze is.”

“But I don’t know where it is.”

Redd’s fingers twitched and Jack thought he saw the Wig-Beast move.

“The Alyssians don’t know either!” he said quickly. “The caterpillars have to tell them!”

The caterpillars: those annoying, oversized larvae. Redd had tried to do away with them and their outdated prophesying when she first took control of the queendom. She didn’t need those things breeding dissent with their predictions. But every time she tried to attack them, they saw her coming and vanished like smoke. So she had exercised her rage on their beloved Valley of Mushrooms. But what to do now? A raid on the valley would not serve her purpose.

“I have decided to let Alyss meet with the caterpillars,” she announced. “We’ll maintain close surveillance on that goody-goody little Heart, and when she leads us to the Looking Glass Maze’s location, we’ll attack and I will enter it myself. Cat, bait the seekers.”

“But what about Lord Diamond?” the feline whined. “He may prove useful yet.”

Jack gave Redd’s furry assassin a taunting little smile. The Cat was to blame for his trouble, the bruises he felt forming all over his body. He would have to return the favor somehow.

“I see you don’t treasure your lives as much as I’d supposed, Cat, or you would have obeyed my order by now,” Redd said.

As The Cat sulked off to bait the seekers, Redd again focused her imagination’s eye on Alyss. How wonderfully cruel it was going to be! Miss Prissy Heart would serve as personal guide to the Looking

Glass Maze and thereby become the agent of her own downfall. How deliciously nasty.

The Cat could hear the seekers’ frenzied screeching even before he reached the end of the corridor, shouldered open the heavy door, and stepped inside the chamber carved out of Mount Isolation itself. It was impossible to hear his own footfalls or breathing because the seekers’ cries-like the sound of pain itself-were so loud. The chamber was dimly lit by faint, glowing crystals embedded in the walls. Hundreds of cages hung from the ceiling, with several seekers in each of them: Redd’s bloodhounds,

bred out of her distrust and paranoia; creatures with bird-of-prey bodies and the heads of blood-sucking insects.

Walking up and down the chamber, The Cat stopped beneath each cage to wave Alyss’ London wedding dress-a souvenir from his raid on the Alyssian headquarters. He teased the seekers with its scent and they pressed eager faces against the bars of their cages.

The baiting complete, The Cat flipped a lever in the floor and a wall retracted-a wall that, from the outside, looked like part of the mountain. The cages fell open and with wild shrieks the seekers flew out into the night, on the hunt.