Bargain price

CHAPTER 52

T HE FORTRESS was surrounded. Regiments of The Cut had been amassed from across the queendom and stood ready to defend Redd’s stronghold. Their ranks formed the front line and, behind them, as the second line of defense, were platoon after platoon of Glass Eyes. Both the card soldiers and Glass Eyes were armed with the full array of weaponry available to them in Redd’s Wonderland-orb generators, whipsnake grenades, crystal shooters, cannonball spiders, AD52s, all manner of knives and swords.

As the suns rose on a new day, Redd was breakfasting on spicy, crunchy tuttle-bird legs in the Observation Dome. The Cat and the members of her cabinet, none of whom had eaten since the previous midday, looked on with hungry eyes but said nothing. Jack of Diamonds had wisely excused

himself from the dome, but more because he feared Redd watching him toy unsuccessfully with the key to the Looking Glass Maze than because of his stomach’s grumbling.

Redd’s teeth crunched down on the only remaining tuttle-bird leg, the last scrap of night’s shadow faded with the day, and they all saw it at once. Gazing out through the telescopic glass, it would have been

impossible to miss: An Alyssian army, seeming to rival the population of the queendom itself, massed a short distance off and waiting to attack. Like Redd’s forces, the Alyssians were armed with orb generators, whipsnake grenades, cannonball spiders, AD52s.

“How has Alyss gathered such an immense army?” the Lady of Spades asked. “They’ll just have a larger body count,” Redd fumed.

Sitting astride a spirit-dane at the head of the soldiers, Alyss raised her arm and held it above her head a moment before bringing it down in a quick motion. The Alyssians charged toward the fortress.

“Deal the first hand,” Redd ordered.

Outside, The Cut launched orb generators and cannonball spiders at the advancing Alyssians-direct hits many of them, which should have taken out entire columns of the enemy. The card soldiers followed up the barrage by charging into the smoke and flame. Confident, Redd eyed the scene from her perch in the dome, but when the smoke cleared she saw her soldiers surrounded by tiny Alyssians. Her weapons had had zero effect and the miniature army continued to push toward the fortress.

Redd’s face contorted with a sudden realization. “How could I have been so stupid?”

The Cat was trying to decide if this were a rhetorical question when she roared, “It’s a construct!” With a dismissive swing of Redd’s arm, Alyss and her army began to shimmer, the billion points of

energy that formed them momentarily visible before exploding apart into nothing. Redd scoped the queendom with her imagination’s eye. “Where are you, Alyss? Where is my dear little niece?”

Alyss and the others could hear the explosions and the rasping, metallic sounds of The Cut racing toward the conjured army as they came upon the fortress from the opposite side. Until now, their approach had been covert; they’d traveled only over the desert’s black squares of tar and volcanic rock to camouflage themselves from Redd’s lookouts. But to enter the fortress they would have no choice but to show themselves in open warfare.

Under cover of the black rock, Hatter flicked his top hat into blades and winged them at the card

soldiers and Glass Eyes guarding the fortress’ entrance. While the weapon was still in the air, he activated his wrist-blades and charged. Molly flattened her homburg into its slicing shield and took up his left flank with Dodge, while Generals Doppel and Ganger took up his right, and the chessmen followed.

“We must be getting close to the Heart Crystal,” Alyss said to Bibwit. The tutor looked at her, his ears bent in a questioning manner.

“I feel…I don’t know how to explain it.”

The princess reached out both arms and extended her ten fingers toward the fighting in front of her.

Star-bright branches of energy shot out of her fingers, forking and attaching themselves to card soldiers and Glass Eyes until every single one of them was caught on an end while the other ends were, ultimately, still attached to Alyss’ fingers. The princess then raised her arms above her head and the card soldiers

and Glass Eyes lifted into the air, helpless. She sent them reeling through the sky. Somewhere in the

Chessboard Desert it was raining card soldiers and Glass Eyes.

The sound of orb generators exploding on Alyss’ conjured army still assaulted the Alyssians’ ears, but it

stopped almost as soon as they entered the fortress. Silence could mean only one thing. “She knows,” Alyss said.

“Can you see her?” asked Bibwit.

Alyss felt that she was close to the Heart Crystal. Remote viewing wasn’t something she’d been able to do before, but Redd was now clearly visible in her imagination’s eye, standing in a large, open room at the foot of a spiral hall, beckoning Alyss with a cold smile on her lips. The steady pulse of the Heart Crystal was behind the queen, obscured somehow.

“She’s waiting for me,” Alyss said.

“We should split into factions for safety,” General Doppel urged.

“Two targets may be harder to combat,” agreed General Ganger, “and we can surround Redd if it comes to that. Bibwit, Rook, Molly, you come with us.”

“I’m staying with Princess Alyss,” Molly said.

Exchanged glances all around. The girl looked quite adamant and this was no time for argument. “Let her come with me,” Alyss said.

The generals dipped their heads; whatever the princess wished.

“Knight, Hatter, and Dodge will also accompany you,” said General Doppel, which was when they noticed that Dodge was no longer among them.

“Where did he go?” asked General Ganger.

To find The Cat. Alyss sighted him in her imagination’s eye, cautiously picking his way down a hall. If he crosses paths with Redd, he’ll try to engage with her. She cast her worried eyes toward Bibwit. He too knew why Dodge had left them. And Dodge’s selfish desire for retribution might compromise the Alyssians’ chance for victory.

“We’ll split the pawns between us,” said General Doppel.

“Meet us at the Heart Crystal,” Alyss said. “Look for a spiral hall.”

The generals bowed. “By which time, may the peace of White Imagination have descended on the queendom.”

Using her imagination’s eye as guide, Alyss led Homburg Molly, Hatter Madigan, and the chessmen through the fortress. It was as if she had been there before, the way she maneuverd without hesitation through the passageways, heading straight for Redd while elsewhere, avoiding detection by the packs of card soldiers that patrolled the gloomy rooms and halls (it was easy to avoid the enemy when he worked alone), Dodge hunted for The Cat.

“Here, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

He had already crept around the fortress’ lower floors, visiting the seekers’ cave and the empty hall of the Glass Eyes, and was now systematically working his way up, floor by floor. Ahead of him, the hall curved up and out of sight like a corkscrew. He could have taken any of the corridors that branched off to the left and right of him, but something-a feeling, an instinct-propelled him forward. Not three

spirit-danes’ lengths away from the ballroom in which Redd waited for Alyss, he heard urgent, hushed voices coming from behind a door on his right. He didn’t care if it was to be among his last actions in life. He didn’t care about anything except confronting his whiskered nemesis. He kicked open the door and found-

Not The Cat, but Jack of Diamonds and the walrus-butler, hiding from the violence. They both jumped, startled at Dodge’s sudden entrance, but Jack was quick to recover. He took a small knife from his waistcoat pocket and jabbed the air in the general direction of the walrus.

“Ha-yah! Yah! We’ve got you now! Thank Issa you’ve come,” he said, to Dodge. “I thought I’d have to kill all of them myself. Hoi! Cha! Cha!”

Jack went on jabbing the air, but Dodge wasn’t fooled, especially because Jack was trying to shove the key to the Looking Glass Maze into a pocket of his pantaloons.

To Dodge, anyone who had collaborated with his father’s murderers was an enemy. “There’s only one reward for a traitor,” he said and raised his sword to strike Jack of Diamonds a fatal blow, when-

The unmistakable sound of purring. He spun around, saw The Cat standing in the doorway. “And what is my reward?” asked the beast.

Dodge gave voice to no warrior yell, no cry of attack. He simply ran at The Cat, sword first. The creature leaped to the side and Dodge’s blade missed, clanged against the stone wall just as The Cat swatted his shoulder with a claw, tearing his Alyssian uniform. Dodge himself was only grazed; four thin lines of blood formed on his skin. It could have been worse.

“A little something to match the ones on your face,” The Cat said, indicating the scars on Dodge’s cheek. Dodge feinted left and, as The Cat moved right to avoid him, he spun and stabbed the beast with the

knuckle-blade on his free hand-an ancient Wonderland weapon, the tops of its ring holes sharpened to

a blade that spanned the width of four fingers.

A patch of The Cat’s fur matted with blood, but it wasn’t a fatal wound. The Cat lunged-a balletic move, landing on his front paws and kicking Dodge with his hind ones, the claws making shallow puncture marks in Dodge’s chest and sending him stumbling to the floor.

Seeing that the doorway was clear, Jack of Diamonds and the walrus ran out of the room, each hurrying on his own way in search of a new hiding place.

Alyss was fast approaching the spiral hall, sandwiched between Hatter and Molly for protection, but she paused.

“What is it, Princess Alyss?” Molly asked.

In her imagination’s eye she saw The Cat pounce. She saw Dodge roll clear and get to his feet, ready to face whatever might come next, battered and bleeding but as determined as ever.

“It’s Dodge,” she said. “He’s-”

But just then a patrol of card soldiers spotted her and rushed forward. In a wall to her right, Alyss imagined a doorway opening into one of the fortress’ many unused rooms, and just as she, Molly, Hatter,

and the others passed through it, with all of the card soldiers but one a few steps behind them, and that one-a Three Card-in the doorway itself, she imagined it gone. The doorway vanished, leaving the Three Card half sealed in the wall and the rest of the card soldiers stranded on the other side of it without their quarry.

Dodge. She focused her imagination’s eye on him, saw him punching The Cat in the face with the handle of his sword. I won’t risk losing him a second time. She created another Dodge.

“I’ll do this myself!” he screamed when he saw his double.

He slashed at his conjured self, which gave The Cat a chance to shove him away and gain some room. The double disappeared and The Cat went at Dodge with his front paws poised to strike. Bad move. Dodge used the paws as targets; with his sword in one hand and the knuckle-blade on the other, he stabbed them both simultaneously, and before The Cat could retreat, he sunk his sword deep and hard through the beast’s rib cage. The Cat crumpled to the floor, lifeless.

“Get up!” Dodge shouted. “Get up, get up, get up!”

It felt as if he waited nine lifetimes for The Cat to regain consciousness. He saw the beast’s eyelids tremble and again sank his sword into that furry chest. He didn’t know that Genevieve and Hatter had each already taken one of The Cat’s lives and that Redd herself had taken three more. Now that he’d begun it, now that he’d tasted the revenge for which he’d waited so long, he was in a frenzy of rage and impatience for it to be over.

“Come on! Get up!”

Dodge understood that a soldier’s reflexes were fastest when he was relaxed, but his emotions were getting the better of his training and he failed to anticipate The Cat’s cleverness. He stood over the creature, watching for the slightest movement. But upon again regaining life, The Cat held himself as still as death, so that his first move wasn’t a flicker of eye muscle but the swipe of a claw across Dodge’s thigh, inflicting the deepest wound yet.

“Aaaagh!”

Dodge fell back. Blood pumped through his shredded trousers and down his leg.

Slowly, almost leisurely, The Cat stood. His wounds were healed and he grinned. He appeared revived, stronger than ever, while Dodge’s injuries were beginning to make themselves felt-his reactions slower, his shoulder and leg and chest pulsing with pain. The Cat stepped toward him and, for the first time in the fight, Dodge moved backwards, a whisper of defeat in his head, as-

Alyss at last came upon the ballroom where Redd waited. I send you wishes and hope for survival, Dodge, since you won’t let me send anything else. Please try not to let your darkest urges overtake what’s good in you. She was about to enter the ballroom when a horde of Glass Eyes ambushed her soldiers, and suddenly Hatter, Molly, the knight, and chessmen were fighting for their lives all around her. Redd wants me to face her alone.

Clangk! Skrich-onk!

The way Hatter and Molly fought, the particular manner in which they spun, kicked, twirled, punched, and used their Millinery weapons, was very similar. She fights more like a full-fledged member of the Millinery than a halfer. But the thought was as fleeting as thoughts can be, and as Alyss entered the ballroom, she left the Alyssians to fight for themselves, her entire being focused on her aunt, with whom

she was about to come face-to-face for only the second time ever.