It was probably another test of her self-control.

She would abide by the Millinery code of resorting to lethal violence only after every other option had failed. She’d already been wrong once this mission. She couldn’t afford to be wrong again.

With an underhanded twist of the wrist, she sent her homburg shield whirling toward the oncoming projectiles. Almost in the same instant, she snapped open her wrist-blades. The homburg ricocheted from one makeshift missile to another, deflecting them back upon those who’d thrown them. With the spinning blades attached to her wrists, she easily knocked away the odd chunks of mortar that made it past the homburg, which now boomeranged back to her like an eager pet. As she listened to the fading footfalls

of her assailants, she snapped the weapon back into its traditional homburg shape and flipped it onto her head.

Something was glowing in the half-ruined wall. She approached for a better look: a luminescent top hat emblem embedded in the brick.

“That was too easy,” she said, reaching out to touch the emblem, when- Eeeeeech! Eeeeeech! Eeeeeech!

A flock of seekers came soaring out of the sky, dive-bombing toward her. No need to debate with herself this time. Seekers were part vulture, part fly, all nastiness.

Molly punched her belt buckle. The long, crescent-shaped sabers of her belt flicked open and, with both sets of wrist-blades activated, she at last exercised her abilities to their fullest, twisting and tumbling through the air, slashing at the shrieking creatures, sending them headlong to the ground with a blood-wet splat until-

They were gone, the street deserted.

She snapped shut her weapons, touched the glowing symbol in the wall and the scene vanished. She was standing in a vast armory, two city blocks square, the ceiling four stories above her head: the Holographic and Transmutative Base of Xtremecombat training, or HATBOX, at the Millinery.

“Definitely too easy, even for someone as embarrassing as me,” Molly huffed.

She marched back to the control booth at the opposite end of the room. Sure, Alyss and Bibwit and everyone else said it didn’t matter that she was a halfer. Sure, she had been made the queen’s personal bodyguard. But it wasn’t as if the position came with any serious responsibilities. Alyss was too powerful to need a bodyguard. And when Hatter had held the post, she knew, he’d been more involved in policy making and missions vital to Wonderland’s security. She’d probably never be treated like a full-fledged Milliner, never be considered good enough. Why else would Rohin and Tock have been sent to Earth to keep a lookout for Redd and The Cat? She was at least as talented in combat as they were.

“More so!” she exclaimed aloud.

At the control booth, she turned the dial to Z, the most advanced skill level. No one in her class had ever gotten past W before, including Rohin and Tock.

She planted herself firmly at the starting position-the top hat symbol inked on the floor. “Begin!” she said loudly, and though she remained stationary, it was as if the walls of the room had been set spinning.

The HATBOX, which never presented the same scenario twice, was scanning its infinity of locations, enemies, and weapons for a suitable trial. The scanning was meant to disorient her, upset her mental balance. Whatever. As a hall in Mount Isolation solidified around her, she took a single step forward, felt the tickle of something like a whisker against her cheek and-

Ooomph!

She was knocked to the ground, her coat shredded near the right shoulder. She looked up and saw The Cat, Redd’s top former assassin, laughing at her. A muscular humanoid who could morph into a cute kitten at will, he stood erect on two legs, his thighs each as thick as her waist. He had powerful, sinewy arms tapering to paws, claws as sharp and long and wide as butcher knives, and a feline face with flat pink nose, whiskers, and a slobbery mouthful of fangs. Bits of Molly’s coat hung from one of his claws. She didn’t even have time to get to her feet before the scene dissolved.

“Again!” she yelled.

This time she activated her wrist-blades while the room was still scanning, its walls flickering with possible scenes and enemies. At the briefest sighting of The Cat or anything feline, she lunged forward, determined not to be caught off guard again. Yet when a new environment took on form and substance around her, The Cat was nowhere to be seen. She stood backed up against one end of a long, narrow canyon of volcanic rock, trapped by three jabberwocky.

“Nice jabberwocky,” Molly said. “Molly jabberwocky’s friend.”

Jabberwocky didn’t need friends. One of them exhaled a jet of fire at her and-

She dropped and rolled, tapped her belt buckle, and the belt’s sabers sprung open and sliced into the beast’s underbelly.

Bad move.

A jabberwock’s skin was nearly as hard as fossilized lava. Far from fatal, the saber wound only provoked the beast into a rage. It stomped and spat fire in all directions, Molly rolling first one way, then another, deftly maneuvering to get out from under the thing without being crushed. Problem was, she came out exactly where she’d been before: trapped against the canyon wall by three jabberwocky.

She shrugged open her backpack-flink!-and from among the variety of blades and corkscrews it offered took hold of two crowbar-shaped weapons, their pointed ends veering off at right angles from

the long handles. With one of these in each hand, she leaped toward the canyon wall, knife points driving into the rock and holding her momentarily aloft over the jabberwocky. She pushed off from the wall with her feet and landed on the back of the nearest jabberwock. The beast went insane, bucking and twisting its head around on its long neck, snapping its jaws at her. It required all of Molly’s strength not to fall off, just to keep her grip on the bony protuberance near the top of the beast’s spine-a lucky vertebra, not unlike the pommel of a spirit-dane’s saddle on the otherwise cratered moonscape of jabberwock skin.

Something hot flashed against Molly’s leg.

One of the jabberwocky had spit a fireball. It grazed her-worse, it grazed her mount, and now her

jabberwock and the other were fighting, burning each other alive with their furnace breath even as they reared up on their hind legs, raking and clawing at each other with their forelegs.

Thwap!

A tail came around and laid Molly flat on the ground. She had time enough to see a jabberwock approach, its mouth opening wider and wider in the yawn-like motion that inevitably preceded a fire-shot from its throat before-

The scene dissolved and the lights came on. “Again!” she yelled.

She had to set aside her anger and resentment. She had to relax. If her time at the Millinery had taught her anything, it was that adrenaline made you impulsive, overanxious. It could trick you into doing something stupid. If she was to complete level Z, she had to stay calm.