A trio of old notebooks tied together with flugelberry vine. Weaver had carried them everywhere. They contained the esoteric formulas of her art. Hatter untied the vine and opened one of them, wondering if the indecipherable symbols on the page in front of him were responsible for the scarf she had once give him…or at least the timing of the gift. “For your birthday, whenever it might be,” she had said, because

Milliners were not supposed to know or celebrate their birthdays, such personal trifles falling outside their duty to protect the queendom. Hatter’s birthday wasn’t listed in his official file, but he had always suspected that Weaver, by means of some concoction or other, might have discovered it and this had been her way of telling him.

He took a carton of jollyjellies from the satchel. Even in his grief, he had to smile. Weaver had been addicted to sweets: frosted cakes with lollipop sprinkles, chocolate biscuits with swirls of vanilla batter at their center. It was just like her, so lovably willful, to accommodate her cravings while hiding out from Redd and her minions, on the run for her life.

Next out of the satchel came a first-aid kit, complete with cauterizer, skin grafter and the U-shaped

sleeve of interconnected NRG nodes that a surgeon had once used to fuse Hatter’s shattered shoulder back together. But also inside the kit, smashed as if with a rock or other blunt object: Weaver’s Millinery ID chip. She must have removed it from under the skin of her forearm to aid in her survival, destroyed it to prevent Redd from tracking her. It was a tiny thing, roughly the same size as the mole Weaver had had

on the nape of her neck, but one of the chip’s circuits wasn’t adequately destroyed. It had probably been enough to betray her location to Redd’s assassins.

He should have trusted his instincts. Originally against the idea, put forward by the Millinery’s board, of hiring a carefully vetted civilian to handle the facility’s alchemistic needs, he had changed his mind only after he considered: better to have every Milliner out in the field than in a lab. Besides, none had Weaver’s gift, her ability to discover and exploit the hidden properties of things; she could take some secret mixture of liquid metals, combine it with a beaker full of who knew what, and produce the strongest, most responsive of Millinery blades. Weaver was no ordinary civilian. But he should not have

let her work there. He might never have known her, never have fallen in love with her or even known that he was capable of such love-he’d have lost these things, but she’d still be alive, filling her civilian days with civilian concerns.

He thoroughly crushed the ID chip against a rock, returned it to the first-aid kit. He upended the satchel and let the lone item it still contained drop into his palm. As slim and compact as a playing card, it resembled a typical book from Earth in every detail except size: Weaver’s diary. What he’d hoped and feared to find.

Mustering his courage, Hatter pressed the sides of the diminutive book, the covers sprang open and- More than three lunar cycles after arriving here, the man who had fought too many battles to remember,

who had faced a thousand different deaths and come away from all of them more or less intact, suffered

the blow of his life when the 3-D image of Weaver materialized and he heard the sound of her voice. “Hatter, my love, we never got a chance to say good-bye.”

CHAPTER 10

Most continuum travelers had to concentrate on their destinations to keep from being projected out of a looking glass portal at some undesired location. Portals were stationed throughout Wonderland; the interlinked channels they created could prove slow going for inexperienced travelers who might enter a portal with the intention of visiting the Unnatural History Museum across town only to find themselves projected out of one at the end of their block. Navigating the continuum took time and practice. But on this particular day, at this particular hour, even the most skilled travelers were helpless. Commuters streaming home after a long day at work, families returning from visits with friends or relatives: One moment they were traveling along the continuum’s network of crystalline byways, the next they were shot out of the nearest looking glass like cannon fodder, their limbs flailing desperately for purchase on something, anything.

Wondertropolis descended into tumult: the cries of the injured; the breathless reassurances and urgent calls of those rendering first aid; the bawling of frightened children; the moans and prayers of the superstitious who thought a sky raining Wonderlanders signified the end of the world. All was shock, confusion, pain, in the midst of which lay the girl who had caused it, unconscious, untended to, and unnoticed by everyone save two Boarderlanders on an illicit errand for their King.

Whoomp!

A bright hot force knocked Molly unconscious as what few splinters remained of the once beautiful chest fell from her hands. Catapulted out of a looking glass on Theodora Avenue, she landed hard on the

quartz-and-pyrite-mottled pavement, in front of a pet store full of squawking tuttle-birds and screeching lizards. Even before her homburg came tumbling out of the continuum after her, four seekers began to circle in the sky above, signaling her location.

Deaf to the injured Wonderlanders strewn about the desperate streets, blind to everything save the seekers, Ripkins and Blister stepped onto Theodora Avenue and sighted their quarry. As they approached, Ripkins shook his head, dismissive of the young bodyguard.

“What could Arch want with her?”

Blister said nothing, not one to try and guess Arch’s motives the way Ripkins did. What did he care of motives so long as he got to use his gift of touch to hurt people? He noticed Molly’s homburg on the pavement and picked it up. He had never seen a Milliner’s hat in operation before, but with the instinct of one given to all things military, he flicked it and-

Fwap!

It flattened into a razor-edged shield.

Ripkins scanned the scene: no one was watching. Lucky them.

“Are we supposed to be impressed?” Blister scorned, returning the homburg to its original shape. Ripkins took Molly’s limp body in his arms, laid her over his shoulder, and Blister led the way through

the alleys of the city. Not until the assassins had crossed back into Boarderland did they make contact with their king, who was in his palace with his ministers when the alert came and Blister’s face hovered before him.

“We have her,” the assassin said.

A LYSS WALKED purposefully through the palace’s night-dimmed halls, through three state rooms and as many parlors, trying to convince herself that her sole aim was to become more familiar with her new home, but…

Can’t I even admit it to myself?

She was looking for Dodge. To seek him with her imagination’s eye had felt like spying. Now, if and when she found him, she would feign surprise and say that she was simply exploring the palace, familiarizing herself with its well-appointed rooms, glittering floors, tumbled stone staircases that resembled frozen waterfalls, hand-hewn balustrades, and spacious landings.