CHAPTER 41

C HESSMEN GUARDED the palace’s perimeter, card soldiers had been dispatched to key points in Wondertropolis, and military outposts throughout the queendom were put on alert. In the palace’s war room, the screens showing Vollrath, The Cat, and the two unidentified strangers blinked on and off as if from a momentary power failure. Before the failure, Vollrath and the others were visible; afterward, they were gone.

“I’ll find them,” Alyss said. Directing her imaginative sight to the outcropping of rock where the enemy had just been, she scanned the surrounding Boarderland terrain. When she located them, they were farther away than she would’ve thought, speeding headlong in a vehicle unfamiliar to her, as it had been freshly conjured by Redd-a three-wheeled machine built to cover rugged land, in which her aunt sat above and behind the others in a throne-like seat, a staff topped with a long-dead heart in her hand.

“I see them,” she announced. “Redd’s with them. She has her scepter.” “We should attack before she attacks us,” Dodge urged.

“Attack Boarderland?” The general looked doubtful. “We’d have Redd and Arch to contend with,” said Bibwit. “We already do, I’d bet.”

“She’s traveling away from Wonderland?” Alyss murmured.

Racing deeper into Boarderland, her steel-wool hair buffeted by the wind, Redd turned and seemed to stare right at Alyss, as if she could sense her niece’s imaginative eye upon her. The corner of her lips curled in a sneer, she swung her scepter and, in Heart Palace’s war room, Alyss jumped, startled; her imaginative sight had gone black.

“What is it?” Bibwit asked. “She blocked my sight.”

“Not good,” the general fretted, splitting in two. “Not good at all,” said Generals Doppel and Ganger, each entering coordinates on their crystal communicators, ordering troop deployments to the demarcation barrier.

Alyss tried again to settle the eye of her imagination on her aunt. She flashed on images of Redd in a valley and on a hill. Then she realized, there were hundreds of them: Redd in her three-wheeled transport trundling across an open plain; Redd in her three-wheeled transport bouncing up a rocky escarpment; several Redds spread out on the Glyph Cliffs; an untold number of Redds along the banks of the Bookie River; innumerable Redds marching along Boarderland’s side of the demarcation barrier.

“We’re getting reports!” Generals Doppel and Ganger cried.

“She’s conjured doubles of herself,” Alyss said. “Hundreds of them, if not more. From this distance, there’s no way for me to know which one is real. I’ll have to attack them all at once.”

She conjured a spikejack tumbler for every Redd she saw. The tumblers would pass harmlessly through the constructs, but the legitimate Redd would have to counterattack to survive. The weapons went hurtling toward their targets-and through all of them.

“I don’t understand. Not one of them is real?”

“How can that be?” Dodge steamed. “Where could she have gone?”

Alyss had no answer and Bibwit’s ears shrugged in apologetic ignorance. Generals Doppel and Ganger were shouting into their crystal communicators:

“The demarcation barrier itself is the front of the front line!” “Our border soldiers are the back of the front line!”

Bibwit hopped to his feet. “We need to get you to the crystal chamber, Alyss. Your imagination will be strongest there.”

“Great,” said Dodge. “So if Redd happens to remote view her, she’ll know where the Heart Crystal is.” “If Alyss cannot defeat Redd while standing next to the crystal-a necessity Redd’s apparent strength is

calling into question-it won’t matter if we try to hide it from her.”

Whether this convinced Dodge or he had simply resigned himself to the worst, he turned toward the door. “I’ll be with my men.” He was already halfway to the hall when-

“Wait!”

Alyss was standing, a pleading, concerned look in her eyes. But for what was she pleading? She could say nothing to keep him from going-she should say nothing-and she knew it.

He returned to her, but only for a moment. “I forgive you, Alyss. For lying to me. That’s something, isn’t it-a guardsman forgiving his queen?” He kissed her. “Please stay safe. I’ll try to do the same.”

He spun on his heels and was gone, and Alyss allowed Bibwit to lead her from the room.

CHAPTER 42

T HE ARMS dealer was a scurrying creature, a former Glebog who kept his merchandise beneath false drawer bottoms, behind artwork that popped out of frames, and inside clocks and cooking appliances whose mechanical workings had been removed. Hatter waited outside his tent while Weaver purchased as much as she was able with the gems he had given her. She emerged carrying a duffel, inside of which were a couple of AD52s with several additional projectile decks, a quiver of mind riders, and a scorpspitter.

Hatter armed himself in a nearby alley, latching the quiver and scorpspitter to his belt so that his laborer’s coat hid them from view. He pocketed the projectile decks, strapped one of the AD52s to a thigh and reached for the other.

“I’m keeping this one,” Weaver said. “I don’t think you should.”

“I know.”

The luxury of arguing was not an option. “At least wait until I’m inside,” Hatter said. “We only have a chance if I get to Molly before the worst of the fighting starts.”

As they entered Arch’s street, Weaver drifted off alone, loitering at a propaganda stall while Hatter slipped around to the back of the wives’ tent. He peered in through the cut in the canvas he’d made earlier. Nothing had changed inside: still just the thirteen wives, two ministers, and Molly.

From the distance, a rumbling approached, growing in volume.

Hatter pulled the scorpspitter out from under his coat and dropped it into the tent. Sploink! Splish! Bullets of poison splattered against the inside walls, and before the last of the wives ran screaming to the street, Hatter flicked open his wrist-blades and rammed them hard against the tent’s canvas. He stepped through the shreds. The ministers on either side of Molly unloaded their shooters at him, but he moved toward them, his blades deflecting the onslaught of their deadly crystal. He had gone just a step or two when the guard posted outside the tent’s entrance ran in, and behind him, Weaver.

“Hey!” Weaver shouted, and when the guard turned, she dealt a quarter-deck of razor-cards into him. Shwink! Hatter snapped open his belt sabers, twirled and sliced the life out of the ministers. Weaver was

rocking gently on her knees, holding her daughter.

“Your homburg?” Hatter asked.

“I don’t need it anymore,” the girl answered, ashamed.

This wasn’t the time to ask what she meant or to look for it. “We should hurry,” Hatter said. “I can’t move in this.”

With her eyes, Molly indicated her outfit. Hatter slashed the tight-fitting material with his wrist-blades and it fell in tatters without a single knife edge so much as scraping her skin. Weaver ferreted out something for Molly to wear from among the wives’ things. Hatter folded shut his wrist-blades, unlocked one of the bracelets and tossed it to his daughter along with the quiver of mind riders.