“And what if women devoted themselves to domestic chores as they should?”
She would not allow herself to get angry, especially in front of Molly, whom she could feel bristling beside her. The difference between Redd and King Arch might only be one of degree. She would have to be more circumspect around him.
“I apologize,” said Arch. “You are my host as Wonderland’s queen and I should behave accordingly.”
Alyss stood. “It’s time I returned to my party, Arch. You’re welcome to join the festivities or not, as you choose, but I thank you for offering your respects.”
Alyss and Homburg Molly started for the door.
“You know that I was one of the last people to see your father alive?” Arch asked. Alyss paused, not turning to face him.
“I’ve never met a finer king than Nolan,” Arch went on. “He was a brilliant politician and a brave soldier. The loss of such a king is itself cause to mourn. But when I consider that he and I were on the verge of securing greater cooperation between our nations, to create a united front against the unknown threats of the future, ah well…”
Even if Alyss had been looking directly at Arch, she couldn’t have known that he was lying, that he had in fact thought Nolan a weak and ineffective king who was forever at his wife’s skirts, and that he’d sooner have had his head lopped off than ever entangle his government with Wonderland’s. She swept out of the room, Molly following, careful not to step on the train of her dress.
A minister approached the Boarderland ruler. “Will we be joining the celebrations, my liege?”
Arch bent down, picked up a cracked button that had fallen unnoticed off Molly’s coat. “I think not,” he said. “I’ve found what I needed.”
CHAPTER 4
T HE GROUND became increasingly less fertile as the Everlasting Forest approached the gorge that separated it from the Volcanic Plains-the full heat and lava streams of which were visible to the card soldiers patrolling Wonderland’s most isolated military outpost.
“How am I supposed to prove myself in battle if we never get into one?” the Two Card complained. “If you had been in a battle,” answered the Four Card, “you wouldn’t wish for one.”
The Four Card knew what he was talking about, having been shuffled here after most of his former deck had been annihilated in skirmishes with Redd’s forces. He had spent the lunar cycles of Alyss’ exile deep within the Everlasting Forest, guarding the camp that had once served as headquarters for the Alyssian rebellion.
The Two Card glanced toward the parched, scanty trees that made up this part of the forest-which, from this vantage point, didn’t seem so everlasting. He looked off toward the plains with its shimmers of heat, its bright, slow-moving lava flows, and its occasional burst of the stuff from underground, as if the planet were nauseous and coughing up what it couldn’t digest.
“Who would ever attack us from here? It makes no strategic sense. We’re near nothing of vital importance to the queendom. Our enemies would have to use most of their strength just getting through the plains to reach us. Plus, they wouldn’t exactly be leaving themselves an easy route of retreat. There’s only one way to go, and that’s back into the Volcanic Plains.”
The Four Card had to admit this was all true. After Alyss’ ascension to the throne, General Doppelganger had established these far-flung military bases throughout Wonderland to serve as an early warning system: The first sign of anything unusual was to be immediately relayed to the bases closest to
the trouble, as well as to Central Command. It was not possible to be too vigilant, the general preached. Decks of card soldiers had thus been deployed to the distant jungles of Outerwilderbeastia, with its brambles and wildlife, and to the outermost quadrants of the Chessboard Desert, with its alternating squares of ice and black rock. Only the Valley of Mushrooms and the Volcanic Plains had been spared an influx of military personnel. General Doppelganger had ordered bases to be erected around the valley, on various peaks of the Snark Mountains, so that the caterpillar-oracles’ habitat could enter a period of new growth after being cleared of the mushrooms hacked to virtual mush by Redd’s forces. As for the Volcanic Plains, the belching heat of the place was so inhospitable to all life save jabberwocky that General Doppelganger considered it a buffer zone or no-man’s-land between the queendom and any opposing force.
But, thought the Four Card, even supposing that enemies did attack this outpost and somehow managed to fight their way into the thick of the Everlasting Forest, they would still be confronted with the Wall of Deflection-a series of looking glasses unconnected to the Crystal Continuum that spanned the entire breadth of the forest. Just as the glasses around the rebel Alyssian headquarters used to overlap one another at countless angles, these were aligned in such a way that, as you approached them, you saw not your reflection but what looked like dense, impassable arborage and so were deflected away from Wondertropolis.
“To attack the queendom from here would be suicide,” muttered the Two Card.
Funny, but what the Two Card most despised about life on this post was precisely what the Four Card appreciated. It was the least likely ever to be attacked. He had seen enough of battle and death.
“I wish you’d stop that humming,” said the Two Card.
The Four Card was about to explain that he wasn’t humming when all at once the forest trees began to whisper-troubled, hoarse whispering. Then he heard it too, a steady hum, approaching fast and growing into a great swell of-
“Incoming!”
He dove to the ground as a cannonball spider smashed into the wall behind him.
The Two Card fumbled with his weapon, unable to get off a single shot before the giant arachnid pricked him with its pincers and he crumpled to the ground, dead.
Not about to become food for some artificial spider, the Four Card scrabbled to his feet and ran, spraying razor-cards from his AD52 in the direction of incoming fire. Whoever his attackers were, they had begun to launch whipsnake grenades; electric coils crackled, hissed, slithered all around him. In the frenzy of the eye-burning explosions and ear-stabbing squeaks of cannonball spiders, he saw the enemy rise up out of the gorge with amazing agility-ordinary-looking Wonderlanders except for the colorless crystal embedded in their eye sockets.
“How’s it possible?”
The Glass Eyes, a breed of fighters manufactured by the maliciously inventive Redd Heart, were supposed to have been destroyed. Their return could mean only one thing: Redd had survived the Heart Crystal and was back in Wonderland.
“I fought her armies once and survived. I’ll do it again,” the Four Card vowed.
He emptied his AD52 at the Glass Eyes. Thwip thwip thwip, thwip thwip thwip thwip. Razor-cards shot