ArchEnemy (19 page)

“I know better than to answer for Her Imperial Viciousness,” the assassin said, “but Wonderland is vast and filled with enemies. Imagination or not, there
are
just two of you.”

“And now there are three. I feel so much better.”

Alyss’ hand fell lightly on his arm. “Dodge,” she whispered.

If he was going to convince everyone that he accepted this new alliance, he had to stop trying to pick a fight with Redd’s assassin. He had to act as if he trusted the man.

Feigning apology, he dipped his head first to Alyss, then to Mr. Van de Skülle. “We should inform Bibwit and General Doppelgänger,” he said, determined not to lose the best opportunity he had of slamming his father’s sword hilt-deep into The Cat’s guts.

“
S
CRUMPTIOUS!”

“Delicious!”

“So bold yet so subtle!”

“So pungent yet so delicately flavored!”

“The perfect hint of cinnamon-minnamon and such a delightfully crumbly mouthfeel!”

Blue unstuck his lips from his hookah and grumbled: “Ahem hum hem hem. I remind the council that the king’s surprise delivery has not yet arrived.”

Sitting in a semicircle deep within the Everlasting Forest, each oracle on a fungus as tall and wide as a three-room cottage and as intensely colored as himself, Yellow, Purple, and Red turned to one another, shocked, Orange and Green were horrified, but the antennae of all bent low to explore mouths woefully empty.

“I wish he’d hurry,” Purple moaned, “I’m starving!”

As if in answer, Blue pushed a long funnel of smoke from his lungs—so long that it appeared never-ending, continuing to pour out his mouth even as its other end weaved off through the valley to some unseen rendezvous. Then he began to inhale, sucking the smoke funnel back into his lungs. Purple and the rest of the oracles twittered in anticipation, salivating outright when the funnel’s end came into view, because moving toward them, following the trail of smoke, was one of Arch’s intel ministers bearing what looked like a gigantic upside-down mushroom top filled with fragrant, steaming fresh—

“Tarty tarts!” the oracles cried at once.

Piled willy-nilly in the curious-shaped receptacle: enough tarty tarts to feed . . . well, six tarty tart-loving oracles. Caramel-stuffed tarts decorated with choco-nibblies. Tarts bursting with gobbygrabe goo and strawberry mash. Cream-filled tarts dusted with glittering sugar. Buttery tarts topped with vanilla icing, blueberry swirls, squigberry doilies, cinnamon-minnamon sprinkles. The minister had brought these and more, had in fact brought every variety of tarty tart known to Wonderland. Stepping before the council, he cleared his throat and—

“King Arch wishes to present us with a token of his esteem and appreciation,” the orange and red caterpillars said.

Spooked at hearing the words he was about to utter, Arch’s minister—acting by no means ministerial—stumbled off into the valley, where he would, the oracles knew, soon be lost.

Purple dropped from his mushroom and thrust his face into the caldron of tarty tarts.

“Have some manners!” Yellow huffed.

Purple paused from his indiscriminate munching, lifted his head. “I have
plenty
of manners,” he said, gobbygrape smears staining his cheeks and crumbs stippling the area around his mouth. “There’s the manner in which I puff on my hookah, the manner in which I move through dirt, and what you’re presently witnessing is the manner in which I delight in tarty tarts!”

“
I’ll
show
you
delight!” Yellow bellowed, and floated down next to Purple to shove his own face into the treats and munch indiscriminately.

The red caterpillar, meanwhile, had grabbed eight tarty tarts and was holding them in the eight feet closest to his mouth, taking a single bite of each in turn, over and over again. Blue was stacking tarty tart upon tarty tart to make a quintuple-decker tarty tart sandwich and Green was putting an end to the heretofore eternal question of just how many tarty tarts a caterpillar-oracle could fit in his mouth at one time.

“You proceed better than anticipated with the king,” Blue said.

“Aaanhaaah nanh nanh aanhing gah annnahghing,” Green answered, swallowing mightily so that a bulge of food visibly passed along the length of his body. “Excuse me. Depends who was doing the anticipating, I meant to say.”

Blue and Green chuckled. Green chucked a raspberry-blast tart into Blue’s eager maw, Blue tossed a dingy-pear tart into Green’s. They chewed and swallowed.

“Homburg Molly is in place,” Blue noted between bites of his five-decker. “But time grows short for getting Alyss to where Everqueen requires her to be.”

“Earth,” Green said knowingly.

The red caterpillar was now holding sixteen tarty tarts in the sixteen feet closest to his mouth, taking a bite of each in turn. “You know what
I’m
going to say,” he announced, too busy attacking his baked goods to utter more.

“I know the many things you
might
say,” Blue prompted him. “To which do you refer?”

“The third one.”

Purple lifted his head from the tarty tart caldron, his front legs wagging in the air, his eyes wide and turned to the sky. “Wait! I’m having a vision! Yes, I see . . . I see . . . that Arch
must
be the one to lure Alyss to Earth!”

“I see it too!” Red cried, lifting his sixteen tarty tarts heavenward. “It will not accomplish what must be acccomplished to establish Everqueen if Blue directs Alyss to Earth without involving the king!”

Tipping the last of his tarty tart sandwich down his gullet, Blue addressed the council, “Do we not see the past and all possible futures at every given moment?”

“I’m blind!” Yellow shouted; having removed his face from the pile of tarty tarts, gobs of the stuff were covering his eyes.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Green, plucking the gobs free and popping them into his mouth.

“Do we not,” Blue continued, “alter all possible futures every time we intervene with lesser beings who vie for the Heart Crystal?”

“The possible futures of all beings change constantly,” Green pointed out.

“Every gwormmy-blink of every lunar minute,” added the red caterpillar, “every time a lesser being takes the slightest action. I find the role of an oracle exhausting even without this
flux
. Having to be aware of all the possible futures of every moment as well as the possible futures of
those
possible futures and—”

“It’s enough to make my head hurt,” said Yellow.

“Tell me about it,” Purple agreed with a roll of his eyes.

Blue took a long pull of his hookah, grumbled: “Ahum hem. If we again intervene, we create possibilities that will not exist otherwise. The most important of these, as we can see, represents the gravest risk to the Crystal and to ourselves.”

“He is, yes,” Green said.

“Who is, what?” asked Blue, as Yellow, Red, Orange, and Purple looked to him for guidance.

“That is the answer to your next question. Yes, Arch is clever enough to discern the course of action that poses awful risk to us, but which Everqueen demands.”

“Yum,” Red said, gazing adoringly into the tarty tart caldron.

“Don’t we know that we
must
intervene?” Yellow quizzed the council. “Do we not all see that? If we do not intervene, none of the possible futures for ourselves currently foreseen is, um . . . good?”

“It is decided then,” said Blue. “Green shall prod the king and I will do what must be done with regards to Alyss Heart.”

Red wiped his brow with a flugelberry cream tart as one wipes away sweat after much exertion. “This reminds me of the time we were deciding whether to intervene when the Lady of Clubs tried to steal the Heart Crystal.”

“That’s next month,” Yellow said.

“That
was
next month,” corrected Purple, “now that you-know-who’s done you-know-what.”

“Right!”

“Ugh. Now?” Green said, wrinkling his nose at Blue.

Blue exhaled a puff of hookah smoke that formed the sentence, “Yes, now.”

“OK then, all right. Rush me, why don’t you?” Green frantically tucked tarty tarts into the crevices between his annular muscles—horizontal crevices that acted like little pockets up and down his caterpillar belly. “Let me just . . . I must have sustenance to fortify me on my journey. All right, off I go!”

Laden with his favorite foodstuff, Green stepped on to a carpet of hookah smoke and floated off through the valley to instigate events in which everything that mattered to Wonderland’s oracles could be lost.

I
N HEART Palace’s royal library, Bibwit Harte pulled scrolls from drawers and encyclopedia crystals from shelves, a charred codex and diaries of long-gone tutors from a glass display case in the center of the room. With its numerous floor-to-ceiling shelves, its reading nooks and desks for study, the library was as accommodating as any place could be for the accumulation of knowledge, yet it didn’t contain a tenth the number of volumes there had been in the former palace—so much of Wonderland’s history, documented nowhere else, stolen by looters in the weeks following Queen Genevieve’s downfall, or destroyed in the Redd-imagined collapse that ultimately rendered Genevieve’s seat a mound of rubble.

“Oof!” the walrus-butler exclaimed, blowing on a scroll to clean it of dust and getting the dust all over his cheeks and whiskers. “I’ll have to make sure these are cleaned more frequently. Yes, they do need a good . . . a thorough cleaning and airing out, don’t they, Mr. Bibwit?”

Mr. Bibwit would have preferred the volumes to remain as they’d been, collecting dust, rather than surrender them to Arch. He hadn’t opened a single one of them since Queen Genevieve’s last tutorial, but as he laid a milk white hand upon each, he saw their contents as clearly as if he and Genevieve were sitting down to a lesson. A Ten Card’s chronicle of the early wars incited by discovery of the Heart Crystal; official transcripts of negotiations among the suit families prior to Wonderland’s formation; the diary of a tutor Bibwit knew in his youth: These texts contained miscellaneous anecdotes relating to the oracles—a cryptic utterance by Blue (“Where did we come from? We have always been here. Waiting”); a vague reference to a Looking Glass Maze as the means to imaginative maturity for “those gifted with imitation of the Heart Crystal’s power.” What was known of the caterpillars had been culled from these and other volumes, distilled into brief entries found in the encyclopedia crystals.

“Despite the lunar hours of reading and viewing these volumes represent,” Bibwit said to the walrus, “His Majesty isn’t likely to come away with more knowledge of the oracles than he already possesses.”

“Ouff, goodness, this dust! How is that possible, Mr. Bibwit?”

Bibwit’s ears softened. “Gentle friend, I sometimes forget that although you and I are frequently together, you have little experience with the oracles.”

“None at all, Mr. Bibwit, and I wish to . . . I do prefer to keep it that way. But if the oracles help Queen Alyss, our beloved distraught queen, why, I
will
be extraordinarily grateful to them from afar.”

“I’m afraid the caterpillars’ concern lies solely, as it always has, with the Heart Crystal as the generative force in the cosmos,” said Bibwit. “They bother with kings and queens only to the extent that these impact the Crystal’s welfare, and I have no evidence the oracles favor Alyss any more than they do, say, King Arch.”

The walrus’s whiskers trembled, his tusks gnawed his lower lip. To think he might have to serve King Arch for the remainder of his days!

“But as I was saying,” Bibwit went on, “these volumes contain no great information about the oracles. Many of the most reliable and informative—direct accounts recorded by others of my species—have been lost or destroyed. Even
In Queendom Speramus
has not yet been re-collated. What King Arch will find here are unrelated quotes and rumors that span generations, the impression of which, taken together, present the oracles as frustrating, exasperating, often inexplicable, and rarely or never easily intelligible. Just as they are in life. Excuse me.”

Bibwit abruptly reached under the sleeve of his scholar’s robe and tapped the receiver node on his crystal communicator’s keypad—before, to the walrus-butler’s ear, the device even sounded. Projecting as if from the tutor’s navel on to the air: an image of General Doppelgänger in the war room.

“Mr. Harte,” the general whispered, “I hope you aren’t presently indisposed?”

“Since Arch has given me this assignment on the oracles, General, his spies have relaxed their guard somewhat—which is to say, a tad. I suspect Arch’s belief in the inferiority of females is causing him to underestimate our queen and any who’d plot on her behalf.”

Doppelgänger looked dubious and whispered, “Spies haven’t lessened their watch of
me
. But I’ve received a communication requesting our immediate attention.”

The general made some adjustments on the knobby slab of equipment before him and the vid nozzle of Bibwit’s communicator shot forth a second projection: Alyss and Dodge in Outerwilderbeastia.

Alyss wasted no time with pleasantries. “General, Bibwit, what I’m about to tell you is likely to be a shock, but in light of the extreme hardships we currently face, I believe we have more to gain from this new connection than to lose.”

“An assassin!” General Doppelgänger cried, splitting into the twin figures of Generals Doppel and Gänger as Mr. Van de Skülle passed into view behind the queen.

“Yes, General,” Alyss said without turning around, “that’s Mr. Van de Skülle. He’s here to help. Redd and I have agreed to work together against Arch.”

Flabbergasted, Generals Doppel and Gänger each split in two: a pair of Doppels and the like number of Gängers stared, loose-jawed, at Dodge. Bibwit, no less stunned, also stared openmouthed at the guardsman.