ArchEnemy (20 page)

“Why is everyone looking at me?” Dodge asked. “I think cooperating with Redd is brilliant—hard to wrap the mind around at first, sure, but Arch won’t expect it. And except for Alyss, I probably have the most reason to resent this affiliation, but I know my father wouldn’t want me to sabotage our chances of winning back the queendom by insisting on revenge against The Cat.”

He felt Alyss looking at him, turned and steadily returned her gaze.

“But certainly you don’t—” the Doppels began to ask Alyss.

“—trust Redd?” the Gängers finished.

“I do not,” said the displaced queen. “Nor do I believe she trusts me, which is as it should be. The moment it is beneficial to her, she will betray me, and I’m prepared to betray her as soon as our strategy permits. But until then . . .”

“Allow me to query, my dear,” Bibwit’s ears crimped and uncrimped worriedly, “to what specific purpose is this alliance to be put? What do we gain that we don’t already have on our own?”

“To my mind, Bibwit, it’s less an alliance than an acknowledgment that, so far as imagination is concerned, what hurts me or Redd hurts us both equally, and remembering this we will consult each other when determining how to proceed against Arch.”

The four generals shook their heads, rubbed sweaty palms down the front of their uniforms, then became two generals, then one—a singular Doppelgänger, apprehensive but resigned. “If you think it best, my queen,” he bowed.

Bibwit also bowed, albeit with wincing reluctance.

“General,” Alyss said, “in the past you’ve mentioned a certain scientist employed at the munitions factory in the flatlands outside Wondertropolis’ Creedite Quadrant. I believe you’ve said he exhibits rare devotion to White Imagination?”

“Taegel,” said Doppelgänger. “He was with the Alyssians during Redd’s reign. It was he who devised the Wall of Deflection that hid our headquarters in the Everlasting Forest.”

“Do you think we might still consider him a friend, even if he hasn’t suffered under Arch’s rule?”

“As long as you live, my queen, I’m convinced he would claim loyalty to you above all others.”

“Good. I want you to contact him and tell him to expect me and Dodge. Forward his communication codes to us and we’ll make arrangements with him once we’re near the factory. Obviously, he can tell no one.”

Bibwit still wore his wincing, pained expression.

“We have to go where we can find food and shelter,” Alyss said as if answering his concerns. “The munitions factory is close enough to Heart Palace to provide me with a better offensive position against Arch, and increased power from proximity to the Crystal, but it’s not so close as to be suicidal.”

“And we’ll benefit from whatever weapons Taegel can procure for the cause,” Dodge added.

“But my queen,” said General Doppelgänger, “to get to the factory, you’ll have to pass close to the Creedite Quadrant, where there is a greater risk of your being discovered.”

“If anyone has a better suggestion, I’m prepared to hear it. But whatever I do will have its dangers.”

Bibwit finally spoke. “Excuse me, my dear, but there is something else you should know. Arch has removed the Heart Crystal from its chamber and has not informed me of its location.”

“Nor me,” General Doppelgänger interrupted.

“Therefore,” said Bibwit, “I assume he means to keep it hidden—whether because of extreme prudence or, what is perhaps more likely, because he suspects that you and I are in contact and I am thus untrustworthy.”

“How could he move it without anyone seeing?” Dodge asked.

“Your point,” Alyss said to Bibwit, “is that if Arch has moved the Crystal out of Wondertropolis altogether, my journeying to the munitions factory is an unnecessary risk and the factory’s location of doubtful benefit to our cause?”

Bibwit’s ears flapped once, in concert with his shuttering eyelids: This was indeed his point. “You needn’t attack Arch if you have the Crystal or know where it is,” he said. “The Crystal is everything.”

“So Arch had a huge glowing gemstone of world-creating power moved without anyone seeing it?” Dodge asked. “Didn’t anyone
hear
it? Bibwit?”

Paying no attention to the tutor’s answer, Alyss sought the Crystal with her imagination’s eye, scanning the ballrooms of Heart Palace, its gardens and parks, Wondronia Grounds, the Aplu Theater and every Wondertropolis landmark large enough to house the Crystal. She scanned what she knew of Boarderland. But wherever she focused her imaginative eye: no Heart Crystal.

At length, she said, “I have to believe the munitions factory is our best option for now.” The projection of her and Dodge was already flickering to nothing when she signed off: “General, Bibwit, if you soon hear reports of me leading an army against Arch’s forces, I trust you’ll know it’s a decoy.”

The air of Heart Palace, from the war room to the library, transmitted perplexity, General Doppelgänger and Bibwit looking mutely at each other until the general murmured what neither of them was sure they’d heard:

“Decoys?”

I
’M NOT abandoning you.
The words rattled in Hatter’s head as he walked briskly from Molly into the bustle of High Street. He hadn’t wanted to leave Wonderland but now it required all of his mental strength to leave Oxford; he didn’t trust himself to turn around for one more glance. Ready to give his life in service to his queen though no less intent on returning to claim his daughter, he might not have been abandoning Molly, but it felt as if he were.

He turned off High Street, passed Radcliffe Square and rounded a corner on to Brasenose Lane, was in front of Lincoln College before he sighted one: a puddle where no puddle should be, in the middle of sun-warmed pavement. He took his top hat from his head, flicked it into a stack of blades that he secured in an inner coat pocket and, without any change in stride, not caring if anyone noticed, he stepped into the puddle and—

Sucked down and down and down, he struggled to keep his eyes open, to see what—if anything—there was to see, but the speed of his descent made everything a blur, the world outside his head a darkly shadowed blue murk. His pace slackened. He floated in the depths and then felt the upward tug, the reverse pull toward the Pool of Tears. He grabbed the ends of his Millinery coat and held them out wide, letting the garment act as a sort of inverted parachute, working against the water and slowing his ascent so that—

His head broke the water’s surface long enough for him to take in breath. Dropping completely back underwater, he swam toward the crystal barrier and crawled over it on to dry land in less time than it required his wrist-blades to revolve. He didn’t see any tribal guards, but that didn’t mean they weren’t somewhere, watching. ScorpSpitter-like, he moved to the lee side of the cliff overlooking the Pool and then along the rough, chalky rock until he reached foliage enough to provide cover.

He stopped to rest, to think.

He was without a crystal communicator, at least half a lunar hour away from the nearest hiker’s cabin, from which he could send a transmission to Bibwit. He had to contact the tutor, but half a lunar hour’s trek over land infiltrated by the enemy, where a confrontation with even the lowliest tribal warrior would alert Arch of his whereabouts and effectively end his chance of aiding Queen Alyss? It wasn’t worth it. He might as well take the same risk and penetrate into Wondertropolis, cut and dice his way into Heart Palace where, if he was to lose his life, he would lose it while ensuring the end of King Arch.

He made it through the Everlasting Forest without being sighted and was about to step from the last cover its trees afforded. He had no way of knowing whether, under Arch’s sovereignty, Milliners were branded as traitors or officially trusted and employed by the state, and the homes within view might have been commandeered to serve as monitoring stations by Arch’s military. Which was why he kept his top hat in his coat pocket; on his head, it would make him conspicuous. But his coat too might make a target of him, so he slipped it off, balling it up to carry under an arm when—

He felt something. A watchful presence.

A patrol of two white pawns and five Catabrac warriors had fanned out along the street nearest the forest. They were combing the neighborhood, passing up and back between the homes. One of the pawns, happening to glance at the forest, had spotted him and now they stared at each other, Hatter as still as any scuttling woodland creature in frozen alarm, his hand poised to snatch a blade from his backpack. If the pawn alerted his colleagues, Hatter would do what he had to do—grab and snatch at his backpack’s array and put an end to the entire patrol. But the pawn didn’t signal the others. He had recognized the famed Milliner. Discreetly, he removed a crystal shooter from its holster and unstrapped his communicator, dropped both behind a parked hover-cycle and continued on his rounds. Hatter waited until he was sure the patrol had moved on, then sprinted to the hov ercycle, took up the shooter and crystal communicator and, racing back to the forest, punched the code into the communicator’s keypad that would put him in direct contact with Bibwit Harte.

I
T WAS Alyss’ turn to wait, to be first to the Morgavian hilltop, standing solitary in a whipping wind. A mottled wet land stretched to the horizon, thawing in what passed for the hinterland’s summer—the few weeks barely long enough for the spearheaded trees to shake off their winter coats.

The air bit into her skin, the ground crunched under her feet: the sensations as real as any she’d ever felt, yet . . .

Rhythmic stomping, tremors rippled the reflective pools of melting ice, and Alyss turned as—

A jabberwock reared up, almost trampling her. Redd was riding the beast bareback as she might a spirit-dane, pulling on reins of heavy chain-link.

“I trust you feel special,” Redd grimaced. “I don’t allow myself to be summoned by just anyone.”

Flame jetted from the jabberwock’s throat—close enough for Alyss to feel its heat.

“He likes you,” Her Imperial Viciousness said, yanking hard on the jabberwock’s chain to keep the beast still. “They’re not the easiest things to tame, but that’s why I like them.”

“Remember when you were queen—?” Alyss started.

“I never forget! How could I forget the only years I’ve exercised the authority that’s rightfully mine?”

Alyss took a deep breath and tried again. “Remember when you were queen . . .”

She spoke of the time Her Imperial Viciousness had received reports of her rebel niece enjoying a gwynook kabob in Tyman Street, entering a tube station at Redd Square, roughing it on an Outerwilderbeastia safari. She asked her aunt to recall how the Glass Eyes and card soldiers despatched to these locations had found nothing, because the Alysses were decoys, constructs dispersed throughout the queendom to confuse Redd’s all-seeing imaginative eye.

“And this allowed me to reach the Chessboard Desert and close in on the Heart Crystal unimpeded,” Alyss said.

Her Imperial Viciousness’ expression became more and more steely as she listened to what she knew had happened next: Alyss’ feint of a full-on attack, she herself in Mount Isolation, the sky brightening with day beyond the Observation Dome’s telescoping glass to reveal her niece astride a spirit-dane at the head of a populous army; she dealing the first hand of the Cut to engage in battle, discovering in the initial explosions that Alyss’ soldiers were impervious to annihilation because the entire army was a construct, a diversion that had allowed the real Alyss to reach Mount Isolation undetected.

“You remind me of this oh-so-joyous time in my reign, why?” Redd said in a clenched voice.

“I’m proposing we imagine decoys of ourselves and an army to goad Arch into revealing his next move.”

“And what, my clumsily plotting niece, will that get us?”

Alyss had asked herself the same question many times, beginning to feel that any attempt to provoke Arch into exposing his scheme would be flawed. Only now did she understand why. If Redd’s hypothetical scenario was correct—that Arch simply wanted to lull them into believing their imaginations had returned for good, which in turn would cause them to reveal themselves in battle so that he could void their imaginations when they were most vulnerable—if this were true, then getting Arch to expose his scheme via decoys would render Alyss as powerless as if he’d
succeeded
with it. She would have acccomplished nothing. She’d be stuck in hiding without imagination. Arch would still have the crown. Imaginationists would still be imprisoned.