ArchEnemy (34 page)

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

“General, sir!” the knight and rook cried. Their commander, with the wounds he’d received at Blister’s hands visible, had looked better.

General Doppelgänger smiled in greeting. “Bibwit. Chessmen.”

“We were beginning to fear we’d lost you, General,” said Bibwit.

“Not yet, Mr. Harte. Not yet. I intend to fully recover and serve Queen Alyss as long as she’ll have me.”

“Ahem hem hum,” Blue grumbled loudly, to get everyone’s attention. “We oracles have been in Wonderland these many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many years, waiting for the time of Everqueen. Now that she’s come . . .” the oracles shone beatific faces to the sky, “... we are no longer needed.”

Upon which, with astonishing speed and dexterity, each oracle wrapped himself in a chrysalis spun of his own silk. And as Redd’s surviving assassins—Siren Hecht, Alistaire Poole, and Sacrenoir—slipped away into the surrounding country, as Club Cards of high number and earth mercenaries escaped to cause trouble another day, the cocoons broke open and the largest butterflies ever seen in the queendom emerged, flitted up and away into the streaming energy of Everqueen as—

Alyss and Dodge, Hatter and Molly, Bibwit and General Doppelgänger, the Heart soldiery and white chessmen, all joined together in huzzahs.

Reverend Dodgson sat at his desk with only the ticking clock and crackling fire for company. His imagination hadn’t failed him once in the fortnight since he’d last seen Alyss Heart and Homburg Molly and, with notebook open before him, he reasoned out the answers to his math puzzles as fluently and creatively as ever. The more time that passed without harm to his creative powers, he believed, the more it signified Alyss’ victory in the war for imagination and the less chance there was of his again being accosted by Redd Heart or The Cat. Although he couldn’t know for sure. Which was why he wouldn’t throw his false starts to
I, Redd
into the fire. Not yet.

It was a stanza from the poem he’d published at the conclusion of
Through the Looking-Glass
. He had perhaps never written anything so true; for whatever else was to happen, Alyss Heart would remain a phantom in his life, a presence he thought of from time to time, but particularly whenever he crossed paths with Miss Alice Liddell. Musing thus, Oxford’s most famous bachelor closed his notebook and set down his pen for the night as—