Alice—which the reverend and Mrs.
Liddell, presiding happily over all, did not fail to
notice.
How cozy and simple things seem.
Alyss knew better. She had eaten in that room many times, and when in the thick of whatever traumas a day in Oxford had offered up, nothing had seemed simple. But she couldn’t help thinking it—things were simpler there.
She watched, feeling like one of the company even though the scene was silent and she could only guess at the amusing anecdote Reginald had related that set everyone laughing. Alice was laughing the hardest to show how much she liked him. He grinned, not taking his eyes off her even when Lorina asked for his attention, apparently reciting some humorous tidbit of her own. The easy way they show their affection… She thought of Dodge, of herself and Dodge, how theirs was a stuttering kind of love, a tentative, timid thing, a—
Tzzzz.
Something’s wrong. The hatchway had opened. The march of pressing business was descending toward her.
“What is it?” she asked as Dodge, Bibwit, and General Doppelgänger came into view. “The queendom is under attack,” said the general. “By whom we don’t yet know.” “We know,” Dodge said, a vengeful, dissatisfied look about him, a look that Alyss knew had everything to do with Redd, The Cat, and Sir Justice’s murder. “Several of our outposts have been routed,” the general continued, “and several more are engaged with the enemy as I speak. I have ordered the deployment of reinforcement decks to prevent any attacks from penetrating farther into the queendom.”
Under attack? Outposts routed? They were waiting for her to say something. “There are reports,” Dodge said.
“Of?”
“We have reason to believe that those attacking us are Glass Eyes,” Bibwit informed her. “We’re in the process of verifying the intelligence.”
“Glass Eyes?” Alyss echoed in disbelief. After Redd’s downfall, attempts had been made to reprogram them, but this proved a more difficult task than Wonderland’s engineers and programmers had originally supposed. Only a small number of them had been successfully reconfigured when she and her advisers realized that the populace was too used to being terrorized by them to ever view them as a safeguarding element.
Dodge spoke in a tense whisper, as if to raise his voice was to unleash unappeasable fury: “Redd must have survived. You should have let me go into the crystal after her.” “We don’t know that it’s Redd,” insisted the general. “How else could the Glass Eyes be attacking us?”
How cozy and simple things seem.
Alyss knew better. She had eaten in that room many times, and when in the thick of whatever traumas a day in Oxford had offered up, nothing had seemed simple. But she couldn’t help thinking it—things were simpler there.
She watched, feeling like one of the company even though the scene was silent and she could only guess at the amusing anecdote Reginald had related that set everyone laughing. Alice was laughing the hardest to show how much she liked him. He grinned, not taking his eyes off her even when Lorina asked for his attention, apparently reciting some humorous tidbit of her own. The easy way they show their affection… She thought of Dodge, of herself and Dodge, how theirs was a stuttering kind of love, a tentative, timid thing, a—
Tzzzz.
Something’s wrong. The hatchway had opened. The march of pressing business was descending toward her.
“What is it?” she asked as Dodge, Bibwit, and General Doppelgänger came into view. “The queendom is under attack,” said the general. “By whom we don’t yet know.” “We know,” Dodge said, a vengeful, dissatisfied look about him, a look that Alyss knew had everything to do with Redd, The Cat, and Sir Justice’s murder. “Several of our outposts have been routed,” the general continued, “and several more are engaged with the enemy as I speak. I have ordered the deployment of reinforcement decks to prevent any attacks from penetrating farther into the queendom.”
Under attack? Outposts routed? They were waiting for her to say something. “There are reports,” Dodge said.
“Of?”
“We have reason to believe that those attacking us are Glass Eyes,” Bibwit informed her. “We’re in the process of verifying the intelligence.”
“Glass Eyes?” Alyss echoed in disbelief. After Redd’s downfall, attempts had been made to reprogram them, but this proved a more difficult task than Wonderland’s engineers and programmers had originally supposed. Only a small number of them had been successfully reconfigured when she and her advisers realized that the populace was too used to being terrorized by them to ever view them as a safeguarding element.
Dodge spoke in a tense whisper, as if to raise his voice was to unleash unappeasable fury: “Redd must have survived. You should have let me go into the crystal after her.” “We don’t know that it’s Redd,” insisted the general. “How else could the Glass Eyes be attacking us?”