“Yes, and you can monitor their
progress in your imagination’s eye,” said Bibwit. “If there are
Ganmedes
to negotiate with, I doubt they’ll refuse to talk with whomever we send.” Alyss agreed. “If they do, I’ll be close enough to the Heart Crystal to combat them through my imagination. And while they’re occupied with saving their own lives…” she directed her words at Hatter, “…you can then lead a force to rescue Molly.” The Milliner stood looking at his queen for a long moment. “If that is what you command, Your Majesty,” he said. But something was welling up inside him, something he had never felt before and that at any other time he would have tamped down with all the force of his formidable will: disobedience. CHAPTER 23
T HE REMAINS of the well-heeled audience were piled in the corner, the waiters taking longer than usual to sweep up the dust that had been the bones of Sacrenoir’s resurrected dead, too often pausing to glance at the man-cat and the ruinous woman in her dress of teeth-baring roses. “Get to work!” Marcel scolded. “Unless you’d like Master Sacrenoir to treat his dead to a meal of your flesh?”
The waiters tried to focus on their brooms, but hardly a minute passed before they were again sneaking glances at the alcove next to the stage, where a scarlet cloud hung over the table, images flickering within it while the grim woman expounded to Vollrath and Sacrenoir: “What you’re seeing is the moment my ill-judging mother informed me that I would not be queen,” Redd was saying.
In the cloud, images brought forth from her imagination flared and passed like lightning. A younger, less bitter-worn version of herself railed at Queen Theodora, who apparently didn’t appreciate being talked to in such a manner and walked off, leaving her daughter to steep in futile anger. The scene shifted to Redd marching up a spiral hall. She had aged, grown haggard from years of disdain, the line of her mouth set in a permanent frown of disgust.
“There I am, festering on Mount Isolation, my home in the Chessboard Desert, heir to a queendom reduced to an heir of insult and outrage.” She watched herself step out onto a balcony atop Mount Isolation and begin to preach to the mercenary card soldiers and Black Imagination enthusiasts gathered below. “Those are the nearly useless beings I called a military. It was all I could do to force them into a weak semblance of the army I deserve.”
Again, the scene changed. The walls of Heart Palace tumbled. Queen Genevieve’s card soldiers fell dead as Redd sauntered untouched through the battle of that long-ago day when her sister had been cut down from the throne. The Cat, sitting next to his mistress in the alcove, began to purr. But then the cloud revealed Genevieve’s private quarters, the blades of Hatter’s top hat catching the feline assassin unaware and costing him one of his lives. He saw what he’d not been able to see when it happened, lying there dead as he’d been: Hatter escaping into a looking glass with seven-year-old Alyss Heart, Redd imagining her knotty scepter into a scythe and beheading Genevieve. “My niece escaped through the Pool of Tears,” Redd told Vollrath and Sacrenoir, “and for reasons I won’t go into, I believed her dead.” The next scenes passed quickly, as if she were growing impatient with the past. “After years of shaping Wonderland to my fickle will, as is my birthright, my niece had the
to negotiate with, I doubt they’ll refuse to talk with whomever we send.” Alyss agreed. “If they do, I’ll be close enough to the Heart Crystal to combat them through my imagination. And while they’re occupied with saving their own lives…” she directed her words at Hatter, “…you can then lead a force to rescue Molly.” The Milliner stood looking at his queen for a long moment. “If that is what you command, Your Majesty,” he said. But something was welling up inside him, something he had never felt before and that at any other time he would have tamped down with all the force of his formidable will: disobedience. CHAPTER 23
T HE REMAINS of the well-heeled audience were piled in the corner, the waiters taking longer than usual to sweep up the dust that had been the bones of Sacrenoir’s resurrected dead, too often pausing to glance at the man-cat and the ruinous woman in her dress of teeth-baring roses. “Get to work!” Marcel scolded. “Unless you’d like Master Sacrenoir to treat his dead to a meal of your flesh?”
The waiters tried to focus on their brooms, but hardly a minute passed before they were again sneaking glances at the alcove next to the stage, where a scarlet cloud hung over the table, images flickering within it while the grim woman expounded to Vollrath and Sacrenoir: “What you’re seeing is the moment my ill-judging mother informed me that I would not be queen,” Redd was saying.
In the cloud, images brought forth from her imagination flared and passed like lightning. A younger, less bitter-worn version of herself railed at Queen Theodora, who apparently didn’t appreciate being talked to in such a manner and walked off, leaving her daughter to steep in futile anger. The scene shifted to Redd marching up a spiral hall. She had aged, grown haggard from years of disdain, the line of her mouth set in a permanent frown of disgust.
“There I am, festering on Mount Isolation, my home in the Chessboard Desert, heir to a queendom reduced to an heir of insult and outrage.” She watched herself step out onto a balcony atop Mount Isolation and begin to preach to the mercenary card soldiers and Black Imagination enthusiasts gathered below. “Those are the nearly useless beings I called a military. It was all I could do to force them into a weak semblance of the army I deserve.”
Again, the scene changed. The walls of Heart Palace tumbled. Queen Genevieve’s card soldiers fell dead as Redd sauntered untouched through the battle of that long-ago day when her sister had been cut down from the throne. The Cat, sitting next to his mistress in the alcove, began to purr. But then the cloud revealed Genevieve’s private quarters, the blades of Hatter’s top hat catching the feline assassin unaware and costing him one of his lives. He saw what he’d not been able to see when it happened, lying there dead as he’d been: Hatter escaping into a looking glass with seven-year-old Alyss Heart, Redd imagining her knotty scepter into a scythe and beheading Genevieve. “My niece escaped through the Pool of Tears,” Redd told Vollrath and Sacrenoir, “and for reasons I won’t go into, I believed her dead.” The next scenes passed quickly, as if she were growing impatient with the past. “After years of shaping Wonderland to my fickle will, as is my birthright, my niece had the