“Molly!”
In all the clank and clatter and air-searing gunfire, the girl hadn’t noticed the Gnobi death-ball rolling to a stop not a spirit-dane’s length away from her. Weaver leaped in front of her as the weapon burst, releasing a supernova of crystal buckshot. Tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet! The death-ball spent itself and Weaver dropped limp to the ground. Unharmed, Molly lowered to one knee and bent over her mother, snapping shut her wrist-blades and leaving herself vulnerable, open to enemy fire.
“Mom! MOM!”
But the life had already drained out of Weaver’s body. A short distance away, Hatter had fallen still in the midst of fighting three Shifog, his eyes on his unmoving beloved, his blades held in front of him as if he hardly cared for their protection.
Molly’s bottom lip trembled, and—
“Aaaaagh!”
She ran straight at the nearest warrior, her wrist-blades hacking and slicing. She ran straight at Astacans and Glebog and Scabbler, the Milliner weaponry she wore never put to more efficient use while, with her free hand, she stabbed mind riders into any bodies fool enough to come within reach. No cry of anguish escaped Hatter. His top hat blades ricocheting among the warriors, he activated his belt sabers and spun, cutting through Boarderlanders as if through a field of winglefruit, maintaining the silence of a master assassin, his expression as steely as his blades. What was left of the tribesmen quickly escaped into Wonderland—probably, Hatter thought, to connect with Redd’s other soldiers for a march on the capital city. Hatter folded closed his weapons, stepped over to Weaver’s body and lifted it in his arms.
“We need a crystal communicator,” he said. Molly removed the keypad and ammo belts from a dead Four Card, father and daughter not yet daring to say more than was necessary, nor to look directly at each other, lest any word, any direct glance, let loose a grief neither felt strong enough to survive.
The wind carried the sound of explosions
and hoarse cries—the military outpost on the second-highest peak in
the Snark Mountains was raging with bloody battle. But in the cave
near the top of Talon’s Point, all was solemn, quiet. Hatter laid
Weaver’s body on the ground and cracked open a fire crystal for
warmth. Molly covered her mother with blankets left from earlier
days, and she and Hatter sat for a time, each absorbed in silent
thought, gazing at Weaver’s stilled chest as if in hope of seeing
it rise and fall again.
“It’s my fault,” Molly said. “Everything that’s happened. I was
given a chance no halfer ever gets—to be the queen’s
bodyguard—and…” she glanced at her mother’s body, “…I did this.”
“Arch did it,” Hatter said. “And Redd. Not you.”