ArchEnemy (23 page)

“We hope the ‘oracle’ didn’t upset His Highness with any ridiculous prattle,” the lady said, noticing Arch’s changed mood.

“I don’t know how those things ever convinced Wonderlanders they were oracles to begin with,” huffed the lord.

To these, Arch said nothing. Whenever vital information was too easily granted him, he presumed he was being set up. Were he and the green oracle using each other? He was using the caterpillar, of course. But was the caterpillar truly using him? He might believe it if he knew what the worm gained by helping him to snuff the Crystal and rid the living world of Redd and Alyss Heart. All he knew was what he’d been told: The oracle was a bored prisoner of the Crystal and ached for freedom. But the more Arch considered this, the less he believed it. Why couldn’t the caterpillar plot on his own to extinguish the Crystal? Why did he need anyone’s help? More specifically, why did the worm require
his
help?

There was too much the oracle wasn’t telling him. He determined to do nothing with the intel regarding Alyss Heart and her attachment to the Liddells. He would make use of it only if he had to, if he had no choice.

The Lord of Clubs cleared his throat. Arch was sick of looking at the Lord and Lady of Clubs.

“I trust you both enjoyed dinner,” he said, sliding a nub of agate into a slot in the console to the right of his chair, an action that brought the walrus-butler into the room. “The walrus will show you out.”

Taken aback by their sudden dismissal, the ranking couple hardly had time to thank His Majesty as they were led out to the hall. Arch fitted an amoeba-shaped nodule into a slot on the console and his intel ministers swished into the room.

“Report,” he said.

“The Heart Crystal is no longer in transit, Your Highness,” one of the ministers answered. “It has arrived safely and without complications.”

“No complications? You’re sure?”

The head of every minister bobbed, affirmative.

Ripkins and Blister advanced to the table to forage among the leftovers, which caused the ministers some alarm since they generally tried to keep as much distance from the pair as possible. Striving for greater separation between himself and Blister, one of the ministers inadvertently knocked a goblet from the table. The bodyguard—a shred of meat poised in gloved hand before his mouth—eyed the clumsy minister with contempt while the fearful fellow and the rest of his kind stood hushed, expecting an outburst from the king. But the king remained silent, thoughtfully watching the mechanized vac that zoomed into the room and sucked the puddle of wine from the floor.

Perhaps he’d been too quick to dismiss the caterpillar’s intel? Arch mused, his eyes on the vac as it zipped off to wherever it’d come from. Perhaps—and here he coded his thinking, letting random words and figures come to mind so that his thoughts would be incoherent to any caterpillars accessing them—there was a way to use what he knew of Alyss’ affection for the Liddells, to benefit from it without reducing himself to a larva’s plaything. Yes, he might do something no one, not even the so-called oracles of Wonderland, would expect.

“
I
T TAKES a certain strength of mind to be bad.”

“Yes, Your Imperial Viciousness.”

“A vigorous mind, to always live according to the motto, Why put off till tomorrow the death I can bring about today?”

“And no one has lived it more forcefully than you have, Your Imperial Viciousness.”

Redd squinted round at the Whispering Woods, its trees annoying her no end by their silence. All arborage whispering had ceased the moment she galloped into the woods on her jabberwock, whose sulfurous breath torched a number of the more mature shade trees. Vollrath, The Cat, Sacrenoir, Alistaire Poole and Siren Hecht, each atop a jabberwock, had pulled up rein behind her. The quiet of the woods, while better than any nervous whispers of her presence, would nonetheless alert Arch of her whereabouts. If she stayed long enough.

“I’m no less vigorous or strong because I joined with Alyss,” Redd snarled.

Vollrath was having considerable trouble controlling his jabberwock. “On the contrary, Your Imperial Viciousness,” he said, “it shows how very strong-minded you are, being nasty and evil while thus aligned with one of such a pronounced beneficent persuasion.”

“Are we making camp?” Alistaire Poole asked.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Redd scorned.

But in this instance, it could be argued, Alistaire Poole had every right to be an idiot. Because Redd had been extremely careful. Never knowing when Alyss might spy on her with imagination’s eye, but assuming that her niece
would
spy, Her Imperial Viciousness had lied to Vollrath and her assassins, telling them their destination was the Whispering Woods when it was not. She withheld the truth because it
was
the truth and truth bored her, and because their actions were visible to Alyss at any time, she didn’t want them to reveal her real destination by some bit of careless behavior.

Since first sighting Arch’s ninny ministers playing the busybodies around a specific hedge in the grounds of Heart Palace, she had kept her imagination’s gaze steadily on the spot. And was rewarded. In the hours before dawn, vacant hours when even late-night revelers had succumbed to sleep, she had watched from the Volcanic Plains as Doomsines carted the heavily shrouded Heart Crystal from the palace. Adroit at such things from their nomadic ways, the tribesmen quickly worked their way out of Wondertropolis; before it was light, they were traveling with the Crystal out to the land beyond the Whispering Woods.

Redd’s plan had always been to pass completely through the woods into the land beyond, where she now knew Arch was hiding the Heart Crystal in a prehistoric edifice that, at one time, may or may not have been the site of bloody sacrifices to unknown gods: the Iron Butterfly.

T
HE MUNITIONS factory was secured by two networks of lightning-hot soundwaves, the networks separated by a track ten meters wide and patrolled by pawns and Three Cards themselves closely monitored by Doomsine warriors. More easily accessible was the town that had formed to cater to factory employees and their families. Taegel, the Alyssian weapons genius, suggested the queen—for so he continued to think of Alyss Heart—meet him at a certain café where the steady ebb and flow of diners would help ensure anonymity for Her Majesty.

Taegel arrived early, commandeering a table away from the windows, but much surprised when a Wonderlander with the skin of a newborn and a head of thick, curly brown hair joined him. Clearly, this was not Queen Alyss.

“Does Taegel not recognize an old friend?” the stranger asked.

The lips nearly as white as the surrounding skin, the mischevious play of the eyes.

“Bibwit!” Taegel said.

“As pale as ever though a little more hirsute,” the tutor acknowledged, pulling at his curls to show they were not part of a wig. “Courtesy of Queen Alyss’ imagination. Rather interesting—to have a bushel on one’s head.” He glanced at the engineer’s long gray hairs rising every which way in tremulous wisps, making it appear as if steam was emanating from the fellow’s venerable skull. “Don’t take offense, dear Taegel, but I greatly hope—which is to say, it is my ardent wish—that my defection from Arch’s authority won’t require me to keep this hair for the remainder of my days.”

The engineer couldn’t help laughing and even Bibwit allowed himself a brief chuckle. Which was how Alyss, Dodge, and Mr. Van de Skülle found them, basking in a lighthearted moment’s afterglow. Seeing the queen, Taegel started from his chair, intending to genuflect before her, but Dodge pressed a firm hand on his shoulder to keep him in his seat.

“Right,” Taegel said. “Sorry.”

Alyss, Dodge, and Mr. Van de Skülle settled in around the table.

“Bibwit and General Doppelgänger have explained to me your reasons for being here,” Taegel told Alyss. “I am humbled by their recommendations of me and honored to do everything I can to help you.”

“You assume great risk by having us here, Mr. Taegel,” Alyss answered. “It’s a reminder of what constitutes model service to White Imagination and it is
your
steadfastness in this service that humbles
me
.”

Taegel, embarrassed by the queen’s praise, busied himself with a satchel at his feet, pulled three smaller satchels from it and passed one each to Alyss, Dodge, and Mr. Van de Skülle. “I didn’t expect you,” he apologized to Bibwit, “and still have to provide for you and the Milliner.” He explained that the satchels contained ID badges as well as subcutaneous ID chips, eyeglasses that presented to munitions factory security scanners a complete genetic makeup and 3-D image of eyeballs belonging to those with the highest clearance, and second-skin gloves with vetted fingerprints—all of which were needed to get the queen into his lab at the munitions factory. “I can take you tonight, if you wish,” he concluded.

Dodge and Bibwit were smiling at each other.

“Or tomorrow, if you prefer?”

This amused the tutor and guardsman even more.

“Or . . . the day following?” tried Taegel.

Still, Dodge and Bibwit grinned.

“What?” the weapons engineer asked. “What is it?”

“Alyss’ imaginative powers pretty much nullify the factory’s security measures,” Dodge said.

“But we thank you for your trouble,” Alyss added.

“Speaking of trouble,” Bibwit patted the curls covering his head, “it is probably best, my dear, not to tax your imagination with the inessential. Now that I’m free of Arch, I’ll not trouble you any longer with my disguise—which is to say, I invite you to rid me of this most inessential hair as soon as we’re somewhere more private.”

“You don’t think Arch will have warriors searching for you?” Dodge asked. “Because it wouldn’t surprise me if he rounds up every member of the tutor species he can find.”

Alyss considered a gwormmy-blink. “I’d rather keep my tutor’s hair than lose my tutor altogether,” she said, to the albino’s obvious disappointment. “Oh, you don’t look
that
funny, Bibwit. Let’s leave it be for now.” She stood. “Is your home far from here, Mr. Taegel?”

“Not very, Your Majesty. My transport is just outside.”

A factory-issue transport: missile-shaped, light as foil, all sleek, reflective surfaces. Seated in the vehicle’s long, slender body, they shuttled along to their destination while Taegel—nervous, excited: The queen would be in his flat!—chattered away as Bibwit often did, to no one and everyone.

“It was tough at work,” he said, unbidden, “tough all around at the factory when imagination was blinkered, but I’d say things are back to normal.
I
think they are anyway. At least as far as my own work is concerned.”

Which was true enough since factory colleagues were once more finding the engineer busy at his lab in a nest of wire, relay switches, trigger mechanisms, nano-scanners, compression chambers, ammo cartridges, loading cylinders, docking bays from dismantled crystal shooters and AD52s—anything used in the manufacture of weaponry within arm’s reach. Unfortunately for Alyss and her companions, Taegel’s flat was just as messy as his lab. If, as Dodge did, you tried to sit in the lounge-pod, you felt the prick of springs and coils in your backside. If, as Bibwit did, you cautiously lowered yourself on to the arm of a floating chair, you wound up squashing the empty razor-card cartridges that had blended in with the chair’s fabric. Better to remain standing, as Alyss and Mr. Van de Skülle did—and not risk injury.

“Sorry,” Taegel muttered, scooping up armloads of weapons parts and laboring into his bedroom. “My apologies, sorry.”

“Hatter should be with us shortly,” Dodge noted.

“And General Doppelgänger told me he would establish contact as soon as . . . ah, there he is.” At the sound of his crystal communicator, Bibwit called up a projection of Wonderland’s long-time commander of card soldiers and chessmen.

“Queen Alyss,” Doppelgänger said, seeing his sovereign, “I’d like nothing more than to be there with you, but I hope to be of some value as your ‘man on the inside,’ as it were.” Then, splitting into two identical figures: “We’re your
men
on the inside!” Generals Doppel and Gänger said as one.

“And I, Generals,” Alyss responded, “would prefer to have you near but believe you made the right decision. It’s better for the stability of Wonderland’s decks that you remain where you are.”

“Although we should hope,” said Bibwit, “that my having left Arch doesn’t endanger the general—pardon, the
generals
—further.”

Mr. Van de Skülle stood quiet with his hand on his whip, and Taegel kept coming and going in his effort to clear the common room of lab debris, as Alyss informed Bibwit and the generals of her most recent “meeting” with Redd Heart, of their decision to try and turn one of Arch’s personal guards via remote constructs, and of Her Imperial Viciousness being in the Whispering Woods to help surround Heart Palace.

“We, for two, are glad to hear of the attempt on the guard,” Generals Doppel and Gänger said in unison.

“Had you provoked Arch into battle with conjurings,” started General Doppel, “as it seemed you were thinking of doing—”

“—we wouldn’t have relished unshuffling the decks, even against an imaginative construct of our queen!” finished Gänger.

Dodge was watching Taegel pick up what looked like junk—all of it, he knew, the scattered scraps of warfare technology that could help him protect Alyss, depose Arch, ruin Redd, and wreak vengeance upon The Cat.

“I’d definitely like to get hold of whatever new weapons are available at the factory,” he said, “but we probably shouldn’t chance a run on the place until we know how we’re going to proceed.”

Bibwit’s ears flapped. “Now that you’re here, Alyss,” he asked, “do you feel Power of Proximity to the Crystal?”

Alyss shook her head.