ArchEnemy (29 page)

“Yaah!” Dodge shouted, exchanging crystal shot with more Doomsines until—

A blinding light flared between the guardsman and his enemies: a dazzle dart’s detonation. Eyes shut, Dodge ran into the light, his father’s sword unsheathed and swinging. He felt one body fall, another and another. Then the flaring light burned out and—
clank!
—steel met steel. Dodge found himself engaged in one-on-one combat with his old friend the white rook.

“We were told only there were traitors . . . didn’t know it was you,” the rook said, stepping back to swing his sword, telegraphing his move so Dodge could easily defend against it.
Clink!
“Where’s the queen?”

“Earth.”

Clank!
Dodge’s sword locked with the rook’s. The white knight was above them on a gangway, armed with an oozy. He and the rook caught each other’s eye, came to an immediate understanding as only two soldiers who’d survived innumerable firefights together could.

The Doomsines were being relentless, emptying AD52s and crystal shooters at the Alyssians, trying to spear them with sharpened knobkerries. Hatter cut and diced with his blades, Van de Skülle lashed with his whip, and Taegel tried to shelter Bibwit as—

“Meet us at the burial field near the Iron Butterfly,” the rook said to Dodge as the knight raised his oozy and took aim at them. “But right now, you and I are going to jump to my left, and then you stab me in my shoulderplate. Not too hard, but make it believable.”

Dodge didn’t have a chance to question; the knight fired and a thick stream of mulch missiled toward him. He and the rook jumped, tumbled clear as the mulch splat against one of the pylons that maintained the outermost wall of deadly soundwaves. The pylon’s vents clogged, taking soundwaves off-line and creating a window of escape. The Alyssians barely made it out to open ground before the oozy’s charred mulch fell from the vents and the soundwaves were again online.

The rook, a hand against his wounded shoulder, stood and watched his friends recede into the darkness, on the run from Doomsine fire determined not to let them live.

I
T WAS almost ten past the hour when Molly, preoccupied with thoughts of the Heart Crystal’s doubtful well-being, realized that Alice was late. They had arranged to meet at the entrance to the Water Walk at two o’clock. Alice was never late.

“But you haven’t known her long,” Molly said to herself.

She’d spent no more time with Alice than could fit in a single afternoon; despite the speed with which they’d become friends, for all Molly knew, the lady could have been frequently late to appointments. Still, Alice’s tardiness made her uneasy.

“I’ll check for her at the deanery.”

But Molly couldn’t remember if Alice was supposed to be coming from home. What if she came from the opposite direction and she arrived while Molly sought her in Tom Quad? She had begun to notice this need she had to protect Alice—indeed, would have been hard-pressed
not
to notice it after what had happened yesterday at the riverside . . .

Twenty-five past the hour.

“I’ll give her a few more minutes,” Molly said.

Their second meeting had taken place at the tea shop on St. Aldate’s, where, over a pot of estate tea, Alice had spoken at length of her parents and siblings, and of a gentleman named Reginald Hargreaves, whom she was starting to fancy, and who, she was fairly certain, fancied her. With anyone else, Molly would have been bored—envious of Alice’s close family bond probably, but bored. Except with Alice . . . to hear such mundane stuff from a lady who looked and sounded exactly like Queen Alyss Heart!

Whereas her own life had been marred by war and loss, with little of the solace offered by family, Alice’s centered around her family and had been subjected to no combat whatsoever.

Half past the hour and still Alice hadn’t . . . but here she was, running up from the direction of Tom Quad, agitated.

“Molly, you’ll never guess what’s . . . a man is dead! At the house! A man with . . . I hardly know how to . . . with knife-fingers who tried to harm mother and father and Lorina and Edith! The authorities are there, but my father has no idea who the man was! No one’s ever seen him before! Why he would ever want to harm the gentlest, most caring people in the world, I can’t . . . but that’s not the strangest part! No, the strangest part is who saved them!”

“Who?” Molly asked. A man with “knife-fingers”? She knew of only one.

“Me! Well, it wasn’t
me
, of course, I wouldn’t know the first thing about fighting anyone, let alone a devil like that! But it
was
me, a woman utterly like me in every way! It’s all so, I don’t know, impossible! I just came to tell you I can’t spend the afternoon as we’d planned! I must get back, in case . . . oh, in case I don’t know what! It’s all so dreadful, so dreadfully impossible, so . . .”

Alice was already hurrying back to the quad, and Molly had fallen in step with her, alert for threats; if Ripkins had come to Earth, other assassins might be lurking. But why would Ripkins want to harm the Liddells?
A woman utterly like me in every way
. Wasn’t that what she had said?

At the quad, Alice squeezed Molly’s hand and left her, passing through the curious Oxfordians milling outside the deanery, and now that Molly had a moment to herself—

A woman utterly like me in every way
. She had definitely said it. Which meant . . . could it be . . .

“The queen,” Molly breathed.

She would ask Dodgson. She would relate what had happened to Alice Liddell and ask him what he thought her words meant. But when she pushed open the door to his rooms, all intentions left her, because seated across from the reverend—

Alyss Heart.

I
T HADN’T been the easiest thing to do, to direct her steps to Reverend Dodgson’s door. Running from Carfax Tower, the object of unwanted stares, Alyss slipped into an alley, where she could be alone, invisible, while she subdued her panic and waited for her clothes to dry, determining her next move.

Because puddle portals didn’t just evaporate en masse like that. She again tried to sight a portal with her imagination’s eye, discovered herself completely incapable of remote viewing; she was without imagination. But unlike the first time she’d been robbed of her power, she didn’t feel even a temporary release from responsibility, from duty. The most—
the worst
—she had ever done, ever could do, was ignore her responsibilities as queen and White Imaginationist. “Release,” as she knew too well, was not possible. But her next move? How could she make any move without the Pool of Tears?

She couldn’t bear the idea; much less would she be able to tolerate the reality. How could she live, not just without Dodge, but without knowing what would become of Bibwit and Doppelgänger, the walrus-butler, Mr. Dumphy, and so many others?

Yet if the oracles had had anything to do with the Pool’s disappearance, her situation could very well be hopeless. It
was
the most probable explanation, wasn’t it? The Pool of Tears, like imagination, was gone. And how had Arch known of the Liddells? There were, to be sure, a few possibilities as to who could have told him of the family, but none made as much sense as the caterpillars; they always knew everything. Only the caterpillar-oracles had power and vision enough to be behind it all. But even so, even supposing the oracles were behind it all . . .

She couldn’t go back to the Liddells’ without facing questions from them and the police, the answering of which would accomplish nothing. Her answers wouldn’t be believed. What about Prince Leopold, the man who’d once almost become her husband? No, she’d gain nothing there: She’d have to get through too many royal attendants to reach him, and besides, he wouldn’t recognize the committed Heart she currently was.

Then she remembered Dodgson.

If she had a list of people from whom she’d most like to seek aid, Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson would not have been on it. She didn’t know how he might help her, but Homburg Molly was supposed to be with him. And there was no one else.

Opening his door to her, the reverend was not as taken aback as he would have been a fortnight earlier, the outfit of a Wonderland farmer’s maid distinct enough to inform him that his visitor was not Alice Liddell but Queen Alyss Heart.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, after they’d stood several moments in silence.

Sorry, he said, for failing to acknowledge the truth of what she’d confided to him all those years ago. Sorry for taking a young girl’s confidence in vain and turning her memories into absurd little books. He had never been sorrier in his life. He could never have known that her bloody tales of Wonderland hadn’t been fiction—to believe such would have required a different man—but ignorance of his crime did not excuse it, and every hour he spent with Homburg Molly served as chastisement for how he’d betrayed her.

“And where is Molly?” Alyss asked, not quite able to keep regal authority from her tone or manner.

“S-she is . . . ah, well . . . she should b-be returning soon. Very soon, I’m sure.”

Sitting at his modest tea table, describing her predicament, her anger toward this nervous man broke. If she wasn’t able to completely let her guard down with him, she could not allow past hurts and prejudices to get in the way of present necessities.

“Something’s happened to the Pool of Tears,” she concluded.

“And the Heart Crystal?”

“I assume so, since I can imagine nothing.”

“Nor I. H-has anything such as this ever happened to the Pool of Tears before?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

An awkward silence threatened, but Dodgson began to speak of Molly. His inhibitions fell away in his enthusiasm, and by the time the girl opened the front door, Alyss knew everything there was to know about her extraordinary talent in math and logic, which Dodgson believed might rival the girl’s Milliner skills.

“Molly,” Alyss said, standing.

The girl didn’t move. She glanced from Dodgson to the hall and seemed on the verge of running away, but then a breath of resignation filled her. She stepped forward and prostrated herself. “My queen,” she said.

“Please, Molly, get up. We don’t need such ceremony between us, especially now.”

Alyss embraced her as she would a sister. Overwhelmed, Molly nearly sobbed: for the queen to treat her like this after everything! She tried to explain how she’d wanted to be forgiven for contaminating the Crystal Continuum, for being weak-willed and doubtful of the trust that had been placed in her; she wanted to explain how she used to want this forgiveness even though she hadn’t thought she deserved it, but that now, while she was no less regretful of her actions, she was willing to accept the burden of what she’d done. And yet she couldn’t speak; her mouth wouldn’t work.