Seeing Redd (12 page)

M
OLLY'S HEAD felt like it had been cracked open and poorly fit back together. Her shoulders ached. Her forearms tingled raw, as if skinned. Her swollen hands were so sensitive that it hurt to make a fist. It hurt to do most things—including blink, so she lay with her eyes closed, remembering what had happened: the Lady of Diamonds; the carved wooden chest that was supposed to have gone to Queen Alyss; her suspicion of a plot to upset Alyss' reign (which, judging by her present pains, had not been ill-placed). But an attempt on the queen's life? The Lady of Diamonds was bolder than she had supposed. Alyss had to be informed.

Molly forced herself to sit up and open her eyes. What the—? King Arch was sitting in a chair next to her mattress. What was Arch doing in Wonderland?

“She lives,” he said.

A minister scurried in on silent feet and whispered in the king's ear, which was when she realized: Arch wasn't in Wonderland; she was in Boarderland. But how had she ended up in Boarderland? Where was her gear? And
what
was she wearing that encased her like a second skin? Instead of her usual pants and belt, she had on a formfitting one-piece made of some unfamiliar pink material, and there were no visible buttons or clasps by which to remove it. The collar fit tightly about her neck, the leggings tightly around her ankles, and the cuffs of the long sleeves came close to choking off the blood supply to her hands. She hated tight-fitting clothes. Worse, she hated pink.

“Send her in with the dumplings,” Arch told the minister, who left as quietly as a curl of smoke. The king smiled down at Molly. “And how are we feeling after our much-needed nap?”

“Where are my things?”

“Right there.”

He pointed to a table across the room, on which her homburg, Millinery coat, backpack, belt, and wrist-blades were neatly arrayed. Standing on either side of the table were two creatures from a species she had never seen before.

“You underestimate me,” she said, and lunged for her gear.

Her legs gave way as if they'd been shorn of all muscle. Her arms were useless and she was unable to steady her vision, as if her eyes were swirling in their sockets independently of each other. She fell to the floor. Far, far away she felt someone pick her up and set her back down. Her head began to settle and she found herself on the mattress.

“It seems, Molly, it is you who underestimates me,” Arch said. “I should've perhaps told you the item you're wearing is a drug-delivery system. When you make any sudden move, it will secrete through your skin a certain something that…Well, I hope you'll never succumb to the illusory charms of artificial crystal, but let's just say that this certain something produces an effect similar to a night of overindulgence with such unhealthy ingestives.”

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

“You had an unpleasant tumble.” He nodded toward the unfamiliar creatures. “My Ganmede friends and I are nursing you back to health, that's all.”

“By drugging me?”

Molly tried to intimidate him with her most vicious glare, but not getting much of a response, she fell to pulling at her collar and the cuffs at her wrists.

“You might as well try to remove your own skin,” Arch said. “Please understand, Molly. I have no intention of harming you. The Lady of Diamonds has caused you enough inconvenience, I think. Your flattering outfit is simply a precaution in case you overreact at finding yourself here. I hope that soon you'll choose to stay here as my personal guest.”

Molly rose to her feet—slowly, steadily. “I have a duty to my queen, who will be missing me. I would like to go home now.”

“I wouldn't be so hasty. The queen you left might not be the one you return to.”

He was trying to trick her into something. She would be smart. She would keep her mouth shut, learn as much as possible, and report back to Alyss.

“I want you to know that I find it appalling how the Lady of Diamonds attempted to deceive you,” the king said. “You're to be commended for protecting the queen from opening the Lady of Diamonds' ‘gift,' however much your doing so has jeopardized the queendom itself.” Seeing Molly's questioning expression, he explained: “Yes, it seems your little adventure in the Crystal Continuum has limited the mobility of Queen Alyss' army, a circumstance the Diamond clan has taken advantage of to try and gain the crown.”

Molly didn't believe him,
refused
to believe him. Besides, the Lady of Diamonds could never defeat Alyss Heart.

Arch rose from his chair and paced about the tent. “The Diamonds came to me for support, but as you can see, my loyalty lies with Queen Alyss rather than with a scheming lady of rank in her queendom.” He was at the table, picking over her wrist-blades and coat and backpack as if they were a merchant's untidy wares. “I should never have been so dismissive of you when we first met at Heart Palace. I should have realized that you possessed formidable skills, since it's not anyone who can take Hatter Madigan's place.”

Molly said nothing.

“Your parents must be extremely proud of you.” He turned abruptly to face her. “Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that you don't have parents.”

King or not, he was lucky she didn't have access to her homburg.

Arch sat back down in his chair and, with practiced nonchalance, asked, “Do you know much about the people who brought you into this world?”

“I know enough.”

“Really? Is that why you don't seem very curious about them?”

“There's nothing to be curious about,” she said.

“Nothing to be…? But don't you want to know why they gave you up?”

“They didn't give me up!”

She flung herself at him, but her legs refused to obey her, her arms belonged to somebody else, and her head filled with kaleidoscopic jelly. When her wits were again hers, she was back on the mattress.

“I apologize,” Arch said. “I should have taken into account how the trials of life can break a family apart for reasons that have nothing to do with ill will or a lack of love in any of its members. With Redd in control of Wonderland as she was, the actions of your parents might have only appeared uncaring, when in fact they were just the opposite—necessary to your survival.”

“Uh-huh,” Molly said, hating him.

“Do you, by chance, remember how old you were when you last saw your mother?”

She wasn't going to answer. She would tell this man nothing, especially not that she'd been just three lunar years old when Weaver left the Alyssian camp in the Everlasting Forest and that, if not for the holographic crystal of her mother posing in front of the Unnatural History Museum shortly before Redd's coup, she wouldn't even know what the woman looked like.

“Her name was Weaver, wasn't it?”

Molly was startled. “How'd you know that?”

He waved off the question. “I've hardly begun to astound you, Molly. Not only do I know your mother's name, I know who your father is. And what's more, so do you. You've already met him.”

Molly was so taken aback by all of this that she didn't hear Arch call for his bodyguards. Shadows fell over her as Ripkins and Blister entered the tent.

“Molly wants to know her father's name,” Arch said to them. “Why don't we give her a hint?”

“His first name rhymes with ‘splatter,'” said Ripkins.

“And ‘matter,'” put in Blister.

“Also ‘fatter,'” said Ripkins.

“Likewise ‘chatter,'” added Blister.

“And his surname?” Arch asked.

“It rhymes with ‘that again,'” said Ripkins.

“And ‘Flanagan,'” put in Blister.

“Also, um…‘pad a fin'?” offered Ripkins. “Or ‘pan a tin'?”

Arch and Blister looked at him.

“‘Pannikin'!” he said proudly.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Molly screamed. “You don't know what you're talking about!”

“Perhaps not,” Arch said. “But I can think of at least one person whose knowledge you'll trust.” He got to his feet as a strange aroma wafted into the tent. “Here she comes now with a plate of DoDo dumplings, one of my favorite Boarderland delicacies, to help you regain your strength.”

Ready to deny all, to denounce Boarderland as a nation of liars, Molly turned and saw the last person in the world she had ever expected to see alive.

“M-Mom?”

R
EDD FOUND her usual bitterness amplified by her passage through the Heart Crystal. The roses of her dress gnawed the air, their petal-mouths mutely opening and closing in echo of her black melancholy as she stalked the predawn streets of this alien city and lashed herself with gloomy thoughts.

“If anyone tells you it's painless to be turned into pure NRG and formed again from the muck of some Earth person's imagination,” Redd hissed, “don't believe them.”

“I won't, Your Imperial Viciousness.” The Cat glanced side-long at his mistress, licked a paw and rubbed it over his eyes.

“If I'm not powerful enough to defeat Alyss…” Redd murmured, and dropped into a depressed silence.

The otherworldly pair walked the length and breadth of Montmartre, not knowing what else to do. Few people were out and about, and none had passed within twenty yards of them when Redd stopped as if slapped.

“I
am
more powerful than that disgustingly well-intentioned niece of mine!”

But what if her journey through the crystal had weakened her power, diluted it to a laughable remnant of what it used to be?
What if what if what if
. She would test it, flex the muscle of her imagination, and it would tell her all. She reached a hand out to nothing. A stick as long as one of The Cat's claws formed in her palm, extended lengthwise until it resembled the twisty, knobby thing she'd used as a scepter in Wonderland.

“You try,” she said to The Cat, who morphed from humanoid to kitten and back again, testing his own powers.

“Good.”

But Her Imperial Viciousness wasn't done. She banged the end of her makeshift scepter on the pavement and, from the point of impact, cracks branched out in all directions, widening enough to let vines of flesh-eating roses slither out of them. Growing at a rate never before seen in nature, the vines methodically covered the entire block—buildings, lampposts, street, and sidewalk. It was then that an unfortunate butcher, hurrying to his shop at this early hour as was his custom, emerged from his apartment. He saw the roses and the menacing figures of Redd and The Cat and he tried to run, but the thorn-laden vines wrapped around his ankles and held him rooted. Thorns dug into him as the vines wound up and around his legs, torso, and arms. He opened his mouth to scream and a vine stuffed itself down his throat.

“It's like watching an enjoyable narrative on an entertainment crystal back on Mount Isolation,” Redd said as the roses finished with the butcher. She motioned with her stick—a conductor leading her orchestra—and the roses retracted into the pavement's cracks. “You've been to this world before, Cat. Take me to where I can sulk and complain in peace. Someplace suitable to my delicate temperament.”

“Yes, Your Imperial Viciousness.”

The Cat preferred not to admit his ignorance. True, he had recently plunged through the Pool of Tears and traveled to Earth in his hunt for the exiled Alyss Heart, but nothing looked familiar to him and he was certain that he had never been in this city. He led Redd through a series of turns and along countless blocks. They rounded a corner and came upon the dead butcher. They had traveled in a circle.

“You don't know where we are?” Redd asked.

Her voice was so quiet that it made the fur between The Cat's ears stand on end. He hadn't risked a leap into the Heart Crystal only to die now.

“When I was last on Earth,” he said cautiously, “I must not have come to this city.”

“Tell it to the steel,” Redd snarled, conjuring the end of her stick into a blade, with which she was about to pierce him, when—

“I have only one life left,” he reminded her.

She held the spear aloft, ready to strike. With a grunt of vexation, she lowered it, imagined the blade-end back into a nonlethal nub, and jabbed it against his chest with every other word. “Then you'll have to be more helpful in the future, won't you? Because I might not be so lenient a second time.”

The Cat licked his paw and rubbed his eyes.

“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked, annoyed.

“What?”

Redd pretended to lick her hand and rub her eye.

“Don't take this the wrong way, Your Imperial Viciousness, but I look around and everything is clear and hard. Except you. You're…blurry.”

“You're not so clear yourself,” Redd snapped. “It's probably just the lingering effects of the Heart Crystal.”

She had noticed it too: The Cat out of focus while everything around him was clear and distinct. It was the same whenever she looked at any part of her body. She seemed to exist within a soft fuzz, the edges of herself dissolving into the surrounding air. Not until she and The Cat passed a furniture shop on the Avenue de Clichy and she glimpsed her reflection in an oval looking glass did she understand the cause.

“That hack of a painter! His style was too soft! His coloring too gentle!” She exploded the mirror into thousands of fragments with the force of her anger. “I'll kill him!”

The Cat was all for it, but neither he nor Redd could remember the way to the painter's studio. Her Imperial Viciousness focused her thoughts, searched for him with her imagination's eye. But she wasn't sure where to look; no vision of the painter or his studio appeared. Instead, the eye of her imagination alighted on a crumbling stone staircase half hidden by garbage in an alley behind a charcuterie. The bottommost steps were lost in darkness as unremitting as the grave, a darkness that, for generations, had attracted lesser beings given to Black Imagination—occultists, drug addicts, outcasts seeking a shelter devoid of society's judgment, thieves and murderers seeking refuge from the police.

“Come,” Redd said. “I've found a place for us.”

Descending the crumbling stairs, enveloped by the darkness, Redd and The Cat entered a dank catacomb whose size was belied by the echo of their footfalls. Redd conjured a throne for herself, its seat and backrest resembling a splayed-open rose blossom, its legs and armrests thick, petrified rose vines. Her Imperial Viciousness flopped down into the throne like a woman falling into her favorite chair after a hard day's work.

“You best remember how to return to Wonderland,” she warned The Cat.

“I remember, Your Imperial Viciousness. The portals look like ordinary puddles. I'll know them when I see them.”

“Let's hope for your health that you will. But it'd be no use returning to Wonderland now, when my army is at best scattered and at worst imprisoned en masse.”

Her assassin began to clean himself. “With your strength and power, you could rule as much of this world as you wanted.”

Redd's nostrils flared with impatience. “I know it's difficult for you, Cat, but try to use your brain, as small as it is. Why would I want to lord myself over this world when it's nothing but a weak reflection of my birthplace? Wonderland belongs to
me
. I intend to get what's mine.”

“Won-der-land!” echoed a voice in the dark. “How long it's been since I've set foot on her soil!”

A flickering glow bobbed toward them from the distance of a tunnel: a torch, carried by what appeared to be a dead man, as emaciated as he was and having the complexion of a week-old cadaver. He was dressed entirely in black and wore black gloves. In addition to the torch, he carried a violin case. With him was a tall, bald albino with elongated ears sprouting from his head and a map of veins visible beneath semi-transparent skin: a near twin to Bibwit Harte, identical in every feature except that his nose was more pointed and his cheeks pitted with acne scars. Neither he nor his cadaverous companion showed signs of alarm at the sight of creatures as extraordinary as Redd and The Cat.

“Are you from Wonderland?” the albino asked.

Redd knew a member of the tutor species when she saw one. She also knew that the tutor before her must be a criminal—someone who had leaped into the Pool of Tears to avoid prosecution in Wonderland courts and make what life he could for himself in this antiquated world. She might have considered such ex-Wonderlanders sooner. She could put them to nasty purpose.

“What business is it of yours where we're from?”

“It's none of my business whatsoever,” the stranger answered. “It's just that I used to have a few friends in Wonderland. The one I'm most curious about, however, I can no longer with justice call my friend.”

“Justice is overrated,” Redd brooded.

“Quite,” the stranger agreed. “But perhaps you know this former friend of mine? He's a tutor, as am I, and he likely holds a position of eminence in the queendom. His name is Harte.”

“Everyone knows Bibwit Harte,” The Cat said. “He's tutored three queens.”

With growing interest, Redd asked, “Who are
you
that you've made an enemy of him?”

“My name is Vollrath. Mr. Harte and I were in the Tutor Corps together many, many moons ago, when Queen Issa was still a newborn princess. We were, the top two students in our class, but for as long as we were in the Corps, Mr. Harte remained first-in-class while I was supposed to be content with second. I am incapable of being satisfied with second place in anything, so…” the tutor's ears angled back, stiff, as if buffeted by a strong wind, “…not wanting to be forever at Mr. Harte's heels in the propagation of White Imagination, I began to devote my knowledge and intellect to the service of Black Imagination. And with as much truthfulness as I allow myself—for too much makes one dull, dull, dull—I may say that I became its premier scholar. I offered my services to any Black Imagination practitioners willing to pay me the outlandish sums I demanded, and I lived a life of glorious decadence. But about the time of Issa's coronation, I became entangled with an overambitious smuggler and it became necessary for me to throw myself into the Pool of Tears. I haven't been back to Wonderland since.”

A graduate of the Tutor Corps in the service of Black Imagination? A scholar of malice and foe of Bibwit Harte? It was time for Redd to announce herself:

“I am Redd Heart, granddaughter of Queen Issa and eldest daughter of Queen Theodora and King Tyman, both of whom are dead.”

Vollrath immediately dropped to one knee, his head bowed. “I didn't realize I was conversing with royalty,” he said. “I apologize for my lack of proper respect, Princess.”

Princess
. Redd bridled at the word. “You might ask why Wonderland's heir apparent is in this foul and slummy place. The answer: because my birthright has twice been denied me, once by a traitorous mother who connived with my younger sister (both dead by my hand), and again by an upstart niece who this moment wears the crown that looks so much better on my head than it does on hers. Now get up. And call me ‘Your Imperial Viciousness.'”

Vollrath rose to his feet and put a thoughtful finger to his bloodless lips, about to speak, when—

“Monsieur Vollrath,” the skinny torch-bearer said, “unless you want to be late…”

“Yes, yes, Marcel. Your Imperial Viciousness, if you will deign to tell me, I'd like to hear more about your niece—and of course, what you intend to do to her—but I'm presently on my way to an engagement in a catacomb not far from here. I'd be honored if you and your feline friend would join me as my special guests. The entertainment is to be provided by a pupil of mine—one who, although not from Wonderland, has talents I think you'll appreciate. Afterward, we may discuss your niece at our leisure, and if I can be of any service to you whatsoever, I shall not hesitate.”

So Redd and The Cat followed Vollrath and Marcel along a zigzag of cobwebbed tunnels until they emerged into a catacomb well lit by torches. Though large, the crypt was crammed with tables. At one end, opposite a bar made of coffins, a pile of human bones took up most of an elevated stage. In the center of the room, a heavy-set man with an ink-dark mustache was urging on what appeared to be waiters readying the room for an influx of customers.

“Chop chop!” the man was booming. “Chop chop! Sacrenoir's performance will begin on time or not at all! Marcel, where have you been?”

“Forgive my delay, Master Sacrenoir,” Marcel said.

“I'm to blame for our tardiness,” interrupted Vollrath. “But I've just made what I hope will be a profitable association for all of us. This is Her Imperial Viciousness, Redd Heart, and her feline companion, who have just arrived from my former home.” Addressing the Wonderlanders, he said: “This robust gentleman is Master Sacrenoir, a former apothecary from Lyons gifted in a particularly unsavory practice of black magic.”

“A ‘master,' is he?” Redd said, amused.

Sacrenoir eyed the visitors. “I hope the lack of focus so evident in their persons doesn't represent what's within their heads. I need to check on my bones.” The magician hulked over to the stage, where he made a great clatter rearranging femurs and pelvic bones and skulls.

“Master Sacrenoir has never shown much talent for courtesy,” Vollrath said, “especially before a performance. Come, we shall sit at the best table in the house.”