A Blade So Black

by L. L. McKinney

  Alice pointed her toes and touched them against the waters. A jolt of cold shot up her leg. Immediately the surface stilled. Motionless, the waters cast her reflection at her like a mirror, except her mirrored self held a silver scepter, crowned with a stone glowing deep purple. She extended a hand, offering the staff to Alice.

  Without hesitation, Alice knelt and reached into the waters. It was like reaching through pudding, thick and creamy, the surface wavering gently. A numbness traveled up her arm, prickling like it had fallen asleep. Her fingers curled around the scepter and pulled.

  When the staff slipped free, the water solidified with a crackling like ice and chilled the soles of her feet. Alice gripped the scepter, examining it. The head split outward into two hands cast in silver, the purple gem cupped by their fingers. She lifted her fingers toward the glowing stone.

  “No!” her reflection shouted.

  Alice’s finger pricked the stone’s surface. The purple exploded outward. The ice beneath her feet buckled before melting, and she dropped through. Water swallowed her, filled her nose and mouth, poured down her throat. Her limbs kicked and flailed. She couldn’t breathe.

  Help!

  Her eyes flew open. Light stabbed the back of her skull, and she snapped them closed again, pressing her palms over her lids. Her chest spasmed.

  Oh, thank god. She was able to breathe, though … she wasn’t sure why she thought she couldn’t. Pressure behind her eyes swelled and deflated. The steady pounding felt like someone was holding her head underwater.

  Drinking in gulps of air, she blinked her eyes open again. Unfamiliar clay-colored walls rose around her, bare and boring, with not a window between them. The white ceiling held an equally plain fan, the blades whipping the air in soft whispers. A plaque featuring a white rabbit in a waistcoat and brandishing a pocket watch hung on the wall. She knew that funky tchotchke.

  I’m at the pub? She frowned, trying to remember how she wound up here. Flashes played through her mind: a white dress, her holding a stick while running through the woods. She fought a Nightmare. Then everything went dark, followed by lots of water.

  It was a dream. No, she’d been attacked, she was certain.

  “Ha—” Hatta’s name stuck in her throat. She swallowed, and her mouth withered like grass in the hot sun. Breathing became a chore and she coughed, choking on dry air.

  The attempt to roll onto her side sent shards of pain tearing through her. She yelped as much from surprise as the hurt. “W-wha?” Her voice cracked, pitching her words into a squeal.

  A door she hadn’t noticed swung open, and Maddi scurried through. “Don’t move.” She scrambled to the side of the bed.

  “Not moving,” Alice whimpered, frozen in an awkward position where she’d arched off the bed, partially trapped by the sheets.

  “Easy,” Maddi shushed. The sound of something sloshing accompanied her words, then a slippery coolness spread through Alice’s side. The pain eased, and she sank against the mattress with a groan.

  It was then that she noticed she was dressed in some sort of cotton tank and sleep-shorts set. She plucked at the front of the white shirt, brow furrowed. “What happened to my clothes?”

  “You mean besides being muddied and bled all over?”

  “Touché.” She must’ve been pretty banged up if Serious Maddi was on the clock. Normally the sleepy girl was all riddles and nonsense talk, but funnily enough, whenever Alice was badly injured, it was like Maddi was a different person entirely, all sense and clarity.

  “So you soundly boggled your scourse.”

  Mostly sense and clarity. “What?” Alice asked.

  “You got really messed up.”

  “Ahh.” Understatement.

  “By the time we got you in here you were practically half-dead. Plus you smelled like you crawled out of Death’s ass.”

  “Lovely.” And here she was supposed to be quitting in order to avoid this whole half-dead situation. Images of Mom crying after Alice had been killed poured over her mind. She dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Uuuuugh.”

  “I got you cleaned up and changed, no worries.” Maddi patted at Alice’s side with a cloth before tossing it onto a bedside table that looked more like a chemistry station, various glass containers filled with different liquids set atop it. “Sorry no one was here; we didn’t expect you to be up so soon, and moving around to boot.”

  Questions bubbled in Alice’s mind, about what happened and why she couldn’t remember clearly. Only one was important enough to make the journey to her lips. “Where’s Hatta?”

  “Coming.” Maddi turned her attention to mixing something orange in one of the glasses while Alice risked a look at her wound. Dark skin puckered around four distinct slices. Strips of tissue stretched across the gashes like fleshy string cheese, spurred on by Maddi’s healing touch no doubt.

  “Nasty business, that.” Hatta filled the doorway, his expression drawn. His eyes fixed on her wounded side. “What happened?”

  What happened? Alice frowned, the throbbing in her head kicked up. “I … the twins. We found something. I was coming back and—”

  Images of the Black Knight darted behind her eyes. Her chest tightened, and she bolted up with a shout. Pain danced down her side, her head pounding now.

  “I said easy!” Maddi called, reaching for her.

  Hatta was at her side as well. He didn’t say anything, just wrapped his arms around her and held her close as she shook and cried, fumbling over the words. “H-him! He happened!”

  “Easy, luv,” Hatta coaxed, his hands sliding over her arms, up and down her back. “Breathe.”

  She was trying. Deep breaths became quick hitches. She swallowed thickly, her mouth like cotton. Her vision waned in a combination of tears and the sudden decrease in oxygen to her brain as she panted.

  “Drink this.” Maddi offered a frosted glass filled with the orange liquid from before.

  Alice downed it without a second thought, ignoring the tart lemony taste made worse by the lukewarm temperature. By the time she handed the cup to Maddi, the pain in her head was all but gone, replaced by a warm, tingly feeling, like hot sand being poured between her ears. It felt … funny. She was also able to actually inhale without choking on it.

  “That’s it,” Hatta cooed. “In and out. In and out.”

  Her headache was gone. But she was still shaking.

  “Now then. What happened?” Hatta asked.

  “I was headed back when he jumped me,” she forced between clenched teeth.

  “Who?”

  She shook her head, sniffing and wiping at her runny nose. “I—I don’t know. He called himself the Black Knight.”

  Hatta stiffened. Alice could feel his muscles lock up around her. She winced, he was holding her so tight.

  Something clacked to the side. Maddi quickly righted a bottle that had fallen over, spilling yellow liquid across the table. “Bobs and ends,” she whispered. “Bobs and ends and round the bend.” Her hands shook as she stacked glasses and jars away from the mess.

  Alice couldn’t see her face, but she could tell from the hitch of the Poet’s shoulders something was wrong. “Maddi.”

  “Towel!” Maddi jumped to her feet, pink eyes wide, her brown face gone white. “I’ll get a towel.” She hurried from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  “Um…” Alice stared after the Poet. “She seems awful upset.”

  “For good reason.” Hatta loosened his hold, drawing back to ease Alice against her pillows and sit at her side. “The Black Knight was the strongest force the Black Queen commanded. He wiped out entire battalions in her name, did horrible things.” Hatta’s jaw tensed. His lips pursed. “No one likes talking about him or hearing about some tosser pretending to be him.”

  Alice frowned. “Pretending?”

  “Absolutely.” Hatta’s multicolored eyes smoldered, his expression oddly unreadable.

  Alice squirmed under his gaze, struggling to hold it. “How
do you know he’s pretending?”

  “Because I do,” Hatta snapped. Shaking his head, he forced air through his nose as he shifted his weight. “What did he look like?”

  Alice snorted. “Wore armor, a mask. I couldn’t see his face.”

  “Anything identifiable? A crest on the breastplate?”

  “Not that kind of armor. More modern, Call of Duty–type stuff.”

  “Any markings at all?”

  It had been dark, and they’d been moving around a lot. She hadn’t seen much detail. She shook her head before blinking at Hatta.

  “That’s it then.” He drew one leg up to tuck beneath himself. “The Black Knight—the true Black Knight—wore enchanted plate armor with the emblem of his queen emblazoned on the breastplate. All knights of Wonderland wear such armor. The real Black Knight is gone.”

  That seemed way too simple. “Then who the hell was that?”

  He rolled his shoulders as he twisted one of the rings on his hand, his long fingers curling and flexing. “An imposter. Someone still loyal to the Black Queen, possibly, looking to start trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “That is the question.” He tapped his fingers against his lips. “Curiouser—”

  “And curiouser, I know.” Alice picked at a hole in her sheets. “He fought pretty good for just some imposter.” Kicked her ass, actually. She hadn’t been beaten that bad since training.

  “But you defeated him.”

  Heat burned through Alice for a different reason now. “No, I didn’t. He let me go after whoopin’ my butt with his freaky sword.”

  Hatta straightened, eyes on her. “Sword? What sort of sword?”

  An image of that weapon and the way it swallowed the moonlight danced across her memory. A shudder crawled through her, and she fought not to press back into the pillows. “He called it a Warped blade or something.”

  “Vorpal Blade?”

  She nodded. “It infected everything it touched with this black stuff. The grass, the dirt, the rocks.” Another shiver moved through her. She shut her eyes, trying to remember. There was something important … “It was black. He used it like some sort of reverse Figment Blade, drove it into the ground and boom, Nightmare popped up.”

  Hatta watched her, his head cocked to the side. The easygoing air around him had shifted, as if standing at attention. “You’re certain he said Vorpal Blade?”

  Alice blinked, her mouth working as words tripped over themselves, tumbling free. “It sounded—I mean—yeah, I’m sure. He said the Vorpal Blade, snicky snack, and something about cutting off someone’s head.”

  “Impossible…” His gaze drifted past her to the wall and somewhere beyond. Somewhere long ago that once was, and perhaps should never be again.

  Everything played across his face, through those eyes that weren’t really looking at her.

  Her hand fell over his. “Hatta?”

  He started and refocused on her. “I should let you rest. We can talk about all of this later.” He twisted his fingers to twine them with hers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, luv.”

  The warmth from his hand spread to hers and up her arm. This odd, tingly feeling followed. Her gaze lifted from their fingers, and her eyes caught his. Their colors shifted. He smiled. It may have been a trick of the light, but she thought he leaned in a little.

  “I’m all right,” she murmured, her throat going dry. She swallowed, sitting up. Their hands shifted, lacing their fingers together. Her palm pressed to his.

  Something sparked at the contact.

  Hatta yanked his hand away with a yelp and shook it out.

  Alice stared at him, then her still-lifted hand, the sudden space between them like a chasm.

  The hell? “I’m … sorry.”

  “No worries.” He flexed his fingers, his expression faintly twisted.

  “You okay?” Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, clumsy.

  “What?” He rubbed his palms together, looking his hands over before glancing at her. “I’m fine. You?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged, eyeing her hand. “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault.” Another flex of his fingers.

  Smirking, Hatta leaned in and brushed his lips against her forehead. Every part of her tingled lightly, heat crawling up her neck from her chest and consuming her face. “Rest, milady.”

  “R-rest sounds good.” Alice tucked her hands between her sheet-covered thighs as Hatta moved over to the door. He tugged it open, drawing up short when he nearly ran into Maddi, who stood on the other side clutching a towel to her chest and looking like she’d been caught in the act.

  “Towel,” she whispered, holding it up.

  Hatta chuckled and stepped back to let the mousy girl move past and over to start cleaning up the mess from earlier. The liquid had congealed into more of a greasy substance, so the towel wasn’t really working.

  “Good night.” He waved.

  Alice returned the wave, smiling faintly, all warm and fuzzy. Then she caught sight of her palm. A pinprick of black nestled in the center. It started to grow. And grow. And she remembered. “Wait!”

  Maddi jumped, jostling the table and a few jars. She reached to steady them. Hatta stood in the door, an eyebrow arched.

  “He told me to give you a message.” Alice held her arm out, marked palm up.

  Fingers took her hand and pulled so fast she jerked up a bit. Her side stung in protest. “Ow!” She hadn’t even seen Hatta move.

  “Sorry, luv.” He studied her palm, squeezing her fingers.

  His gaze flicked up to catch hers through the veil of his dark lashes. “Does it hurt?”

  She swallowed and shook her head, praying he couldn’t hear how her heart thudded against her ribs. “He wants something called the Eye.”

  Maddi glanced back and forth between the two of them, her wide eyes shifting in color with every blink.

  Alice withdrew her hand. Hatta let her.

  “He says you have it and he’s coming to … Hatta?”

  Hatta traced his own palm. His lips moved the slightest bit, whispers escaping him in a rush.

  “Hatta?” she tried again. When he didn’t answer, she glanced at Maddi, who was watching him with a frown crinkling her normally sleepy expression.

  The Poet approached Hatta and leaned in to wave her hand in front of his face. He didn’t do anything, just stood there, mumbling.

  Worry crawled through Alice, enough for her to draw back the sheets, ready to go to him. Before her feet touched the ground, Maddi hauled back and slapped him. “Addison!”

  Hatta jerked. So did Alice, actually.

  His body snapped straight. His head lifted as he shook it. He blinked owlishly, glanced at Maddi, then at Alice, back and forth a few times before smacking his lips. “Anyone else taste chartreuse?”

  “Ahh…” She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, or to the fact that Maddi now stood with her arms folded over her chest, looking annoyed for having to slap him in the first place.

  He lifted a hand to massage his cheek. “Ahem. Thank you, Madeline.”

  Maddi went back to cleaning, her actions stiff, her frown deepening. It was so strange to see her looking anything but exhausted.

  Alice still wasn’t sure what to say, if she should say anything. After a few beats, she found the words. “Are you okay?”

  Hatta blinked at her as if surprised to find her there. “Ah, yes. What were you saying?”

  “The message.” The mark on Alice’s hand seemed to stand out all the more now. “The Black Knight wants the Eye.”

  “Right, right.” Hatta continued to rub his cheek, which had now gone an angry red. “I don’t have it.”

  “What is it? And why is some asshole tagging my hand over it?”

  The rubbing moved to his temple. “It was a magic artifact that belonged to the Black Queen. After defeating her, the Red and White Queens hid it. As I said, I don’t have it.”

  Maddi clacked glasses against the table, sprea
ding them out again. The way she manhandled them, Alice almost felt pity for the dishes. She’d never seen the bartender so bothered.

  “He’ll have to look elsewhere.” Hatta lowered his hand and moved for the door. “As for your hand, if I’m not mistaken, the mark is a conduit. It contains a Verse meant to pass from one carrier to the next. I imagine it’s supposed to be a reminder.”

  “Mark?” Maddi glanced at Alice. “What mark?”

  Alice offered her palm. Maddi stared and shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Because you are not the bearer nor the intended recipient.” Hatta kept his eyes on Alice. “It should fade soon. Maddi will finish looking after the worst of your wounds, give you something to ease the pain and speed up healing, more than your naturally enhanced regeneration. Take two swallows every few hours for four days. Or three and nine-eighths days. Just in case. If you miss a dose, take one swallow every quarter half hour.”

  “Every quar—that doesn’t even make sense.”

  “And don’t take the bandage off.”

  “What bandage?”

  Maddi slapped something against Alice’s side. She jumped, more from surprise than anything. The bartender slathered what looked like green finger paint against Alice’s bare skin. The color gradually darkened to match her complexion, concealing the wound completely.

  Alice blinked. Had Maddi used this after Ahoon? Alice didn’t remember much following that fight, but this was some useful stuff. “Can I get some of this to go?”

  “’Fraid not. It goes bad a few days after being mixed.” Maddi turned her attention to Alice’s leg. “I applied some earlier, but a second coating helps maintain the illusion.”

  “Literal wound dressing. Can’t have you looking like you got yourself mauled.” Hatta winked, then disappeared out the door and down the hall, his words trailing behind him. “Get some rest. We’ll talk more later.”

  Alice settled against the pillows as Maddi finished applying the bandage and cleaned her hands with the towel she’d used to wipe up her earlier spill. “All light, starshine.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yup yup. I’ll let you sleep.”