by Eva Chase
Lyssa smiled at me with an amused glint in her eye. “As long as it’s over dry land?”
I grinned back. “I’ll brave the watery depths again for you, lovely. I just can’t say I’ll like it.”
When we set off, Lyssa had pulled her woven vest of armor over the bodice of her dress. The dusky gray metal gleamed almost as much as the embedded rubies did. She made a face when she saw me looking.
“I know I look a little ridiculous. It’s just easier to wear it than to carry it.”
“Not ridiculous at all,” I said. “If we come across something that wants to stab you rather than drown you, I expect we’ll all be glad you’ve got it on, too.”
We didn’t come across any trials of either sort as we marched across the moonlight terrain and passed into the next stretch of daylight. A few of the squares were willing to give us some peace. It wasn’t the most pleasant going, though. The sun over this square had scorched the sky and the ground dry. Cracked earth gave off puffs of dust under our feet—and sometimes where we didn’t step too. Sweat trickled down my back.
We walked at a diagonal to get us back in the row where Lyssa had spotted her special hill, which meant crossing that square took even longer. I think we were all ready to be done with the place by the time we reached the corner where two edges of cool dark haze touched just before another square of daylight. We gulped down a hasty lunch and walked on.
Vines slithered and bats flapped through the jungle beyond. After a few hours’ hike, we emerged from at the top of a hill overlooking a wide plain flecked with wildflowers—and a small town.
The White Knight motioned for us to stop where we could stay hidden from view in the shade of a stand of trees. People swarmed around the scattered buildings, far more than could possibly have lived in that place. The sun caught on brilliant glints on their chests and the bright colors of their elegant clothes. Diamonds, I realized. Yes, there were the hunched beetle-like forms of the palace’s silver air trolleys parked in a row beyond the buildings.
“What are they all doing there?” Lyssa asked.
As I squinted, two figures broke from the cluster of buildings onto the open plain, both of them wearing scarlet short pants and nothing else. Ah. Unicorn shook his sparkling mane, his glittering horn streaked red and his hooved hands raised to fight. Across from him, Lion let out a roar that shook the air all the way to where we were watching. His teeth flashed, and he lunged forward with a swipe of his massive paw. His claws raked a fresh gash across Unicorn’s arm. His own shoulder was seeping blood where the horn had pierced it.
“The Lion and the Unicorn went fighting through the town,” I murmured, and turned to Lyssa. “It’s one of the many palace spectacles: pitting Lion and Unicorn against each other. The Diamonds never get enough of watching them fight. They must have decided the resumption of Time was as good a time as any for a temporary change in scenery.”
“They do this all the time?” Lyssa said. “Don’t the two of them mind all the fighting?”
“I suspect they got tired of it a long while ago,” Hatter said. “But what the Queen says will be, will be as she said.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Unicorn landed a punch with one of his hooves that made Lyssa wince. Lion reeled backward. Before the equine figure could even lower his horn, the feline one had sprung up again. He hurtled at Unicorn with another roar, and Unicorn didn’t sidestep fast enough. Lion knocked him to the ground. They sprawled, the tawny man pinning the sparkly one beneath his paws.
Lion snapped out a command with a jerk of one hand. I didn’t need to be able to hear his voice to know what he’d asked for. My body stiffened as a giddy lady among the Diamonds presented him with the victor’s knife. He raised it triumphantly.
I should have looked away, but what can I say? I was stubborn as a cat. My limbs stayed tensed, a metallic flavor creeping through my mouth, as Lion lowered the blade to Unicorn’s throat and sliced across it.
Not deep enough to kill. Just enough to mark him with that streak of blood that sprang up in an instant. A jabbing sensation shot through my ribs. Then I yanked my gaze away.
“But if he dies,” Lyssa was saying.
“It’s only a superficial wound,” Theo said with a note of disgust. “A symbolic gesture, though a painful one. They’ll seal it up with salve after they’ve all celebrated the victory.”
“I expect Unicorn is used to it by now,” I made myself say, my voice steady even if it felt detached from the rest of me. “He’s the loser more often than not.”
The crowd of Diamonds was milling out of the town around the two fighters, one still prone on the ground, the other standing with paws raised in triumph. Blood had spilled all down Unicorn’s pale neck, but at least the knife was out of view.
“Let’s leave them to their bloody fun,” I said. “We’ve got better sport ahead of us, don’t you think?”
No one seemed inclined to argue. We skirted the edge of the night-bound square until we’d come down the side of the hill. Then we ventured on toward Lyssa’s cliff through a shallow grassy valley.
I strolled along at the back of the bunch, drinking in the bright floral air. Other than our company on the other side of the hill, this was my favorite square yet.
Lyssa drifted back to join me. She walked alongside me for a few minutes simply taking in the scenery. Then she said, quietly, “Are you all right?”
I hadn’t hidden my reaction as well as I’d hoped. The lingering effects had all vanished now. I could give her a perfectly genuine grin and roll my answer lightly off my tongue.
“The people of the palace are like the food they serve there—so rich they give you indigestion. Nothing a brisk walk and a sweet breeze couldn’t cure.”
Lyssa nodded even though the slant of her mouth suggested she didn’t totally accept my answer. She was getting keen, our Otherlander. I admired that canniness even as I wished she didn’t notice quite so much about me.
“You Wonderlanders have quite the violent streak, huh?” she said. “Or maybe just the Hearts and the Diamonds do?”
“I can see how you might draw that conclusion,” I said. “And I won’t claim it’s a false one. Are people in the Otherland so different?”
She grimaced. “Maybe not. Fair point. I guess everything else in this place is so different it’s hard not to think the people should be too.”
She paused, with a silence that tasted of words on the verge of being spoken. Her steps slowed to let the others gain more ground on us. I eased up on my pace to match hers. A flicker of pleasure passed through my chest at the thought that out of everyone here, she was taking me into her confidence. That she wanted to hear my thoughts on serious matters despite the fact that I so often turned them into a joke.
“Chess,” she said finally, her voice low. “Are you sure the Spades didn’t kill the prince? Maybe just one or two of them off on their own, without Theo’s permission? The way they did it—Doria told me they cut off his head, like the Queen does to everyone else… If that’s even true.”
“It is,” I said with a twist of my stomach. “I saw it myself.” More years ago than I’d bothered to keep track, but the memory still rose up vividly behind my eyes. All that blood splashed across the gleaming marble floor. Prince Jack’s head lying in the midst of it, golden curls stained red so they almost matched his mother’s hair, face bruised and battered as if his killer had played a game of kickball with it.
The Queen had barely had time to scream. Barely time to cast about to find the rest of him. It’d been just a few minutes before midnight when I’d darted over to investigate the commotion. With a tick of the clocks and a jolt, we’d all ended up back where we’d started—and the Queen’s youngest son had been wiped from this world.
I willed the images away. “All I can tell you with certainty is that I’ve never heard so much as a murmur suggesting anyone with the Spades knows more about the murder than I do,” I said. “And the way it was
done—it wasn’t set up like an act of rebellion. They pretended they were trying to steal something from the palace—that broken vase—as if killing him were an accident, which is ridiculous anyway because it’s not as if anyone could have stolen anything for more than a day before it hopped back home. Or a matter of minutes, in this case. It was nearly midnight.”
“Maybe they didn’t want the Queen to think it had anything to do with the rebellion,” Lyssa suggested.
“That’s possible,” I said. “But I wasn’t part of the Spades back then, and even I knew she’d blame them no matter what the evidence showed. I’ve often wondered if it wasn’t carried out by a Diamond.”
Lyssa’s eyebrows shot up. “Why would a Diamond kill him?”
“Oh, the Diamonds have large appetites, and for many things other than food,” I said. “Power, for example. If one of them saw a clear enough opening to grasping the crown, they’d take it like that.” I snapped my fingers. “I could see them thinking the murder would destabilize the Queen’s rule. She did dote on Prince Jack. Before he came, many said she couldn’t have another child, you know—her others were all grown by the time he was born. Losing him definitely broke something in her. But possibly not the way they hoped.”
Lyssa made a humming sound. She studied the grass for a moment before saying, hesitantly, “You were there, even though it was almost midnight. Did you stay out at the palace all the way into the night very often?”
“At least as often as I didn’t,” I said glibly.
She glanced up, turning that pensive gaze on me, as if she were trying to read answers to questions she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask out loud. I smiled and picked up my pace to catch up with the others. “Let’s not get left behind.”
If she ever got around to asking those questions, I hoped she made sure she truly wanted the answers.
Chapter Ten
Lyssa
It was amazing how easily I could tell apart the twins now that I’d matched personalities to names. In the moonless, starless square of night we’d been trekking across for a couple hours at least, Dum was obviously the one who’d pulled a lantern out of his pack to help light the way, and Dee was the one making goofy shadow shapes in front of that lantern as they walked.
Theo had kept his place in the lead with a lantern of his own. We’d had to edge across a narrow bridge that connected two sides of a chasm that dropped so far down the lantern-light didn’t reach the bottom. After that, we’d needed to circle around a bunch of thorny tumbleweeds that gouged their way across the rocky terrain in an endless ring. At the moment, the walking was pretty easy, comparatively speaking. Especially when I could make out the glow of the next daylight square getting brighter up ahead.
“And then I flung it so hard I’ll bet they never found it again,” Dee said with a laugh, finishing his recollection of a mission he and his brother had been part of, with shadowy animation to illustrate.
“How long have you two been with the Spades?” I asked. They looked younger than the other guys—I’d have guessed college freshmen age—but Hatter had told me that people in Wonderland didn’t age much once they reached adulthood, and then only in fits and starts. You couldn’t really judge just by looking.
“Since we were kids, pretty much,” Dee said cheerfully. “Our talents showed up young.”
“The White Knight didn’t have us running missions,” Dum put in. “He protected us.”
“Yep. Because if the Queen got wind of those talents, we’d have been assigned to the Hearts’ Guard in a snap.” Dee raised his feet high as if imitating the springy steps his twin could make, his shadow-legs stretching into the distance. “Mom went to the White Knight, and he helped us keep the secret. Started teaching us all the stealthy Spades stuff at the same time.”
Dum frowned as if he didn’t like his brother telling me so much about their situation. I still got the impression he didn’t like me all that much for whatever reason. “Although some of us remember those lessons better than others,” he said.
Dee waved him off and shot a smile at me. “Dum thinks it’s his job to worry about both of us. I’m actually the older twin, you know. Ten whole minutes.”
I wasn’t sure what Dum would have been worried about. When Dee had gone on the mission into the palace grounds with us a few days ago, he’d taken it seriously enough, as far as I could tell. Chess was proof that you could be a joker around here but still get the job done without losing your head.
“Well, thank you for coming along to help with this—” I started, and a burbling moan echoed through the air.
My mouth snapped shut, all the hairs on my arms standing on end. Our whole procession jerked to a stop, even Dee’s eyes widening.
I’d heard that noise before. Hatter had called it a—
“Jabberwock,” Chess said behind me in a deadpan voice. “Oh, how very delightful.”
Another wavering groan rippled over us. Dum turned toward Theo. “Should we put out the lamps?”
“What direction is it coming from?” Hatter asked, his head swiveling.
The ground shook with a scrabble of claws that was definitely just ahead of us. The next moan sounded more like a roar. Theo spun around, his lantern swinging so the light swayed over us. “Run! Back to the spike-wheels.”
I guessed those thorny tumbleweeds might give us some cover. We all dashed back the way we’d come, Hatter waving us on with his hand hooked around Doria’s elbow, Chess touching my back to urge me faster.
Jaws snapped behind us with an unnerving rasp of scraping teeth. Somehow I didn’t think my fancy metal vest was going to do much to protect me if that thing decided to chomp on me. Why couldn’t it have been a full body suit of armor?
The monster’s moan warbled over us so close it rustled my hair, with a wash of hot breath that stunk like raw meat drenched in vinegar. I coughed and pushed my legs faster. The jostling lantern light caught on the prickly edge of one of the tumbleweeds just ahead—and then on four figures charging toward us.
The Knave and his guards. They must have been tracking us, nearly caught up with us. My heart stuttered at the glimpse I got of that gray sharkish face, yellowed by the lantern’s glow.
My feet stumbled over a ridge in the rocky ground, and Chess yanked me to the side, out of reach of one of the guards’ swords. Hatter and Doria had veered off in the opposite direction.
The Knave slashed at Dum, who sprang out of the way a second too late. Blood welled along a thin line on his forearm as his lantern slipped from his grasp. It rolled across the ground, the light wheeling like the tumbleweeds did, and a massive form barreled into our midst.
The jabberwock looked like the deformed offspring of a dragon and a macaw. Red and gold feathers shuddered all over its bulky body. Its long sinuous neck reverberated with one of its burbling moans. Even the ends of its wings had glinting talons, but I was more nervous about the claws that cut into the stone beneath each splayed toe on its wide feet.
Theo jumped in front of me with a flash of his lantern. The jabberwock’s rectangular jaw detached from the rest of its snout to yawn open, revealing rows of jagged teeth like broken glass. Its head shot down, and it clamped those jaws shut around the torso of one of the guards.
The guy barely had time to gasp in pain before his voice cut off completely with a crunch of bones. My stomach churned. The jabberwock shook the now-limp body from side to side like a puppy with a toy and then hurled it off into the darkness.
We scrambled backward as it lunged at another of the guards, its nearest target. The man threw himself out of the way, but the creature veered to follow him at the last second. Its claws plunged into his chest with a gush of blood.
Oh, fuck. How the hell were we going to fight off that? I wasn’t sure even an avalanche of thorny tumbleweeds would slow it down.
The jabberwock raked its claws through the guard’s abdomen, scattering his innards across the ground. As if bored with its catch, it swung around—toward Hat
ter and Doria.
Every nerve in my body screamed in protest, and the ruby ring turned hot against my chest. The rubies on my vest gleamed with a faint glow. A tingling sensation ran through me, like the sense of certainty and power I’d felt in that brief moment when I’d slowed the train.
No. This monster would not kill my lovers, my friends, my allies. No.
Without thinking, I stepped toward it. “Lyssa!” Theo said, grabbing my arm, but I pushed him back.
“Jabberwock!” I called. My voice rang through the scattered light. “Stop.”
Hatter had produced one of his hatpins that he usually put to work opening locks, holding it like a narrow dagger in front of him, his other arm extended protectively in front of his daughter. His face tightened and paled even more than it already had when the jabberwock paused. The creature’s head swiveled around toward me.
Blood dribbled over the jabberwock’s feathered jaw and streaked the ground beneath its feet. Its narrow eyes burned with a violet glow. My pulse thudded hard, but I took another step toward it and another, holding out my hand. The ring flared hotter; the rubies glowed brighter. The sense of sureness flooded me, taking the edge off my fear.
“Jabberwock,” I said in a quieter voice. “Stand down. We’re not your enemy.”
The creature turned its whole body toward me with a swish of its tail. Its head dipped down toward my hand, but so slowly I didn’t flinch. Theo had come up beside me. From the corner of my eye, I saw him stiffen. Chess sucked in a startled breath. Across from us, Hatter simply stared.
The jabberwock bumped its snout against my fingers. A whiff of that sour meaty smell wafted over me. Swallowing hard, I gave the beast a light scratch just above its nostrils like I might have with a horse. Never mind that this thing was twice as tall as the biggest horse I’d ever seen and outfitted with much sharper appendages. It had responded to something—to the ring? To the vest? To both in combination?—and that was all that mattered.
