ArchEnemy (16 page)

“I
did
expect this,” Arch said, swinging again, his knobkerrie clattering against Redd’s, “just not so soon.”

More knobkerries formed to pummel the king’s arms and shoulders and gut while the construct watched, smug. Then, from nowhere Arch could see, a sword shot toward him, its point aimed for his heart and not a spirit-dane length away when—

Blister and Ripkins, hearing the commotion from the hallway, came rushing into the room. Blister jumped in front of the king, catching the sword in a gloved hand. Ripkins, his fingerprint sawteeth flashing, sprinted at the construct and—

Passed right through it. The bodyguards exchanged a surprised glance, but Arch only had eyes for the construct, which faded from sight, cackling at his gullibility.

In the Volcanic Plains, the smoke from Her Imperial Viciousness’ scepter thinned, drifted away. It had never been a good plan, Redd judged. A remote kill of Arch would have brought her satisfaction, but not necessarily closer to the Heart Crystal. There were too many unknowns. Who had been assigned to command in the event of Arch’s premature death, before she and her remaining assassins could reach the palace and take possession of the Crystal? If no one assumed command and the tribes and Heart soldiers fell into civil war, would she have time to gather her former forces together—or enough of them, at least, to win the Crystal?

She sought the power source for the cosmos in her imagination’s eye, might never have glimpsed its location if not for the extraordinary amount of activity around a certain shrub, the coming and going of intel ministers to and from its underground hiding place. It was, she knew, too much activity around the Heart Crystal to be innocent; Arch was up to something.

The caterpillar, intent on refilling the bowl of his hookah, did not confirm or deny these thoughts. He made no comment on what had just taken place in Heart Palace, and Redd was beginning to think the worm had forgotten her when he gestured with five of his right legs at the sleeping Gnobi.

“You should not be here when they wake.”

“They shouldn’t wake at all,” Redd countered.

The caterpillar took to the air on a cloud from his hookah, rising higher and higher. “To get what you want, Rose Heart, you must go toward that which you most despise.”

Redd watched the oracle until he vanished into great banks of geyser steam. She should go toward that which she most despised? She despised so many things: Alyss, White Imagination, happy, well-adjusted—

She spun round to where Mr. Van de Skülle was still taming the eight jabberwocky. When she’d been queen, she had intended to train the beasts and use them in place of spirit-danes. It had amused her to picture herself charging through Wondertropolis on the back of such a ferocious creature, but now . . .

She might not yet know what despised thing she was to go toward, but whatever it was, however she proceeded, it
would
culminate in violence. Having jabberwocky at her disposal could not fail to be an advantage in the coming war.

A
LTHOUGH ALYSS’ imagination was again hers and she had strength and abilities he could never match, Dodge was unwilling to relax his vigilance for her safety. In case soldiers were lying in wait, he preceded her through the limbo coop’s wall and out across land belonging to the House of Clubs. To prevent them being seen from above, Alyss conjured a canopy that took on aspects of the changing landscape over which they traveled, yet he insisted on leading the way, determined to take unto himself any enemy fire.

“You’re on the northernmost rim of Outerwilderbeastia,” General Doppelgänger informed them via crystal communicator, “in one of the Clubs’ more remote land holdings.”

Dodge hacked a path into the jungle with his father’s sword, cutting back vines thick as a spirit-dane’s shin bone and rubbery fronds the size of tea platters. Pushing through the dank, heavy foliage, he tested each gwynook-length of spongy ground with his own body weight before letting Alyss follow. Infrequent communications with General Doppelgänger and Bibwit failed to settle them on a destination, and unsure how long it would take to maneuver through Outerwilderbeastia, they stopped to rest in a sort of enclave, an area surrounded on all sides by dense jungle and no larger than the table in the palace’s briefing room.

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” he suggested.

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

He knew he’d never be able to close his eyes. And so, with what passed for silence in Outerwilderbeastia as accompaniment to his ruminations—the whir of fist-sized insects, the caw and rattle of unseen creatures—he watched her sleep.

He’d been intending to propose—even before the queendom’s distant military outposts were attacked, before the need to figure out who or what was attacking them rendered the timing for highly personal questions inappropriate. And since then, there’d been one calamity after another, misfortunes contriving to prevent him from
ever
asking what his heart compelled him to ask. Couldn’t he and Alyss manage so much as a quarter lunar hour together, which, if not romantic, might at least be free of invasions, rebellions, unlawful incarcerations, political and military subterfuge? Between Alyss’ loss of imagination and the Clubs’ uprising, the timing for a proposal perhaps hadn’t been the absolute worst, since her loss of power had brought her closer to Dodge’s level as an ordinary Wonderlander. Expecting a better opportunity, though, he hadn’t acted. But what if a better opportunity never came? Maybe this was, in part, what it meant to love a queen: Where your personal life was concerned, you made what you could of unlikely times and places.

There, in a tiny clearing in northern Outerwilderbeastia, watching his beloved sleep, Dodge made up his mind: He just had to do it—to not think but act. Their future survival was uncertain, but he would declaim his feelings for Alyss Heart, ask her to make him—despite all—the happiest man in Wonderland.

I
T WAS developing into a habit as firm as his chattiness had been previously—the royal tutor barely returning the greetings of the sunflowers, tulips, and hollizaleas he passed as he hurried along a path on palace grounds, not even murmuring to himself as he approached a hedge indistinguishable from those around it. His bald head glistening like a second moon in the evening’s light, his ears pivoting as if to catch any sound made by nearby foes, Bibwit stepped into the thickest part of the hedge, his weight causing its roots to shift and a hatchway to open. A hand grabbed him and pulled him roughly back on to the path.

“Can’t go down.”

The king’s bodyguards: Ripkins and Blister. Where had they come from? How had he not heard them?

“I can’t . . . go down?” Bibwit repeated. “But . . .” What could he say? He had no official reason for being in the Heart Chamber. He’d been overcome with a need to check on the Crystal, to confirm that its recovery from WILMA was continuing unabated, that he and Alyss, Wonderland and White Imaginationists everywhere, still had a chance.

“No one is to go down,” Ripkins said. “King’s orders.”

“Yes,” the tutor’s ears belied surprise with a not-so-subtle flick, “the king is down there. I have business with the king.” He struggled to think what that business might be, because once he descended the bronzite steps, Arch would demand to know the meaning of his intrusion.

“You’re not going down,” Blister said.

“Your business with the king will wait until he ascends,” said Ripkins.

Unable to walk away without arousing distrust, Bibwit smiled weakly at the inexpressive bodyguards and resigned himself to waiting.

Arch didn’t care how the green caterpillar did it—whether he lied to the other oracles to get them to give up their silk or somehow, despite their alleged omniscience, stole it from them without a word. Why should he care? The caterpillar had given him what he required. And if the story of the creature’s boredom, of his need to test the extent of his power, were a lie, he’d discover it in time. For now, he would press forward with his scheme. He would figure out the rest as facts became known.

On the floor of the Heart Chamber, the waist-high spools of purple, blue, yellow, red, orange, and green caterpillar silk were immediately before him, his intel ministers and their assistants working on what looked to be an enormous sock. The ministers consulted diagrams similar to the one Hatter Madigan was supposed to have followed when weaving WILMA’s final thread into place over Heart Palace. Purple and yellow in a butterfly stitch
here
, the ministers instructed, more orange entwining the green
there
. The assistants wove the silks together accordingly, adding to the length and girth of the giant sock, and the repeated pattern made by the combined threads proved to be the exact one Hatter had purposely failed to weave into WILMA.

Arch reached down and teased out a bit of green silk from its spool. The caterpillar, plotting toward an end he had yet to fathom, might not have provided enough.

“You’re positive the cocoon’s measurements are correct,” the king asked a minister.

“We re-check constantly to be sure, Your Highness.”

The Heart Crystal, irksomely bright, pulsed like a vital organ. The effects of WILMA would soon belong completely to the past.

“Get more men to help you,” Arch said. “I want it ready as soon as possible. The Crystal’s not to have its former power for longer than is absolutely necessary.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“There’s been no word?”

“None that you would wish to hear, my liege. Wherever Alyss and Redd are hiding, they continue to avoid discovery.”

There was something unsettled in the minister’s tone.

“But?”

“But—my apologies, Your Majesty—a score of Gnobi were recently found dead in the Volcanic Plains. From the manner in which they were killed, we believe Redd is responsible. Warriors have scoured the area but discovered no further sign of her.”

It had to be Redd. It was not Alyss’ style to leave twenty dead lying around for him to find. It wouldn’t have been her style even if she’d known the Gnobi tribe was under orders to kill her and she’d exterminated them in self-defense. But she hadn’t known. Arch had been careful not to divulge those orders to Bibwit or General Doppelgänger, in case they maintained secret contact with their former queen.

“Neither Alyss nor Redd can hope to wrest the Crystal from me
and
remain in hiding,” he said. “As soon as they’re convinced imagination has returned to them just as powerfully as ever, they’ll make a push for it—one or the other, both if I’m lucky. And that’s when . . .” Arch let his voice trail off, nodded at the cocoon.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Get more men to help you,” he ordered.

Taking the bronzite steps two at a time, the king ascended to ground level, passed through the hatchway into open air, and emerged from the hedge. The royal tutor, trying not to look discomfited, was standing on the path, flanked by Ripkins and Blister.

“Mr. Harte. Just the Wonderlander I wanted to consult. Walk with me.”

Ripkins and Blister started to follow.

“No,” the king said to them. “Stay and make note of every assistant the ministers employ, in case anything goes wrong.”

The bodyguards returned to their inconspicuous posts near the hedge.

“You were coming to see me?” Arch asked Bibwit, strolling along at a leisurely pace—so leisurely that the tutor, at his side, had to be careful not to get ahead of him.

“I was . . . out for a bit of air, my liege,” the tutor answered.

The king looked unconvinced. They turned on to a path that led through hollizaleas and sunflowers, which bowed and greeted the king—some, Bibwit thought, more respectfully than others.

“You have everything you want?” the king asked. “You’re comfortable?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“No less comfortable than when Alyss was queen?”

Bibwit preferred not to admit the truth. But perhaps, since he was so inept at lying, he should avoid it when he could. “No less,” he said.

“Good. I can understand how the transition might be difficult for you, having tried to shape those fickle female minds for so many years and now you suddenly have to answer to a king. We wouldn’t want lack of physical comfort to be an added strain.”

“There’s another comfort I’d humbly request, Your Highness, if you’d deign to provide it.” And taking the king’s silence as invitation to proceed, he asked, “The Heart Crystal, how is it?”

“It’s improving, Mr. Harte. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that it’s greatly improved from what it was.”

Bibwit sifted through what he knew of Arch’s connection to WILMA: The king had never directly taken responsibility for the weapon and, if not for Hatter, Alyss would not know of his guilt; to have actually produced a weapon of WILMA’s power Arch had needed a wealth of caterpillar silk; only a few lunar hours before, Alyss had envisioned the king in talks with the green oracle.