“Thank you, Father.”
With measured steps, father and daughter started down the aisle. Alice’s face showed no sign of concern, no hint of the consternation that had been plaguing her since the masquerade. One might have assumed that all her thoughts were on the momentous occasion at hand, which was certainly what Prince Leopold believed. Dressed in full military uniform, ancestral sword at his hip, he stood before the high altar with the archbishop. Dean Liddell kissed Alice lightly on the cheek and deposited her at Leopold’s side, then padded to his seat next to his wife.
Leopold smiled at his bride. It was such a shy, awed, pleased, and overwhelmed smile that it fairly overwhelmed her. Alice feared he was making more of her than he ought, that not loving him wouldn’t be the hardest part of their coming years together; it would be living up to his estimation of her. She turned
to face the archbishop. Behind her, pews creaked, throats cleared. The archbishop began to speak, but
Alice hardly heard a word he said.
“If there is anyone here who objects to this union, let him speak now or forever hold his peace,” the archbishop intoned.
Alice had a strong desire to glance toward the left balcony, to where she imagined the scarred man was standing, a man whose name she had with great effort tried to erase from her memory and which she didn’t dare say to herself even now, as if to do so would be to conjure a figure whose nonexistence meant everything to her present and future happiness in England.
She heard herself repeating the archbishop’s words without comprehending their meaning. The vows. I’ve taken my vows. And now it’s Leopold’s turn. She stood listening to the alternating timbres and resonances of the men’s voices.
Then something strange happened. It was as if a gathering storm, moments from breaking, had sucked up all the oxygen from the enormous room, only to unleash itself with that much more vengeance. Alice
would later swear that she had felt it coming beforehand, had felt something before the stained-glass windows on both sides of the abbey imploded as the strangest-looking creatures broke through them and landed amid the shards and crumbs of colored glass. Guests ran screaming toward the exits, trampling
one another in their haste. Others fell to their knees and prayed to be delivered safely from harm.
In the seconds between the shattering of glass and the first casualty, soldiers surrounded Queen Victoria and hustled her through a door normally reserved for the archbishop, who hurried after her with breathless prayers. Prince Leopold put a protective arm around his fiancee, but she shrugged it off, unthinking, and now stood watching the cat-like beast fight his way toward her, swatting soldiers and policemen out of his way, raking their flesh with his claws. She recognized him, as one suddenly remembers a dream hours after waking, and the recognition brought her a troubling relief, for if this thing was real…
She stood defenseless and unmoving amid the mayhem. These were not the card soldiers she remembered. Can’t remember what isn’t supposed to exist.
Leopold and Halleck were battling four of the tall, steel-limbed creatures whose backsides were protective shields engraved with card suits: clubs, spades, and diamonds. Both of the men had studied swordplay, but Alice could see that they’d be lucky to survive. Please let Leopold be all right. Whatever else is to happen, may he-
The Cat took to the air, lunging toward her. Still she didn’t move. She extended her arm, reached out to feel once and for all if this beast was real, when-
I knew it!
The man with the scars came sprinting toward her from the periphery, pushing her out of the way just as The Cat landed and smashed the altar with a downward swing of his thigh-sized arms. And she was running now, her hand in his, the man whose name she would still not voice to herself. He pulled her out through one of the broken stained-glass windows and onto the street. The Cat and card assassins jumped out of the abbey after them. The London street was a blur, a confusion of shouting, screaming people. A card assassin fell onto the train of Alice’s gown, bringing her up short. With a single swipe of
his sword, the scarred man cut the train from the gown, spun around, and severed the leather harness ties that held a rearing horse to its carriage.
“Hey!” the carriage driver protested.
But the scarred man was already astride the horse, pulling Alice up behind him even as he spurred the animal at a gallop through the streets. The Cat chased after them on foot, his powerful legs making him as fast as any of Earth’s four-legged creatures.
The card assassins had come armed with glowing orb generators and, as the scarred man urged the horse this way and that, from streets to sidewalks and back again, zigzagging to make a more difficult target, explosions shook the surrounding buildings. Dizzy with all of this action as she was, it seemed to Alice that her companion had a destination in mind, for if the horse skidded past a certain street, he would steer the animal back to it and they would race along its course, past befuddled pedestrians and cursing carriage drivers.
The man did know where he was going. He had memorized the route he’d taken from his exit portal to Westminster Abbey and was traveling it in reverse. And they were getting close. A few streets still to go when an orb generator rocketed into an empty police wagon not twenty yards away, turning it into a fireball. Their horse reared, bucking them off its back, and they landed on a pile of cabbage in a street seller’s cart. They jumped to the ground and ran, the scarred man pulling Alice, gripping her by the arm.
“Where are we going?” she breathed. “You’ll see!”
He pointed: a puddle. She was embarrassed by what she said next, the first thing that occurred to her as she and this man took a running jump into the puddle, their hands clasped. “I’ll ruin my dress,” she said, and then-
Shoosh!
They were rushing down, deeper and deeper. She lost hold of the man’s hand. This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t be…yet it was. And as she torpedoed up toward the surface, having worked impossibly hard to convince herself that the place about to be seen by her disbelieving eyes didn’t exist, she said the man’s name-Dodge Anders-and water filled her lungs.
PART THREE CHAPTER 31
B IBWIT HARTE, blue-green veins pulsing anxiously beneath the translucent skin of his learned head, waited on the shore of the Pool of Tears with two spirit-danes hobbled at his side. It hadn’t been easy for him to get here. Since learning of Hatter Madigan’s return, Redd had become more of a tyrant than ever and demanded that he spend hours every day rewriting In Queendom Speramus, glaring over his shoulder to make sure he scribbled down her venomous words exactly as she spat them at him. He had been forced to cross out entire pages of the ancient text and replace them with Reddisms, as if Her Imperial Viciousness believed that, by excising passages in which Queen Genevieve had once found strength and comfort, she might be able to destroy Princess Alyss herself.
“You don’t feel well?” Redd had screeched, hearing his excuse to forgo his secretarial duties that day. “What do I care if you don’t feel well? I’ll show you what it means not to feel well!”
“But my hand is terribly cramped and would welcome a small respite from its daily exertions,” Bibwit had corrected. “With utmost respect, I suggest…couldn’t Her Imperial Viciousness imagine the newly written pages instead of having me write them for her?”
Redd had laughed, showing her black, pointy teeth. “Bibwit Harte, you are not as cowardly as I thought. If I didn’t let you live on the off chance of benefiting from all that lore you’ve crammed inside that pale, bald head of yours, I would almost be sorry to see you die. You have until the Redd Moon rises to meet me in the Observation Dome.”