Who was this strangely attired man with knives and oversized corkscrews jutting out of his backpack and rotary blades on his wrists?
Hatter kept an eye on the puddle, expecting The Cat or Redd’s soldiers to spring from it at any moment. “Alyss?”
But she was nowhere to be seen. This was worse than not having his top hat. In the Pool of Tears for hardly any time at all, with only one job to do, one simple job-to look after the future Queen of Wonderland-and he’d let her fall away from him. She must have been sucked through the portal to another location.
Men were coming toward him-men in uniforms and small, firm caps with brims, looking confused and more than a little frightened. He snapped his wrist-blades closed and ran, not because he was afraid of them, but because he was afraid of what he might do to them. Even here in another world he would abide by the codes of Wonderland’s Millinery, which stated that combat skills were not to be used on a person until he was a proven enemy, and even then only to the extent that they were necessary. Plus, it was best to draw as little attention to himself as possible, to disappear into the underground in order to find
Princess Alyss.
His Millinery coat swooped out behind him as he cut across the Champs-Elysees and down a residential street. He was faster and more agile than the Frenchmen and would have easily escaped their pursuit if he’d known his way around Paris. Time and again he thought he’d lost them, that they were no longer following him, only to discover that they must have taken a shortcut through an alley, because now they were in front of him.
He had to get rid of them for good. He stopped running and let them approach. When they were within ten paces of him, he flicked open his wrist-blades, feinted at them, and they scattered into cafes, brasseries, patisseries, and boulangeries, lunging for safety anywhere they could find it. Hatter snapped shut his wrist-blades and ran, and this time they didn’t follow.
He hid under a bridge on the banks of the Seine until nightfall, when he could more easily move through the city undetected. He planned to canvass the streets, search every lane and alley for the princess before moving on to another town or city. He would get maps, systematically scour this entire world if
necessary, familiarize himself with intercity routes, pass across borders like a phantom. His promise to
Genevieve, the queen he’d left behind, demanded it.
Under the blanket of darkness, he made his way up and down streets, starting at one end of the city and working his way across it. And now that he had an opportunity to notice, Hatter saw that some people had a glow about them. Supposing them suffused with the luminescence of imagination, he followed one glowing man down the rue de Rivoli to a modest shop with a wooden sign in the shape of a top hat hanging over its door. It could have been a station for the Millinery men and women of the city. Perhaps he would find camaraderie and assistance here. He followed the man into the shop. It was filled with every variety of hat: derbies, bowlers, tams, fezzes, berets-an array of headware that impressed even Hatter. He picked up one of the top hats and flicked it, but it held its innocent shape.
A diminutive gentleman with a wispy mustache approached. “Bonjour, monsieur. Est-ce-que je peux vous aider?”
“I come from Wonderland,” Hatter said. “I oversee the Millinery there.” He waited, hoping the meaning, the import, of this would make itself felt to the shopkeeper.
“Cela est un bon chapeau,” the man said, pointing to the top hat.
Hatter set down the item. “I am searching for Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland. She has landed somewhere in this world, as I have, through a portal and…”
But the shopkeeper’s eyes showed no recognition at Alyss’ name, no understanding of what Hatter was saying. When the man tried to show Hatter the merits of a certain beret, Hatter left the shop. He would try others, however. He trusted those who dealt in headwear more than he trusted anyone else.
A few doors down, three men emerged from a cafe, tipsy with drink. They stopped in bleary-eyed surprise at the sight of Hatter, his odd-looking clothes.
“Je n’aime pas des etrangers,” one of the men said.
Hatter didn’t have to understand French to hear the hostility in his voice. The man pretended to punch
Hatter and his companions laughed.
Hatter didn’t flinch. “I don’t want to fight you,” he said. “Non?”
“No.”
The man shoved Hatter, who stood his ground, an exemplar of restraint. “Qu’est-ce qu’il y dans le sac?” the man asked, indicating Hatter’s backpack. “Donnez-moi le sac.” The man took a step toward Hatter, reached for the backpack.
Only an enemy would try to take Hatter’s weapons. Activating his wrist-blades, the Milliner flipped backwards to give himself some space. He reached into his backpack and let fly with a handful of daggers. Thimp! Thimp! Thimp! The daggers pinned the men to a wooden cart by their shirtsleeves: a feat of martial skill Hatter hoped would show that he could kill all three of them if he so desired.
More men appeared, spilling out of the nearby cafes, alarmed. They surrounded Hatter-fifteen of them. One of them aimed a pistol at his head.
Hatter vaguely recognized the pistol as something invented by a Wonderlander during his boyhood. To reacquaint himself with its capabilities, he eyed the man and said, “Boo!”
Panicked, the man fired.
A round steel bullet shot toward Hatter, but with the speed of a jabberwock’s tongue, he ducked and it whizzed past.
Hatter punched a button on his belt buckle and a series of curved saber blades flicked open along the surface of his belt. But before the blades sliced into action, the group scattered, each man running as far from Hatter as he could get, which didn’t stop them from later reporting that they had witnessed the menacing figure kill upwards of twenty innocent civilians with his elaborate weaponry, themselves living to tell about it only by the grace of God.
The sabers on Hatter’s belt retracted. He snapped his wrist-blades closed and allowed himself a brief smile, relieved that he hadn’t had to kill anyone. He didn’t see the large, elaborately decorated rug closing in on him, held up from behind by six of Paris’ bravest carpet salesmen. The rug knocked him down and the men rolled him up tight in it. His backpack weaponry poked through the thick pile, but his arms were pinned to his sides; he was unable to reach his belt buckle or flick his wrists to activate his deadly bracelets.