Bargain price

PART TWO CHAPTER 19

I N A region somewhere between the Everlasting Forest and Outer wilderbeastia, remarkable only for its desolation, Wonderlanders who not long before had been law-abiding, family-loving folk slaved away in Redd’s most notorious labor camp, Blaxik. Having fallen into the queen’s ill favor, they worked in unventilated factory rooms for seventeen hours a day on nothing more than water and infla-rice-a food favored by the poor because each grain inflated in the stomach, making the recipient feel full.

It had been decreed that every Wonderlander was to have a three-foot-high porcelain and crystal statue of Redd in his residence, the set piece in a shrine to the queendom’s ruler. Surprise spot checks by Redd’s soldiers were not uncommon. Those in violation of the decree, anyone whose statue was not in pristine condition, found themselves hauled off to Blaxik, where-in a bit of irony Redd found pleasing-they were forced to make the statues until death descended upon them.

But tonight something was wrong. Production of the statues had been interrupted by a rebel attack. Periodic explosions rattled camp dormitories. Flares zoomed through the night, illuminating figures engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Card soldiers from Redd’s technologically advanced, ultramodern army, known as The Cut, were trying to fend off the attack, which shouldn’t have been so difficult considering that the rebels were nothing more than a hodgepodge of ex-Heart soldiers and Wonderland civilians. But the rebels had righteous anger working for them, which could be a better weapon than mere combat skills, and among them was one who suddenly split in two so as to lend an extra body to the fight: Generals Doppel and Ganger, battling alongside a white knight, a white rook, and several pawns.

The rebels called themselves Alyssians, in honor of the young princess who’d been killed before her time, never able to ascend to the throne. Princess Alyss Heart: not alive in flesh and blood, but very much alive as a symbol of more innocent (though still imperfect) times, an icon of hope for peace’s return.

Among the Alyssians, one particular soldier was making a name for himself with his growing military prowess and suicidal bravery. If this renegade didn’t always mix with his rebel brethren, if he kept to himself when not engaged in battle, at least he was on their side. Better to have him as a friend than an enemy, as anyone who’d seen him fight well knew. It was this renegade who broke away from the cover of the other rebels at the Battle of Blaxik. Without concern for his own well-being, and with sword glinting, he slashed his way through Redd’s soldiers, who looked like ordinary playing cards (albeit larger) when unengaged, but who now fanned out as if the hand of a giant poker player was spreading them across the green baize of a gaming table. Each card flipped open to form a soldier almost twice the height of an average Wonderland male, with limbs of steel and a brain that understood little more than how to follow orders in combat. One by one, the renegade aimed the point of his blade at the soldiers’

upper chests, their single vulnerable spot (a medallion-sized area above the breastplate, at the base of the steel-tendoned neck); a direct hit cut through vital inner workings and sent sparks flying, killing them. He fired a cannonball spider at the doors of the factory; in midair it mutated from ball to massive black spider and tore through the doors. As the renegade slashed and hacked at Redd’s soldiers, the slave workers were able to flee across the plain into the Everlasting Forest.

A burning dormitory illuminated the renegade’s face: handsome and rugged, with four parallel scars visible on his right cheek. Dodge Anders. Only fourteen years old but fighting like a grown man.

A handful of years had passed since Redd’s initial invasion of Heart Palace, and the chaos that resulted from her takeover of the queendom had settled into a new order. Upon hearing of Redd’s coup and fearing the kind of ruler she’d be, many citizens had immediately packed their bags and tried to emigrate to Boarderland, that independent country separated from Wonderland by the tangled expanse of Outerwilderbeastia and overseen by King Arch. But whether these would-be emigrants didn’t bribe Boarderland’s border officials generously enough, or Redd had anticipated an exodus among the

cowards of the population and made an agreement with King Arch, no one was able to leave. All were stuck in Wonderland, forced to endure the teeth of Redd’s anger. Entire families were shipped off to labor camps or, worse, exterminated. Others, who hadn’t attempted to flee the country but nonetheless had issues with Redd being queen, heard about the Alyssians and fled what they knew of normal life to join the resistance.

Redd chose to rule the queendom from her fortress on Mount Isolation. The fortress served as a constant reminder of her years in exile and unjust banishment at the hands of her dear departed sister, and thus

was a spur to her ruthless methods. Soon after her coronation, and very hush-hush, Redd had the Heart Crystal moved to the fortress, and she could feel it now, shimmering in its secret chamber as she paced back and forth, listening to Bibwit Harte recite pages of In Queendom Speramus, which she was rewriting, the tutor acting as her secretary.

“…the queendom had always been a naive, optimistic place,” Bibwit read. “It was as if Wonderland were run by girls and boys-”

“By children,” Redd corrected.

“-by children who had yet to put away their childish toys and face the harsh realities of the universe.” “Good,” Redd said. “Now continue: A universe in which only the cruelest survive, a

jabberwock-eat-jabberwock universe, so to speak.”

The pointed tip of Bibwit’s quill scurried against the royal papyrus. The Cat entered the room. “Yes?” Redd asked.

The Cat hissed, “Blaxik has fallen and the slaves escaped. The Alyssians were responsible.”

Redd clenched her fists. Items around the room began to quiver. The Alyssians: a boil on the face of her reign, a thorn in the fist of her rule. Why hadn’t The Cut done away with them already? Weapons and furnishings, anything not bolted down, shook with her mounting fury. Knowing her intolerance for failure, Bibwit Harte and The Cat hurried from the room.

“Yaaaaaaaaah!” Redd yelled, standing at the center of whirling chairs, lamps, swords, spears, platters, and books, a tornado brought forth from the bottomless well of her hateful imagination.

Blaxik attacked? Slaves freed? Heads were going to roll.

In the aftermath of the Blaxik battle, their adrenaline still pumping, Dodge and the white rook braved a walk through the teeming urban slum Wonderland had become to remind themselves why they fought. The rook camouflaged himself in a hooded coat, but Dodge refused to do likewise. He would not hide who he was from his enemies.

“I remember when Wonderlanders actually cared for this city,” the rook said as they picked their way along a sidewalk choked with litter. “Streets were clean, roads swept. The curbside shrubs and flowers were always humming bouncy tunes.” He glanced at the curb: nothing but weeds and long-dead growth; all vegetation silent, killed by Naturcide, a chemical Redd had concocted specifically for that purpose. “And you could get a hot, fresh tarty tart on every corner. I miss tarty tarts.”

Dodge nodded. He had his own memories: the glittering, quartz-like buildings of Genevieve’s time, the twinkling colors of towers and spires regularly cleaned and polished. Wonderland had been a gleaming,

incandescent place, filled for the most part with hardworking, law-respecting citizens. Now everything was covered with grime and soot. Poverty and crime had oozed out of the back alleys and taken over the main streets, and anything bright and luminescent had to hide itself away in the nooks and crannies of the city.

“Let’s cross the street,” the rook suggested.

Dodge saw why: Ahead of them, a fight had broken out-two emaciated Wonderlanders attacking a third. Probably an imagination-stimulant deal gone bad. Dodge and the rook could never walk more than a few streets without witnessing a brawl. It was best not to approach, to not draw attention to

themselves.

They crossed the street and came to a corner crowded with smoky gwormmy-kabob grills and crystal smugglers hawking contraband. Dodge tried to call to his senses the aroma of freshly baked tarty tarts. Hadn’t his father bought him one on this very corner? His sense-memory failed him. Impossible to enter into the past. Underneath the shouts and horns that echoed through the streets, he heard a disembodied voice speaking “Reddisms” from loudspeakers mounted overhead. The Redd way is the right way. As in the beginning, there was Redd, so in the end Redd shall be. Three-dimensional faces on holographic billboards told of the latest crackdowns and taxations. Piped in from who knew where played the background music of Wondertropolis’ free fall into decay. It seemed to come from every crack in the pavement, every pothole in the street, every crevice in the time-battered buildings: a composition on infinite repeat, featuring lyrics Redd had written herself, which sang her praises as Wonderland’s savior.

“I’d like to hear silence again,” Dodge said. “A whole day’s worth of quiet. Do you remember what that was like?”

“Yes. But you know how it is.” The rook did his best imitation of Redd. “‘Silence is hereby outlawed. Silence breeds independent thought, which in turn breeds dissent.’”

Not that there were many true dissenters, as they both knew. Those disloyal to Redd were quickly rooted out of the general population, never to be heard from again.

The Blaxik battle was growing more distant in their minds, their blood cooling. They had their choice of places to visit, provided they were careful.

“How about a jabberwocky match?” suggested the rook. At the amphitheater, they could watch the huge, ferocious beasts go at each other with a teeth-gnashing hatred rivaled only by that which audience members felt for one another.

Dodge shook his head. “Fights always break out and I don’t like the feeling I get when we slip away without at least injuring a few of Redd’s soldiers.”

“The statue then?”

Again, Dodge shook his head. The Queen Redd statue stood at the city’s western edge, where, from the observation deck, Dodge could gaze out through the eyes of this enormous agate replica at the city

spread below. It sometimes helped his vengeance to imagine himself inside the queen’s skull. But not today. “Let’s just walk,” he said.

They passed the boarded-up shop fronts in Redd Plaza, the pawnshops and moneylenders in Redd Square, and the mammoth complex of Redd Towers Apartments, whose advertising slogan, “If you lived here, you’d be home by now,” did little to fill vacancies. They stopped in at Redd’s Hotel Casino where, in addition to gambling with crystal, Wonderlanders could bet their lives on a single roll of the

dice. Dodge picked up his pace when they passed Heart Palace-now fallen into disrepair and occupied by stimulant-addled squatters-on their way to the Five Spires of Redd construction site. Her Imperial Viciousness had promised that the Five Spires of Redd would be the tallest structure ever erected in the universe-a vertical column of steel sheathed in spiked and mottled crystal, rising magnificently into the sky and topped with five pointed spires like the fingers and thumb of the queen herself.

“Do you think she’ll finish it?” the rook asked.

Dodge tensed. “I don’t think we should give her the chance.”

Everywhere they went, they saw signs urging Wonderlanders to attend meetings of the numberless Black Imagination societies that now flourished in every banqueting hall, while the few White Imagination societies were forced to gather in stealth and secret. Anyone exposed as a practitioner of White Imagination was sentenced to a slow, work-slogged death-shipped off to the Crystal Mines, just as practitioners of Black Imagination had been in Genevieve’s time, but whereas then the emphasis had

been on hard work and repentance with a chance for freedom, prisoners were now purposely worked past all endurance.

“What sort of world is this,” the rook asked, angry, “where neighbors and friends inform on one another? Where children, mad at their parents because they didn’t get a Black Imagination starter’s kit for their birthday, can complain to the nearest lieutenant from The Cut, saying they’ve heard their parents claim Redd isn’t the rightful ruler of the queendom, and then their parents are hauled off to face unmentionable tortures? And I’m sure Redd doesn’t care if they tell the truth.”

“She probably prefers it if they don’t,” Dodge said.

The rook nodded, again imitated Redd: “‘Because it’s much more Black Imagination. My reign thrives on deceit and violence.’”

“And uncertainty.”

The rook sniffed in disgust. “Different laws for different people. A member of the Spades or Clubs, he avoids being shipped to the mines with a generous donation to the queen’s personal crystal account; whereas for the average Wonderlander, there’s no hope: It’s off to the mines he goes.”

They turned their footsteps in the direction of the Everlasting Forest. They had seen enough.

“I’ll tell you what sort of world this is,” the rook said, answering his own question. “It’s one that can’t last.”

“No,” Dodge said. But he was no longer thinking of the rise and fall of queens, the corruption of general populations. He was thinking of something more personal, his motivation for getting up in the morning: assassination of The Cat.