Seeing Redd

CHAPTER 37

P ARTING FROM Redd, Jack of Diamonds had lumbered breathlessly into the first encampment that fell in his way.

“Your leader!” he’d said to the Gnobi tribespeople lolling about. “It’s important that I speak to your leader immediately! Your future freedom depends on it!”

The Gnobi, when not roused to violence, were a sluggish clan, the least nomadic of Boarderland’s tribes. Not sensing any immediate threat to their freedoms in the person of Jack Diamond, they had responded to his urgency with characteristic listlessness.

“Myrval’s tent is somewhere that way,” one of them had said with a vague wave of the hand. “Follow the sound of the snoring and you’ll find it,” another had suggested.

But there had been a fair amount of snoring to be heard in the camp, and not until Jack had roused several civilians from their naps did he catch sight of the only tent with a pennant flying from its roof and two males asleep on stools at its entrance.

“Guards,” he’d said to himself.

He had marched past the slumbering guardsmen and, in the tent’s front room, discovered five more sleeping guards-two slumped on chairs, two curled up on floor mats, and one snoring on his feet. What Jack had come upon was no less than a festival of snoring, a riot of honking inhalations, snotty exhalations, and inarticulate mutterings. But louder than all of these, coming from the back room: the wail of an ailing jabberwock. Jack had stepped into the back room and seen a lone figure asleep on a cot.

“Myrval!” he’d called, unsure, which had caused the sleeper to groan and roll toward the wall.

“I’m an emissary of Redd Heart, former and future queen of Wonderland,” Jack had said, shaking the Gnobi leader awake. “She has sent me here with a proposal that can guarantee future peace and freedom for the Gnobi tribe-for all of Boarderland’s tribes. But it’s a-”

“That’s nice of Miss Heart to think of us,” Myrval had mumbled, and again closed his eyes.

“We must arrange a gathering of the tribal leaders to discuss the details of Mistress Heart’s proposal, a summit.”

“You can arrange what you like. I have nothing against nineteen of the twenty other leaders, but Gerte, who heads the Onu tribe, insulted my daughter. He’s an abomination and I will never meet with him unless he is to apologize.”

Jack had been about to promise this and anything else when Myrval yawned, “The Gnobi and Onu are on the verge of war.”

Jack had had similar trouble with the rest of the tribal leaders, each citing one of their number with whom they refused to have any dealings that did not involve bloodshed. Several of them also took offense at Jack’s not having physically visited their camps to request their attendance at the summit, seeing in this his

favoritism of the Gnobi tribe. But Jack of Diamonds had exercised his powers of persuasion to the utmost. At last able to convince the twenty-one leaders to talk, he was now in one of Myrval’s conference tents, with Myrval seated on his left, a fire pit glowing in front of him, and the faces of the other leaders on screens around the pit.

“What I have already said to each of you singly,” Jack began, “I repeat to you now that we’re together. You are made subordinate to King Arch by the antagonisms he invents to keep you at war with one another. He does this to prevent you from joining together to fight his forces, knowing that he doesn’t have the military power to defeat you if you formed a coalition against him.”

“That’s insane,” said the Sirk leader. “Just yesterday, I got word from a reliable spy that the Fel Creel are gathering beyond the pale hills in preparation for an attack against us.”

“That’s your justification for the attack my reliable spy says you are planning!” shouted the Fel Creel leader.

“We planned no attack until we learned that you were.” “Ditto!”

“This proves what I’ve been saying,” Jack interrupted. “It’s obvious that neither of you would be attacking the other if not for the ‘intelligence’ you received. The Sirk tribespeople would go about their peaceful business and the Fel Creel would go about theirs.”

“Right!” said the Sirk and Fel Creel leaders.

“But the intelligence you both received was false,” Jack explained. “It came directly from King Arch in order to put you at deadly odds. Just as the ‘intelligence’ the Catabrac received of an impending ambush by the Shifog was false, as was the report the Shifog received of the Catabrac stockpiling weapons to annihilate them.”

The Catabrac and Shifog leaders mumbled in surprise; neither had mentioned these intelligence reports outside of their own tight-lipped clans.

Jack turned to the Gnobi leader. “And Myrval, I assure you, Gerte of the Onu tribe never said your daughter looks as if she’s been put together out of spirit-dane droppings and that her personality is just as foul as her person. I was there when King Arch thought up that particular bit of ugliness.”

Myrval said nothing. Each tribal leader was glancing at every other, unsure what to believe. “He might be speaking the truth,” said the Maldoid leader.

“How else could he know the exact wording of the insult?” Myrval answered. “I have never repeated it, not even to Gerte, who I assumed recalled his own foul words.”

“I’m glad to see that I’m gaining credibility,” Jack said. “Now, as Redd Heart’s emissary, I’ve come to propose that you all unite under Redd to battle Arch. King Arch will be defeated and, in exchange for helping you take control of Boarderland to govern equally among you, Redd asks only that you fight under her command for another teensy little war with the forces of Alyss Heart, so that she can regain control of Wonderland.”

“Excuse me,” said Myrval, “but now that you have informed us of Arch’s methods, why should we fight under Redd’s command when we can battle Arch without her help?”

“Because,” Jack said, “to fight Arch on your own, you will be required to choose a leader from among you. I’m just guessing, but I think there’ll be more than a little argument over which of you is best fit to lead the others. With Redd at your head, you are all equal.”

“With Redd at our head, we are all equal,” repeated the Maldoid leader, encouraged.

“Redd Heart is not known for being trustworthy,” said the leader of the Awr tribe. “But even supposing that we agree to this proposal, and that she leaves Boarderland under our control as she promises, we would still have to contend with her as our neighbor. She would make a dangerous neighbor.”

“She ruled Wonderland for thirteen years without causing Arch much trouble,” Jack said. “I urge you not to let this opportunity for true freedom pass.”

“And why is Redd suddenly so concerned about our freedom?” asked the Kalaman leader.

“Her Imperial Viciousness is primarily occupied with regaining her crown. The easiest way to accomplish this is to engage you all as her mercenary army. Happily, you stand to benefit from the arrangement as much as she does.”

“We would like to discuss the matter in private,” said the Glebog leader.

“Of course.” Jack rose to depart. “But allow me to say one more thing before I leave you to your decision. If you accept Redd’s proposal, you face the uncertainty of a future that you will, at the very least, have some power to shape. But if you reject the proposal, you’re doomed to remain as you are, with only the freedom to fight against one another for as long as Arch lives.”

Jack stepped from the tent, his words-the wisest he’d ever uttered in his life-lingering after him.