“My niece escaped through the Pool of Tears,” Redd told Vollrath and Sacrenoir, “and for reasons I won’t go into, I believed her dead.” The next scenes passed quickly, as if she were growing impatient with the past. “After years of shaping Wonderland to my fickle will, as is my birthright, my niece had the

gall to bubble up through the Pool of Tears, returning through a portal puddle she’d discovered here on

Earth.”

The vast rooms of Mount Isolation took shape around twenty-year-old Alyss Heart, now become a

rebel leader and dressed in the coarse-fibered clothes of the Alyssians. Beyond a half-destroyed wall, the Heart Crystal was visible. Aunt and niece faced each other, razor-cards, orb generators, and cannonball spiders rocketing between them. Alyss shot an energy spear from her finger, snagged Redd on the end of it, and began smashing her around the room. With a heave of imagination, Redd freed herself and closed with Alyss like a fighter ungifted in imagination who physically attacks her foes. Clangk! Scepters

clashed, and just when Redd’s defeat seemed assured, she and The Cat dared what no Wonderlanders had ever dared before-a leap into the Heart Crystal.

“I’d had a cold that day and wasn’t as powerful as usual, otherwise Alyss would never have done so well,” Redd said as, in the alcove, the final image dissolved. She blew at the cloud and it drifted off into the crypt. “Has a malicious ruler ever suffered more? I think not.”

“There have been rumors that one might travel to Wonderland through certain puddles,” Vollrath said. “But until your mention of Alyss a moment ago, nobody, as far as I knew, had ever put the rumors to the test.”

Redd scoffed. “Why would they? What would any of you have returned to in my sister’s Wonderland but a skulking life in a society unappreciative of your talents? Nothing more than that awaits you even now, so long as Alyss remains queen. But your savior has arrived-me. For the first time, Wonderlanders reduced to living in this junk heap of a world have someone powerful enough to lead them back to their native home. And in exchange for helping me regain my crown, I will allow them to live free of whatever punishments were unfairly bestowed upon them by the narrow-minded courts of Wonderland.”

“I can think of a hundred souls in this city alone who’ll be eager to subjugate themselves to you,” said

Sacrenoir.

Redd pushed away from the table and stood. “Take me to them. They will either pledge their allegiance to me-and if lucky, live through my impending war with Alyss’ forces-or I’ll kill them where they stand.”

“Your impatience is a virtue,” said Vollrath, his long ears tilting forward in supplication, “but to prevent your attracting too much attention from earthlings, you might want to consider a change of clothes. It’s unfortunate enough that you’re somewhat blurry around the edges, but in addition…well, a gown of animate roses is not exactly the fashion of the times.”

“You don’t like my dress?”

The vines of Redd’s couture stretched toward the tutor, the roses’ petal-mouths chomping.

“It isn’t that, Your Imperial Viciousness. The earthlings will not understand you. Not understanding you, they will be frightened and send their petty authorities to apprehend you.”

“Ha!”

“Of course they’ll fail. That isn’t the point. But you’ll have to waste energy dealing with them instead of concentrating on your niece’s destruction. I doubt that the way to achieve your aim is to spread your strength across many fronts so that, when it’s time to battle Alyss, you may not be at the peak of your powers. Your niece, I gather, shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Vollrath hadn’t graduated from the Tutor Corps for nothing. “I don’t like it when sound reasoning counters my wishes,” Redd hissed.

“I apologize, Your Imperial Viciousness, and will try not to let it happen too often. But you might also want to camouflage this rather intimidating feline creature with whom you travel.”

“The Cat is his own camouflage,” said Redd. And to The Cat: “Show them.”

The Cat shrunk down into a kitten, meowed, then morphed back into an imposing humanoid. “Ingenious!” enthused Sacrenoir. “Your Imperial Viciousness, I will find you something suitable to wear

from the clothes of my recent audience. Something not too ravaged and bloody.” “I don’t mind blood so long as it isn’t mine.”

The magician returned with a gown that bore the marks of its previous owner’s demise: the lace was torn in parts, the once shimmering silk stained with dirt and worse.

“We will leave you while you dress,” Vollrath said, and pulled the alcove’s curtain shut to give Redd privacy.

At the foot of the stage, The Cat indulged a sudden urge to bathe himself. The waiters paused in their work to watch him, risking little now that Marcel was busy reviewing the night’s receipts with Sacrenoir. And though Vollrath too was staring at The Cat, he hardly saw the creature. He was recalling everything Redd had divulged of her history, mining the narrative for tidbits he could exploit to make himself ever more necessary to Mistress Heart, and thus, ever more deserving of reward. A vital piece of information seemed missing from all he’d heard. He approached the alcove and addressed Redd through the curtain:

“Your Imperial Viciousness, for my own edification, would you mind telling me when your mother removed you from succession? Was it before or after you had navigated your Looking Glass Maze?”

“Before,” Redd answered in a clenched voice. “But I would have navigated it if I’d had any underlings worth even a tenth of Bibwit Harte’s intellect. The key to the maze was in my hands, but no one could get it to work.”

Vollrath’s ears took on the aspect of little beings huddled against the cold. “Where did you find this key?”

“My seekers snatched it directly out of Alyss’ hands. She’d entered the maze. It’s the only reason I’m here. If I had entered it too, she wouldn’t have gotten the better of me at Mount Isolation. We would have both gained in strength from passing through it, instead of her alone.”

Redd’s lack of knowledge astounded the tutor. Did she really understand so little about how a

Wonderland princess became queen?

“She doesn’t even know what she doesn’t know,” he mumbled, and then: “Your Imperial Viciousness, perhaps we should speak face-to-face, without this velvet barrier between us. Are you decent?”

“I’m never decent!”

The curtain was flung open and there she stood, a clash of opposites-the hate-infused pallor of her blemished skin and her spaghetti-wire hair at odds with a dress that was meant to be seen in lavish parlors, and which, despite its rips and bloodstains, still retained an aura of delicate creaminess.

“The gowns of the privileged class suit you,” Vollrath lied.

“If wearing this rag will in any way speed the process of gathering my future soldiers, then I will wear it. But if it doesn’t…”