“Lady Diamond,” the rook said with a sarcastic bow, “by order of Queen Alyss Heart, I hereby take you into custody, to be carried back to Wonderland, where you’re to stand trial for treason and conspiracy

to murder the queen.” “What?!”

The pawns and card soldiers surrounded the lady.

“This is outrageous!” she raged. “Someone’s clearly playing a trick on you, chessman! Do you have any idea how much my vacation package at this retreat costs? Get out of here before I have you arrested!”

The rook threw a grenade at the lady’s feet. She flinched, but instead of a bone-shattering explosion, the grenade’s detonation produced a small cell, one just large enough to contain her.

“But you don’t even have jurisdiction here,” she whined, shaking the porta-prison’s bars. “King Arch is aware of my mission and has granted me all the authority I need.”

“King Arch? That deceitful…Arrest him, why don’t you? He’s to blame for everything. I’m warning you, chessman! Let me out of this thing or proceed at your own risk! I can stop you with the power of my imagination!” The lady squeezed her eyes shut, balled her hands into fists and-

Poosh! A piddling little jewelry case formed. The rook, soldiers, pawns, and imagination enabler stared

at it, wondering what miraculous means of escape it would provide. Then it fell apart.

“Hup,” one of the card soldiers said as he and the others lifted the Lady of Diamonds’ porta-prison between them and carried it out to the waiting smail-transport.

“Somebody notify Lord Diamond!” the lady shrieked, shaking and rattling the bars of her cell. “Lord Diamond knows how to put chessmen in their proper places! Just you wait, Mr. Rook! You’ll face a punishment worse than any you can fathom for this mistake!”

“You and your husband will have plenty of time to discuss my punishment while you await your trials,”

said the rook.

Their memories of the previous night were unreliable, befogged and sketchy, entire chunks of time blacked out by overindulgence. Still, Jack of Diamonds was pretty sure that he had fallen asleep atop a mattress-sized pillow stuffed with the first-growth feathers of tuttle-birds. The Lord of Diamonds was likewise certain that platters of tasty treats and decanters of mind-fuzzing libations had been within arm’s reach when he had drifted to sleep beneath the canopy of an antique Kalaman bed. And both father and son remembered tiring themselves out with dancing, their ears even now ringing from the loud volume of the Boardertonian deejay’s music. How then had they become surrounded by so much blatant industry?

“What’s all this?” the Lord of Diamonds asked, waking from a heavy slumber and reluctantly opening his throbbing eyes.

They appeared to be in a factory. The signs of mass production were all around: conveyor lines, automated assembly arms, laser-solders, racks of intel chips, an army of steel skeletons, some fitted with wire-vein armatures and lab-grown muscle, others plain. On the billowing tent walls: blueprints for building Glass Eyes.

“Where are the ladies and servants?” Jack of Diamonds yawned.

Which was when the white knight, leading a contingent of pawns and card soldiers, marched into the tent. The knight gazed around at the Glass Eyes manufacturing facility-overwhelming corroboration of King Arch’s story, if ever there was.

“Lord Diamond,” he said, “by order of Queen Alyss Heart, I hereby take you into custody, to be carried back to Wonderland, where you are to stand trial for treason and conspiracy to murder the queen.”

“Arrested?” the Lord of Diamonds murmured, backing away and shaking his head. “Treason and murder?”

The knight turned upon the Jack of Diamonds. “And you, sir, being an escapee from the Crystal Mines, are also under arrest. I intend to personally deposit you back where you belong.”

The knight lobbed a pair of grenades-one at Jack’s feet and the other at the lord’s. Foosh! Porta-prisons shot up at the grenades’ points of impact, but-

They contained nothing. Jack could be surprisingly quick for his size, and he’d jumped behind the machine that screwed Glass Eye heads onto Glass Eye bodies. The Lord of Diamonds, meanwhile, was ducking under mechanical arms and stumbling across loading bays. The pawns and card soldiers split into two groups and gave chase, but the lord ran a serpentine course, erratic and nonsensical enough to avoid capture until he sighted an unobstructed path to the tent’s exit. He sprinted toward it, was just a couple strides from freedom when-

“Ugh!”

The white knight dove off a storage rack and tackled him. Out came another grenade and-foosh!-the

Lord of Diamonds was encaged in a porta-prison.

The pawns and card soldiers gathered round, congratulating one another on a mission accomplished. Or mostly accomplished. For in all the rumpus, he of the oversized rump, Jack of Diamonds, had quietly slipped away.

H ATTER FOLLOWED Arch’s bodyguards out of the Sin Bin Gaming Club and across a dusty street

to a tent repair shop that was itself in need of repair. Blister took up position on one side of the entrance, Ripkins on the other, and the Milliner pushed aside the tent flap and stepped inside.

“Hatter Madigan,” King Arch said.

He instinctively calculated his odds: Arch; the nervous proprietor hunched over a patching machine; the two assassins out front; probably reinforcements nearby. Not the greatest situation, but Hatter had faced worse.

“Where are the Ganmedes I’m to negotiate with?”

“They couldn’t make it. But I have the power to deal on their behalf. I assume you have the power to negotiate for your queen?”

Hatter gave no indication either way.

“Ripkins!” Arch shouted, and when the called-for guard entered the tent: “Escort our host across the street for a drink.”

“N-no, that’s all right,” said the proprietor, “I’m not thirsty.” But Ripkins had already stepped up to him and taken hold of his elbow. “I mean, I’m not not thirsty. Sometimes I don’t realize how thirsty I am until I have a drink, and then it’s as if I could drink an entire…”

The proprietor’s words were lost to the world outside. Hatter and Arch were alone. Reinforcements would never make it in time. All Hatter had to do was flick his wrist and the king would be dead.

“I wonder how Alyss and the others reacted to hearing that the great Millinery man had secretly fathered a child,” Arch mused.

“And I wonder how the great King Arch knew about it.”

Arch laughed. “That is a question that will soon be answered, my Millinery friend. I prefer questions that have definite answers, don’t you? As opposed to abstract ones concerning the meaning and purpose of life, blah blah blah. You’d probably like to know that your daughter is being adequately taken care of.”