Poisoned Piece: Castled Kings, Part 1
Duchess's contacts were as promised: the only hitch in their plan was the fact that her father had apparently grown tired of waiting for her and decided to rescue himself, and take a Club Suit/resistance spy names Felix with him. Reactions to this news were variable: Caterpillar promised to check with the Resistance members Felix was most likely to be hiding with, Dodo made annoyed and annoying noises about the fact that she was still sleeping in what he considered to be his library, and Owl had patted her consolingly on the head for an awkward length of time. For her part, Alice avoided Jack and Duchess like the plague and took Hatter's boat out to check up on Charlie.
She'd been grateful for the motorboat lessons her infrequent but memorable fishing trips with her father had given her when she first recovered it. This was her fourth trip on it since, and she was familiar enough with the craft to allow her thought to center around something other than the water. And boy, did she ever have some thoughts.
The first and biggest one was that things had been simpler when she'd first arrived. Sure, she had absolutely no idea what was going on or where she was, but that had forced her to narrow her priorities. Get Jack and get home: there wasn't anything else she could do. That had changed a bit after she allowed Mad March to capture her, but just a bit; her itinerary then read: get her father, figure out what Jack's deal was, and go home. The Jabberwocky and the heights and the politics hadn't mattered, really, couldn't matter. Nothing in this strange world mattered except getting her friends and family out of it and forgetting any of this ever happened.
Things were more complicated now. She knew Jack was safe- or about as safe as you could be in Wonderland- but wasn't entirely sure what he was to her anymore, and doubted that he would be following him back through the Looking Glass. Her father was in Wonderland somewhere, looking for her, but when they found him, would he really be her father, or just bait in a trap? Even if it he had remembered, Caterpillar was right; he'd feel responsible for what he'd done as Carpenter and want to stay. She couldn't leave her father, not after years of searching for him. She couldn't leave Charlie to go back to living amid the corpses of his fellow Knights. She couldn't leave all the people who were now dependent upon her to make the trip out to get them food. She couldn't leave Caterpillar and Dodo to talk over everyone's heads.
She couldn't leave Wonderland, period.
There was another reason why she could leave, of course, although she didn't like thinking about him. Duchess' contacts had confirmed that he was alive, but not in good shape. The Tweedles still had him, evidentially. She remembered how terrified and discombobulated she had felt in the Truth Room and shuddered. They'd had her for less than an hour: she couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be at their mercy for over a week. And if it weren't for her, he'd still be in his Tea Shop, toeing the line with the Queen none the wiser.
She couldn't leave Wonderland. It was Hatter's home.
They didn't believe him- but they didn't seem to disbelieve him enough to kill him outright, which leant Robert enough confidence to continue as honestly as possible. Felix's eyebrows had nearly disappeared into his curls and Lory get shooting him sidelong looks while fussing over the tea things. Eaglet watched him steadily through the whole thing, not blinking, and when he'd finally finished he nodded to himself, and said "That's quite a story."
"We're in Wonderland," Robert replied. "If stories can't count for something here…"
"You seem to have acclimated well, for an Oyster," Lory sniffed, setting down the tea tray. Felix reached out and grabbed the entire bowl of wafers and began to eat at a furious pace, causing Eaglet to frown slightly.
"Until yesterday I couldn't remember I was an Oyster," Robert replied. "I couldn't remember I had a daughter, or a wife- I don't even know if I still have a wife. She could have filed for divorce. She probably thinks I abandoned them…"
He trailed off into more private thoughts until Lory coughed loudly. "We can send word along through the grapevine. See if anyone else is willing to hear you out."
"They should want to," Robert said. "Being Carpenter means that I know more about what keeps that place running than anyone else."
"In the mean time," she continued, as though he hadn't said anything at all, "You can stay in the basement. We've got a storage cubical with a cot in it, you'll be comfortable enough there."
"I can't go out to spread the word today," Felix said, pausing in his wafer decimation to fix himself a large cup of tea. "At least three of my ribs are broken, I'm going to need to wrap them up and rest a bit first."
"You look like you were jumped by hooligans outside a pub as well," Eaglet complained. "When you're finished eating us out of house and home you can move into the back. I'll leave the medical kit out for you, you can use that to tend to your injuries."
"Don't mind if I do," Felix replied, turning back to the wafers.
Eaglet turned back to him, staring again. "Is that my cue to curl up in the storage cubical?" Robert asked after an uncomfortable moment.
'Oh no, we'll escort you down for that," Eaglet told him. "That's your cue to drink your tea."
Hatter was thinking. And sneaking out of the infirmary, but he was a very clever person, and could manage both at the same time.
Mostly he was thinking about the frayed little patch that was the sum of his information about his life, and trying to find any loose threads he could use to reconstruct the rest. He didn't like have great big whopping holes in his head, practically speaking because he knew he'd kept things from March and didn't want them coming back to bite them both in the arse because he'd been neglecting them. Less practically speaking, he felt like half a man; he was worse than useless, he was floundering, and that wouldn't do at all.
So he thought as he snuck out of his little corner of the ward. March was the biggest figure in his life, as far as he could tell. He'd done something that had made Hatter extremely grateful, been a steady, constant presence throughout. He was Hatter's friend, hell, he'd even go as far as to say that he was the closest thing to family he had.
But there was no getting around the fact that he was absolutely insane, and didn't have full control over than insanity even at the best of times. It wasn't directed towards him, mostly, but that didn't mean that he didn't spend a lot of his time trying to contain the damage, and direct March's urge to kill and maim and hurt onto specific and deserving targets. Very nearly everyone was a fair target, from the people he was paid to kill to their families to random passersby on the street. He was terrifying enough that by the end of his old memories he could remember anticipating something better- although what it was, he couldn't begin to figure out. He could only think that it must have been something which he thought would have helped March as much as himself, because the man still felt like a sort of psychotic older brother.
And everything was tied up in March, even the dangling loose ends he was so interested in, Hatter mused, stealing the clothing out from the chest of a post-operatively drugged Suit. He could remember looking up 'homicidal mania', but couldn't remember how he knew how to read, let alone where the book was from. He remembered being very excited for the "Serenity" flavor of Tea when it came out, but couldn't recall ever having seriously drunk the stuff. He also remembered that there was something big that he absolutely could not let March know, something dangerous not only for him, but for others…
So, as Hatter sauntered pass the nurse on duty with a nonchalance that completely covered for the fact that he was wearing a stolen suit, Hatter began to contemplate things that began with the letter 'T': threads, terror, Thyme, text, Tea…
Duck was not a very patient man by nature. He was, more often and more likely, a very impatient man, because he often found that patience was a coward's excuse for not acting. This made his involvement in the Resistance a conflicted one, at times, but he couldn't fault them for getting results when they did act. They were very rarely the desired results, exactly, but he knew from experience that there wasn't much a single artillery man could do on his own, and that coordinating a widespread network like their own was certainly difficult at the best of times. He was a soldier, but he understood that they could not comport themselves like they were in battle. So he volunteered to do things which might at least be useful, like setting up living areas for the refugees, guarding the north-northwest entrance and helping cultivate more supplies for those still living in the Great Library.
He was beginning to regret that last one, though. It wasn't the work, exactly, although the sun had burnt his skin to a crisp with more speed than he remembered being possible, which didn't make farming any more pleasant. It was Charlie.
He understood that this was his territory, he understood that he had been alone for a very long time, and he understood that he had some affinity for magic, but none of that seemed enough to compensate for the fact that the man was completely devoid of sense. His camp was completely haphazard, his inventions were ludicrously complex, and his manner was extremely off-putting. And heaven help the man if he heard so much as one more…
"Galadoon De Booshe!" Charlie cried, and even though this time the soil overturned into a neatly-tilled patch on the first go, Duck threw down his trowel and started towards him.
"Now see here!" he called. "Do you really have to be quite so loud!"
"Be glad he's not singing," Alice called out from up the path. "It's infectious- before long you'd be singing too."
"Lady Alice!" Charlie called, joyously, forgetting Duck entirely. "Back for more cabbages already?"
"What can I say, people are hungry," Alice replied, accepting a hug from the batty old man. She wasn't looking well, although the longer she talked with the knight the more color returned to her cheeks. After a perfunctory inquiry into the health of the Resistance, the Library, Dodo, Caterpillar and Owl, Duck left them too it. At least someone was getting something out of the knight's company beside a twitch in the eye.
March was livid. Hatter had apparently taken it upon himself to mozy on out of the infirmary and no one knew where exactly he was. Terrifying the nurses had done no good; neither had pounding the ever-living snot out of the Club who'd suggested that he sit quietly and wait for his return. Like he'd do that! He left for just a few hours to pick out the Suits and now all the previous weeks' work might be undone.
Fuck it. When he found Hatter he was going to lock that kid right back up in a cell, relapse or no. It wouldn't do for him to go wandering about, picking up ideas like he did without March to filter out the bad ones, would it?
He went tearing through the Casino until finally one of the smarter Suit pointed him in the right direction before making herself scarce. Hatter was on a terrace, looking out over the lake towards the city. Or he would have been, if his gaze had been focused on it. As it was he just stared at the middle distance, murmuring to himself occasionally.
March's anger left him in an abrupt rush, and with a sigh he settled himself next to Hatter on the railing.
"You're a mess, Hatter," he told him apologetically.
Hatter snorted. "And why is that, March?"
"The Resistance fucked you up," March told him. It was the truth really; if Hatter had never chosen to help one of the Resistance's leading ladies instead of letting him catch her, they'd have remained thick as the thieves they were without the need to brainwash and the made-in-all-seriousness death threats.
"Is that it? Really?" Hatter asked. "Because there are huge chunks of my life missing. And I mean huge! Gigantic! Decades of my life are just nothing but blank space and I can't see why anyone else would want them!"
"I always kind of thought you had contacts in the Resistance," March said. "Maybe that was what they were after?"
Hatter gaped. "Really?"
"Yeah. You hit your books the way other people hit their Tea," March said. "I don't know of anywhere else to get a book that isn't Resistance owned and operated."
"So, you think they were covering their tracks?" Hatter asked, looking down at the three splints that remained on his fingers with a frown.
"It wouldn't surprise me," March said, and in all honesty it wouldn't."They just tried to overthrow the Queen again, and came closer than they should have been able to. The probably didn't want you to be able to tell us where to find the ones who escaped the crackdown."
Hatter digested this, for a moment, and then asked, almost timidly. "You didn't mind about the books?"
"Nah," March replied. That was completely honest: he really hadn't given it any thought at all. It was just another one of Hatter's quirks, like his love of loud colors and his abhorrence of clocks. He knew better now. "I work with the Queen because she's a steady employer." By the time the Resistance's balls had dropped enough to consider having anyone killed he'd done enough jobs for the Crown that they wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire. "Politics doesn't factor into it."
Hatter relaxed a bit, and then said, in a worried tone "And your head?"
If he could have, March would have smiled. There was the dependant, needy kid he lost over a decade ago. "I got careless. Luckily, the Queen was even more careless and forgot that there's no better assassin in Wonderland, and so I got bought back even after the old head was too bashed in to use."
Hatter nodded, then smirked. "Are you sure it wasn't to get out of your promise to find a hat to wear?"
March couldn't roll his eyes, so he looked up at the sky to convey his fond exasperation. "You and your hats."
"You'd look good in a hat," Hatter protested. "Well, you'd have looked good with your old head. The new one isn't much good for anything that isn't a fez."
March shook the head in question. "Listen, while I'd love to stand here and let you haberdash around me, I got to get up early tomorrow and hunt down one of the Resistance bastards. You on the other hand, have to go back to the infirmary, and try to sleep off some more of that damage."
"Would now be a good time to tell you that my pain medication has worn off and I can't take a step without wanting to curl up in a ball and cry?" Hatter asked.
March sighed, and slung an arm under the kid's shoulders to help support his weight. They hobbled forwards a step, and Hatter sucked in a pained breath, but continued. March put a halt to his budding plans to have Hatter re-imprisoned, and together they made their slow way back to the infirmary.
Dodo took another look at the figures, which stubbornly didn't change into anything more favorable as he glared at them. Their food supplies had taken a sharp drop since Hatter had left, and although the supply line Alice had secured was a help, they were going to run out of food within the month at current rates of consumption.
He supposed he could see about sending more people out to the City of the Knights, but as being caught living outside the city limits was a death sentence, he was reluctant to authorize anything that would draw attention to both the refugees and what was now their main source of food.
He massaged his temples against the oncoming throb of a headache, which spiked at the sound of incoming footsteps.
"Oh what now!" he shouted as Caterpillar rounded the corner, followed closely by a red-haired man in a green Suit.
Caterpillar blinked mildly, blank and unflappable as always, the cad. "Dodo, this is Bill, our contact with the Lizards."
"How d'you do?" Bill said hurried. "Anyway, we've got Carpenter: he's holed up with Felix 'round Lory and Eaglet's place. Do you want him bought here or am I taking you to him?"
"Should you be the one guarding the door?" Alice asked as she entered the Library, frowning. "Isn't that a bit risky? What if someone recognizes you?"
Jack ignored her questions; she'd forget she asked soon enough anyway. "Alice, we've located your father."
Alice sucked in a sharp breath and sank onto one of the bus seats.
"He's safe," Jack continued. "But on the other side of the city. We've got a contact with the Resistance who works in the Lizards, he'll bring you out to verify that he is himself again, and then he can help us plan how to bring down the Casino. He'll be back around nightfall."
Alice gaped. "We're going to bring down the Casino?"
"We don't have a choice, from what I understand. Word has spread that the Hospital of Dreams has ceased to function as a Resistance stronghold, and it's hurt our credibility. The smugglers won't negotiate with us, and supplies are already running low. We're in real danger of starving."
"But the food from Charlie's-" She stopped and then shook her head. "It's not enough, is it?"
"Not nearly enough, I'm afraid," Jack replied, gently. He pushed the blue button and the bus began to descend. He waiting until it jerked to a stop before continuing. "I know this isn't how you wanted to be reunited with your father. And I promise you, as soon as I can I'll get you both home-"
Alice cut him off by making a slashing motion in the air. "I've done some thinking. I don't think I can leave."
Jack sat down directly opposite her, and she continued: "Not for a while, I think. I have too much to do that I can't get done until after the Queen falls-"
She stopped, biting on her lip.
"Alice," Jack said as gently as he could. "You don't owe me anything."
"I owe Hatter," she told him. "I owe Hatter a lot."
And just like that, this conversation became decidedly more awkward. Jack considered: there was an exit handy. He could leave now, and likely as not Alice wouldn't bring the subject up again. But this was perhaps one of the few parts of his life that he could get a definitive answer on. So much was in turmoil now…
"What exactly is Hatter to you?" he asked. When she didn't respond, he pressed a little. "You seemed very friendly. More than friendly-"
"So do you and Duchess," Alice said.
Jack fought off the urge to justify himself: she hadn't meant it as a jab. This wasn't about who was cheating on whom. Actually, she seemed just as lost as he was.
"I don't know what Duchess and I are to each other," he answered honestly. "It's… all very complicated. I don't think we'll be able to resolve it satisfactorily until the dust begins to settle."
"I know what you mean," Alice said, with a small laugh. "I've known him less than a week, and yet…"
Jack nodded, disappointment flowing over profound relief. "Where does that leave us?"
"As friends, I hope," Alice said.
Jack nodded slowly. He could be friends with Alice. "Well then. As your friend, would you like me to accompany you when you go to your father?"
"No," Alice said, quickly. Then she winced and softened her words: "I'd like as small an audience as possible, this time."
That it could well be a trap, and it would be better for the Queen to get her hands on Alice than on Jack, or them both was something they both knew and didn't say. They sat there is contemplative silence for a while, before Owl knocked timidly on the door.
"Is everything alright in there?" she asked.
"We're fine," Alice called quickly.
"We better go before rumors start spreading," Jack said.
"Start?" Alice asked, teasingly. Jack groaned, and opened the door.
Alice exited, then turned around. "Jack?"
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry about throwing you in the lake," Alice said. "The light was really bad- I didn't know it was you."
"Don't apologize to me, apologize to my suit," Jack said.
Alice laughed, and left. Jack remained standing there until Owl told him to stop catching dust.
Lizards were the type of Suits which were in charge of distributing supplies throughout the city, using boats as truck as aqueducts as highways. They took the Tea from the Casino and distributed it to the Shops, collected clothing, food and other essentials for the Suit's barracks, which sounded more like gated communities than anything else. Bill was a junior manager, which was evidentially of enough importance to puff out his cravat. He had a lovely fiancé, a bloke who was the floor manager at a Tea Shop in another part of the City entirely, and you know if Alice was ever in that part of town she could just drop his name and she'd be sure to get the best brews available, real tea even, and that was rarer than Jabberwocky skulls these days…
Alice listened to distract herself from the bread-and-butterflies swarming in her stomach. Bill, she suspected, was talking so much for much the same reason.
She'd nearly gotten through to him, last time. She wondered what had done it: did he just need more time? He'd kept the watch on, after Mad March found them. Had that triggered something? Did he even remember everything? It'd been ten years in this place, ten years of not remembering who he was, thinking he was someone else. Even if he hadn't had his brain tampered with, that was a long time…
The engine cut out, and Bill parallel parked his supply runner with practiced ease.
"Here we go, Ms. Alice," he said, stepping out and offering his hand to her. He guided her through a twisty maze of concrete buildings, all alike, finally stopping at a door with a yellow-ish crack of light showing underneath.
Here we go," Alice thought as he exchanged the password. The door swung open, and an elderly lady ushered them inside.
Her father was standing next to the table. She stared. He stared back.
"Jellybean-" he began. Alice threw herself at him.
"Oh Jellybean- Alice- I'm sorry," he said. She started to cry, tightening her arms around him and burying her face in his neck so that it wasn't so evident. "I'm so sorry. I should have known the moment I saw you."
"Daddy," she croaked.
"Alice, don't cry," he murmured. "Please don't cry."
"Yes, don't," The old man said, pushing against them on her way to the back hall. "All that salt water will ruin the woodwork. Oi Felix, your ride's here!"
Alice carefully untangled herself from her father, as the woman turned to them and whispered: "Take him with you when you go. He's a dear, but he'll eat us out of house and home otherwise."
Alice nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak yet. A curly-haired man, Felix, she guessed, appeared in the hall, limping slightly.
"It's you!" Bill cried from behind them.
"What do you mean it's you?" Felix scoffed. "You never even hinted you were one of us, Bill."
"Well of course I didn't, you're a pretty convincing Suit!" Bill scoffed. "Speaking of, we're leaving. Everyone have everything?"
"Not even close, but I do have what I've got," Felix replied.
"Excellent, let's go."
Felix got shotgun, the better to gossip with Bill about all the near-missed and frights they'd given each other over the years. Robert found he didn't mind sitting in the storage compartment with Alice: it would give him a chance to learn some of what he'd been missing.
"We had to sell the house," Alice said. "We live in the city, now. It's close to Mom's practice, and the apartment isn't all that bad. It was a wreck when we moved in, but we've been slowly, slowly redoing it and it's pretty respectable now."
Robert nodded. "How is your mother?"
"She's doing okay," Alice said. "She took you not being there better than I did, I think. She hasn't been dating again, or anything, but she's at peace with the idea, I think. Or maybe the troubles that came with raising me were just too distracting."
"Oh?" Robert asked, heart sinking.
"I never stopped looking for you. Never. Your name and picture is in every database dealing with missing persons- I've had people contact me from Koka-freaking-tahi!"
"Hawaii?" Robert asked.
"New Zealand," Alice corrected him agitatedly. "And all this time, all I had to do was walk through the mirror in that moldering old warehouse!"
Robert swallowed thickly. She had to understand- it wasn't her responsibility to rescue him. He should have remembered sooner. She shouldn't have had to step on foot in Wonderland for him to recall that he had a daughter.
"Alice-" he began. She didn't appear to hear him.
"I used to break into that place to make out with guys in high school!" she cried.
"Alice!"
She blinked, then looked horrified.
"I'm going to need a list of those guys, so that I can retroactively threaten them with a pointed object," he said.
"A list? Of guys I've dated?" Alice said, despondently. "That's a pretty long list. Not that I've slept with them all, or anything, but- but you don't really want to hear this, do you?"
No, actually, he wanted nothing to do with Alice's sex life, now that he spent half a second thinking about it. But he did have a duty as a father… "Where does this Hatter guy fall into things?"
"You've met Hatter?" Alice asked. "Is he- how is- the Resistance's contacts said that he was one of the Tweedles' cases, and that he was in the infirmary. What does that mean, exactly?"
Robert frowned- Hatter hadn't been in the infirmary when he left, but if he was there now it was possible that the Tweedles had finished with him. Which meant…
"Jellybean, you're really not going to want to hear this," Robert began.
Caterpillar studied the drawings Felix and Carpenter- or Robert, as he preferred to be called- had made of the Casino. It was an activity made slightly more difficult, if more worthwhile, by the fact that Jack kept amending it to add passageways and hidey-holes the other two knew nothing about.
"I've spent a lot of time trying to get out from under my mother's thumb," Jack said when asked. Caterpillar heartily approved.
"As long as we can get to here, I can release the Oysters and overload the emotion distilleries," Robert said. "The piping runs through the core of the building and right alongside several of the main support struts- feedback from the wrong emotions mixing will bring the whole building down."
"Will there be enough time to evacuate the building?" Jack asked.
"Who cares?" Dodo asked.
Felix shot him a disbelieving look while Jack, used to Dodo's default setting of 'vitriol' by now, answered calmly "Well, the Oysters, for one. Our agents on the inside, for another."
Dodo made an incoherent grumbling noise before falling silent once more.
"The problem is going to be getting there. It's been more than long enough for them to notice that I'm gone, they'll be assuming that I've found you and you'll be pumping me for everything I know," Robert continued. "They'll be expecting a small force of people to try breaking into the Casino."
"So we need something to distract the Suits," Caterpillar concluded.
All eyes turned to Felix, who shrugged. "I was a Club. They don't do fighting."
"And you never had any contact with the Spades," Dodo drawled.
"You didn't know? Those guys are always itching for a fight," Felix shot back. "Give them a reason and they'll come down on you as hard they can."
A grim silence fell down upon the group.
"Duck and I could distract them," Owl said suddenly. "He's good with explosions, and is even more itchy than those Suits too, I'll wager."
"Do we have enough resources to draw them away from internal security?" Jack asked.
"No," Dodo said, at the same time Caterpillar said "Perhaps."
"I couldn't help but notice that you are sitting on a very large number of bullets," Caterpillar elaborated when Dodo looked at him askance.
Dodo snorted. "We have plenty of ammunition, but nothing to fire it with. Hatter was completely incapable of getting us anything else." Alice, who had been staring blankly for most of the meeting contrary to her normal habits, seemed to rouse herself at that. She bristled, and glared at the librarian.
"Duck can still use the gunpowder," Owl said.
"Pity," Caterpillar mused. "If I'd known you were hard up for guns I would have sent you some of mine."
Doubtlessly by now they'd been confiscated, a double loss for the Resistance since now they could be used by the Suits against them. Having gotten the hint that he was being blamed, Dodo simply glowered back.
"I don't need a gun," Alice volunteered. "I wouldn't know what to do with it, anyway."
"You're not going!" Robert protested.
"Yes, I am," Alice said firmly. Robert opened his mouth to protest further, but she cut him off. "I'm a black belt, Dad. I'm probably the most qualified person here in terms of hand-to-hand combat. I'm going."
Robert frowned. Dodo scoffed.
"You do realize that there are more important things at stake here than your boyfriend," he sneered, then shot a significant look at Jack. "Well, your other boyfriend."
Jack opened his mouth, but as was her wont Alice beat him to the punch. "Isn't Hatter still necessary to get the smugglers to cooperate with you? Isn't my romantic life none of your business? Isn't it also completely incidental to the fact that we're storming the Casino?"
Dodo blinked.
"I still say Duck would make a pretty good distraction," Owl pressed.
"I'll go get him," Alice said, standing up and all but running out of the room. She stopped at the doorway and turned around. "Please, please have something approaching a concrete plan by the time I get back?"
"Don't worry, we'll be ready," Duchess said, causing everyone in the room who wasn't Caterpillar to jump.
"Thank you," Alice said, gratefully, and left.
"Now," Duchess said, standing. "We can free the Oysters and destroy the Casino. We're also going to need to make sure that the Stone of Wonderland isn't buried in the rubble, and have yet to decide who is actually going on this expedition…"
The alarm for the northwest perimeter went off with a loud caw, and Charlie once more fell out of a hammock that he hadn't quite broken in yet. From across the camp he heard Duck groan at the interruption to his sleep.
"Quiet!" he hissed. He could here Duck stumble to his feet, and just beyond that there was the sound of footsteps.
"It's me!" Lady Alice's voice said.
"Ah!" Charlie said, delighted. He managed to lever himself back up into a standing position, and brushed the dirt off his escutcheon. "What brings you back at this time of night?"
"We're attacking the Casino," she announced. There was a collective intake of breath as the Resistance members in camp proved themselves to be shameless eavesdroppers. "My father thinks he can bring it down from the inside, but we're going to need a distraction."
"A distraction?" Charlie murmured, thinking furiously.
"Yes," Lady Alice looked around, stopping when her eyes fell upon Duck. "I've heard from Owl that you're good with explosives?"
"Yes," Duck said, bringing himself up proudly. "I was in charge of an artillery corps once, you know."
Well no wonder the man was a lousy farmer! But would one man, even with a lot of explosions, might not be enough to keep the Suit's interest for long. They might need something a little more… yes, yes that would do nicely.
"Lady Alice!" Charlie called, then realized that he was interrupting her conversation with Duck. Wincing, he pressed forwards anyway. "Would the Knight's weaponry be any use to you?"
"What swords and lances against guns?" Duck scoffed. Charlie suppressed the urge to roll his eyes- it was childish, and this was a serious conversation.
"And catapults and arrows against unarmored bodies," Charlie pointed out. "I've kept the siege machinery in good repair."
Lady Alice still seemed doubtful. "Are you sure that would be okay?"
"Of course!" Charlie said. "I know it doesn't match up well, but we seem to be marching outgunned either way. At least this way the distance between our might and theirs is a bit closer."
Lady Alice nodded. "I get that- but Charlie- is it okay? I got the impression that that equipment was a part of the Knight's resting place."
Oh. That was very noble of her. "I am certain they would want it to be used in defiance of the Queen of Hearts," he told her. "In fact, they would likely take it as an insult if we were to pass them over."
"Do we have enough people for that?" Duck asked, frowning.
"I'll have to check. There are plenty of people in the Library, but I don't know how many of them would be willing to fight," Alice said. "Duck, you need to come back with me, and see what you can do with the supplies we have."
Duck nodded, and picked up the bundle of his belongs he'd been using as a pillow. "I'm ready, let's go."
"We'll get some of the lighter equipment ready for transport upon your return," Charlie promised.
"Thank you," Alice said, and then the two of them began to make their way back to the shore. Charlie turned and began to make his way towards one of the larger crossbows, then stopped when he realized that no one was following him.
"Well, what are you all doing still laying there?" he called. "This is no time for a nap! We have work to do!"
A few people groaned, but for the most part they left their bedrolls with more quiet anxiety than anything else. Charlie could understand that. He liked to think that he'd proven himself when he'd rescued Lady Alice from the Suits, but deep down inside, he was still afraid that he would be too terrified on the battlefield to do anything but run.
Next chapter can be read here.