Through a Looking Glass, Darkly: Queen of Swords, Part One
When she was ten years old, Alice fell into Wonderland.
Her father had been involved with a project for a grant all month long, working long hours that saw him coming home later and more exhausted than usual. Alice was worried, as a child worries when parents aren’t acting as they normally do, and her mother picked up on that worry. On a whim, she bundled Alice into the car and after they made a quick stop at the drive thru of a KFC, they parked in the university parking lot and surprised her father at his office.
It took several minute for Daddy to get to a point at which he could safely stop, during which Alice regaled him with tales from school and Mommy could be heard setting up the fried chicken in the empty classroom across the hall. He’d just finished back up his files, carried her into the classroom, they were about to sit down and eat when the door burst open, and three men in white suits came in, guns cocked at the ready.
“Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?” Daddy asked. He was ignored.
“You said he was alone,” hissed one of the men.
“He has been every day at this time before,” another hissed back.
Mommy grabbed her by the shoulder and began to back away from them, heading for the door at the other end of the room.
“Look, you can take whatever you want. I’m not going to stop you. Why don’t you put the guns away before someone gets hurt?” Daddy placated, placing himself between his family and the gunmen.
“That’s not a bad idea,” the man closest to them said. He holstered his gun, and then pulled a small spray bottle from inside his jacket. Curiosity and confusion dulled his reflexes, and Dad didn’t pull back quickly enough to avoid the spray that dulled his features and hung his arms loosely at his sides.
“Run!” Mommy ordered, pushing Alice towards the door. The men came after them; one went crashing to the floor when Mommy hit him with a chair, while the other sprayed furiously until she was as still and compliant as Daddy.
Alice reached the door and wrenched it open, running into the shelves of the closet at full speed. She collapsed in a flurry of papers and test tubes, clutching her head.
“Don’t worry, little one,” one of the men said. “You won’t feel a thing.”
Then her face became wet, and the world dissolved into pinks and purples.
~*~
Thirteen years later, a woman known to most as Jelly lay on a cot in a cell. Officially, she was awaiting her execution. Unofficially, she was staring at the cracks in the ceiling in the hopes that they might do something interesting.
She wasn’t too worried. She’d been on death row two or three times a year since turning fourteen. If her stomach would occasionally roll over on itself when she thought about the proposal that had gotten her thrown in her holding cell this time, it was only because she sincerely thought that the idea was the best idea. It was nothing she was emotionally invested in at all.
Just as the sun was beginning to rise to an angle where it would shine in her eyes, the door to the cellblock opened, and the Ten of Clubs walked in.
“Good morning, Ten,” he greeted her, opening the cell door.
“Good morning to you too, Ten,” she replied. “I hope you told Secunda that I was sorry for missing out on her lessons yesterday afternoon.”
“She understands,” he replied. “She was worried though. She heard a rumor that the argument was louder than usual.”
And the Club’s middle child had a real talent for gathering accurate gossip. It was part of why she agreed to teach her hand-to-hand. Jelly ignored the roll of her stomach. “It’s a perfectly viable idea.”
“I’m sure it is. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s been less than a month since we did this. Normally you’re more careful about picking your battles.”
“I am careful. This is a battle worth fighting for,” Jelly told him, hoping that the conviction in her voice could be construed as professional rather than personal. “If the Resistance is in deep enough to off Mad March, then we’re all in danger. We need a way to get better information.”
The Club looked like he was going to object further, so she lifted a finger to cut him off preemptively. “Is there any way we can skip the lecture and go straight to the raspberry scones?”
“No time for either I’m afraid,” he told her. “I’m to bring you to the King straight away. Your idea might have pissed off the Queen mightily, but the King seems to be working from the same aqueduct as you.”
~*~
Jelly was keenly aware that she was wearing the same suit as yesterday as she knocked on the door of the King’s private study.
“Who is it?” the King called out.
“It’s the Ten of Spades, Jelly,” she called.
“Enter,” he ordered. She waved goodbye to Darrel as the Ten of Clubs left for his other duties.
The King was a warm-looking man, with curly hair and a heavy set. There were crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, which wasn’t rarely, and more often than not he wore a manner to set the other person completely at ease. Jelly liked the man, and had gone through great lengths to make sure that the feeling was mutual. The Queen was a woman with a terrible, limitless cruelty, and the only thing that could shield you from it was the amiable man with her ring on his finger.
“You’re none the worse for your night in the cell, I trust?” he inquired.
“I’m fine,” Jelly replied. “At the rate we seem to be going, I think I might have to hide a change of clothes in there somewhere, though.”
The King frowned. “You do upset her like nothing else.”
Like he would permit nothing else, Jelly translated mentally. She took a deep breath then began to state her case. “As upsetting as it is to hear, we do have a security problem.”
“I know,” the King moaned. “But did you have to state it so… bluntly? The Queen takes her public image very personally.”
“I never meant to imply that her public image was suffering,” Jelly told him sincerely. She never had meant to imply it: she’d been kind of hoping that the pitch would go off without a hitch. She’d planned for it to go as well as it did, though, so no harm done. “Merely that her old enemies clearly have at least one assassin in the Casino.”
This was the point in the conversation where things had gone wrongward. Apparently still smarting from the perceived slight, the Queen had focused on proving her theory wrong. What made her think that it was an assassin? How could she be sure that he was still in the Casino? How could she be so sure that March hadn’t been their only target? Was she really sure that there was danger? Wasn’t she overreacting?
Thankfully, there was no need to go through any of that with the King. He took any potential threat to his wife more seriously than he did anything else.
“And you think the best course of action is for you to go undercover with the Resistance?”
“I’m the logical choice,” Jelly told him. “I’m high up enough in rank to make a tempting target. I have experience with undercover work. It would be very easy to believe that the Queen and I are at odds with one another. I don’t think the Queen would mind if I were to be out of the Casino for a few days either.”
“That’s certainly true,” the King acknowledged. “Very well then. Put some feelers out, but don’t do anything to compromise us yet. I’ll bring the Queen around to the idea.”
“Thank you,” Jelly said.
“No, thank you,” the King replied. “And, if you have the time, why don’t you drop in on your father today? He was worried about you last night.”
“I will,” Jelly said, and recognizing a dismissal when it smacked her in the face, left.
~*~
The first thing to do was to grab something to eat- breakfast was all but done when she arrived in the mess hall, but she managed to grab a muffin that had some powdered sugar still on it, and make an appearance in front of enough people that news of her non-beheading would spread rapidly.
She passed Duchess on the way to her quarters, and nodded respectfully. Duchess didn’t appear to see her, and Jelly made a mental note to check on Jack when she next got the chance; he and his fiancée seemed to barely speak to each other beyond what was strictly necessary. While she doubted she could actual get him to talk about it, what with him being the most closely watched person in the entire Casino, she might be able to pick up a hint or two.
‘Quarters’ was perhaps too generous a term for what Jelly was fairly certain was actually a converted broom cupboard. But it had a bed for her to sleep in and a chest to put her suits, so she wasn’t going to complain too much. After changing into a fresh uniform, she made for the Internal Security Deck and her first meeting of the day with the two other Tens, Dudley and Otter, and their Trump, Sam. Dudley was the one who ran Internal Security, whereas Otter was in charge of maintaining their military forces. Sam, on the other hand, had retired in all but name years ago, and more or less deferred to her judgment in all things. It was a strange system, but it worked out well for everyone involved: the Spades got a competent leader who wasn’t steeped, Sam got to enjoy Court life a little longer, Otter and Dudley got to remain in their preferred positions, that came with less responsibility and more free time, and she got to stay with that extra degree of separation between herself and Her Majesty.
She had already decided against bringing up her idea with any of her fellow Spades, and as a result the meeting went very quickly. No one had found either Mad March’s head or his killer, which was the part everyone was anxious about. Sam reminded them all to start looking at what their new budgets would be able to do for them as far as training and recruiting went, Dudley had some ideas about increasing their security she gave the nod too, Otter had nothing new to report, and for herself, she managed to get her deck first chance to pit up against the White Rabbit during the next cross-Suit training exercise. After a little ribbing about her umpteenth near-decapitation experience, they parted ways, just in time for her to catch the Scarab out to her office.
Jelly was the Ten of Spades in charge of the Police Deck, something which had rather less to do with her childhood dreams of arresting bad guys and keeping neighborhoods safe, and more about keeping the Resistance from getting too cocky and having a reserve of Suits in the city ready for action if required. They didn’t protect neighborhoods so much as the Queen’s own, and very rarely did they arrest genuine bad guys. She took comfort in the fact that since she’d been in charge, they’d arrested very few genuine good guys, but it was a very thin sort of comfort.
It wasn’t fair, what she did. It wasn’t right; but, in the end, doing otherwise would only end with her head on the chopping block. So she settled on doing the best she could.
She kept her back to the windows and concentrated on her paperwork for the ride over, not looking up from the reports of civil unrest and pockets of smuggling activity until the Scarab had come to a complete halt at its dock over the White Rabbit’s city headquarters. Then she watched her steps very carefully as she exited the thing. She hated heights, with the sort of passion that would make a very pricey bottle of Tea, but they were the price of being here. The city was far enough away from the Queen that she wasn’t in danger of being casually beheaded- but if need be, she could be back in the Casino and at her father’s side within the hour.
The Spades had their main base of operations just beneath the White Rabbit’s, and Jelly took advantage of that fact to make the remainder of the trip inside a safely enclosed service elevator. She walked into the lobby, nodding to the Club that was newly-attached to their deck- Sheila? No, Shakina. Sheila still worked in the Casino, and was a Diamond to boot- as she passed. To her surprise, instead of merely nodding back the Club called out.
“Ace?”
“Yes, Four?” Jelly replied.
“You might want to have a look in the holding cells. I’m reading a ruckus in there.”
Jelly heaved a sigh, and made back for the elevator.
~*~
There was indeed a ruckus in the holding cells. One of the prisoners they’d been holding overnight for transfer to the Casino had gotten free, and was holding one of their own hostage. Jelly snuck around behind him and slid next to her top Nine, Othello, who was leaning against a desk with his fingers tapping against the barrel of his gun.
“And this guy is?” she asked.
“Food runner. We caught him in an unauthorized transaction involving some avocados, and found several bags of rice under the floorboards,” the Spade replied. “Good morning to you too, boss.”
Jelly winced: he was one of the better guys, if not one of the good ones, then. She could tell from the angle of the gun and the way his body was trembling that he couldn’t pull the trigger if his life depended upon it- not that that meant he wouldn’t press it by accident. “I don’t suppose you remember his name?” she asked, ignoring his last comment.
“Bruno, I think,” Othello replied.
“Bruno!” Jelly called out, stepping into the open. The smuggler turned around, his shaking intensifying as he saw who she was. “Put down the gun.”
“No,” came the predictable reply.
“Then at least let my Seven go. Let’s talk about this.” The gun was shaking noticeably by now, so Jelly lowered her voice. “I know you’re scared. You don’t want to go to the Casino. You don’t want to be tortured. You don’t want to be executed. And you don’t want to be pushed to the point where you start naming names. Put down the gun and let him go: I’ll give you two more days before you’re shipped out. Promise.”
She wasn’t sure if the man was just shaking too hard or if he really had taken the deal, but the next moment the gun had clattered to the floor and Seven had broken free. She quickly pulled the prisoner into a joint lock and yelled out for handcuffs.
“Thank you,” she told the Two that had bought them to her. “Take him back to his cell, I don’t want to see him again for another two days. The rest of you, finish up with the transfer, let’s not give the Rabbits anything to grumble about. Not you,” she stopped the Seven. “You, come with me to my office.”
~*~
The Seven’s name was Quigley Tove; he was just four years older than she was, and a recruit that had come from a Suit family, his father being the previous Ten of Clubs. He was a member of one of the eight hands stationed in the city: a quick look at her handwritten schedule confirmed that the hand should be on Lizard-watching duty today. A longer but more surreptitious look told her that the schedule posted on the ticker put them on warden duty, and that there had been no authorized changes to the schedule since she’d entered it.
Interesting. She would have to do a more thorough search later, just to confirm the hunch, but if she was correct she’d found her feeler.
“Take a seat and help yourself to some chocolate,” she ordered, when she noticed that Quigley was still standing uncertainly by her desk.
“Ace?” The Spade asked, confused.
“You get taken hostage, you deserve some chocolate,” Jelly told him. “Take a minute, enjoy the sugar rush, and then tell me what happened this morning. You’re not in trouble yet.”
Quigley took a small piece of fudge from the platter on her desk, and nibbled on it for a moment until the color returned to his cheeks. “We were moving the prisoners out of their cells, when Bruno collapsed on the floor. We thought he might have taken a suicide pill, or something, so I went over the where he was. That when he got my gun and pulled me into an arm lock. The rest of my hand secured the other prisoners and tried to get a clear shot at the joker; one of my top Fives, Crane, started trying to persuade him to let go of me: Bruno told him to shut it. That’s about when you showed up.”
Jelly nodded. “How was he able to get your gun out of your holster so quickly?”
“I-” his eyes skittered nervously to the side for a moment. “I’d forgotten to fasten it in properly.”
Feeler! Jelly thought triumphantly. Outwardly, though, she kept her features schooled and responded with a bland “I hope this doesn’t mean that you’ll be requiring a refresher course on gun safety, Seven.”
“Of course not, Ace,” Quigley replied. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Jelly said. “To your work, then.”
She waited a few minutes after he’d gone, then sent a request to the records department to have Bruno’s file be sent up to her office- the original file, not a copy. Then the White Rabbit was screeching at her from the phone, and she went back to being a Spade through and through.
~*~
After she wrote up her report of the incident, sent reminders to everyone else involved that they would need to do the same, arranged for the security footage from this morning to be erased in a freak accident involving a tea tray and a bat, and met with Othello about any new developments (“Beyond the fact that tea trays apparently do twinkle when they fly? I managed to make a killing off of the new recruits who don’t know about your ax-tease tendencies.”), she slipped out the service entrance and went to go check in with one of her informants.
Carlotta St. Delaware was a tough chick in every sense of the word: her normal outfit included feathers and a ludicrously short skirt, but the amount of muscle tone in her legs was a sure indication that she could do more with them than just dance. She could often be found working in many of the holes-in-the-wall Jelly ignored until it became obvious that the Resistance was using them to meet and exchange information. Carlotta could tell her when that had happened: her price was generally a hot meal and a moderately valuable bauble, but there was the promise of a recommendation for the Diamond Suits that Jelly would have to cash for her one day.
Not that she minded, really. For all that she needed someone to keep an eye on the Resistance, she certainly wouldn’t mind having a contact in the Diamonds to help her keep an eye on her father.
“Buy you a ratburger?” Jelly asked, as Carlotta strutted backstage, still flushed from her routine. This particular hole-in-the-wall was located about midway up the City, and perhaps half a step up from the dancer’s normal employers.
“Today, hun, you buy me the something made with an actual animal,” Carlotta responded, grabbing a coat off a hook in the wall and twirling it over her shoulders. “I have a hit, and then some.” She opened the door and waited, anticipation shinning in her eyes.
They walked along the ledgeway, Jelly keeping her hand firmly on the wall and her eyes firmly ahead of her, and Carlotta leading the way with a definite swagger in her step. They ended up in one of the nicer restaurants in the area, where they got a secluded booth and a very extensive menu.
Jelly raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got for me first, then we’ll order?”
“Oh, come on, you aren’t even going to let order a starter?” Carlotta asked.
“You expect me to buy you a starter?”
“I expect you to buy us a starter. Come on, live a little.”
Jelly rolled her eyes, but let Carlotta order some fried rice pilaf before sending the waiter away.
“I have two potential meeting sites, and a name. One of the big guys, I think,” Carlotta said, in a hushed tone of voice. “Big guy physically too- Dodo generally orders himself a whole platter of those clam things for a starter, and eats them all too. He’s certainly not feeling the pinch.”
“What makes you think he’s Resistance, then?” Jelly asked.
“Well, partways because he pays with books,” Carlotta told her. “And partways because he told me.”
Jelly raised an eyebrow. “And you believed him?”
“Of course I believed him,” Carlotta said, offended. “I doused his food with enough Honesty for that.”
Their starter came at that point; Carlotta seized the opportunity to order herself a whiting; Jelly ordered some baked clams, and waited until the waiter had left before pressing forwards.
“How did you get your hands on Honesty?”
“Another client of mine gave it to me for a job well done,” Carlotta replied. “Now, before you get jealous, let me assure you that when it comes down between you and him, I’ll be going with my pension plan.”
Jelly gave her a level look.
“Which would be you,” Carlotta clarified.
“Are you sure you doused his food with Honesty, rather than say, water?” Jelly asked.
“I’m very sure,” Carlotta replied, “Because most of the rest of the evening was either spent fending off either insults or blatant propositions.”
Jelly filed the information under ‘to investigate later’. The fact that there was somebody around- and more than likely, Somebody was from the Resistance, rather than from the White Rabbit, though either would be bad for her- with the wealth to shell out bottles of Honesty to their informants made her feel a bit wary. She would have to go about this carefully though: asking an informant who else they worked for tended to result in them never speaking to you again.
“But you aren’t sure which?” Jelly asked.
“You know what I mean,” Carlotta said. “So?”
Jelly leaned forwards and pulled a pocket watch out of her pocket. It was gold, with a ruby inlay. Carlotta’s eye went wide.
“The meeting sites?”
“The Mome Rath Pub- it’s pretty far down, right on the docks. That’s where Dodo goes,” Carlotta told her. “The Bluegrass is a more typical case: plenty of information changes hands there, I recognized a few of the usual suspects.”
Which likely meant that she’d been recognized as well, though considering how many of the people she normally saw lived their lives while either drunk, high, or steeped, Carlotta might have not pick up on it. She doubted that the Resistance would stay there for very long, but that made the information useful for entirely different reasons.
“Thank you,” Jelly said, passing the watch over. Carlotta quickly stuffed it down the front of her dress, and began to dig into the starter with relish. Still feeling the dinner she’d missed the night before, Jelly did as well.
~*~
She returned from lunch to find that yet another one of their raids on the food runners had gone belly-up. The warehouse they’d been using as a drop point had been cleared out by the time they’d got there, no sign of either contraband nor the food kingpin they’d been sure would be there this afternoon, and worse, the set she’d had watching the place hadn’t noticed any unusual activity at all.
Othello was not amused. Neither was she, though that had a lot to do with the fact that she was now required to fly there on a flamingo more than anything else. She didn’t have to arrest anyone who was only trying to feed their family, and didn’t end up sending the contraband foodstuffs back to the Casino, where it would sooner rot than be eaten. Win-win, provided the Queen didn’t take personal offense to the report and demand the sets’ heads, but even then, she knew ways around the system. If she delayed the prisoner transfer long enough, the matter was normally dropped.
Normally. The Queen wasn’t too fussed about food smuggling, these days, so she put the odds of being ordered to hand over her men for execution at about one to twenty against. There was always the chance that she might order their heads anyway, due to a combination of stress and failure in other areas, though she generally took out those impulses on the people who were directly in front of her.
Yet another benefit of working in the city: less people she was responsible for died.
“Report!” she called out, after landing her flamingo safely on the warehouse’s roof.
“I have no idea what happened, ace,” replied the Five, looking extremely apologetic. He was a young man just about a year older than her, going by the name of Alban. “I made sure to have two plays observing the area at all times. There was no increase in activity, the target arrived on time, we waited three clicks and then made our move, and not only was our target gone, but the place was empty!”
“So everything was going fine up until it wasn’t?” Jelly asked.
“Yes, Ace,” Five said.
“Word of advice- when everything seems to be going right, that’s a pretty good sign things are about to go spectacularly wrong,” Jelly told him.
The warehouse was indeed empty. She’d seen the pictures of the place when they’d first pegged it as a Resistance drop point; it had been piled high with boxes and barrels. Now just about the only thing in the place was a leaky pipe; she could hear it dripping somewhere near the far end.
“Surveillance?” she asked, starting towards the pipe.
“Fragged,” Five replied. “We recovered some of the bits, but I don’t think they’ll tell us all that much, ace.”
“You can drop the honorific when we’re not in Court and you’re not in trouble,” Jelly reminded him. “You know that.”
“The Queen’s not going to be happy with this, ace,” Five reminded her. Jelly thought for a moment, and then it clicked: his wife had been one of the Diamonds to get the axe last month. Of course he was dreading reprisal- he had a young son to look after all on his own now. She grimaced, and was glad she was facing away from him.
“To be honest, Five, she’s more likely to want my head than yours,” Jelly told him. He snorted; the Queen always wanted her head. It was a fact of life as constant as breathing.
“We need a tracker,” Five said morosely. Jelly hummed her acknowledgement, watching the way the drips of turned into a trickle on the floor. “I don’t suppose Mad March is alive yet?”
“No,” Jelly replied. “Ten Dudley’s still got his deck running around looking for the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tapped a hand from this deck to start combing the countryside soon.”
As she spoke she moved around the pillar; there was a grate over a large hole in the ground, obviously meant for transporting sewage.
“Wouldn’t that be more the military’s thing?” Five asked.
“Not when they’re on high alert, looking for the assassin’s assassin,” Jelly replied. “Okay, send the surveillance bits to the Clubs at the station, they might be able to get something out of it, even if it’s only spare parts. Get a pair or three going over this place with a fine toothed comb, and another one to follow me?”
As she expected, the screws on the grate were loose, and it came up easily.
“Follow you where?” Five asked, moving towards her.
“Down the rabbit hole,” she replied, before finding the ladder welding into the side and beginning her descent.
~*~
Something Jelly would be sure to emphasize in her report was that it was apparent to her that they’d actually just missed the Resistance by a hair. Not only had the screws been loose, but when she reached the bottom of the hole, she found that there was a large pulley system lying on the ground in tangles, obviously having just been cut in haste and left with the hopes that it might be able to be recovered later, after she and her Suits had finished with the place.
She could imagine it; they knew they were being watched, so whenever the airbuses made their stop, they made a show of having the same flow of intake and outtake as they normally did, but in reality they were only offloading- the empty crates that the airbuses would bring in would simply be loaded onto the pulley and deposited at the end, for them to be picked up again. The alleged kingpin’s visit would have been stage too, of course- but no one had wanted to be caught, so when her Suits made their move they’d left in a hurry, leaving behind some of the broken camera pieces. One of them had realized that the pulley might attract attention, and so prized it free from the sewer wall and let it fall. The noise might have been muffled by the sounds of the set storming the place, or maybe the set hadn’t been inside the warehouse to hear it; in either case, by the time her Suits had entered the building proper and begun to search for stragglers, the Resistance fighter would have been well on their way down the ladder. They’d have reached to bottom fairly quickly, but there wouldn’t have been time to gather the pulley- there was no guarantee that the Suits wouldn’t think of the grate, the pulley itself was too big and unwieldy for one person to carry while running, and the other Resistance members would have already run ahead to-
The tunnel she’d been following ended abruptly in the shadow of the city. The water trickled out into the lake; there was a floating dock two cubits down and about one cubit away. She made the jump easily enough, stayed in the crouched position long enough for the dock to stop swaying, and straightened.
It was late enough in the day that the sunset was starting up. It was shaping up to be a real beauty, too; distantly she wondered if Mount Asclepius had started brewing again. She hoped not; true, the sunsets were always spectacular after the volcano blew, but execution-by-lava was a) even more terrifying than execution-by-axe b) necessitated her direct involvement. Her job was dirty enough without having to throw people she’d worked with into a pit of molten rock.
There was only one boat on the dock, and as she drew nearer, it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the one she was looking for. There was only one man in it, apparently sleeping with his legs on the dash and his hat over his eyes, and she knew for a fact that he was the last man in Wonderland to get deeply involved with the Resistance.
“How was rehab?” she asked him.
“Exhausting,” Hatter replied, tipping his hat back onto the top of his head and standing with a characteristically hedonistic stretch. “Do you have any idea what the rehab for Clarity is like? It’s nearly as confusing as finding a Suit this far down in the city, let alone one as pretty as you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m looking for a lead. I don’t suppose you happen to have one?”
“No, but I could give you directions to the pound if you like. They might have a spare,” Hatter replied, getting out of his boat to stand beside her on the dock.
“How about a group of Resistance agents, coming out of the opening in the drainage system?” she asked.
He blinked, and for a moment looked slightly perturbed. She could only imagine what he thought of the Resistance, but somehow she doubted that they thought all that much of him, and the notion that they’d been nearby, this far down in the city, without any Suits to call on for protection was probably a disturbing one for the Tea Shop owner.
His face cleared quickly, though, and he pointed behind her. “You mean like those two over there?”
She turned, and watched as a pair of Twos landed unsteadily on the dock.
“No, those are mine,” she replied, watching as the two noticed her and Hatter, and began to jog in their direction.
“They’re a bit young, aren’t they?” he asked.
Jelly shrugged. “We do start training at the age of fourteen.”
“Yeah, but isn’t it a bit dangerous, being posted in the city?” Hatter asked.
Not moreso than being posted in the Casino, especially for Felicity, she thought, but didn’t say, choosing to shrug again. It wasn’t the sort of thing you said to a non-Suit, even one who was nearly as much a part of government as they were.
The pair slowed and drew their weapons as they approached. She felt, rather than saw, Hatter tense beside her.
“Ace?” questioned Moran.
“He’s not a suspect,” she informed them. They reholstered their weapons, and Hatter relaxed. “I thought he might be a witness, but…”
“But I’m much too tired for that,” he told them. “Rehab, and then having to drive this from the other side of the city. I’m never doing that again.”
Jelly nearly laughed- Hatter was good about not letting things get too out of control, but somehow he ended up in the Hospital of Dreams every other month anyway- but was cut short by the sound of her EP beeping.
“Is that your wrist making that sound?” Hatter asked.
“No, it’s the electric pigeon attached to my wrist,” she replied, pulling back her sleeve and flipping it open.
“Huh,” Hatter remarked. “I always wondered what those were for.”
“We generally have them turned off when we’re,” she stopped mid-sentence, and re-scanned the message. “Which of you is the faster climber?” she asked the pair.
The Twos exchanged glances, and then Moran raised his hand. “Go back up to the warehouse, get my flamingo and bring it down here as quick as you can. Run.”
“Yes, ace,” the Two replied, and took off.
“Found your lead?” Hatter asked.
“Even better,” Jelly said, tapping out instructions for a hand to be sent to the coordinates she’d received, and then to proceed under the contingency plan she’d come up with for just such an occasion. “I’ve found a bad guy.”
~*~
The fact that so few of the people she arrested were bad guys had a lot to do with the fact that the Queen’s official policy for sociopaths, hit men, and serial killers tended towards recruitment rather than execution as per nearly every other type of person she could think of. It was one of those inner-workings of government that was a little too well known: your average citizen likely thought that everyone in a Suit was a psychotic murderer, and she sometimes thought that idea was the reason why there was always at least one wise-guy who came to visit the recruiter with a cadaver in tow.
She did try to disabuse people of that notion, back when she’d earned her ace’s jacket, and didn’t tire as easily with people. But one visit from Mad March tended to undo whatever progress she’d made and paint her a liar as well, so she stopped, and focused her efforts on recruiting fewer confirmed killers. It was working too, especially once she managed to convince the King that mass murderers tended to have less respect for authority than they did for human life, and therefore didn’t make very suitable employees.
Even before that though, there were a few cases where one of Wonderland’s more violently insane citizens crossed a few too many lines; the Queen might not recognize any constraints on her behavior, but she certainly imposed them on other people, and the more cynical part of Jelly rather thought the idea of being upstaged by a commoner bothered her far more than what said commoner was actually doing.
She didn’t particularly care why, these days, only that she was always relieved when Sam came back from the Throne Room with orders for arrest, rather than a new assassin. Even bigger was the relief when she got to carry those orders out. Biggest of all was when she managed to get the job offer rescinded.
“Magpie” (as they were calling this particular killer) had made a pretty big mistake when they chose the daughter of an Eggman and Diamond to turn into jewelry. The only person who was allowed to harm a Suit was the Queen, and anyone who did so without her nod had a tendency to die an unlamented death.
“Everything in place?” she asked Othello.
“No, I sent everyone home early instead,” he replied. “Because this plan of yours is insane and has no chance of working.”
Jelly stared at him a moment. Really, compared to some of the stuff they’d done over the years, this was nothing. “You do know that you’ve said that about all my plans- and they’ve all worked just fine, right?”
“Except for that one time when-”
“Okay, I admit that bit with the radishes was a little overambitious,” Jelly said impatiently. “Is everyone in place, Nine?”
“Yes,” Othello said. “Just like they’ve been every other time you’ve asked me that question.”
He was lucky enough not to have any produce-related incidents in his background, so Jelly merely unholstered her gun and said “Let’s be good guys.”
The school Magpie had been working a nightshift in had been quickly and quietly cleared out while Jelly and Othello kept her distracted. Magpie had given them all the gory details; so sure that they were like her, that they were here to give her accolades and free reign over the city.
She’d reacted to the order of arrest in the expected violent manner; in addition to the normal concealed weaponry and resistance, she’d managed to get in a few too many lucky shots, leaving Jelly gasping for breath on the floor and Othello clutching at a stab wound in his arm.
“Really? A gun that turns into a knife?” she asked, levering herself off the floor. She had a love/hate relationship with body armor; on the one, it was better to be shot with it than without it. On the other, it always took her by surprise how much getting shot hurt anyway.
There was a shout from the hall as Magpie discovered that, rather than potential hostages, the school was full of armed, angry Spades.
“Yeah,” Othello said, making his way over to where the first aid kit was displayed, covered in happy faces, fluffy white rabbits, and the slogan Thank the Queen. “When that’s missing from our contraband shipment, it’ll have nothing to do with the fact that I got one just like it, okay?”
“Works for me,” Jelly said. “Just try and keep it out of the paperwork.”
~*~
Her father had been involved with a project for a grant all month long, working long hours that saw him coming home later and more exhausted than usual. Alice was worried, as a child worries when parents aren’t acting as they normally do, and her mother picked up on that worry. On a whim, she bundled Alice into the car and after they made a quick stop at the drive thru of a KFC, they parked in the university parking lot and surprised her father at his office.
It took several minute for Daddy to get to a point at which he could safely stop, during which Alice regaled him with tales from school and Mommy could be heard setting up the fried chicken in the empty classroom across the hall. He’d just finished back up his files, carried her into the classroom, they were about to sit down and eat when the door burst open, and three men in white suits came in, guns cocked at the ready.
“Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?” Daddy asked. He was ignored.
“You said he was alone,” hissed one of the men.
“He has been every day at this time before,” another hissed back.
Mommy grabbed her by the shoulder and began to back away from them, heading for the door at the other end of the room.
“Look, you can take whatever you want. I’m not going to stop you. Why don’t you put the guns away before someone gets hurt?” Daddy placated, placing himself between his family and the gunmen.
“That’s not a bad idea,” the man closest to them said. He holstered his gun, and then pulled a small spray bottle from inside his jacket. Curiosity and confusion dulled his reflexes, and Dad didn’t pull back quickly enough to avoid the spray that dulled his features and hung his arms loosely at his sides.
“Run!” Mommy ordered, pushing Alice towards the door. The men came after them; one went crashing to the floor when Mommy hit him with a chair, while the other sprayed furiously until she was as still and compliant as Daddy.
Alice reached the door and wrenched it open, running into the shelves of the closet at full speed. She collapsed in a flurry of papers and test tubes, clutching her head.
“Don’t worry, little one,” one of the men said. “You won’t feel a thing.”
Then her face became wet, and the world dissolved into pinks and purples.
~*~
Thirteen years later, a woman known to most as Jelly lay on a cot in a cell. Officially, she was awaiting her execution. Unofficially, she was staring at the cracks in the ceiling in the hopes that they might do something interesting.
She wasn’t too worried. She’d been on death row two or three times a year since turning fourteen. If her stomach would occasionally roll over on itself when she thought about the proposal that had gotten her thrown in her holding cell this time, it was only because she sincerely thought that the idea was the best idea. It was nothing she was emotionally invested in at all.
Just as the sun was beginning to rise to an angle where it would shine in her eyes, the door to the cellblock opened, and the Ten of Clubs walked in.
“Good morning, Ten,” he greeted her, opening the cell door.
“Good morning to you too, Ten,” she replied. “I hope you told Secunda that I was sorry for missing out on her lessons yesterday afternoon.”
“She understands,” he replied. “She was worried though. She heard a rumor that the argument was louder than usual.”
And the Club’s middle child had a real talent for gathering accurate gossip. It was part of why she agreed to teach her hand-to-hand. Jelly ignored the roll of her stomach. “It’s a perfectly viable idea.”
“I’m sure it is. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s been less than a month since we did this. Normally you’re more careful about picking your battles.”
“I am careful. This is a battle worth fighting for,” Jelly told him, hoping that the conviction in her voice could be construed as professional rather than personal. “If the Resistance is in deep enough to off Mad March, then we’re all in danger. We need a way to get better information.”
The Club looked like he was going to object further, so she lifted a finger to cut him off preemptively. “Is there any way we can skip the lecture and go straight to the raspberry scones?”
“No time for either I’m afraid,” he told her. “I’m to bring you to the King straight away. Your idea might have pissed off the Queen mightily, but the King seems to be working from the same aqueduct as you.”
~*~
Jelly was keenly aware that she was wearing the same suit as yesterday as she knocked on the door of the King’s private study.
“Who is it?” the King called out.
“It’s the Ten of Spades, Jelly,” she called.
“Enter,” he ordered. She waved goodbye to Darrel as the Ten of Clubs left for his other duties.
The King was a warm-looking man, with curly hair and a heavy set. There were crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, which wasn’t rarely, and more often than not he wore a manner to set the other person completely at ease. Jelly liked the man, and had gone through great lengths to make sure that the feeling was mutual. The Queen was a woman with a terrible, limitless cruelty, and the only thing that could shield you from it was the amiable man with her ring on his finger.
“You’re none the worse for your night in the cell, I trust?” he inquired.
“I’m fine,” Jelly replied. “At the rate we seem to be going, I think I might have to hide a change of clothes in there somewhere, though.”
The King frowned. “You do upset her like nothing else.”
Like he would permit nothing else, Jelly translated mentally. She took a deep breath then began to state her case. “As upsetting as it is to hear, we do have a security problem.”
“I know,” the King moaned. “But did you have to state it so… bluntly? The Queen takes her public image very personally.”
“I never meant to imply that her public image was suffering,” Jelly told him sincerely. She never had meant to imply it: she’d been kind of hoping that the pitch would go off without a hitch. She’d planned for it to go as well as it did, though, so no harm done. “Merely that her old enemies clearly have at least one assassin in the Casino.”
This was the point in the conversation where things had gone wrongward. Apparently still smarting from the perceived slight, the Queen had focused on proving her theory wrong. What made her think that it was an assassin? How could she be sure that he was still in the Casino? How could she be so sure that March hadn’t been their only target? Was she really sure that there was danger? Wasn’t she overreacting?
Thankfully, there was no need to go through any of that with the King. He took any potential threat to his wife more seriously than he did anything else.
“And you think the best course of action is for you to go undercover with the Resistance?”
“I’m the logical choice,” Jelly told him. “I’m high up enough in rank to make a tempting target. I have experience with undercover work. It would be very easy to believe that the Queen and I are at odds with one another. I don’t think the Queen would mind if I were to be out of the Casino for a few days either.”
“That’s certainly true,” the King acknowledged. “Very well then. Put some feelers out, but don’t do anything to compromise us yet. I’ll bring the Queen around to the idea.”
“Thank you,” Jelly said.
“No, thank you,” the King replied. “And, if you have the time, why don’t you drop in on your father today? He was worried about you last night.”
“I will,” Jelly said, and recognizing a dismissal when it smacked her in the face, left.
~*~
The first thing to do was to grab something to eat- breakfast was all but done when she arrived in the mess hall, but she managed to grab a muffin that had some powdered sugar still on it, and make an appearance in front of enough people that news of her non-beheading would spread rapidly.
She passed Duchess on the way to her quarters, and nodded respectfully. Duchess didn’t appear to see her, and Jelly made a mental note to check on Jack when she next got the chance; he and his fiancée seemed to barely speak to each other beyond what was strictly necessary. While she doubted she could actual get him to talk about it, what with him being the most closely watched person in the entire Casino, she might be able to pick up a hint or two.
‘Quarters’ was perhaps too generous a term for what Jelly was fairly certain was actually a converted broom cupboard. But it had a bed for her to sleep in and a chest to put her suits, so she wasn’t going to complain too much. After changing into a fresh uniform, she made for the Internal Security Deck and her first meeting of the day with the two other Tens, Dudley and Otter, and their Trump, Sam. Dudley was the one who ran Internal Security, whereas Otter was in charge of maintaining their military forces. Sam, on the other hand, had retired in all but name years ago, and more or less deferred to her judgment in all things. It was a strange system, but it worked out well for everyone involved: the Spades got a competent leader who wasn’t steeped, Sam got to enjoy Court life a little longer, Otter and Dudley got to remain in their preferred positions, that came with less responsibility and more free time, and she got to stay with that extra degree of separation between herself and Her Majesty.
She had already decided against bringing up her idea with any of her fellow Spades, and as a result the meeting went very quickly. No one had found either Mad March’s head or his killer, which was the part everyone was anxious about. Sam reminded them all to start looking at what their new budgets would be able to do for them as far as training and recruiting went, Dudley had some ideas about increasing their security she gave the nod too, Otter had nothing new to report, and for herself, she managed to get her deck first chance to pit up against the White Rabbit during the next cross-Suit training exercise. After a little ribbing about her umpteenth near-decapitation experience, they parted ways, just in time for her to catch the Scarab out to her office.
Jelly was the Ten of Spades in charge of the Police Deck, something which had rather less to do with her childhood dreams of arresting bad guys and keeping neighborhoods safe, and more about keeping the Resistance from getting too cocky and having a reserve of Suits in the city ready for action if required. They didn’t protect neighborhoods so much as the Queen’s own, and very rarely did they arrest genuine bad guys. She took comfort in the fact that since she’d been in charge, they’d arrested very few genuine good guys, but it was a very thin sort of comfort.
It wasn’t fair, what she did. It wasn’t right; but, in the end, doing otherwise would only end with her head on the chopping block. So she settled on doing the best she could.
She kept her back to the windows and concentrated on her paperwork for the ride over, not looking up from the reports of civil unrest and pockets of smuggling activity until the Scarab had come to a complete halt at its dock over the White Rabbit’s city headquarters. Then she watched her steps very carefully as she exited the thing. She hated heights, with the sort of passion that would make a very pricey bottle of Tea, but they were the price of being here. The city was far enough away from the Queen that she wasn’t in danger of being casually beheaded- but if need be, she could be back in the Casino and at her father’s side within the hour.
The Spades had their main base of operations just beneath the White Rabbit’s, and Jelly took advantage of that fact to make the remainder of the trip inside a safely enclosed service elevator. She walked into the lobby, nodding to the Club that was newly-attached to their deck- Sheila? No, Shakina. Sheila still worked in the Casino, and was a Diamond to boot- as she passed. To her surprise, instead of merely nodding back the Club called out.
“Ace?”
“Yes, Four?” Jelly replied.
“You might want to have a look in the holding cells. I’m reading a ruckus in there.”
Jelly heaved a sigh, and made back for the elevator.
~*~
There was indeed a ruckus in the holding cells. One of the prisoners they’d been holding overnight for transfer to the Casino had gotten free, and was holding one of their own hostage. Jelly snuck around behind him and slid next to her top Nine, Othello, who was leaning against a desk with his fingers tapping against the barrel of his gun.
“And this guy is?” she asked.
“Food runner. We caught him in an unauthorized transaction involving some avocados, and found several bags of rice under the floorboards,” the Spade replied. “Good morning to you too, boss.”
Jelly winced: he was one of the better guys, if not one of the good ones, then. She could tell from the angle of the gun and the way his body was trembling that he couldn’t pull the trigger if his life depended upon it- not that that meant he wouldn’t press it by accident. “I don’t suppose you remember his name?” she asked, ignoring his last comment.
“Bruno, I think,” Othello replied.
“Bruno!” Jelly called out, stepping into the open. The smuggler turned around, his shaking intensifying as he saw who she was. “Put down the gun.”
“No,” came the predictable reply.
“Then at least let my Seven go. Let’s talk about this.” The gun was shaking noticeably by now, so Jelly lowered her voice. “I know you’re scared. You don’t want to go to the Casino. You don’t want to be tortured. You don’t want to be executed. And you don’t want to be pushed to the point where you start naming names. Put down the gun and let him go: I’ll give you two more days before you’re shipped out. Promise.”
She wasn’t sure if the man was just shaking too hard or if he really had taken the deal, but the next moment the gun had clattered to the floor and Seven had broken free. She quickly pulled the prisoner into a joint lock and yelled out for handcuffs.
“Thank you,” she told the Two that had bought them to her. “Take him back to his cell, I don’t want to see him again for another two days. The rest of you, finish up with the transfer, let’s not give the Rabbits anything to grumble about. Not you,” she stopped the Seven. “You, come with me to my office.”
~*~
The Seven’s name was Quigley Tove; he was just four years older than she was, and a recruit that had come from a Suit family, his father being the previous Ten of Clubs. He was a member of one of the eight hands stationed in the city: a quick look at her handwritten schedule confirmed that the hand should be on Lizard-watching duty today. A longer but more surreptitious look told her that the schedule posted on the ticker put them on warden duty, and that there had been no authorized changes to the schedule since she’d entered it.
Interesting. She would have to do a more thorough search later, just to confirm the hunch, but if she was correct she’d found her feeler.
“Take a seat and help yourself to some chocolate,” she ordered, when she noticed that Quigley was still standing uncertainly by her desk.
“Ace?” The Spade asked, confused.
“You get taken hostage, you deserve some chocolate,” Jelly told him. “Take a minute, enjoy the sugar rush, and then tell me what happened this morning. You’re not in trouble yet.”
Quigley took a small piece of fudge from the platter on her desk, and nibbled on it for a moment until the color returned to his cheeks. “We were moving the prisoners out of their cells, when Bruno collapsed on the floor. We thought he might have taken a suicide pill, or something, so I went over the where he was. That when he got my gun and pulled me into an arm lock. The rest of my hand secured the other prisoners and tried to get a clear shot at the joker; one of my top Fives, Crane, started trying to persuade him to let go of me: Bruno told him to shut it. That’s about when you showed up.”
Jelly nodded. “How was he able to get your gun out of your holster so quickly?”
“I-” his eyes skittered nervously to the side for a moment. “I’d forgotten to fasten it in properly.”
Feeler! Jelly thought triumphantly. Outwardly, though, she kept her features schooled and responded with a bland “I hope this doesn’t mean that you’ll be requiring a refresher course on gun safety, Seven.”
“Of course not, Ace,” Quigley replied. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Jelly said. “To your work, then.”
She waited a few minutes after he’d gone, then sent a request to the records department to have Bruno’s file be sent up to her office- the original file, not a copy. Then the White Rabbit was screeching at her from the phone, and she went back to being a Spade through and through.
~*~
After she wrote up her report of the incident, sent reminders to everyone else involved that they would need to do the same, arranged for the security footage from this morning to be erased in a freak accident involving a tea tray and a bat, and met with Othello about any new developments (“Beyond the fact that tea trays apparently do twinkle when they fly? I managed to make a killing off of the new recruits who don’t know about your ax-tease tendencies.”), she slipped out the service entrance and went to go check in with one of her informants.
Carlotta St. Delaware was a tough chick in every sense of the word: her normal outfit included feathers and a ludicrously short skirt, but the amount of muscle tone in her legs was a sure indication that she could do more with them than just dance. She could often be found working in many of the holes-in-the-wall Jelly ignored until it became obvious that the Resistance was using them to meet and exchange information. Carlotta could tell her when that had happened: her price was generally a hot meal and a moderately valuable bauble, but there was the promise of a recommendation for the Diamond Suits that Jelly would have to cash for her one day.
Not that she minded, really. For all that she needed someone to keep an eye on the Resistance, she certainly wouldn’t mind having a contact in the Diamonds to help her keep an eye on her father.
“Buy you a ratburger?” Jelly asked, as Carlotta strutted backstage, still flushed from her routine. This particular hole-in-the-wall was located about midway up the City, and perhaps half a step up from the dancer’s normal employers.
“Today, hun, you buy me the something made with an actual animal,” Carlotta responded, grabbing a coat off a hook in the wall and twirling it over her shoulders. “I have a hit, and then some.” She opened the door and waited, anticipation shinning in her eyes.
They walked along the ledgeway, Jelly keeping her hand firmly on the wall and her eyes firmly ahead of her, and Carlotta leading the way with a definite swagger in her step. They ended up in one of the nicer restaurants in the area, where they got a secluded booth and a very extensive menu.
Jelly raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got for me first, then we’ll order?”
“Oh, come on, you aren’t even going to let order a starter?” Carlotta asked.
“You expect me to buy you a starter?”
“I expect you to buy us a starter. Come on, live a little.”
Jelly rolled her eyes, but let Carlotta order some fried rice pilaf before sending the waiter away.
“I have two potential meeting sites, and a name. One of the big guys, I think,” Carlotta said, in a hushed tone of voice. “Big guy physically too- Dodo generally orders himself a whole platter of those clam things for a starter, and eats them all too. He’s certainly not feeling the pinch.”
“What makes you think he’s Resistance, then?” Jelly asked.
“Well, partways because he pays with books,” Carlotta told her. “And partways because he told me.”
Jelly raised an eyebrow. “And you believed him?”
“Of course I believed him,” Carlotta said, offended. “I doused his food with enough Honesty for that.”
Their starter came at that point; Carlotta seized the opportunity to order herself a whiting; Jelly ordered some baked clams, and waited until the waiter had left before pressing forwards.
“How did you get your hands on Honesty?”
“Another client of mine gave it to me for a job well done,” Carlotta replied. “Now, before you get jealous, let me assure you that when it comes down between you and him, I’ll be going with my pension plan.”
Jelly gave her a level look.
“Which would be you,” Carlotta clarified.
“Are you sure you doused his food with Honesty, rather than say, water?” Jelly asked.
“I’m very sure,” Carlotta replied, “Because most of the rest of the evening was either spent fending off either insults or blatant propositions.”
Jelly filed the information under ‘to investigate later’. The fact that there was somebody around- and more than likely, Somebody was from the Resistance, rather than from the White Rabbit, though either would be bad for her- with the wealth to shell out bottles of Honesty to their informants made her feel a bit wary. She would have to go about this carefully though: asking an informant who else they worked for tended to result in them never speaking to you again.
“But you aren’t sure which?” Jelly asked.
“You know what I mean,” Carlotta said. “So?”
Jelly leaned forwards and pulled a pocket watch out of her pocket. It was gold, with a ruby inlay. Carlotta’s eye went wide.
“The meeting sites?”
“The Mome Rath Pub- it’s pretty far down, right on the docks. That’s where Dodo goes,” Carlotta told her. “The Bluegrass is a more typical case: plenty of information changes hands there, I recognized a few of the usual suspects.”
Which likely meant that she’d been recognized as well, though considering how many of the people she normally saw lived their lives while either drunk, high, or steeped, Carlotta might have not pick up on it. She doubted that the Resistance would stay there for very long, but that made the information useful for entirely different reasons.
“Thank you,” Jelly said, passing the watch over. Carlotta quickly stuffed it down the front of her dress, and began to dig into the starter with relish. Still feeling the dinner she’d missed the night before, Jelly did as well.
~*~
She returned from lunch to find that yet another one of their raids on the food runners had gone belly-up. The warehouse they’d been using as a drop point had been cleared out by the time they’d got there, no sign of either contraband nor the food kingpin they’d been sure would be there this afternoon, and worse, the set she’d had watching the place hadn’t noticed any unusual activity at all.
Othello was not amused. Neither was she, though that had a lot to do with the fact that she was now required to fly there on a flamingo more than anything else. She didn’t have to arrest anyone who was only trying to feed their family, and didn’t end up sending the contraband foodstuffs back to the Casino, where it would sooner rot than be eaten. Win-win, provided the Queen didn’t take personal offense to the report and demand the sets’ heads, but even then, she knew ways around the system. If she delayed the prisoner transfer long enough, the matter was normally dropped.
Normally. The Queen wasn’t too fussed about food smuggling, these days, so she put the odds of being ordered to hand over her men for execution at about one to twenty against. There was always the chance that she might order their heads anyway, due to a combination of stress and failure in other areas, though she generally took out those impulses on the people who were directly in front of her.
Yet another benefit of working in the city: less people she was responsible for died.
“Report!” she called out, after landing her flamingo safely on the warehouse’s roof.
“I have no idea what happened, ace,” replied the Five, looking extremely apologetic. He was a young man just about a year older than her, going by the name of Alban. “I made sure to have two plays observing the area at all times. There was no increase in activity, the target arrived on time, we waited three clicks and then made our move, and not only was our target gone, but the place was empty!”
“So everything was going fine up until it wasn’t?” Jelly asked.
“Yes, Ace,” Five said.
“Word of advice- when everything seems to be going right, that’s a pretty good sign things are about to go spectacularly wrong,” Jelly told him.
The warehouse was indeed empty. She’d seen the pictures of the place when they’d first pegged it as a Resistance drop point; it had been piled high with boxes and barrels. Now just about the only thing in the place was a leaky pipe; she could hear it dripping somewhere near the far end.
“Surveillance?” she asked, starting towards the pipe.
“Fragged,” Five replied. “We recovered some of the bits, but I don’t think they’ll tell us all that much, ace.”
“You can drop the honorific when we’re not in Court and you’re not in trouble,” Jelly reminded him. “You know that.”
“The Queen’s not going to be happy with this, ace,” Five reminded her. Jelly thought for a moment, and then it clicked: his wife had been one of the Diamonds to get the axe last month. Of course he was dreading reprisal- he had a young son to look after all on his own now. She grimaced, and was glad she was facing away from him.
“To be honest, Five, she’s more likely to want my head than yours,” Jelly told him. He snorted; the Queen always wanted her head. It was a fact of life as constant as breathing.
“We need a tracker,” Five said morosely. Jelly hummed her acknowledgement, watching the way the drips of turned into a trickle on the floor. “I don’t suppose Mad March is alive yet?”
“No,” Jelly replied. “Ten Dudley’s still got his deck running around looking for the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tapped a hand from this deck to start combing the countryside soon.”
As she spoke she moved around the pillar; there was a grate over a large hole in the ground, obviously meant for transporting sewage.
“Wouldn’t that be more the military’s thing?” Five asked.
“Not when they’re on high alert, looking for the assassin’s assassin,” Jelly replied. “Okay, send the surveillance bits to the Clubs at the station, they might be able to get something out of it, even if it’s only spare parts. Get a pair or three going over this place with a fine toothed comb, and another one to follow me?”
As she expected, the screws on the grate were loose, and it came up easily.
“Follow you where?” Five asked, moving towards her.
“Down the rabbit hole,” she replied, before finding the ladder welding into the side and beginning her descent.
~*~
Something Jelly would be sure to emphasize in her report was that it was apparent to her that they’d actually just missed the Resistance by a hair. Not only had the screws been loose, but when she reached the bottom of the hole, she found that there was a large pulley system lying on the ground in tangles, obviously having just been cut in haste and left with the hopes that it might be able to be recovered later, after she and her Suits had finished with the place.
She could imagine it; they knew they were being watched, so whenever the airbuses made their stop, they made a show of having the same flow of intake and outtake as they normally did, but in reality they were only offloading- the empty crates that the airbuses would bring in would simply be loaded onto the pulley and deposited at the end, for them to be picked up again. The alleged kingpin’s visit would have been stage too, of course- but no one had wanted to be caught, so when her Suits made their move they’d left in a hurry, leaving behind some of the broken camera pieces. One of them had realized that the pulley might attract attention, and so prized it free from the sewer wall and let it fall. The noise might have been muffled by the sounds of the set storming the place, or maybe the set hadn’t been inside the warehouse to hear it; in either case, by the time her Suits had entered the building proper and begun to search for stragglers, the Resistance fighter would have been well on their way down the ladder. They’d have reached to bottom fairly quickly, but there wouldn’t have been time to gather the pulley- there was no guarantee that the Suits wouldn’t think of the grate, the pulley itself was too big and unwieldy for one person to carry while running, and the other Resistance members would have already run ahead to-
The tunnel she’d been following ended abruptly in the shadow of the city. The water trickled out into the lake; there was a floating dock two cubits down and about one cubit away. She made the jump easily enough, stayed in the crouched position long enough for the dock to stop swaying, and straightened.
It was late enough in the day that the sunset was starting up. It was shaping up to be a real beauty, too; distantly she wondered if Mount Asclepius had started brewing again. She hoped not; true, the sunsets were always spectacular after the volcano blew, but execution-by-lava was a) even more terrifying than execution-by-axe b) necessitated her direct involvement. Her job was dirty enough without having to throw people she’d worked with into a pit of molten rock.
There was only one boat on the dock, and as she drew nearer, it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the one she was looking for. There was only one man in it, apparently sleeping with his legs on the dash and his hat over his eyes, and she knew for a fact that he was the last man in Wonderland to get deeply involved with the Resistance.
“How was rehab?” she asked him.
“Exhausting,” Hatter replied, tipping his hat back onto the top of his head and standing with a characteristically hedonistic stretch. “Do you have any idea what the rehab for Clarity is like? It’s nearly as confusing as finding a Suit this far down in the city, let alone one as pretty as you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m looking for a lead. I don’t suppose you happen to have one?”
“No, but I could give you directions to the pound if you like. They might have a spare,” Hatter replied, getting out of his boat to stand beside her on the dock.
“How about a group of Resistance agents, coming out of the opening in the drainage system?” she asked.
He blinked, and for a moment looked slightly perturbed. She could only imagine what he thought of the Resistance, but somehow she doubted that they thought all that much of him, and the notion that they’d been nearby, this far down in the city, without any Suits to call on for protection was probably a disturbing one for the Tea Shop owner.
His face cleared quickly, though, and he pointed behind her. “You mean like those two over there?”
She turned, and watched as a pair of Twos landed unsteadily on the dock.
“No, those are mine,” she replied, watching as the two noticed her and Hatter, and began to jog in their direction.
“They’re a bit young, aren’t they?” he asked.
Jelly shrugged. “We do start training at the age of fourteen.”
“Yeah, but isn’t it a bit dangerous, being posted in the city?” Hatter asked.
Not moreso than being posted in the Casino, especially for Felicity, she thought, but didn’t say, choosing to shrug again. It wasn’t the sort of thing you said to a non-Suit, even one who was nearly as much a part of government as they were.
The pair slowed and drew their weapons as they approached. She felt, rather than saw, Hatter tense beside her.
“Ace?” questioned Moran.
“He’s not a suspect,” she informed them. They reholstered their weapons, and Hatter relaxed. “I thought he might be a witness, but…”
“But I’m much too tired for that,” he told them. “Rehab, and then having to drive this from the other side of the city. I’m never doing that again.”
Jelly nearly laughed- Hatter was good about not letting things get too out of control, but somehow he ended up in the Hospital of Dreams every other month anyway- but was cut short by the sound of her EP beeping.
“Is that your wrist making that sound?” Hatter asked.
“No, it’s the electric pigeon attached to my wrist,” she replied, pulling back her sleeve and flipping it open.
“Huh,” Hatter remarked. “I always wondered what those were for.”
“We generally have them turned off when we’re,” she stopped mid-sentence, and re-scanned the message. “Which of you is the faster climber?” she asked the pair.
The Twos exchanged glances, and then Moran raised his hand. “Go back up to the warehouse, get my flamingo and bring it down here as quick as you can. Run.”
“Yes, ace,” the Two replied, and took off.
“Found your lead?” Hatter asked.
“Even better,” Jelly said, tapping out instructions for a hand to be sent to the coordinates she’d received, and then to proceed under the contingency plan she’d come up with for just such an occasion. “I’ve found a bad guy.”
~*~
The fact that so few of the people she arrested were bad guys had a lot to do with the fact that the Queen’s official policy for sociopaths, hit men, and serial killers tended towards recruitment rather than execution as per nearly every other type of person she could think of. It was one of those inner-workings of government that was a little too well known: your average citizen likely thought that everyone in a Suit was a psychotic murderer, and she sometimes thought that idea was the reason why there was always at least one wise-guy who came to visit the recruiter with a cadaver in tow.
She did try to disabuse people of that notion, back when she’d earned her ace’s jacket, and didn’t tire as easily with people. But one visit from Mad March tended to undo whatever progress she’d made and paint her a liar as well, so she stopped, and focused her efforts on recruiting fewer confirmed killers. It was working too, especially once she managed to convince the King that mass murderers tended to have less respect for authority than they did for human life, and therefore didn’t make very suitable employees.
Even before that though, there were a few cases where one of Wonderland’s more violently insane citizens crossed a few too many lines; the Queen might not recognize any constraints on her behavior, but she certainly imposed them on other people, and the more cynical part of Jelly rather thought the idea of being upstaged by a commoner bothered her far more than what said commoner was actually doing.
She didn’t particularly care why, these days, only that she was always relieved when Sam came back from the Throne Room with orders for arrest, rather than a new assassin. Even bigger was the relief when she got to carry those orders out. Biggest of all was when she managed to get the job offer rescinded.
“Magpie” (as they were calling this particular killer) had made a pretty big mistake when they chose the daughter of an Eggman and Diamond to turn into jewelry. The only person who was allowed to harm a Suit was the Queen, and anyone who did so without her nod had a tendency to die an unlamented death.
“Everything in place?” she asked Othello.
“No, I sent everyone home early instead,” he replied. “Because this plan of yours is insane and has no chance of working.”
Jelly stared at him a moment. Really, compared to some of the stuff they’d done over the years, this was nothing. “You do know that you’ve said that about all my plans- and they’ve all worked just fine, right?”
“Except for that one time when-”
“Okay, I admit that bit with the radishes was a little overambitious,” Jelly said impatiently. “Is everyone in place, Nine?”
“Yes,” Othello said. “Just like they’ve been every other time you’ve asked me that question.”
He was lucky enough not to have any produce-related incidents in his background, so Jelly merely unholstered her gun and said “Let’s be good guys.”
The school Magpie had been working a nightshift in had been quickly and quietly cleared out while Jelly and Othello kept her distracted. Magpie had given them all the gory details; so sure that they were like her, that they were here to give her accolades and free reign over the city.
She’d reacted to the order of arrest in the expected violent manner; in addition to the normal concealed weaponry and resistance, she’d managed to get in a few too many lucky shots, leaving Jelly gasping for breath on the floor and Othello clutching at a stab wound in his arm.
“Really? A gun that turns into a knife?” she asked, levering herself off the floor. She had a love/hate relationship with body armor; on the one, it was better to be shot with it than without it. On the other, it always took her by surprise how much getting shot hurt anyway.
There was a shout from the hall as Magpie discovered that, rather than potential hostages, the school was full of armed, angry Spades.
“Yeah,” Othello said, making his way over to where the first aid kit was displayed, covered in happy faces, fluffy white rabbits, and the slogan Thank the Queen. “When that’s missing from our contraband shipment, it’ll have nothing to do with the fact that I got one just like it, okay?”
“Works for me,” Jelly said. “Just try and keep it out of the paperwork.”
~*~