Through a Looking Glass Darkly: Nine of Swords, Part Two
It really was very dark in the forest. She was used to the more gentle grayness of the city at night, where even if there wasn’t a streetlamp on your corner, there were plenty glowing above it. Here the only source was the moon that grinned maliciously down at her, and the stars that twinkled just a bit too brightly.
Jelly tore through the woods, navigating her way by the contrast between the harder dark of the trees and the softer dark of the space between. It wasn’t too long before she realized that she was being followed. The footsteps were too quiet to be Charlie’s, and too sure to be Jacks; she wasted a few moments trying to evade him, before she remembered that Hatter was better at it than she was.
“I don’t know how I could make this any clearer,” Jelly said loudly. “But I’m not very good company right now.”
“Well, you could write it out,” Hatter said from his position a good twenty cubits behind her. “The glowing kind of ink would probably be best for this light.”
Jelly turned around so that it would be possible for him to figure out that she was staring at him.
“There’s always musical theater,” Hatter added, taking a tentative step towards her. “You could write a play about how poor your company is.”
“And then I suppose you’d come along and make it that much richer?” Jelly asked, holstering her gun.
“Of course,” Hatter said, as though he were surprised she thought things could have gone any differently. “And then we’ll have a dance number.”
Jelly giggled. “Yeah, and Charlie and- and Jack will-” She leaned against the tree, shaking. “Will dress up the skeletons-” She gasped, tears welling up in her eyes and making it even more difficult to see. “-and we’ll-”
Hatter placed a hand on her shoulder, and Jelly let out a proper sob.
“Right,” he said, steering her off the tree and over to where a large stump was standing at about knee height. “Let’s sit down a minute. I’m a bit knackered from chasing after you anyway.”
“Smooth,” Jelly said thickly as she sat down.
“I don’t know why you’re assuming I’m lying,” Hatter said, mock affronted. “I mean, really, think back on the day I just had. First I get word that the bloody Ten of Spades wants to defect to me, and then she avoids me like I’ve got the nephelokokkygian plague. Then she pulls a gun on my boss…”
Jelly buried her face in her hands and let him speak, his arm around her shoulders the entire time. He’d moved onto talking about the first time he’d been in the Forest of Wabe before she had herself under enough control to straighten. She scrubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hand and he wound his commentary down.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s been a long day for me too.”
“I remember,” Hatter informed her. His hand was still on her shoulder, and for all that she was no longer in danger of crying, she wasn’t quite ready to shrug it off.
“I should probably apologize to Jack,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “He’s still a giant dick, but that was-”
“Hitting below the belt so hard his whirligigs are now above it?” Hatter offered, after a moment of watching her struggle to find the words to complete her sentence.
Jelly glared a little, before giving up on glaring as a bad job. She was spent. “Yeah, something like that.”
They were silent for a moment more, before Hatter said. “You know, I kind of wish my father had hung on a bit longer.”
“Oh?” Jelly asked, not sure where this was going.
“Yeah,” Hatter said. “You and he probably would have had a lot to talk about.”
“How so?” Jelly asked.
Hatter pulled his arm away from her. “It’s like this,” he said, getting up. “My mother was Resistance, a pamphleteer. No, that’s not right. She was the pamphleteer. It’s been almost twenty years since she died and still half the stuff in circulation is her work.”
“She got caught,” Jelly guessed.
“Yeah, she got caught,” Hatter confirmed. “The Suits came in one night, roughed her up a bit, and whisked her away to the Casino. Dad went to collect her body a day or so later, and came back with the license required to sell the Queen’s Teas in the shop.”
“When my mother was executed,” Jelly began. Hatter jerked in surprise, so she elaborated “She was caught helping people fight their addiction to Tea. That’s kind of a big deal. It wasn’t long after that when I started thinking about what sort of Suit I was going to be when I grew up.”
“And that’s what I don’t get,” Hatter cried. “Weren’t you angry? Didn’t you want it to stop? Why would you help keep it going?”
“Because I can’t stop it. I can’t pardon everyone on the executioner’s docket, I can’t even pardon my own Suits when they end up there, and I’ve barely been able to stop my father from ending up there or worse,” Jelly explained, anger rising again.
“But you’re only making it go,” Hatter said.
“Not always,” Jelly pointed out. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t let Bruno go, and he wasn’t the first. And another thing,” she stood as well, agitation jerking her arms about, “You’re not exactly an innocent here yourself. You sell Tea. It might get you contacts, free information, and a healthy supply of bribing material, but that doesn’t erase the fact that the Queen’s reign is built on Tea, and you support that.”
“No, it doesn’t, and I don’t forget that,” Hatter snapped. “I couldn’t, between Dormie and Dodo. It’s part of why I take jobs like this. I’d have been much safer just leaving you with Dodo, you know.”
“No, you’d probably have died, because I would have shot you if you tried that,” Jelly told him.
“I wear body armor, and that’s not the point,” Hatter said. “The point is I know how much harm I’m doing. And I know how much good I’m doing. And I make sure I keep the second column at a higher value than the first.”
“And you can quantify that?” Jelly asked snidely, folding her arms and leaning back against a tree.
“You’re the one who’s getting by with making the occasional exception,” Hatter shot back, mimicking her posture. “As far as I can tell pretty much everyone in the Suits is getting by with either doing that or steeping themselves.” Jelly snorted, but Hatter continued “I don’t get why you keep at it.”
“What would you like me to do?” Jelly demanded. “I mean, hypothetically speaking in some universe where I haven’t already defected, what is there to do? If I started talking about overthrowing the Queen, the mostly likely thing that would happen would be that Darrel would tell the King, and then he’d have me taken down. Then he’d do to my father what he did to Grace. The only thing that would change would be that there would be a Carpenter who liked his job, and Othello would spend his first few months as Ten trying to separate himself from me by striking out the policy changes- and those are to your benefit, you know. Our focus shifted from Resistance activities to violent crimes after I took over as Ten, and believe me, I’m not stupid enough to think we got even a fraction of you after the food riots.”
“Oh, I never took you for stupid,” Hatter protested.
“Then what do you take me for?” Jelly asked.
“You’re-” Hatter’s answer was cut off by a roar from somewhere deeper in the forest.
“I think we should head back to camp,” Jelly suggested.
“There, see? You’re not stupid at all,” Hatter said, and they went back the way they came.
Jelly thought about trying to explain things to Hatter as they went, but decided that it was no use with a non-Suit. They didn’t get it; civilians thought of the Queen as a person mad with power, and as executions the extensions of her whims. Suits knew that there wasn’t that much thought behind it, that her whims often didn’t extend down as far as the level of individuals. They were just a pack of cards to her, faceless and interchangeable; the Queen needed someone to blame when things went wrong, and unless they came up with better targets, they were it. Executions weren’t personal any more than Mt. Asclepius’ eruptions were.
Except it wasn’t a perfect metaphor, she realized. There were certainly ways to avoid the Queen’s wrath without leaving the Casino altogether. You didn’t speak up, especially if you were a woman. You became quietly necessary. You gained the favor of the King, or a Trump, or the Club Suits. She had done as much.
She thought some more. You would live longer if you didn’t have children, longer still if you were single, longest of all if you couldn’t be a wife and mother in the first place, she reasoned. How many of the people she worked with were orphans? How many men did she work with who were single fathers? Hell, she’d been more or less raised by a single father. She remembered what Fletcher had told her about women in the Spades. She thought about how quick the King was to tamp down on anything that would upset his wife.
Maybe the civilians were more right than she’d believed. The thought didn’t sit very well in her stomach.
They were nearly back in the throne room before something else occurred to Jelly. “What happened to your father?”
“He killed himself,” Hatter replied. Jelly stared at him. “He left me a shop, and a note asking me to do something good with it. So I have.”
The fire had died down a bit, and Jelly took a look around as Hatter tried to coax it back up. She could see a lump on the bed just inside the derelict to the left of the fire, which was probably Jack. She would have to apologize later, then. She turned as she heard the sound of a stick cracking in the wood, and then let out a small scream as Charlie appeared directly in front of her and she reflexively kicked him in the shins.
The kick didn’t seem to register, because Charlie’s reaction to this was to squint, and place his pointer finger directly over her heart.
“Uh,” she said, pulling the finger off of her. “Hi?”
“Are you really a Suit?” Charlie demanded.
“A Spade,” Jelly clarified, “And yes, I have been my whole adult life.”
“You don’t look like a Spade,” Charlie said, eyeing her suspiciously.
“I’m out of uniform,” Jelly replied, shifting so that she had Hatter at her back rather than the forest.
“That’s not what I meant,” Charlie said. “You aren’t sharp enough.”
“Excuse me?” Jelly said.
Charlie weaved back and forth, still squinting at her. “You’re at all the wrong angles for a Spade.”
Jelly shot a look over her shoulder back at Hatter, who shrugged.
“Uh,” Jelly said, turning back to Charlie, who moved forwards a few steps and began to feel at the air around her body. “I’m not a Spade any more. Maybe that’s the problem?”
“No, it’s not,” Charlie said decisively. “You wouldn’t be nearly this poufy if that were the case.”
“Poufy?” She’d been called a lot of things in her time. Poufy was not one of them.
“Yes. You’re puffier than a midsummer’s raincloud, and twice as lightning-y.” He stopped waving his hands around and looked her directly in the eye. “Would you permit me to do a toenail reading?”
“No, thanks,” Jelly said, hoping she didn’t look as weirded out as she felt. “I’ll pass.”
Charlie’s face fell, but he shuffled away without protest. “This is all wrong. You’re too poufy to be a Spade. He’s too stringy to be a Heart.” He wheeled suddenly on Hatter, who had been busy smirking and thrust a finger into his face. “And I don’t know what you are beneath all that rabble, but I don’t like it.”
“Fair enough,” Hatter replied. “I have no idea what you are either.”
“I’m a Knight!” Charlie reminded him, and brought his fist down on the top of Hatter’s head. Hatter yelped, and whisked his hat off his head. Charlie wandered off to the where there was a hammock strung between both trees, muttering something unflattering about the younger man’s tailor.
Jelly went over to stand next to Hatter, the better to stare at the old man as he arranged himself on the hammock, and snuggled up close to a teddy bear.
“So,” Hatter said, a bit too cheerfully, as he turned to face her. “I’ll take the first watch-”
“There’s no need for that!” Charlie yelled, not even opening his eyes. “I have an early warning system all set up! Just be ready to run if the raven caws!”
Hatter turned and stared at him. “Is that a metaphor or-”
“No,” Charlie said derisively. “It’s the signal for the perimeter breach, you huggermugger.”
“What did he just call me?” Hatter asked her.
“A huggermugger,” Jelly told him, before adding, deadpan. “I can’t believe it. You accost people in alleyways for hugs. You monster.”
Hatter ignored her, and continued to stare at the Knight. “I’m tempted to go over there and shake him until he makes sense.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Jelly told him.
Charlie snored, and Hatter visibly tore himself away from whatever line of thought he’d been following. “So, as I was saying, I’ll take the first watch-”
“Oh, there’s no need for that,” Jelly interrupted. “I had a nap today, I’ll take it.”
They looked at each other for a moment before Hatter said “First one to fall asleep makes breakfast?”
“Works for me,” Jelly agreed.
They talked about inconsequential things, gossip about their mutual acquaintances and the like, as they sat by the fire. It got progressively colder as the night wore on, and it wasn’t long before Jelly had buttoned up her jacket, popped the collar, dug her numb fingers deep into her pockets and was still shivering.
“You could come and sit by me?” Hatter suggested, watching her lean towards the flames.
“Is it warmer over there?” she asked.
“Of course it is,” Hatter said. “I’ll have you know I’m an excellent source of heat.”
To prove his point, he moved beside her, sweeping his arm and a good portion of his jacket around her back as he sat down.
“Well, you certainly have excellent taste in jackets,” Jelly admitted.
“Well you knew that already,” he pointed out.
Jelly hummed, and tried to rub the feeling back into her fingers.
~*~
Jelly woke up some time later, still tucked under Hatter’s arm and leaning back against the log that had served as their bench last night. Dawn had broken and Hatter’s beard was tickling her ear; for a moment, Jelly thought it was that which had woke her up. Then she heard the sound of a stick snapping, and realized that that wasn’t it at all.
“Hatter,” she hissed. “Hatter!”
Hatter jerked awake; Jelly pressed a finger to his lips and stood as quietly as she could.
“What it- what is it?” Hatter whispered sleepily, as he got to his feet and her eyes darted about.
“I don’t-” Jelly began, before she realized what was wrong: Jack was gone.
“Fuck a duck!” she yelled, stalking towards his empty bed. Charlie tumbled out of his hammock with a surprised shout.
“Okay,” Hatter said, straightening his hat and coming up behind her as she looked out from the bedside. “Is he going home, or-”
“No, he’ll head for the city,” Jelly said, looking out. A metallic glint caught her eye, and recalling Jack’s wristwatch, she went after it.
Jack was trying to move discreetly rather than swiftly, and was still unsure of his footing; Jelly had years of experience chasing deviants through a not-always-level city. It wasn’t long before she caught sight of him fully.
“Jack!” she yelled.
Jack audibly smacked his palm to his face, before dashing off of the path.
“Oh no you don’t,” Jelly growled, and took off after him.
Jack was leaning against a tree when she caught up with him, as though to say I’m letting you catch me.
Jelly glared at him, unimpressed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m going to the city,” he replied. “As you might imagine, after years of escaping to there, I have a few friends I can stay with.”
“And you’re so sure that these are friends your parents know nothing about?” Jelly asked.
“Are they?” Jack asked back. “You’re the one held responsible for breaches in city security. You’re the one who catches me and brings me back every time I escape. You tell me.”
She couldn’t help but get the impression that Jack was still a little sore from the night before. “Look, Jack,” she began.
Jack raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“Okay, so you knew Gryphon,” she said, pushing her apology to the side in favor of perhaps getting somewhere useful today. “Who else in the Resistance do you know?”
“Caterpillar,” Jack replied, pushing away from the tree and heading back towards the path.
“What?” Jelly cried. “Are you serious?”
“He recruited me into the Resistance, he helped me look for a cure for Grace, he got me through the Looking Glass,” Jack yelled back. “Yes, I’m serious.”
“Who are we talking about now?” Hatter asked as he walked up from the path.
Jack went back into stiff mode, and didn’t reply.
So Jelly did for him. “He knows Caterpillar.”
“What?” Hatter said, indignant. “Why didn’t you tell us that yesterday?”
“That’s what I want to know!” Jelly said.
Before Jack could explain himself, there was the distant sound of Charlie yelling.
“Oh, what now?” Hatter muttered, grabbing Jack by the arm and dragging him back up to the throne room, Jelly following close behind.
What now apparently consisted of a raven cawing the early warning in its cage as Charlie yelled out the names of different musical instruments.
“Drum!” he shouted, brandishing a frying pan. “Fife! Piccolo!”
“Charlie!” Jelly yelled, grabbing him by the shoulder, and then ducking as he nearly brained her. “Charlie! Sir Charles!”
Charlie stopped mid-swing and stared at her.”Yes?”
“How far away is the perimeter?” she asked.
“Three stadia,” he replied.
“Okay,” Jelly said. “We have time then; they’re going to be on foot. Can we borrow your horses?”
“Yes,” Charlie said softly. Then, much more loudly, “Yes! To the horses!”
He ran off, and the three of them followed him.
There were enough horses for each of them, and more, which she supposed was only right. Whichever of the Knight’s warhorses survived would have had one hundred and fifty years to breed in, after all.
“Okay,” Jelly said. “Here’s the plan.”
“We have a plan?” Hatter asked.
“I’m making one up right now,” she told.
“Okay, continue,” he replied.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to avoid the posse altogether,” Jelly did continue. “Equally hopefully, it’ll rain mince pies and lemonade this afternoon. We can buy ourselves some time by sticking along this ridge. The trees will provide us with some cover, and the elevation will give us a vantage point. When March spots us, we’ll know. Then, I’ll break cover. I shot his ear off, I’m pretty sure he’s angry at me; that means he’ll follow me. The three of you fall back into the forest and double back towards the Casino a bit. If I make it, we’ll meet up by the hedges. If not, take the Stone to Caterpillar.”
“That’s a terrible plan,” Jack opined, buckling his saddle onto his mare.
“I don’t like it either,” Hatter added.
“Okay,” Jelly said. “What’s wrong with it?”
“The consequences of being captured are greater for you than they are for anyone else here,” Jack said.
“Uh, Jack?” Jelly replied, pretty sure she should be offended. “There are two people here who belong to an army, and the one who isn’t me is old enough to remember your grandmother’s reign. I have the greatest chance of fighting them off, and come to it, the greatest chance of resisting an interrogation.”
“Bravo,” Jack shot back, stepping up into his saddle. “Well done, you are correct. But there’s something you’re forgetting.”
“What?” Jelly asked, annoyed.
“The Stone has been away from the Looking Glass for long enough that they’ll have had to have shut it down. That means that there are no more Oysters coming into Wonderland. As much as my mother would dearly love to see your head roll, my father’s far too practical to allow it. He’s going to ensure that every Oyster is drained dry, including you.”
Jelly froze in the act of mounting her horse, surprised less by the words and more by the way he said them, like it wasn’t a terrible secret and there weren’t people around to hear it.
“What?” Hatter yelled, loud enough to spook his horse a little.
“I knew it!” Charlie crowed. “I knew you weren’t a Spade! Aha ha!”
There were many ways Jelly could respond to this. She could deny it. She could call Jack out on what was obviously an immature attempt at revenge for her remarks last night. She could pull out her gun and shoot him in the face. But, as tempting as those ideas were, there was only one good way to respond.
“Jack,” Jelly said, slipping into her saddle so that they were at more or less eye level. “Think about it for a moment. Is my being drained really worse than Charlie being paraded around the Casino as a trophy, or Hatter being tortured, or your own parents killing you? Is it worse than the Crown getting the Stone of Wonderland? My feelings and I aren’t on speaking terms anyway!”
“But you’re an Oyster?” Hatter asked.
“Only from the minute I was born,” Jelly replied.
Hatter looked like there was more he wanted to say, so Jelly cut him off. “And we need to leave quickly, so unless one of you has a better idea why don’t we stick with my plan?”
“I could drive them away with my skills in the Black Arts,” Charlie offered, his tone growing more theatrical as the sentence reached its end.
“We’ll hold that idea in reserve,” Jelly replied. “Let’s go.”
~*~
They made their way through the Forest of Wabe in silence, Charlie’s inclination to sing having been unanimously vetoed by everyone else. They skirted the edge of the cliff face, keeping watch over the valley below with keen eyes. They were nearly in the Fungiferous Foothills before Jelly caught sight of a Spade.
“They’re here,” she said. There was a flash of white, and March’s bunny face turned up towards them. They’d been spotted. “And they know we are too.”
Charlie groaned.
Jelly thought. The posse was Darrel, March, and a set of twelve Spades. She had twenty nine bullets, three knives, and, for the moment, the high ground with the sun rising behind her, and a horse. She didn’t like those odds, but they were workable.
“This is the part where you slip away,” she reminded the men. They ignored her.
“By my psychic to the mysterious sinews that bind mankind to the out realm,” Charlie moaned, touching his fingertips to his temples and closing his eyes. “Galadoon De Booshe!”
“Charlie,” Jelly said.
Charlie opened his eyes a sliver. “Hm?”
“Get the hell out of here. All of you,” Jelly said. “The Stone needs to get to Caterpillar. More importantly, they can’t get a hold of it.”
At that, Jack urged his mare around and deeper into the Wabe, followed reluctantly by Charlie.
“Do me a favor? Don’t forget to ask about my father,” she said pointedly. Hatter nodded, and followed the other men.
She watched as the foliage closed around them before urging her mount into motion. She steered her horse back where the slope had been gentler; they would climb there. Well, the Suits would climb there; it wouldn’t surprise her to learn that March was planning on leaping up out of the valley onto her horse. She clutched at the reigns, and waited on the cusp of the slope for the Suits to come into view. Once she was sure that they knew where she was, she take off, and they’d follow.
Kill or be killed situations were surprisingly uncommon in the City. The sort of people who would rather be killed than taken in to face the executioner’s axe were few in number and, for the most part, as inclined towards suicide as they were to going out in a blaze of glory. When she had climbed the ranks, she’d encouraged those under her command to take prisoners, if only so that they could fill the spaces in the executioner’s docket that might otherwise be occupied with their own numbers. There had been times when it was unavoidable, and during the food riots things had almost escalated to open civil war, but even then, the Spades worked under a strategy of having the numerical advantage whenever possible, and they always had body armor, the best weapons, medical assistance on standby and three square meals a day. She was used to having her opponents at a disadvantage. She was used to being able to force them to surrender. She was used to have at least Othello at her back, but more often a set, or a hand, or a play, if not the entire deck.
That wasn’t going to happen here. She was outnumbered. She was outgunned. She was a traitor. And she didn’t even know if she’d managed to accomplish anything.
She didn’t have to wait very long. The first Suit- and she forced herself not to identify them- was in her sights before her muscles had time to begin to cramp. She was just about the kick her horse into action when he fired off a shot. The sound of the gun going off panicked her horse, which reared back unexpectedly, throwing her to the forest ground. Pain flare anew through her wounded arm and she was momentarily bereft of breath. She took it back quickly though, and snatched the gun up from the ground.
Thankfully, the Suits kept aiming for the horse after it bolted, rather than her, and she managed to make two clean kills in three shots before they realized that they’d been shooting in the wrong direction. Jelly felt their return fire thud into the tree she’d taken cover behind, before popping off three shots of her own. None of them hit anything that was after her, as far as she could tell, but that hadn’t been the point. As they took cover she fled deeper into the Wabe, running until she found a hollow tree in which to hide.
Hurriedly, she reholstered her gun in the small of her back, and took out the one from her shoulder holster, which had more bullets in it. After a moment’s thought, she placed it back inside, and pulled the knife out of her right pocket. She was outnumbered, but for the moment, no one knew exactly where she was. They would spread out and search for her. The less noise she made, the easier it would be to evade them, and pick them off. The EPs would let Darrel know which of his men had died, and with that information, direct them towards her position anyway: that would lend itself well enough to her purpose. There was no need to be stupid about this.
Before long came the sound of footsteps, crunching against the leaves and mulch that coated the forest floor. They belonged to a pair of Spades, Jelly guessed. She clutched her knife and waited; the pair paused not too far from her position, checking the shrubbery across the path. As she watched, one of them turned from keeping watch on the forest to confirm something for his partner, leaving both of their backs exposed.
She leaped at them from behind, bringing her left foot down on one Spade’s instep as her right hand smashed into the back of his head. The other Spade brought his gun up to bear; she grabbed his arm with her free left hand and forced his aim down and away, at the prone Suit’s body rather than hers. Then she brought her knife up and slashed it across his throat. Blood gushed from the wounds, coating her hand; his body shook in his death throes, causing him to fire his gun before falling to the ground. The bullet went in through his partner’s neck, putting an end to his struggle to get back onto his feet.
Jelly threw herself behind a nearby tree as another pair of Spades, drawn by the fire, rushed through the forest. She switched dropped the knife back into her pocket and withdrew her gun. The pair drove for cover when they saw the bodies, but one wasn’t quite quick enough to avoid her opening shot. His body flopped into the bushes, but a chunk of his head spilled out onto the path. His partner shot at her, and she pressed herself more fully behind the tree for a moment, before darting out to return it. They exchanged fire for a few moments, until her gun jammed. She swore, dodging fully behind the tree again. The Spade clipped the side of the tree trunk with his next shot, sending splinters flying through the air, several of which embedded themselves in the side of her face, just narrowly missing her eye. She yelled in pain, and heard the Spade ease out of his cover when she failed to return fire.
She had two thoughts, as she eased the gun out from behind her back. The first was fuck that hurts. The second was that guy must think his shot hit me, rather than the tree.
Then she whirled around the tree and shot at the Spade. He bellowed in pain, and Jelly shot again, this time making sure the bullet hit his head, not his chest.
She listened. Nobody seemed to be coming, so she picked up the guns from the fallen Suits, taking one to replace her jammed weapon, and collecting the other’s cartridges. Then she wiped her knife and hands down on the pants legs of one of the Spades as best she could. Her arm still hurt and the side of her face was throbbing, but they were debilitating injuries. She had thirty-eight bullets and three knives against six Spades, Darrel, and Mad March. She might just live after all. Though, the fact that no one had come to investigate the prolonged exchange of gunfire by now was worrying her just a little.
She moved the way the last pair of Spades had come, listening for any sound of approaching Suits and trying to keep her own tread as light as possible. Then suddenly, there was the sound of shots being exchanged.
A portion of her was unsurprised to find Hatter, on foot and being shot at by a pair of Spades. Most of her was too busy being furious with him to be unsurprised. Then Hatter went flying back as one of them shot him in the chest.
Jelly stepped out from behind her tree and shot them both, one through the head, the other through the neck. Then she slid down the small hill that separated her from their bodies, and went to get Hatter.
He’d already picked himself up and set his hat to rights when she came into full sight of him.
“What happened to you?” he asked, as he took in her appearance. “You were on your own for what-”
“My plan happened,” Jelly hissed. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m making sure you see your father again,” Hatter replied.
Jelly stared at him for a moment. “Okay,” she said finally. “How many did you incapacitate?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hatter replied.
“Hatter-”
“No, you’re not listening,” Hatter said. “It doesn’t matter. They’ve already called for back-up. Do you know how many Suits can fit into a Scarab?”
“Two hands worth,” Jelly replied with a groan.
“Well, yes of course you do,” Hatter muttered. “As far as I can tell, the plan was to have the posse drive us towards them.” He glanced back to where the bodies were. “But if they’re all dead, they’re going to abandon that plan pretty quick.”
“They aren’t all dead,” Jelly told him. “There are still at least four Spades, Darrel, and March: though, if I were Darrel that would be enough casualties to make me scrap the plan. What about Charlie and Jack?”
“Riding back to the City of the Knights at breakneck speed when I last saw them,” Hatter said. “The Suits will be looking for two men and a woman, not just two men, and certainly not a Knight. With a little luck they’ll be passed over.”
“By what?” Jelly asked. As though in answer, there was the unmistakable whirr of flamingos flying overheard. “Oh, motherfucker…”
“Yeah,” Hatter said, pressing them both flat against the tree. They waited, barely breathing, until the sound of airborne Suits faded.
“Do they have a plan after that?” she asked. “The City of the Knights is probably big enough to hide in, but it’s also big enough that the Suits will find it sooner or later.”
“If we’re not back by nightfall, they’re going to head for the boat,” Hatter said. “Come on.”
“The boat that March will have found and Darrel will have told his back-up about?” Jelly asked as she followed him along the path. It was narrow enough to provide ample cover to hide behind, while being clear enough not to trip them up.
“There’s a distinct lack of other options here, you know. The way between the Casino and here is blocked, and the way between the city and here is a whole lot of open ground we could very easily be spotted on,” Hatter replied. “Besides, the boat’s docked right near a hot-spot for smugglers. As soon as word gets around to Tortoise’s lot, they’ll come kick them out. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t happening already.”
“What makes you say that?” Jelly asked.
“Because I know the food smuggling business like I know the Tea business,” Hatter told her. “I know what the demand is and I know what people can get out of their government rations and what’s grown in the city. And let me tell you, there is one hell of a gap. Shipments will have been intercepted, and no competent Resistance leader- which Tortoise seems to be- is going to let their source of political sway wane. With a little luck, we could slip out in the confusion.”
“I try not to rely on luck too much,” Jelly said. “It always seems to duck out at the worse possible moment.”
“Well, do you have a better idea?” Hatter asked.
She opened her mouth to respond, but heard the sound of an approaching pair. She wondered, distantly, if they knew they were being that loud as she gestured for Hatter to hide and crouched behind a bush.
A few moments later the pair blundered by, visibly steeped on one of the less relaxing Teas. Jelly waited for them to stagger by- the game had changed now, and the less attention she drew to herself, the better.
Naturally, that was the moment in which she lost her footing, slid, and crunched into the shrubbery. No amount of Lust, or Passion, or Desire was going to obscure the noise, and the pair doubled back to investigate.
They were nearly upon her when there was a whistle, and Hatter punched one of them in the face. Jelly rose, bringing the butt of her pistol up into the back of the other’s skull. The one Hatter had taken care of flopped back and was still; hers collapsed forwards and attempted to rise until she gave him a sharp kick in the head.
“What’s the deal with your right arm?” she asked, bending to retrieve their weapons.
“It’s my right arm,” Hatter replied, holding out his hand, his eyes not on her but on the forest. She handed over one of the fallen Spade’s guns, and he checked the cartridge and the safety before depositing it in his breast pocket.
“Yeah,” Jelly drawled. “But you seem to be able to hit harder with it than most people.” She ejected the other gun’s cartridge, and tossed the gun itself into a nearby hummock. Assuming they found it at all when they regained consciousness, it would need a thorough cleaning before it worked again. She held out the cartridge. “Free bullets?”
“Thank you,” Hatter said, taking them and ignoring her earlier comment. The headed off again, forgoing talking in favor of listening for the approach of more Suits.
There were many more Suits: the pairs came closer and closer together and thrice they heard flamingos overhead, but they managed to avoid most of the Spades, incapacitate the ones they couldn’t, and if the flyers spotted them, there was no indication of it. Eventually, the patrols thinned, and she began to shift her focus, bit by bit, off of immediate survival and onto what they were going to do when they caught up with Charlie and Jack. Providing they did catch up with them; the alternative was that they’d been captured, and she wasn’t really prepared to face that possibility. She wasn’t a very big fan of the whole ‘escape in the merely probable confusion of a firefight between the Resistance and whatever Spades were guarding their drop point’: she’d played with more wildly fluxuating odds, yes, but generally with some way of seeing where they were just before she acted, and with a back-up plan firmly in place.
Before she could come with one, however, there came the sound of marching feet; there was only one set, but at the pace it went, there was no mistaking who it was.
She turned to Hatter, who jerked his head towards a tree with low-laying branches. She swung herself up into it, and had climbed several cubits up before she realized that Hatter wasn’t following.
“Hatter!” she hissed, trying to project her voice and not have it carry at the same time. The marching grew closer as Hatter turned around and pointed skywards. Climb.
Jelly gesticulated wildly with one arm, the other clutching tightly to the branch she was seated on. She forced herself not to grimace as the way her face tried to contort drove the splinters deeper into her skin. What the hell are you doing?
Hatter pointed up again, and then hurried away, moving around the edge of a medium-sized hill and out of sight. Jelly had several strongly-worded things to say about this development, but no way of communicating them, because at that moment March came into view.
Jelly tore through the woods, navigating her way by the contrast between the harder dark of the trees and the softer dark of the space between. It wasn’t too long before she realized that she was being followed. The footsteps were too quiet to be Charlie’s, and too sure to be Jacks; she wasted a few moments trying to evade him, before she remembered that Hatter was better at it than she was.
“I don’t know how I could make this any clearer,” Jelly said loudly. “But I’m not very good company right now.”
“Well, you could write it out,” Hatter said from his position a good twenty cubits behind her. “The glowing kind of ink would probably be best for this light.”
Jelly turned around so that it would be possible for him to figure out that she was staring at him.
“There’s always musical theater,” Hatter added, taking a tentative step towards her. “You could write a play about how poor your company is.”
“And then I suppose you’d come along and make it that much richer?” Jelly asked, holstering her gun.
“Of course,” Hatter said, as though he were surprised she thought things could have gone any differently. “And then we’ll have a dance number.”
Jelly giggled. “Yeah, and Charlie and- and Jack will-” She leaned against the tree, shaking. “Will dress up the skeletons-” She gasped, tears welling up in her eyes and making it even more difficult to see. “-and we’ll-”
Hatter placed a hand on her shoulder, and Jelly let out a proper sob.
“Right,” he said, steering her off the tree and over to where a large stump was standing at about knee height. “Let’s sit down a minute. I’m a bit knackered from chasing after you anyway.”
“Smooth,” Jelly said thickly as she sat down.
“I don’t know why you’re assuming I’m lying,” Hatter said, mock affronted. “I mean, really, think back on the day I just had. First I get word that the bloody Ten of Spades wants to defect to me, and then she avoids me like I’ve got the nephelokokkygian plague. Then she pulls a gun on my boss…”
Jelly buried her face in her hands and let him speak, his arm around her shoulders the entire time. He’d moved onto talking about the first time he’d been in the Forest of Wabe before she had herself under enough control to straighten. She scrubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hand and he wound his commentary down.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s been a long day for me too.”
“I remember,” Hatter informed her. His hand was still on her shoulder, and for all that she was no longer in danger of crying, she wasn’t quite ready to shrug it off.
“I should probably apologize to Jack,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “He’s still a giant dick, but that was-”
“Hitting below the belt so hard his whirligigs are now above it?” Hatter offered, after a moment of watching her struggle to find the words to complete her sentence.
Jelly glared a little, before giving up on glaring as a bad job. She was spent. “Yeah, something like that.”
They were silent for a moment more, before Hatter said. “You know, I kind of wish my father had hung on a bit longer.”
“Oh?” Jelly asked, not sure where this was going.
“Yeah,” Hatter said. “You and he probably would have had a lot to talk about.”
“How so?” Jelly asked.
Hatter pulled his arm away from her. “It’s like this,” he said, getting up. “My mother was Resistance, a pamphleteer. No, that’s not right. She was the pamphleteer. It’s been almost twenty years since she died and still half the stuff in circulation is her work.”
“She got caught,” Jelly guessed.
“Yeah, she got caught,” Hatter confirmed. “The Suits came in one night, roughed her up a bit, and whisked her away to the Casino. Dad went to collect her body a day or so later, and came back with the license required to sell the Queen’s Teas in the shop.”
“When my mother was executed,” Jelly began. Hatter jerked in surprise, so she elaborated “She was caught helping people fight their addiction to Tea. That’s kind of a big deal. It wasn’t long after that when I started thinking about what sort of Suit I was going to be when I grew up.”
“And that’s what I don’t get,” Hatter cried. “Weren’t you angry? Didn’t you want it to stop? Why would you help keep it going?”
“Because I can’t stop it. I can’t pardon everyone on the executioner’s docket, I can’t even pardon my own Suits when they end up there, and I’ve barely been able to stop my father from ending up there or worse,” Jelly explained, anger rising again.
“But you’re only making it go,” Hatter said.
“Not always,” Jelly pointed out. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t let Bruno go, and he wasn’t the first. And another thing,” she stood as well, agitation jerking her arms about, “You’re not exactly an innocent here yourself. You sell Tea. It might get you contacts, free information, and a healthy supply of bribing material, but that doesn’t erase the fact that the Queen’s reign is built on Tea, and you support that.”
“No, it doesn’t, and I don’t forget that,” Hatter snapped. “I couldn’t, between Dormie and Dodo. It’s part of why I take jobs like this. I’d have been much safer just leaving you with Dodo, you know.”
“No, you’d probably have died, because I would have shot you if you tried that,” Jelly told him.
“I wear body armor, and that’s not the point,” Hatter said. “The point is I know how much harm I’m doing. And I know how much good I’m doing. And I make sure I keep the second column at a higher value than the first.”
“And you can quantify that?” Jelly asked snidely, folding her arms and leaning back against a tree.
“You’re the one who’s getting by with making the occasional exception,” Hatter shot back, mimicking her posture. “As far as I can tell pretty much everyone in the Suits is getting by with either doing that or steeping themselves.” Jelly snorted, but Hatter continued “I don’t get why you keep at it.”
“What would you like me to do?” Jelly demanded. “I mean, hypothetically speaking in some universe where I haven’t already defected, what is there to do? If I started talking about overthrowing the Queen, the mostly likely thing that would happen would be that Darrel would tell the King, and then he’d have me taken down. Then he’d do to my father what he did to Grace. The only thing that would change would be that there would be a Carpenter who liked his job, and Othello would spend his first few months as Ten trying to separate himself from me by striking out the policy changes- and those are to your benefit, you know. Our focus shifted from Resistance activities to violent crimes after I took over as Ten, and believe me, I’m not stupid enough to think we got even a fraction of you after the food riots.”
“Oh, I never took you for stupid,” Hatter protested.
“Then what do you take me for?” Jelly asked.
“You’re-” Hatter’s answer was cut off by a roar from somewhere deeper in the forest.
“I think we should head back to camp,” Jelly suggested.
“There, see? You’re not stupid at all,” Hatter said, and they went back the way they came.
Jelly thought about trying to explain things to Hatter as they went, but decided that it was no use with a non-Suit. They didn’t get it; civilians thought of the Queen as a person mad with power, and as executions the extensions of her whims. Suits knew that there wasn’t that much thought behind it, that her whims often didn’t extend down as far as the level of individuals. They were just a pack of cards to her, faceless and interchangeable; the Queen needed someone to blame when things went wrong, and unless they came up with better targets, they were it. Executions weren’t personal any more than Mt. Asclepius’ eruptions were.
Except it wasn’t a perfect metaphor, she realized. There were certainly ways to avoid the Queen’s wrath without leaving the Casino altogether. You didn’t speak up, especially if you were a woman. You became quietly necessary. You gained the favor of the King, or a Trump, or the Club Suits. She had done as much.
She thought some more. You would live longer if you didn’t have children, longer still if you were single, longest of all if you couldn’t be a wife and mother in the first place, she reasoned. How many of the people she worked with were orphans? How many men did she work with who were single fathers? Hell, she’d been more or less raised by a single father. She remembered what Fletcher had told her about women in the Spades. She thought about how quick the King was to tamp down on anything that would upset his wife.
Maybe the civilians were more right than she’d believed. The thought didn’t sit very well in her stomach.
They were nearly back in the throne room before something else occurred to Jelly. “What happened to your father?”
“He killed himself,” Hatter replied. Jelly stared at him. “He left me a shop, and a note asking me to do something good with it. So I have.”
The fire had died down a bit, and Jelly took a look around as Hatter tried to coax it back up. She could see a lump on the bed just inside the derelict to the left of the fire, which was probably Jack. She would have to apologize later, then. She turned as she heard the sound of a stick cracking in the wood, and then let out a small scream as Charlie appeared directly in front of her and she reflexively kicked him in the shins.
The kick didn’t seem to register, because Charlie’s reaction to this was to squint, and place his pointer finger directly over her heart.
“Uh,” she said, pulling the finger off of her. “Hi?”
“Are you really a Suit?” Charlie demanded.
“A Spade,” Jelly clarified, “And yes, I have been my whole adult life.”
“You don’t look like a Spade,” Charlie said, eyeing her suspiciously.
“I’m out of uniform,” Jelly replied, shifting so that she had Hatter at her back rather than the forest.
“That’s not what I meant,” Charlie said. “You aren’t sharp enough.”
“Excuse me?” Jelly said.
Charlie weaved back and forth, still squinting at her. “You’re at all the wrong angles for a Spade.”
Jelly shot a look over her shoulder back at Hatter, who shrugged.
“Uh,” Jelly said, turning back to Charlie, who moved forwards a few steps and began to feel at the air around her body. “I’m not a Spade any more. Maybe that’s the problem?”
“No, it’s not,” Charlie said decisively. “You wouldn’t be nearly this poufy if that were the case.”
“Poufy?” She’d been called a lot of things in her time. Poufy was not one of them.
“Yes. You’re puffier than a midsummer’s raincloud, and twice as lightning-y.” He stopped waving his hands around and looked her directly in the eye. “Would you permit me to do a toenail reading?”
“No, thanks,” Jelly said, hoping she didn’t look as weirded out as she felt. “I’ll pass.”
Charlie’s face fell, but he shuffled away without protest. “This is all wrong. You’re too poufy to be a Spade. He’s too stringy to be a Heart.” He wheeled suddenly on Hatter, who had been busy smirking and thrust a finger into his face. “And I don’t know what you are beneath all that rabble, but I don’t like it.”
“Fair enough,” Hatter replied. “I have no idea what you are either.”
“I’m a Knight!” Charlie reminded him, and brought his fist down on the top of Hatter’s head. Hatter yelped, and whisked his hat off his head. Charlie wandered off to the where there was a hammock strung between both trees, muttering something unflattering about the younger man’s tailor.
Jelly went over to stand next to Hatter, the better to stare at the old man as he arranged himself on the hammock, and snuggled up close to a teddy bear.
“So,” Hatter said, a bit too cheerfully, as he turned to face her. “I’ll take the first watch-”
“There’s no need for that!” Charlie yelled, not even opening his eyes. “I have an early warning system all set up! Just be ready to run if the raven caws!”
Hatter turned and stared at him. “Is that a metaphor or-”
“No,” Charlie said derisively. “It’s the signal for the perimeter breach, you huggermugger.”
“What did he just call me?” Hatter asked her.
“A huggermugger,” Jelly told him, before adding, deadpan. “I can’t believe it. You accost people in alleyways for hugs. You monster.”
Hatter ignored her, and continued to stare at the Knight. “I’m tempted to go over there and shake him until he makes sense.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Jelly told him.
Charlie snored, and Hatter visibly tore himself away from whatever line of thought he’d been following. “So, as I was saying, I’ll take the first watch-”
“Oh, there’s no need for that,” Jelly interrupted. “I had a nap today, I’ll take it.”
They looked at each other for a moment before Hatter said “First one to fall asleep makes breakfast?”
“Works for me,” Jelly agreed.
They talked about inconsequential things, gossip about their mutual acquaintances and the like, as they sat by the fire. It got progressively colder as the night wore on, and it wasn’t long before Jelly had buttoned up her jacket, popped the collar, dug her numb fingers deep into her pockets and was still shivering.
“You could come and sit by me?” Hatter suggested, watching her lean towards the flames.
“Is it warmer over there?” she asked.
“Of course it is,” Hatter said. “I’ll have you know I’m an excellent source of heat.”
To prove his point, he moved beside her, sweeping his arm and a good portion of his jacket around her back as he sat down.
“Well, you certainly have excellent taste in jackets,” Jelly admitted.
“Well you knew that already,” he pointed out.
Jelly hummed, and tried to rub the feeling back into her fingers.
~*~
Jelly woke up some time later, still tucked under Hatter’s arm and leaning back against the log that had served as their bench last night. Dawn had broken and Hatter’s beard was tickling her ear; for a moment, Jelly thought it was that which had woke her up. Then she heard the sound of a stick snapping, and realized that that wasn’t it at all.
“Hatter,” she hissed. “Hatter!”
Hatter jerked awake; Jelly pressed a finger to his lips and stood as quietly as she could.
“What it- what is it?” Hatter whispered sleepily, as he got to his feet and her eyes darted about.
“I don’t-” Jelly began, before she realized what was wrong: Jack was gone.
“Fuck a duck!” she yelled, stalking towards his empty bed. Charlie tumbled out of his hammock with a surprised shout.
“Okay,” Hatter said, straightening his hat and coming up behind her as she looked out from the bedside. “Is he going home, or-”
“No, he’ll head for the city,” Jelly said, looking out. A metallic glint caught her eye, and recalling Jack’s wristwatch, she went after it.
Jack was trying to move discreetly rather than swiftly, and was still unsure of his footing; Jelly had years of experience chasing deviants through a not-always-level city. It wasn’t long before she caught sight of him fully.
“Jack!” she yelled.
Jack audibly smacked his palm to his face, before dashing off of the path.
“Oh no you don’t,” Jelly growled, and took off after him.
Jack was leaning against a tree when she caught up with him, as though to say I’m letting you catch me.
Jelly glared at him, unimpressed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m going to the city,” he replied. “As you might imagine, after years of escaping to there, I have a few friends I can stay with.”
“And you’re so sure that these are friends your parents know nothing about?” Jelly asked.
“Are they?” Jack asked back. “You’re the one held responsible for breaches in city security. You’re the one who catches me and brings me back every time I escape. You tell me.”
She couldn’t help but get the impression that Jack was still a little sore from the night before. “Look, Jack,” she began.
Jack raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“Okay, so you knew Gryphon,” she said, pushing her apology to the side in favor of perhaps getting somewhere useful today. “Who else in the Resistance do you know?”
“Caterpillar,” Jack replied, pushing away from the tree and heading back towards the path.
“What?” Jelly cried. “Are you serious?”
“He recruited me into the Resistance, he helped me look for a cure for Grace, he got me through the Looking Glass,” Jack yelled back. “Yes, I’m serious.”
“Who are we talking about now?” Hatter asked as he walked up from the path.
Jack went back into stiff mode, and didn’t reply.
So Jelly did for him. “He knows Caterpillar.”
“What?” Hatter said, indignant. “Why didn’t you tell us that yesterday?”
“That’s what I want to know!” Jelly said.
Before Jack could explain himself, there was the distant sound of Charlie yelling.
“Oh, what now?” Hatter muttered, grabbing Jack by the arm and dragging him back up to the throne room, Jelly following close behind.
What now apparently consisted of a raven cawing the early warning in its cage as Charlie yelled out the names of different musical instruments.
“Drum!” he shouted, brandishing a frying pan. “Fife! Piccolo!”
“Charlie!” Jelly yelled, grabbing him by the shoulder, and then ducking as he nearly brained her. “Charlie! Sir Charles!”
Charlie stopped mid-swing and stared at her.”Yes?”
“How far away is the perimeter?” she asked.
“Three stadia,” he replied.
“Okay,” Jelly said. “We have time then; they’re going to be on foot. Can we borrow your horses?”
“Yes,” Charlie said softly. Then, much more loudly, “Yes! To the horses!”
He ran off, and the three of them followed him.
There were enough horses for each of them, and more, which she supposed was only right. Whichever of the Knight’s warhorses survived would have had one hundred and fifty years to breed in, after all.
“Okay,” Jelly said. “Here’s the plan.”
“We have a plan?” Hatter asked.
“I’m making one up right now,” she told.
“Okay, continue,” he replied.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to avoid the posse altogether,” Jelly did continue. “Equally hopefully, it’ll rain mince pies and lemonade this afternoon. We can buy ourselves some time by sticking along this ridge. The trees will provide us with some cover, and the elevation will give us a vantage point. When March spots us, we’ll know. Then, I’ll break cover. I shot his ear off, I’m pretty sure he’s angry at me; that means he’ll follow me. The three of you fall back into the forest and double back towards the Casino a bit. If I make it, we’ll meet up by the hedges. If not, take the Stone to Caterpillar.”
“That’s a terrible plan,” Jack opined, buckling his saddle onto his mare.
“I don’t like it either,” Hatter added.
“Okay,” Jelly said. “What’s wrong with it?”
“The consequences of being captured are greater for you than they are for anyone else here,” Jack said.
“Uh, Jack?” Jelly replied, pretty sure she should be offended. “There are two people here who belong to an army, and the one who isn’t me is old enough to remember your grandmother’s reign. I have the greatest chance of fighting them off, and come to it, the greatest chance of resisting an interrogation.”
“Bravo,” Jack shot back, stepping up into his saddle. “Well done, you are correct. But there’s something you’re forgetting.”
“What?” Jelly asked, annoyed.
“The Stone has been away from the Looking Glass for long enough that they’ll have had to have shut it down. That means that there are no more Oysters coming into Wonderland. As much as my mother would dearly love to see your head roll, my father’s far too practical to allow it. He’s going to ensure that every Oyster is drained dry, including you.”
Jelly froze in the act of mounting her horse, surprised less by the words and more by the way he said them, like it wasn’t a terrible secret and there weren’t people around to hear it.
“What?” Hatter yelled, loud enough to spook his horse a little.
“I knew it!” Charlie crowed. “I knew you weren’t a Spade! Aha ha!”
There were many ways Jelly could respond to this. She could deny it. She could call Jack out on what was obviously an immature attempt at revenge for her remarks last night. She could pull out her gun and shoot him in the face. But, as tempting as those ideas were, there was only one good way to respond.
“Jack,” Jelly said, slipping into her saddle so that they were at more or less eye level. “Think about it for a moment. Is my being drained really worse than Charlie being paraded around the Casino as a trophy, or Hatter being tortured, or your own parents killing you? Is it worse than the Crown getting the Stone of Wonderland? My feelings and I aren’t on speaking terms anyway!”
“But you’re an Oyster?” Hatter asked.
“Only from the minute I was born,” Jelly replied.
Hatter looked like there was more he wanted to say, so Jelly cut him off. “And we need to leave quickly, so unless one of you has a better idea why don’t we stick with my plan?”
“I could drive them away with my skills in the Black Arts,” Charlie offered, his tone growing more theatrical as the sentence reached its end.
“We’ll hold that idea in reserve,” Jelly replied. “Let’s go.”
~*~
They made their way through the Forest of Wabe in silence, Charlie’s inclination to sing having been unanimously vetoed by everyone else. They skirted the edge of the cliff face, keeping watch over the valley below with keen eyes. They were nearly in the Fungiferous Foothills before Jelly caught sight of a Spade.
“They’re here,” she said. There was a flash of white, and March’s bunny face turned up towards them. They’d been spotted. “And they know we are too.”
Charlie groaned.
Jelly thought. The posse was Darrel, March, and a set of twelve Spades. She had twenty nine bullets, three knives, and, for the moment, the high ground with the sun rising behind her, and a horse. She didn’t like those odds, but they were workable.
“This is the part where you slip away,” she reminded the men. They ignored her.
“By my psychic to the mysterious sinews that bind mankind to the out realm,” Charlie moaned, touching his fingertips to his temples and closing his eyes. “Galadoon De Booshe!”
“Charlie,” Jelly said.
Charlie opened his eyes a sliver. “Hm?”
“Get the hell out of here. All of you,” Jelly said. “The Stone needs to get to Caterpillar. More importantly, they can’t get a hold of it.”
At that, Jack urged his mare around and deeper into the Wabe, followed reluctantly by Charlie.
“Do me a favor? Don’t forget to ask about my father,” she said pointedly. Hatter nodded, and followed the other men.
She watched as the foliage closed around them before urging her mount into motion. She steered her horse back where the slope had been gentler; they would climb there. Well, the Suits would climb there; it wouldn’t surprise her to learn that March was planning on leaping up out of the valley onto her horse. She clutched at the reigns, and waited on the cusp of the slope for the Suits to come into view. Once she was sure that they knew where she was, she take off, and they’d follow.
Kill or be killed situations were surprisingly uncommon in the City. The sort of people who would rather be killed than taken in to face the executioner’s axe were few in number and, for the most part, as inclined towards suicide as they were to going out in a blaze of glory. When she had climbed the ranks, she’d encouraged those under her command to take prisoners, if only so that they could fill the spaces in the executioner’s docket that might otherwise be occupied with their own numbers. There had been times when it was unavoidable, and during the food riots things had almost escalated to open civil war, but even then, the Spades worked under a strategy of having the numerical advantage whenever possible, and they always had body armor, the best weapons, medical assistance on standby and three square meals a day. She was used to having her opponents at a disadvantage. She was used to being able to force them to surrender. She was used to have at least Othello at her back, but more often a set, or a hand, or a play, if not the entire deck.
That wasn’t going to happen here. She was outnumbered. She was outgunned. She was a traitor. And she didn’t even know if she’d managed to accomplish anything.
She didn’t have to wait very long. The first Suit- and she forced herself not to identify them- was in her sights before her muscles had time to begin to cramp. She was just about the kick her horse into action when he fired off a shot. The sound of the gun going off panicked her horse, which reared back unexpectedly, throwing her to the forest ground. Pain flare anew through her wounded arm and she was momentarily bereft of breath. She took it back quickly though, and snatched the gun up from the ground.
Thankfully, the Suits kept aiming for the horse after it bolted, rather than her, and she managed to make two clean kills in three shots before they realized that they’d been shooting in the wrong direction. Jelly felt their return fire thud into the tree she’d taken cover behind, before popping off three shots of her own. None of them hit anything that was after her, as far as she could tell, but that hadn’t been the point. As they took cover she fled deeper into the Wabe, running until she found a hollow tree in which to hide.
Hurriedly, she reholstered her gun in the small of her back, and took out the one from her shoulder holster, which had more bullets in it. After a moment’s thought, she placed it back inside, and pulled the knife out of her right pocket. She was outnumbered, but for the moment, no one knew exactly where she was. They would spread out and search for her. The less noise she made, the easier it would be to evade them, and pick them off. The EPs would let Darrel know which of his men had died, and with that information, direct them towards her position anyway: that would lend itself well enough to her purpose. There was no need to be stupid about this.
Before long came the sound of footsteps, crunching against the leaves and mulch that coated the forest floor. They belonged to a pair of Spades, Jelly guessed. She clutched her knife and waited; the pair paused not too far from her position, checking the shrubbery across the path. As she watched, one of them turned from keeping watch on the forest to confirm something for his partner, leaving both of their backs exposed.
She leaped at them from behind, bringing her left foot down on one Spade’s instep as her right hand smashed into the back of his head. The other Spade brought his gun up to bear; she grabbed his arm with her free left hand and forced his aim down and away, at the prone Suit’s body rather than hers. Then she brought her knife up and slashed it across his throat. Blood gushed from the wounds, coating her hand; his body shook in his death throes, causing him to fire his gun before falling to the ground. The bullet went in through his partner’s neck, putting an end to his struggle to get back onto his feet.
Jelly threw herself behind a nearby tree as another pair of Spades, drawn by the fire, rushed through the forest. She switched dropped the knife back into her pocket and withdrew her gun. The pair drove for cover when they saw the bodies, but one wasn’t quite quick enough to avoid her opening shot. His body flopped into the bushes, but a chunk of his head spilled out onto the path. His partner shot at her, and she pressed herself more fully behind the tree for a moment, before darting out to return it. They exchanged fire for a few moments, until her gun jammed. She swore, dodging fully behind the tree again. The Spade clipped the side of the tree trunk with his next shot, sending splinters flying through the air, several of which embedded themselves in the side of her face, just narrowly missing her eye. She yelled in pain, and heard the Spade ease out of his cover when she failed to return fire.
She had two thoughts, as she eased the gun out from behind her back. The first was fuck that hurts. The second was that guy must think his shot hit me, rather than the tree.
Then she whirled around the tree and shot at the Spade. He bellowed in pain, and Jelly shot again, this time making sure the bullet hit his head, not his chest.
She listened. Nobody seemed to be coming, so she picked up the guns from the fallen Suits, taking one to replace her jammed weapon, and collecting the other’s cartridges. Then she wiped her knife and hands down on the pants legs of one of the Spades as best she could. Her arm still hurt and the side of her face was throbbing, but they were debilitating injuries. She had thirty-eight bullets and three knives against six Spades, Darrel, and Mad March. She might just live after all. Though, the fact that no one had come to investigate the prolonged exchange of gunfire by now was worrying her just a little.
She moved the way the last pair of Spades had come, listening for any sound of approaching Suits and trying to keep her own tread as light as possible. Then suddenly, there was the sound of shots being exchanged.
A portion of her was unsurprised to find Hatter, on foot and being shot at by a pair of Spades. Most of her was too busy being furious with him to be unsurprised. Then Hatter went flying back as one of them shot him in the chest.
Jelly stepped out from behind her tree and shot them both, one through the head, the other through the neck. Then she slid down the small hill that separated her from their bodies, and went to get Hatter.
He’d already picked himself up and set his hat to rights when she came into full sight of him.
“What happened to you?” he asked, as he took in her appearance. “You were on your own for what-”
“My plan happened,” Jelly hissed. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m making sure you see your father again,” Hatter replied.
Jelly stared at him for a moment. “Okay,” she said finally. “How many did you incapacitate?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hatter replied.
“Hatter-”
“No, you’re not listening,” Hatter said. “It doesn’t matter. They’ve already called for back-up. Do you know how many Suits can fit into a Scarab?”
“Two hands worth,” Jelly replied with a groan.
“Well, yes of course you do,” Hatter muttered. “As far as I can tell, the plan was to have the posse drive us towards them.” He glanced back to where the bodies were. “But if they’re all dead, they’re going to abandon that plan pretty quick.”
“They aren’t all dead,” Jelly told him. “There are still at least four Spades, Darrel, and March: though, if I were Darrel that would be enough casualties to make me scrap the plan. What about Charlie and Jack?”
“Riding back to the City of the Knights at breakneck speed when I last saw them,” Hatter said. “The Suits will be looking for two men and a woman, not just two men, and certainly not a Knight. With a little luck they’ll be passed over.”
“By what?” Jelly asked. As though in answer, there was the unmistakable whirr of flamingos flying overheard. “Oh, motherfucker…”
“Yeah,” Hatter said, pressing them both flat against the tree. They waited, barely breathing, until the sound of airborne Suits faded.
“Do they have a plan after that?” she asked. “The City of the Knights is probably big enough to hide in, but it’s also big enough that the Suits will find it sooner or later.”
“If we’re not back by nightfall, they’re going to head for the boat,” Hatter said. “Come on.”
“The boat that March will have found and Darrel will have told his back-up about?” Jelly asked as she followed him along the path. It was narrow enough to provide ample cover to hide behind, while being clear enough not to trip them up.
“There’s a distinct lack of other options here, you know. The way between the Casino and here is blocked, and the way between the city and here is a whole lot of open ground we could very easily be spotted on,” Hatter replied. “Besides, the boat’s docked right near a hot-spot for smugglers. As soon as word gets around to Tortoise’s lot, they’ll come kick them out. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t happening already.”
“What makes you say that?” Jelly asked.
“Because I know the food smuggling business like I know the Tea business,” Hatter told her. “I know what the demand is and I know what people can get out of their government rations and what’s grown in the city. And let me tell you, there is one hell of a gap. Shipments will have been intercepted, and no competent Resistance leader- which Tortoise seems to be- is going to let their source of political sway wane. With a little luck, we could slip out in the confusion.”
“I try not to rely on luck too much,” Jelly said. “It always seems to duck out at the worse possible moment.”
“Well, do you have a better idea?” Hatter asked.
She opened her mouth to respond, but heard the sound of an approaching pair. She wondered, distantly, if they knew they were being that loud as she gestured for Hatter to hide and crouched behind a bush.
A few moments later the pair blundered by, visibly steeped on one of the less relaxing Teas. Jelly waited for them to stagger by- the game had changed now, and the less attention she drew to herself, the better.
Naturally, that was the moment in which she lost her footing, slid, and crunched into the shrubbery. No amount of Lust, or Passion, or Desire was going to obscure the noise, and the pair doubled back to investigate.
They were nearly upon her when there was a whistle, and Hatter punched one of them in the face. Jelly rose, bringing the butt of her pistol up into the back of the other’s skull. The one Hatter had taken care of flopped back and was still; hers collapsed forwards and attempted to rise until she gave him a sharp kick in the head.
“What’s the deal with your right arm?” she asked, bending to retrieve their weapons.
“It’s my right arm,” Hatter replied, holding out his hand, his eyes not on her but on the forest. She handed over one of the fallen Spade’s guns, and he checked the cartridge and the safety before depositing it in his breast pocket.
“Yeah,” Jelly drawled. “But you seem to be able to hit harder with it than most people.” She ejected the other gun’s cartridge, and tossed the gun itself into a nearby hummock. Assuming they found it at all when they regained consciousness, it would need a thorough cleaning before it worked again. She held out the cartridge. “Free bullets?”
“Thank you,” Hatter said, taking them and ignoring her earlier comment. The headed off again, forgoing talking in favor of listening for the approach of more Suits.
There were many more Suits: the pairs came closer and closer together and thrice they heard flamingos overhead, but they managed to avoid most of the Spades, incapacitate the ones they couldn’t, and if the flyers spotted them, there was no indication of it. Eventually, the patrols thinned, and she began to shift her focus, bit by bit, off of immediate survival and onto what they were going to do when they caught up with Charlie and Jack. Providing they did catch up with them; the alternative was that they’d been captured, and she wasn’t really prepared to face that possibility. She wasn’t a very big fan of the whole ‘escape in the merely probable confusion of a firefight between the Resistance and whatever Spades were guarding their drop point’: she’d played with more wildly fluxuating odds, yes, but generally with some way of seeing where they were just before she acted, and with a back-up plan firmly in place.
Before she could come with one, however, there came the sound of marching feet; there was only one set, but at the pace it went, there was no mistaking who it was.
She turned to Hatter, who jerked his head towards a tree with low-laying branches. She swung herself up into it, and had climbed several cubits up before she realized that Hatter wasn’t following.
“Hatter!” she hissed, trying to project her voice and not have it carry at the same time. The marching grew closer as Hatter turned around and pointed skywards. Climb.
Jelly gesticulated wildly with one arm, the other clutching tightly to the branch she was seated on. She forced herself not to grimace as the way her face tried to contort drove the splinters deeper into her skin. What the hell are you doing?
Hatter pointed up again, and then hurried away, moving around the edge of a medium-sized hill and out of sight. Jelly had several strongly-worded things to say about this development, but no way of communicating them, because at that moment March came into view.