Through a Looking Glass Darkly, Nine of Wands
NINE OF WANDS
Upright - Order, discipline an unassailable position. Any opposition will be defeated. Courage in the face of attack or adversity and a stability that cannot be removed. Good health.
Reversed - Lack or inability to give and take. Projects pursued that are destined to fail because of their impractical nature. Delays and disarray. Card could indicate possible poor or ill health. A secure position that is no longer. Personality flaws.
When Alice was twelve years old, she learned what being a member of Court meant.
She'd come home from school to find the apartment empty. It was unusual, but not unheard of; her father was Carpenter and her mother a Seven of Clubs in the medical deck. Their work had a tendency to overflow. She'd been a little annoyed by this; she wasn't allowed to go out without the permission of one of her parents, and she, Cricket, and Grace were supposed to meet up that afternoon and see if they couldn't find the secret passage that lead into the hedge labyrinth. Jack might even join them, after his tutor had left and he managed to sneak out of his room.
She did her homework easily enough- all her schoolwork was easy. Her teacher, Fletcher, said that it was her father's scientist blood that made it seem that way. Privately, she just thought that copying the same things out over and over again was just plain stupid.
Speaking of private, she'd messed up her name again. She blacked out 'Alice' with her pen and wrote 'Jelly' above it. That was another one of her parents' rules: she wasn't supposed to forget that she was Alice, but she wasn't allowed to tell anyone else. She wasn't even supposed to react if someone called her Alice, and she should always introduce herself and refer to herself as Jellybean, or simply Jelly, if she liked. 'Doublethink' her father called it. That wasn't what the word actually meant, her mother had said, but her father explained that it captured the level of cognitive dissonance involved rather nicely.
Alice wasn't very sure what any of that meant. The word dissonance hadn't even been in the dictionary. She supposed that it didn't matter very much. She was called Jelly now, and that was the end of it.
It wasn't until the sun had begun to set that she began to get worried.
There weren't phones in Wonderland, and she couldn't get an EP until she was a Suit. Grace's mother would be home soon, though, and if there was trouble and her parents were around, she was supposed to go straight to Honoria. She watched the shadows creep across the room a while longer, planning on waiting until the kitchen table's hit the sink. They were normally touching when she got back from playing and Grace went home to her mother. She'd wait until then, and if neither of her parents were home yet, she'd go.
Before that happened, though, there was a knock on the door. Breathing a sigh of relief, she raced across the room and flung open the door.
It was Jack.
"Jelly, I'm sorry," he started. "I'm so sorry, I tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn't listen!"
The only time Jelly had ever heard Jack apologize unprompted was to Grace, just after her father had been executed. She leaned heavily against the door, holding on to the knob as the story came out in bits and bobs.
Her mother, as it turned out, had been treating Suits for Tea addiction. This was strictly against the law; the Queen had declared Tea to be a non-addictive substance. You did not become an addict, you merely overdosed because you were using it the wrong way, which was certainly your own fault rather than hers. If you weren't swelling up from Self-Importance or floating from Flying High, then there was no problem. Saying otherwise was treason, and her mother had said otherwise and more. Her father had walked in while they were arresting her and tried to stop it, but he was an Eggman, not a Spade, a White Rabbit, or even a Lizard. It hadn't worked.
"Mother had her executed," Jack said. "And they took your father to the Truth Room."
Jelly remained where she was, processing. Dimly, she heard a commotion start up at the far end of the hall.
"There he is!"
Darrel appeared, his Five's robes rumpled and his face ruddy. "What are you thinking, running away like that, Your Highness? Did you not notice what sort of mood Her Majesty's in?"
He looked at her, just long enough to figure out who she was, then quickly looked away.
"Yes, I'll be there in a moment," Jack replied. "Do you have somewhere you can go?"
Jelly thought about Grace and Honoria, and nodded.
"Good. I don't think you should be alone."
He stood there for a moment, looking like he wanted to do something more but couldn’t figure out what there was to do.
"Come on," Darrel said, taking him by the shoulder. "The Queen's mood will only get worse the longer you're gone."
She didn't start crying until much later, when both Grace and Honoria were asleep.
It was three days before her father came to pick her up.
Eleven years later, Jelly was woken up by the sound of knocking on the door. She sat up in bed, and was still rubbing the grit from her eyes when her father answered it.
"Oh, what now, Cricket?" Her father groaned.
Jelly got to her feet and walked into the main room. Cricket gave her a little nod before answering.
"Jack's esca- run away."
"Again?" They both asked.
"It's different this time," Cricket said grimly. "He's gone through the Looking Glass."
Silence greeted that statement, broken only by the sounds of birds chirping as the sun began to peak over the mountaintops.
"The Queen would like to see you in the Throne Room, Ten, as soon as possible," the Nine of Clubs told them, after a moment. "Carpenter, you're to report to work and begin reviving Mad March with all due haste."
"Have you found his head yet?" Dad asked.
"No."
Dad heaved a sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Then there's no way I can bring him back 'in all due haste'. Bimolecular transdistropia is a delicate and complex process which takes time. If you don't have his head, it'll take me weeks to make a new one."
"Do you want to be the one to tell the Queen that?" Cricket asked.
"I'll be there in a minute," Jelly intervened, before things could decline further. "Thank you, Nine."
For a minute, she thought that he wouldn't recognize her dismissal, but after a moment, he gave a small bow with his hand pressed over his heart, and left.
"I don't know how," Dad started.
"You'll think of something," Jelly said. "You always do."
Dad shrugged. "Do you know what the Queen wants with you?"
"She wants to go over my proposal again, I expect," Jelly replied. She fiddled with the hem of her sleepshirt for a moment, realized what she was doing, and abruptly stopped. "I'm going to get dressed."
Cricket was waiting for her in the hall.
"Ooh, I warrant an escort," she joked as he fell into step beside her.
"Well, who knows what you'd get into if left on your own," he retorted, one corner of his mouth lifting slightly. "How have you been, lately?"
"Pretty well," Jelly said, neatly avoiding her father's declining health and her intent to betray everyone else in the Casino with a mental sidestep. "We're going to start up cross-training again soon."
"Yes, I heard. Which one is your deck in with?"
"The White Rabbit. And who are the bureaucrats facing?"
"Eggmen," Cricket sighed. "There's no way that will end well. Your father fights dirty."
"My father uses his brain," Jelly retorted, pressing the call button for the elevator.
"Your father's brain is twisted," Cricket shot back. "There is no excuse for Sleep-shooting flowers. None."
The elevator doors opened, revealing Dr. Dee and Dr. Dum. In unison, they grinned out at her and Cricket. She was just about to suggest the stairs when Cricket walked inside, giving her no choice but to follow.
"Of course," Cricket continued, in a slightly louder voice than usual as the doors slid shut. "You're not going to have a good time either. Agent White hates your spleen."
"And my spleen feels much the same way," Jelly replied, keeping her eyes straight ahead.
"Do they think if they ignore us, that we might ignore them, brother dear?" One of the Doctors asked.
"He's not going to go easy on you, or your deck, that's for sure," Cricket pointed out.
"I do believe that is the idea at work here, dearest brother." The other Doctor said.
"It's not supposed to be easy," Jelly told him. "It's supposed to point of problems in our tactics and routines."
"Delusions are such nasty things to break," the first Doctor replied.
"A challenging thing indeed, but necessary," the second Doctor agreed.
"We wouldn't want them to get in trouble, after all."
"And so much trouble comes out of clinging."
"To boards."
"And ladders"
"And daughters."
Jelly's hand curled into a fist, and with reflexes born of long association Cricket reached out and grabbed her by the wrist before she could do anything more. She struggled against it for a while, and then stopped as the elevator opened on the Throne Room's floor. She and Cricket walked out, his hand still on her wrist.
"I'd like to begin my apology by asking you to please not hit me," he said pleasantly, after the elevator had closed again.
"You pull something like that on me again and I'll more than just hit you," Jelly growled.
"I don't like letting them know I'm afraid," he explained.
"And I don't like being in an enclosed space with them," she shot back.
"Breathe," Cricket said, letting her hand go. "If you walk into the Throne Room looking that angry, the Queen will have your head just on principle."
"Yeah, I know," Jelly replied, trying to get herself back under control. Cricket gave her a mildly encouraging look, before his features shifted into being merely mild.
There were a set number of ways to deal with life in Court. The most common by far, used by almost every Diamond, Eggman, and Courtier, as well as roughly half of the other Suits, was to get steeped. If that didn't work for you, you could try Jack's method and run away: but unless you were the prince, she wouldn't recommend it: runners died in far greater quantities than they got away. You could also simply go mad, though you wouldn't be allowed to enjoy it unless you were already past retirement age and had plenty of children to look after you. And then there was the method of repression: just keep moving forward and try not to think about who you're stepping on too much.
Both she and Cricket had gone that way, though she couldn't help but feel that he was a lot better at it than she was.
"Better?" Cricket asked.
Jelly nodded, and straightened her blouse. "Let's not keep them waiting any longer."
The Throne Room was, as usual, full to brimming with Courtiers. The Trumps were seated at the table, sipping Tea from long-stemmed goblets. On the fringes of the room stood several men in white suits, the red insignia on their jackets marking them as Hearts rather than White Rabbits. There were also several Heart women and a few men clustered around in groups of three and four, dressed in elaborate costumes and tittering expectantly.
Somewhere in Wonderland's lawbook, she swore there was a rule that any woman who dealt regularly with the Queen was required to be at most half as clever as Her Majesty. The fact that she flew in the face of such a rule tended to inspire a lot more terror than it did pride.
"You!" The Queen bellowed as the door shut closed behind her. "You have been conspiring with my son. I know you saw him last night. You helped him escape! Off with her head!"
Case in point. Jelly mentally rolled her eyes and held out an arm so Cricket could drag her back to her holding cell.
"A thought, my sweetest," the King said hurriedly, freezing the Nine of Clubs with a look. He whispered in the Queen's ear.
"Well of course we shall," the Queen hissed back, not nearly as quiet as her husband. "Yes, yes of course, Winston, don't be so obvious."
She turned her attention back to Court. "Jellybean, Ten of Spades. What do you think of my son's disappearance?"
Jelly wasn't sure how she was meant to answer that. "Your Majesty?"
"It's a bit beyond his usual antics, don't you think?" The Queen stood, and walked towards her until she was uncomfortably close.
"It is outside his pattern," Jelly admitted. Then stopped and thought for a moment- there was something wrong here, something missing. She wasn't being told the whole story. "Do you suspect foul play? Could he have been kidnapped?"
"No." The Queen began to circle her, and Jelly fought the urge to break her stance and keep the other woman in her sights. "Nothing quite so crude. But my son is… impulsive. Rash. Weak willed. Easy to influence."
"You're afraid he might be acting at the behest of a Resistance member?" Jelly asked.
"I am not afraid!" The Queen roared.
Jelly started. "No, of course not, Your Majesty," she said quickly. "That was… a poor word choice, on my part. I apologize."
Thankfully, that seemed to mollify her, for she only sniffed and said. "You should."
She came around so that they were facing each other again. "I doubt he would realize if he were being manipulated by a Resistance spy," she continued. "I think he wouldn't bother to question anyone who helped him run away- which, of course leaves him open to further machinations. When you last appeared before me, you proposed a method to finding Resistance spies. I am giving you my royal permission to use that method."
Thank God. But before she could start with the requisite outpouring of gratitude, the Queen continued further. "Indeed, I am ordering you to begin applying your methods immediately. I expect you to have this issue resolved before the week is out."
What?
She snuck a quick look at the King, who looked back, stony-faced. "Thank you, Your Majesty," Jelly managed. "I'll get started right away."
"Of course you will," the Queen snarled. "Isn't that what I just said? Be gone!"
The Hearts opened the Throne Room doors and Jelly left.
Well, fuck. That had gone horribly right.
She'd go see the King before she left for the city, but she would, at best, walk out with an extension when she hadn't really wanted a deadline at all. But what was she expecting? You either act on the Queen's terms or you hid and prayed you weren't found. End of options. Even as the Ten of Spades she had no choices but what the Queen presented her with, knowingly or not.
She made it to her quarters, closed the door and then leaned against it, recent stress and two nights of poor sleep catching up with her. She closed her eyes for a moment, and thought. It was only her back-up plan that was pinched now. If she could win the Resistance over before the deadline it wouldn't matter. Hell, if she could get the Resistance to smuggle him out of the Casino before the deadline, it would be enough for her to work with. This wasn't the end of the world. It would be okay.
She opened her eyes and bent over to open her chest. She would need something that would pass as a civilian outfit: the closest thing she had was her party dress for state dinners. It was a pale blue thing, consisting of a tube top in the shape of two Spades and a long skirt with slits up to her thighs. Not the sort of outfit anyone would want to walk around the city in. That left her with her suits, which wouldn't do very much to disguise her as an ordinary citizen. She'd have to mix and match, at the very least.
She pulled out her barely-used larger briefcase from under the bed, fumbling a bit as the lack of space between the bed and the wall made getting it out difficult. She put in on the bed, and immediately put in her blue suede boots- they were absolutely not regulation, no matter how comfortable and hard wearing they were. Taking a second look at her choices with a more critical eye, she settled on a pair of grey trousers. She dug around the chest for a few minutes more, before deciding on a blue blouse that, if a bit frilly, was at least not marked with a Spade insignia. All of her old polo shirts from before she had attained an ace ranking were patterned with it, and most of her others had them on the buttons.
Besides, the blue brought out her eyes. It couldn't hurt for her to look pretty while she was selling herself.
Jackets posed something of a problem; even the ones she'd kept from her early days as a Spade displayed rank, and once she'd managed to become an ace they'd gained a giant spade on their backs as well. Eventually, she'd decided to go without- it might be chilly, but it was better than shouting her identity to all the world.
The next thing was weapons: switch blades that could be hidden up her sleeve, in her boot, and between her shoulder blades, and a gun for the small of her back. She'd bring her side arm and shoulder holster: no one would believe she left without them anyway.
She was just debating whether or not to try and bring a torch, a blanket, or other miscellany when there was a knock on the door. She hurriedly closed the briefcase and stuck it back under the bed before opening it.
It was Duchess.
"Ten," she said, less a statement and more an accusation. "You had an audience with the Queen this morning. I know you did. You're going after him, aren't you?"
It was… uncanny how much she sounded like the Queen these days.
"I'm on a special assignment, yes," Jelly said, not quite lying.
Duchess nodded to herself, and for a moment she looked young and lost. The moment passed quickly, however, and her default, arrogant look slipped back into place.
"I see."
She didn't quite push her way into Jelly's quarters, but it was a close thing. Jelly shrugged, and closed the door behind her, leaning back against it so as not to be invading the other woman's personal space more than necessary.
"While you are pursuing your special assignment, I would like you to keep in mind that as the prince's bride to be, I have a vested interest in his well being, and as the queen to be, I have the ability to make your life very, very difficult."
"Okay," Jelly agreed.
For a very long time, Duchess said nothing at all, her face rapidly cycling through different expressions until Jelly began to worry that she was having some sort of fit. She was just about to go running for a doctor when Duchess suddenly reached out and grabbed her by the hand.
"You have to keep him safe, Jelly" she implored. "I don't care what that entails. But someone needs to look out for him and I can't."
Jelly stared; Duchess broke down into tears.
"He won't even talk to me, and even if he did she's always watching and she always knows so I couldn't do anything at all without giving him away!"
Jelly sat down next to her and pulled her into a hug. "Duchess. Grace. It's okay. He'll be fine."
Duchess pulled back, looking shocked. "I- I'm sorry, Ten. I don't know what came over me."
Jelly stared at her, not entirely sure how to react. "Would you like me to tell him that you're worried about him, should I run into him?"
"No," Duchess replied apathetically. "No, just try to keep him in one piece, will you? It would be difficult to produce an heir if he was missing bits."
She rose to her feet and sashayed out of the room. Jelly stared after for a moment, the grabbed her briefcase and headed for the Internal Security office. Miscellany be damned; the sooner she was out of here the better.
The rest of what might very well be her last day as a Spade past quickly if not entirely without its oddities.
Sam had spoken up about something that wasn't routine for the first time Jelly could recall: he revealed that Jack had stolen a piece of jewelry before jumping through the Looking Glass, and as there was the risk, however slim, of his having doubled back, he wanted them to know that if any of their decks found him, they were to ask that he hand it over. And then force him to.
On that note, she went to pay a visit to the King, who was in an uncharacteristically ill temper. No, she would not have an extension, and as to her complaints that she did not have all the information, she had been told all she needed to know.
She was running short on time, but she raced back to her father's apartment and left him a note anyway. It might be a week before she saw him again; it might be more than a week. If this went really bad, she might never see him again, but she didn't think it would, and also didn't want him to worry about her in the meantime.
Then she caught a Scarab (barely) and went back into the city.
Work itself was a large blur of arrests, paperwork, and violent disregard for security cameras. Othello snarked, whined, and followed orders. Carlotta had somehow managed to get herself arrested and she had to arrange for her release and compensate her for her time. Shakina sent down forms for her validation and recommended that the station invest in dustpans for all the broken glass. The only truly notable happening was from Quigley, who came into her office with the news that his contact wanted to meet with her tonight at the Lobster Quadrille, and would come bearing orange tulips so she could tell who he was.
That left her in a bit of a conundrum; she was supposed to tutor Secunda again today, and she had wanted to keep that appointment, both to make up for her absence last time, and for the sessions she was about to miss. 'Tonight' was a fluid time, like most time was in Wonderland; it wouldn't be unreasonable for her to make her way to the Lobster Quadrille after her session with Secunda. She might even pick up more valuable information from the teen.
On the other hand, she didn't want to have her mysterious tulip man get fed up with waiting for her and close her window of opportunity. No, she'd have to play this safe. That meant going straight to the meeting place after work.
The Lobster Quadrille was a hole in a wall, but one with pretensions of class. It also seemed to have pretensions of being a dance club, though it was early enough that it had the potential of being salvaged in that regard.
She’d changed in the bathroom of a nearby, less pretentious hole, tucking her various weapons away on her person and switching out the suit on her back for the outfit in the briefcase. The ceiling tiles were removable; she slid the briefcase up between them and the floor above with more ease than she had getting it out from under her bed. After a moment's pause, she took off her EP and put it beside the case. If she needed her uniform or communicator for any reason, she put the odds at about even that they would still be here for her to pick up again.
Apparently she'd arrived just before the rush, because it wasn't too long before the club began to fill up. She ate dinner, and refused a surprising number of dance offers until she caught sight of a familiar straw porkpie and shock of dark brown hair. She was much more comfortable dancing with some random guy than making conversation with a Tea Shop owner as she waited for her opportunity to commit high treason.
Unfortunately, there was no good way to inform Hatter of this. He seemed to be dogging her steps, probably curious as to what she was doing out of uniform and in an illegal establishment, and even after she’d spread the rumor that he was an ex she'd broken up with badly and was trying to avoid, she saw a lot more of him than she would have liked.
A great deal of time later, when she needed a drink and her choice of dance partners had thinned out considerably, she'd asked for a private booth and hoped that she could hide from him there.
"You know," Hatter said conversationally as he clambered over the divider. "I could almost get the impression that you're avoiding me."
Jelly exercised a considerable amount of will power, and did not bang his head on the table.
"You're making me feel that I'm being stood up," he continued, pulling out a slightly crumpled bouquet of orange tulips from inside his jacket and holding them out to her.
Jelly stared at them. Then she looked at Hatter, who was wearing a decidedly smug expression. Then it clicked; he'd been there, yesterday, right where she'd been looking for Resistance agents, and she'd asked him about rehab.
"Son of a bitch!"
"Not a tulip person?" Hatter asked innocently. "I have to admit, my first thought was orchids, but they're out of season."
She hadn't even checked his alibi. Hell, she'd never checked his alibi. She ran a quick mental check of all the times she'd missed her mark and all the times he'd been 'in rehab'. There was a lot of overlap between the two groups.
"You-you joker!"
"And then I thought I could try the classic, and get you roses, but then I thought you must be sick of roses, otherwise you wouldn't be coming to me," Hatter continued, still looking far, far too pleased with himself.
Did he even drink Tea? He was a Tea Shop owner, so she'd kind of assumed that he did, but then again, she'd also assumed he wouldn't be doing things like recruiting Resistance agents out of her deck.
Ye gods. She'd been hustled.
"So I realize it's not what you were expecting," Hatter said, suddenly a bit more serious. Her eyes had drifted down to the bouquet, and she snapped them back up. "But I'd feel a lot better if you didn't just leave me holding these."
Jelly took the bouquet.
"Lovely," Hatter said. "By the way, I like the blouse."
"Thanks," Jelly replied. "Nice hat."
"It's my absolute favorite," Hatter told her.
Jelly placed the flowers in her lap and leaned forwards. "I take it Quigley told you what I want out of this arrangement?"
"One ticket to Oysterland, no White Rabbit involved?" Hatter said, leaning forwards as well until they were almost touching. "It's a high price. But I know a guy who knows a guy. And the stuff you're carrying around in your noggin should just about cover it."
"You know a guy who knows a guy?" Jelly repeated.
"Yes," Hatter said. "Would you like to meet him? He doesn't get out much, so it'd be a bit of a walk in the dark."
"Oh stop, you're making me nostalgic for my days on a beat," Jelly replied, standing up, flowers in hand.
"Follow me, then," Hatter said, standing as well. He offered her his arm, and she gave him her hand, and they made their way out into the night, to the complete bewilderment of roughly half the men in the club.