Free Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor Page A

and—
    Whoomp!

C HAPTER 9
    A TOP THE second-highest peak in the Snark Mountains, at a military base overlooking the Valley of Mushrooms, card soldiers armed themselves with AD52 projectile-decks, fortified the grounds with orb cannons and whipsnake grenade launchers. The latest communication from Doppelgänger’s headquarters had informed them that there was no discernible pattern to the attacks on other outposts, no strategic principle by which the general could deduce which base would next come under siege.
    Seven other outposts had already been destroyed; the card soldiers had no intention of becoming the eighth. They cautiously walked patrols, stood their lines. Yet there was no sign of Glass Eyes or anyone else, no sign of life whatsoever unless they counted the wind, the scudding clouds. They were remote enough from civilization that, if not for the shadow cast over them by Talon’s Point to remind them where they were, they might have supposed themselves the lone community in the world, isolate in the vast, unpopulated upper reaches of the sky.
    Talon’s Point was the highest peak in the queendom and thought to be unreachable by ordinary means, the winds too fierce even for the two-person crafts operated by Wondertropolis sightseeing firms. But unbeknownst to the nearby card soldiers, it was here, on the only upsurge of land closer to the heavens than they, that an extraordinary Wonderlander had taken up residence, one who had wanted to utterly remove himself from his responsibilities, to wallow in the fact that he was not first and foremost a Milliner, but a man. He had fought against this for so long, struggled to subordinate every impulse, every desire, to the dictates of Millinery duty. It had been futile to try. He knew that now.
    He had helped Princess Alyss ascend to her rightful place on Wonderland’s throne and been granted leave. Packing only enough provisions to last the journey, planning to forage for food on the lower parts of the mountain as needed, he came to Talon’s Point, wanting time and space and solitude to mourn the loss of Weaver, a woman he loved more than he had realized. Completely severed from his responsibilities for the first time in his life, he unburdened himself of his Millinery backpack, took off the long, battle-scarred coat that had been his uniform for as long as he could remember. He unhooked his Millinery belt and unlocked the cuffs that held his wrist-blades in place. He removed his top hat last, sensing its reluctance in the suction-like hold that made it slightly more difficult to lift from his head. He arranged all of his Millinery gear in a neat pile and set it aside, doubtful he would use any of it again.
    Far from the bustlings of Heart Palace yet within easy sight of Alyss’ imaginative powers if she but knew where to direct them, the legendary Hatter Madigan—unflinching in combat, role model of the duty-bound stoic for all those born to the Millinery, was allowing himself to feel .
    Â 
    Long before, he had chosen Talon’s Point for his intermittent rendezvous with Weaver because it was presumed to be unreachable. Untrodden by Wonderlander and Boarderlander alike, it would be safe from trespassers.
    He’d made the first visit alone—by means of blades pulled from his backpack, scaled the sheer cliff that towered up to the summit of Talon’s Point, where he discovered a ridge wide enough to support a smail-transport and, in an outcropping of ice-glazed rock, a cave that could comfortably accommodate two. Weaver, the Millinery’s sole civilian employee, would never be able to scale the cliff, he knew, so over the course of several following visits, he’d used his wrist-blades to bore an upsloping tunnel from the cliff’s base to the cave at the summit, pressing his whirring blades into the mountain, his entire body vibrating with the friction as they churned bedrock to pebbles and flinty dust.
    He had brought