War of the Cards Page 11

  “I promise you this. I have come to rule over you not with fear, but with patience and strength. I would ask that you give me your loyalty, to rebuild this city, to make a better Wonderland for all of us and our neighbors, the Yurkei. They are not the people you have been taught to fear, but rather a peaceful and generous race. . . .” Dinah cringed, wishing for a moment that Mundoo was not holding the king’s disembodied head beside her.

  “I will strive for peace and commerce with our neighbors, all of them! The Yurkei have much to teach us, and as an act of good faith, when this day is done they will leave the palace walls and reside outside on the Wonderland Plains until our work and treaties here are done.”

  Dinah looked up and saw Sir Gorrann watching her silently, his expression bursting with pride, his eyes blurred with tears. Dinah’s own voice caught in her throat as she raised a bloody hand above her head. She could feel it. The crowd was hers.

  “I vow to you this day that I will be the ruler that the King of Hearts never was. I vow to you that criminals will have their day in court before being shut away in the Black Towers. I vow that people who speak up about injustice will not simply disappear. If we are ever attacked again, I vow that I will open the palace for your protection. And when I am done making sure that this palace and city are put back to their former glory, I swear as the daughter of Davianna, the Queen of Hearts, that I will empty the Black Towers. The evil that rots this palace from below will be flushed out and we will look to a time when Wonderland enters a peaceful period of prosperity. Will you join me?”

  The crowd erupted in wild, tear-filled cheers.

  Dinah raised her chin. “Release her.”

  The executioner helped Vittiore up from the white marble block. Her face was tearstained and weary. She fell at Dinah’s feet and kissed them, as her blond hair washed around Dinah’s boots.

  “Thank you, thank you, you are my queen, you are my queen.”

  Dinah turned away from Vittiore and walked swiftly down the platform steps toward the crowd. Her new subjects reached out for her, begging to touch her hands, her face, her feet. She smiled at each one of them, her bloodied hands brushing many, her cracked lips gracing the heads of plump babies, now safe. A shower of roses, plucked from the bushes around them, fell around her like rain.

  “All hail the Queen of Hearts! All hail the Queen of Hearts!”

  Dinah shut her eyes and let the glory sweep over her. For just a moment, the world was hers. Thank the gods that humans are so fickle. Cheshire had been right about everything. By granting Vittiore mercy, she had won the people. Our plan worked.

  Cheshire marched up beside her. “Your Grace. My Queen. We should get you cleaned up before you begin restoring order. A queen shouldn’t be covered with such filth. More important, your wounds need tending.”

  “I have one last thing to do first,” she answered, walking quickly now so that Cheshire ran to keep up.

  “May I be of assistance?” he asked.

  “No.”

  This was something she needed to do alone.

  Dinah flung open the doors to the Black Towers, letting light flood into the darkness. This time, she would not be sneaking in through the underground tunnels. The towers were barely manned; a few nervous Clubs had been left to linger behind. News traveled fast in Wonderland, and they bowed to her as she entered. She grabbed one and pushed him up against the wall.

  “Where is he?” she hissed. The guard pointed to the top of the tower, and Dinah ran faster than she had run through the castle, spiraling up and up and up until she was dizzy and her breathing labored. Up one circle and then up one more, she climbed her way up through the levels of the hive, an unending spiral that reeked of death. The highest-ranking Club in the Towers tried to keep up with her, but he was several floors below her before long. Dirty hands, some twisted with slimy black roots, reached out for her as she passed their cells. Soon, she thought, soon I will come back for all of you.

  “It’s the queen! It’s the Queen of Hearts!” one yelled, and soon the whole prison was filled with catcalls and the cheers of the insane.

  Dinah reached the top level. It was tiny, barely ten feet across and black as night. There was a padlock around some iron bars: a new silver padlock, perfect for a heart-shaped key. Dinah yanked at the doors, desperate. They clanged loudly as she shook them. She screamed at the guard.

  “Unlock this door or I swear I will have your head!”

  The Club fumbled with the keys, dropping them twice on the grime-covered floor before Dinah grabbed them from his hand. Finally, she found the heart-shaped key and pushed it inside the lock, flinging wide the cell doors. She saw the outline of a body, curled over on a bench. A gnarled beard and a knotty spine rose and fell with each breath.

  He was much thinner than she remembered. His face was hidden by the dark, but his voice was so familiar—warm and loving.

  “Who’s there?” it called out. “Who is it? I can’t see!”

  Dinah walked forward and motioned for the guard to bring the lantern over. The prisoner was gaunt, with black circles under his eyes, and the lean look of hunger was etched into his cheeks. His hands shook as he covered his eyes.

  “Who is it? Please, no more, I beg of you!”

  She was silent for a moment and then bent down and touched his face gently with the palm of her hand. “Harris?”

  A cry escaped his lips. “Dinah?” He reached out to touch her bruised face, her blood-soaked hair.

  She released a sob. “I’m here.” She took his dear, withered old face in her hands and looked upon it with love. “I am queen now, and you will never set foot in this tower again, old friend.”

  Harris cried out again and pressed his cracked lips against her palms. “My child, I knew you were alive. I could feel it! The roots told me that you were alive! They whispered it to me when I slept. I saw you in my dreams. I saw you in a field of mushrooms, saw you take the shape of a crane. . . .”

  She did not doubt it for a second. He raised his eyes to hers, and Dinah saw a glimpse of the old Harris, jovial and gay, staring back at her in rapturous joy. She took his arm in hers.

  “Will you give me one honor?” he whispered.

  “Anything,” she replied.

  “Step away from me.”

  Dinah stepped back in confusion and Harris very slowly pushed himself up from the stone bench. He stumbled twice, and Dinah reached out to catch him. His legs and chest shook with the effort of standing, but he batted her hands away.

  “Do not help me, child!” he said sternly.

  Dinah moved away from him, unsure of what to do. Harris gave her a smile with blackened teeth.

  “I have been waiting to do this since I pulled you screaming from your mother’s womb. Wild and angry even then.” He paused. “Perfect to me, even then.” With a happy sob, he tenderly bowed before her. “My queen. How may I serve you?”

  His legs collapsed beneath him, and Dinah eased him back onto the stone bench. He placed his gentle hand on her head, his voice a lullaby that she had dearly missed.

  “Be at peace, my dear. Rest finally.”

  Dinah then bent her face into his lap and wept unabashedly for all she had seen and done.

  Eleven

  Dinah looked at herself in the gilded mirror, preparing for the coronation that would crown her queen. She frowned at the thought. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had killed the king, and yet it had only been four days since the end of the war. The barrage of events that had followed had occurred with such urgency that time had passed quickly.

  As soon as peace had been declared and the fighting stopped, Dinah had sent the Yurkei just outside the palace walls to await their release back to Hu-Yuhar. Mundoo remained in the palace, to make sure that Dinah kept her promises and to see her through the coronation, just in case some faction of leftover Cards attempted a revolt.

  It was all for naught—there was not a whisper of discontent. The Yurkei and the Spades outnumbered the Car
ds two to one, and any talk of insurgency would have been a swift walk down the road to death.

  Dinah was amazed at and grateful for how quickly Cheshire was able to organize everything—laws, ordinances, titles, and land were all distributed within two days of Dinah declaring herself queen. The result was a sigh of relief from both the people and the Yurkei, who longed to return to their peaceful lives at Hu-Yuhar. Part of Dinah wished she could go with them, live out her life at Hu-Yuhar under the watchful eye of the cranes and Mundoo, who was the kind of leader that Dinah aspired to be. It wouldn’t be the same without Bah-kan, though, and Dinah knew that her soul belonged here, in the palace.

  She clutched her hands together, feeling her nerves getting the better of her. Overthrow and kill a king? Fine.

  Stand in front of all her new subjects in a dress? Terrifying.

  The entirety of Wonderland proper had been invited to the coronation. People stretched out through the Great Hall and into the hallways and stairwells of Wonderland Palace. The high-born members of the court and the low farmhands, the famous and the decorated, spilled out into the courtyard. All longed to see the Queen of Hearts, who had gone from an embodiment of terror to the hero of the people. Their fickle hearts made Dinah uneasy, but Cheshire had explained their motivations away as he helped prepare her for the coronation.

  She turned back to him now as he sat in the queen’s reading chair across the room, his dazzling new purple cloak a burst of color against the soft brown leather. He lazily twirled his dagger in his right hand.

  Dinah’s bedroom was in shambles, but pieces of her old life remained: a trinket here, a music box or book there. Eventually, these chambers would be glorious, but right now they were little more than a makeshift dressing room.

  “Are you listening, Your Majesty?”

  Dinah turned back. “Yes. I’m just . . . thinking.”

  Cheshire cleared his throat and continued on with his lecture about the coronation. “Remember this. Peasants and regular townspeople care not for the business of kings and queens. They long for stability above all. Unless your war killed one of their family members, in which case you will probably be their sworn enemy forever, don’t worry about their loyalty. These people want to tend to their farms, have their babies, eat their tarts, and live in peace. To them now, you are a fascinating woman, a source of rich gossip, and they want nothing more than to see you take the throne. The masses love to see a leader brought low, and you have given them that. Now they simply wish to discuss what dress you wear, what you say, what you eat, what you do.”

  Cheshire stood and handed her a short speech on a rolled scroll.

  “This should rouse them sufficiently after the coronation is over. I’ll give you a minute to get dressed.”

  As he walked out, the doors to Dinah’s airy chambers burst open, and three maids struggled in with an enormous dress wrapped delicately in bright purple linen. Dinah looked at the dress and sighed. She already missed her boots, her tunic, and her wool pants. The people expected a queen to dress a certain way and so she would, but she would never throw away the muddy, bloody boots that sat beside her bed. Those were the boots that had walked the vast reaches of Wonderland, and the blood crusted on their sides had come at a great cost.

  Vittiore ducked her blond head inside the room and gave Dinah a timid smile. With reluctance, Dinah had hired Vittiore as her lady-in-waiting, a more suitable post for a girl born on the Western Slope. This was at the urging of Wardley, who had taken pity on the skinny waif. People were drawn to her glow the way insects buzzed around a wilting flower. Dinah could barely understand it, but she hesitantly allowed Vittiore to serve her. There were some things only they shared: both had been manipulated by the king. He had killed both of their mothers. It bonded them without words.

  Vittiore motioned silently for the maids to hang Dinah’s dress by the window. The maids bowed to Dinah, who gave them a gentle nod before letting them scuttle out of her vast chamber. Only Ki-ershan, Vittiore, and Dinah remained.

  Ki-ershan, who had been inseparable from Dinah since the battle, stood by the door at the far side of the room. He had exchanged his loincloth for a tunic bearing Dinah’s seal, but the white stripes that ran from his blue eyes to the end of his feet remained. Ki-ershan was everything she had ever wanted in a guard—he was crafty and intuitive, and knew what she needed before she did. He sensed danger before it was present and had already provided her with wise counsel. He helped Dinah look over treaties and ledgers in her room, well after the rest of Wonderland had turned to their pillows.

  Vittiore bowed her head. “We’re ready, Your Majesty.”

  Ki-ershan turned his head.

  With a grimace, Dinah stepped out of her dressing gown and stood naked before the mirror, staring at herself. Her lean, muscular form was so different from the stout and soft body she had left behind. So many scars, she thought as her black eyes took in the damaged form before her. One large scar ran across the back of her shoulder where Mundoo had “reminded” her of his power. A jagged wound crossed her palm where she had pulled a bone spike out of Morte’s leg. It had never healed correctly. Neither had her two fingers, which were still a bit crooked. The wide gash across her chin remained, as well as the wound on her head, bruised, sore, and still occasionally leaking. A gift from the King of Hearts.

  Vittiore began gently taping a linen wrap over her torso. Cheshire believed Dinah had cracked a rib when the Club had pushed her off Morte. She winced. It was tender to the touch.

  “Be careful,” murmured Vittiore, touching Dinah’s side gently, her small hand just below Dinah’s breast. “You’re still healing.”

  Dinah looked at her reflection as Vittiore stood next to her, fussing over her rib. Vittiore was wearing a simple, pale-pink dress, and yet she radiated light. It was like standing next to a doll, next to something unreal and holy. Next to her, Dinah felt like a living wound, compressed into one compact form. Still, she allowed a smile to stretch across her face. She had earned these scars, and she was queen after all of it.

  I would choose victory over beauty any day.

  She sat still as Vittiore applied rouge to her face and drew a tiny heart underneath her right eye—a symbol of her loyalty to the Cards.

  “Draw another one,” Dinah ordered, pointing to her other eye. “Put the Spade symbol here.”

  “Are you sure, Your Majesty?”

  “Yes. I will show the people that Starey Belft did not die in vain.”

  Vittiore cupped her tiny hand under Dinah’s chin, lifting it ever so slightly. Her fingers trembling, she drew the tiny Spade symbol with a black charcoal pencil. Her blue eyes, the color of an early morning sea, looked with genuine care upon Dinah’s face. Loving Vittiore as a sister might be easier than Dinah had originally thought. Vittiore dashed bright red lipstick across Dinah’s heart mouth.

  “All right, we’re done. Let’s get your dress on.”

  With a gasp, Vittiore lifted Dinah’s coronation gown out of its purple linen wrap and laid it on the bed. Fifty seamstresses, with a fair wage from the queen’s new discretionary fund, had stitched this dress together in three days. Dinah refused to wear the gown that had adorned Vittiore, and so a new coronation dress had been designed by Cheshire, a man of seemingly endless talents. The bottom of the dress was bone white, decorated with thousands of tiny red hearts. The tip of each red heart collided with the top of another, and so the gown resembled a spider web of red hearts, each dotted with a single tiny ruby. The top of the gown was bloodred, and made to cinch perfectly to Dinah’s figure. The signs of the Cards—Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades—ran across the bustline before it arched up over Dinah’s shoulders. The back of the bodice was made of just the red heart webbing, showing a scandalous amount of Dinah’s shoulders and lower back. The base of the skirt was dusted in a shimmering white, so that when Dinah walked up the aisle, the fabric would sparkle and dance. She would look as if she were walking on air.

  Dinah stepped del
icately into the dress as Vittiore raised it up over her shoulders. Dinah felt all the air in the room get sucked away as Vittiore began binding the corset that pressed hard against Dinah’s broken rib. She bit down on her lip.

  “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty,” whispered Vittiore. “I can loosen it if you desire.”

  “No.”

  Vittiore’s speech faded into hazy mumbling as Dinah stared at herself in the mirror, encouraged by what she saw. For a moment, Dinah looked just like her mother.

  “We must go, Your Majesty. Your escort is ready and the walk is quite long.”

  Dinah let a deep breath of air fill her chest, which pressed painfully into her corset. She winced. The dress was so heavy that she was having a hard time standing in it. Vittiore laid her hand gently on Dinah’s side and tucked a stray lock of Dinah’s hair back into place.

  “Breathe, but not too deeply. Don’t injure your rib further.”

  Dinah gave a nod and turned away from her. “I’m ready.”

  “You look like a queen,” the girl said softly.

  Dinah walked alone through the hallway, turned the corner, and gasped.

  At the end of the long corridor, which shimmered with the light of hundreds of pink torches, Sir Gorrann waited, dressed in his finest Spade uniform, all polished and clean. He was almost unrecognizable. The Spade bowed deeply when she approached. The new commander of the Cards took Dinah’s free arm.

  “I barely recognize you, sir.”

  He gave a deep laugh. “And yeh as well. That dress probably weighs more than yeh do. It’s honestly a bit ridiculous.”

  Dinah gave his arm a squeeze. “I like it. I look like my mother.”

  The Spade kept his eyes trained straight ahead as they walked through the stone corridors of the palace, the filtered red light of the heart windows beaming over their bright faces.

  “Dinah, sometimes I forget how young yeh are still. Yeh always thought yeh would share the throne with yer father, at least until yeh were married. Yeh were never supposed to rule alone.”