War of the Cards Read online

  That following winter was the worst winter that Wonderland had ever seen. Thousands of people froze to death in their houses. Gray corpses littered the street and birds fell from their nests with ice-covered chicks hidden under their wings. Crops had frozen on the vine, and hunger was as widespread as the silent panic. Pink snow covered the palace, burying the doors beneath massive drifts that blew from courtyard to courtyard. Just when it seemed the kingdom could survive no longer, warm summer winds blew down from the Western Slope, thawing the snow and ice, and leaving all of Wonderland to dig themselves out.

  Harris had been wrong. The Sky Curtain hadn’t been a gift.

  It was a warning.

  Dinah pushed against the body on top of her, recognizing his smell immediately—a smell like cream and leaves and horse.

  “Wardley, get off me!”

  “No.”

  She realized in that moment that she would rather die by whatever split the sky than be this close to the man she could never have. It was torture, worse than anything they could ever do to her in the Black Towers. Her voice was muffled as he pushed her head into the dirt. “Get off. It’s an order.”

  He stayed still. Finally she pulled the dagger out of her boot and pressed the tip of it gently against his stomach.

  “Get off.” She felt his shoulders sag in defeat.

  “Dinah . . .”

  She crawled out from underneath him and shakily got to her feet. She couldn’t see the Yurkei anymore. They were cut off from her, divided by the Sky Curtain.

  She gasped. It couldn’t be. “No.” She took a step closer.

  Stretching down from the stars, the midnight-blue curtain divided the line between Yurkei and Spade. It was perhaps a mile across and made of the night sky. It had swallowed the Yurkei’s arrows and the Spade’s ax. It rippled in the wind, like a thick fabric left in front of an open window. Pulled from the sky and cascading down to earth, it brushed the ground in front of Dinah’s feet. It gave the slightest tremor as Dinah came near it, as if it recognized her. She could see her reflection in its glossy surface, while at the same time staring deep into its unfathomable and ancient depths. Within its rippling body, stars blinked back at her, so close that she could touch them. A physical piece of the sky brushed the earth. It was a void, the sky and the heavens all at once, and it was draped at her feet, preventing her two armies from destroying each other.

  Beside her, Cheshire was getting to his feet, his always-confident face unmasked with complete disbelief. Starey Belft’s mouth was hanging open as she approached him.

  “It’s not the king!” he yelled out, before turning toward the Spades, who had obviously assumed the same. They dropped their weapons in awe. “It’s”—he paused and lowered his voice to an awed whisper—“it’s something I believed I would never see again.” As Dinah raised her eyes, her sword lowered.

  “Sweet gods,” she whispered.

  The men stayed where they were, rightly terrified of the phenomenon happening in front of them.

  Dinah moved forward, fascinated. Somehow, she knew it had come for her.

  She stood in front of it now, equally terrified by its godlike presence and seduced by its beauty. Her eyes filled with tears as she wished that Harris could be here, to see the thing that had so touched his heart years ago.

  A small thistle by Dinah’s feet blew in the curtain’s soft wind. Celestial bodies spun and moved inside the shifting cloak, their depths unfathomable and ancient. There was no doubt that all of Wonderland could see it, such was its height. The king, wherever he was, was surely looking out at it. It made Dinah glad. She walked closer, taking in its incredible beauty. All sound around her was sucked out of the air, so that the only thing she heard was the slight snapping of the curtain, like a small flag tossed in a breeze.

  Far off, someone was screaming, but it was as if they were underwater. “Dinah! Stop! Don’t get too close to it!”

  She turned around and saw Cheshire running toward her, his purple cape flapping around him. He held his hand out, waving for her to step back. Sir Gorrann was behind him, hollering swear words at her in two different languages, looking furious, as always. The Spades all stared up at the curtain, their faces contorted with fear and amazement. She smiled. Silly men.

  Her eyes followed the dirt back to Wardley, who was sitting on the ground next to Corning, his face pale as he stared at her.

  “Don’t . . . Dinah.” He shook his head softly, but Dinah had already turned away.

  She dropped her sword and stepped up to the curtain. Though she couldn’t explain it, she knew that she had nothing to fear. Reaching out a steady hand, she dipped her fingers into the curtain. They disappeared for a moment and then they were on the other side, weightless. She turned her hand, feeling everything and nothing. A circular constellation of stars whirled in front of her, just beyond her reach. Time seemed to slow. She felt Cheshire’s hand on the back of her cloak, pulling her away from the curtain. She reached up and undid the feather-shaped clasp around her neck. The cloak fell away from her body, and Dinah stepped inside.

  Three

  A deep pool of ink encompassed her entire body, only the ink was weightless. As her hands trailed inside it, deep grooves appeared where her fingers had been, lighting up with tiny stars. Constellations swirled around her, and Dinah knew at once everything inside her was made of the same stuff as the stars, that she was light and life and also darkness, capable of swallowing everything around her.

  Her feet tipped over her head, and she was yanked upside down, her hair falling away from her face as she swirled in the sky. She kicked a few times before pulling herself hand over hand so that she was right side up—or was she? It was hard to tell. Either way, she was climbing, higher or perhaps lower, deeper into the night sky.

  As she made her way up—or down?—something started happening to the stars around her. There was another crack, and Dinah turned her head to see where it had come from, but there was only the inky blackness and the stars. One after another, the stars plummeted down past Dinah in a shower of sprightly light, each one dancing in their unique constellations. She blinked as everything around her lit up. The inky black shifted to a blinding white light. Effortless beauty tumbled all around her. Her heart felt impenetrable, as if the stars themselves were stitching her wounds closed, wounds shaped by wanting what she could not have.

  She understood at once why the curtain had come; it was a warning and a gift. It was a warning of the war that would bring death to so many. The curtain was a warning to those who didn’t know that their fates would be forever altered by her fury. It was a gift in that it had bought her a few moments to get her army under control.

  Not that it mattered, since she had decided to stay here in this weightless, twinkling plane. She would close her eyes, just for a minute, be free from the pain, just for now.

  Something yanked hard at her stomach, and she was pulled backward out of the spinning stars, out of the thick night. Her fingers left streaks of light in the watery black. She flopped backward out of the Sky Curtain and landed hard on the rocky ground below.

  “Ow!” she yelped. She tried to stand up, but there was a solid weight pressing down on her chest, so heavy she felt as though her ribs were cracking.

  When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at a dozen ivory spikes, some crusted with dried blood, others so shiny that they reflected her terrified eyes. Morte peered down at her, his massive head inches away from hers. Steam hissed angrily out of his nostrils, singeing the ends of her hair. His lips curled back, and for a moment Dinah thought he might eat her. Instead, a piece of white fabric fell from his lips, landing on her chest. She looked at the fabric. It was from her shirt. Morte had pulled her out of the Sky Curtain.

  “I’m here. I’m here,” she breathed, reassuring herself and reassuring him.

  Cheshire knelt beside her. “Are you all right?”

  Dinah looked up at Cheshire, then Morte, who gave a huff and pulled up his
massive hoof before bringing it down hard beside her head, a deadly serious reprimand. The ground beneath it cracked under his colossal weight.

  Dinah sat up. “I’m fine.”

  Cheshire stood up with a sigh and smoothed his purple cloak, readjusting his brooch. “She’s fine,” he muttered to himself. “She’ll be the death of me, but she’s fine.” Then, with a raised eyebrow, he turned and walked away from Dinah.

  Sir Gorrann looked at Dinah with fascination. “How did you know to go inside it?”

  Dinah shook her head. She couldn’t explain. “I just did. How long was I in there?”

  Sir Gorrann rubbed his beard. “’Bout a minute’s time. We could all see yeh floating there, turning up and down, but it was obvious you couldn’t see us.” He tilted his head. “What was it like?”

  Dinah couldn’t explain it, and when she tried, she found the words all tangled on her tongue. “It was nothing. It was . . . like being free.”

  She was interrupted by a howl of vicious wind that ripped down from the Sky Curtain, so powerful that it almost blew Sir Gorrann off his feet. The wind ceased, and the curtain stood still for a moment before a single star at the top began falling, cartwheeling through the curtain, hitting other stars on its way down. All the stars began to fall, each one colliding with others in burst after burst of green and yellow light. Everything inside the curtain was falling into brilliant destruction, mirrors of light and swirling blackness appearing at random. Finally, the last star fell, a wispy burst of thin light dropping straight down, as if bent on hurtling itself to its doom. The star disappeared beyond the bottom of the curtain, and then the curtain vanished, as quickly as it came, flickering out like a dying flame.

  Dinah looked across the grass, happy to see that the Yurkei were still there, except now they were kneeling, their foreheads pressed against the dirt. Their horses went mad around them. The Spades were either lying or kneeling on the ground. Some covered their heads in fear, some pressed their hands together in prayer, and yet others boasted giddy smiles on their faces.

  Sir Gorrann looked at Dinah with amazement. “I believe you’ve just made yourself a god.”

  The funeral pyre sparked to life again, gentle crackling sounds filling the air. Smoke began to rise.

  “Incredible,” breathed Wardley. Dinah closed her eyes at the sound of his voice, at once a balm and a poison.

  Yur-Jee and Ki-ershan burst forward from where the curtain had been and practically smothered Dinah, checking her hair and body for wounds.

  “I’m all right!” she snapped, gently patting Ki-ershan’s arm. She laughed when she saw his bow and arrow drawn. “Did you try to kill it?” Then she noticed a huge pile of arrows on the ground about twenty feet away, on the other side of where the curtain had been. He had indeed. The Yurkei guard’s commitment to her life never failed to move her.

  The Spades began shouting to each other about what they had just seen.

  “Oh gods, just shut it already, you filthy animals! Go to yer tents and stay there!” screamed Starey Belft, reasserting his role as a fearsome Spade commander.

  After a moment’s pause, the Spades silently obeyed, all anger at the Yurkei defused. The two men who had charged the Yurkei camp left their axes in the dirt and turned away, their heads hanging in shame.

  After his troops were in their tents, Starey Belft walked up beside his queen. “What in the bloody hell was that? You’re quite the brave one, aren’t yeh? Should we call you the Sky Queen?”

  He reached his hand down to help Dinah to her feet. It was the first time that he’d truly spoken to her as if she was an equal. She hid her smile by turning away from him.

  “Just queen will be fine.”

  The Spade commander grinned.

  With one hand, Dinah reached up for Morte, who lifted his hoof to accommodate her. She slung herself up on his high back, feeling his massive muscles settling themselves against her body. She looked down at her men.

  Sir Gorrann’s eyes tracked her movement, riveted by his emboldened leader. “What do you think it meant?”

  “It was a warning.”

  “A warning about what?”

  Dinah sat very still. “It was a warning to us, but also about us. War is inevitable.”

  Sir Gorrann looked out at the Yurkei warriors, still on their knees. The Spades had no idea how close they had come to total obliteration. “They should be warned, just as long as we can keep from killing each other.”

  Later that evening, as the rest of her army slept, Dinah sharpened her sword beside a fire. A shower of sparks flew down from the blade as she struck it with a rock. Over her shoulder, she felt the creeping presence of someone watching her.

  “Hello, Cheshire.”

  “Hello, daughter.” Cheshire turned to Ki-ershan, standing a few feet away from Dinah, so still that he could have been mistaken for a tree in the darkness. “I need a few moments with the queen.”

  Dinah nodded to Ki-ershan, who took maybe twenty steps away from them, his glowing blue eyes still visible in the dark night.

  Cheshire snickered. “I’ll say one thing for the Yurkei, they are quite persistent.” He sat down, fanning out his purple cloak so that she’d have a clean and dry spot on the log beside him.

  Dinah looked down at the ground while he made himself comfortable. She still wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this man: her father, and yet not at all her father.

  “We almost lost the battle today.”

  “I know.” She blinked and lowered her voice. “I know.”

  “The Sky Curtain must mean that the gods want us to be successful!” he crowed. Then his voice sank back to its normal slithering tone. “Or it wants to save us for destruction at the hands of the king.” He shook his head. “This is why I don’t believe in the gods.”

  Dinah looked up. “I don’t think it was either of those. I don’t know what it meant, I just know how it felt.” It felt like death and life. “Either way, it’s probably the last beautiful thing we will see for a long time.”

  He nodded thoughtfully before lowering his face so that it was next to hers. His voice, for once, was gentle. “I watch you, Dinah. I’ve watched you all my life. I see the dark circles under your eyes. I see the tears you wipe away when you think no one is watching. I see that you are broken.” He rested his long fingers on either side of her face. “I know that he rejected you.”

  Dinah turned away, trying to keep control of her quavering voice. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  Cheshire’s lips pulled back on his lean face, revealing those hungry white teeth that had so scared her as a child. His grin was wide—wide enough to swallow all of Wonderland. “Don’t lie to me, Dinah. After all this time, don’t you think I know my own daughter? I can read you like a book.” He tucked a piece of her short black hair behind her ear. “My favorite book. A book filled with so much possibility and fire.”

  She looked away. She much preferred the scheming, genius Cheshire to the kind, fatherly Cheshire. It was obviously quite unnatural for him. Her patient smile faded as her fingertips brushed the tip of her sword. She stuck the tip of the blade into the fire and pulled it out. Its outer ridge glowed orange in the darkness.

  “It turns out I have no part to play in Wardley’s book. His feelings for me haven’t changed. Not since we were children,” she whispered finally.

  “What has changed in you is the only thing that matters,” he said firmly.

  Dinah thought about that for a moment. “I’m so angry that he doesn’t love me. I’m angry at him, angry at everyone,” she whispered. “From when I wake up to the time I close my eyes, it’s like a poison underneath my skin. When I see him, I see—” She stopped.

  Cheshire leaned over her. “What? What do you see?”

  Dinah raised her eyes to his face. “I see rivers of blood,” she whispered. Cheshire’s face didn’t change to the disgusted look that she had been expecting. Instead, a small smile spread across his face.
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br />   “Good,” he hissed back.

  “Good?” Dinah shook her head. “No, that’s insanity. Maybe I’m just as crazy as my brother.”

  “You are nothing like your brother,” snapped Cheshire. “He was mad and you are brilliant.”

  “But the fury . . .”

  Cheshire pressed a long fingernail against her heart. “Take that anger, and use it. Use it for battle, use it to rule. Look how you subdued the captain of the Spades today! This anger is a gift, meant to keep you hard. Instead of suppressing it, embrace it. Let it fill your body, your mind, and your heart. It will be your best friend when none are there. Anger is righteousness, it is power, it has made kingdoms and heroes. Without anger, there is no passion, no life.”

  Dinah sputtered, “But I can’t always control it.”

  Cheshire raised both of his eyebrows, his midnight eyes glittering dangerously in the firelight. “Then don’t.”

  “Once I’m queen . . .”

  “Once you are queen, you can deal with Wardley however you see fit. You can marry him, you can kill him, you can make him your boudoir slave.”

  Dinah made a disgusted sound, but Cheshire continued. “First, you have ten thousand Cards to get through, and a king who wants to see your head mounted outside the gates. Do you not think your anger will serve you well in battle?”

  Dinah saw her sword cutting through Card after Card, heart after heart. The excitement of it made the hairs on her arms stand up. If Mundoo knew about her bloodlust . . . She suddenly didn’t feel like talking anymore.

  “Thank you, Cheshire. I think I’ll try to get some sleep now.”

  Her father stood to leave before looking down at her, his figure impassive in the waning flames. “Dinah, your heart is broken, and it will hurt and fester for years as you yearn for what you cannot have. I know the pain well. Still, you are charged with ruling a nation and uniting a people. These burdens are too heavy for anyone to carry without a fire burning inside of them. Don’t try to suppress your beautiful, unruly, angered heart. Let it empower you.”