Playing Hearts (9 page)

I came out, gasping, in a
small decorative pool in the painter’s marbled hall. Behind me, I heard
footsteps echoing, and looked over my shoulder to see a servant heading for the
front door. It was too late to save him: he was already opening the door as I
splashed out of the pool. So I left him to die, a dry sob of fear and sorrow in
my throat, and ran as fast as I could up the wide stairs that must lead to the
family rooms upstairs. I tried not to listen to the noise behind me, but I
heard the sound of a struggle, the servant screaming, and the thump of a body
when it hit the marble floor. Then there were the soft, slapping sounds of
Number Five’s wide feet as he crossed the hall. I didn’t know if he’d seen me
or not, but it didn’t really matter. He wouldn’t hurry himself: he would
continue at the same steady, determined pace until he caught up with me or the
painter’s daughters, whoever came first. I took the stairs two at a time, and
was still fumblingly checking doors when I heard Number Five’s tread on the
bottom stair. The next door I tried led into the small suite I’d seen through
the Queen’s mirror, and I stared at it wildly for a moment, finding it empty of
children despite the toys carelessly left on the floor and the two girl’s coats
lying in a puddle on the floor.

“Doors!” I panted, with a
fizz of inspiration. I snatched at the big key that hung by a pink thread
beside the door and darted back out to sprint from door to door, locking each
one. I only had time to lock the first four doors before I had dive for the
girls’ suite again, slamming the door and locking it behind me.
There!
I
thought in satisfaction. Let him try and figure out which one it was! He would
be naturally suspicious of the locked doors, and perhaps that would buy me some
time to find the girls. Stepping lightly, I checked the other rooms in the
suite, from the bathing room to the closet stuffed with pink skirts and big
straw hats. I was crossing the room again to check under the bed when I heard
Number Five break down the first of the doors in a terrifyingly loud
splintering of wood. My head snapped around even though I’d been expecting it,
and I caught sight of a flutter of pink in the window. I abandoned the bed
immediately, and leaned out the window with my heart thumping loudly.

The girls were playing by
a fountain in the garden below, floating paper boats peopled with flower
petals, their hats bowling along the lawn behind them in a brisk breeze. I
heard a rattle and a snap-snap of noise: Number Five must have also seen the
girls, and his head was protruding from a window to my left. He saw me at the
same time that I saw him, and his teeth gnashed at me. I couldn’t tell if it
was in warning or promise, but either way, he seemed to be enjoying himself. I
began to scramble out the window, but he was quicker than I; and when he was
out he threw himself from the window with the kind of careless abandon that was
only explained by the light way in which he fluttered to the lawn. He looked
back up at me, with my one leg out of the window and my mouth open, and this
time there was no doubting his malicious glee. He was closer to the girls: he
knew it, and there was nothing I could do about it. So I did something about it
anyway. I pulled my leg back through the window and hauled the window frame
back down. It slammed down on the sill and my reflection shuddered at me for a
wobbly moment before I pushed cleanly through the window and emerged, wet and
shivering, in the fountain. The little girls were both screaming when I rose
from the water. They weren’t screaming at me: they had seen the card shark
approaching them, and they knew he was there for them. I wrapped my dripping
arms around them from behind, which prompted more screaming and quite a bit of
determined wriggling, but I pulled them back into the water with me without
knowing exactly where I was going. A moment later we tumbled out of a bedroom
mirror onto plush black carpet, dampening the threads around us. By the time we
were rolling across the carpet, my arms around the both of them, the girls had
stopped screaming and were clinging to me instead, their eyes wide and unsure.
Dazed and dizzy, I looked around me incredulously. How on earth had I managed
to come out in Jack’s suite? We were in his closet: a vast, many-racked room
with three dressing mirrors and rail upon rail of clothing. There were his
shoes, too, pointy-toed and shiny: pair after pair of the things. I felt a
momentary twinge of annoyance despite our peril: why should on boy own so many
shoes?

I didn’t dare leave the
girls in Jack’s closet: not after coming through a mirror. I threw three of his
elegant, tailed suit jackets over the mirrors and carried the girls off with me
into the bathroom. They didn’t struggle. I think they may have been crying, but
I couldn’t stop to soothe their tears when things could get a lot worse than
tears if we were caught. I pulled up short in the bathroom, surprised and
suspicious to find that there was already water in the bathtub. And as it had
been the last time I was here, every mirror in the room had been covered. It almost
looked like my bathroom back in Australia.

To stop the little girls
being frightened again, I said to them: “We’re going to jump through again,
okay? I promise the card shark won’t get you.”

One of them wiped her
nose on my sleeve, but the other said: “N’yep,” and though I wasn’t sure
whether that was a yes or a no, at least they didn’t scream again when I stepped
carefully into the tub.

We came out in a freshly
washed stew pot in the Queen’s kitchen, exploding in a clatter of lid against
the lip of the pot and tumbling to the floor. It was fortunate that we’d landed
in this one and not the one at present simmering stew over the fire. Our
clattering and the whimpering of the little girls prompted a shuffling of feet
and several Underland swear words somewhere in one of the corners. I looked
around to find a couple of castle servants gaping at us, dismay in their eyes.

“You shouldn’t be here,”
said the girl, her voice hushed. She was looking at me with recognition in her
eyes. “She won’t like it. We’ve already lost three men.”

“I know,” I said quietly.
“But she’s cut off one of the painter’s fingers and she sent a card shark for
his little girls. I had to do
something.
”

They both looked at me
with wide eyes and open mouths. At last, the boy closed his mouth and reformed
it to ask: “You went up against a card shark to get them? Does the Queen know?”

“Not yet. I need–”

“Yes,” said the girl,
simply.

“But you don’t know–”

“Yes,” said the boy. “It
doesn’t matter.”

“What about the men who
were lost?”

The boy’s face darkened.
“That was something different,” he said. “That was...someone didn’t like what
we were talking about and told the Queen. We still don’t know who it was.”

“If you talked anywhere
that had a mirror, it probably wasn’t anyone,” I said, remembering the flashes
of heart red that I’d seen sometimes when I saw the Downstairs staff. Even if
the Queen hadn’t had her Mirror Hall, she would still have been able to see
them in her hand-held mirror.

“Never near a mirror,”
said the girl. “We know better.”

“What about flat
reflecting surfaces? Windows?”

There was a sick look in
their eyes. “She can see us through
windows
now?”

“Probably always could,”
I said, with difficulty. The flame that had flared in their eyes was dying into
the same kind of dead acceptance I had seen in the eyes of the rest of the
Downstairs staff. “The kitchen’s safe. It’s just glass that seems to work for
her. And even then, if it’s not flat, she doesn’t seem to be able to see through.”

The boy drew in a deep
breath through his teeth, and I saw the girl’s eyes flicking toward him,
lighting with speculation and determination.

“What do you need us to
do?” he asked. “She’ll have him in the dungeon by now. We heard someone being
taken down there a little while ago.”

“Take the girls out of
the castle. Find somewhere with water, and I’ll come and get you when the
others are safe.”

They nodded in tandem,
each of them taking a small, frightened girl from me.

I said: “I’m going to get
Jack. He’ll help.” They didn’t look convinced, so I added: “And get ready to
take all the staff out of the castle: we’re going to break out
everyone
from the dungeons.”

I’m still not sure why I
did it, but I went back to Jack’s room. Maybe I thought that if he could just understand
what was going on outside his velvetted and satined world, he would fight back.
He would see the injustices as I did—he
had
to—and if anyone could do
something about the Queen, it was Jack. Maybe there was a part of me that just
wanted to see if he would help me if it involved any risk at all for himself. I
couldn’t recall a time he’d actually done so. He’d helped me once or twice, but
it had never been in such a way as to leave himself without any way of turning
it into an innocent action on his own part if it went badly. I wanted to know
if he would do the right thing when it came right down to it. With the darkness
spreading over Underland, it seemed to me that there would soon come a time when
even Jack would have to choose sides, rules or not. So when I left the kitchen,
I dipped only slightly back into the ripples and climbed out of the bathtub in
Jack’s suite. I stepped out onto the cool, black and white tiles, drying
swiftly, and padded softly into the main room to wait for him. He was already
there. He was stretched out on one of the black sofas, his crossed ankles
propped against the sofa back and his fingers linked beneath his head. His eyes
were on me before I noticed him: he must have been waiting for me. I checked
myself, then kept walking anyway. I should have expected it.

“I thought you were
back,” said Jack, flicking his legs down. “Mab, must you use my best suit coats
to cover the mirrors? They’re hand sewn and embroidered.”

“Did you leave the bath
full of water for me?”

“Do you know, I’m almost
certain that thinking everything is about oneself is the first sign of
madness.”

I didn’t mean to smile
but I think I must have, because he smiled back at me with nothing arrogant or
sarcastic about it. I said: “Thanks.”

“I have no idea what
you’re talking about,” said Jack, but the left side of his lips still curved up
just slightly. “Be careful Mab, you’ll only confuse me by being pleasant.”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t
come to be pleasant.”

“Perhaps I’m pessimistic,
but I don’t believe I was ever under that impression,” said Jack, rising from
his sofa. “Sit down.”

“I was Downstairs
earlier,” I said, watching him. He seemed to be unpacking a small cabinet that
had liquid-filled bottles and glass swizzle-sticks in it. He took out three of
the bottles and two small glasses, and mixed something that fizzed and bubbled,
and scented the air with the sweet, sharp smell of mulberries.

“More of your
revolutionary little friends, I suppose,” said Jack, but his voice was pleasant
enough. I had an idea that he was trying not to quarrel with me, and it left me
feeling uneasy. I didn’t know whether to take pains to be polite, or to be rude
on principle.

I said: “Not exactly.
Well, if they weren’t before, I’ll bet they are now, anyway.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at
me from across the room, and scooped up the two full glasses. “Have you been
annoying Mother Dearest again?”

“Probably. She cut off a
painter’s finger this morning, did you know?”

“Yes, she likes playing
with her food,” said Jack. “You shouldn’t have got involved.”

“She sent a card shark
after his kids, Jack. What was I supposed to do?”

“Tell your revolutionary
little friends. Keep out of it. Hope someone else helps.”

“There was no time, and
no one would have helped.”

“Then I don’t see why you
did. If Underlanders are ignoring Underlanders, I don’t see why an otherworld
girl should be risking her neck.”

“It’s not like that!” I
flashed. I wasn’t sure which offended me more: his judgement of Underlanders,
or his casual exclusion of myself from Underland. “They’re scared! The streets
are bare and everyone is hiding behind their doors and shutters. Have you
been
outside the castle in the last four years?”

“Why should I?” said Jack
coolly. “It’s cool and peaceful in here. Out there it’s all madness and
fighting and harsh things.”

“What, like the truth?”

“Don’t sneer, Mab,” he
said, strolling back to his seat with both drinks. “It’s rude. Have a drink.”

I didn’t want a drink,
but he’d already made it so I took it anyway. It was something sherbetty and
lovely, and after a little while I forgot I hadn’t wanted it. Jack sat back
down and crossed one leg over the other. He looked elegant and rich and
ridiculously poised.

“Well, then,” he said.
“This is just delightful. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

I couldn’t tell whether
he was being ironic or not, so I ignored his question. Instead, I said: “You
need to come Downstairs with me. We have to help someone.”

Jack raised one elegant
brow. “I’ll do nothing of the kind. Downstairs is no place for me to be
wandering around: it’s far too dirty. If it comes to that, it’s no place for
you to be wandering around, either. The Prince’s fiancée shouldn’t be
consorting with the staff.”