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valuables, trying to comfort the confused murmurings of wives and husbands, to hush the protests of children forced to leave prized possessions behind, until—
    A muted thunder, as of an orb generator exploding underground. The floors trembled. Outside, a fountain of shattered glass rose five stories into the air.
    In the Croquet Courts lobby, the Four of Clubs muttered, “Heart soldiers,” and grabbed his spinning shield. “Time’s up! Everybody out! Move! Move!”
    Throughout the building, Club soldiers cocked their heads, receiving the order, and in the crush caused by their impatience to herd the imaginationists outside, children were separated from parents, husbands from wives. Had the prisoners eyes for anything but their own fear as they walked to the waiting smail transports, they would have seen—at the nearest intersection, where Heart soldiers battled Clubs and Spades—a hand of Heart Cards emptying the ammo cartridges of their AD52s at the enemy and a fiery orb tearing through the sky toward them, bringing the bright light of midday and death.

CHAPTER 3
    D ODGE ANDERS—head of the palace guard, son of the late Sir Justice—was half-dressed in his quarters, but to the walrus-butler standing uncertainly before him, he seemed, even without the trappings of his military uniform, a man as fierce in combat as any Milliner. The guardsman’s undershirt was obscured by an ammunition belt that crossed in an X on his chest, AD52 projectile decks and shooter cartridges strapped along its surface save for areas taken up by a crystal communicator’s microphonic patch, audio output, and vid nozzle. And what with an AD52 holstered under each of Dodge’s arms, a crystal shooter strapped to each thigh, and whipsnake grenades pinned and dangling about his person, the walrus-butler might have been forgiven for thinking that weapons were the guardsman’s underthings.
    “What do you think of this ratty old gown, Mr. Anders?” the creature asked, holding up the garment in question.
    “Too showy,” Dodge said.
    The walrus’s eyes widened at the gown’s plain weave, its dim color as of dried clay. The guardsman was proving impossible to satisfy, and the past lunar hours the butler had spent hurriedly waddling about the palace’s environs on his behalf had made him more anxious than usual. Trying to deposit the gown on to a heap of discarded clothes, he somehow got himself tangled up in it.
    “Oh!” he cried, flippers flailing. “This is troublesome! Help!”
    Dodge pulled the gown free, dropped it on the floor with the rest of the rejected items. “Anything else?”
    “Anything . . . ? Oh, Mr. Anders, I have raided the servants’ closets. I have picked through the Bandersnatch Avenue Donation Bins, and I’ve begged among the shops on Heart Boulevard for whatever they might be willing to dispose of. I have, Mr. Anders, exhausted what I believe are the best sources of supply, but if you wish, if you insist, I will seek further afield for more.”
    Dodge eyed the scant items brought by the walrus that he’d not yet dismissed as unsuitable: a wig, a sack-like smock, a pair of soiled stockings and another of worn sandals. In one respect, he admired Alyss for refusing to hide safely behind the palace gates, not content to rule according to reports delivered to her from advisers. He respected her warrior queen spirit, her determination to get into the muck of things, the better to decide what was best for the queendom.
    And yet . . .
    He wished she would hide safely behind the palace gates, abandon her plan of venturing out into a city so recently under siege by a foreign army and now being nipped at here and there by the Clubs’ rogue military. Why couldn’t Alyss rely on relayed intel like a normal queen? Why couldn’t she have conceded to him when—early in the afternoon, over tea and wondercrumpets—he’d asked her not to expose herself to undue risk? Especially because he’d appealed to her not as a