Thanks to fallacies, ElTangoDeRoxanne and emeraldonyxdragon!
Alice looked about the marble courtyard desperately, spotting the White Queen, Mirana, and a few men descending the stairs of the castle. Cradling Balthier in her arms, she dashed toward them, skidding to a halt at the base of the stairs.
"My lady—" she gasped, not forgetting her manners. "My friend, he's been hurt by the Bandersnatch, badly— please, help— I don't know how he's lasted—"
"Fear not, Alice. You are in good hands now." Mirana smiled warmly, and Alice wanted to melt with relief as two men bearing a stretcher took Balthier from her. They vanished through the castle doors.
"I believe this belongs to you." Alice quickly picked the Vorpal Sword from where she had dropped it in her panic and presented it to the Queen. Pressing her palm to the pearl inlay, Mirana breathed deep, as if welcoming a long lost friend, and smiled wider.
"The Vorpal Sword has returned home. Thank you, Alice." Mirana lead the way through the Great Hall, replacing the sword on a pedestal flanked by a suit of armor. "I must admit, I hardly recognized you. You've grown so much."
"Too much Upelkuchen," Alice explained, and the Queen nodded knowingly, never losing her smile all the while.
"A dose of pishsalver ought to do the trick, then," she breezed through a marble entryway, just as an onion sailed over her head and splattered into the white door. Alice poked her head in, and spotted the March Hare screeching obscenities and twirling a ladle.
"You're alright! I feared that the Knave got you," she cried.
"Haw haw! It'll take more than a pack o' cards to stop me! Haw!" He threw another onion, laughing uproariously.
"Now then, the pishsalver." Mirana called Alice's attention to a small table strewn with all manner of medicinal looking items. She did not like how close the jar of fingers was to the mug of potion that the marble Queen was making, open as if it had just been used, and neither did she miss the look of disgust that passed over Mirana's face when she smelled a ladleful of brew.
"You're not like your sister at all. Are you really related?" Alice asked as Mirana handed over the potion. She gagged as she caught a whiff of pishsalver— it smelled of fish and the used stockings of a midden trawler. Steeling herself, she took a gulp, coughing at the revolting taste.
"We are quite different indeed— yes, I do wonder if we really are sisters. Is her head…?" Mirana gestured to her own, holding her hands away to exaggerate the size. Alice laughed, clutching the prison dress she had been wearing (which was now entirely too big) about her shoulders.
"Oh, yes, it is enormous! And she does like to chop off other people's heads, almost as if she were jealous."
"Well, Iracebeth is jealous of many things, love especially. How funny that she is the Queen of Hearts, don't you think?" Mirana sighed. "Unfortunately, instead of learning the finer, peaceful arts of potion making and kindness, she chose to take Dominion Over Living Things."
"Dolt class?" Alice cocked her head, the dress slipping off her shoulder, and Mirana giggled before standing.
"Yes, I like to think of it as such. Now, why not get some clothes that fit better? That cannot be comfortable."
Alice sat on a bench in the palace garden, listening to the trickle of fountains and the whisper of wind through the tree leaves. It was so peaceful; she wanted to be here forever. There were no Hamishes, no Aunt Imogens, and no girls who swam in the pond naked as the day they were born. Oh, how Marmoreal truly was a dreamland. A wonderland. A Rocking Horse Fly zoomed by, whinnying at a Dragon Fly that came roaring after it.
"Excuse me, but would you be Alice?" She turned toward the voice. A young man in white armor with skin and hair almost equally as pale approached her tentatively, his helm (a white horse's head) under his arm and a stone bottle in the other.
"Yes. What is it?"
"It's the man that you brought… he's quite peculiar. He won't let the doctors anywhere near him to treat his wounds, keeps saying things about them being dead and gone. The last time Doctor Aurum came close to him, he was very nearly incinerated. The man sleeps now, and Mirana has suggested you try to treat him, because he trusts you more." The soldier held out the bottle, and Alice took it from him delicately. "That is a salve made from Bandersnatch saliva. It will heal the infection, if you can get it on him."
"Thank you… can I have your name?" Alice asked, feeling it was only polite to ask, seeing as he was being so friendly.
"I am Valerius. Pleased to meet you." He saluted smartly and led her through a long corridor and up a twisted flight of stairs into a sunlit room.
It was white, like everything in in Marmoreal, but for a huge black swath of scorched stone that ran from the floor up the wall. Cocooned in sheets, Balthier slept very soundly, though— Alice frowned— he looked very tired, old almost. His hair was definitely not as vibrant as it had seemed when they first met, a hint of grey peeking through the layers of brown and brass, and his face had a distinctly sunken look to it. She sighed. He was three-and-a-half centuries old, she reasoned. It was a miracle that he even looked vaguely young. Alice stood over the sleeping man, simply watching as he took shallow, stuttering breaths.
His face contorted, and a low hiss escaped from between his teeth. He seemed to be in pain, and that reminded her of why she was here, holding a bottle of Bandersnatch saliva. She reached down, peeling a sheet back, much like one would shuck and ear of corn, and beheld his chest.
It was the first time she had seen a man's bare chest before. Most of the time, the English gentlemen were smothered in clothing from head to toe, though she imagined that Hamish had quite a muscular set of abdominals underneath his snow-white jacket. Balthier had a very muscular chest, though his waist was so lean she was reminded of greyhounds and whippets rather than the anatomy of any human. And once again, he had told her the truth. He had no heart, in every meaning of the word— a gold disk filled where his heart should be, surrounded by a puckered layer of scars. He had many, many scars, some so old she could barely see them, others slightly more recent or more damaging, and then others so fresh they wept and dribbed inky black gore on the sheets underneath. Still more festered, oozing pus and rimmed with red and black crust. Stayne was a cruel torturer, and the Bandersnatch's claws had gone very deeply into Balthier's flesh indeed. Alice traced a finger along a thick, ropy scar stretching from his right shoulder from his left hip. Like the rest of his skin, it was cold as winter ice, and equally as hard. His unmarked skin was softer, though she could still feel corded muscles tensing under her touch. She brushed the back of her fingers against his hollow cheek.
"Bloody hell!" His panicked voice filled the room. In an instant, she found herself on the ground as he exploded out of the bed, swearing up a blue streak mixed with the words to (she now recognized it for what it was) a spell. The bottle of medicine rolled away across the floor as he straddled her stomach, one hand around her throat, the other inches from her face, caging a glowing ball of lightning. His sharp teeth were bared in a ferocious snarl; his eyes were dark with both terror and rage.
The ball of lightning fizzled out, crackling, and he was off her in an instant when he recognized her.
"Don't scare me like that, girl! You nearly killed me with shock." Balthier staggered back to the bed, collapsing upon it and leaning against the cool wall, closing his eyes, once more appearing young and vibrant. Alice bent down, retrieving the bottle of Bandersnatch saliva.
"I did not mean to scare you— I only meant to help," she showed him the bottle, and he opened one eye to half-mast.
"Don't worry. I was having the oddest dream; there aren't any doctors around, are there?"
"None, you chased them all away," Alice shook her head, dipping her fingers into the jar. "If you turn around, I can get this on some of the scratches on your back."
He obliged, and shivered as she ran her fingers up and down his spinal. Balthier was very thin, she decided, for not only was his waist narrow, but his backbone jutted out under his skin like knobs. Her fingers went down over his shoulder blades and the backs of his ribs— bump, bump, bump, bump, all the way to the bottom.
"My mother would say you need to eat more."
"Fran, too, says I should eat more, or else I will wither away to skin and bones. She does not want to pirate with a sack of bones, or tell stories with one, either. Most decidedly bad for business, I daresay." Alice could not stop a giggle from escaping when he winked at her roguishly. "And now, my dear, the bottle?" Almost reluctantly, she gave it to him, not quite ready to give up the opportunity to do what she could never do in Hamish's presence. He began applying the salve to his lacerated stomach and chest, healing the wounds with magick as he went.
"I wish I could stay here. It's better than home," Alice sat down on the edge of his bed, watching as he tenderly prodded more ointment about a deep cut that ran across his largest scar. "Everything is better— the people are kinder, and even the animals are more interesting. They can talk."
"Ah, but the beasties are meaner, and so are the villains. A serpent always lies beneath the gilt exterior." Balthier said softly. "There is no rose without thorns. I have marveled at the resilience of humans for quite some time now. It seems that as soon as they have found greener pastures from the pits of despair they were mired in, they are content and happy. I too thought so, for the longest time, but I ought to know better than any that old scars ne'er fade, and the past is a wolf that snaps at the heels of the present. It all catches up, one day or another."
Alice frowned. "I thought that pirates were free."
"So did I, love, so did I. What? It's true— you give me an example where a pirate died free." Balthier's eyes slid toward the window. "Reddas? Please, tell me it is a joke. He died still with penance on his lips. And don't look at me. I died being disgustingly chivalrous, a slave to nobility, if you will." Alice sighed— he was lost to her, again. "The cards… the cards don't lie. Freedom is not in my future, and neither was it in my past."
"Balthier," Alice gently touched his shoulder, and he grudgingly returned.
"Pardon?"
"The cards… tell me about the cards."
He frowned. "Oh, Alice. You're the right size again." She was now shorter than he was by four inches, rather than a foot or five.
"Don't change the subject."
"Very well— the cards. You probably know them as the tarot?"
Alice nodded. "My mother calls them dreck. She says there is no worth in them— just a load of hogwash."
"I believed so, too— I fancy myself a man of science, though certainly, my condition makes it slightly hard to uphold that position."
"You do magic." Alice pointed out, but Balthier scoffed.
"Magic? Hardly— I can explain the theory behind magick if you would like. There is nothing magical to it. But the cards; these are no ordinary cards. They belonged once to the sea goddess of Earth: Calypso, the woman responsible for who and what I am today. Hm…? Yes, I do blame her. I was supposed to get better, not worse. I was only supposed to be dead, not…not…" he trailed off, staring out the window. Alice rose from the bed, shaking her head. It was hard to get anything sensible out of the pirate nowadays without him sinking into another fit of insanity. His eyes snapped toward her. "These cards are very special because they can tell the future, perhaps in a very roundabout way, but all things they allude to come about eventually."
"Could you read my cards?" Alice asked curiously. Balthier shrugged.
"I'm not very good at it, and I don't have them, Fran does. She understands how they work better. I do hope she and Tarrant found a way out of Salazen Grum."
Alice felt her heart sink. She had been trying to avoid thinking about the bloody Red Queen and her horrid palace at all, merely putting hope upon hope that the Hatter was still alive.
"For both our sakes, Balthier, I pray you're right," she whispered.
"The leading man is always right, Princess."