Mad jerked himself out of sleep, pulling himself from images of the war, sitting up straight. It took a wild moment of looking around at the dark, chilly trees to understand where he was. Breathing hard, he lay back down and looked up to see grey, pre-dawn light filtering through the trees. He normally had dreams about the war, but these had been worse than usual. Sota had kept popping up in the middle of old firefights, asking him why he had lied.

With a shake of his head, he sat back up and yawned, knowing that he couldn't dwell on the images. He rubbed at his eyes and turned to find Cheshire looking down at him from the oak tree, green eyes glowing like emeralds in the dull light. 

"Which one?" Chesh asked.

"Guam," he answered quietly. Of course, Cheshire didn't know where Guam was. But that didn't matter. He knew what Guam was and just nodded, knowing that Mad didn't want to talk about it, couldn't talk about. Mad didn't say anything about Sota.

Mad stood and stretched, wincing at the stiffness in his shoulder. It was still quite painful but he'd honestly had worse. Tilting his head from side to side, the bones in his neck popped and he tread easily through the camp. He let the others sleep and hardly made a noise, even with booted feet.

When he got to it, Mad crouched next to the river and splashed water on his face and up over his head, the chilly water waking him up more and washing the cold sweat from his face and neck. Cupping his hand, he drank his fill before going back to the camp to find everyone but Dinah awake.

He watched as Chesh shifted through the tree until he was just above Dinah. Before Mad could decide if he wanted to stop what was about to happen, Chesh dropped lightly from the branch, landing a hairsbreadth away from the other Ikati.

Dinah sprang into the air, yowling, making him double over with laughter. She was sidling sideways the way Mad had seen Real World cats do when something scared them and was hissing and spitting at Cheshire, which made Mad laugh all the more.

Alice went over to Dinah and started smoothing her hair, comforting her and shot a dirty look at Mad, who was still laughing. 

"Don't look at me. Chesh did it." Mad smiled innocently at her. Alice huffed but moved the look over to Cheshire, who was sitting serenely, looking very pleased with himself.

Eventually, Dinah calmed down and when Mad had verified that she wouldn't try to eviscerate Chesh, he said, "Try to drink as much as you can before we leave. You'll sweat it away in a little less than an hour out there." Mad took four canteens from one of his smaller packs. Looking  at Maris he asked, "How many you got?"

Maris said, "One for each of us."

"So five?" Mad asked.

Maris pursed his lips. "Four. I didn't realize that you would be joining us."

He nodded, knowing he deserved that. "Okay. Fill 'em up at the river after we've crossed. No sense in carrying the extra weight. Can you swim?" he asked, looking at Alice.

"Of course I can," Alice said, looking affronted.

Mad turned to Chesh. "Get my guns across?"

Chesh nodded and, after eating, they moved to the side of the river. Mad couldn't see the river bed, but the water didn't appear to be moving too swiftly. They watched as Chesh faded away, then reappeared on the opposite bank with their gear at his feet.

"All right. Here we go." Mad stepped into the river, wincing as the cold water soaked into his clothes. He held out a hand to Alice, who took it reluctantly, and helped her into the river. Mad stayed next to her, keeping her from overbalancing and being washed downriver.

Now that they were in, he could feel the current pull at him and knew the river was running much faster than he had anticipated. It didn't worry him though. He was a strong enough swimmer that he was confident in his ability to get himself and Alice safely across. Maris had simply hopped over the river and was waiting with Chesh on the other side.

Dinah remained on the bank. "Come on, Dinah," Alice coaxed, but the she shook her head stubbornly, white ears flattening against her skull.

"No! I'll get wet!" Dinah eyed the water distastefully.

Mad sighed and said, "Come on Dinah. A little water never hurt anybody."

"No!" She crossed her arms, voice sullen.

Mad looked at Cheshire. "Just carry her across, would you?"

Chesh showed his teeth, but appeared next to Dinah, who jumped away from him. "No! No, no, no! He can't touch me!"

Mad clicked his tongue. "Dinah," he started, voice pleasant, "either you let Cheshire take you across, or I will throw you into the water."

Dinah muttered something about liking to see Mad try but stepped toward Chesh, who gathered her a little reluctantly to him. They faded out of being and when they rematerialized on the other bank, they jumped apart like they'd been scalded.

Mad turned. "Do you trust me, Miss Alice?"

Alice looked up at him. "I don't think—"

"Then you shouldn't talk," Mad interrupted, then felt heat crawl up the side of his neck as he realized how impolite that was. After all, Alice was a Real Worlder. Not a Wonderlander.

Alice's blue eyes were glacial when she said, "No, Mr. Hatter. Not really. But I haven't got much of a choice, now do I?"

His only response was a grimace before pulling her with him into the river. As they swam, Alice kept bumping into Mad, her body pushed into his by the current. The river pulled them along, but he was able to keep them on a more or less straight course. Soon enough, they were standing on the riverside, dripping wet and shivering a little.

Looking at Dinah and with her teeth chattering, Alice asked, "Is there a reason Cheshire couldn't just carry us across as well?"

Mad wrung water from his sleeves. "The shadow traveling he does doesn't agree with humans from Real World. Dinah's okay because she's a cat, even if she's a Real World cat. But it would make you and I very sick, and we can't afford the delay."

Maris and Chesh had already filled the canteens, and they split them so that everyone was carrying some water. Maris, Mad and Chesh all carried two canteens, Alice and Dinah carrying one apiece. 

"Do you know where to go?" Alice asked, voice cold as the river water.

Mad looked at her, eyes hard, voice polite as he answered, "Yeah. This time of year, with spring rolling around, most of them are on the eastern side of the Small Mountains. They get more rain that way. Makes water a little more reliable."

Alice wrinkled her nose. "Small Mountains?"

Mad smiled tightly. "I don't make up the names, Miss Alice. Come on. We've got a ways to go. I would like to stay near the river but the Aces will expect that, so we need to go a little deeper into the desert."

"Why would they expect us to stay by the river?" Dinah asked, still a little pouty from the episode by the river.

"Because I'm not by myself," Mad responded shortly and started walking, already cursing the heat of the early morning sun. "If I was by myself I would go into the desert. Since you're with me, they'd expect me to take the easiest route near water."

"How could they possibly know we are with you?" Alice asked. "I thought the whole reason you had Cheshire take us to Maris was so they didn't know that."

Mad's boots sank into the soft sand as he used the sun to guide him south. Another strange thing about Wonderland, among the plethora of strange things in Wonderland, was that the sun rose in the north and set in the south.

It had taken him forever to adjust to this, and it had almost gotten him killed the first time he'd ventured into the desert, when he was still trying to escape from Wonderland.

Ironically, it had been Tamsus who had kept him from dying that time. Now, if Tamsus got the chance, he would gladly kill them all. 

Mad finally said, "Oh, they know you're with me. Don't kid yourself."

"Then why didn't they just kill you when they found you with Sota?" Maris asked. "Why let us get this far?"

Mad turned, eyes shaded by the brim of his fedora. "Apparently I'm still Off Limits. None of you are though, and I wouldn't put it past either Tamsus or Rakta to accidentally," he put a sarcastic edge to the word, "kill me, getting to you."

"Still. Why let us get this far? It's just like you said, even if you're Off Limits, none of the rest of us are." Maris lifted a hand to help shade his eyes as he looked out across the desert.

Mad stopped, looking back toward the forest. He could have sworn he had seen a flash of red among the trees. When he didn't see it again though, he answered, still watching the forest. "Because this way it gets turned into a Hunt. Tamsus is bored—"

"How do you know that?" Alice cut him off, then raised her chin when Mad looked at her.

"Because Tamsus is always bored. Unless he's hunting, and Hunts don't come along very often. Especially not like this. So Tam is going to draw it out. He's been waiting for this for a long time." Mad started walking again, just to stop. There it was again, the red.

"And just what exactly makes hunting us so special?" Alice gestured to herself and Dinah. 

Mad's eyes were scanning through the trees. He kept a hand on Chesh's shoulder to guide him, walking backwards so that he could watch the forest and still keep moving. He wanted to create some space between their group and the darkness of the trees.

It took him a while to answer, but eventually he said, "Because Tamsus isn't hunting you. He's hunting me."

"But you said..."

"Get down!" Mad yelled and hit the sand, Maris and Chesh dragging Alice and Dinah down too. A bullet whipped over Mad, just where his head had been a second ago. He rolled to his back, keeping low, partially covered by a roll of sand. His eyes searched frantically for more sufficient cover, but there was nothing but the dunes.

Mad craned his head back to see the others also pressed into the ground. "Anyone hit?" he whispered harshly, before rolling onto his stomach to peer over the edge of the dune. A bullet spat sand into his face and he ducked back down.

"Anyone hit?" he asked a little louder when no one answered.

"No," came Chesh's steady voice. 

He risked peeking over the edge of the sand one more time and yet again, a bullet passed him, close enough for Mad to feel a breeze just next to his ear, wincing at the belated whine that followed it.

Looking around, he swore under his breath, then flipped back over and shifted, settling against the sand, the earth's heat burning into his back. "Get comfortable," Mad called. "Tamsus is playing. He's got us pinned so we'll just have to wait him out. Drink very little if you can manage it. We need the water to last us for a couple days yet."

"Can't you just shoot him?" Dinah hissed from somewhere to Mad's left.

He licked his lips, already feeling the pull of thirst, before answering, "Sure, if I could actually get a bead on him. He's got cover in those trees. I've got nothin'. I'd be dead before I ever saw him. We'll just have to wait him out."

"How do you know we'll last that long?" This was Alice, and Mad didn't miss the slight bite in her voice.

He gave a dry laugh before saying, "Tamsus Heart is many things, of which patient is not one. It's really the only thing that affects his effectiveness as an Ace."

"How do you know it's not Rakta?" Maris asked. 

Mad suppressed a sigh. He could understand why they were all questioning him. He'd more than made it known that he didn't exactly want to go along with their little plan. But still, Mad thought, you'd think they would trust him on stuff like this.

"Because Rakta would've just killed us. He wouldn't have let me see him before firing and he wouldn't have shot at me. This is all just a game to Tamsus and he wants to savor it. If nothing else, he'll keep us here 'til dark, sweating in the sun with the knowledge that if we move so much as an inch, we'll be dead."

Mad paused, listening for the crunch of footsteps in the sand, but this was more of a thorough precaution than anything. He was pretty confident in what he thought Tamsus would do.

This was also what made this Hunt so tempting to Tamsus. Part of what made it so exciting. The Ace would see if he could outsmart someone who knew all of his plays before Tamsus even set his cards down.

 It would be an actual challenge for him.

Mad tipped his hat down over his eyes. This was going to be a chess game between Tamsus and himself and he laughed a little. If it was to be a game, then chess was perfect since Mad was going to kill the Queen.

 He didn't believe that the Spade Crown Prince was alive, but Alice's words of assassination had continued to ring in his head. Mad was a little surprised at how incredibly tempting that thought was.

He heard the others talking amongst themselves but Mad, keeping an ear on their surroundings, didn't join in. Instead, he started thinking through Tamsus' every possible move. Thinking about what he would do in response to Mad's actions. Regardless of how much he despised the Heart, he knew Tamsus better than anyone else in Wonderland. Even better than Mavros did and Tam was her Ace.

Her proper Ace. Not hired help like Rakta was.

Mad knew him so well because he'd spent his first two years in Wonderland with the Ace. Either as friends, though he grimaced at the bitter taste of the word, or as captor and prisoner. Tam had always been the one to find Mad whenever he had tried to get away from the Queen, which had been often in his early days in Wonderland. He'd returned Mad to Mavros over and over again, until Mad had grown sick of the game.

But even then, Tamsus had been friendly. Charming even, in the way that a psychopath is charming. Of course, he hadn't seemed like a psychopath at first.

Mad had always prided himself on his ability to read people and still to this day, five years later, couldn't forgive himself for having read the Ace so completely wrong.

He retreated from that memory and went back to trying to be three moves ahead of Tamsus. Those two years had taught Mad a lot about Wonderland and the Heart's Ace, and he was determined to bend all of the intelligence and will he possessed toward beating the Ace.

Crossing this desert, especially with Tamsus tracking after them, wasn't going to be a piece of cake.

But one way or another, no matter what he had to do, Mad was going to get Alice and the others across the desert to the Clubs and Spades safely.

He smiled, sending a silent challenge to Tamsus.

Tam could come at them with everything he had. Mad would be ready.

He was going to win this final chess match.