Chapter 7 Chapter Six The Queen's Summer Palace

The jagged grass in front of Jack was tall and stiff like sabers, and they seemed to cut through the air rather than bend it. He looked up and groaned a little.He couldn't care less about face, he felt his forehead and eyes burning, and the liquid in his stomach was still gurgling.Jack managed to get himself up on his knees, forcing himself to stand up.A horse-drawn carriage rattled toward him down the dusty lane driven by a red-faced beard as big as the barrels he was carrying.He stares at Jack, who nods at him, trying to look nonchalant, even though he knows he looks like a sneaky little slick.After standing up straight, the uncomfortable feeling disappeared; in fact, this was the most comfortable time since he left Los Angeles. He not only felt refreshed, but also had an indescribable sense of coordination.The warm breeze in the Demon Realm brushed his face, which was a gentle and fragrant touch that he had never had before—not to mention the strong smell of raw meat, the air itself smelled very elegant, like the fragrance of flowers.Jack reached out to touch his face, and sneaked a peek at the driver, this was the first person he met in Demon Realm.

If the coachman called him, how should he respond?Do people here speak English like he does?Jack fantasized about moving through the world as quietly as possible, with everyone communicating in a language he couldn't understand, and maybe the coachman would ask him, "Where do you want to go?" If so, he decided to pretend to be dumb . Finally the coachman stopped staring at Jack and shouted at the horses, "Slassia! Slassia!" This was certainly not Jack's usual English, and of course it might just be the local term for horses and carts.Jack silently retreated to the edge of the grass, wishing he had gotten up a few minutes earlier.

The coachman glanced at Jack again and nodded. Jack was surprised—this gesture was neither friendly nor hostile. It seemed to be just a way of greeting between two peers, as if to say: After today's work is over, you can relax. One click, brother.Jack nodded back, and wanted to put his hand into his pocket, but couldn't help showing a foolish expression of surprise, and the coachman laughed when he saw this. Jack's clothes had changed—the old jeans had become rough, baggy wool trousers, and the upper body had become a blue soft cloth fitted jacket.Jack deduced that the style of the jacket was very similar to the sleeveless vest coats of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the original buttons missing and replaced by a row of cloth hooks; the trousers were obviously handmade.His Nike sneakers also disappeared, replaced by flat leather sandals.His knapsack became a leather bag, his strap a string.The coachman was dressed similarly to Jack, except that his vest jacket was made of leather, with circles of color stains, like the rings of an old tree.

The carriage rolled past Jack, raising a lot of dust.The wooden barrels on the car exude the aroma of beer fermentation.Behind the wooden barrel was a stack of three pancake-shaped things. At first, Jack thought it was a car tire without hesitation, but then he found that the "car tire" had a smooth and flawless appearance, filled with a rich and enticing mysterious aroma, which immediately made him hungry.It's cheese.But cheese like he'd never seen before.After the pile of cheese, near the rear of the car, there is a pile of raw meat like a hill - long strips of beef with ribs, thick and large steaks, a pile of greasy and intangible meat Guts, with a whole bunch of shiny flies flying over them.The strong smell of raw meat hit Jack, disintegrating his appetite aroused by the cheese just now.After the carriage pulled away, Jack walked to the middle of the road and watched it bump up and down a small hill.After a while, he followed the direction of the carriage and headed north on foot.

Halfway up the mountain, Jack saw the steeple of the big tent again, with a row of slender flags fluttering in the wind in the center.That, Jack guessed, was where he was going.After walking a few more steps, he came to the blackberry bush he passed by last time (Jack couldn't resist grabbing two more handfuls because he couldn't forget the delicious taste), and at this time he could see the whole picture of the big tent.It is actually a comfortable and spacious palace, with two wings extending left and right, with walls and gates, and gardens.The odd-looking building—Jack's intuition told him it was a summer palace—was rising above the coast, like the Alhambra Hotel.Crowds of people passed in and out, or moved around the outer ring of the palace, like iron powder pulled by magnetic force.Crowds may gather or disperse, and the flow is endless.

Most of the costumes were not far from Jack's, and a few wore bright and colorful clothes.Some of the women marched through the gardens in shining white robes or gowns, going about their business like commoners.Outside the palace, many small tents and scattered cabins gathered together.The crowd here is also bustling, people walking, eating, drinking, buying and selling, talking, but the atmosphere is more casual.In a sea of ​​people, Jack must find the man with the scar on his face. Before the official start, he turned around and looked back, along the rutted road, looking towards the original location of Arcadia Amusement Park.

At first he thought the amusement park had become a farm when he saw two little black horses dragging the plow fifty yards away.He realized it was a game later when he noticed a group of people watching from high up in the field.Immediately, his eyes were occupied by a big red-haired man, who was naked from the upper body, spinning like a spinning top.He straightened his arms, holding the heavy object in his hand, then stopped suddenly, let go of his hand, and the heavy object flew far away and landed on the grass. Only then did Jack see that it was a big mallet.The fairground had become a market, not a farm—Jack noticed the many stalls piled high with food, and the children straddling their father's shoulders.

Could there be a Speedy Parker in the very center of that fair too, busy making sure the stalls were roped and the stove was well stocked?I hope so, Jack thought. Also, what about his mother?Are you still sitting in the tea shop, wondering why you agreed to let him go on a long trip? Jack turned around and watched the carriage drive into the palace gate, turn left, and part the crowd that had gathered nearby, like watching a car turn off Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and passers-by hurriedly give way.Jack pondered for a while, then walked along the route of the carriage. At first, Jack was afraid that all the people around the palace would stare at him and notice the difference between him and them.With his head down, he pretended to be a boy assigned to a complex shopping task, with a look of trying desperately to remember what to buy—a shovel, two hoes, a bundle of twine, a bottle of goose. Oil... Gradually, he realized that no one was paying attention to him.Some of them are in a hurry, some are wandering leisurely, some are browsing the goods on the small tent stalls - blankets, iron pots, bracelets - some are drinking drinks from wooden cups, some are holding other people's sleeves to express opinions or gossip It was homely, and some were busy arguing with the gatekeepers, but everyone was preoccupied with their own business.Jack's needless cover-up seemed superfluous and ridiculous.So he puffed up his chest and walked along this roughly semicircular curved road to the palace gate.

Jack could tell at a glance that he could not enter the gate of the palace at will - two guards guarded both sides of the gate, and almost all the people in the palace had to go through their interrogation.Those who were able to get in either showed their papers or their badges.Jack had only the guitar pick that Speedy Parker had given him, but he didn't think that would get him permission from the guards.At this time, a man came to the door and showed a round silver badge. The guard waved him in, but the people behind him were stopped.The man was blushing at first, but later his attitude softened and he begged bitterly.The guard shook his head at him and ordered him to move away.

"Anyone with him can get through," said a man to Jack's right.This sentence instantly dispelled Jack's previous doubts about language communication. He turned his head, wanting to confirm whether the target of the sentence was himself. However, this sentence was addressed to another person. The middle-aged man who spoke was dressed in plain civilian clothes like most men and women outside the palace. "They'd better hold back," another added. "He's coming—about today, I guess." Jack then followed them to the city gate. Seeing them approaching, the two guards took a step forward, and the two walked towards one of the guards at the same time. Seeing this, the other guard waved to the one who was closer to him.Jack backed away quickly.So far, he has not found anyone with a scar on his face, nor has he seen anyone who looks like an officer.These were the only guards for now, both young and rustic—looking like country bumpkins in fancy clothes with their big red faces on top of their fine uniforms.The two people who spoke just now seemed to have passed the interrogation. Within a few minutes, the guard who questioned them took a step back to let them pass.A guard looked at Jack sternly, and Jack turned and walked back.

Unless he finds the captain of the moat with a scar on his face, it is absolutely impossible for him to enter the palace. A group of people walked up to the guard who had looked at Jack before, and they started yelling after a short while, saying that they had an important meeting and they had to go in. This matter involved a large amount of money, but they didn't have any documents.The guard shook his head vigorously, his chin rubbing against the white ruff around his neck.Jack stayed nearby, not sure how to find the captain of the moat, when he saw the leader of the group start waving his hands, punching the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, flushing as red as the guard.Finally, he poked the guard with his finger, and another guard came running to help, both guards looking angry and impatient. At this time, a tall man appeared silently beside the arguing crowd. He was also wearing a uniform, but there was an indistinguishable difference from the guard's uniform—maybe it was a different way of wearing it, and it seemed that the owner of the uniform had once Wear it in and out of battle.It was not long before Jack saw that he had no ruff round his neck, and that his hat was not like a guard's cocked hat, but a peaked cap.He said a few words to the guard, then turned to face the rowdy crowd.All the shouting and tugging died down.He spoke in a low voice, and the arrogance of the group of people gradually faded, they shifted their legs uneasily, their shoulders drooped, and finally scattered away.The officer watched the crowd go away before turning to the guards to deliver his instructions. As the officer resolved the dispute, he happened to be facing Jack, and Jack saw a lightning-shaped scar on the man's right cheek, from the corner of his eye to his chin.The officer nodded to the guards and walked away briskly.He never looked left or right as he passed through the crowd, and was clearly heading for a specific purpose near the palace.Jack ran after him. "Sir!" he yelled, but the officer made his way through the slow-moving crowd. Jack ran around a group of men and women leading a pig towards the tent area, then darted through the gap between the two groups moving towards the palace gates, and managed to get close enough to touch the officer's elbow. . "team leader?" The officer turned around, and Jack froze in fright.When viewed closely, the scar seemed to have an independent life, entrenched on the officer's face.Even without the scars on his face, Jack thought, the impatient look would have been scary enough. "What's the matter, boy?" the officer asked him. "Captain, I have to talk to you—I have to see the queen, but I guess I can't get into the palace. By the way, there's something I should show you." He fumbled in the wide pocket of his strange trousers, pulled Take out that triangular object. Opening his palm, Jack was surprised again—that thing was no longer a guitar pick, but a tooth, maybe a shark's tooth, with golden threads embedded in it with twists and turns and intricate patterns. Jack looked up at the captain's reaction, somewhat expecting that he would be beaten, but he saw the same surprised expression.The impatient expression suddenly disappeared, and suspicion and fear briefly distorted the hard lines of the captain's face.The captain raised his hand, Jack thought he would take this gorgeous tooth, but he just wrapped his big hand around Jack's little hand, asked Jack to put the tooth away, and said, "Come with me." They came to the side outside the palace, and the captain led Jack into a sailboat-shaped tent made of canvas.In the sweltering shadows inside the curtain, the officer's face looked as if it had been drawn with pink crayon. "That token," he said coldly, "where did you get it?" "Speedy Parker gave it to me. He told me to find you and show you the stuff." The captain shook his head. "I've never heard of this name. I want you to give me the token. Now." He grabbed Jack's wrist forcefully, "Hand it over. Tell me, where did you steal it from?" "I'm telling the truth," said Jack. "The man who gave it to me was called Lester Speedy Parker. He worked at the amusement park. But it wasn't a tooth he gave me, it was a guitar. Pick." "You really don't know what to do, kid." "You know him," pleaded Jack. "He told me who you were—he said you were captain of the moat. It was Speedy who sent me to you." The captain continued to shake his head, and the strength in his hands became stronger. "Tell me what he looks like. Don't think I can't see that you're lying, kid, be honest with me." "Speedy is very old," said Jack. "He used to be a musician." He seemed to see a gleam of recognition in the captain's eyes. "He's black. White hair. Wrinkled. And thin, but much stronger than he looks." "Black. You mean, brown?" "The skin of black people is not really black, just like the skin of white people is not really white." "A brown-skinned man named Parker." The captain gently let go of Jack's wrist, "His name here is Baca. So, you are from..." He glanced at an invisible place on the distant horizon Turned his head. "Yes." Jack said. "And then Bakka... Parker...he sent you to the queen." "He asked me to see the queen. He also said you would take me to her." "Then we have to move quickly." The captain said, "I should be able to do this, but we can't waste any more time." His attitude changed quickly, showing the decisiveness of soldiers adapting to the situation. "Listen now. There's a lot of trouble around here, so once we lift this curtain, you're going to be my son. You're not listening to me for a little thing, and I'm throwing a tantrum at you. I think, If the acting is realistic enough, no one will stop us. At least let you get in - the real trouble is after you get in. Do you think you can do it? Convince others that you are my son?" "My mother is an actress," Jack said proudly. "Well, let's see what skills you have learned." The captain winked at Jack, which surprised him. "I'll try not to hurt you." Then he reached out a big, strong hand and grabbed Jack's upper arm. "Come on," he said, half-dragging Jack out of the tent. "I told you to wash the floor behind the kitchen, so obediently wash the floor for me," the captain didn't look at him, but scolded him loudly, "Do you understand? You work obediently for me! If you dare to be disobedient, see if I don't teach you a lesson." !" "I'm half done washing..." Jack wailed. "I didn't tell you to wash...half the floor!" the captain yelled, dragging Jack along.The surrounding crowd dispersed automatically to let the captain pass.Some smiled sympathetically at Jack. "I was going to wash, I swear, I was going to wash..." The captain pulled Jack, without even looking at the guard's face, and dragged him into the palace gate. "No, Dad!" Jack yelled, "You're scratching me so badly!" "You'll have it later," the captain continued, pulling Jack across the vestibule, which Jack had looked out from the knoll.At the end of the courtyard, the captain dragged him up the wooden steps. At this moment, Jack finally entered this magnificent palace. "From now on, your acting skills should be more realistic." The captain finished in a low voice, and pulled Jack into a deep passage without hesitation. His hand was so strong that it almost bruised Jack's arm. blue. "I promise I won't dare in the future!" Jack screamed. Soon, Jack was dragged into another, narrower corridor.He found that the interior of the palace was completely different from ordinary tents. Layers upon layers of secret rooms and passages were criss-crossed, like a maze. In addition, the palace was filled with the smell of smoke and grease. "You swear!" the captain yelled. "I swear! Really!" They drilled another passage, and came across a group of well-dressed men, some standing or lying down, some leaning against the wall, some lazily lying on the sofa.They turned to look at Jack, the boisterous father and son.One of them, who was making fun of two maidservants holding a stack of sheets, looked suspiciously at Jack and the captain. "I'm going to fix you up," the captain said loudly. One or two of the men laughed.The men wore velvet boots and wide-brimmed hats trimmed with fur.Their eyes were hard and unfeeling.The man who was talking to the servant girl was tall and skinny, and seemed to be the leader of the group, and his sinister eyes were fixed on the back as the fake father and son hurried past. "No!" Jack begged, "Please!" "If you keep quarreling, I will fight harder!" The captain roared loudly, and the group of men giggled for a while.The corner of the thin man's mouth twitched, revealing a sharp smile like a blade, and then turned back to continue talking to the maid. It wasn't until the captain pulled Jack into a small room full of dust and piles of wooden furniture that he let go of Jack's aching arm. "Those people are his lackeys." He whispered, "What will happen to Moyu by then, if—" He shook his head, as if forgot what he was going to say for a moment. "It is said in the "Good Farmer's Classic": 'The benevolent inherit the earth', but those people have no benevolence and morality in their bones. They only know how to plunder. They just want to get rich, they just want-" He stared up at the ceiling, not knowing whether he was unwilling or unable to continue.Then his gaze returned to Jack. "Our actions must be very fast. Having said that, there are still some secrets in this palace that they don't know." He nodded sideways, pointing to an old wooden wall. Jack followed him to the wall.The captain held down two flat brown nail heads at the end of a dusty wooden board, and a secret door opened towards the inside of the wall, revealing a narrow and dark passage only as thick as a coffin. "You can only look at her once, but I think that's enough for you. And you don't have any more time." Jack obeyed the instructions and walked into the passage silently. "Before I say anything, just go straight," the captain whispered to him.When the secret door closed behind them, the two began to move forward slowly in the pitch-black darkness. The secret passage was twists and turns, and occasionally a glimmer of light could be seen, some seeping in through the cracks of other secret doors, and some coming from the transom overhead.It didn't take long for Jack to completely lose his sense of direction and could only follow the soft-spoken instructions of his companions.In one place he smelled barbecue, in another he smelled the stench of sewers. "Here we go," said the captain. "Now I have to lift you up. Hands up." "Can I really see?" "You'll know when you go up." The captain inserted his hands under Jack's armpits and lifted them up neatly, so that Jack's feet were off the ground. "There is a small door in front of you," he whispered. "Push to the left." Jake groped, came across a smooth board, and the sliding door was loose, and it flew open, and the light came in, and he saw a spider the size of a kitten crawling towards the ceiling.Looking down, there is a bedroom as spacious as a hotel lobby below. There are many women in white clothes rushing in and out, and the finely crafted furniture reminds Jack of the many museums he and his parents have visited.There was a huge bed in the middle of the bedroom, and the woman on it covered her chest with the quilt, exposing her shoulders and face.She was asleep, or perhaps unconscious. Shock and fear made Jack almost scream, because the one lying on the bed was none other than his mother.That was mother, and she was dying. "You saw it." The captain whispered, holding Jack tighter. Jack opened his mouth and stared at his mother.She was dying, and Jack could no longer deny that fact.She was so sick that she was completely pale, and even her hair had lost all luster.The maidservants in white huddled together, stretching the sheets or clearing the books on the table, seemingly happy to have something to do, because none of them really knew how to help the Queen.They understand that since the illness is so serious, there is nothing they can do to help.As long as they can keep the god of death out of the door temporarily, even for a month or even a week, they are willing to do their best. He looked at the sickly waxy face again, and finally realized that the woman on the bed was not his mother.Her chin is rounder and her nose is slightly more elegant than her mother's.The dying woman was Laura DeRosian, his mother's double.Even if Speedy had asked him to look more, Jack couldn't: he couldn't see anything about the woman other than the face. "Okay." He closed the sliding door and whispered.The captain put him back on the ground. He asked in the dark, "What happened to her?" "No one knows." The captain replied, "The queen can't see, she can't speak, she can't move..." After a long silence, the captain touched his hand and said, "We have to go back." They returned to the original room from the dark passage. Captain Shans dropped the cobwebs on his uniform, tilted his head, and stared at Jack for a long time, his face full of worry. "Now, you have to answer a few questions," he said. "it is good." "You were sent to save her? To save the Queen?" Jack nodded. "I think so—I think this is part of my mission. Tell me," he hesitated, "why didn't that group of people just defect? ​​She has no ability to resist." The captain smiled, and there was no hint of teasing in his smile. "Because of me," he said, "because of my men. We will stop them. I understand that their influence has somehow infiltrated the outposts, after all, it is too far from the palace for me to reach - but at least here, we can protect Queen." On the side of the captain's unscarred cheek, a muscle under the eye was beating like a fish, and his palms were tightly folded. "Your direction, your order, whatever you say, uh, is to... go west, isn't it?" Jack felt the excitement of the captain, who was suppressing his mounting emotions with a lifelong exercise of discipline. "That's right," he answered. "I should go west. Shouldn't I? Shouldn't I go west and find another Alhambra?" "No, I can't say it." The captain blurted out, taking a step back. "We gotta get you out of here fast. I can't tell you how." He couldn't even look Jack in the eye. "Anyway, you can't stay here for a second—we, uh, we gotta find a way to get here in Morgan sent you away before." "Morgan?" Jack thought he had misheard. "You mean Morgan Sloat? He's coming here?"