He frowns. "Do you know why they betrayed you?"

"There was not precisely an opportunity to interrogate them afterwards," she says dryly.

"One might have any number of reasons: fear of Marcella; a belief that our effort was doomed to fail regardless, and that they might as well be on the winning side; a genuine belief that her side is the right one; perhaps blackmail or similar..."

She looks old, and world-weary, as she enumerates the possibilities. 

He sighs. "I'm sorry."

She sighs, too. "Thank you."

Moving swiftly on, she continues, "The third and most recent attempt was only a few years ago, and was aimed purely at assassinating Marcella. We chose a time at which she would be away from the palace and lightly guarded, then sent a highly-trained agent in to shoot her. He knew from the outset that there would be no chance of survival if he failed, and little even if he succeeded.

"Marcella saw the shot coming and raised a magical barrier to protect herself, then blasted the shooter with a second spell. We never found all the pieces."

"—what was he shooting her with?"

"A crossbow. We knew that there was not a great chance of success with purely mundane weaponry," she admits, "but, not having access to magic ourselves, our options are limited."

She reaches for the teapot to refill her cup, but finds it empty. 

"...so guns haven't been invented here?"

"If they have, the news has not reached my ears," she replies.

"I suspect it would be a waste of both our time for you to describe guns to me, so I will leave that to Everless and others with more technical expertise. I assume from context that they are projectile weapons superior to crossbows, and that is all the detail I require."

"Vastly superior, yes, although I unfortunately don't know in detail how they're made, only in general lines."

"That is unfortunate. Vastly superior weaponry would be a significant asset to our cause."

She sighs. "If we had a route out of Wonderland that would not be guarded, I could send an agent or two to purchase guns and bring them back. But, to my knowledge, no such route is known." 

"How did the White Rabbit get out?"

"Oh, there are ways into and out of Wonderland," Araminta clarifies. "But they are controlled by Marcella and the Hearts."

She considers. "Everless might know of an unwatched route, if such exists, and so might the Wandering Seer - although it would be something of a chore to extract such information from the latter."

"Is the White Rabbit not an agent of yours, then? She did not seem very fond of Marcella."

"Oh, no - she is merely one of the more soft-hearted of the Queen's servants, and has managed to stay beneath Marcella's notice to the extent required to keep her heart," she diagnoses.

"The rabbit is not even aware of the Resistance, since we do not believe that either her compassion or her license would stretch so far as to participate in concealing its continued existence."

"She did know to indicate I seek Everless or the Seer if I was keen on overthrowing the Queen."

"Everless has a reputation of handing out knowledge to all comers, regardless of their intentions for it," Araminta explains.

"Said reputation is...not entirely deserved, but certainly accurate in the broad strokes. As for the Seer, he is one of the few Heartless not to serve Marcella, and his powers of foresight, aside from being very useful if properly directed, indicate that Marcella will not always be Queen of Wonderland. This, in itself, is seen by many as seditious."

"How is the Seer still—free, then?"

"He is simply never in the wrong place at the wrong time," she says with a laugh.

"Much of his time is spent on the borders of Wonderland, or beyond, where the reach of the Hearts is less certain. They have tried, many times, to arrest him and bring him to justice, but have failed."

"Ha. Clever."

"Indeed. Now, do you have any further questions?" she asks, bringing the conversation back to business.

"Not at the moment. Something tells me the next plot point is asking Everless about some of the things we talked about but that may just be my curiosity."

The queen nods.

"Everless has a greater chance than I of understanding much of which you speak. We should speak again later, though."

And that seems to be a dismissal; she pulls out paper and pen to begin writing a report of some kind, utterly ignoring Sadde.

Alright then. Where's Everless?

Everless is in the kitchen, ranting to Hatter about something. Hatter sees Sadde coming and motions for her to stop talking.

"Sadde! I see you survived," he says brightly.

"What can we do for you?"

"I did survive! I had a bunch of questions that the two of you might be able to answer that Queen Araminta couldn't."