Текст книги "Ice Country"

Автор книги: David Estes

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Twenny

I bite my lip. I’ve told them most everything, but not one of the most important things. They might already know all about it—but then again, they might not. And who am I to be the one to tell them? On the other hand, who am I to keep it from them?

I decide on a more neutral approach, seeing if I can draw what they know out of them.

“My sister was taken,” I say.

Silence and stares.

“I’m sorry, I left it out because—well, I don’t know why. Just because it’s personal, I guess. Her name’s Jolie, she’s twelve years old, and someone took her away, abducted her in the middle of the night. I couldn’t stop them, I couldn’t—” My voice breaks and I look at the ground, at the rock at my feet. Failure written all over me. Plain as day for Skye to see. I couldn’t even protect my own little sister.

“Who took her?” Wilde asks softly.

A second question. Do I have to answer? Should I answer? Can I answer?

“I don’t know for sure,” I say, “but I think…”

I grab the rock, skid it across Siena’s cell, all the way to Circ’s. “How can the Heaters send their children to King Goff?” I ask, with no attempt to keep the venom outta my voice. I feel heat rising everywhere. My fists clench and I feel my old friend, my temper, urging me to hit something, anything. So much for our fun, laughter-filled game. Maybe we should’ve stuck to Buff’s type of questions.

“What?” Circ says.

“What the scorch are you talkin’ ’bout, Icy?” Skye says. There’s no question it’s a capital I in Icy this time.

My eyes meet hers, but there’s no anger in them. Or truth. She has no clue what I’m talking about. I scan the faces of the other prisoners and find the same thing in all of them. Confusion. They’re as clueless as I was not that long ago. They don’t know an icin’ thing about any of it, which is a huge relief, because if they did…well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be something I could forgive. Says the man who delivered the children to the king.

I sigh, close my eyes, feeling the heat leave me.

Eyes closed, I tell them everything I left out the last time.

~~~

When I finish, there’s complete silence. Dungeon master Big would be proud.

When I open my eyes, I expect everyone to be looking at me, just staring. Hating me. For being the messenger. For not doing anything to stop it. For delivering—actually being a part of taking—the children to Goff.

But they’re not. They’re looking off into nothing. At the walls, at the floor, at the ceiling. None of them speaking or doing much. Just waiting, as if maybe I’ll say, “Ha! I got you, didn’t I?” But I can’t say that, as much as I wish I could.

Finally, Wilde speaks. “Goff took your sister. Jolie.” It’s not a question.

I nod, tired of speaking.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“What’s he doing with the kids?” Feve asks. I shake my head, feeling more and more helpless. “You don’t know?”

“No one does,” Buff says, coming to the rescue. “Not even those close to the king. It’s a big mystery.”

I remember that it’s Skye and Siena’s father who’s as much to blame as anyone. I look at Skye first, but she must have something mighty interesting on her thin, leather shoe, because she’s studying it with both her eyes. So I look at Siena, who feels me looking, and turns her head. There’s a tear in her eyes, just hanging there, as if it’s not strong enough to make it over the edge of her eyelid.

“That’s what he was doing for the Cure?” she says. It’s a question, but I don’t think she’s expecting an answer, so I don’t say anything. She wipes away the weak tear with the back of her hand, then slams it into her other palm, as if smashing it. “I always wondered what’d be enough to trade for some of the Cure. Some tug meat ain’t nothing. Guarding the border? It made sense when we thought there was no Fire in ice country, when maybe fear of it spreading would make the king give a lot for a little. But now it makes sense, in a knocky kinda way. If Goff wanted little kids for some reason, then he’d pay anything for them, even the Cure. No wonder my father was so obsessed with reproducing.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Siena sighs. “He was so focused on girls growing up and having children,” she says. “He told us it was for the good of the tribe, to ensure our numbers didn’t dwindle. But really…” Her voice fades away in an echo.

“He wanted more available to trade.

“We still don’t know why he wants them though,” Circ says, reaching over and grabbing Siena’s hand.

“Free labor,” Buff says. “Servants, young and fresh and moldable.”

That’s the theory we’ve been working under, but even as he says it, I know it’s a weak one. Why would the most powerful man in ice country need to kidnap servants when he can buy anyone he wants? “I don’t think that’s it anymore,” I say, wishing I didn’t have to say it. I can’t think about other possibilities—not now. Not when I’m so close to finding my sister.

“Then what?” Siena says.

I don’t answer.

No one answers, because we’re all thinking the same thing: something sick, something twisted. An addiction of sorts involving little kids. My throat fills with bile.

“Don’t think about all that,” Skye says suddenly. My eyes flick to hers, relieved to hear her speak, although I’m not sure why. “What I wanna know is where my fath—where Roan got the Heater kids.”

“He just took them,” I say. I sense something behind her words, something I’m missing. “Kids go missing and life moves on,” I add, knowing full well it doesn’t.

“Yeah, he took ’em alright,” Skye agrees, “but they didn’t just go missin’. We had lots of girls go missin’, but they were always older, like Siena and me when we ran away, fifteen, sixteen years old. Never heard of any disappearin’ kids.”

“Skye’s righter’n rain,” Siena says. “The only time we ever lost kids was in accidents or early Fire, but they always died…” Her words hang in the air like a dirty piece of laundry blown off the clothesline, just before it’s swept away by the wind.

“How old did you say the kids looked?” Feve asks.

I shrug. “I dunno. Seven, maybe eight.”

Skye curses. What am I missing?

“Oh, sun goddess,” Siena says, her voice a whisper so soft I wouldn’t know she said it if I didn’t see her lips move.

“That sonofablazeshooter,” Skye says, and my eyes dance back to her.

“What?” I say.

Skye looks at Siena. Siena looks at Skye. Siena releases Circ’s hand and reaches out toward Skye, as if just by stretching she might be able to touch her. “Skye?” Siena says.

“Their younger sister,” Circ says. “She died when she was seven. Her name was Jade.”

My breath catches in my throat.

Chapter Twenny-One

“Did you see her body?” I ask, saying the wrong thing as usual.

Skye stands up, grabs the bars, tries to shake them, but they don’t so much as quiver. “The baggard. The filthy baggard,” she mutters while she yanks at the metal.

“She was taken by a brushfire,” Siena says slowly. “Father said the flames were so hot that all t’was left was ash.”

“He cried for her, the no-good tug-lovin’ baggard,” Skye spouts, pacing across her cell.

“They were real tears,” Siena says.

“No,” Skye says. “No, no, no! There was nothin’ real ’bout them.” She starts pounding her fist into her hand.

“He didn’t wanna give her up,” Siena says. “He couldn’t. He was forced to. They were real tears.”

Skye just shakes her head, continues pacing. “You can think what you want, but if he was ’ere I’d kill him agin.”

“Your sister might be alive,” I say.

Skye stops short, stops pounding her fist, stops spouting “the baggard.”

“She’s not alive,” Skye says.

“She might be,” I insist. “How long ago was the fire that supposedly killed her?”

Skye shakes her head. Siena answers. “Six years,” she says.

“It’s a long time,” Feve says. “Don’t get their hopes up.” But by the look in Siena’s eyes, I can tell her hopes are already up. Way up.

“There’s always hope,” I say, but it’s for me as much as them.

“Skye?” Siena says. She needs her sister now. My words are just words, but her sister’s, they’re feelings. Beliefs that can become real if she will only speak them.

Everyone looks at Skye.

She’s sort of grimacing, chewing on something that’s not there, like she’s trying to digest the possibility of what a few minutes earlier was impossible.

“I dunno,” she says. “I just dunno. But what I do know is that we can’t change what’s happened, but we can stop it from happening agin, save those it’s happened to. Your sister. Maybe ours if she’s there too. Jade.” I grab each of Skye’s words, bundle them in my arms, tuck them away somewhere to look at later, when I’m ready to hope again. I can see Siena doing the same, a big smile on her face.

Skye’s given us both the gift of hope. I wonder if she saved any for herself.

~~~

While we’re all energized with Skye’s words, I tell them all about Wes, and how he’s going to get us out, and how when he does, we’ll get them out too. The Wildes and Heater and Marked are all surprised, but pleased, and it only adds to the rising level of excitement.

But then, all of a sudden, it’s as if another minute of talking is more than any of us can handle, because we’re still confined, still prisoners, so we retract into our cells and our own individual thoughts. Except for Buff and Wilde, who I hear whispering to each other long after the rest of us stop listening. I wonder how that’s working out for him—flirting with the unflirtable.

But even they stop eventually, and all goes quiet.

It’s so quiet that I suspect at least a few of the group have fallen asleep. I peek through the hole and try to see Skye, but all I see is the cracked and chipped gray blocks of the opposite wall, painted shimmering hues of orange and red by the flickering torchlight.

I want to sleep too, to turn off my brain and let the hours slip by until Wes comes to crack Big on the head and give us our freedom back.

But I can’t, so I lay there in silence, worrying about Wes and Jolie, and wondering about Skye’s sister, Jade. Could she really be alive after all these years? Somewhere in this very palace?

I hear a sound, a whispered conversation. Buff and Wilde chatting again? Nay, too close. Circ and Siena.

I slither forward noiselessly, till my ear is right against the bars but I’m still outta sight. It’s a terrible thing to do, I know, spying and eavesdropping and all that, but I just have to. Everything about the thing Circ and Siena has intrigues me. They seem younger than me, a year or two perhaps, and yet there’s such certainty in each other, in their togetherness. It’s fascinating and magnetic and I wonder just how rare it is.

I can’t hear their words, but their tone tells me everything. Soft, tender, occasionally broken by laughter. I peek through the bars. They’re holding hands again, and playing some game with their fingers, trying to trap each other’s thumbs. I smile, watching them do that simple thing in this impenetrable dungeon.

I don’t know how much time passes as I watch them. They stop with the thumb fight and just talk and talk and talk, like they’ve talked this way hundreds of times before, and will continue hundreds of times after. So easy.

Finally, though, Circ rubs his eyes and scoots back, outta sight, presumably to take a nap. Siena stays by the bars, however, flicking them lightly with her forefinger, making a soft ting!ing sound.

“Psst!” I hiss, my attention-getter of choice.

She turns, sees me, a snake with its head stuck through the bars.

She crawls over.

“Thank you,” she says.

“For what?”

“For telling us what you did. It’s bigger news’n when good ol’ Veevs got all big with child.”

“Sounds like a big deal,” I joke.

“’Tis for me,” she says. “A year back I had no sisters, thought Skye’d been taken by the Wildes, maybe killed. And of course, Jade was long gone. Now I might still have both. I only wish my mother could’ve known.”

“She passed?” I say.

“No, she’s dead,” Siena says, looking at me strangely. “You’ve a funny way of talking, you know that?”

“I could say the same about you,” I say.

“’Spect so.” She goes back to ringing her finger off the metal bars. The conversation fades for a minute as I muster the courage to ask her what I want to. I feel silly just thinking it, especially since I’m older, probably more experienced with relationships, if you could call what I had with any of my exes relationships.

“You gotta thing for my sister?” Siena says, looking me in the eyes suddenly.

I laugh and if I had any liquid in my mouth I woulda surely spewed it out. Like sister, like sister apparently. Blunter than a lumberjack’s axe at the end of a long wood-chopping day.

“Is it that obvious?” I say.

“No,” she says. “But she’s my sister, so I look out for her, and she does the same for me.”

“I don’t want to cause any problems,” I say, “especially not if she and Feve…”

“Feve?” Siena whispers. She looks across the way to make sure he’s sleeping. “She’s not with Feve. Skye knows I’d kick her butt halfway to ice country if she was with the likes of that baggard.” She scratches her head, as if thinking. “Well, I s’pose we’re already in ice country, so I’d hafta kick her back to fire country, but you know what I mean, don’t you?”

I nod, smiling. Siena, also like her sister, is a total crack up. “You don’t like Feve much?” I ask.

Siena cringes. “We have a bit o’ history—and not the good kind,” she says.

“Like you and he were…”

She cringes double. “Blech. No, nothing like that. I always been with Circ. Always will.” That brings me back to my unasked question. My heart hammers, though I don’t know why. It’s just a question.

“Siena, can I ask you something?”

“Long as it’s not ’bout Feve, I ’spect so.”

“Nay, not Feve. Circ. What you two have got seems so…” I say, searching for the right word without sounding like some doe-eyed school girl. Beautiful? Buff would slap me for saying something like that. Magical? A harder slap.

“Perfect?” Siena says.

I nod. “Yah. You just seem to fit each other. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” There are plenny of couples in ice country. My parents, who were better together than most, at least before my father died, still seemed like a round crossbeam in a square fitting-hole. And the three girlfriends I’ve had, well, they were like ice to my fire. Or in the case of the witch, the opposite. One would melt the other, leaving a big old lake of slushy water. And then whoever was the slushy water would rise up and douse the fire, leaving it a big old mound of wet, muddy ash.

Siena laughs and it reminds me of Skye, which sends a bit of energy zinging down my arms. “Nobody’s perfect,” Siena says. “Everyone knows that, but I guess with me and Circ it was something like fate of the gods I s’pose. Everything tried to stop us from being together—once I even thought, really truly believed, he was dead—but then some power greater’n anything us humans have, pulled us right quick back t’gether. And we ain’t letting go. Never again.”

She pauses, and I don’t have any more questions, but I feel like she’s got more to say so I just wait, looking off at one of the torches burning from its fixture on the wall.

“I guess you know when you’ve found your true Call when everything else just melts away and it’s you and them and them and you, and you want nothing more’n to stay like that forever and ever. And then time stops even though it can’t, can’t possibly, ’cause no one can stop time, but it does, it really stops. You look at them and you see yourself, your past, your future, all at once. And it’s enough—no, more’n enough. And everyone acts like it was a choice—and you were so brave for making that choice—but it was never a choice, not really.”

I stare at her, shocked, not expecting to hear all that. It’s a lot to take in. I haven’t ever felt like that around anyone, although Skye’s definitely changed my perspective on women and relationships.

There’s something about being around Skye that’s so icin’ energizing. She could just as well punch me in the face as kiss me, and I suspect the effect would be shockingly similar. A jarring so deep it shakes my very soul. She’s got a toughness in her you can’t teach. You’re either born with it or not. She’s got something special in her, that’s for sure.

But with everything that’s happened, first with the notorious cheating witch, to losing all my silver, to seeing what I’ve seen, to losing Jolie, and now to meeting Skye, maybe my heart’s ready to heal. I need to get back on the figurative snow angel, so to speak.

For the first time in a while, everything seems okay, even when I know it’s not. But at least now I know it can be. I have hope.

Abruptly, the dungeon door is thrown open. We both look in its direction, expecting to find Big carrying our evening meals of unidentifiable slop. Big’s there alright, but not with dinner.

He pushes Wes through the door in front of him.

He’s got chains on his hands and feet.

Chapter Twenny-Two

From the beginning, it was my plan, and mine alone. An arrogant plan, one that’s doomed us all. My best friend. My brother. Jolie. And these fine people from fire country. Well, mostly fine. Feve’s been giving me the death stare from the time Big shoved Wes into the cell next to him, across from me.

“No funny business,” Big hollers to Wes, before leaving him to stare across at me.

“What happened?” I say, wondering whether it really matters.

“I got caught,” Wes says, managing a tight smile. A bad joke, especially under the circumstances.

Everyone’s awake from their naps now, poking their heads between their cell bars. “Who’s that?” Skye says. I dip my head, hating to have to tell her. Then she says, “Wait just one Cotee-nibblin’ moment. That’s yer brother, ain’t it? He’s the tugblazin’ spittin’ image of you, ’cept not so rough-lookin’.”

“Everyone, this is Wes, my brother. Wes, meet the people of fire country, the ones you tracked to the palace.”

“Hi people of fire country,” Wes says.

“Hi, Wes,” Buff says.

“Hey, Buff.”

“How’d you get caught, Icer, brother of bad-plan-maker?” Feve says without a smile.

I stare at the ground, feeling fire-country-hot all of a sudden.

“It was my own stupidity,” Wes says. “This isn’t Dazz’s fault.”

I look up. “It’s all my fault,” I say, not letting my older brother take my blame away. None of us would be here if not for me.

Wes continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “No one really paid me any attention, letting me move about the palace pretty much as I chose, so long as I was there to prepare the meals on schedule. I got too confident, started sneaking places I shouldn’t have. Most doors were open or unlocked, and I investigated them all, but they were all just rooms for normal palace activities, like dining or meeting or preparing. Nothing unusual. This was all on the first day, mind you.

“Today I got bolder, seeking out the darkest and the least-traveled places in the palace. After the lunch preparations and cleanup were over, I found a staircase that seemed to lead to nowhere. It spiraled round and round and up and up and into one of the towers, only at the top there was no way in. Just a stone wall and pair of gleaming brass mountain lion heads, mounted on the wall, mouths open in a perpetual growl.”

“Sounds like a dead end,” Circ says from down the row.

“That’s what I thought, but when I went to inspect the lions, there were faint cracks running from above and below them, like someone had torn away the rocks at one time, and then put them back together piece by piece, so perfectly you could barely tell they’d been pulled away.

“So I pushed on the lions, hard, with all my might, and guess what? They pressed into the wall.”

“Into the wall, Icer?” Feve says.

“Yah. Right in, like there was nothing behind them. But that’s not the strangest thing. As soon as the brass lions disappeared, there was the sound of chains pulling, clinking through a pulley. The door started to rise.”

“Holy blaze!” Skye says. “A secret room.”

“More than that,” Wes says, jamming his eyes shut as if they’re stinging. When they flash open, there’s hurt in them. “A prison,” he says. “A child prison. Past the door were little bodies, brown-skinned and every one of them shrinking back from me as if I might hit them, or do worse. I just stood there for a minute, shell-shocked, searching the faces, wishing beyond wishes that she’d be there. Jolie, that is. Do they know about Jolie?”

I nod, my eyes never leaving Wes’s face, urging him silently to continue, to tell me the part where he finds Jolie, where he tries to escape with her, where he gets caught and they take her away again. The part where at least she’s still alive.

“She wasn’t there,” he says, and my heart sinks into my empty stomach, beating dully, thumping a hole in my gut.

“Maybe you just didn’t see her?” Buff says.

“Maybe,” he says. “Before I could go in, really look at them all, someone grabbed me from behind, threw a bag over my head, and dragged me down here.”

His words are still hitting my ears, but I’m not really hearing them, because I’m back at how he didn’t see Jolie, how she wasn’t there, how for all we know she’s been planted in the ground somewhere, having outgrown her usefulness to the king.

“Any of them children you saw older?” Skye asks, and I want to bang my head against the wall for not thinking to ask it myself. She probably thinks I’m all selfishness and no caring. Always focused on my own problems and no one else’s. She’s lost a sister, too. We’ve got that in common, which is what I gotta get through my freeze-brained head.

Wes shakes his head. “They all looked to be seven, eight years old. Nine at the most. No older than that. Why?”

Skye just slaps a fist in her palm, so I tell him what Skye and Siena told me about their sister.

“This whole thing is icin’ sick,” Wes says when I finish.

“We’re knocked,” Siena says. “There ain’t no way out now. Not unless the sun goddess decides to shine down on us.”

I grab the bars, slump against them. The sheet of gray clouds covering ice country will prevent the sun goddess or any other goddess from seeing any of what’s happening here.

No one says anything after that.

~~~

I don’t even bother with the gruel. It’s tasteless and unsatisfying anyway. My stomach rumbles, but I ignore it. The others eat theirs and keep up a healthy chatter, all about how else they can escape, whether there’s any other way now that our inside man’s a little too far on the inside.

I ignore that, too, throwing all my thoughts into beating on myself, what a failure I am. Everything I’ve done over the last year has been a complete and utter disaster. Nothing’s gone right, nothing’s felt right, nothing’s been right. Every move’s been a mistake, picking apart my life piece by ice-sucking piece.

I’m about to see if I’m flexible enough to kick my own arse, when there’s a “Psst!” from beside me. I look over. It’s Skye, because, of course, who else would it be? There’s no one else over there.

I glance around. The others are still talking, even Wes, passing thoughts back and forth with Siena, Feve and Circ, like he’s known them his whole life. That’s Wes’s way. He’s a fitter-inner, always has been.

Surprised, I scoot over to Skye, close enough that if I reached out like Siena and Circ always do, and if she did the same, then we could touch through the bars.

“Ready to stop feelin’ burnin’ sorry for yerself?” she asks.

I don’t know what I expected her to say, but not that. “I freezed everything up,” I say.

“You tried,” Skye says. “That’s all you can do in this sun goddess searin’ life.”

I look at her and she looks at me and I get lost so quick it’s like I’m in another place and maybe there are no bars and no walls and nothing at all separating us. Her hand reaches out into the empty space between us. I stare at it, sun-kissed and full of strength. Strength I’m missing, ever since Wes was pushed through the dungeon door. Strength I need.

I reach out and take it.

It’s an icin’ good feeling, her hand touching mine, made up of something more solid and realer than the few other womanly touches I’ve felt since I became a man. Holding her hand for just those few short seconds makes those three other girls seem like distant memories.

She lets go, a smile on her face as she pulls away. “I like you,” she says. “Even better when you’re like this. Alive.”

~~~

The others aren’t giving up and neither am I. There’s too much at stake, for all of us.

We’ve got a simple plan, but it might just work. It has to. The only thing left to decide is who—

“I once wrestled a bear with my bare hands,” Buff says.

“It was a very hairy, drunken man,” I say, “and he ended up passed out on top of you.”

“What’s a bear?” Siena asks.

“He sure felt like a bear,” Buff says, scratching his head.

“You’re not the best fighter here, Buff,” I say, “so just let it go.”

“And you are, Icy?” Feve says, forcing me to duck to avoid his eye darts.

“Why does he keep calling you ‘Icy’?” Wes hisses from across the way.

I shake my head, both because I don’t know if we’ll ever decide who’s best suited to carry out the plan, and at my brother, because, well, there’re some things that just can’t be explained, at least not easily. “I’m not saying anything,” I say. “But I doubt if you’re the one either.”

Feve glares at me, and I glare right back.

“Quiet! Everyone!” Wilde snaps. Her command echoes once, twice, and then fades, along with all our arguments. “Good sun goddess,” she says. “You’d think we were from different planets rather than different countries. Let’s just take a vote and be done with it.”

“Are we all eligible for the vote?” Buff asks.

“Yes.” No one has anything to say to that, so Wilde says, “We’ll go around and everyone can name who they think is the best fighter.”

“I’ll start,” Buff says. “Dazz. I’ve seen him take down three knife fighters with just his fists and maybe a head butt or two.” I silently thank my friend for the vote of confidence.

“Head and butt seem to go together all too well for him,” Feve mumbles.

I bite back a retort. No one’s voted for him yet so…

Wilde says, “Skye. She trains my young warriors and she’s the best I’ve seen.” I look at Skye but there’s no pride on her face. Just belief.

Feve says, “Circ.”

“Siena,” Circ says.

“Circ,” Siena says.

“That’s two for Circ, one for Skye, one for Siena, and one for Dazz,” Wilde says, recapping.

Wes says, “Dazz.” I look at him, surprised, and he says, “I know, I know, I’ve never seen you fight. But I hear people talk, and no matter how many times I’ve had to clean up the cuts and bruises on your face, they always say the other guy looked ten times worse.” I nod, feeling a burst of pride in my chest. I never realized he listened to the talk about me.

“Skye,” I say, knotting the count at two apiece for me, Circ, and Skye.

“The decision is yours, Skye,” Wilde says.

She doesn’t flinch, just smiles, not one shred of doubt in her eyes. “Me,” she says.