Текст книги "Ice Country"

Автор книги: David Estes

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Thirteen

Knowing and not being able to do anything is almost worse than not knowing at all.

Every day Buff and I think up a dozen hare-brained plans to infiltrate the palace and rescue Joles and all the other kids, Heaters and Icers alike, but every day we shoot so many holes in our ideas that they cross the line from impossible to no-way-in-chill-buddy.

At night I literally pull my hair out trying to bully my brain into being smarter. In the morning I find strands of black on my pillow. I want to tell Wes everything, but I’m afraid they’ll know if I do, and then I’ll end up like Nebo. And because Wes’ll know, he’ll have to be taken out too.

It’s a problem without a solution. The only thing I have going for me is the job, which at least allows me to see what’s going on at the border, what the king is up to. But then, one day, the Heaters don’t show up.

“Whaddya make of it?” Brock says, cracking his knuckles and staring off into fire country. It’s a question, but I guess not one that’s against the rules.

Abe scratches his chin. “They were s’posed to have supplies for us today. Something musta happened.”

“Like what?” Buff says.

“Who knows?” Abe says, grabbing a handful of sand and letting it drift through his fingertips. It’s hotter down here than I’ve ever felt before in my life, like sitting in a roaring fire. Even the light breeze is full of heat. Not even a wisp of a yellow cloud mars the great red sky. And the sun? Chill! It feels so close and big I have to shield my eyes with my hand.

I remember everything Roan said the night he failed to deliver the next batch of children. Shiv about being attacked from all sides, by something called Killers, and the pasty-skinned Glassies, and something about the Wildes stealing their girls, or some such rot. When all the time he’s been giving away his children to King Goff anyway, so who is he to complain? Whatever the case, though, something’s gone wrong, which means we have no choice but to trudge back up the mountain empty handed.

At the palace gates, I say, “I want to be the one to deliver the news to Goff.”

“Forget it,” Abe says.

Feeling restless and tired, I say, “Try to stop me,” and march right for the gates, which start to open to let Abe in.

Abe grabs at my arm, but I shrug it off. He makes another grab, so I turn and push him, hard enough to get him to back off, but not as hard as the last time. To my surprise, he raises his hands in peace and lets me go.

“Don’t do anything stupid, kid,” he says.

Surprisingly, Brock and Hightower just watch me go, as if I’m their entertainment for the day. I reach the gates, which stretch higher than ten men on each other’s shoulders, an arched entranceway that’s normally barred by a heavy metal gate that’s cranked open from below. The gate’s more than halfway up now.

Two burly guards block my path, heavy battleaxes in their hands, crisscrossed between them. “I’m here to see the king in place of Abe,” I say, hard-like, as if I really belong there.

“Those are not our orders,” Burly Guard A says.

“Turn around and keep on walking,” says Burly Guard B.

An important decision. To fight or not to fight? Why is it that I constantly have to make this decision over and over again? My standard answer used to be to fight, which I preferred, but now it’s like my brain’s taken over everything, and I don’t know up from down. If I fight a couple of palace guards, maybe I break through, get as far as the next group of guards, but eventually I get stopped. Lose my job if I’m lucky; get dead or chucked in prison if I’m not.

But Jolie’s in there! Argh! I know where my sister is—or at least I’m pretty icin’ sure—and yet I can’t do a freezin’ thing about it.

“I said, move on,” Burly Guard B says. Or is it A? I can’t remember, but all I know is I’ve been standing there for way too long, drawing all kinds of attention from the wall guards, who are peeking over the edge at me, bows steady, arrow nocked and ready to fly.

Not fight.

The decision burns me up inside like I ate something rancy. It’s not a natural decision for me, but I know it’s the right one.

I walk away, expecting the guards to grab me and pull me inside at any second, to do to me what they did to Nebo.

But they don’t, leaving me wondering why I seem to be able to get away with so much more than everyone else.

~~~

Something’s gone down in fire country. Rumors are flying around like snowflakes in a winter’s snowstorm. Or even like a summer snowstorm, like the one we’ve got now.

It’s the warmest part of the year, but you wouldn’t know by looking out your window at the blanket of cold white coating everything, and the blurry, snowflake-filled air.

Buff and I are camped out at my place, riding out the storm, drinking warm ’quiddy and speaking in hushed tones. I don’t know why we’re whispering, because Wes has gone out, still looking for a job, even in a snowstorm, and Mother, well, she’s even more gone, although she’s sitting not two steps away.

“People are saying the Heaters have been destroyed,” Buff says.

I shake my head. “There’s no way…” I say, although I know anything’s possible around here. Like selling kids for cures.

“It would mean…”

“No job,” I finish.

“We were so close,” Buff says, groaning.

“Who gives a shiv about that,” I say. “Yo’ll probably let the last two payments go anyway.” From what we were able to save, we handed a whole bundle of silver over to Yo, nearly paying for the damage we caused in the fight.

“You think?” Buff says optimistically.

“Yah, but like I said, who cares?” I regret saying it right away, because I see the hurt in Buff’s eyes. “Look, I know Fro-Yo’s is like home to you—it is to me too—but I’m just worried about how I’ll ever get Jolie back without that job. It was my only connection to the palace.”

“We’ll find a way,” Buff says.

I shake my head. “I don’t see how.”

“We’ll start by going to the border.”

~~~

So that’s what we do. Every day, we wake up, grab our nice, shiny King-provided sliders, and slide/hike our way down to the borderlands, hoping to see something, to get some news of the Heaters. Why? Because if we can be the ones to bring news of what’s happened in fire country to Goff, maybe he’ll agree to see us.

And if I can just get behind those palace walls…

Then what? I break out dozens, maybe hundreds of children?

That’s the plan.

The first few days we see nothing at the border. Just empty flatlands, hotter than chill, stretching off in the distance farther than the human eye can see. So we venture a little further in. Each day, we go a little farther. We strip off clothes as we go, until we’re down to nothing but our skivvies.

And yet it’s still hot. Amazing! I still don’t get how it can be so cold and full of snow up the mountain, and fire-hot down here, in the desert. To my smallish brain, it don’t make no logical sense.

One day, when we’re trudging back into ice country after a long morning in the desert, I see something. A flash of movement in the trees. There and then gone. A bird maybe? Or a rabbit? I don’t know why, but it felt bigger than that. Not bear-size, but much bigger than some woodland critter.

I stick a hand out to stop Buff. We’re both wearing just our skivvies, having left our clothes hanging on a tree branch a little further into the woods. He raises an eyebrow questioningly, opens his lips to speak, but I raise a finger to my mouth, quieting him. I point in the direction I saw the movement.

There it is again, something creeping amongst the creepers. But whatever it is, it’s almost blending in with the brown of the tree trunks, the earthy colors of the forest. Barely discernible, unless you happen to be looking right at it.

A twig snaps.

I charge toward the sound, feeling Buff right behind me. If it’s a Heater, I gotta catch him, make him talk to me about what’s going on in fire country. This might be my only chance.

I barge through a tangled thicket, getting scraped and poked by a half-dozen jaggedy branches, barely noticing the flashes of red on my skin.

More twigs are snapping in front of me, as my quarry realizes he’s being chased, and has chosen haste over stealth. I follow the sound, grabbing tree trunks and swinging around them to increase my momentum. I can see him now, definitely a Heater, wearing brown skins that cover his arms and legs, as if he’s expecting it to get cold real soon. He’s fast too, cutting amongst the trees and bushes like a deer.

But he don’t got nothing on me. I grew up in the forest, I know how it moves, how it breathes, where to expect the roots to jump out at you.

I close in.

His head bobs, his short dark hair ducking around trees, picking a path through the forest.

Almost close enough to grab.

I’m about to dive when—

He whirls around, stopping so quickly I almost bash into him. Except…

The him’s a her.

I look the Heater woman over from head to toe in an instant, and I can’t stop my eyes from stopping on her chest, which pushes her coat outward in a feminine curve. “You’ve got…but those are…I thought you were…” I say eloquently.

She looks at me with dark, mesmerizing eyes, her lips turned up in a fierce grin. “Yeah, and I got one of these too.” Before I have a chance to even think about ducking, she decks me in the head with a fist that I swear is made of stone.

My last thought before my vision goes black: she hits harder than me.

Chapter Fourteen

I wake up beaten by a girl. But she was a Heater, so I don’t mind so much. I don’t even mind the headache, which pounds like an angry drummer on my skull.

A leaf rests on my lips, which I blow off.

Wow! I think. Who was that? A Heater, obviously. But ice, was she ever—

“Urrrr,” someone moans nearby.

“Buff?” I say.

“Yah.”

“You breathin’?” I ask, sitting up, holding my head to stop the forest from spinning.

“Nay,” Buff says, lying flat on his back next to a large tree.

“What happened to you?” I ask, wondering if the Heater girl took him down too. I’m kind of hoping she did, because that would be even more impressive. I mean, we’re not the best fighters in the world or anything, but I like to think we’re better than most. Although that might just be my pride talking.

“Not sure,” Buff says, trying to lift his head up, but thinking better of it and resting it back on the ground. He looks funny wearing just his underwear.

“Was it the girl?” I ask.

“Girl?” Buff says. “What girl?” He’s speaking to the tops of the trees.

I drag myself over to him, so I can see his face. There’s dried blood in a line from his split lip to his chin, and one of his eyes is purple and puffy. I wonder how it compares to my face.

“You look like chill,” I say.

“What girl?” Buff repeats.

“The one I was chasing. I thought she was a guy, but then she turned, all short-haired and fierce. That’s when she hit me.”

“You got hit by a girl?” Buff says incredulously.

“Not hit, Buff. Knocked out. She hits harder than you do!”

Buff looks at me with the one eye he’s able to open. Then he starts to laugh. “You got beat up by a girl?”

I shake my head. “She’s probably the one who got you, too. She’s crazy-tough. Unlike any Icer woman, that much I can tell you.”

“She’s not the one who got me,” Buff says, squinting his one eye, like he’s trying to remember something. “I was right on your tail, doing my iciest to keep up with the manic pace you were plowing through the woods, when something dark dropped from over my head, leaping from the trees. This wasn’t no girl, Dazz, no one so easy to beat as that.”

“She wasn’t easy to beat,” I interrupt.

He shakes his head again. “Anyway, this was definitely a guy, but not like the Heaters we’ve seen. He was cut like stone, brown-skinned, but covered in dark markings, like some kind of wild man. He was shirtless, but had a mess of skins over his shoulder. And he hit harder than some sissy-eyed Heater girl. He knocked me flat into tomorrow with a left and a right.”

“Two hits?” I say. “Like I said, the sissy-eyed Heater girl knocked me out with one punch.”

“I guess I can just take a hit better than you,” Buff says, laughing. But then he grabs his head like he just got hit by an iceball.

I sigh. “We can argue about it later. What do you think they’re doing here in ice country?”

“How the chill should I know? They’re supposed to be destroyed.”

“Maybe most of them are,” I say. “Maybe they’re coming here looking for help, someone to take them in.”

“Funny way of asking for it,” Buff grumbles.

“Well, we were chasing them.”

Buff’s eyes narrow. “Hey, describe this Heater girl again, will ya? You know, the girl who beat you up.”

I punch him on the shoulder, but then I describe her.

“The short hair thing’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”

I shrug. “I guess so, but it sort of worked for her. She wasn’t bad looking.”

Buff says, “You know, I felt like there were more of them, too.”

“More of who?”

“The Heaters, or Marked, or whoever they are. Although I only saw the guy with the markings, it felt like there were others watching the whole thing.”

“How many?” I ask.

“I dunno. Like I said, it’s just a feeling I had.”

We both stare off into the forest for a few minutes, thinking about everything. Finally, Buff says, “What are we going to do?”

“Find them,” I say.

~~~

It’s dark by the time we get back to the Brown District. We agree to meet in the morning, to start looking for the mysterious invaders who gave us the quickest beating of our lives.

When I push through the door, I can’t help the smile on my face. It quickly fades though when reality sets in. Mother’s in front of the fire, rocking slightly, using her hands to drum out an uneven rhythm on the floor. Wes is off to the side on the floor too, back against the wall, hand against his head, a half-eaten bowl of soup beside him. And, of course, there’s no Jolie. It’s like losing her sucked all the life out of our already lifeless family. We may have only gotten to see her once or twice a day, but that was enough to make things different, to fill in a bit of the emptiness.

I can’t. As hard as I try to think of the Heaters in ice country, I can’t. Images of my broken family flood my mind and my lips stay flatter than the floor.

“Wes,” I say.

He doesn’t move.

“This has to stop,” I say.

No response.

“I know where Jolie is.”

His head snaps up and a pair of red-veined eyes stares at me. His face is moist. He’s been crying. “That’s not funny,” he says.

“She’s in the palace somewhere,” I say.

“Cut it out.”

“I’m being serious. I’ve got a lot to tell you. I should’ve told you sooner.”

Over two fresh bowls of soup, both for me, and to the erratic sound of my mother’s ceaseless drumming, I tell him everything. What the job really was, about the Cure, how we found Nebo dead and frozen, about the “special cargo”, how I felt ill being a part of it. I wrap things up with our trips to fire country and “meeting” the Heaters.

Wes’s eyes widen at parts, narrow at others, but mostly just pay rapt attention to every word I speak in between slurps of soup. When I finish, his eyes finally leave mine, drifting to watch Mother and her incessant drumming.

“You don’t know for sure Jolie’s in there,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

He nods, like he understands. It’s a brother-sister thing. He knows, too.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I’ve been dying more and more every day.” The way he says it sounds so weary-like, as if he might die right here, right now, on the spot, if he doesn’t like my answer.

“Like I told you, they’re watching me. Or at least they were when I worked for the king. I expect they’re still watching, on account of what I know, although maybe they’re not being quite as attentive now that the trade agreement seems to be on hold, or over, or whatever. I thought if they knew I told you, they’d kill us both.” It’s the honest to Mountain Heart truth.

Wes nods, sighs. “You did the right thing.”

I close my eyes. My brother’s back. The one who decides what’s right and wrong, who always knows what to do, whose approval I’ve been desperately seeking even though maybe I didn’t realize it until right now. His words seem to wash over me like cold water, cleansing me. Every decision I’ve made over the last few months has seemed so wrong, mostly because Jolie’s still gone, but hearing Wes say those words seems to validate it all. I shouldn’t need validation, but I do.

“Thanks,” I say.

“What now?” he asks.

“I need your help.”

Light flows into his eyes as he turns toward me, as if someone’s just lit a fire, although the fireplace has been crackling since I entered the room. A purpose. Perhaps he can’t get a job, can’t provide for his family, but he can help me bring Jolie back, and that’s a greater purpose than anything.

~~~

We don’t know where to start looking, so we begin where it started, where Buff and I got our arse’s handed to us by a girl and marked man.

“The trail’s cold,” Wes says, “but it’s still here.” I smile, both because of the words he’s saying and because it’s him that’s saying them. I haven’t heard him speak like that, with such confidence and directness, since Joles was taken.

“How many do you think there are?” I ask.

Wes chews his lip. “Can’t tell just yet, but at least two. Maybe more.”

“Good,” I say. “Let’s see where it takes us.”

Wes leads, because he’s the best tracker, and Buff brings up the rear, because, well, “You’re the biggest arse I’ve ever met,” I say.

He makes a gesture that borders on rude, but slips in behind me, stepping on the back of my boots every few minutes.

We’re warm when we start, on account of our heavy clothing, but soon the trail leads us high enough up the mountain that it’s downright chilly. “The Heaters we always met at the border were dressed for hot weather, wearing only thin skins,” I say. “These ones had skins and looked ready to face the cold.”

“Do you want to be the one to warm her up?” Buff says from behind.

“Shut it,” I say. “Just because I was impressed with how she could throw a punch doesn’t mean I’m looking to hug her.”

Wes stops, looks at us both like we’re slightly crazy, says, “The trail keeps leading up, so they’d be getting good use out of those skins right about now.”

Wes keeps marching on and we follow. He stops every once in a while to inspect a broken tree branch or a shallow footprint.

When we reach the snowfields, there are dozens of prints, all clustered together, and then deep gouges in the snow where it looks like they laid down. “I can see five distinct sets of prints,” Wes says.

“They’d have frozen their stones off lying in the snow like that,” Buff says. Then, grinning, adds, “At least the Marked guy would’ve, but the girl wouldn’t have any stones to freeze off, would she?”

“Oh, she had stones all right,” I say, “just not the kind you’re talking about.”

“Don’t they know snow is cold?” Wes asks.

I shrug. “They’ve probably never seen it. You should’ve seen the look on the Heater children’s faces when we came through these parts. They were in awe of the white stuff.”

“Don’t see what the allure is,” Buff says. “I’ve had enough of it to last me for ten lifetimes.”

I bend down to touch the impressions in the snow, imagining the Heater girl in the snow, knee bent, smiling at the white ground around her. What is she doing so far from home?

“Well, whatever the case, even with their warm clothing they’d be getting pretty cold at this point, searching for shelter. Let’s see where their footsteps lead,” Wes says.

Sure enough, the trail leads off to the side, away from the snowfields and back into the forest, where the snow is thinner and there’s more protection from the frosty wind. Ahh, summer in ice country, I think to myself. Not what the Heaters would be used to.

The prints run right up to a gigantic tree, with a trunk thicker than a Yag’s chest and a huge hole in it, big enough to sleep five people, if everyone crammed together. And, according to Wes, they had to sleep five, so they were really crammed.

Inside are the remnants of a small fire, all ash and charred twigs left over, which is impressive. Fires aren’t easy to make in ice country, especially when you’re not used to doing it.

“They slept here,” Buff says.

“Thanks for the input,” I say.

“My pleasure.”

The trail continues up the mountain, aiming right for the eastern edge of the village, the White District, and eventually the palace.

“They were heading for us,” Wes says, meaning the Icers in general.

“Well, we could’ve led them,” Buff says. “If they hadn’t beaten the shiver out of us.”

“Maybe they wanted to surprise the king,” I say.

“Why?” Wes says.

“Because maybe Roan is dead,” I say, feeling my brain working double time, spinning a few impossible theories into one possible one. “What if something did happen to the Heaters and the Marked? Something really big, really bad—devastating even. What if the Head Greynote, Roan, was killed? What if a bunch of the Greynotes were killed and there was a big shakeup in their leadership? You’ve all heard the rumors. People are saying the Heaters were destroyed, but maybe they were just attacked and they survived, but Roan and the other Greynotes were killed. If they have new leaders they’d want to check things out with their neighbors, make contact with Goff, figure out how things work with the trade agreement. Wouldn’t they?”

The questions float for a moment, settling over us like the quiet before a winter storm.

“It’s possible,” Wes admits. “It would certainly explain them showing up out of nowhere. But we’ve never seen a Heater in ice country, not this far up the mountain anyway. I don’t think the king would take too kindly to them appearing unannounced at the palace gates.”

“Nay. He wouldn’t. You’re right about that,” I say.

~~~

And the Heater’s footprints do lead toward the palace gates, at least for a while, but then they veer off away from civilization again, taking us back into the thick woods.

“They’re going around back,” I say. It’s still crazy that they’re making for the palace at all, but at least they had enough brains to skip the knock-on-the-front-gates approach.

“There’s an entrance in the back, isn’t there?” Wes says.

“Yah,” Buff and I say at the exact same time. We’ve talked about finding a way through the back door many a time. But like every other way in, it’s well-guarded and impossible to breach.

We pick a path through the forest, easily following the mess of snapped twigs the Heaters left in their wake. When we reach a clearing, the path suddenly opens up in a wide swathe all the way to the palace walls. A guard stands atop the wall and I swear he’s looking right at us.

“Shiv!” I hiss, ducking back behind the trees and pulling Wes and Buff with me.

“Did he see us?” Wes asks.

“I dunno. I don’t see how he couldn’t’ve,” I say.

“Maybe he was looking past us, over the forest,” Buff says.

“Maybe,” I say wanting to believe it.

We wait for a long ten minutes, expecting a parade of palace guardsmen to come charging down the track at any moment. But they don’t, and the forest stays quiet, save for the occasional song of a snowbird.

Ever so slowly, I stand up, conscious of keeping myself behind the army of trees that separate us from the palace. When I look at the tracks in the clearing I gasp.

Footprints trample every which way, but not just six sets. Twenny, maybe more, cut deep from heavy steps and packing the snow down to a hard skin. But that’s not what caused my sudden intake of air. There’s blood, too, bright and wet on the snow. Mostly droplets, perfect little crimson circles burnt into the snow, but a few rivers too, crisscrossing and zigzagging around the middle of the clearing.

“What is it?” Wes says, hearing my gasp and standing up next to me. “Holy shiverbones!” he says.

“Not good,” Buff says, taking it all in along with us. “The guards got ’em.”

“You think they’re…” I say.

“Nay,” Buff says. “Goff woulda wanted to talk to them. But after what they did to us, I expect they’da fought like mountain lions. The blood might not even be theirs.”

I think about that, hoping my friend’s right. “Then they’re prisoners,” I say.

“Probably,” Wes says. “I doubt they’re guests, especially not the way they snuck in and put up a fight.”

Prisoners. The word hangs heavy between my ears.

Prisoners. Just like Jolie.