Текст книги "Ice Country"

Автор книги: David Estes

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Chapter Eighteen

“It wasn’t entirely his fault,” Siena says.

“He didn’t help matters though,” Skye says.

“No, he didn’t,” says a fourth voice, one I haven’t heard yet. The muscly, athletic-looking guy. I wonder what group he’s affiliated with. “The Glassies attacked us,” the guy explains.

“Who’d they attack?” I ask.

“The Heaters.” So the other guy’s a Heater. I’m still trying to figure out how everything fits together. “They’ve attacked us three times. The third time was just at the start of the summer. Siena and Skye’s father…Roan…he was a bit of tyrant.”

“A bit?” Skye says. “I still got scars from where he used his snapper on me. Siena too.”

Sounds like a real good guy. “At least he was going out and getting the Cure for you,” I point out.

“Ha!” Skye scoffs. “Whaddya you know about the Cure?”

Something in her tone tells me to tread carefully. “I, uh, I know we delivered it to Roan’s men all the time.”

“You don’t know what he did with it?” the Heater guy says.

“We assumed he passed it out to the village,” Buff says, even though we weren’t really sure of that at all.

“He didn’t.” Siena again. “He kept it for himself and maybe a few of his baggard friends. There wasn’t enough to go ’round, and no one knew ’bout it anyway.”

I don’t know what to say. Not only did Roan not share the Cure with the Heaters, but he kept it from his own children? It’s not what I expected. “So back to the Glassies,” I say. “They attacked the Heaters, but where do the rest of you fit in?”

“Me and Sie are Wildes,” Skye says. “We ran away from home to join them. Wilde, well, she’s the leader.”

“Sorry, who’s Wilde?” Buff asks.

“I am,” says the musical voice.

“Yes you are,” says Buff, like me, choosing the wrong time for a bad line. “I’m Buff. And my friend’s Dazz.”

“I’m Circ,” says the other guy, the non-Marked one. Circ, Siena, Wilde, Feve, and Skye. Skye.

“Got it,” I say. “So the ladies joined the Wildes. Then what?”

“My father tried to burnin’ kill us,” Skye says. “But we searin’ near killed him and half his Hunters.”

“I bet you did,” I say, rubbing my bruised nose.

“Then when the Glassies attacked the Heaters, we went to help them. Not ’cause of my father. ’Cause of the rest of the Heaters. The good ones.”

“We showed up to help, too,” says Feve. “The Marked.”

“Yeah, when the fight was mostly over,” Siena says. There’s a hint of something in her voice. Not hate necessarily, but something bordering on it, animosity maybe. She doesn’t like Feve, and maybe not the Marked in general.

“The Heaters, Wildes, and Marked,” I say. “The Tri-Tribes, right?”

“Right,” Circ says. “Roan was killed, most of the—”

“Wait, Roan’s dead?” Buff says.

“Searin’ right,” Skye says, not a speck of sadness for her father in her voice. “Glassies killed him deader’n two tons of tug meat.”

Well, that explains why the trade stopped. Given the secrecy, I wonder if he didn’t orchestrate the whole thing. He and Goff. Skye and the rest know about the Cure, but I wonder if they know about the “special cargo”…

Circ continues. “Most of the Greynotes were killed too. Given how small each tribe’s numbers were, we declared a truce amongst us and formed the Tri-Tribes. At least until the danger from the Glassies passes.”

“Why do the Glassies want to kill you?” I blurt out. There’s silence for a minute, so I say, “They seem to like us just fine.”

“You’ve seen them, Icy?” Feve says incredulously.

“Well, yah. Not that often, but they come up the mountain from time to time. Only to meet with the king though.”

“What does the king have to do with the Glassies?” Feve’s questions are filled with sharp edges, like jagged rocks and icicles.

“I dunno. I assume something trade related,” I say. “It’s all a bit secretive, and Goff doesn’t really tell the Icers anything.”

“Doesn’t make any sense,” Circ mutters.

“Doesn’t make one burnin’ lick of sense,” Skye agrees.

I’m missing something. “What doesn’t?” I look through the hole, but Skye’s eyes aren’t there. The back of her head rests against the wall.

Skye’s not talking, so Circ says, “Goff’s trading with Roan on one hand and then dealing with the Glassies on the other. Seems like he’s straddling the middle, playing both sides. Or he’s really on one side, and helping the other.”

“But he’d be helping your side by giving you the Cure,” I say.

“But my father didn’t share it ’round,” Siena interjects.

“But Goff doesn’t know that,” I reply.

“But you don’t know what the scorch yer talkin’ ’bout!” Skye suddenly yells, twisting her eyes around and pointing them back through the hole at me.

“Sorry,” I say, feeling hot, although there’s a cool chill in the dank dungeon air. “Look, I’m not trying to defend Goff, or Roan, I’m just trying to understand things.” I wonder if now’s the time to ask about the children cargo. Probably not, there’s enough on the table already.

“Us, too,” Wilde says. “Skye?”

“I’m sorry, too,” she says, although I’m not sure she would’ve said it if Wilde hadn’t pushed her to.

“Maybe I can help,” I say. “Let me tell you what I know.”

~~~

So I tell them mostly everything, from the beginning. My gambling mistakes, the job, how we learned about the Cure, how Goff is hiding it from the Icers almost exactly like Roan was keeping it secret from the Heaters, about the job suddenly ending and Buff and I going looking for answers and finding Skye and Feve. I only leave out the part about Jolie getting taken and the children being traded for the Cure. I don’t even know why I skip it, but Buff doesn’t say anything.

“So Goff is keeping the Cure all for himself, too,” Wilde says. “Interesting. We thought part of the trade agreement was keeping the Heaters out of ice country so as to not spread the Fire.”

“Not spread the Fire?” I say. “The Cold—that’s what we call it—kills many of us every year. Something about the snow and ice and cold air slows it down, so we live a little longer, but it still gets us all eventually, like it did my father a while back.”

“I’m sorry,” Wilde says. “About your father.”

“Me, too,” I say.

“Goff sounds like our father,” Siena says. “Eviler’n a pack of Killers scorch bent on biting their fangs into anything that moves.”

“Yah, well, we’re learning very quickly that he’s not such a good guy,” Buff says.

“Where’s he get it?” Siena throws out there. “The Cure.”

It’s another good question none of us know the answer to. “I’ve taken a fair look at the dried herbs,” I say. “But it’s nothing I’ve seen growing on the mountain. But it’s possible he grows it right in the palace somewhere.”

No one has anything to say to that. A question they’ll be able to answer pops into my head. “Why’d you come here anyway?” The question I don’t ask is: why’d you sneak in the way you did?

“The Cure,” Siena says. “Mostly. We want to get more of it for our people, to stop the death. Whatever’s in the air is killin’ us all, one by one. We can’t barely live past thirty. We were gonna offer a new trade ’greement, a good’un, in exchange for more of the Cure, but he wouldn’t e’en listen to us. All he cared ’bout was what happened to my father.”

“When we told him Roan was dead, he threw us all back down here,” Circ explains. “He didn’t look like he’d be letting us out anytime soon.”

And there it is. Unless Wes can come through for us, we’re all freezed. I’ll keep that to myself too.

~~~

Everyone goes silent for a while after that, each lost in their own thoughts. Mine are like dead leaves in the wind, drifting and swirling and scattering every which way, as haphazard and random as falling snow. Too many questions and not enough answers.

But mostly I just think about Jolie. Whether she’s wandering the palace somewhere, carrying a bucket, or planting seeds in the palace gardens that will sprout the stems that’ll eventually grow into the Cure plants. Whether she’s thinking about me, about ways to escape so she can come home. Whether she’s tried to escape and gotten caught, been punished. Whether Wes’s seen her around, and is biding his time to get us all out together. Wes has always been so icin’ good at protecting us, at taking care of us. Can he do it now?

Then I hear a voice through the hole in the wall, raspy but whispered. “Hey, Icy,” Skye says. “You there?”

“It’s Dazz,” I say, peering through the hole. “And where else would I be?”

She laughs and I see her lips turned up into a smile. She’s not looking through the hole—just talking through it, laughing through it. “Good’un. I meant if you were sleepin’, but considerin’ yer speakin’ to me, I s’pose you ain’t.”

“I ain’t,” I agree.

“Watcha doin’ down ’ere?” Skye asks. “Watcha in for?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” I say, trying to think up a good response.

“No, you stopped yer story when you followed us through the woods and found where we got caught.”

“We picked a fight with a coupla of castle guards,” I say, bending the truth just a little for effect. We didn’t actually fight them, although I definitely wanted to.

“You did what? Are you wooloo?” The word rolls around in the hole, clattering against the sides like a pebble. I can easily guess what wooloo means.

“Uh, yah, I guess we are,” I say, wondering if being crazy is a really bad thing where she comes from.

She laughs and I admire her lips. I could reach through and touch them so easily. Shame I can’t fit my head through. I’ve never made out in a dungeon before. “We’re all a little wooloo too,” she says. “Hafta be to survive fire country.”

I steer the topic away before she asks any more questions. “You know, the only reason you knocked me out in the woods was because I was surprised you were a girl,” I say.

“Ha!” Her laugh echoes loudly through the dungeons. “Surprised, eh? Seems to me you were the one chasin’ me.”

“Yah. But when you turned and you were so—so…”

“So what?” she says, a smile in her question. I wish I could see her face again. All I’ve got is a memory, a set of eyes, and a pair of lips to go offa.

I laugh. “So…not a guy,” I say. “Except for the hair.”

“Short hair don’t hafta be a guy,” she snaps.

“Nay, I didn’t mean—I’m not saying—” I’ve never been this rattled talking to a woman before. When I was courting the witch I was as smooth as butter, at least up until the point where she cheated on me and threw me out on my arse.

“What’re you sayin’?” she asks, once more laying the pressure on hard.

My face is hotter than fire country. “I’m saying I like it. Your hair. I like your hair. I like everything.” Buff chuckles. I realize my voice has risen like the temperature on the way down the mountain. Our private conversation is no longer private.

A hard voice says, “I think you’ve said enough.”

Feve has spoken.

Buff chuckles again. “More than enough,” he adds.

Chapter Nineteen

Not much happens for a day.

The dungeon’s not so bad, mostly because my cell’s right next to Skye’s, and she’s been pretty set on sitting near our shared hole, so I get glimpses of her all the time. A strong shoulder. A slender neck. Did I mention her lips?

A few times I think I’m doing something wrong by paying her so much attention, because I should be focused on finding Jolie—which I am—but it’s kind of hard to find your sister when you’re locked in a tiny cell. So I figure anything to pass the time is fair game—at least until Wes breaks us out.

Which he will.

Of that I’m certain.

Well, mostly certain.

When I think it’s near the end of the day, Big brings us each a thin metal dish of something gruel-like, but even under the torchlight it’s hard to identify what it is. It tastes like a mixture of dirt and bark, so maybe that’s what it is, seasoned with yellow snow and fried up in a big old pot, made special for prisoners. Wanting to stay strong, I eat it anyway.

Skye messes with Big on the way out. “Hey, Big,” she says.

“Eat your food!” he says.

“I will. It’s just, there’s this nasty searin’ fungus goin’ ’round and I been wonderin’ if you know anythin’ ’bout it.”

What’s she up to?

Big stops sharply. “I’m the one who told ya about it, Woman. When I tossed you in ’ere.”

“Was it you?” Skye says, false question in her voice.

“Yah!”

“Oh, I guess I forgot.” Skye’s voice echoes off the walls.

“What about the fungus?” Big asks, a hint of something that I think is fear in his tone.

“Is that a spot of it on your chest?” Skye says, pointing.

Even under the dim light, I can see Big’s face go white. “Where?” he says, frantically searching with his fingers.

“Above that big ol’ crater you call a bellybutton,” she says.

Big’s fingers find the spot, run across his sweaty skin. “Just a mole,” he says, relief evident in the way he breathes out as he says it.

“Good,” Skye says. “I was worried.”

“Now eat your food!” Big repeats, stomping through the doors.

“What was that all about?” I ask Skye.

“Nothin’,” she says. “Just havin’ a bit of fun. When we were brought in, the big fella was goin’ on and on ’bout this flesh eatin’ fungus that’s been goin’ ’round. Seems the only thing he’s scared of. Just wanted to put that fear to the test.”

~~~

There’s not much else to do other than talking, sometimes as a group, sometimes broken up into separate conversations. A coupla of times I move to the front of my cell, stick my head out the bars, look up and down the row, hoping to get another look at one of the others—okay, okay, Skye mostly—but none of them are ever doing the same. Well, except for Buff, who seems to be doing the same thing, except his eyes are always on the cell I suspect belongs to the song-voiced one they call Wilde.

When I make a rude gesture he slinks back into his cell.

So I just sit there, arms draped over the bars, waiting. For Wes. For anybody.

I picture how it’ll be when we’re reunited with Jolie, how her smile will fill up my heart, how she’ll wrap her arms around me and I’ll swing her in a circle.

There’s movement to my left, from the cell next to mine. The girl sticks her head out. Skye’s sister, Siena. She glances my way, smiles a rather pretty smile, and then leans as far to the edge in the other direction as possible, as if I might have the Cold and share it with her. I frown, perplexed as to her strange anti-me behavior, but then a pair of strong arms reaches out from the cell beyond hers. She’s barely able to reach them, to grasp them, to hold them. There’s something so tender, so longing, so loving in the simple touch I witness, between Siena and Circ, that I feel a yearning in my own heart. Not for anyone in particular, certainly not for any of my exes, not even for Skye—although she has captured my interest—but just for a connection to someone like the one I see between Skye’s sister and the Heater boy.

As they continue to hold hands, they whisper to each other, laugh, whisper some more, laugh some more. Everything seems so easy for them, like one was made for the other. Like they never had a choice. Almost like destiny. As I pull back into my cell, I’m left wondering if it’s always been that way for them.

~~~

“Psst! Skye!” I hiss through the hole in the wall.

Everything’s dark. A few hours back, Big stomped through the dungeon extinguishing all the torches. Everyone’s sleeping. I should be sleeping. But I can’t, not without clearing something up first.

“Psst!” I hiss again.

“Sun goddess sear it, Icy! This’d better be good.” I can sense her face at the hole, her lips turned into a frown that could kill.

I smile in the dark.

“I’ve got something to say,” I whisper.

“Well, out with it, Icy.”

“Dazz,” I say.

“That’s what you wanted to say? To tell me yer name agin?”

“Nay, nay, I’m just saying call me Dazz. In ice country, icy means…”

“Spit it out, Icy. I’m tired.”

“Attractive,” I say.

“And yer not?” she asks. Is she asking me? Is she saying I am…icy? What is she saying? “An icy Icy,” she whispers, floating the words off her tongue. It’s the gentlest I think I’ve ever heard her voice sound.

“Uh,” I say.

“Yer smoky, Dazz,” she says, my name sounding strange coming from her. “But that ain’t nothin’ where I come from. Not that I mind a-lookin’ sometimes.”

I almost choke on the wad of spit that’s congealing in my throat. I’ve never had a woman be so…honest with me. Not that women aren’t honest, a lot of them are, too honest sometimes, but Skye seems to say every last thought that pops into her head. It’s exhilarating in a way, although I couldn’t imagine doing the same. If I said half the things floating around in my brain right now, she’d probably never speak to me again.

“Now, are we done, or are we done?” she says. “This feather-hard floor is callin’ my name.”

“Wait,” I say. “Nay, there was something else.”

“Well then hocker it up like the lump that always seems to be in yer throat.”

Heart of the Mountain, is she reading my thoughts now, too? I gotta get control of things again, if I ever had control of them in the first place. “Look, I just wanted you to know that I’m usually a better fighter. I really was surprised when you turned around and found out you were a—”

“A woman. I know. Full of curves and a mix of hard and soft spots and all the things that guys git all wooloo over. But even if I hadn’ta been a woman, or if you weren’t surprised and all that, I’da still’ve beat you redder’n the fire country sky. You can count on that, Icy.”

My jaw drops and I try to lift it back up but it’s dead weight. I’m thankful it’s dark and she can’t see me. “Now wait just a minute, you’ve never even seen me fight. I’ve been in more scraps in the last week than you’ve probably seen your entire life.”

“I ain’t tryin’ to compete, Dazzy. I’m just sayin’ truths, which can be hard to hear sometimes. Sleep on it and you’ll feel much better in the mornin’.”

Sleep on it? You bet your cute little arse I’ll sleep on it. And I’ll prove to her one way or the other that I can hold my own in a fight. Certainly better than Feve, who’s probably who she’s comparing me to.

“G’night, icy Dazz,” she says, completely disarming me. I lay down with my own shoulder and arms as a pillow, not thinking about proving that I can fight, but about whether she meant icy with a capital or lowercase “i”, smiling like a butcher’s sled dog.

~~~

Boredom sets in pretty hard the next day. People are used to having the right to come and go as they please, so if you take that right away from them, they get bored very quickly. At least I do.

All of us seem energized after sleeping, though, and when morning comes—in the form of a pathway of torches lit by a lumbering Big, still shirtless and so meaty he looks capable of feeding a village of cannibals for a month—everyone’s ready to talk some more. Buff, being Buff, suggests a game of sorts.

“I’ve got some rocks that broke off the floor,” Buff says. “I toss one to whoever I please, and I get to ask them a question.”

“A question ’bout what?” Skye hollers down the row.

“Anything,” Buff says. “Whatever I want. And the person who’s got the rock has to answer, and when they do, they get to throw the rock to someone else and ask their own question.”

“What’re we, a bunch of game-lovin’ Midders tryin’ to figure out which boy thinks they’re smoky?” Skye says.

I laugh, starting to catch onto the fire country lingo.

I make a suggestion. “We’ll play Buff’s little game, but let’s stick to questions about fire or ice country.”

“’Specially blaze about Goff, the Cure, and the Glassies,” Skye suggests.

“I’m bored already,” Feve says.

“You shut it,” Siena says, which makes me smile. I’d love to get a glimpse into whatever history there is between those two.

“I’m in,” Circ says.

“It might help us figure things out,” Wilde adds.

“Right,” Buff says. “First rock’s for Wilde.” Surprise, surprise.

There’s scuffling and scraping as everyone moves to the front of their cells. I stick my head out and purposely look left first, so as to not be so obvious about how icin’ bad I want to look in Skye’s direction. Siena’s head pops out but she looks at Circ, who’s grinning at her. Feve’s on the opposite side, his bare chest sliced by shadows and markings. He’s staring at me like if he looks hard enough he might kill me with just his eyes. Further down the row, Wilde’s next to Feve, and she’s looking my way, but past me, I guess at Skye.

Don’t look. Don’t look.

Not yet. Too obvious.

Buff’s at the end of the hall, sort of looking at everyone, but definitely favoring Wilde’s direction.

Don’t look—

–how can I not look?—

–don’t. Really, don’t.

I look.

I mean for it to be a quick, nonchalant glance, just to see that she’s there, but she’s looking right at me, a smile tugging at the corners of the lips I’ve gotten to see the most of over the last day. I don’t blush this time, not one bit, just look back, meeting her eyes, feeling something akin to excitement rush through my chest.

She’s not icy, like we thought. Nay, her beauty goes far beyond a word like that, which suddenly seems so childish, so ordinary. And she is anything but ordinary. With deep, brown eyes that seem to collect every last flicker of torchlight, strong high cheekbones that fit her right-sized nose and full lips so perfectly, she’s a brown-skinned angel, delicate and strong, soft and hard—and grinning.

I’ve been staring a while.

“Mornin’, icy Dazz,” she says, soft enough so only I can hear.

“Morning, beautiful Skye,” I say, shocking myself at my own boldness.

Skye’s grin fades and I can tell I’ve surprised her too, which is some feat, considering she’s seemed one step ahead from the very beginning.

When Buff says, “Catch, Wilde!” she looks past me, and the moment is broken. I turn, too, and watch as Buff chucks the stone awkwardly through the bars. To his credit, it goes in the general direction of Wilde, skipping across the stone and resting in front of her cell, where she picks it up. She looks at Buff, her long black hair draped behind her.

“Ahem.” Buff clears his throat. “Wilde, my lady, what are the three most important qualities you look for in a guy?”

Chaos follows the question. I’m laughing, unable to help it. Feve’s protesting, yelling something about the childishness of Icers. Siena and Circ are holding hands and more or less just shaking their heads. And Skye’s screaming the most, saying things like “…burnin’ not what we agreed,” and “…searin’ wooloo Icies.”

Wilde, however, raises a hand, instantly silencing everyone, including me, as I suddenly find myself unable to laugh. “Truth, honor, wisdom,” she says, answering.

There’s silence for a moment, and then I say, “Sorry, Buff, oh for three.”

Laughter fills the dungeon, Buff’s being the loudest of all as he nods his head. I catch a glance from Feve and it’s not filled with animosity. He’s not laughing exactly, but he’s not glaring or frowning or shooting eye-daggers, so I guess it’s a win.

Skye’s laughing, too, which makes me smile even bigger. Score one for the funny man.

We all stop, however, when the door barges open and Big sticks his thick head in. “What the freeze is goin’ on in here! Shut yer gruel-eaters ’fore I shut ’em for you!” He slams the door and there’s a lot of hands over mouths, as people try not to laugh.

“Now, can we stick to the rules?” Wilde says.

Buff nods sheepishly.

Right away, Wilde turns down the row and says, “Dazz,” bouncing the rock along the floor. It skitters to my feet and stops against my toe. I look up expectantly. What will the wise Wilde leader ask me?

“What are you not telling us?” she asks.