Ice Country (32 page)

“Who’s included from the Brown District?”

There’s a twinkle in Buff’s eye. “Yo, for
one,” he says, and I smile. I couldn’t think of a better choice.
He’s always had more wisdom and kindness than most.

“Good,” I say. “What’ll this consortium
do?”

“Decide on what’s to become of the king, and
then what’s to become of the Icers. Yo says they’ll be announcing
the king’s execution any day now.”

I feel like I should smile, but I can’t, not
with Jolie the way she is.

“And then what?”

He shrugs. “Not even Yo can predict, but he
expects things’ll get better.”

“They could hardly get worse,” I say.

Buff leaves after that.

~~~

Skye comes shortly after Buff leaves. She’s
wearing thick snow pants and a heavy coat, borrowed from Looza, so
they hang from her like extra skin, way too much material for her
lean frame. But at least she’s warm. And she still looks beautiful,
breathtakingly so.

“She’ll heal soon,” she announces when she
sees the frustration on my face. “Feve’s a searin’ good healer.”
She flips Buff’s chair around, straddles it backwards, her leg
close to mine.

Her words give me hope, which surprises
me.

With her leg tapping on the floor, always
moving, I feel the warm sensation I get inside me whenever she’s
around. “Skye?” I say.

“Yeah?” She tilts her head to look at me.

“Why’re you doing all this?” It’s a question
I’ve been holding for a while, but with everything happening, I
haven’t had the chance to ask it.

She shrugs, keeps on tapping her foot. “Why
not,” she says. “We were ’ere. The village needed help.”
You
needed help.
The rest hangs unspoken on her pink tongue.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help you get your
sister back from the Stormers. Jade.”

“You’ll stay ’ere with yer sister,” she says.
“We’ll take care of it.”

“I need to know the truth. Who wanted my
sister. And why.”

“You want revenge,” Skye says, right on point
as usual.

“Wouldn’t you?” I ask.

“Yes,” she admits. “But we can give you that.
You need to stay with her.” She motions to Jolie.

“When are you leaving?” We haven’t talked
about what comes next, but I know it’s got to be coming soon.
Skye’s not the type to wait around for heroes to rescue her. She is
the hero.

One side of her lip turns up. “I know what
yer thinkin’ in that pretty little Icy Dazz head of yers,” she
says. “You’ll follow us, you’ll find a way to stay with us till we
realize you ain’t takin’ no fer an answer. Am I right?” Before I
can answer, she adds, “Yer not comin’.” She’s got that locked-jaw
look that says it’s the end of the conversation. Only for me it
isn’t. She was exactly right. I’m going with her if I have to
follow like a shadow from a distance.

“If you say so,” I say, laughing. I cut off
short, however, when I realize it. I can’t laugh, not when Jolie
might be dying beside me.

Can I really leave her like this?

“I do say so,” she says, getting that look in
her eyes, the one where she narrows them and you know there’s no
way you can change her mind, so it isn’t even worth trying.

So I try anyway. “You helped save my sister,
so I’ll help save yours. This has nothing to do with us.”

She punches me lightly on the shoulder and
gets that
other
look in her eyes, the one where her eyebrows
raise, pulling her big brown eyes open a little wider than usual,
and you know, just know, she’s about to say something that’ll
surprise you, because it’ll be so honest, so straight to the heart
that you wonder where she came from, how she can wear her emotions
on the outside like that, when most people are hiding them deep
inside, locking them in a box, throwing away the key.

“Dazz,” she says, and I wait for it
breathlessly.

“Yer a real icin’ fool sometimes,” she says,
and I burst out laughing, both because she’s right and because she
used one of our words, the one that I think means the same thing as
searin’
in her language.

~~~

After Skye leaves I feel that hole in my soul
that always seems to appear when she’s not around. I don’t know
what’s wrong with me, but maybe Skye is right, that I’m a real
icin’ fool for thinking I should leave the side of my unconscious
sister to go on some wild hunt for a Heater girl I don’t even know,
who’s probably not alive anyway.

Call it foolishness, call it the need to pay
the Heaters back for what they did for me, call it a hot desire for
revenge
, call it bear crap for all I care, but that’s what I
know I need to do.

The Stormers can’t get away with stealing
children, not from ice country, not from fire country, not from
anywhere. We’ll make them stop.

I’m staring at the floor thinking about it
all when there’s a heavy knock at the door, so heavy I think the
guards are back with their battering ram, trying to smash straight
through our hut. “Ice it all to chill!” I hiss under my breath,
striding to the door with snow water in my veins.

I throw the door open, ready to knock
whoever’s disturbing my thoughts and my sister’s peaceful slumber
all the way into fire country.

I suck in a quick breath when I find myself
staring into the chest of a giant.

He grunts and I look up. Hightower stands
over me, a foot taller and twice as wide.

Abe steps around him, leaning on a stick and
smiling the nastiest smile I’ve ever seen, all bite and no warmth.
A smile that makes me smile back. “Hey, kid, mind if we come
in?”

I chuckle. These are the last two people I
expected to show up on my doorstep. “It’s not like I can stop you
when you got him leading the charge,” I say, motioning to his
Yag-sized brother.

“Icin’ right,” he says, pushing past me. I
step aside and let Hightower grunt his way inside, having to duck
and turn sorta sideways to get through the narrow entrance.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” I say when
I close the door.

Abe smiles wickedly. “Tell ’im, Tower.”

I frown and look at Tower, who I’ve never
heard speak even a single word. The monstrous man reaches a big ol’
hand into a deep pocket in his bearskin coat. There’s a jingle when
he pulls out a fistful of bright, gleaming silver.

I gawk at the sickles, more wealth than I’ve
ever seen in my entire life.

“But where…how…what…” I say, unable to pull
my eyes off the shiny coins.

“Exactly,” Abe says. “All of that. This ’ere,
kid, is yer share.”

I keep on staring, wondering when I’m gonna
wake up. “Share of what?” I finally say.

“The silver!” Abe says. “Ain’t you been
payin’ attention?”

I manage to tear my eyes from Tower’s hand,
look at Abe. “Nay, I mean, what’s it for? I didn’t realize we were
in business together.”

Abe laughs and then stops suddenly, seeing
Jolie’s resting form in the bed against the wall. “Poor kid,” he
says. “I heard what happened. She’ll be all right?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.

Tower grunts something. “My brother offers
his well wishes,” Abe says. Before I can even wonder how Abe can
understand anything his brother says, he continues. “When the
riders tore through the castle, not to mention you and yer strange
friends running about, it was like a free fer all fer all the
lowlifes in ice country…”

“What does that have to do with you?” I
say.

“Well, thank you for sayin’ that, kid, but
I’m proud to be a part of such a rowdy and mischievous bunch.
Anyway, we snuck our way in like rodents, keepin’ behind the melee.
It took ten men and Hightower ’ere to break into the palace vault,
but we did it. Now I’m richer than the richest snow-blowers in the
White District. Tis only fair that you get a share for everythin’
you been through. Consider it payment for killing my biggest enemy,
may the king rot in a shallow grave.”

“Did you know the king was hiding behind a
puppet figurehead?” I ask

Abe chews his lip. “Well, I had my
suspicions, but never enough to prove anything. But now one’s dead
and the other ain’t far behind, so enjoy the spoils.”

Feeling the weight of the coins in my hands,
I lift a hand to my forehead, feeling the room spinning. “I don’t
know what to—”

“Don’t say a freezin’ thing, kid. Just take
it,” Abe says, smirking. “I’m not usually this generous, so be
quick ’fore I change my mind.”

I don’t have to be told twice. I cup both
hands together, knowing I’ll need two hands for one of Hightower’s.
Abe’s brother tilts his palm and lets the silver fall like
shimmering rain into my hands, piling up and filling them to
overflowing, and yet still they fall, clattering to the floor,
scattering.

“Thank you,” I say, misty-eyed, but I’m
talking to Abe’s back, because he’s already at the door.

“Hope the kid gets better,” he says, opening
the door and stepping outside.

“I’m sorry about your wife,” I say, but I
don’t know if he hears me.

Hightower lingers for a moment, staring off
at Jolie. Then he starts to lumber over to her. “Whoa there,
Tower,” I say, springing in front of him. Luckily he stops, because
if he didn’t I’d be human paste under his feet. “The door’s that
way,” I say, motioning to where Abe’s waiting outside.

Tower grunts, points to Jolie. I look up, way
up, into his eyes, which are crystal-blue, and ogre-sized, like
everything else on him. I never realized his eyes were blue, and
for some reason it surprises me. “You want to see her?” I say,
replacing
see
with
eat
in my head.

He nods. I hope he means
see
and not
the word I was thinking.

I chew on my mouth for a second. Hightower,
despite his somewhat scary and threatening appearance, has been
nothing but good to me, other than when he held Buff back so Abe
could beat the living shivballs out of me. But I probably deserved
it then, and he did save my life on at least two occasions. If
nothing else, he’s earned my trust.

I step aside to let him pass, watching his
every move like a hawk.

He approaches Jolie, kneels down—which means
he’s still almost as tall as me—reaches toward her. My spine
stiffens, but I don’t stop him. His movements are slow, almost
gentle, if gentleness is possible from such a large person.

He touches a single finger to Jolie’s
forehead, runs it along her skin, pushes a few strands of loose
hair away from her eyes. And if all that’s not surprising enough,
his next move is so shocking I swear a lightning bolt hits me in
the head. He kisses the same finger, and then places it on her
forehead, as if kissing her with his lips would be inappropriate
coming from such a gargantuan.

He stands, grunts something, I think a
farewell, and then ducks through the door and is gone.

T
hree days later
Jolie still hasn’t moved.

With only two days before Skye and her gang
leave to find the Stormers, Feve’s been teaching the healers what
they’ll need to do for Jolie after he’s gone.

Skye insists I’m not coming with her, but I
am. At least that’s what I’m telling Buff.

“I’m going,” I say.

“You sure you want to leave Jolie?” he asks
for the third time.

I shake my head. “I don’t
want
to,
Buff, ice it! By the Heart of the Mountain you know that’s true.
But I have to. You know I do. I owe Skye, Siena, all the others. I
owe it to Jolie to find out the truth.”

“But isn’t Skye telling you not to come?”

“Yah, but I’m freezin’ going anyway,
okay?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll watch out for her while
you’re gone.”

“Nay. Clint and Looza already said they’ll do
it. You’ve got to come with us.”

Buff’s face falls. “Dazz, you know I want to,
more than anything, but I can’t. Father, he’s not getting back on
his feet anytime soon and I have to get a job—a
real
job—or
Darce and the others are gonna starve.”

I smile. Not at the thought of Buff’s
bed-ridden father or of his brothers and sisters starving, but
because I have a solution. Compliments of Abe and Hightower. Buff
takes my smile the completely wrong way. “Something funny?” he
says, his fists coiled at his side.

Things must be really bad at home if his
temper’s gotten as bad as mine. I speak quickly. “What if I pay you
in advance to help us find Skye’s sister?” I say.

His eyebrows shoot up and he stares at me
like I’ve been punched in the head one too many times, which I
probably have. “Pay me? I don’t want to come as part of a job. I
want to come because you’re my friend.”

I feel a bit of foolish warmth in my heart so
I smack a fist in my hand to compensate. “Not like a job,” I say.
“Like a donation. To your family. So you can come.”

“You’ve barely got more silver than me, and
you’ll need to give it all to Clint to take care of Jolie and your
mother while you’re gone.”

I keep smiling as I tell him about Abe’s
little visit. He doesn’t believe me until I show him the pouch of
silver coins. “Holy mother of all shivballs!” he exclaims. “You’re
rich, Dazz!”

I nod because I am, and because sickles solve
problems. “So you’ll do it?”

“Chill yah, I’ll do it,” he says, all smiles
and taut muscles.

~~~

“Sear it, I’m gonna miss you when we leave,”
Skye says, running a finger along my hand.

I laugh. “You know, I really love your
honesty, Skye, but I’m coming with you.”

“You ain’t.”

“Think what you want to,” I say.

“My fists say you ain’t,” she says, and I
laugh again.

“You can’t fight me,” I say. “Remember what
happened last time? We might as well skip the fighting part and go
straight to the other part.”