Ice Country (17 page)

“What?” she says.

“My name. It’s Dazz.”

“Okay, Icy Dazz. Whaddya got to say fer
yerself?” Skye says. I snort, unable to stop the laugh from
escaping me.

“You laughin’ at me?” Skye says.

“Sorry, nay. It’s just…ah, never mind.” I
repeat my question from before.

Skye laughs, and it sends a beautiful tremor
up my spine. “I mighta been causin’ more trouble than they could
handle,” she says.

“You searin’ nearly killed one of the
guards,” her sister says across my cell.

She closes her eyes and laughs again.
“Siena’s right,” she says. “I mighta done just that.”

“So they left you in the cell?” I ask.

“I’m here, ain’t I?” I’m racking up some sort
of a record for freeze-brained questions.

“Where’d they take the others?” I ask, moving
on quickly.

“How the scorch should I know?” she says. “I
been sittin’ here havin’ the most unfortunate conversation with
you.”

My face is becoming an unending pile of red
blush.

“They took us to see the king,” Siena
says.

“King Goff?” I say.

“Is there more’n one King?” Siena says.
“Anyway, he’s more like King Goof if you ask me. Here we are,
leaders of the new fire country Tri-Tribes, and he’s got us locked
up tighter’n a hand up a tug’s blazeshooter.” Like her sister,
Siena seems to have a way with words, although she has none of the
grit in her voice that I admire so much about Skye.

Thankfully, Buff chimes in, because I’ve only
got more stupid questions. “What happened in fire country?” he
asks. “And what’s this new Tri-Tribes you’re talking about.”

“You ask too many questions,” the warm voice
of the Marked guy says.

“It’s okay, Feve,” the song-like voice of the
long-haired woman says. “Anyone we can tell our story to could help
us.” Although there’s nothing special in her words, they seem to
command attention, obedience, like she’s used to people listening
to what she has to say.

“Please,” I say. “We’ve got as big a problem
with Goff as anyone. Just tell us what happened.”

“My father happened,” Skye says.

“I
t 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.

N
ot 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?