Ice Country (19 page)

“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.

“D
id 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.