Ice Country (31 page)

“No,” Skye says, suddenly by my side, taking
my hand, taking the knife. My fingers don’t protest as she uncurls
them. I am powerless against her. “Go to your sister.”

My whole body numb, I manage to stand,
unsteady on my feet, shaking, stumbling my way over to Jolie,
seeing moving bodies around me, barely able to recognize them as
the others. Siena, Circ, Wilde, Feve. They’re all here, all fought
through the hordes of guards to get to me.

But they’re too late. We’re all too late.

Right where I left her, Jolie sleeps.

That’s how I want to see her—asleep—just
resting, a child in her bed, dreaming a child’s dream.

My eyes play the trick, and play it well, but
when Feve rushes to her side, coated in a thin layer of sweat, his
markings glistening in the light, the truth returns.

Jolie, broken. Jolie, lying in a pool of her
own blood. Jolie, covered in red and black, a knife sticking from
her…from her beautiful…from her beautiful little body, and I can’t
speak, can’t think, can’t remember another word about her, because
it hurts too much, and I’m by her side, like I floated there,
because I can’t remember walking, and I’m cradling her head in my
arms and I’m crying into her hair, and there’s nothing left in this
world.

Nothing.

And then Feve opens a leather pouch at his
side, removes little glass jars and skins of herbs.

And then he reaches for the knife, the knife
in my sister’s back…

“Don’t!” I shout, my voice husky and heavy,
grabbing his hand, stopping him, meeting his eyes. “Don’t touch
her,” I say.

“Trust me,” Feve says. He puts a hand on my
shoulder. “It’s her only chance.”

Siena kneels beside me, says, “Feve’s saved
me ’fore. Let him save her.” Coming from her, it means everything.
She’s the one who doesn’t even like him.

A dead girl doesn’t have a chance, but my
shoulders slump and I release Feve’s arm. He couldn’t save Wes, but
perhaps my brother’s life was too far gone. Maybe the Marked have
magic. Maybe they have miracles. But I won’t hope for it; my heart
can’t be broken twice.

Feve’s hand goes back to the knife
handle.

I hold her limp head, brush her sweat-damp
hair away from her face.

“Cloth, Circ!” Feve orders, and then takes a
deep breath, adding a second hand to his grip on the handle. I hear
cloth tearing behind us and it sounds like the rending of my own
heart.

“Oh, Joles,” I murmur under my breath,
touching my forehead to hers. “You can’t go. Please stay.” But
she’s not breathing, not moving, not sleeping like I want to
believe.

Circ slides next to us with a panel of cloth.
He uses a blade to cut it into long strips. Feve looks at him. “You
ready?” Circ nods. “When I pull it out, hold some cloth firmly on
the wound. You’ve got to be quick, she can’t lose any more blood.”
Circ nods again.

“One…”

I kiss Jolie’s head.

“Two…”

I close my eyes.

“Three!”

Jolie’s body shudders and my eyes flash open
to Circ covering a deep stab wound with cloth, holding it in place
with the heel of his hand. Jolie gasps suddenly, coughing in my
face, her eyes shooting open, wider than the base of the
mountain.

“Jolie? Jolie?” I say, holding her, but her
eyes drift closed slowly, her head heavy once more. Lifeless.

But wait.

Wait.

Please, wait.

Her breath’s on my face. It’s weak, so
frighteningly weak, but still there.

Feve pushes in next to Circ, lifts the
bandages, which are already tinged with blood, pours clear liquid
across the wound, refolds the cloths, and presses them back down,
closing Circ’s hands on them once more. He looks at me. “To help
close the wound,” he explains.

I want to know more, how he knows to do what
he’s doing, how he’s going to save Jolie’s life, but not now. Now,
all I want to do is feel her breath on my hand, on my face, as I
watch her sleep.

Really sleep.

S
he hasn’t woken up
and I haven’t left her side, sitting in an uncomfortable wooden
chair that hurts my back and my arse in equal measure.

Three days have passed with her little chest
rising and falling, rising and falling, but other than that, she
hasn’t moved more than a whisper, not even stirring for the dark
dreams that surely plague her sleep.

Mother’s oblivious to everything.

I’ve held Jolie’s hand for hours and hours,
just in case she can feel it and draw strength from me. And in case
she can hear me, I speak to her, tell her memories of growing up
together, when Father and Wes weren’t dead, when Mother wasn’t a
ghost of a human. Good stories. Stories I can’t tell without
feeling melting snow in my eyes.

Feve comes every day, gives her herbs in a
drink that we dribble on her tongue, both for strength and for
healing. I help him replace her bandages and watch as he sprinkles
his strange medicines on her wound. Every day I hope it’ll look
better, but it never does.

And every day I get plenny of visitors. Buff,
Siena, Circ, Wilde—even good ol’ Yo from the pub comes by. My
friends from fire country are staying at Clint and Looza’s with my
mother. I never ask them how
that’s
going and they don’t
offer the information.

Skye comes by more than anyone, at least six
times a day. It’s weird, seeing her on a daily basis outside of the
prison, outside of the woods, outside of battle. She can be so
different when she wants to be. So much less strong, more tender.
Sometimes she holds my hand while I hold Jolie’s, and I can almost
feel her strength running through me and into my sister.

She might never wake up.

I think it all the time, but I won’t say it
out loud, even when Feve cautions me that it’s a possibility.
“There’s no way to predict how a body will react to something like
that. And she’s so small,” he says.

“She’s strong,” I reply back, but still the
thought is in the back of my head.

(She might never wake up.)

I’m so tired, so freezin’ exhausted, both
mentally and physically, that all I want to do is curl up in a ball
next to Jolie and sleep forever with her. But the bed’s too small
and I’m too big and I’m afraid of crushing her in my sleep.

For the third night in a row and with tears
in my eyes, I drift away into an uncomfortable sleep filled with
dark riders, burning houses, and the king stabbing my sister.

I’m still sitting in my chair.

But I’m still holding Jolie’s hand, too.

~~~

I awake with tearstains on my cheeks and Buff
punching me in the shoulder.

“I brought you breakfast,” he says, and he
doesn’t even call me a sissy-eyed snowflake-lover for the tracks of
white salt on my face. That’s how I know everything’s changed.

“How’s your gut-slash?” he asks, and I know
what he means. It took him asking me that three times before I
realized he was asking about Jolie, not me. After all, Jolie’s the
gut-slash that hurts me the most, deep under the surface, in the
pit of my stomach, worming and gnawing away.

“No worse, no better,” I say, my standard
response that I hope will change one day soon.

He nods and we’re both silent for a moment,
just watching Jolie sleep. “So, uh, you said something about
breakfast?” I ask. I’m not hungry but I need something to distract
me.

“Rolls again,” he says. “Harder than rocks.
Less tasty too,” he adds with a grin. He hands me a hunk of bread
from his satchel. It really is like rock.

For a few minutes we scrape at our rolls with
our teeth, trying to get some kind of sustenance from them.
Watching Buff gnaw away, I almost laugh, but my lips don’t turn up
so quickly these days. “You make these?” I ask, raising my
eyebrows.

“Shove it up your snow-blowin’ arse!” Buff
says. I glance at Jolie, who’s as silent and motionless as ever. If
she can hear us, she’s getting a topnotch education on the
intricacies of cursing. Buff’s as good a teacher as anyone.

“Sorry,” Buff says, covering his mouth with a
rock-roll. “It’s easy to forget your…gut-slash is there
sometimes.”

“Stop calling her that,” I say, feeling a
flash of heat for the first time in three days. “Her name’s
Jolie.”

“I know, it’s just hard—”

“And quit forgetting she’s there,” I
interrupt. “She’s still a person. She’s still my little
sister.”

Buff nods a heavy nod and right away I know
I’ve been too hard on him. It’s not like he doesn’t have problems
of his own. It’s not like he doesn’t care about Jolie. The fire in
me dies quickly, like it was no more than a spark anyway, and I
find myself backtracking. “Look, man, I’m sorry, it’s just…seeing
her here like this, day in and day out, it’s getting to me.”

“Don’t apologize to me, Dazz. Everyone’s on
edge. It’s natural. And she’ll…
Jolie
will come out of it. I
know it.”

“Thanks,” I say, nearly breaking a tooth as I
try to bite into the roll again.

Buff grins. “Alright, alright, I made them.
But only because Darce was busy cleaning my father’s injuries.”

“How is he?” I say, wishing I’d asked right
away. It’s so easy to get stuck in the snowdrift of our problems
sometimes, so deep and cold that you can’t see anything else at
all, even the important stuff.

“The slash he took from the rider should’ve
killed him,” Buff says. “Even the healers can’t explain how the
rider, in that position, didn’t manage to do more damage. It’s like
he only did enough to keep my father from hurting him, so he could
get past and on to the castle. The men he was with had similar
injuries, none of them fatal. They’re healing up nicely.”

“That’s good,” I say, managing a weak smile.
“And his leg?”

Buff frowns. “Not so good. When the horse
stepped on him, his leg shattered into a whole lot of pieces. He
won’t be able to work for a long time. But even that…” Buff trails
off, staring at Jolie.

“What?” I say.

Buff tilts his head thoughtfully. “It feels
like even that was an accident, like the rider didn’t want to hurt
him badly.”

Now I frown. “Buff, that rider was lighting
houses on fire, stampeding through the village with a sword,
chopping down good men like your father. That’s no accident. It was
the Stormers who took the children, too. I told you what the king
said, they wanted my sister to marry one of their boys. They were
going to force her to obey him. They’re evil.”

“The king was evil,” Buff says, “he might’ve
lied to you.”

I close my eyes because I know Buff’s right.
“Some of it was the truth,” I say. “He had no reason to lie.”
Like the part about my sister being betrothed.

Buff sighs. “I know, I’m just saying it’s
weird. My father said the horse was bearing down on him, about to
stomp all over him, and then the rider pulled up sharply, like he
didn’t want to step on him. The horse turned as best it could, but
wasn’t able to avoid my father’s leg.”

“He still trampled him,” I say. “He still
slashed him.”

“But didn’t you say one of the riders saved
your life? That he left you with Jolie and gave his life to hold
back the guards? That he told you to save her? Why would he do that
if they wanted your sister? It doesn’t make sense.”

Vivid memories flash through my mind: the
rider, dark-robed and menacing, stepping toward the king and my
sister; his words, “You’re here for the girl?”; then, watching him
leap past me and into the flow of guards, fighting them back while
I barricaded the door. He did save my life. Maybe Jolie’s too. But
why?

“He thought it was over,” I say. “He thought
he’d killed the king, which apparently was what the Stormers were
after in the first place. And he didn’t take Jolie because he knew
he couldn’t possibly escape
and
abduct her.”

“Maybe,” Buff says. “But no one else in the
village died. Other than the castle guards, casualties were zero.
The Stormers massacred or injured almost every guardsman and then
galloped off with their own injured on their backs. They could’ve
taken over the entire village if they’d wanted—but they
didn’t.”

“But the burning,” I say.

“Only houses with no one in them.”

“But why?”

Buff cringes, closes his eyes—opens them.
Says, “I don’t know.”

“Aren’t the people angry?” I ask.

“At King Goff mostly,” he says. “Now that the
truth is out, people are saying he brought a curse on our
country.”

“I meant, aren’t they angry at the
Stormers?”

Buff chews his lip. “Yes and no, but mostly
no,” he says. “Sure they’re angry that they have to rebuild, but
mostly at Goff for bringing the curse on our people. Already the
Stormers are falling back into myth and legend. There are rumors
that they rose out of the ground, formed from clay, and returned to
it, like inhuman shadows.”

“I saw them. They’re as real as you or I.
They’re evil,” I repeat. “Child stealers. Don’t you get it?”

Buff nods. “I do, but the rest of the
villagers won’t be so easily convinced. At least they didn’t get
your sister.”

“Thank the Mountain Heart,” I say.

“Do you want to know what’s been going on at
the castle?” Buff asks, changing the subject.

I raise my eyebrows. I’ve been so set on
watching Jolie and praying for her to wake up, I’ve almost
forgotten there’s a whole world out there, one that’s broken into a
thousand pieces. “The king?” I say.

Buff nods. “You gave him quite a beating, but
he survived it. The truth is out though, and already the people are
calling for his head on a platter. A consortium’s been created with
an equal number of representatives from each of the Districts,
which the White District folks aren’t too happy about, but given
the situation they haven’t fought it too hard.”