The Boys of Fire and Ash (20 page)

“Ah?” he said, his finger pointed to me, a gap-toothed smile spread across his hairy face. “Ah huh?”

I shrugged and shook my head, the best I could communicate that I didn't understand him. He was strange, like he wasn't right in the head, but still, he was a man of Fendar Sticks.

I sat up in my seat, swallowing my nerves, and decided to take a chance.

“Belphebans?” I asked him.

His mischievous grin faded and his eyes flashed with disbelief.

“No!” he said. Then he looked to Fiver and began inspecting his clothes, tugging and pulling at Fiver's filthy Larmy skins. “No! No! No!” He erupted with laughter. “Ikkuma?”

I looked to Fiver, who was more irritated now that the man had touched his clothing.

“Ikkuma!” he roared, clapping his hands and laughing hysterically. I began to feel really hot, immediately regretting saying anything. Many heads turned and pairs of eyes now watched us with curiosity as the man continued to make a spectacle. Most were sniggering, bemused grins across their faces, while others seemed annoyed at the disturbance. But the woman who'd helped her fallen friend, the blonde, had stopped dancing, and I noticed she was watching us differently. She wasn't annoyed or amused. She looked frightened.

Fiver caught my stare and turned around to see what I was looking at. We watched as the woman rushed over to her stumbling friend, seizing her by the arm and whispering in her ear.

It was then that our generous host arrived, squawking
and scolding our rude guest. He laughed and raised his mug to her but she swatted it from his hand and grabbed him by the ear. Groaning with pain, the man got up and ran away, and she cooed and fussed over Fiver and me, refilling Fiver's empty glass, much to his pleasure.

He grinned a lazy grin but I was starting to feel uneasy.

“We should probably get back to Av,” I said.

Fiver wasn't listening.

“S'not bad, eh?” said Fiver.

“What's not?”

“The Mother.”

My eyes shot open. “The what?”

He waved his goblet sluggishly towards the bar. “The woman, the old lady.”

“You said, ‘the Mother.' ”

Fiver's eyes shot open the same way mine had, his posture suddenly rigid. “No, I didn't.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I did not.”

I sighed, sitting back in my seat. I didn't want to fight. “I'm going to go check on Av.”

Fiver pounded a lazy fist on the table. “You're right. Let's go.”

He picked up his goblet and then tilted it back and back, guzzling down his full glass.

I glanced around the room, waiting for him to finish.

The two women were still conspiring, the blond one tugging at her stumbly friend's arm and ushering her to the door. The stumbly friend had gained her balance, mostly by hanging on to the blonde, and her razor eyes were focused on me.

“Guess we found your ladies, eh?” Fiver said, and let out
an obnoxious burp. His eyes were looking puffy, like he was tired but…happy to be.

“What do you mean?”

“They're Belpheban.” He was so confident, so final, I almost laughed at how quickly he'd jumped to that conclusion.

“What makes you think that?”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at me like I was stupid. “Who else would look at us like they'd seen a ghost? Like their past has just caught up with them?”

“You can't tell that from a look,” I protested. But he was right; they couldn't keep the horror off their faces. I looked away.

THWAM!

A hand slammed down on our table and the woman who had fallen, her cropped dark hair draped over her face in greasy strands, eyes smeared with black, was hunched over our table, glaring at me and Fiver.

“What do you want here, ah?” she hissed.

My heart stopped. She spoke Ikkuman. She had a strange but lovely accent, much different than Gorpok Juga's, and she spoke it better, less broken and stunted.

Fiver stood up slowly and returned the woman's vicious stare. “That's none of your business,” he growled.

“Farka,” her friend barked from the entrance, ready to leave, while some man pawed and pulled at her. She ignored him and called to her friend. “Farka! We're leaving!”

“You do not belong here,” she said, scowling in Fiver's face. “You leave Fendar Sticks, and you leave now”—she turned to make sure I got the burn from her hateful glare—“little boys.”

A crash and a loud bang caught our attention and we looked to the front entrance, where the other woman now had her foot on the touchy man's throat, pinning him to the floor, where he was groaning and grabbing his head. She held his angry friends at bay with a dagger pointed in their direction.

“Farka!” she shouted again. “Now!”

Farka gave us one last glare, the upper corner of her lip twitching before she stumbled to follow her friend, our old lady screaming and scolding after them.

“Believe me now?” Fiver said.

I didn't answer. I jumped to my feet and rushed out after them, Fiver right behind me.

The air hit me like a slap in the face, frigid and icy. Up ahead, we saw Farka and her friend hurrying into the shadows, fleeing the lights of the street lamps.

“Come on,” I said to Fiver as I hurried to follow. I heard him groan before he started running.

The shadows of the mountains and darkness of the surrounding rocks made it nearly impossible to see.

Soon I couldn't hear them anymore, but I crept along, keeping low and close to the rocky slopes.

I looked behind me and could see Fiver's silhouette. He'd stopped moving and was standing still, taking a moment to warm up, I figured.

I crept along and tried to see through the shadows, rocks and boulders tricking me into thinking the Belphebans were just ahead.

Suddenly Fiver grabbed my arm.

“Let's go back,” he said.

“What? We'll lose them!”

“They know we're following them,” he whispered.

“What?”

“They're watching us.”

“How can you tell?”

He smacked me on the back of the head. “Learn to know when you're being stalked, Useless. By Rawley!”

With that, he turned back towards the town and I felt embarrassed and deflated all at once. I'd come all this way and I was still nothing but useless.

That night, our generous host and her helpful healer put Fiver and me into warm beds with clean clothes not made of skins but something else entirely, like some of the fabrics that Blaze had worn. They were light and warm against my skin, and I slept better than I had since I'd left the Ikkuma Pit. I didn't have nightmares, I didn't even dream, I just slept.

When I opened my eyes to the cozy room we'd been left to sleep in, I felt a twinge of guilt in my stomach. I'd forgotten Cubby, only for a little while, but I still had. I worried that if I didn't get him back, I might forget him altogether.

A sharp pain shot through the tip of my ear as someone flicked it. Annoyed, I turned over and saw Av, a wide grin across his face. He was standing on his own, like nothing had happened at all.

“Av!” I shouted, and grabbed him for a hug.

“Whoa!” he laughed, pushing me away. “Take it easy, Urgle.”

I let go, relieved to see him alive and healthy.

“How are you feeling?” said Fiver, his face still buried in a big fluffy pillow.

He shrugged and rubbed his head. “Bit of a headache, but I'm all right.”

Fiver rolled onto his back and grabbed his face. “Me too.”

Av raised an eyebrow. “What did I miss?”

“We found them!” I said. I could hardly wait to tell him about our night in Fendar Sticks, about our run-in with the Belphebans and his near-death experience.

“Found who?”

Fiver groaned and covered his ears with the pillow. I'd forgotten how long Av had been out of it. There was so much he didn't know.

The door flew open and in rushed the round old lady, chirping and chatting, flinging off the blankets that covered Fiver to check his leg. He growled, but stopped as soon as she waved a savory plate of puffy cakes in front of his nose.

“First we eat,” said Fiver, following the old woman.

I nodded. “Then we get Cubby back.”

Our new friend, the old lady, wept as we prepared to leave, and the healer man rolled his eyes at her the more she carried on. I didn't really understand it. We'd only just met, but the way she hugged us and squeezed our cheeks so frequently, you'd think she'd known us forever. We'd come across so many strangers outside the Pit, and none of them seemed to like us. But the old lady, she treated us nice. I was sorry to say bye, though not as much as Fiver, who hugged her goodbye and held on long and tight. Av's mouth fell open and I just shrugged. It was too hard to explain. Fiver might have hated the Mothers, we all did, but if he could have had one, I knew he would have hoped for this one. She held out three pairs of thick foot coverings, which I suspected she'd made herself. They were warm and fuzzy on my aching feet. The old healer shook our hands and gave us each a heavy tunic and a colorful woven blanket that I was grateful for. He patted Av on the back, his farewell speech completely lost on our ears but his good wishes accepted with gratitude.

We set off by midday carrying a large pack filled with
baked goods, meats, and bottles of the red liquid, supplied by the kind old woman. Thanks to her, hunger was one less thing we'd have to worry about. We followed on the same path Fiver and I had stalked Farka and her friend along the night before, trying our best to find their trail through the rocky slopes. I tried to pretend I knew what I was looking for, but mostly I was counting on Av and Fiver to point the way.

The slopes of the giant mountains were steep and jagged, but my feet were well protected by my new foot coverings. It was strange to walk in them. My feet had been naked my entire life, and swaddled in this thick fabric they were starting to sweat.

“How did he look?” Av asked. He listened quietly as we walked and Fiver and I filled him in on all the things he couldn't remember, which was everything after we swam the river. “Was he”—Av watched me as he spoke, trying to read the answer on my face—“hurt?”

I didn't say anything. When I saw Cubby, he looked healthy enough—no bruises or limps. He looked better than we did. But he had the mark.

“He didn't look hurt,” said Fiver for me. “Scared, though.”

I swallowed, the image of him cowering beneath the Tunrar forcing a lump in my throat.

Av nodded. “That's good.”

There was something on his face, something he wasn't saying. “Why do you ask?” I said.

He stopped, planting his foot in a notch in the slope. “I just—” He turned and looked at Fiver. “Nothing, I was just wondering…”

He was hiding something.

“Av, what is it?”

He looked to me and shook his head, silently asking me not to make him say. I couldn't do that. There were no secrets. Not now. Not when it came to Cubby.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I just had a dream, all right?”

“You mean like…” I looked at Fiver, realizing now why Av didn't want to say. “You mean like your usual one?”

He shook his head.

“Dream?” said Fiver. “What dream?”

Av sighed and wiggled his foot deeper into the notch. “When I was sick, I kept having the same dream, over and over.”

“About Cubby?” I said.

He nodded. “And other things.”

“You saw him hurt?” I asked, needing to know more.

He shook his head. “Not hurt. I saw him. Smiling like usual. But…when I saw him, I felt sore. Like this really bad ache. I get the same thing with the dream about my—my other dream. I get these feelings. But this time it was different. It was…stronger.”

“What does that mean?”

“I'll tell you what it means,” said Fiver. “Means he hurt his head really bad.”

“Yeah.” Av shrugged, rubbing his chin. “My head's just not right.”

My stomach felt hot, the juices inside raging. What if Cubby was hurt? What if Krepin did something to him?

Av kicked at the notch in the slope, then reached for another above his head and tried to hoist himself up, but his strength seemed to give out and he fell back into me.

I held him by the arm to keep him steady.

“Av, you all right?”

He nodded. “Fine. Just a little dizzy all of a sudden.”

Fiver threw down our pack from the old lady. “She put something in here for you,” he said. He fished out a small glass bottle of the brown liquid he'd tasted the night before. “Tastes awful, but it's for pain, I think.”

Wincing from the ache, Av reached for the bottle and took a sniff.
“Ewf.”
He took a deep breath and knocked the drink back, his face turning almost green as he swallowed. He coughed and sputtered and took a seat beside Fiver. “By Rawley, that's foul stuff.”

Fiver smiled and handed him a piece of some kind of dried meat. “Here, takes the taste out of your mouth.”

He handed a piece to me, then set to work opening a bottle of the red liquid I didn't much care for. I bent the piece of rubbery meat back and forth in my hand, my stomach too unsettled to take a bite.

“How are you going to do it?” asked Av. He was looking at me.

“Do what?”

“You know, kill her.”

My body went rigid. Fiver let out a laugh. I hadn't thought about it. It hadn't really hit me that I'd have to take a life until he asked. How would I do it?

“You really think it's going to be Useless who does it?” said Fiver.

“What do you mean?” I said.

Fiver shook his head. “Look, they sent you, so if you want to give it a shot, fine. But let's not pretend you're not going to muck it up and need me and Av to jump in and help you.”