Ice Country

  Wes nods, sighs. “You did the right thing.”

  I close my eyes. My brother’s back. The one who decides what’s right and wrong, who always knows what to do, whose approval I’ve been desperately seeking even though maybe I didn’t realize it until right now. His words seem to wash over me like cold water, cleansing me. Every decision I’ve made over the last few months has seemed so wrong, mostly because Jolie’s still gone, but hearing Wes say those words seems to validate it all. I shouldn’t need validation, but I do.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “What now?” he asks.

  “I need your help.”

  Light flows into his eyes as he turns toward me, as if someone’s just lit a fire, although the fireplace has been crackling since I entered the room. A purpose. Perhaps he can’t get a job, can’t provide for his family, but he can help me bring Jolie back, and that’s a greater purpose than anything.

  ~~~

  We don’t know where to start looking, so we begin where it started, where Buff and I got our arse’s handed to us by a girl and marked man.

  “The trail’s cold,” Wes says, “but it’s still here.” I smile, both because of the words he’s saying and because it’s him that’s saying them. I haven’t heard him speak like that, with such confidence and directness, since Joles was taken.

  “How many do you think there are?” I ask.

  Wes chews his lip. “Can’t tell just yet, but at least two. Maybe more.”

  “Good,” I say. “Let’s see where it takes us.”

  Wes leads, because he’s the best tracker, and Buff brings up the rear, because, well, “You’re the biggest arse I’ve ever met,” I say.

  He makes a gesture that borders on rude, but slips in behind me, stepping on the back of my boots every few minutes.

  We’re warm when we start, on account of our heavy clothing, but soon the trail leads us high enough up the mountain that it’s downright chilly. “The Heaters we always met at the border were dressed for hot weather, wearing only thin skins,” I say. “These ones had skins and looked ready to face the cold.”

  “Do you want to be the one to warm her up?” Buff says from behind.

  “Shut it,” I say. “Just because I was impressed with how she could throw a punch doesn’t mean I’m looking to hug her.”

  Wes stops, looks at us both like we’re slightly crazy, says, “The trail keeps leading up, so they’d be getting good use out of those skins right about now.”

  Wes keeps marching on and we follow. He stops every once in a while to inspect a broken tree branch or a shallow footprint.

  When we reach the snowfields, there are dozens of prints, all clustered together, and then deep gouges in the snow where it looks like they laid down. “I can see five distinct sets of prints,” Wes says.

  “They’d have frozen their stones off lying in the snow like that,” Buff says. Then, grinning, adds, “At least the Marked guy would’ve, but the girl wouldn’t have any stones to freeze off, would she?”

  “Oh, she had stones all right,” I say, “just not the kind you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t they know snow is cold?” Wes asks.

  I shrug. “They’ve probably never seen it. You should’ve seen the look on the Heater children’s faces when we came through these parts. They were in awe of the white stuff.”

  “Don’t see what the allure is,” Buff says. “I’ve had enough of it to last me for ten lifetimes.”

  I bend down to touch the impressions in the snow, imagining the Heater girl in the snow, knee bent, smiling at the white ground around her. What is she doing so far from home?

  “Well, whatever the case, even with their warm clothing they’d be getting pretty cold at this point, searching for shelter. Let’s see where their footsteps lead,” Wes says.

  Sure enough, the trail leads off to the side, away from the snowfields and back into the forest, where the snow is thinner and there’s more protection from the frosty wind. Ahh, summer in ice country, I think to myself. Not what the Heaters would be used to.

  The prints run right up to a gigantic tree, with a trunk thicker than a Yag’s chest and a huge hole in it, big enough to sleep five people, if everyone crammed together. And, according to Wes, they had to sleep five, so they were really crammed.

  Inside are the remnants of a small fire, all ash and charred twigs left over, which is impressive. Fires aren’t easy to make in ice country, especially when you’re not used to doing it.

  “They slept here,” Buff says.

  “Thanks for the input,” I say.

  “My pleasure.”

  The trail continues up the mountain, aiming right for the eastern edge of the village, the White District, and eventually the palace.

  “They were heading for us,” Wes says, meaning the Icers in general.

  “Well, we could’ve led them,” Buff says. “If they hadn’t beaten the shiver out of us.”

  “Maybe they wanted to surprise the king,” I say.

  “Why?” Wes says.

  “Because maybe Roan is dead,” I say, feeling my brain working double time, spinning a few impossible theories into one possible one. “What if something did happen to the Heaters and the Marked? Something really big, really bad—devastating even. What if the Head Greynote, Roan, was killed? What if a bunch of the Greynotes were killed and there was a big shakeup in their leadership? You’ve all heard the rumors. People are saying the Heaters were destroyed, but maybe they were just attacked and they survived, but Roan and the other Greynotes were killed. If they have new leaders they’d want to check things out with their neighbors, make contact with Goff, figure out how things work with the trade agreement. Wouldn’t they?”

  The questions float for a moment, settling over us like the quiet before a winter storm.

  “It’s possible,” Wes admits. “It would certainly explain them showing up out of nowhere. But we’ve never seen a Heater in ice country, not this far up the mountain anyway. I don’t think the king would take too kindly to them appearing unannounced at the palace gates.”

  “Nay. He wouldn’t. You’re right about that,” I say.

  ~~~

  And the Heater’s footprints do lead toward the palace gates, at least for a while, but then they veer off away from civilization again, taking us back into the thick woods.

  “They’re going around back,” I say. It’s still crazy that they’re making for the palace at all, but at least they had enough brains to skip the knock-on-the-front-gates approach.

  “There’s an entrance in the back, isn’t there?” Wes says.

  “Yah,” Buff and I say at the exact same time. We’ve talked about finding a way through the back door many a time. But like every other way in, it’s well-guarded and impossible to breach.

  We pick a path through the forest, easily following the mess of snapped twigs the Heaters left in their wake. When we reach a clearing, the path suddenly opens up in a wide swathe all the way to the palace walls. A guard stands atop the wall and I swear he’s looking right at us.

  “Shiv!” I hiss, ducking back behind the trees and pulling Wes and Buff with me.

  “Did he see us?” Wes asks.

  “I dunno. I don’t see how he couldn’t’ve,” I say.

  “Maybe he was looking past us, over the forest,” Buff says.

  “Maybe,” I say wanting to believe it.

  We wait for a long ten minutes, expecting a parade of palace guardsmen to come charging down the track at any moment. But they don’t, and the forest stays quiet, save for the occasional song of a snowbird.

  Ever so slowly, I stand up, conscious of keeping myself behind the army of trees that separate us from the palace. When I look at the tracks in the clearing I gasp.

  Footprints trample every which way, but not just six sets. Twenny, maybe more, cut deep from heavy steps and packing the snow down to a hard skin. But that’s not what caused my sudden intake of air. There’s blood, too, bright and wet on the sno
w. Mostly droplets, perfect little crimson circles burnt into the snow, but a few rivers too, crisscrossing and zigzagging around the middle of the clearing.

  “What is it?” Wes says, hearing my gasp and standing up next to me. “Holy shiverbones!” he says.

  “Not good,” Buff says, taking it all in along with us. “The guards got ’em.”

  “You think they’re…” I say.

  “Nay,” Buff says. “Goff woulda wanted to talk to them. But after what they did to us, I expect they’da fought like mountain lions. The blood might not even be theirs.”

  I think about that, hoping my friend’s right. “Then they’re prisoners,” I say.

  “Probably,” Wes says. “I doubt they’re guests, especially not the way they snuck in and put up a fight.”

  Prisoners. The word hangs heavy between my ears.

  Prisoners. Just like Jolie.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “We gotta get in there,” I say. “Not just for Jolie, but for the Heaters too.”

  We’re back at our place, discussing what to do next—me and Wes and Buff and my mother. Well, she’s not discussing so much as scraping a rock in a circle, marking the floor. Every time she finishes another round, she cocks her head as if to say, “Huh?” like she can’t figure out why the circle keeps on going. Then she draws another one.

  “We’ve talked circles around infiltrating the palace,” Buff says, motioning to my mother’s drawing. I smirk, even though it’s a bad joke. “It’s impossible.”

  “Nothing’s impossible,” I say.

  “Nay. Some things are,” Buff says. “Like us getting rich. Like you getting the time of day from a White District girl.”

  I stand up, clenching my fists. “I got more than the time of day, you freezin’ son of a snowblo—”

  “Knock it off, you two,” Wes says.

  Glaring at Buff, I take a deep breath, slowly unfurl my fingers.

  “I agree with Dazz,” my brother says. “There has to be a way. We just have to think outside the snow globe.”

  “Buff won’t be much help then,” I mutter.

  “Dazz!” Wes says sharply. “Focus.”

  I try, I really try, but Buff and I have thought about this question for a whole lot longer than Wes has. I feel like my mind’s more fried than deer bacon on a cold winter’s morning.

  Jolie. Are you okay? Has Goff hurt you? Are you a slave, carrying around buckets of soap water, scrubbing the palace floors, brown-skinned Heater children doing the same beside you? Have you made friends with them?

  Right when I stop thinking about the question and focus on who I’m asking it for, an idea hits me. And not a bad one either.

  “We’ve got to talk to Abe,” I say.

  ~~~

  “Not in a million years,” Abe says. “I’d just as soon be skinned and boiled by a Yag than cross the king.”

  I’m alone with Abe, a good ways down the mountain—he wouldn’t talk to me any other way. Sleepy snowflakes flutter this way and that way in the wind, seeming to never reach the ground. “You owe me,” I say.

  “Ha!” Abe scoffs. “How do you figger? The last time I saw you, you disobeyed a direct order and shoved me.”

  “I did,” I admit. “But I was desperate. Don’t you get it? My sister’s in there. Goff’s got my sister. What am I supposed to do, just forget about it, let it go?” My voice rises over the last few words.

  “That’s exactly what yer s’posed to do,” Abe says. “Just like me, you shouldn’t cross the king, especially when he’s got your loved one chained up somewhere.”

  What does he mean by Just like me? I shake off the thought, continue to work on him.

  “I’m not asking you to cross him,” I say. “Just help him make a hiring decision. He won’t hire me or Buff, not with our shoddy records, not for any jobs inside the palace anyway, but Wes, he’s a golden child, been nothing but a good worker everywhere he’s been.”

  “Ferget it,” Abe says, folding his arms defiantly.

  “What if it were your sister?” I say, changing tactics.

  “I don’t have a sister,” Abe says smugly.

  “A brother?”

  His face changes, softens somewhat. “I’d do anything for Hightower,” he says.

  Huh? “Tower’s your brother?”

  “Yah. So?”

  “Uh, nothing. That’s great.” I try to keep my face expressionless even though I want to ask him what in Heart’s name is wrong with his brother. “Okay. So if Tower was a prisoner somewhere, what would you do?”

  “I’d freezin’ bust him out and mangle the face of whoever put him there in the first place.” He stops, wrinkles his face. “Oh,” he says, seeing my point.

  “Please,” I say. “Just do this one thing and I’ll never bother you again.”

  Abe cringes, looks like he’s screaming but no sound comes out, punches his fist into his palm. “Heart-ice it! Why’d I ever hafta meet an ice-sucker like you?”

  I don’t think he means for me to answer him, but I do anyway. “Because this ice-sucker sucks royal ice at high stakes boulders-’n-avalanches,” I say. “So you’ll do it?”

  “Yah. And then you’ll never talk to me again.”

  “Deal,” I say, grinning.

  ~~~

  We’re conspiring at Fro-Yo’s. Like we suspected he might eventually, Yo bent a little and let us back in the pub with the promise we’d pay him the last few sickles we owe him as soon as we can. He even cleared the place out so we could hold our secret meeting here. He said he’d add the lost business to our tab.

  Four tinnys sit on a round wooden table, similar to the one we broke the last time we were here. They’re empty so Yo clears them away and replaces them with fresh ones, amber liquid frothing over the sides.

  Abe leads the first part of the meeting. “Yer not Wes anymore,” he says to Wes. “Yer Buck, son of Huck.”

  “Can I choose a different name?” Wes says.

  “Nay,” Abe says, settling the matter.

  “You already got him the job?” I ask, surprised.

  Abe lifts the edge of his lip, the closest thing to a smile we’ll get from him tonight. “Course. I told you a million times, I got power in the palace. But I didn’t know what he could do, so they couldn’t place him. All you gotta do is tell me what yer good at.”

  “Uh,” Wes says.

  “He’s good at digging up rocks,” I joke, earning a sharp look from my brother.

  “There ain’t much rock-diggin’ in the palace,” Abe says seriously, not getting the joke. “But there’s plenny of other stuff. Has he got any other skills?” He directs the question at me, as if I’ve suddenly become the authority on Wes’s abilities.

  “I can cook,” Wes says, pulling Abe’s gaze back to him.

  “Perfect,” Abe says. “The king’s near always lookin’ for kitchen workers, on account of him killin’ most of ’em off when his supper doesn’t agree with him.”

  The three of us just stare at Abe, shocked by his statement.

  His lip curls again. “Jokin’,” he says, smacking his leg. We all breathe out at the same time, like we’ve been collectively holding our breath. “Kitchen it is. You start tomorrow morning. Just go to the back gates and give them this.” He hands Wes a type of gold coin I’ve never seen before. “Any questions?”

  Wes shakes his head. “Good. Then it’s been terrible knowin’ you all. Try not to git yerselves killed doin’ whatever it is yer doin’. An’ don’t ferget: yer name’s Buck now.” He grabs his tinny and chugs what’s left of it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he finishes.

  “Yah, yah, son of Huck. I got it,” Wes says.

  “Thanks, Abe,” I say, just before the door slams.

  “I hope I never see the likes of him again,” Buff says after he’s gone.

  “You and me both,” I say, wondering whether I mean it as I take another sip of ’quiddy.

  Wes slaps the gold coin on the table. “Right.
I’m in. Now what’s the rest of the plan, or am I supposed to get Joles out all by myself?”

  “Yah. That’s pretty much it,” I say.

  Wes stares at me. “What?”

  “Jokin’,” I say, imitating Abe’s voice.

  “Very funny,” Wes says.

  “Really? I thought it was an icin’ dumb joke,” Buff says.

  “Right,” I say. “The real plan. Me and Buff, we just have to do what we do best.”

  Buff cocks an eyebrow. “And what’s that?” he says.

  I grin. “Fight.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  We watch Wes from the morning shadows of the forest. He gets in without a hitch, the gold coin Abe gave him doing the trick.

  So Wes is in. My mother’s taken care of, with Clint and Looza looking after her. All that’s left is us.

  It’s our turn to get in. And it’s not the easy way.

  We wait an hour before making our move, so that no one links us to Buck—I mean, Wes.

  When we stomp into Yo’s pub, every head in the place turns our way. The door slams off the inside wall.

  It only takes a moment for us to locate our quarry. Coker and the other stonecutters sit at the end of the bar in their usual spot, sipping on ’quiddy.

  This will feel good, I think, cracking my knuckles. Nothing like a good pub brawl to get the blood flowing. And with Yo’s agreement to press charges, we’ll surely end up in the dungeons.

  When I take a step forward, the door thunders shut behind us. I look back, wondering why Buff closed it so hard. Five heavily armed castle guardsmen stand just inside the entrance.

  “By the order of the king, you’re under arrest,” one of them says. I immediately recognize him as Burly Guard A.

  Burly Guard B says, “Any resistance will be met with violence.”