Ice Country (14 page)

“Funny way of asking for it,” Buff
grumbles.

“Well, we were chasing them.”

Buff’s eyes narrow. “Hey, describe this
Heater girl again, will ya? You know, the
girl
who beat you
up.”

I punch him on the shoulder, but then I
describe her.

“The short hair thing’s kinda weird, isn’t
it?”

I shrug. “I guess so, but it sort of worked
for her. She wasn’t bad looking.”

Buff says, “You know, I felt like there were
more of them, too.”

“More of who?”

“The Heaters, or Marked, or whoever they are.
Although I only saw the guy with the markings, it felt like there
were others watching the whole thing.”

“How many?” I ask.

“I dunno. Like I said, it’s just a feeling I
had.”

We both stare off into the forest for a few
minutes, thinking about everything. Finally, Buff says, “What are
we going to do?”

“Find them,” I say.

~~~

It’s dark by the time we get back to the
Brown District. We agree to meet in the morning, to start looking
for the mysterious invaders who gave us the quickest beating of our
lives.

When I push through the door, I can’t help
the smile on my face. It quickly fades though when reality sets in.
Mother’s in front of the fire, rocking slightly, using her hands to
drum out an uneven rhythm on the floor. Wes is off to the side on
the floor too, back against the wall, hand against his head, a
half-eaten bowl of soup beside him. And, of course, there’s no
Jolie. It’s like losing her sucked all the life out of our already
lifeless family. We may have only gotten to see her once or twice a
day, but that was enough to make things different, to fill in a bit
of the emptiness.

I can’t. As hard as I try to think of the
Heaters in ice country, I can’t. Images of my broken family flood
my mind and my lips stay flatter than the floor.

“Wes,” I say.

He doesn’t move.

“This has to stop,” I say.

No response.

“I know where Jolie is.”

His head snaps up and a pair of red-veined
eyes stares at me. His face is moist. He’s been crying. “That’s not
funny,” he says.

“She’s in the palace somewhere,” I say.

“Cut it out.”

“I’m being serious. I’ve got a lot to tell
you. I should’ve told you sooner.”

Over two fresh bowls of soup, both for me,
and to the erratic sound of my mother’s ceaseless drumming, I tell
him everything. What the job really was, about the Cure, how we
found Nebo dead and frozen, about the “special cargo”, how I felt
ill being a part of it. I wrap things up with our trips to fire
country and “meeting” the Heaters.

Wes’s eyes widen at parts, narrow at others,
but mostly just pay rapt attention to every word I speak in between
slurps of soup. When I finish, his eyes finally leave mine,
drifting to watch Mother and her incessant drumming.

“You don’t know for sure Jolie’s in there,”
he says.

“I know,” I say.

He nods, like he understands. It’s a
brother-sister thing. He knows, too.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I’ve been
dying more and more every day.” The way he says it sounds so
weary-like, as if he might die right here, right now, on the spot,
if he doesn’t like my answer.

“Like I told you, they’re watching me. Or at
least they were when I worked for the king. I expect they’re still
watching, on account of what I know, although maybe they’re not
being quite as attentive now that the trade agreement seems to be
on hold, or over, or whatever. I thought if they knew I told you,
they’d kill us both.” It’s the honest to Mountain Heart truth.

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
snow. 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.

“W
e 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.