Ice Country (12 page)

Roan steps forward, his face speckled with
starlight and mottled with anger. “You will do what I tell you to
do, and let Goff make the decisions. You’re nothing but a filthy
messenger.”

I almost laugh, but manage to hold it in,
passing it off as a cough. The tension is so tight that no one even
looks my way. Abe’s trying to hold it together, to keep a brave
face, but I can see he’s intimidated by Roan, his lip quivering,
his cheeks sagging. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll tell the king what you
said. But no promises.”

“Good,” Roan says. “When he agrees to the new
terms, which I’m confident he will, bring the Cure here in three
days’ time.”

As we turn and walk away, one word thumps
through my head: Cure.

“C
ure for what?” I
say, already knowing the answer.

“There’s only one thing that needs a cure,”
Buff says.

“The Cold,” I say.

“They call it the Fire,” Buff says.

“The Fire…” I murmur, as if it’s something
sacred, like the Heart of the Mountain. “But Goff can’t have a cure
for the Cold—the Fire. People are dying of it more than ever.
Almost every day.” I know the answer to that too, but I want Buff
to confirm it.

“He’s keeping it from us,” Buff says.

“And giving it to the Heaters.” Ice him!
Freeze him! How can he have a cure and not share it with his own
people? But wait…

“But the Heaters are still dying of the Fire.
I hear them talking about it all the time when we go to the
border,” I say, frowning. It clicks and this time I don’t wait for
Buff to say it first. “Roan’s keeping it from his people too,
because he’s only getting enough for himself and maybe the other
leaders.”

“Icin’ straight,” Buff says.

It’s all coming together. The secrecy. Why
the king had to have Nebo killed off. Not because he knew, but
because he might talk about it. If we were able to draw a bit of
information out of him, then maybe someone else could get the whole
story. And the king couldn’t have that. There would be mutiny,
rebellion. The Icers would string him up from a tree branch.

We killed Nebo.

The realization hits me like a winter wind,
chilling me to my bones. If we hadn’t questioned him, hadn’t got
him riled up enough to tell us about the medicine, he might still
be alive. But how would the king have known what Nebo told us? One
of his men must’ve been spying. “Ice it!” I say.

“What do we do?” Buff says.

“Nothing,” I say. “There’s more to this
story, and we need to know everything before we make a move.”
Starting with what the special cargo is that Roan failed to
deliver. Unfortunately, that means we’ll have to wait until the end
of spring to find out.

~~~

We play the game, show up for work every few
days, deliver blah blah blah to the border, collect some other blah
blah blah and lug it back to the castle. Evidently King Goff
buckled to Roan’s new terms, because every few weeks we deliver
bags of the Cure. Keeping the Heater leader alive and free of the
Fire, while Icers and Heaters continue to die from the Cold.

Something about that just doesn’t seem
fair.

Summer arrives and the snow starts to melt,
but not completely, because it’s unusually cold for this time of
year. The special cargo still hasn’t arrived and Abe’s getting
grumpier by the day, probably because Goff’s getting even grumpier
from behind his palace walls. He’s paying for the cargo with the
Cure, but he’s not getting anything in return. That’d make even the
most happy-go-lucky king grumpy. And I have a feeling Goff isn’t
the happy-go-lucky kind.

Finally, however, one night when we show up
for a delivery, Abe’s usual angriness has melted away to a muted
melancholy. “We’ve got special cargo tonight,” he says.

What does that even mean? I want to say, but
as usual, I hold my question inside. I’m getting pretty good at it
considering how many unanswerable questions I’ve got.

Buff and I just nod as if we understand.

Brock and Hightower show up a few minutes
later and Abe says the same thing to them, and they don similarly
gloomy expressions. Why do they look so miserable? Isn’t the
special cargo what we’ve all been waiting for? On a night like
this, I’d expect them to be smiling wolfishly, grinning like
banshees, all excitement and energy. Not so…somber.

The five of us take the usual route to the
borderlands, except we have to dismount our sliders earlier than
usual, on account of the less than usual snow as we approach the
bottom. It may be a cold summer, but down the mountain it’s much
warmer this time of year. We trudge the rest of the way through the
forest, which is teeming with fresh, green life, thicker than Yo’s
beard.

There’s a commotion when we reach fire
country. I stand stock still for a moment, taking it all in,
wondering what and where and when and
huh?
Then I think,
What the freezin’ son of a goat herder?
There’s no cargo,
just five adult Heaters, standing tall and brown around a cluster
of children. Heater children. None of them look older than—

—I can barely even think it but—

—older than my sister. In fact, all of them
are much younger.

The thought sits in my brain like a dull
ache. “What’s going on?” I say aloud, finally letting one of my
questions slip out and away.

“Just stay cool,” Abe says, warning me off
with his eyes. “There’s no going back from this point, so I’ll
answer your questions after it’s over.”

I want to grab him by the shirt, lift him up,
shake him till he spills it, tells me everything he knows. But, as
usual, I don’t. Can’t. It’s not the right time—not the right way. I
have to be patient.

We approach the Heaters.

One of them steps forward. These men are
dressed like Roan was, more covered, less wild-looking. They are
clearly Roan’s fellow leaders. The Greynotes. “Will seven units
cover us through the summer?” the Heater asks.

Abe walks around the children, who cower in
the middle, lashed together, just a splash of brown with arms and
legs sticking out every which way. He eyes them up, from head to
toe, as if inspecting a prize sled dog. “They strong?” he asks.

“Always are,” the Heater replies.

Abe nods. “That should do it. You’ll get the
herbs till autumn, then we’ll have to talk to Roan again, agree on
new terms.”

What the chill?
I think, tired of
thinking that same question over and over, as if I can’t even
formulate a more intelligent thought.

“They’re all yours,” the Heater says, waving
his hand in a circle. In a pack, the Heaters stride off, back into
fire country, the desert moon beating a shimmering path across the
sand.

The children look at us with scared,
unblinking eyes.

“Round ’em up,” Abe says.

Right away, Brock and Tower step toward the
Heater children, cracking their knuckles and almost daring them to
run. Without thinking, I step in front of them, blocking their
path. Buff does the same, shoulder to shoulder.

“Git outta our way,” Brock says. Tower grunts
his own complaint.

“Not till you tell us what this is all
about,” I say. “These are kids—not cargo.”

Abe sighs, as if he’s been through this
conversation too many times before. I wonder just how many
times—for how many kids. “I told you I’ll tell you and I will,” he
says, “but not until we get ’em back to the palace.”

“Nay,” I say.

“Excuse me?” Abe’s voice is incredulous. He’s
not used to being denied. “Are you forgetting rule number one?”

“You can take rule number one and shove it up
your—”

“Dazz!” Buff says sharply. He’s thinking with
his brain, and I’m thinking with my heart. If we start a fight
here, we’ll lose. We’ve been in plenny of scraps, and we know how
to fight, especially together, but these guys are no less
experienced, and they’ve got Hightower, which is like having three
guys in one body.

I take a deep breath. “Look,” I say. “I
didn’t sign up for kidnapping.”
Kidnapping.
That’s what it
is. Taking kids from their homes. Just like…

I don’t need to finish the thought. I don’t
want to finish the thought.

Because I already know.

If there’s a King who’ll take kids from
another country, then he’ll take kids from his own country too.

“It’s just business,” Abe says, but there’s
no conviction in his voice. “They give us kids, we give them the
Cure. It’s not our job to think.” I might not know Abe that well,
but I know enough to realize he’s more than just hired muscle. He’s
got a brain. So why does he refuse to use it?

Brock moves to step around me, but I shift to
block him. “What does the king do with them?” I ask, my sister’s
face dancing around the question. I don’t want to know, but I have
to know. If Jolie’s behind those palace walls, I need to know if
she’s in any immediate danger.

Abe says, “Not my busin—”

“Tell me!” I explode, feeling veins popping
out all over my forehead. Jolie. Jolie. Where are you?

Abe steps away, taken aback by my outburst.
The kids huddle together even tighter.

“For the love of the Mountain, kid. Can you
get a grip on yer temper?” Abe says. “Honestly, I don’t have a
freezin’ clue what he does with ’em, and I don’t ask. He’d kil…” He
leaves the thought hanging, unfinished. Instead says, “He pays me
too well for that. And he’d kill me if I ever asked. Do you really
not understand who yer dealin’ with? It’s the Heart-icin’ King for
Heart’s sake! He’s got a whole freezin’ army of men just waitin’ to
crush anyone who gets in his way. Do you think we’re the ones who
killed Nebo? Do you really think we’re so heartless to not feel bad
about what happened to him, too? He was strange, yah, but we liked
him. I even shed a few tears for the stumpy little man. Ice, kid!
Are you really so clueless? He’s got spies watchin’ us all, just
waitin’ for us to make a wrong move, to cross him in any way. After
all yer icin’ questions, I had to stick my neck out for you so he
wouldn’t kill you, too!”

I raise a hand to my aching head, massage my
temples. Abe stood up for me? The king’s watching us? The king
trades the Cure for little kids—little kids just like my sister?
Everything’s so tangled, like the forest, all knotted and growing
and twisting together, vine-covered and spiky and windblown. I turn
to look at the kids, who are hanging onto each other, whispering
something that sounds like a prayer, to the Heart of the Mountain,
or whoever it is that they pray to.

Turning back, I say, “They’re watching us
right now?”

“Yah,” Abe says. “You try anything stupid and
you’ll be bird-feathered with arrows before you get more than two
steps.”

“Where?” I say, looking around.

“For Heart’s sake, kid, don’t look around.
Ice!”

I bring my gaze back to Abe, repeat the
question. He says, “They’re good at hiding. Even when you know
they’re there, you rarely ever see ’em. They’re in the trees and in
the brambles and under the leaves. They just watch…and wait.”

“Ice it!” I say. “We don’t have a choice
here, do we?”

“No,” Abe says, his single word filled with
regret.

~~~

Every step up the mountain is like an arrow
in my heart.

Before we leave, we wrap the kids in heavy,
full-length coats that Abe has in his pack, so at least they’ll be
warm.

But everything else is awful. The brown
children whimper and cast fearful glances around them as if
everything in the forest is new to them, scary. Maybe it is. Do
they have trees in fire country? Probably not, as they send their
prisoners to ice country to chop wood.

Even though the kids are clearly scared,
they’re like little soldiers, never complaining or crying. They
just march on, taking sips of water when we offer them, clinging to
the rope that tethers them together like it’s the only thing
holding them up.

How can I be doing this?
I ask myself
at least a dozen times, swishing around a taste so bitter it’s
worse than yellow snow.
For Jolie
, I keep saying in my mind.
Getting myself killed now will ensure everything I know is lost,
and then she’ll have no chance at all. My only option is to
continue to play along, wait for the right moment. Be smart. I feel
bad about the kids I’m taking from their families, but I can’t help
that either, can only hope that later I’ll be able to help them,
along with Jolie.

When we reach the start of the snow-covered
slopes, which are shimmering under the pale moonlight, the kids’
eyes light up, and I see the first indication that there’s still
some measure of childlike joy in them. They even reach down and
pick some up, giggling and dropping it when they feel the cold. Abe
gives them a look and I get the feeling that if I wasn’t around, he
would scold them and tell them to get a move on.

After a few more hours of trudging through
the snow, the kids start to falter, tripping under their own
weight, slipping on patches of ice. They’re exhausted. Who knows
how far they had to walk across fire country before we met
them.

Just before we reach the final stretch to the
palace gates, Abe veers off to the right. “Where are you going?” I
say, breaking the no-question rule and floating the very last
sliver of my luck across the night sky.

“Gotta go the long way. Safer.” Safer for
who? Not for the dead-on-their-feet kids. Not for anyone but the
king, who’s worried about the general public finding out about his
secrets. The Cure. His penchant for stealing children in the dark
of the night.

“These kids have to rest soon,” I say.

Abe stops, glances at the kids, as if he’s
forgotten they’re here, that they’re people, capable of weariness.
Perhaps that’s the only way he can manage his guilt. Then, to my
surprise, he shrugs. “I’ll probably catch it from the king, but I’m
ready for bed too.”