Ice Country (21 page)

When the door opens again, we’ve all been
silent for a while, wishing away the minutes until we can carry out
our plan. I look up expectantly, and I’m sure the others do too,
but it’s not Big at the door. It’s a small, thin man, and I
recognize him right away. The servant who King Goff screamed at on
the day Buff and I were captured.

He looks like a mouse, his nose twitching as
if smelling his way in, looking for food. “The king requests your
audience,” he says to the dungeon.

“I’ll give you somethin’ to say to the king,”
Skye murmurs.

“Um, I didn’t mean you, ma’am. I meant
them.

His fingers point in two directions, one at
me and one at Wes.

“Us?” I say. “Why us?” What could we possibly
be to the king that he would request our audience?

“It is not my job—or your job—to ask
questions,” the rat says.

“Look, you little weasel,” I say, “we’re not
going anywhere until you tell us what this is all about.”

His nose twitches. “I beg to differ,” he
says. Heavy feet stomp in unison on the hard stone floor as half a
dozen sword-carrying guards march into the dungeon.

~~~

The king is resting his chin lazily on his
fist when we enter his throne room. I try to keep my face forward,
but I can’t help glancing around me, at the enormity of everything.
The shiny, white pillars are even bigger, both in width and height,
than I could tell when we passed from the hallway a few days back.
The windows are huge too, taking up half the wall space. The other
half is filled with gigantic wall hangings, similar to the
tapestries we saw in the main hall, depicting similarly bloody
scenes of fights between the legendary Stormers and Soakers.

When we reach a spot in front of the king,
I’m still looking around, taking it all in. The soldiers leave us
and step as one to the side, looking through the windows, like
statues, completely disinterested in whatever’s about to happen
between us and Goff.

“Who are you?” Goff says, and my gaze drifts
to him. His chin’s raised now, his hands clasped easily in his
lap.

We say nothing.

“Your resemblance is striking…and yet you
each came to be in my dungeons by very different routes. Odd,” he
says. “Wouldn’t you say?”

We say nothing.

“Why did you force me to arrest you?” Goff
asks, directing his question at me.

I shrug. “Seemed like a good idea at the
time.”

He laughs, but there’s no joy in it. He
stands, descends the three steps from his throne, takes another
four to stand in front of me. He’s an even bigger man than I
thought—like his pillars, thick, strong, and tall. His graying
facial hair buzzes as he speaks. “You’ll answer my questions or
die,” he says.

I don’t doubt the truth in his words for one
second.

“Then you’ll die with him,” Wes growls from
beside me, tensing against his chains.

I jerk my head toward him. I’ve never heard
him speak like that, so uncontrolled, so temper-driven. It reminds
me of myself.

The king sidesteps to face my brother. “Don’t
be ridiculous. You dare to snoop where you don’t belong?”

“I was looking for someone,” Wes says.

The king angles his head. “Really? And who
might that be?”

“My sister. She was taken a few months back,
not long after she turned twelve. You took her.” There’s fire in
his words. Fire fueled by the kindling of truth.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Goff
says, but he doesn’t even try to hide that he’s lying.

“I saw them,” Wes says.

“Your sister?” the king says, turning his
back on Wes, clearly unafraid of my brother’s previous threat.

“Nay,” Wes says. “The other children. In your
Heart-forsaken tower. Prisoners.”

“Are you sure you hadn’t been drinking?” the
king says. “Seeing things maybe? There are children in the palace,
but that’s because their fathers and mothers work here. They play
in the towers while their parents earn silver to feed and clothe
them. I’m a charitable man.”

“You’re a sick man,” Wes spits back.

Goff turns, smiling, as if my brother paid
him a compliment. Everything about his demeanor says control, as
well it should, considering he’s got all the cards on our
lives.

“Ever since our forefathers hid in the caves
in this very mountain, the Heart has protected them, saved them
from what the Heaters call the Meteor god. My bloodline was chosen
by the Heart to be your leaders. Something for you to think about
while you and your
brother
rot away in my dungeons.”

“Is that all?” I ask, suddenly feeling
anxious to get back to my cell.

“No. Before you ever stepped foot behind the
castle walls I knew who both of you were. You think I’m stupid?
From the moment you lost that card game, your sister’s—and
your—lives were mine, part of something much bigger than the
pathetic world you think you live in.”

My head starts to spin.
The card game?
What does that have to do with anything? A piece falls into place,
then another. I stiffen, my knees locking.

“You chose Jolie because of my debt?” I
say.

“Hmm,” Goff muses. “You’re smarter than you
look. But that didn’t stop you from destroying yourself. I need you
both, you see.”

“For what?” I growl, anger rising, cloaking
the real emotion I’m feeling. My fault—it’s all my fault.

“Your sister is an important trade item, and
you’re my insurance that she lives up to her expectations,” the
king says cryptically.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wes says,
taking a step forward.

One of the guards kicks him in the back of
the legs and he goes down.

“I can have you killed any moment I choose,”
Goff says to Wes. “You’re not part of any of this. The only reason
you’re still alive is because I want both your brother and sister
to watch when I personally slit your throat.”

“You’ll have to kill me first,” I say,
knowing even as I say it that it’s an empty threat.

“As much as I’d like that, I need you alive.
Like I said, you’re insurance that your sister will do as she’s
told for the rest of her life. Don’t you think you’d be dead by now
otherwise? At every turn you disobeyed Abe, broke the rules,
practically begged me to kill you. You were warned time and time
again, but even the small, stuttering man’s death didn’t stop your
insolence. I promoted the two men who were able to place his body
so expertly in your path. I have to admit, I was as shocked as
anyone when you tried to talk your way inside the castle. Again, my
guards would have killed you if you were anyone else. Only my
orders to keep you alive stayed their hands.”

I want to call him a liar, to believe that it
was my own skills and strength that kept me alive all this time,
but I know that’s the real lie. They killed Nebo, planted him in
our path as a warning. The moment I met him he was as good as dead.
It was never our fault, not really. I’m nothing but a bug under the
king’s spotless black boots, to be scraped off and mounted on a
board as he sees fit.

“Guards—take them,” Goff says. The guards
start to move to grab us, but the king raises a hand. “Oh, yes,
there is one other thing. Does anyone besides your dimwitted
friend—I believe they call him Buff—know about your suspicions
regarding where your sister was taken?”

“Nay,” I lie, watching Yo slide a tinny of
’quiddy to me in my head.

~~~

When Big brings our one meal, I feel like
doing laps around my cell—I’m so energized. I can’t take another
minute in this place, much less a rotting lifetime as Goff
suggested.

And whatever he’s got planned for Jolie—her
obedience cemented by my own life—I can’t let it happen.

Skye’s feeling the same, apparently, because
she wastes no time throwing our plan in motion.

“Hey, Big,” she says, after he gives her a
plate of gruel, balancing the others along his enormous arms.

“Shut yer—”

“Pie hole, blazeshooter, yeah, yeah, I got
it,” Skye says. “I’m just tryin’ to help you. But if you don’t
wanna know ’bout the weird fungus growin’ on yer back, then that’s
up to you.”

Big stops, looks in at Skye, who’s already
ferociously diving into her gruel, as if she don’t give two shivers
about the dungeon master.

“What fungus?” Big asks, taking the bait.

Skye stops shoveling food, finishes chewing
her last mouthful, says, “The flesh-eatin’ kind you got growin’ on
yer back. You’d better git it removed ’fore it kills you.”

Big tries to look over his shoulder, but when
that doesn’t work, he slides the plates of food to the ground, and
then swats at his bare back. “Where?” he says.

“Right there,” Skye points. “In the center.
No, no, you tug-brained fool. You’ll never reach it that way. ’Ere,
let me. I’ve removed the nasty stuff ’fore.”

Big keeps scrabbling helplessly at his back,
but then eases arse-first against the bars of Skye’s cell.

“Ooh, there it is, big fella,” Skye says.
“It’s even nastier’n I thought, plumin’ out every which way. I
can’t quite get to it through these ’ere bars. Maybe if you come
inside I can git you cleared up right quick.”

Pretty obvious what’s going on here,
right?

Yah, Big’s not heavy in the area of brains,
or he’s just too obsessed with the idea of fungus eating him from
the outside in, because he clinks a coupla keys and shoots that
door open faster than you can say “moron dungeon master.”

Even stretching as far as I can through my
cell bars, I can’t see what’s happening now, so I go to the hole. I
can’t see much, just Skye’s backside, but I keep on looking.

My heart skips a beat, then starts thumping
harder than before.

“C’mon over, big fella, let me have a look,”
Skye says. She shifts out of view and I let out an audible sigh. A
giant leg comes into view, as big as a tree trunk. What were we
thinking letting Skye be the one to take on this monster? She’s
half his freezin’ size!

Then the leg turns and Skye’s leg flashes
out, quicker than lightning, all the bite with twice the grace, and
Big cries out with a boisterous bellow that reminds me of the goats
during mating season.

The ogre doesn’t go down, just staggers away
from where I can see, screaming the whole way. Skye streaks past
the hole and there’s a thud and another Big-sized bellow.

They’re heading for the door.

I clamber to my feet and rush to the bars,
just in time to see Big plow through the opening, bashing a
shoulder on one side of the metal doorframe, which twists him
around so I can see his face contorted in pain, making him even
uglier, if that’s possible. Skye’s work.

He grabs madly at the door and tries to close
it but—

—Skye’s there already, kicking it back
and—

—it swings and crashes off Big’s arm and hits
the outside of the cell and—

—it’s all happening too fast but in slow
motion, like they’re both walking through heavy drifts of snow, but
then—

—time speeds up suddenly, with Skye a blur of
fists and feet and elbows and knees, pounding, pounding, hitting
Big as hard as she hit me, except again and again and—

—Big’s wailing and covering his head and
staggering around like some drunk at Yo’s pub, occasionally
swatting at Skye, but always missing, always a second too late or a
foot too high, but finally—

—just when I think Skye’s going to win the
fight without any opposition at all, he connects.

A direct hit, right on her jaw.

A blind, lucky swing that sounds like a stomp
and feels, even from where I’m standing, like a bone-breaking blow
that even the toughest scoundrels in ice country would have trouble
getting up from.

“Skye!” Siena cries out beside me.

Skye lifts off the ground, floating, flying
for an instant that might as well be an hour, and then jerks to the
hard, stone floor, crumpling in a way that makes her look more like
a cloth doll than a person.

My mouth’s agape and I’m staring, just
staring, watching a trickle of blood meander from her nose and over
her lip.

She won’t get up from that hit.

She won’t.

She gets up. Slowly at first, but then
faster, almost with a spring, and I can’t see her face because I’m
looking from behind her, but I know—
I know
—there’s fury in
her brown eyes.

“Get him, Skye!” Siena says and I’m echoing
the thought in my head.

Big’s got his hands away from his face, and
he’s bleeding all over the place, just dripping the red liquid, but
his teeth are clamped shut and he doesn’t look close to being
finished either. It’s like she’s been pounding on a boulder for the
last few minutes, hoping it’ll break right down the middle, but all
she’s managed to do is knock off a few crumbly edges.

Big takes another wild swing, but Skye dances
around it, kicks him sharply in the knee, the one he appears to be
favoring, keeping his weight off it. He cries out, but steps toward
her with his good leg, grabs at her, just missing when she ducks to
the side, punching him with a series of quick jabs to the ribs. He
hollers again, but not with pain, with anger, as if he hardly even
felt the blows and Skye’s nothing more than an annoying fly he
wants to crush between the flats of his palms.

He turns quicker than I expect him to, swings
twice more and Skye dodges, but she’s being forced into a corner.
She’s down to two options: move back into her cell or retreat
toward the dungeon door, which Big locked behind him on the way in.
I know she won’t go back in her cell where Big’ll just slam the
door shut on our escape plan. I haven’t known Skye that long, and
yet I know she won’t surrender, won’t give up. Not ever.

She backs up a few steps, toward the closed
door, waits for Big to make the next move. “Finish this, Skye,” I
say. Her eyes meet mine briefly, but then they’re back on her
opponent, who stomps toward her.