Ice Country (9 page)

A voice echoes hollowly from somewhere. A
dream voice?

A dream inside a dream, maybe. When I wake up
I won’t remember, because I never remember my dreams.

The voice again. Wes. Dream Wes. Probably
just as responsible and stick-in-the-mud as the real Wes. I don’t
really want to see him now, because I’m too cold, too filled with
heaviness after nightmare number one. Even though I know it’s not
real, it hurts like it is.

“Dazz? What the…? Mountain Heart, Dazz!
There’s blood!”

“Just a dream,” I say. “Go away.”
Everything’s blurry, but not because of spots from a bright light
or the white wetness what floats above me. Just real blurry.

I close my eyes.

“Where’s Jolie?” Wes says.

~~~

The next time I awake it’s not dream number
three.

But dream number one and dream number two are
still alive in my memory, which is unusual for me. I keep my eyes
closed, waiting for them to fade away so I can be happy again.

Murmurs caress the air around me. Saying
something…I don’t know what. Don’t care much either, as long as the
memories of the dreams are trapped in my head. “Go away,” I say,
both to the murmurs and the nightmare-memories. My voice is
crackly, like dry leaves.

“Dazz?” my brother’s voice says.

“Nay, it’s the King of the Yags,” I say. “All
who stand before me shall tremble in fear.”

“Dazz, you need to tell us what happened,”
Wes says, as if what happened is real. Perhaps he’s talking about
what happened at the pub. Maybe I’m just waking up from the hit I
took and everything’s been a head-injury-created dream. That would
make more sense than me actually working for the king.

“Dazz.” A different voice this time. Buff.
“Where’s Jolie?”

The bad dreams scream through my head,
throbbing, throbbing, pounding, chucking a massive tantrum, ripping
my skull apart. Buff’s two words change everything, tell me
everything I already knew.

Not a dream. Jolie’s been taken.

“They took her,” I whisper. I won’t open my
eyes. Can’t. Not with them looking at me. Not when I failed
her.

“Who?” Wes again.

“The light,” I say, making no sense at
all.

“There was a light?” Wes asks, understanding
me like only a brother can.

I nod. “Didn’t see them. Heard Jolie. Someone
hit me.” They probably figured that much out while I was sleeping.
Some help I am. Although I feel like there’s something invisible
holding me to the bed, I push up with all my might, try to get to
my feet, ripping at something soft that’s tight against my head,
fighting the double sets of hands that push me back down, swing at
them, hit one of them, but my punch is so weak I don’t think either
of us feels it.

Everything rushes past and I start to
fade.

“Jolieeeeeee…” I say.

~~~

Jolie’s gone and Mother’s back on the ice.
Mountain Heart only knows where she got the money. I’ve been in bed
for two solid days. Not by choice. If it was up to me I’d be out
there looking for Joles, but the doctor said my head’s pretty bad,
and walking’s out of the question for at least a week.

I questioned it though, even when they
strapped me to the bed with ropes. I pulled them away, squirmed my
way out, ran for the door, feeling like I was floating the whole
time. Perfectly fine.

But Wes and Buff cut me off before I got too
far, fought me back into bed, tied the ropes even tighter. I cursed
them out, said some things I should probably regret, but don’t.
After all, they’re stopping me from finding her.

A Brown District search party’s already out
there looking. The District lawkeeper’s been out to Clint and
Looza’s house, inspected the footprints and the bloody mess I left,
and supposedly he’s confident they’ll find her.

I’m not holding my breath.

Clint and Looza are shaken up, but fine. They
came by to talk to me. Like me, they saw nothing, were surprised by
men in masks at the door who forced their way in and tied them up.
After smothering the fire, the men started to wrestle Joles out the
door. That’s when I showed up.

I’ve got work tomorrow, but Buff says he
talked to Abe and it’s okay, given the circumstances. I’ll still
get paid just the same, as if I worked. Why would he be so
generous? Not that I give a shiver about any of that right now.
Silver and sickles and debts and boulders-’n-avalanches seem like
meaningless things now that Jolie’s gone. I guess they always were
pretty meaningless in the scheme of things.

Wes is out looking for Jolie. He got time off
from work too, but he won’t get paid anything while he’s gone. I
guess the mines aren’t as generous as the king.

Buff’s here, mostly to watch me, although I
can barely move to scratch an itch, much less work my way outta the
complex web of ropes they’ve strung up to keep me still. My head’s
pounding something fierce, but I can’t sleep for one second longer,
so I hold my eyes open.

“We’ll find her,” Buff says, sitting nearby.
Mother’s beyond him, waving her hands at the fireplace, like she’s
coaxing dead spirits out of it. Wes hasn’t got a clue where she got
the ice from, but it’s almost a relief that she’s back on it so we
don’t have to deal with her needing time while we’re trying to find
my sister.

“I’ll find her,” I say.

“Not until your head’s on the mend,” Buff
says.

“It’s fine now,” I retort.

“You’re so weak I could kick your arse with
one arm and a leg tied behind my back,” he says.

“One, that’s physically impossible, and two,
I’d eat yellow snow before I’d ever let you beat me in a fight,” I
say, almost managing a smile.

Buff curls half a lip. Smiles are luxuries
right now. “Just give it a couple more days and then we’ll go
looking for her together.”

“Like I have a choice,” I say, straining
against the ropes to show him just how helpless I am.

“You want something to eat?” Buff says.

“Like I want you spooning soup in my mouth.
It’s bad enough when Wes does it.” Just the same, I know it’s a
rare thing to have a friend like Buff.

Buff shrugs. “I could find you a nurse. A
real icy one, even icier than the White District witch.”

“The witch wasn’t icy. And I’ll pass. I’m on
a break from girls. Maybe permanently.”

We’re both quiet for a minute, tired of the
type of banter we used to both love. Questions hang in the air like
drying shirts on a clothesline.

“Why’d they take her?” I ask the air.

“Only the Heart of the Mountain knows,” Buff
says, thinking the question was for him.

Why her? Why anyone? Who took her? Where’d
they take her? Are they going to hurt her? Is she—is she—is
she…………?

The questions are dropping from the air like
falling stars, bashing me from all sides—and the last question
keeps hitting me, rebounding, hitting me again, never quite
finishing, because to finish it will make it true.

(Is she dead?)

“We’re going to find her,” I say, clinging to
the statement with every bit of false hope I can muster.

L
ife marches on.

Bad shiv happens, people cry—not me, but some
people—and then everyone forgets about it, keeps on keeping on as
if nothing bad happened in the first place.

Wes lost his job after three weeks of not
showing up. I’ve gained more respect for him than ever before,
because he put Joles before his job, before Mother, before
everything. Not that it helped.

Buff’s been great too, spending all his days
off with me, scouring the town, peeking in windows, asking people
itchy questions, like “Where were you on the night…” and “Have you
seen a little girl…” We even romped through the Red District one
night, sneaking down alleys that aren’t safe even during the day,
picking fights with guys we had no business picking fights with.
The two black eyes would’ve been worth it if we’d found out
anything at all about where Jolie might’ve been taken, and by whom.
But nobody knew an icin’ thing, or if they did, they weren’t
talking, other than with their fists.

Abe told Buff I have to go back to work
tonight or he’ll stop paying me, by order of the king, which I
think is a bunch of bearshiv, because the king don’t know me from a
three-legged goat. I could be dead in a cold grave and King Goff
would go on nibbling on his fire country delicacies as if nothing
had changed.

But I’m going back to work anyway, not
because Abe says I have to, but because I need a distraction, and
our family needs a bit of that meaningless silver, so we can keep
eating.

Buff’s pretty much kept me up to date on the
job, what he’s seen, what he’s done. It hasn’t been that much
different than the first day. He and the others slide down the
snowy part of the mountain, hike through the unsnowy bits, and then
either deliver trade items—like bear meat and furs—or pick up fire
country goods. Then they climb back to the top. Easy breezy.

Just like life, Buff and I march on, too, out
of the Brown District, through the Blue District, and around the
White District, even though that’s the long way. I’m in no mood to
see any witches today.

As high and formidable as they are, the
greystone palace walls do little to hide the grandeur of the king’s
royal castle. Surrounded by the turreted wall, the heavy stone
blocks of the castle rise up in five different places. Four thin
towers that nearly reach the clouds can be seen from almost
anywhere in ice country. And the fifth tower, in the center of the
four thin ones, is the marvel of the Icers, rising higher than the
others, splitting the clouds in half. It is said that from the
uppermost lofts of that tower, the king can see direct sunlight, no
different than in fire country.

With the teeth-chattering cold of night
already fallen, we’re stuck waiting on the outside, as winter whips
the snow-filled air around us. Neither of us have the faintest clue
as to why we have to do this job at night, but it doesn’t really
matter because we’ll do it either way. It’s too cold to talk, so we
pull our slider masks over our heads.

It’s the clearest night we’ve had all winter,
and the dim light of a few stars pokes through the intermittent
cloud cover. The brighter light of the moon glows overhead, casting
a surreal sheen on everything. If we have to work at night,
tonight’s as good a night as any.

When the palace gates open and Abe ambles out
from inside, everything I thought about him changes in an instant.
He was actually…inside?
Maybe he does get his orders
directly from the king. Maybe he does have as much power as he says
he does.

He seems to recognize how impressed I am.
Icin’ eyes. Always giving my thoughts away for free. “Welcome
back,” he says, directly to me. “I just had a chat with Goff”—he
says the king’s name casually, like they’re old friends—“and we got
special cargo arrivin’ in a few days, so we hafta deliver some
extra goods today.” He’s speaking words I understand, but when you
put them all together like he does, they make no sense. Questions
pop up in my mind, but I swallow them away, because questions are
against the rules.

Nebo arrives next, looking as skittish as a
pup that’s lost its mother. I try to greet him, but his eyes never
leave the ground, darting around like he’s trying to locate his
lost marbles.

Brock and Hightower arrive last and together,
which makes me wonder whether they’re friends, whether they talk at
all. Well, not talk talk, but something like conversation, with
Brock saying something and Tower grunting a response, maybe adding
an extra grunt that Brock can then respond to.

They nod a greeting, which we return, but no
one says anything about my sister, for which I’m glad. I haven’t
given up on her, not by a longshot, but that don’t mean I want to
talk about her all day and night.

“New guy,” Abe says, and both Buff and I look
at him. He laughs, not in a nice way, but like he enjoys making us
look foolish. “You,” he says, pointing at me. “Daisy.”

Something in me snaps. Or maybe was already
snapped from the night Joles was taken from me. Whatever the case,
I can’t control my fists, which start swinging at Abe like I’m
taking on a whole gang of Red District rowdies. The first punch is
a gut shot and bends him at the waist—the second takes his head
off. He spins from the impact, torqueing around in an awkward,
twisting way, and then goes down in a heap.

Brock’s on me like a beggar on a bear steak,
while Hightower holds Buff away from the fray. “You didn’t just do
that,” Brock says, half-laughing, like he’s been hoping I’d do
something crazy. “Nice punch,” he adds, which surprises me. What’s
the plan? Compliment me to death?

I grit my teeth and wait for him to pull a
knife. He doesn’t.

Although I hit Abe with everything I had and
my hand is stinging, he’s pulling himself to his feet, massaging
his jaw, one eye closed and the other one all bugged out and angry
as chill.

“I’ll leave,” I say. “I’ll find another way
to pay the Hole back.” Even as I say it I wish there was another
way, wish I could take back those two punches thrown only out of
frustration and anger and sorrow about my sister. Not because Abe
called me Daisy, a stupid lowbrow insult. That was just removing
the lid covering what’s been boiling up in me for days.

Abe laughs again and it sounds slightly
maniacal. Okay,
a lot
maniacal, which I suspect is the only
way a laugh can sound when it comes right after taking a haymaker
uppercut to the jaw.

“That’s not the way things work around here,”
he laughs. He cracks his jaw, sighing, like it was out of place and
is now as good as new. “You’ll take your punishment and then we’ll
get on with the job. Other than that, your only other option is a
shallow grave.”