I feel like I should smile, but I can’t, not with Jolie the way she is.
“And then what?”
He shrugs. “Not even Yo can predict, but he expects things’ll get better.”
“They could hardly get worse,” I say.
Buff leaves after that.
~~~
Skye comes shortly after Buff leaves. She’s wearing thick snow pants and a heavy coat, borrowed from Looza, so they hang from her like extra skin, way too much material for her lean frame. But at least she’s warm. And she still looks beautiful, breathtakingly so.
“She’ll heal soon,” she announces when she sees the frustration on my face. “Feve’s a searin’ good healer.” She flips Buff’s chair around, straddles it backwards, her leg close to mine.
Her words give me hope, which surprises me.
With her leg tapping on the floor, always moving, I feel the warm sensation I get inside me whenever she’s around. “Skye?” I say.
“Yeah?” She tilts her head to look at me.
“Why’re you doing all this?” It’s a question I’ve been holding for a while, but with everything happening, I haven’t had the chance to ask it.
She shrugs, keeps on tapping her foot. “Why not,” she says. “We were ’ere. The village needed help.” You needed help. The rest hangs unspoken on her pink tongue.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help you get your sister back from the Stormers. Jade.”
“You’ll stay ’ere with yer sister,” she says. “We’ll take care of it.”
“I need to know the truth. Who wanted my sister. And why.”
“You want revenge,” Skye says, right on point as usual.
“Wouldn’t you?” I ask.
“Yes,” she admits. “But we can give you that. You need to stay with her.” She motions to Jolie.
“When are you leaving?” We haven’t talked about what comes next, but I know it’s got to be coming soon. Skye’s not the type to wait around for heroes to rescue her. She is the hero.
One side of her lip turns up. “I know what yer thinkin’ in that pretty little Icy Dazz head of yers,” she says. “You’ll follow us, you’ll find a way to stay with us till we realize you ain’t takin’ no fer an answer. Am I right?” Before I can answer, she adds, “Yer not comin’.” She’s got that locked-jaw look that says it’s the end of the conversation. Only for me it isn’t. She was exactly right. I’m going with her if I have to follow like a shadow from a distance.
“If you say so,” I say, laughing. I cut off short, however, when I realize it. I can’t laugh, not when Jolie might be dying beside me.
Can I really leave her like this?
“I do say so,” she says, getting that look in her eyes, the one where she narrows them and you know there’s no way you can change her mind, so it isn’t even worth trying.
So I try anyway. “You helped save my sister, so I’ll help save yours. This has nothing to do with us.”
She punches me lightly on the shoulder and gets that other look in her eyes, the one where her eyebrows raise, pulling her big brown eyes open a little wider than usual, and you know, just know, she’s about to say something that’ll surprise you, because it’ll be so honest, so straight to the heart that you wonder where she came from, how she can wear her emotions on the outside like that, when most people are hiding them deep inside, locking them in a box, throwing away the key.
“Dazz,” she says, and I wait for it breathlessly.
“Yer a real icin’ fool sometimes,” she says, and I burst out laughing, both because she’s right and because she used one of our words, the one that I think means the same thing as searin’ in her language.
~~~
After Skye leaves I feel that hole in my soul that always seems to appear when she’s not around. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but maybe Skye is right, that I’m a real icin’ fool for thinking I should leave the side of my unconscious sister to go on some wild hunt for a Heater girl I don’t even know, who’s probably not alive anyway.
Call it foolishness, call it the need to pay the Heaters back for what they did for me, call it a hot desire for revenge, call it bear crap for all I care, but that’s what I know I need to do.
The Stormers can’t get away with stealing children, not from ice country, not from fire country, not from anywhere. We’ll make them stop.
I’m staring at the floor thinking about it all when there’s a heavy knock at the door, so heavy I think the guards are back with their battering ram, trying to smash straight through our hut. “Ice it all to chill!” I hiss under my breath, striding to the door with snow water in my veins.
I throw the door open, ready to knock whoever’s disturbing my thoughts and my sister’s peaceful slumber all the way into fire country.
I suck in a quick breath when I find myself staring into the chest of a giant.
He grunts and I look up. Hightower stands over me, a foot taller and twice as wide.
Abe steps around him, leaning on a stick and smiling the nastiest smile I’ve ever seen, all bite and no warmth. A smile that makes me smile back. “Hey, kid, mind if we come in?”
I chuckle. These are the last two people I expected to show up on my doorstep. “It’s not like I can stop you when you got him leading the charge,” I say, motioning to his Yag-sized brother.
“Icin’ right,” he says, pushing past me. I step aside and let Hightower grunt his way inside, having to duck and turn sorta sideways to get through the narrow entrance.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” I say when I close the door.
Abe smiles wickedly. “Tell ’im, Tower.”
I frown and look at Tower, who I’ve never heard speak even a single word. The monstrous man reaches a big ol’ hand into a deep pocket in his bearskin coat. There’s a jingle when he pulls out a fistful of bright, gleaming silver.
I gawk at the sickles, more wealth than I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
“But where…how…what…” I say, unable to pull my eyes off the shiny coins.
“Exactly,” Abe says. “All of that. This ’ere, kid, is yer share.”
I keep on staring, wondering when I’m gonna wake up. “Share of what?” I finally say.
“The silver!” Abe says. “Ain’t you been payin’ attention?”
I manage to tear my eyes from Tower’s hand, look at Abe. “Nay, I mean, what’s it for? I didn’t realize we were in business together.”
Abe laughs and then stops suddenly, seeing Jolie’s resting form in the bed against the wall. “Poor kid,” he says. “I heard what happened. She’ll be all right?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Tower grunts something. “My brother offers his well wishes,” Abe says. Before I can even wonder how Abe can understand anything his brother says, he continues. “When the riders tore through the castle, not to mention you and yer strange friends running about, it was like a free fer all fer all the lowlifes in ice country…”
“What does that have to do with you?” I say.
“Well, thank you for sayin’ that, kid, but I’m proud to be a part of such a rowdy and mischievous bunch. Anyway, we snuck our way in like rodents, keepin’ behind the melee. It took ten men and Hightower ’ere to break into the palace vault, but we did it. Now I’m richer than the richest snow-blowers in the White District. Tis only fair that you get a share for everythin’ you been through. Consider it payment for killing my biggest enemy, may the king rot in a shallow grave.”
“Did you know the king was hiding behind a puppet figurehead?” I ask
Abe chews his lip. “Well, I had my suspicions, but never enough to prove anything. But now one’s dead and the other ain’t far behind, so enjoy the spoils.”
Feeling the weight of the coins in my hands, I lift a hand to my forehead, feeling the room spinning. “I don’t know what to—”
“Don’t say a freezin’ thing, kid. Just take it,” Abe says, smirking. “I’m not usually this generous, so be quick ’fore I change my mind.”