I look at her and she looks at me and I get lost so quick it’s like I’m in another place and maybe there are no bars and no walls and nothing at all separating us. Her hand reaches out into the empty space between us. I stare at it, sun-kissed and full of strength. Strength I’m missing, ever since Wes was pushed through the dungeon door. Strength I need.
I reach out and take it.
It’s an icin’ good feeling, her hand touching mine, made up of something more solid and realer than the few other womanly touches I’ve felt since I became a man. Holding her hand for just those few short seconds makes those three other girls seem like distant memories.
She lets go, a smile on her face as she pulls away. “I like you,” she says. “Even better when you’re like this. Alive.”
~~~
The others aren’t giving up and neither am I. There’s too much at stake, for all of us.
We’ve got a simple plan, but it might just work. It has to. The only thing left to decide is who—
“I once wrestled a bear with my bare hands,” Buff says.
“It was a very hairy, drunken man,” I say, “and he ended up passed out on top of you.”
“What’s a bear?” Siena asks.
“He sure felt like a bear,” Buff says, scratching his head.
“You’re not the best fighter here, Buff,” I say, “so just let it go.”
“And you are, Icy?” Feve says, forcing me to duck to avoid his eye darts.
“Why does he keep calling you ‘Icy’?” Wes hisses from across the way.
I shake my head, both because I don’t know if we’ll ever decide who’s best suited to carry out the plan, and at my brother, because, well, there’re some things that just can’t be explained, at least not easily. “I’m not saying anything,” I say. “But I doubt if you’re the one either.”
Feve glares at me, and I glare right back.
“Quiet! Everyone!” Wilde snaps. Her command echoes once, twice, and then fades, along with all our arguments. “Good sun goddess,” she says. “You’d think we were from different planets rather than different countries. Let’s just take a vote and be done with it.”
“Are we all eligible for the vote?” Buff asks.
“Yes.” No one has anything to say to that, so Wilde says, “We’ll go around and everyone can name who they think is the best fighter.”
“I’ll start,” Buff says. “Dazz. I’ve seen him take down three knife fighters with just his fists and maybe a head butt or two.” I silently thank my friend for the vote of confidence.
“Head and butt seem to go together all too well for him,” Feve mumbles.
I bite back a retort. No one’s voted for him yet so…
Wilde says, “Skye. She trains my young warriors and she’s the best I’ve seen.” I look at Skye but there’s no pride on her face. Just belief.
Feve says, “Circ.”
“Siena,” Circ says.
“Circ,” Siena says.
“That’s two for Circ, one for Skye, one for Siena, and one for Dazz,” Wilde says, recapping.
Wes says, “Dazz.” I look at him, surprised, and he says, “I know, I know, I’ve never seen you fight. But I hear people talk, and no matter how many times I’ve had to clean up the cuts and bruises on your face, they always say the other guy looked ten times worse.” I nod, feeling a burst of pride in my chest. I never realized he listened to the talk about me.
“Skye,” I say, knotting the count at two apiece for me, Circ, and Skye.
“The decision is yours, Skye,” Wilde says.
She doesn’t flinch, just smiles, not one shred of doubt in her eyes. “Me,” she says.
Chapter Twenny-Three
Morning comes with a quick step and a dive.
There’s plenny of energy buzzing through the dungeon. I even choke down my whole plate of cold gruel, so as to ensure I’m ready for whatever’s coming.
As quick as the morning came, the evening meal’s like a distant mountain, way off on the horizon, days and weeks and months away. We do different things to pass the time: sleep, throw Buff’s rock around (Yah. The question game again.), talk about anything and nothing. Buff even sings a little, in his deep baritone, making us all laugh with his comedic rendition of “The Woman Who Made Me Cry.” He earns a bellow from Big for that one. Out of sheer boredom, I expect, Skye tries to taunt Big into the dungeon, but he just slams the door in all our faces, with a final warning to shut the freezin’ chill up, or something along those lines.
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 di
rect 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.