“Don’t do anything stupid, kid,” he says.
Surprisingly, Brock and Hightower just watch me go, as if I’m their entertainment for the day. I reach the gates, which stretch higher than ten men on each other’s shoulders, an arched entranceway that’s normally barred by a heavy metal gate that’s cranked open from below. The gate’s more than halfway up now.
Two burly guards block my path, heavy battleaxes in their hands, crisscrossed between them. “I’m here to see the king in place of Abe,” I say, hard-like, as if I really belong there.
“Those are not our orders,” Burly Guard A says.
“Turn around and keep on walking,” says Burly Guard B.
An important decision. To fight or not to fight? Why is it that I constantly have to make this decision over and over again? My standard answer used to be to fight, which I preferred, but now it’s like my brain’s taken over everything, and I don’t know up from down. If I fight a couple of palace guards, maybe I break through, get as far as the next group of guards, but eventually I get stopped. Lose my job if I’m lucky; get dead or chucked in prison if I’m not.
But Jolie’s in there! Argh! I know where my sister is—or at least I’m pretty icin’ sure—and yet I can’t do a freezin’ thing about it.
“I said, move on,” Burly Guard B says. Or is it A? I can’t remember, but all I know is I’ve been standing there for way too long, drawing all kinds of attention from the wall guards, who are peeking over the edge at me, bows steady, arrow nocked and ready to fly.
Not fight.
The decision burns me up inside like I ate something rancy. It’s not a natural decision for me, but I know it’s the right one.
I walk away, expecting the guards to grab me and pull me inside at any second, to do to me what they did to Nebo.
But they don’t, leaving me wondering why I seem to be able to get away with so much more than everyone else.
~~~
Something’s gone down in fire country. Rumors are flying around like snowflakes in a winter’s snowstorm. Or even like a summer snowstorm, like the one we’ve got now.
It’s the warmest part of the year, but you wouldn’t know by looking out your window at the blanket of cold white coating everything, and the blurry, snowflake-filled air.
Buff and I are camped out at my place, riding out the storm, drinking warm ’quiddy and speaking in hushed tones. I don’t know why we’re whispering, because Wes has gone out, still looking for a job, even in a snowstorm, and Mother, well, she’s even more gone, although she’s sitting not two steps away.
“People are saying the Heaters have been destroyed,” Buff says.
I shake my head. “There’s no way…” I say, although I know anything’s possible around here. Like selling kids for cures.
“It would mean…”
“No job,” I finish.
“We were so close,” Buff says, groaning.
“Who gives a shiv about that,” I say. “Yo’ll probably let the last two payments go anyway.” From what we were able to save, we handed a whole bundle of silver over to Yo, nearly paying for the damage we caused in the fight.
“You think?” Buff says optimistically.
“Yah, but like I said, who cares?” I regret saying it right away, because I see the hurt in Buff’s eyes. “Look, I know Fro-Yo’s is like home to you—it is to me too—but I’m just worried about how I’ll ever get Jolie back without that job. It was my only connection to the palace.”
“We’ll find a way,” Buff says.
I shake my head. “I don’t see how.”
“We’ll start by going to the border.”
~~~
So that’s what we do. Every day, we wake up, grab our nice, shiny King-provided sliders, and slide/hike our way down to the borderlands, hoping to see something, to get some news of the Heaters. Why? Because if we can be the ones to bring news of what’s happened in fire country to Goff, maybe he’ll agree to see us.
And if I can just get behind those palace walls…
Then what? I break out dozens, maybe hundreds of children?
That’s the plan.
The first few days we see nothing at the border. Just empty flatlands, hotter than chill, stretching off in the distance farther than the human eye can see. So we venture a little further in. Each day, we go a little farther. We strip off clothes as we go, until we’re down to nothing but our skivvies.
And yet it’s still hot. Amazing! I still don’t get how it can be so cold and full of snow up the mountain, and fire-hot down here, in the desert. To my smallish brain, it don’t make no logical sense.