Ice Country(41)

“We’ve talked circles around infiltrating the palace,” Buff says, motioning to my mother’s drawing. I smirk, even though it’s a bad joke. “It’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” I say.

“Nay. Some things are,” Buff says. “Like us getting rich. Like you getting the time of day from a White District girl.”

I stand up, clenching my fists. “I got more than the time of day, you freezin’ son of a snowblo—”

“Knock it off, you two,” Wes says.

Glaring at Buff, I take a deep breath, slowly unfurl my fingers.

“I agree with Dazz,” my brother says. “There has to be a way. We just have to think outside the snow globe.”

“Buff won’t be much help then,” I mutter.

“Dazz!” Wes says sharply. “Focus.”

I try, I really try, but Buff and I have thought about this question for a whole lot longer than Wes has. I feel like my mind’s more fried than deer bacon on a cold winter’s morning.

Jolie. Are you okay? Has Goff hurt you? Are you a slave, carrying around buckets of soap water, scrubbing the palace floors, brown-skinned Heater children doing the same beside you? Have you made friends with them?

Right when I stop thinking about the question and focus on who I’m asking it for, an idea hits me. And not a bad one either.

“We’ve got to talk to Abe,” I say.





~~~





“Not in a million years,” Abe says. “I’d just as soon be skinned and boiled by a Yag than cross the king.”

I’m alone with Abe, a good ways down the mountain—he wouldn’t talk to me any other way. Sleepy snowflakes flutter this way and that way in the wind, seeming to never reach the ground. “You owe me,” I say.

“Ha!” Abe scoffs. “How do you figger? The last time I saw you, you disobeyed a direct order and shoved me.”

“I did,” I admit. “But I was desperate. Don’t you get it? My sister’s in there. Goff’s got my sister. What am I supposed to do, just forget about it, let it go?” My voice rises over the last few words.

“That’s exactly what yer s’posed to do,” Abe says. “Just like me, you shouldn’t cross the king, especially when he’s got your loved one chained up somewhere.”

What does he mean by Just like me? I shake off the thought, continue to work on him.

“I’m not asking you to cross him,” I say. “Just help him make a hiring decision. He won’t hire me or Buff, not with our shoddy records, not for any jobs inside the palace anyway, but Wes, he’s a golden child, been nothing but a good worker everywhere he’s been.”

“Ferget it,” Abe says, folding his arms defiantly.

“What if it were your sister?” I say, changing tactics.

“I don’t have a sister,” Abe says smugly.

“A brother?”

His face changes, softens somewhat. “I’d do anything for Hightower,” he says.

Huh? “Tower’s your brother?”

“Yah. So?”

“Uh, nothing. That’s great.” I try to keep my face expressionless even though I want to ask him what in Heart’s name is wrong with his brother. “Okay. So if Tower was a prisoner somewhere, what would you do?”

“I’d freezin’ bust him out and mangle the face of whoever put him there in the first place.” He stops, wrinkles his face. “Oh,” he says, seeing my point.

“Please,” I say. “Just do this one thing and I’ll never bother you again.”

Abe cringes, looks like he’s screaming but no sound comes out, punches his fist into his palm. “Heart-ice it! Why’d I ever hafta meet an ice-sucker like you?”

I don’t think he means for me to answer him, but I do anyway. “Because this ice-sucker sucks royal ice at high stakes boulders-’n-avalanches,” I say. “So you’ll do it?”

“Yah. And then you’ll never talk to me again.”

“Deal,” I say, grinning.





~~~





We’re conspiring at Fro-Yo’s. Like we suspected he might eventually, Yo bent a little and let us back in the pub with the promise we’d pay him the last few sickles we owe him as soon as we can. He even cleared the place out so we could hold our secret meeting here. He said he’d add the lost business to our tab.

Four tinnys sit on a round wooden table, similar to the one we broke the last time we were here. They’re empty so Yo clears them away and replaces them with fresh ones, amber liquid frothing over the sides.

Abe leads the first part of the meeting. “Yer not Wes anymore,” he says to Wes. “Yer Buck, son of Huck.”