Ice Country(79)

The rider gallops on, a shadow passing down the road, cutting up the slope toward the upper lofts of the Brown District.

Toward where I live. Where my mother, even now, is likely in a drug-induced stupor and oblivious to the world falling down around her.





Chapter Thirty





We leave Buff to take care of his family, his brothers and sisters. His father, who was in the group of men defending themselves, is lying in the snow bleeding, being worked on by a group of healers.

There’s nothing more we can do to help them.

But we can still help my mother.

Can still save my sister.

(Can’t we?)

Buff thinks so and he pounds my back before we leave. I think he’s trying to boost his own morale, because of his father bleeding in the snow. I say, “I can stay, Buff,” even though I know I can’t.

“Nay,” he says. “Fight.”

I try to smile, but it comes out all crooked. “Even now, I fight with you,” I say.

And he says, “Cut the cosmic shiver. Just get it done.”

Up the hill we go, stepping in the snowy horse prints, seeing spots of red where blood’s dripped off the rider’s sword. Buff’s father’s blood, so fresh the rapidly falling snow hasn’t had time to cover it.

I’ll kill that rider. I swear to the Mountain Heart I will.

We reach Clint and Looza’s place, which isn’t burning, which, if you look just at their house, appears to be separate from the battle that ravages everything else. Untouched. Pristine. Just another house in a snow-covered village.

I burst through the door, nearly snapping it off its hinges.

Clint and Looza, who are sitting in the dark, look up sharply, their eyes wide and white. “Dazz?” Clint says. His eyes flick to the posse of brown-skinned people behind me.

“My mother,” is all I say, my eyes darting everywhere and seeing no one else.

“She’s here,” Looza says, pointing to a pile of blankets on the floor. “She passed out and we couldn’t bear to wake her.”

“There are riders,” I say.

“They came here,” Clint says.

“What?” I say. And then again, “What?”

“One of them barged in just like you did. We just sat here looking at him, not moving, not doing nothing at all, and he left, like he couldn’t see us. He left.”

“Oh, he saw us all right,” Looza says. “He looked me right in the eyes and I could see him deciding, like he was working out whether we were any kind of a threat, which of course we aren’t. I guess he decided the same, because he left us alone.”

“Thank the Heart,” I say. I bend down, pull the blanket away from my mother, touch her cheek with my knuckles, kiss her once on the forehead. “Wes is dead,” I say, and both of their mouths open, as if they might say something, but then they don’t. They just nod. “Don’t tell her. I have to tell her.”

They nod again and I leave, out into the autumn snowstorm.

There’s only one place left to go: the palace.





~~~





We don’t see any more riders as we run through the Blue District. They’ve come and gone, leaving burning buildings and bloody bodies in the snow, who are being tended to by healers, of which ice country seems to have plenny; they’re crawling like insects out of the woodwork.

Every rider seems to have moved on, focusing everything on the final goal of taking the palace.

Where Jolie is. Trapped with Goff, who’s surely the riders’ ultimate target.

The gate’s been cranked wide open, but the guards didn’t just open it up and let the riders in. There are signs of a major fight littered all over the ground. Hundreds of arrows lie in bunches, some on their sides, some stuck in the snow, some poking from the dozens of black-skinned bodies of riders and their horses, which lie at a dozen different angles, forcing us to weave our way through the carnage.

There’s red and white and black everywhere.

Long ropes are slung over the walls, which explain the gate being open. The riders dismounted, fought their way up and over, and then cranked open the gate for the rest of the riders to pass through. Several lengths of rope are coiled at the base of the wall, riders tangled in them, stuck with arrows. The rope would’ve been cut by the archers, sending them to the earth before shooting them.

We move for the gate, an Icer, a Heater, a Marked, and three Wildes. A strange and deadly combination.

Before we pass through the opening, we see the battle in the courtyard. Compared to this, our own fight to escape was child’s play. Men play the parts of murderers in a game of death.

Skye pulls up short, raising a hand, and we all stop with her. This is her game.