Ice Country(85)

Thud, thud! The hammering on the door is getting louder, more persistent. If Goff’s guards get in, it’s over.

“You wouldn’t,” I say.

He laughs and that answers my question. He would. He has. Killed children. Enjoyed it. “Don’t be so naïve, Dazz,” he says.

I grit my teeth. I shake my head, trying to take it all in. “Why children?” I ask, pushing the conversation forward. The second it ends Jolie dies.

“How should I know? I don’t even give them our children, just natives from fire country, but I’m sure you already know that.”

THUD, THUD!

I ignore the pounding, keep things moving. “And you give the Heaters the Cure.”

“Gave the Heaters the Cure,” Goff corrects. “Since Roan was killed, the situation has changed, become more complex. But I never gave him much, just enough to get the children. I keep the rest for me and my men.”

“What do the Stormers give you for the children?” Food, goods, what? Nothing seems to fit.

“Are you slow, Dazz?” the king says. “The same thing I gave Roan, except in much larger quantities.”

The air goes out of my lungs. The reason the bags of dried plants looked so unfamiliar, unlike any plant I’d ever seen growing in ice country, was because they weren’t from ice country.

“The Cure comes from…” I don’t finish the statement.

“Of course. It comes from storm country. Those plants only grow on the shores of the sea.”

The pieces click, snap, lock, and then weave together, into a sickening and screwed up tapestry that somehow, somewhere came to include my little sister, Jolie, ending with a knife to her throat.

THUD! The slam on the door is the loudest and heaviest yet, but I barely notice it, barely notice the metal bar bending under the pressure.

“Why her?” I say, spitting out the words, feeling a fresh wave of anger boil to the surface. “You said you only traded Heater children, but then you—you—” Memories of the night I went to visit Jolie at Clint and Looza’s hits me like a punch to the gut. Finding them tied up, silence and darkness surrounding the house like a suffocating blanket. Seeing them drag Jolie out the back. Running, running, a knock to the back of my head, falling, falling, failing the only one I ever wanted to protect…

I can’t speak another word or I’ll lose it.

“I took your sister,” Goff says. “Well, not me personally, but some vile men I dredged up from the Red District. They’ll do anything for silver there.”

“Why?” I growl, pushing him to get to the point.

THUD! I’m vaguely aware of voices shouting behind me, where a crack’s opened up in the door.

“Let’s just say she caught my eye,” he says, licking his lips.

“Liar!” I roar. “That’s not what your captain of the guard told me.”

“What exactly did he tell you?”

“That she’s a special trade item. That I’m the insurance to keep her in line,” I say.

The king raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t authorize him to say that. I’d have needed to punish him if he weren’t already dead,” he muses. “No matter. What you know now is of no consequence to me. In a short while you’ll be dragged across the border with your sister. And she will obey her new masters, because if she doesn’t it’ll be you that pays for it with pain.”

“I won’t let anyone hurt you, Dazz,” Jolie says.

“I know, Joles,” I say. “So you can’t hurt her, Goff. If she’s so special, surely you can’t just kill her here and now.”

“Tsk tsk, Dazz,” the king clucks. “I thought I warned you about being foolish. If she dies, I’ll find another little girl to replace her in an instant. And another brother or sister or friend to force her obedience.”

Something doesn’t make sense. The Heater children were both boys and girls. “Why a girl?” I ask

The king smirks. “Now you’re asking the right things. Because she’ll be betrothed to a young man, of course,” he says.

“Betrothed?” I say, the word sounding foreign because it was so unexpected. “The Stormers want my sister to marry one of their boys?”

“Yes.” One word. The king may have lied about a lot of things, but this one word rings true. “But not just any boy. I suspect it’s a boy of some importance to them. A son of a king or the equivalent.”

“Why? Why an Icer?”

“Like I said, they want to ensure her cooperation and subservience to her master, her husband. Perhaps the young women of their lands are not as…easy to control. And the brown-skinned Heater children are their servants, so it wouldn’t be appropriate to use one of them.” I remember the unchained wildness of the dark riders, many of whom were women.