“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.”
“Can I choose a different name?” Wes says.
“Nay,” Abe says, settling the matter.
“You already got him the job?” I ask, surprised.
Abe lifts the edge of his lip, the closest thing to a smile we’ll get from him tonight. “Course. I told you a million times, I got power in the palace. But I didn’t know what he could do, so they couldn’t place him. All you gotta do is tell me what yer good at.”
“Uh,” Wes says.
“He’s good at digging up rocks,” I joke, earning a sharp look from my brother.
“There ain’t much rock-diggin’ in the palace,” Abe says seriously, not getting the joke. “But there’s plenny of other stuff. Has he got any other skills?” He directs the question at me, as if I’ve suddenly become the authority on Wes’s abilities.
“I can cook,” Wes says, pulling Abe’s gaze back to him.
“Perfect,” Abe says. “The king’s near always lookin’ for kitchen workers, on account of him killin’ most of ’em off when his supper doesn’t agree with him.”
The three of us just stare at Abe, shocked by his statement.
His lip curls again. “Jokin’,” he says, smacking his leg. We all breathe out at the same time, like we’ve been collectively holding our breath. “Kitchen it is. You start tomorrow morning. Just go to the back gates and give them this.” He hands Wes a type of gold coin I’ve never seen before. “Any questions?”
Wes shakes his head. “Good. Then it’s been terrible knowin’ you all. Try not to git yerselves killed doin’ whatever it is yer doin’. An’ don’t ferget: yer name’s Buck now.” He grabs his tinny and chugs what’s left of it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he finishes.
“Yah, yah, son of Huck. I got it,” Wes says.
“Thanks, Abe,” I say, just before the door slams.
“I hope I never see the likes of him again,” Buff says after he’s gone.
“You and me both,” I say, wondering whether I mean it as I take another sip of ’quiddy.
Wes slaps the gold coin on the table. “Right. I’m in. Now what’s the rest of the plan, or am I supposed to get Joles out all by myself?”
“Yah. That’s pretty much it,” I say.
Wes stares at me. “What?”
“Jokin’,” I say, imitating Abe’s voice.
“Very funny,” Wes says.
“Really? I thought it was an icin’ dumb joke,” Buff says.
“Right,” I say. “The real plan. Me and Buff, we just have to do what we do best.”
Buff cocks an eyebrow. “And what’s that?” he says.
I grin. “Fight.”
Chapter Sixteen
We watch Wes from the morning shadows of the forest. He gets in without a hitch, the gold coin Abe gave him doing the trick.
So Wes is in. My mother’s taken care of, with Clint and Looza looking after her. All that’s left is us.
It’s our turn to get in. And it’s not the easy way.
We wait an hour before making our move, so that no one links us to Buck—I mean, Wes.
When we stomp into Yo’s pub, every head in the place turns our way. The door slams off the inside wall.
It only takes a moment for us to locate our quarry. Coker and the other stonecutters sit at the end of the bar in their usual spot, sipping on ’quiddy.
This will feel good, I think, cracking my knuckles. Nothing like a good pub brawl to get the blood flowing. And with Yo’s agreement to press charges, we’ll surely end up in the dungeons.
When I take a step forward, the door thunders shut behind us. I look back, wondering why Buff closed it so hard. Five heavily armed castle guardsmen stand just inside the entrance.
“By the order of the king, you’re under arrest,” one of them says. I immediately recognize him as Burly Guard A.
Burly Guard B says, “Any resistance will be met with violence.”
Then they grab us and bind our arms, leaving Buff and I staring at each other in wonderment as to what just happened. Did Abe turn us in? Or did my constant rule-breaking finally catch up with me? In either case, we’re getting exactly what we wanted: imprisonment.
My only regret: I didn’t get to break Coker’s nose in the process.
~~~
The guards’ took more than a few shots at us as they dragged us along, and now my whole body feels like I slid into a tree. Buff didn’t fare much better than me. His face looks like he got mauled by a bear and he’s all hunched over as he staggers along beside me, dragging chained feet.
But we’re in, although I’m not sure what we’re going to do now. The plan only went so far as getting us inside the palace and Wes figuring out a way to break us out of the dungeons. For all we know, he’ll never make it down there and we’ll be left to rot with the mice and creepy-crawlies.
“When will the king sentence us?” I slur to the guard who’s prodding us along with some sharp instrument from behind. A raunchy joke comes to mind, but I swallow it down with a wad of spit.
“Consider yerself sentenced,” the guard says.
I guess it was too much to hope that the king would personally attend to a couple of lowly tradesmen, but I figured it was worth a shot.
Through vision obscured by swollen eyes, I observe the palace. Despite his condition, I can tell Buff’s doing the same. We’ll compare notes later.
The guard marches us through a high archway, made of a kind of white stone that seems to glitter pink under the barest hint of summer sunlight infiltrating the cloud cover. The hallway beyond is grand, adorned with all manner of white and blue tapestries, which hang proudly along the walls, threaded with delicate scenes from ice country. Here a snowy slope, dotted with soft pines. There a mountain peak, blanketed with clouds. On my right a town teeming with people. Houses burning? People fleeing? Dark men on black horses chasing them, cutting them down with sharp swords. Men from bedtime stories.
I glance to the left and find a similar scene, except this one’s not in ice country, it’s in a land I’ve only heard tales about, a land far, far away, where they say the sun’s bigger than here. A land of endless water and deserts that go all the way to the sea. In the tapestry there’s a giant wooden vessel—they call them ships in the stories—bobbing on a wide splash of water, tied to a tree that looks curved and funny on the shore. Men are rushing from the ship, brandishing swords and torches, charging into an army of dark warriors on black horses, who are galloping toward them, legions of dark clouds and flashing lightning at their backs.
We trudge on and the tapestries are behind us, leaving only a burning memory.
I glance at Buff and he glances back, raising a bruised eyebrow.
(Yah, you can bruise your eyebrow, Buff proved it.)