“You know, I might just ask for your firstborn at some point,” he goes on. “If you can ever find a woman who’ll tolerate you, that is.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” I hiss.
“Or maybe you can just take my brothers and sisters off my hands for a while—or forever.”
“Shut it, Buff,” I finally say loud enough so he can hear.
“Heart of the Mountain, Dazz. No need to get testy. I was just kidding. Well, mostly.”
The wall pinches me, right on the cheek.
I pull back, expecting to feel the wetness of blood, but it’s dry. My skin stings slightly and I feel a tiny bump forming, but that’s it. I reach out to touch the wall, to see if it’ll sting me again. That’s when it jumps out at me.
A stone clatters to the floor, leaving a gap in the wall.
When I peer through, dark brown eyes stare back.
“Who in the burnin’ scorch are you?” the eyes say, as raspy as a punch to the face. “And why the scorch are you followin’ me?”
“What the chill is scorch?” I say, feeling a warm blush on my cheeks. What the chill? I’m not a blusher. I don’t blush.
“What the scorch is chill?” the icy voice says. Did I say icy? I meant raspy. Yah, just raspy.
“I’m Dazz,” I say, memories of a strong, brown-skinned girl floating through my mind. A punch to the face.
“I don’t give a burn whether yer King Goff,” the Heater girl says, which confuses me for a second, because didn’t she ask who I was? But she’s speaking so different than what I’m used to, using words that make no sense and rounding them off, almost like the curve of her hips.
“Uhh,” I say.
“Why’re you followin’ me?”
“I’m not,” I say.
“Who’re you talking to?” Buff calls.
“That Heater girl,” I reply.
“I ain’t no Heater girl,” the Heater girl says sharply. “I’m a Wild One.”
I grin. “I’m sure you are,” I say, instantly pleased with my wit.
“You are?” Buff says.
“No, you ’zard-brained baggard. Not Wild—Wilde, like with an e on the end.”
Roan’s words come back to me. The Wildes steal more and more of our women every year.
“Yah, Buff, I am. Now can you please shut your icin’ trap?” I shoot over my shoulder. I turn back to the hole in the wall and the set of mysterious brown eyes. “You’re a Wilde?” I ask stupidly, considering that’s what she just told me.
“Well, that settles it. I’m speakin’ to a searin’ fool. Sun goddess help us all.”
Well, I don’t know about the searin’ part, but the fool bit’s probably right, considering I’m in a dungeon on an impossible mission to rescue a sister who might not even be here. “Can we start over?” I say hopefully.
“Watcha mean?”
I take a deep breath. “I’m Dazz. I’m an Icer. I’m not following you.”
“Oh-ho,” the Wilde says.
“Okay, okay. I am, but not like you think. You see, my friend and me, his name’s Buff. Say hi, Buff.”
“Hi, Buff,” Buff says. The Yag.
The set of deep brown eyes just look at me and I can see what they’re thinking: his friend’s a searin’ fool too. Which is probably a fair thought to have at this point.
“Anywayyy,” I say, “we were trying to get information on what happened to the Heaters, because there were rumors flying around about bad shiver, all kind of bad shiver, and then I saw you and I thought you were a Heater and so I chased you, not because I wanted to hurt you or anything like that, but because I wanted to talk to you, to ask a couple of questions about the Heaters and whether everything was okay and whether…” I stop. I’m rambling like a river of melting snow in the summer.
“What kinda questions?” the girl says, the rasp of her voice tickling my eardrums.
“I guess just, do you know what happened to the Heaters?” I ask.
“I was there,” she says.
“But how? I thought the Wildes stole the Heaters’ children.”
“That’s a burnin’ lie,” she says. “Give me back my brick.” Because of my bumbling, arguably the most important conversation of my life is spiraling out of control.
“Wait, nay, I’m sorry, that was just what Roan told us.”
Silence. Her eyes blink. Once. Twice. Three times. I feel the blush I never knew I had coming back. Something about being under this woman’s scrutiny is like having my stones clamped in a vice.
(In a good way?)
“You know Roan?” she asks. There’s something hard in her voice.
“Not really. I met him once at the border. As part of my job. He told us a lot of things, but maybe it wasn’t all true. Do you know him?”
“Roan’s my father,” she says, pulling away from the hole.
~~~
I try for a few hours after that, trying to get her attention, to get her to come back to the hole, to talk to me, but she’s not having any of it.
Buff interjects every once in a while, but mostly he’s tossing jokes around, like the hits he took to the head have made him a little loopy.
Eventually, I get tired of speaking through the hole, so I shove the brick in, but only halfway, so I can pull it out again if I have to. I slump against the wall, force my eyes closed, try to sleep. I say one last thing before I drift off. “What’s your name?”
“Buff,” Buff says.
“Skye,” the Wilde woman says, and then she’s silent for good.
I sleep.
~~~
I’m awakened when the heavy dungeon door crashes open. For a moment I’m disoriented, scrabbling at the walls and reaching into the empty space in front of me, but then I remember where I am. In my cell, slumped against the wall, sleeping sitting up.
Big’s voice is a deep rumble of thunder. “No funny…” Well, you know the rest.
Feet scuffle on the floor. More prisoners. I wonder if this is a busy day in the dungeons or if every day is like this, prisoners in, prisoners out. Do prisoners ever go out? Or is the sentence the same regardless of the crime: life in the dungeons. I wonder if they’ll even feed us, or if we just wither away until we can’t wither no more—and then we die.
The feet trod along, at least three sets, maybe four, in addition to Big’s crashing footsteps, and I find myself shrinking into the shadows, like Skye—that’s her name, isn’t it? Or did I dream it?—musta done when we passed by her cell.
“What the scorch happened?” Skye says, her voice firm and echoing.
“Shut yer Heater pie hole!” Big roars.
“I ain’t a Heater, you great big tub o’ tug lard!” Skye retorts. I grin in the dark. She don’t take nothing from nobody, and I’ve got the black eye to prove it.
“It’s alright, Skye,” another female voice says, its tone the exact opposite of Skye’s husky timbre. Hers floats like a simple melody from a flute, calming everything and everyone that hears it.
Skye stays quiet.
Four people pass by my cell, their skin orangey-brown under the torchlight. They’re wearing light-brown skins, exactly like Skye was wearing when I first met her. They look in at me but their eyes don’t register any sort of recognition, because they can’t see me in the shadows. A few hours ago I’d have said they were Heaters, but now I have no clue, because no one except the men at the border seems to be Heaters.
Two are guys, two girls. I only get the barest glimpse, but one’s got shortish black hair, longer than Skye’s but only by a few months’ growing, and could almost be her sister, if she wasn’t so much skinnier. Still muscular, but with bones no bigger than the splinters I occasionally pull out of my feet. Next to her is a guy, lean, muscular, with a look of strength about him. Behind them is another woman, with long, black hair and a regal walk to her, almost like she’s dancing. She looks strong as chill, too, but in a way that’s more graceful than Skye. And bringing up the rear is the Marked man, every bit as full of muscle and hard edges as Buff described, covered with dark markings that shine a bit in the light, which, when combined with his dark eyes, give him an intimidating look.