Only I’m not intimidated. Not by him. Not by his posse.
The only one who might intimidate me is Skye, but I’m not admitting that just yet.
Then they’re gone and I crawl back outta the shadows. Clinks and clanks and four more prisoners are locked in.
I return to the brick, waiting until Big passes and slams the door before pulling it out. “Skye,” I hiss.
“Whaddya want, Icer?” And then her eyes are there and I’m blushing and my heart’s beating just a little bit faster.
“Why weren’t you with your friends?” I ask.
“Who’re you talking to, sis?” a voice says from nearby. Sis. Must be the thin, splinter-boned one.
“Just that searin’ Icy that tried to git us in the trees,” she calls.
“Scram, Icy,” another voice says, this one warm but full of pressure. The Marked guy. Gotta be.
“’S okay,” Skye says. “He ain’t causin’ no problems, are you, Icy?”
I almost laugh at how they continue to refer to me as Icy. To me that means they think I’m attractive, but from their tone I know they mean it in an entirely different way. And not a friendly one. “Dazz,” I say.
“What?” she says.
“My name. It’s Dazz.”
“Okay, Icy Dazz. Whaddya got to say fer yerself?” Skye says. I snort, unable to stop the laugh from escaping me.
“You laughin’ at me?” Skye says.
“Sorry, nay. It’s just…ah, never mind.” I repeat my question from before.
Skye laughs, and it sends a beautiful tremor up my spine. “I mighta been causin’ more trouble than they could handle,” she says.
“You searin’ nearly killed one of the guards,” her sister says across my cell.
She closes her eyes and laughs again. “Siena’s right,” she says. “I mighta done just that.”
“So they left you in the cell?” I ask.
“I’m here, ain’t I?” I’m racking up some sort of a record for freeze-brained questions.
“Where’d they take the others?” I ask, moving on quickly.
“How the scorch should I know?” she says. “I been sittin’ here havin’ the most unfortunate conversation with you.”
My face is becoming an unending pile of red blush.
“They took us to see the king,” Siena says.
“King Goff?” I say.
“Is there more’n one King?” Siena says. “Anyway, he’s more like King Goof if you ask me. Here we are, leaders of the new fire country Tri-Tribes, and he’s got us locked up tighter’n a hand up a tug’s blazeshooter.” Like her sister, Siena seems to have a way with words, although she has none of the grit in her voice that I admire so much about Skye.
Thankfully, Buff chimes in, because I’ve only got more stupid questions. “What happened in fire country?” he asks. “And what’s this new Tri-Tribes you’re talking about.”
“You ask too many questions,” the warm voice of the Marked guy says.
“It’s okay, Feve,” the song-like voice of the long-haired woman says. “Anyone we can tell our story to could help us.” Although there’s nothing special in her words, they seem to command attention, obedience, like she’s used to people listening to what she has to say.
“Please,” I say. “We’ve got as big a problem with Goff as anyone. Just tell us what happened.”
“My father happened,” Skye says.
Chapter Eighteen
“It wasn’t entirely his fault,” Siena says.
“He didn’t help matters though,” Skye says.
“No, he didn’t,” says a fourth voice, one I haven’t heard yet. The muscly, athletic-looking guy. I wonder what group he’s affiliated with. “The Glassies attacked us,” the guy explains.
“Who’d they attack?” I ask.
“The Heaters.” So the other guy’s a Heater. I’m still trying to figure out how everything fits together. “They’ve attacked us three times. The third time was just at the start of the summer. Siena and Skye’s father…Roan…he was a bit of tyrant.”
“A bit?” Skye says. “I still got scars from where he used his snapper on me. Siena too.”
Sounds like a real good guy. “At least he was going out and getting the Cure for you,” I point out.
“Ha!” Skye scoffs. “Whaddya you know about the Cure?”
Something in her tone tells me to tread carefully. “I, uh, I know we delivered it to Roan’s men all the time.”
“You don’t know what he did with it?” the Heater guy says.
“We assumed he passed it out to the village,” Buff says, even though we weren’t really sure of that at all.
“He didn’t.” Siena again. “He kept it for himself and maybe a few of his baggard friends. There wasn’t enough to go ’round, and no one knew ’bout it anyway.”
I don’t know what to say. Not only did Roan not share the Cure with the Heaters, but he kept it from his own children? It’s not what I expected. “So back to the Glassies,” I say. “They attacked the Heaters, but where do the rest of you fit in?”
“Me and Sie are Wildes,” Skye says. “We ran away from home to join them. Wilde, well, she’s the leader.”
“Sorry, who’s Wilde?” Buff asks.
“I am,” says the musical voice.
“Yes you are,” says Buff, like me, choosing the wrong time for a bad line. “I’m Buff. And my friend’s Dazz.”
“I’m Circ,” says the other guy, the non-Marked one. Circ, Siena, Wilde, Feve, and Skye. Skye.
“Got it,” I say. “So the ladies joined the Wildes. Then what?”
“My father tried to burnin’ kill us,” Skye says. “But we searin’ near killed him and half his Hunters.”
“I bet you did,” I say, rubbing my bruised nose.
“Then when the Glassies attacked the Heaters, we went to help them. Not ’cause of my father. ’Cause of the rest of the Heaters. The good ones.”
“We showed up to help, too,” says Feve. “The Marked.”
“Yeah, when the fight was mostly over,” Siena says. There’s a hint of something in her voice. Not hate necessarily, but something bordering on it, animosity maybe. She doesn’t like Feve, and maybe not the Marked in general.
“The Heaters, Wildes, and Marked,” I say. “The Tri-Tribes, right?”
“Right,” Circ says. “Roan was killed, most of the—”
“Wait, Roan’s dead?” Buff says.
“Searin’ right,” Skye says, not a speck of sadness for her father in her voice. “Glassies killed him deader’n two tons of tug meat.”
Well, that explains why the trade stopped. Given the secrecy, I wonder if he didn’t orchestrate the whole thing. He and Goff. Skye and the rest know about the Cure, but I wonder if they know about the “special cargo”…
Circ continues. “Most of the Greynotes were killed too. Given how small each tribe’s numbers were, we declared a truce amongst us and formed the Tri-Tribes. At least until the danger from the Glassies passes.”
“Why do the Glassies want to kill you?” I blurt out. There’s silence for a minute, so I say, “They seem to like us just fine.”
“You’ve seen them, Icy?” Feve says incredulously.
“Well, yah. Not that often, but they come up the mountain from time to time. Only to meet with the king though.”
“What does the king have to do with the Glassies?” Feve’s questions are filled with sharp edges, like jagged rocks and icicles.
“I dunno. I assume something trade related,” I say. “It’s all a bit secretive, and Goff doesn’t really tell the Icers anything.”
“Doesn’t make any sense,” Circ mutters.
“Doesn’t make one burnin’ lick of sense,” Skye agrees.
I’m missing something. “What doesn’t?” I look through the hole, but Skye’s eyes aren’t there. The back of her head rests against the wall.
Skye’s not talking, so Circ says, “Goff’s trading with Roan on one hand and then dealing with the Glassies on the other. Seems like he’s straddling the middle, playing both sides. Or he’s really on one side, and helping the other.”