by Rin Chupeco
He handed her a blanket, refusing to meet her gaze. “Get some rest. I’ve done what I could to stave off the snow, but it can still get cold out here. We’ll have a couple of days before we reach Maidenkeep,” he said, and that was that.
* * *
Tala didn’t get much sleep that night. Her agimat didn’t appear to be interfering with whatever spell Ryker had cast to keep them warm, but she kept half-expecting a ruse; that the boy was biding his time, waiting for the other ice maidens to show up and take her captive. But Ryker wanted her and the firebird in Maidenkeep. Why?
In the silence, she was finally able to assess her current feelings. The puppy-love crush she’d felt for him had faded soon after his betrayal, but she would be lying to insist that the attraction was completely gone. And while Ryker might claim to be exactly where he wanted to be, it also sounded like the bluster of someone who’d never truly been given that choice.
Lola Urduja was still alive. So were the rest of the Katipuneros. And her father. She hated him for not telling her, and she hated that he was the Scourge, and she hated that he had the balls to pretend like everything was fine when he was responsible for so many horrible things, but she gave in and wept quietly all the same, because for all that, he was her father, and also alive.
Ryker was wise enough not to comment on her red-rimmed eyes the next morning. The fat little bird shot the boy a careful, sideways glance, then painstakingly shed a feather.
“Are you not calling for help because Alex is too far away?” Tala asked it quietly, while Ryker was busy dismantling their camp. “Is that why you’re staying and making deals with him?”
The firebird rolled its eyes at her as if to say, no duh.
Together, they looked on as Ryker cast a spell, his hands glowing. The snow around them melted away. “We’re called tempestarii,” he said, catching her watching him. He grinned. “Ideally we can control aspects of the weather, but winter seems to be our best skill. And all it took was a tiny piece of my soul.”
“I’m not sure that’s something to laugh about.” She didn’t want to think about the almost-kiss from the night before. He was right. She didn’t want them like this either.
“You’d be surprised to find how worthless a soul really is. As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting the better deal out of this bargain. And I haven’t given up the entirety of my humanity like the ice maidens, so there’s that.” He looked to the firebird. “Does our agreement still stand?”
It nodded.
“Good. And have you changed your mind about traveling with me?” The words came out guarded, a trifle uncertain.
She could almost believe, Tala thought, that his concern for her wasn’t an act. “I have some ground rules.”
He quirked a brow. “Oh? And what are those?”
She told him.
29
In Which Ken Has Little Say in Anything
I think he’s coming to,” Loki said, as Alex slowly stirred, groaned. None of them had gotten out of the swamps unscathed; though the marsh remained frozen, everyone but Ken was caked from head to toe in drying mud. They’d started another small campfire upon reaching the end of the marsh, thanks to Loki’s resourcefulness, but the flames were negligible despite a brief lull from the snow. Ken, Loki, and Nya had been lucky enough to avoid falling through the ice, but the others hadn’t, and Ken was worried.
West was still gone. Once they’d ascertained the surviving toads had fled the fires, he’d promptly dove into the cold icy waters to begin the search. If anyone could find them, Ken knew, it would be West.
He just fervently hoped the boy wouldn’t pull up corpses.
Alex had nearly met that fate when the ice beneath him had given way, and quick reflexes on Ken’s part were all that had saved the prince from plunging in. He’d been submerged for only a few seconds, but Alex had already been blue from the cold, barely breathing as they fished him out. Loki dumped every spare article of dry clothing they had on him, while Nya stripped him of his wet ones and briskly monitored his vitals. “He’ll be okay,” she reported. “He’s regaining warmth, and he’s no longer trembling as much.” She turned to stare at Ken; despite their situation, her mouth quirked up. “I didn’t know he could do that.”
Ken could only glare back. It wasn’t like he had a choice.
“What happened?” Alex mumbled, forcing himself up to a sitting position.
“You nearly went swimming, Your Majesty. Given the freezing temperatures, I wouldn’t have advised it.” Nya placed a bowl of something hot and steaming under his nose. “There’s a heat potion in this tea. You’ll feel better once you’ve drunk it.”
“My firebird is gone,” Alex said, taking a small sip. Nearly drowning didn’t seem to faze him at all, and Ken wondered just how much compartmentalization went on inside the prince’s head. “It’s somewhere up north.”
“You can sense it?” Loki asked.
“I’ve always been able to sense it. Where are the others?”
“Tala, Zoe, and Cole are missing. West set out to look for them.”
Alex frowned, his eyes falling shut. “I wouldn’t worry about Tala. She’s all right. Where’s Ken?”
Loki winced. “About that…”
At the edge of the swamp grounds, something broke through the ice’s surface. Alex started, and Ken could have sworn that the staff strapped to Loki’s back moved on its own, until they laid a reassuring hand on it.
There was a loud splash. A toad half Loki’s size hopped onto the embankment, accompanied by several smaller, noisier frogs. The air flickered and West sat crouched, shivering.
“I never knew Roughskins could change into toads too,” Nya said, wide-eyed.
“I asked,” West said, gesturing at the toads still hopping around. “They said the bigger ones aren’t coming back up any time soon. A human attacked their king with a black weapon, and he and the girl escaped. That was a terrible swim. It’s like flailing through a sea of mud.”
“It technically is,” Loki reminded him. “Did you find them?”
“No. The swamps are interconnected by underground tunnels large enough for even those toads to pass through. Zoe and Nottingham must have resurfaced at another part of the marsh. Tala too. I swam around but couldn’t see them.”
Loki frowned. “We could spend several lifetimes exploring these swamps and never find them.”
“I’m optimistic that they’re fine,” Nya said. “Grammy was explicit about all of us reaching Maidenkeep, and she’s never been wrong that I know of.”
She said you were going to marry a corpse, Rapunzel, was what Ken wanted to say, and cursed the lost opportunity when the words only came out a strangled sound.
Loki scratched at the side of their face. “I think Zoe and Nottingham can handle themselves. It’s Tala I’m worried about.”
“Like I said,” Alex insisted, “she’ll be fine. My firebird’s with her.”
“I believe him.” Nya held up a strange orange feather. It was glowing. “Found this lying nearby while the prince was out and you were seeing to the fire. Same kind of feathers as the little firebird’s. I’m assuming this is some signal to follow?”
West wriggled into his shirt. “They must be out of the swamp! That’s great!”
“I’d like some clothes myself,” Alex said, wincing. “We know we’re going the right way if we see more of those feathers. Carlisle and Nottingham will just have to figure that out themselves too.”
“Are you mad at Zoe because she’s dating your ex?” Nya asked, and Ken groaned softly.
Alex glared at her. “None of your business.”
“I am pretty sure you made it everyone’s business when you and Tala started getting into each other’s faces back there.”
“He wasn’t an ex.” Ken had eaten lemons that tasted sweeter than the vinegar in Alex’s voic
e. “To be an ex, you have to acknowledge being together, first.” He shrugged on a new shirt and stood. “We’re wasting time. We need to get to Maidenkeep now. I want to catch up to the others if they’re ahead.”
The girl nodded. “Get everyone back to looking decent, first.” She fished out a tin drinking cup and another bottle strangely marked Clean, from her bag. She used the latter to scoop up marsh water, then carefully added a few drops from the bottle to it. “Bend down,” she ordered Loki, and then she poured the contents of the cup over them. The mud and dirt caking the ranger’s clothes began slithering off, dropping to the ground around them in large globs.
I’ll never need to do laundry again with that, Ken croaked in jest without thinking, then groaned again.
“That’s impressive,” Loki said, examining their pants. “Pharma companies would pay top dollar for that recipe.”
“They’ll get it over me and Grammy’s dead bodies. One of these days I’m gonna tell you all about the time some bottling company tried to sue Ikpe and Avalon for the right to take our clean water patents, and Grammy made it that every time a representative came over, she got to curse them with boils. They couldn’t prove that either. I don’t know how to throw balls of fire or summon lightning from the sky like you guys, but I can do this, at least. You telling me they’ve gotten worse over a decade?”
“It’s a crime in Arizona to use magic or potions unless you’ve acquired the proper licenses,” Alex said stiffly. “Or unless you’re the king of the Royal States or a member of his council, which is a rather low bar to set… Where is Inoue, anyway?”
“Well,” Loki said, suddenly apprehensive. “You swallowed a lot of water when the frogs attacked, and Ken said he, uh, he knew CPR…”
“I was going to do that myself,” Nya said fervently, “but he was closer, and he beat me to it. No offense, Your Highness…but I’m glad he did.”
Alex stared down with horror at Ken, who looked up at him and croaked accusingly.
If this is gonna be some rotten permanent situation on my end, he ribbited angrily, no longer caring that they couldn’t understand him at all, then once Avalon’s back to its former glory and all that rot, it’s gonna be my turn to sue, the bloody hell I am.
30
In Which Some Ethical Pillaging Takes Place
They were stealing the truck.
“Technically,” Zoe said, when Cole had pointed that out, “we paid for the truck. I left money and everything.”
She glanced at him and was annoyed to find him smiling. “What’s so funny?”
“There’s no one around to leave money for.”
“They might still be. I left twice the amount a car rental would have cost, plus money for the vegetables and the chicken. And some cooking utensils and extra clothes. And some of the usable spices you pilfered from the kitchen.”
“And for the beer.”
“You stole beer?”
“Takes my mind off the pain.” Cole lifted his right arm a few inches, which was about as far as he could lift, still heavily wrapped in strips of what was left of his ruined shirt. They had both changed into fresh sets of clothes, their last ones wet from a brief snow flurry they’d encountered half a day earlier. Zoe’s were too large for her small frame and made her feel ridiculous, like a child playing dress-up, but she had gamely rolled up the sleeves, hacked the pants legs off to a reasonable length and found a small rope to use as a belt.
She knew she looked ludicrous, but she had wanted to save more of the Clean potion just in case. The amused looks Cole threw her way weren’t helping matters.
“At midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin and drive away in my glass slipper,” she quipped, trying to mimic a soft mid-Atlantic twang. She tugged at her oversized shirt, which kept slipping over one pale shoulder.
“That accent’s an insult to Audrey Hepburn,” Cole said dryly.
“Hey, look, I’m trying to lighten the mood here, but you’re not being very—wait, you watch Audrey Hepburn movies?”
He paused. “My little sister likes them,” he finally said, stacking more clean clothes in, followed shortly by a cooking pan.
Cole had a sister? “You watched them enough times to know who I was quoting.”
“I like them well enough.” Again that faint hesitation. “’Sides, you seem like an Audrey Hepburn kind of girl.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that you’re an old-school nerd.”
Zoe scowled. “Well, you don’t strike me as a Roman Holiday kind of guy.”
“What movie kind of guy am I, then?”
It Happened One Night was the obvious choice to Zoe’s literary brain. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, hiking through the middle of nowhere and annoying the hell out of each other. No, wait, they’d eloped in the end, didn’t they? Not that, then. Rebel Without a Cause? No, that would make it a compliment. “I was thinking Swamp Thing,” she retorted.
A faint chuckle was his reply.
The farm was the first sign of civilization they had seen since leaving the marshlands. Zoe had been tempted to spend a few more nights at the infinitely more comfortable barn, but she knew they would lose valuable hours and miles doing so.
She was all for reimbursing the owners for every item they took away, while Cole had been just as adamant against spending coin when the priority was their survival. Not for the first time, Zoe wondered crabbily if Cole argued with her just for the sheer pleasure of contradicting her at every chance he could.
She was almost relieved they’d gone back to fighting again. Since escaping the marshes, it felt odd not to be bickering constantly with him. That he could quote from old movies was a mild shock, but she was honest enough to admit that he was smart, and that was part of what made him so irritating. That he knew enough to argue with her in advanced literature class regarding Heart of Darkness or The Fifth Season or virtually every other book in existence back in Cerridwen had been proof of that. Cole always had the uncanny ability to get under Zoe’s skin without ever needing to say a word.
On the other hand, Zoe felt that she, too, was exercising a goodly amount of self-control. She hadn’t thrown anything at him yet, for instance. Maybe it was guilt, she conceded, because he’d hurt himself worse for her, and because Zoe didn’t want to know what might have happened if he hadn’t made the attempt.
“At least the truck still works.” Nottingham’s voice was dry. “But we’ll be lucky if it doesn’t die before we reach Maidenkeep. Walking’s still an option.”
“Absolutely not.” Zoe pointed to her stores. “No way we can carry all this on foot.”
“We’re not going to be able to eat all of this, no matter how hungry we are.”
“We don’t know the state of Maidenkeep’s pantry. Besides, once the others reach Lyonesse, they’ll be starved too. Think on the bright side, I doubt any farm horse is going to let someone like you climb onto its back. Or were you planning on running the rest of the way?”
Cole grunted and slammed the hood down on the truck.
“Wait, you can drive, can’t you? Because I haven’t taken driver’s ed yet.”
“I can drive. I’m no expert on trucks, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this one, other than not being maintained in a while. Someone made the effort to add fireproof spells to keep the fuel tank straps from corroding, and the ball joints have been treated with anti-freezing spelltech.”
“Didn’t you just say you’re not an expert?”
“I’m not. My dad does custom work.”
“Your dad?” Cole hadn’t taken his father’s name, but that was no surprise; in old families like the Nottinghams, the more illustrious name was often the one adopted. But while the family was frequently in the news—William Nottingham, the family patriarch and Cole’s grandfather, was a peer of the realm—Zoe didn’t recall
any mentions of his father. With his darker skin, Cole didn’t resemble his mother, a blue-eyed blond, in the least, though he did have William Nottingham’s steel-gray eyes.
She knew Cole was seventeen, only a year older than she was. And while everyone knew William, Zoe knew very little of his daughter and Cole’s mother, Lady Sarah Nottingham, who rumors said was something of a recluse and was rarely seen at the elite society galas Zoe’s own mother was so fond of.
“My father,” Cole said brusquely, his tone quickly stamping out Zoe’s burgeoning curiosity. Zoe retreated. She could understand; she wouldn’t want anyone being inquisitive about her own parents either.
The chicken had been in storage for at least a year. The freezer had broken down long before they’d arrived, but it was so cold, it had retained its frozenness. Zoe was positive it would taste dry once thawed, but decided not to let it go to waste. Cole needed his strength back, and despite being fairly smart in some things, Zoe didn’t want to be hunting down more animals.
Once they’d taken as many supplies as was reasonable, they both got into the truck, which started after a few worrying cranking noises. Cole seemed to know what he was doing, expertly guiding the truck out onto the main road, steering with his uninjured hand. Eventually, Zoe grew used to the bumps. If those made things uncomfortable for Cole, who was in a worse condition than she was, he was doing a fairly good job of keeping his complaints to himself.
They found more of the firebird’s feathers as they rode, which at least indicated they were going the right way. They eventually settled by a small brook to camp for the night, and in no time at all had a fire going. Zoe had reluctantly admitted her inability to cook. Baking had always been more her thing, if you ignored the fact that her cookies sometimes turned out inexplicably salty.
Now she watched with astonishment as Cole upended the flask of beer over the now-thawed chicken, then began briskly adding tarragon and cloves to the meat. A small knife, heated carefully in a small pot of boiling water, made short work of the vegetables they’d pilfered, and a pan of mushrooms, carrots, onions, and peas, liberally sprinkled with more herbs, was soon sizzling merrily over the fire alongside the slowly roasting meat.