Fire Country

Raja just stares. I swear it’s like a whole day passes, him staring, all silent and shocked. Twice I check to see if I’ve grown a second head, but it’s still just the one. “I wa

He shakes his head, snapping out of his stupor. “You can’t help. No one can.”

“You don’t know that. I ain’t a lifer. I’ll be heading back to the village soon enough. I can talk to my father, tell him what’s happening here.”

“Your father?” Raja scoffs. “This is all his idea in the first place.”

Now it’s my turn to stare. There’s no lie in Raja’s thin, sun-leathered face. “Explain,” I say.

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Siena.”

“Then tell me.” My voice is urgent, pleading, but I feel like I’m so close to the truth that I’ll do anything to find it.

I’m about to squirm onto my knees and start begging, when Raja says, “Fine. But you didn’t hear this from me, none of it. And don’t blame me when you start pokin’ around and get caught. They’ll kill you.”

I’m good at poking, Perry says.

Not now, I tell him.

The dead lifer pops into my head. Will that be my fate? Left for dead in a shallow grave? I blink away the thought and manage a nod.

“It’s your death ceremony,” Raja says, lowering his voice to start his story. “I been ’ere over a year, so I been able to put most of the pieces t’gether. When Shiva was struck with the Fire, your father started makin’ his plans. Shiva was still Head Greynote, mind you, but he weren’t callin’ the shots no more. It was Roan. You with me so far?”

Nothing’s surprising about any of this. “Yeah,” I say.

“First thing Roan—your father—does is goes and talks to the Icers. Up till then the agreements with ’em were nothin’ more than basic trade agreements. You know, like we give them tugskins and tug meat and they give us some wood for our tents and fires and such. But there was something else the Icy ones wanted. Something Shiva never let ’em have.”

“What?” I say, leaning forward.

“’Ssurrances.”

“What kind of ’Ssurances?”

“See, they’s scared of us. Not of us us, but of our disease. The Fire.”

“What about the Fire?” I ask.

“Somethin’ you gotta understand, Youngling, is that the Icies are tryin’ to survive just like us. They’s doin’ better at it, too. I heard that they live ten, maybe even fifteen years longer’n us. Anythin’ to threat’n their lives scares ’em.”

The pieces just ain’t making sense. I’m getting all this new information—the answers I been asking for—but I don’t feel any better off. Maybe I’m asking the wrong questions. “So…they feel threatened by…the Fire?” I ask slowly.

“’Xactly. A while back a coupla their border guards came down with it. With the Fire. Died miserable deaths like nothin’ the Icies’d ever seen before. The guards had had brief interactions with Heaters, so they blamed it on that.”

I’m starting to see where this is going. “They wanted ’Ssurances we wouldn’t spread the Fire in ice country,” I say.

“Now yer gettin’ it,” Raja says. “Yer father agreed, in exchange fer double the wood, some meat, and help harvestin’ the wood.”

Ahh. It feels as if the sun just started shining down on my head, even though it’s been doing that for our entire conversation. “That’s why you and the other lifers hafta go up and chop wood every night.” I frown. “But hold on. What’s my father really doing for them? How do these ’Ssurances work?”

“Your father—”

Raja clamps up when we hear the scuff of footsteps off yonder. Not just one pair. Several. We give each other a look and Raja points off toward the entrance to Confinement.

Keep’s door opens and he staggers out, looking like he’s been beaten twice over and then run over by a raging tug bull. “More lifers?” he says to someone we can’t see.

A whiny voice answers and I can picture his lips moving like a burrow mouse’s. Luger. “They got caught doing all sorts of awful behavior. They won’t see the other side of the bars for the rest of their miserable lives.”

Luger comes into view, dragging a rope behind him. A guy appears, staggering. He’s got bloodstains on his shirt, a black eye, bare feet. Then there’s another one, in no better condition. And a third. A fourth. Four new lifers all at one time? Seems hard to believe that many serious crimes were committed overnight.

“Take better care of these ones, will you?” Luger says, handing the rope to Keep. “They weren’t as easy to get and we’re ru

“They’re criminals!” Keep bellows in one of the lifer’s face. The poor guy jumps back. “Whatddya want me ter do? Set down with ’em and have a cup of herby tea?”

To my surprise, Luger grabs Keep by the shirt, shoves him up against his own hut, and holds him there. “Quit killing them,” he says. “Head Greynote Roan orders you to feed the lifers three times each and every day. They need to keep their strength up. Are we clear?”

Keep is wide-eyed and blank-faced, but he nods.

Luger releases him, looks at his hand like it’s covered in blaze, and wipes it on his britches. “Handle them yourself,” he spits, heading back in the direction of the village.

“Handle ’em yerself,” Keep grunts when Luger’s out of earshot. He shoves one of the prisoners, who barges into another one. “I’ll handle ’em alright. Handle ’em right to their graves.”

He stalks off, pulling the wobbly-footed prisoners like Totters behind him.

My heart is beating fast and I notice I’m gripping the bar tightly with my good hand, like I might be able to snap it in half. My knuckles are white.

Raja’s staring at my hand. “Don’t git yerself all riled up. Ain’t nothin’ none of us can do to stop ’em.”

“What were you ’bout to say ’bout my father ’fore they showed up?” I ask.

Raja scratches his head, trying to remember. His eyes light up. “Oh, that’s right. The ’Ssurances. Yer father’s set up border patrols all along the ice country border, so’s the Icers don’t have to. No one goes in, no one goes out.”

“Is that everything?” I say.

“That’s it. The big ’spiracy. Hope you don’t git yerself killed over it.”

I turn away from him, my back against the bars. I need to think. Luckily, I have another six days to think.

Chapter Nineteen

I been thinking for four days, but ain’t nothing come to me yet. It doesn’t help that Perry’s interrupting me constantly with wooloo questions like What’s it like to have legs? and You’d never eat a friendly prickler like me, would you?

Sure to his word, Keep’s been feeding the lifers three times a day to our one, but Raja showed me how Keep also cut the portions by a third, so they end up getting the same exact amount of food in the end. Yeah, Keep’s a baggard alright, through and through. And every night Raja and t’others get forced to go work the trees. I considered following them again, but it’d be a risk and I already know what they’re doing, so I just wait ’round in my cage for them to get back, thinking about everything I know, and worrying about whether Raja’s getting dumped with the bones. But every night he comes back and we look at each other. I see the weariness in his eyes, the defeat, the broken will. “Never give up,” I tell him, and then we both go to sleep.

Every day the winds swirl faster, along with my thoughts. My father. ’Ssurances. The Fire. Keep us out. More meat. More wood. More lifers. Border patrols. It’s all a mess of information and I don’t know how to organize it all. Nor do I know what in the scorch to do with it. My instinct is to rush straight to my father when I get home, demand that he stop making i