The Earth Dwellers

The third Killer is upon us, leaping at Wilde even as she jams her sword upward. The monstrous creature paws aside the sword and knocks her to the ground, landing hard on top of her, snarling and snapping. Oh sun goddess, no. Not Wilde. No, no!

But then:

Tristan plows into the Killer, shoulder first, bashing it away from Wilde, simultaneously jamming his blade—my knife—into its side. They roll end over end, t’gether, like they’re one animal, a strange mix of fur and flesh and paws and hands. When they stop, the Killer—knife handle protruding from its hide—slashes at Tristan with dagger-like claws, swatting him aside like a pesky desert fly.

I realize I’ve got my bow raised, a pointer fitted, almost subconsciously, trying to get an angle on the Killer, which is back on its feet, sorta behind the edge of the dune, sorta behind Wilde’s unmoving body.

Adele yells, charges, moving quickly and gracefully, swinging the blade she stole from Wilde somewhat wildly, like she’s used one ’fore, but’s still trying to get the hang of it. She leaps and the Killer does the same, lunging at her ’fore she can get enough strength behind her stab. It’s got her ’round the waist, in its jaws, picking her up and crushing her to the ground, her sword skittering away like a skipped stone.

She’s as good as dead, but still I can’t shoot, ’cause what if she’s alive and I hit her? But I don’t hafta shoot, don’t hafta save the day, ’cause that’s what Skye does. That’s all she ever does.

And even as I think it, Skye’s there, jamming her own blade into the Killer, missing its head ’cause it twists away, but getting it in the upper body, just below its neck. The Killer, even in the throes of death, two weapons sticking from its fur, keeps on kicking, raking its claws first ’cross Skye’s cheek and then on her shoulder, throwing her back with the force of the blows.

Impossibly, it’s on its feet again, still full of life, standing over Adele’s dead body, growling at Skye, who’s now weaponless, on her back. I loose a pointer, Skye’s last hope, which slams into the beast’s hip, but all I draw is an angry snarl.

The Killer leans back on its haunches, preparing to leap, to finish off my sister with its last living breath. It’s over. The fight, the part of my life that’s worth living, everything.

And then a hand moves beneath the beast. Just a flash of skin and the glint of metal as Adele pulls Tristan’s knife—my knife—from the Killer’s flesh. The animal’s head cocks to the side, such a human expression, as if it’s confused at what it’s feeling beneath it, and then its eyes widen and roll back as the tip of the weapon emerges from the crown of its head.

It falls, heavy and lifeless and nothing more’n a sack of flesh and bones and blood.

Skye saved Adele.

Adele saved Skye.

Who woulda thought it?

Chapter Six

Dazz

“Mother,” I say, feeling the word in my blood, in my bones.

Jolie’s clinging to my side like she’s afraid to let go, but she can’t stop me from crossing the room, dragging her with me, embracing my mother, who looks so beautiful, her blue eyes clear, her dark brown hair clean and braided and hanging like a vine over her shoulder.

With the soft glow of the fire surrounding us, her warm arms hold Jolie and me. Although her grip isn’t tight, I feel like it’s choking me, because our family seems so small now without Wes and my father. We’re all we have left in this cold, harsh world.

“Thank the Heart of the Mountain,” my mother murmurs into my hair.

“You’re still clean, Mother,” I say. Not a question, an observation. When I last saw her she had barely gone through withdrawal from the drugs—ice powder—leaving her system.

“Wilde helped me until she had to leave,” she says, pulling away from me to look at my face. It’s weird to see her eyes so clear, so aware. Strange and amazing.

“And after she left?”

“I helped myself,” she says, which makes me gather her up in my arms once more, out of pride.

“I knew you could do it. I always knew.”

“We’re a family again, right?” Jolie asks from just below my armpit.

“We never stopped being one, Joles,” I say. “Not for one second.”

~~~

Wilde didn’t tell my mother anything before she left, only that it was an emergency. I don’t want to tell her either. How can I when, for the first time in so long, she’s happy, truly happy? Still sad about losing Father and Wes, but coping, on her own, without the fog of drugs to blind her to reality. Like the rest of us—coping.

But I know I have to, because she’ll find out soon enough anyway, and I’d rather she hears it from me.

“The Glassies are going to attack us,” I say through the swirling steam from my cup of tea.

Mother’s eyebrows narrow, followed by Jolie’s. They look so much alike, their expressions so similar, I almost want to laugh. I would under any other circumstances.

“Why would they do that?” Jolie says. “We haven’t done anything to them.”

I shake my head, marveling at how my twelve-year-old sister, having gone through so much in her short life—abducted, nearly enslaved by a corrupt admiral, nearly killed by a deranged king—is able to maintain such a childlike i

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe they’re scared because we’re different than them. Maybe they’re just bad people.”

“Like King Goff?” she says.

“Yah, maybe just like King Goff.”

“He’s dead, you know,” Jolie says, so matter-of-factly it’s like she’s telling me it snowed today, or she bought bread at the bakery.

“I didn’t know that,” I say, unsurprised. There was no way the consortium would find the king i

“Three days past,” my mother says, interjecting. “They did it publicly.”

“I wanted to go, but Mother wouldn’t let me.” Maybe my sister’s i

“Mother was right. Death isn’t something that should be watched, like a competition.”

Jolie shrugs. “Well, I’m still glad he’s dead.”

I have nothing to say to that because I am too.

~~~

I’m nervous. Despite all I’ve been through—from minor things, like facing pub fights with drunken men wielding shards of broken bottles, to major things, like fighting through hordes of soldiers and black-robed Riders—speaking to a bunch of irate and confused ice country leaders scares me more than anything.

For one, they’re men and women, many of them twice my age. And three quarters of them aren’t from my part of town, the Brown District. There are four leaders from each District, White, Blue, Brown, and Black. Yo is huddled up with the other three from the Brown District, probably setting the record straight, telling them what I told him earlier, trying to get them all on the same page. The representatives from the White and Blue Districts are sitting together, speaking to each other more with their hands than with their mouths, as if the grandness of each arm gesture determines the weight and strength of the words attached to it.

Lines are already being drawn, even in this supposedly “equal” tribunal.

The Black District reps are sitting alone. Well, only three of the four have shown up and they don’t seem interested in anything but whatever card game they’re playing—Boulders ’n Avalanches probably. They only turn their attention away from the game to spit wads of tobacco on the dirt floor of the large council room.

I fight back the desire to grab Buff’s arm and jump off the raised platform we’re sitting on.