Are we the fools?

“She’s one of THEM!” Skye hisses, stabbing her finger in the dark toward the now-closed door.

“She was acting,” Wilde says, but her voice is much less convincing’n usual.

“Ha! See what’d happen if I tried to act. They’d shoot me on the spot,” Skye says, stabbing another finger at the Glass City.

Yeah, but… “You don’t look like ’em,” I say. “She does.”

“Exactly!” Skye says, much too loudly, as if I’ve made her point. “If someone looks like ’em, talks like ’em, rides in fire chariots like ’em, she must be one of ’em.”

Her logic makes sense, but that don’t mean it’s true. “So…what? She was spying on us the whole time?” I say. “She’s gonna go tell ’em ’bout the Unity Alliance, ’bout us hiding over ’ere? That’s nothing, Skye. If she was gonna spy on us, she woulda waited till we took her back to New Wildetown, then tried to escape.” Do I believe what I’m saying, or do I just wanna believe it?

“Then where’s Tristan?” Skye says, her eyebrows raised, as if that was the winning argument. Where is Tristan? I wonder, looking ’round.

“I’m right here,” a voice says from behind us, making us all jump a little.

“You baggard,” Skye says, her finger swinging ’round to aim at him now. I’m glad she doesn’t have her longblade with her or we’d be constantly ducking to keep our heads on our shoulders.

“I’m the baggard?” Tristan says hotly, staring Skye down. “You’re the ones who made her go in there alone. They might’ve discovered her already, killed her already.”

He stomps away, back inside the hideaway. “Don’t prove anythin’,” Skye mutters.

But it does and she knows it. He came back. And if they were spies he wouldn’t’ve.

~~~

More’n more fire chariots return to the Glass City during the night. Eventually I lose count and my excitement dies down each time Lara or Hawk come running in saying, “Another one!”

When I finally fall asleep, it’s so heavy the second coming of the Meteor God couldn’t wake me.

It’s my nose that pulls me back to life. I awake to the aroma of spiced ’zard. Ugh. Same old, same old.

But my stomach growls anyway, ’cause sometimes it doesn’t give two blazes ’bout what I put in it, so long as I put something in there.

I sit up, rubbing my eyes. Skye and Hawk are out, lying ’gainst the cave wall at opposite ends. Lara’s nowhere to be seen, so she’s probably camouflaged up top, watching for more chariots. Wilde and Tristan sit ’cross from each other, heads bowed, having a conversation so low I can only catch snatches of it.

“…has to be a reason they’d…” That’s Wilde.

“…found your…” Tristan’s response.

“…be ready.” Wilde again.

I flinch when Wilde’s head suddenly snaps in my direction, like she realizes I’ve been watching ’em, listening.

“Uh, is it morning?” I say. There’s plenty of light coming through the hole in the roof, so it’s probably not the smartest question.

“Yes,” Wilde says. “Today’s the day we go back to New Wildetown.”

“What ’bout Adele?” I ask.

“Only the sun goddess can protect her now.”

“She’ll do her part—now we need to do ours,” Tristan adds.

“The fight on the outside,” I say.

“Searin’ right,” Skye says, rolling over. “’Em baggards won’t know what hit ’em.”

Is she right, or is it just Skye being Skye? Confident, sure of herself, tough as a tugskull. Yeah, we beat the Glassies the last time they came for us, but we surprised ’em. We even surprised ourselves. I mean, the Heaters didn’t expect the Wilde Ones to show up, and we sure as scorch didn’t expect Feve and the Marked to crash the party. We got the best of our pale-faced neighbors, but the next time they’ll come in harder, with more soldiers, with more weapons…

Will we survive? Do we have any chance? With Adele on the inside, maybe, but only half a chance. With the Icers fighting with us under the Unity Alliance, maybe a whole chance. I gotta believe; it’s the only way I can stay sane when Circ’s not ’round.

I blink away my thoughts when Lara comes rushing in, her eyes bigger’n a Killer’s gaping jaw. “Something’s happening,” she says.

We follow her out of the opening, creep to the top, slither under the rock-colored skin. Even Hawk wakes up and follows us up without asking any stupid questions.

Sure enough, as Lara said, something’s happening. But that’s a major understatement, ’cause it ain’t just something, it’s a BIG something. Dozens of fire chariots are setting just outside the Glass City, not moving, just waiting. Half of ’em are full of Glassy soldiers, all wearing masks like the one Tristan’s wearing, all wearing uniforms and balancing black fire sticks on their knees. The rest of the soldiers are piling into the remaining empty fire chariots.

I duck my head even lower. If one of ’em spots us…

But no, our cave is pretty far off. Unless they ride right at us, we’ll be fine.

Skye curses under her breath. “They musta found us,” she says, and I know she don’t mean us us. She means New Wildetown. She means all of us. The mothers, the fathers, the children. Circ. Feve. Jade, our younger sister. Veeva. Everyone I care ’bout. My world.

“We gotta get back. We gotta get back now,” I say, and I feel my heart racing and a creep of chill running through my veins, almost like I’m back in ice country.

I’m already pulling away, ready to grab our stuff and go, charge ’cross the desert, attempt to outrun the fire chariots, even when I know it’s impossible. But Wilde stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “Wait,” she says. “Look.”

I don’t wanna—I wanna run, run, run!—but I hafta look, ’cause when Wilde says something you just do it. I snap my gaze back to the Glass City and see what Wilde’s talking ’bout.

The first of the chariots is leaving, spitting black smoke out the back and growling. A cloud of dust plumes in its wake, but the second chariot just drives right through it, following behind. The third, the fourth, and then all the rest do the same. A long line of fire chariots, like a disgustingly long snake roping its way through the desert. We’re too late. They’re too fast and we’re too late.

But wait, look, I think, my thoughts echoing Wilde’s simple command from only a moment ago.

The chariots ain’t heading west, toward New Wildetown, in the direction most of ’em arrived from during the night. No. They’re heading north.

And there’s only one thing that’s north.

Ice country.

Chapter Eighteen

Dazz

There’s no easy way down the mountain. Not for the entire village anyway. Why would there be? No one ever goes down the mountain; they have no reason to. Back in the days when Buff and I worked for King Goff—may he rot in Chill—and we went to collect trade items from the Heaters at the border, we used to simply strap our sliders on our feet and zip our way down the snowy slopes. This venture south is quite a different experience.

The wooden cart handle is digging into my shoulder. Next to me Buff is mumbling obscenities as he gets similar treatment from his handle. He’s even stopped mocking me and calling me a “sissy-eyed doe-lover” or whatever his usual insults are. Whose idea was the cart anyway?

With each tree root, stone, or bump in the ground, the handles bob up and down, slamming into our bodies, sending shockwaves through our bones and muscles. At least the cold’s not a problem, I think. I’m sweating beneath my thick, bearskin coat.

“Freezin’, icin’, no-good son of a Yag herder,” Buff mumbles. “Yow!” he grunts when we hit a particularly large hump in the frozen earth, hidden beneath the ankle-high snow. I grimace, too, switching the handle to the opposite shoulder for about the hundredth time.