Snake Heart (12 page)

“Arayevo?” he asked, squinting. The light pouring from the ceiling came from Made lamps, rather than lanterns. It brightened the entire corridor to almost a daylight level.

“Yes, it’s me.” She patted his shoulder and guided him out of the way so Lakeo and Dak could step out.

“I thought you left with Minark.” Yanko glanced at Lakeo. She had implied that.

Lakeo shrugged, only meeting his eyes for a moment before looking up and down the corridor in bewilderment.

“No,” Arayevo said. “He left without me. The bastard. I said we weren’t leaving you three on an island full of death. He said he wasn’t spending the night on an island full of death. I tried to, uhm, divert his attention, but he’s superstitious. He was so nervous, it was like—never mind. It got three times harder to convince him to stay after it got dark. When the pirate fleet showed up on the horizon, he piddled himself and ran back to his ship faster than a spanked dog.”

“Save the reunion for later,” Dak said. “Those pirates may figure out we’re down here.”

Chapter 9

D
ak removed his helmet, pushed Yanko, Arayevo, and Lakeo out of the way, and headed past bunks and equipment stations toward the front of the craft. Yanko could just make out a room with two chairs, wall-to-wall controls, and a large viewing porthole.

“Do you want us to do anything?” Arayevo asked.

Unlike Lakeo and Yanko, who were soaked through and dripping water onto the grid-like metal decking, she was dry and didn’t look like she had been wet all night. Dak was dripping as much as they were, but he wore a strangely textured water-repellent outfit and boots. He removed the helmet and clunked it down on the deck before perching on one of the two seats up there. He did not bother to remove the brass tank strapped to his back, and it clanged against the back of the metal chair, forcing him to sit on the edge as he pushed levers and checked gauges.

Not knowing what else he should do—it wasn’t as if he had dry clothes to change into—Yanko went up to the control room and sat in the other chair. Dak glanced at him, but did not say anything. He seemed to be concentrating, both on the gauges and on what lay outside the large viewing porthole. An exterior lamp formed a cone of light on the sand and rocks in front of them.

Dak pushed a lever up, and a hiss came from somewhere within the bulkheads. Bubbles drifted upward, visible through the porthole. The craft rose a few inches from the bottom with a faint shudder.

“It’s supposed to do that, right?” Yanko whispered.

“It’s within operational parameters.” Dak flicked his fingers toward a gauge with a needle in it.

Considering Yanko could not read the numbers or any of the other labels in the control room, it wasn’t that helpful. “I’m glad you know what you’re doing.” He slid Dak a sidelong gaze. He didn’t know how much concentration was required, so he didn’t want to interrupt, but the curious part of him couldn’t help but ask, “Do all Turgonian soldiers learn to operate underwater boats?”

“No.”

Yanko lifted his eyebrows, hoping Dak would expand on his answer. He did not.

“So
Dak
stole the Kyattese underwater boat,” Lakeo said from behind them. She leaned her hands on the back of Yanko’s seat. “Yanko, are you not going to frown disapprovingly at him the way you did at me when I suggested it?”

“I don’t think the Kyattese have any further need of it,” Yanko said. He was not in the mood for humor after the meeting with his mother. “How did you get it out of that pool?”

“I piloted it down the river and out to sea.” Dak frowned over at Yanko. “What happened to the Kyattese?”

“Before or after the soul construct almost killed us all?” Lakeo asked.

“After.” Dak’s gaze remained on Yanko’s face.

“I didn’t see it, but I believe Captain Pey Lu—” Yanko still couldn’t bring himself to say
my mother
, “—shot the Kyattese man and woman who survived the attack. I don’t know if she found the lodestone. She was looking for it when we were dragged away by the party you rescued us from. Thank you for that. I wasn’t sure what our fate was going to be. At the least, we were going to embarrass ourselves further with our escape attempts.”

“I wasn’t trying to escape, and it wasn’t embarrassing,” Lakeo said.

“You just started punching our captors for no reason?” Yanko asked.

“Oh, there was a reason. I was angry.”

Dak leaned back from the controls, though the underwater boat continued traveling forward, the light brushing over blobs of sponge-like coral along the bottom of the lagoon. “If it’s possible that they might find the lodestone, then we shouldn’t go far.”

“Staying here wouldn’t be a good idea,” Yanko said. “I’m sure Pey Lu would be able to sense us. Or sense me, anyway. The same way Sun Dragon did. From what I’ve seen of her, I believe she’s more powerful than Sun Dragon.”

“Much more powerful,” Lakeo said. “We saw her incinerate a giant soul construct with her
mind
.”

“All magic is done with the mind,” Yanko said.

“Some is more worth emphasizing than others.”

Dak looked blandly at him. “You said this is your mother?”

“Yes.” A fact that Yanko did not want to dwell upon. “Shouldn’t you be looking out that porthole? That coral is getting tall.”

“I’m watching it, but I’m also wondering what our course should be after we get past the coral.”

“We don’t have the numbers to face her,” Yanko said. “I bet she can wave her hand and destroy this tub.”

“Tub.” Dak’s eyebrows twitched. “Really.”

A stolen tub, at that. Yanko rubbed his face with damp hands and fought back a shiver. The temperature wasn’t cold inside, surprising considering they were surrounded by ocean water, but his clothes and hair were still wet. He wished he had something dry to wear.

“How much trouble will we get into if we don’t return this to Kyatt right away? Will you be punished or fined for borrowing it? And how did Arayevo get here?” Yanko spotted her sitting on one of the double bunks fastened to the bulkhead behind Lakeo.

“Dak rescued me,” Arayevo said when Dak didn’t respond.

His attention had been drawn back to the porthole by the maze of coral before them, now rising higher than the underwater boat, almost to the surface in some places. It was strange to navigate
through
a reef rather than worrying about sailing
over
it.

“Dak seems to be good at rescuing people.” Yanko tried not to sound bitter that he had needed rescuing. He would have loved being the one to daringly rescue the women in his life. “I was wise to recruit him for our team.”

Dak did not look at Yanko, but his gaze did flicker sideways briefly. “
Recruit
isn’t the word.”

“Whine? Wheedle? Blackmail?” Yanko hadn’t truly blackmailed him, but he had shamelessly appealed to the man’s sense of honor.

Dak steered sharply to one side to avoid a stalagmite of coral, and he didn’t respond.

“After monkey-brains left me,” Arayevo said, “I walked along the beach, looking for you, but I wasn’t sure where you had gone. Like an idiot, I stumbled into a scouting party that was on the way to check the village. To see what our people were doing there, I guess. They took me back to some meeting spot on the opposite side of the island, bundled me up, and tossed me into a boat. I was attempting to work my wrists free, so I could slip out and sneak away, when a platoon of monkeys started howling.” She quirked her brows at Yanko.

Yanko flushed, pleased that she knew he’d had something to do with her rescue—even if he hadn’t known she was the one under that tarp. He was even more pleased that Captain Minark had been reduced in stature to monkey-brains in her eyes. He trusted that meant they would not be pressing lips together anymore.

“Before I knew it, my guards were gone, and I was being slung over a burly Turgonian shoulder.” This time, Arayevo quirked her eyebrows at Dak.

Yanko much preferred it when all of her facial expressions were directed at him, at least her whimsical and cute ones.

“How did you go from being on a burly shoulder to being inside a Kyattese underwater boat?” Yanko asked.

“We came looking for you,” Arayevo said while Dak continued to move them around coral masses. “Dak knew about the waterfall, and we got there just ahead of the main group of pirates. But there were already a couple of them scouting around the cave entrance, and we couldn’t get close. Dak was about to turn Turgonian on them, so we could come in and look for you, but we could see all the lanterns coming up the river and knew the rest of the pirates would be there any minute.”

“Turn Turgonian?” Yanko asked mildly.

“The way he did at the beach, yes. It involves fists, a sword, and a lot of grunting.”

Dak gave her a flat look. “Only the pirates grunted.”

“As your fists and sword struck them, yes. There was crying too.”

“Sounds lovely,” Lakeo said.

“I thought so,” Arayevo said.

Yanko wondered how he had ended up with such bloodthirsty women in his life. He started to smile, but then he remembered his mother and the sound of those gunshots as he’d been led away.

“We’re almost out of the coral,” Dak said. “We’re staying more than ten feet below the surface. I’m keeping the light at the minimum for navigation, but if we get close to one of the ships, they may see us. Yanko, can you see if—”

“Just a moment.” Yanko closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, hoping he had the range to sense where the ships were—and if any pursuers were coming.

As before, when he had tried this from within the water, the incredible amount of life below the waves almost overwhelmed him. Crab, fish, worms, clams, and jellyfish were all active, hiding and feeding in the coral maze. He tried to block out the small life and to look for the ships full of people. This time, he did not sense any krakens that he could ally with if the pirates found the underwater boat. He wouldn’t want to do that again, regardless. The utter destruction the last time had unnerved him. He’d just wanted to make Sun Dragon leave him alone; he hadn’t wanted to destroy an entire ship full of people. He knew Sun Dragon had survived, but he did not know if others had.

“The three ships are still there, but they’re anchored,” Yanko said slowly, analyzing the situation. The third ship was at the edge of his range, but it felt much different from the others. He was tempted to ask Dak to veer closer, but if there were more mages on board, that could be a bad idea. The underwater boat could be sensed, even if nobody saw the light. “We’re coming up to the left of them. I guess that’s south. It’s hard to keep track of direction down here. More rowboats are out in the lagoon, but not all of them. I can’t sense that far, but I’d guess Pey Lu is still hunting for the lodestone. Uhm, I think the boats in the lagoon are searching for us.”

Yanko opened his eyes. Dak was staring at him. It reminded Yanko of the look Dak had given him when he had first donned his mother’s robe and said Yanko looked like someone he should kill.

“I was just going to ask you to use the periscope.” Dak pointed to a contraption that hung from the ceiling behind Yanko’s seat. It looked like it could be pulled down.

“Oh.”

“Maybe we can sneak close later if we turn off the lights,” Arayevo suggested. “After the pirates are back and most of them have gone to sleep—the mages, especially—we could sidle up to their ship, board them, and search for whatever treasure they found and took. And for our belongings.” She touched her hip where a sword usually hung. “That would be an exciting adventure.” Her eyes gleamed as she shared the idea.

Yanko thought it would be a deadly adventure, not an exciting one. “I bet Pey Lu will keep one of the mages awake for the night watch. Even if she doesn’t, it would be hard to board under the noses of the regular crew, especially right after we’ve escaped. They’ll be alert.”

“We sneaked past them before,” Arayevo said. “When it was clear we wouldn’t have time to search the cave and look for you, Dak had us get into the Kyattese boat. We took it underwater to hide, then went down the river and out to sea without being bothered, even though the pirates were all over the place.”

“Actually, we
were
bothered,” Dak said. “When I had the periscope up to watch the pirates, thinking the shadows out in the pool would hide us, a woman looked right at it and launched a mental attack at me. She might have just been probing to see who I was, but it was an aggressive probe.” Dak touched his temple with a grimace. “That’s when I decided we would wait out at sea.”

“Really?” Arayevo asked. “I didn’t feel anything.”

“You weren’t manning the controls.”

“You didn’t show any signs that you were being attacked. I could have...” Arayevo spread her fingers. She sounded truly distressed.

“Dak can rebuff some mage’s mental intrusions,” Yanko said.

This time, Lakeo was the one to ask, “Really?” She added, “I didn’t think Turgonians even acknowledged that magic exists. Wouldn’t take that special training?”

Dak appeared to be quite engrossed in navigating them past the last of the coral. He did not respond.

“Much like piloting an underwater boat, I imagine,” Yanko murmured.

Actually, he assumed that learning to repel mental attacks, as a mage hunter was trained to do, would take years. As complicated as the controls around Dak appeared, they probably wouldn’t take as long to master. Still, neither skill sounded like something a typical Turgonian soldier—even an officer—would be taught.

“I’m taking us close enough to the surface to have a look.” Dak glanced at Yanko, then nudged a lever a couple of inches.

Before, when they had descended, air had been let out. Now, Yanko had the sense of air being pushed into tanks built into the hull of the craft and of water draining out.

Dak left his seat, his head ducked and his knees bent so he would not hit the low ceiling. The underwater boats might have originally been designed by the Turgonians, but this one must have been built with the shorter Kyattese people in mind. Dak dropped to one knee when he activated the periscope, pulling down the viewing apparatus as a tube extended from the hull above them.