Great Chief

by Lindsay Buroker

  Dak raised his rifle at it but didn’t fire. Yanko’s barrier held, but for a moment, he could only stare. He wouldn’t have expected such a huge creature here—it was reminiscent of the kraken he’d called up from the Kyattese harbor—nor that it could hurl itself out of the water like that.

  “Is that going to be a problem, Yanko?” Tynlee asked mildly, glancing toward the now-smirking orange-robed mage.

  “I… don’t think so.”

  Yanko could feel the kraken squeezing, applying pressure to his barrier, but the effort of maintaining it wasn’t yet taxing him. He could also feel the myriad ocean creatures ramming against it down below. But they required less effort to keep out than the kraken, and all of them combined stressed him less than the cannonballs.

  “I’m not sure she quite understands the various kinds of physical and magical powers out there and their ability to affect a mage barrier,” Yanko said.

  “Maybe she believes you’ll be distracted by that.” Dak pointed his rifle at the kraken’s huge pale red belly, the flesh rippling and pulsing as it flexed against his shield.

  You can’t hold that barrier forever, the mage spoke into his mind. And my artifact will continue to call more sea life to attack you.

  Ignoring the kraken, Yanko faced her again. She genuinely believed he was taxed.

  While he was looking in that direction, Yanko noticed Kei sitting on one of their masts, his red and blue plumage distinct against the pale blue sky. Two of the pirates on the deck were pointing at him. One waved a pistol.

  Yanko gulped, afraid they would think Kei was his familiar and should be killed. He was also afraid he wouldn’t be able to maintain his barrier while erecting one around the parrot a half a mile away.

  Kei, come back, he called into the bird’s mind. Seeds!

  Kei seemed to be too busy peering down at the deck—looking for Turgonian biscuits?—to pay attention to him.

  One of the pirates waved, drawing the mage’s attention to the bird. A discussion started, but Yanko feared he didn’t have much time.

  He closed his eyes and touched the kraken’s mind, sensing its hunger. He sensed hunger from many of the creatures down there. The raising of the continent had disrupted much, and fish hadn’t been as plentiful. Yanko hated to deceive them, but he did his best to plant the suggestion that food could be found aboard the pirate ship. In the case of the sharks, and any creature willing to eat humans, that was true. If grisly.

  As he planted the idea, he did his best to add persuasion, willing them to leave the yacht and spring upon the enemy ship.

  The kraken left first, slithering down the side of his barrier and plopping into the water. The sharks rushed to follow it toward the pirate ship, disturbingly eager at the idea of munching on human flesh. The kraken, Yanko sensed, was hoping for fish in the hold. It didn’t seem to realize that fish called by the artifact were in the water all around it. Or maybe his magical compulsion was strong enough to override its natural awareness and hunting instincts.

  A shriek came from the pirate ship. The mage. She realized before the others that trouble was coming their way. She fiddled with the artifact, trying to turn up the power—the creatures should have been directed to attack whatever was in front of the cone—but it was already at maximum. She sprang back, raising her hands and hurrying to create a shield of her own.

  Kei sprang from his perch and tried to fly away, but he ran into the mage’s invisible shield. Yanko’s mouth fell open. He hadn’t anticipated that.

  Kei bounced back, just as the cannonballs had, but he was trapped inside rather than out. Bouncing off the invisible shield startled him, and he plummeted several feet before recovering.

  The kraken reached the pirate vessel and attacked, springing at her barrier. It didn’t land as high out of the water as it had before, but four of its arms and half of its body were visible, splayed against her shield.

  She staggered, gritting her teeth as more creatures assailed it.

  Would it fall? Yanko remembered a time when defending against cannonballs—or krakens—would have been difficult for him. He reminded himself that she’d been mocking and goading him, and that she’d fled Nuria to join pirates. She didn’t deserve his sympathy. Nor his help. Besides, Yanko needed Kei to escape. He teetered on the verge of throwing a mental attack at the mage, at distracting her so she dropped the barrier. It seemed a cold-hearted thing to do, akin to murder, since the sharks swam all around their ship.

  Kei tried again to escape, flying away from the mast in another direction. It didn’t matter. He struck the barrier again and squawked. The kraken slapped an arm against the barrier. Kei flew around and around the sails and rigging, and Yanko sensed the bird’s fear and distress, even from this distance.

  He growled and flicked a finger, sending a terrifying image of fire into the mage’s mind. She jerked her hands up to protect her face, believing that a fireball had engulfed her, and Yanko heard her shriek over the waves. Her barrier dropped.

  The kraken’s limbs landed on the deck and tore into the structure. The crew dropped their weapons, their screams even louder than the mage’s. She lowered her hands, realizing she had been duped. But it was too late.

  Snaps and cracks sounded as the kraken broke masts and rails, hurling them out to sea. Kei finally escaped, flying faster than Yanko had ever seen toward the yacht.

  Metal groaned, then squealed as the kraken yanked the smokestack from the ship and flung it toward land. The mage and the pirates fled, springing overboard and swimming for shore.

  The kraken continued to tear the ship apart, looking for fish. The sharks veered after the people as soon as they dove in. Yanko released his hold on the creatures, leaving the rest to nature. It seemed a fitting end for those who’d attempted to use nature against him.

  He caught Jhali staring at him, her expression startled. Was it disapproving?

  Yanko couldn’t tell, but he remembered that she’d been at the other end of his last kraken attack. He wanted to say that he’d only reversed what the mage had tried to do to them, but wouldn’t he have destroyed their ship, regardless? Dak and Tynlee had thought it the right thing to do.

  It seemed strange that an assassin would judge him for battling enemies when she’d once bragged to him that she’d killed twenty-seven mages. But mages, he knew, she considered evil. Perhaps the mage hunter sect had indoctrinated her to believe that, an integral part of their training. It had only been recently that she’d seemed to decide he was different from so many of the mages she’d detested in her life. He’d liked having her at his side when he’d gone to face his mother, and it would disturb him if he caused her opinion of him to change.

  “That was disappointing.” Dak gazed back at the wreckage and the pirates swimming to shore. They swam very quickly, with shark fins following them. He grunted, looked down at his grenade, and returned it to his pocket. “I didn’t get to do anything.”

  “Completely boring,” Lakeo announced.

  Jhali said nothing, but she turned away from them and gazed toward the pirate ship. All that remained was flotsam and jetsam.

  “Perhaps we’ll run into trouble on land,” Yanko said. “Someone for you to go up against in valiant battle.”

  Dak looked hopeful. Yanko suspected Jhali would object less to him battling enemies on land, wielding the scimitar as much as his magic. There was, he admitted, something unsporting about attacking people who had no way to fight back. Even if they had started the fight.

  “You’re exciting his pocket, Yanko.” Tynlee smiled at Dak.

  “Uh, I think that’s your job.”

  “Yes.” Tynlee linked her arm through Dak’s. “Yes, it is.”

  4

  Yanko stood in front of Jhali’s door for five minutes before knocking. It would be dark before long, and he didn’t want her to think he was showing up in the hope of some nighttime tryst. Not that she likely would when all he’d done was stand there stupidly when she’d kissed him.

/>   He finally knocked, then stepped back and clasped his hands behind his back. As far as he knew, she’d been in her cabin since the skirmish with the pirates that morning. He usually left her alone when she disappeared for days on end, but he wanted to know if she was angry or disappointed with him for destroying the pirate ship.

  She’d seemed to like it when he’d used his magic to feed those stray dogs at Yellow Delta. At the least, she’d told him he wasn’t a lizard’s ass. But destroying other ships, even enemy ships, with magic… Maybe that would seem evil to her. The kind of thing the mages she’d always hated did. Would the reminder that he could use his power like that change her feelings about him?

  Assuming she had feelings. He still wasn’t sure what that kiss had meant.

  The door opened, and Jhali stood there, her hair down, her arms bare. She wore a light silk shirt that he hadn’t seen before. Dumbly, he realized it must be what she wore under the heavier white mage-hunter wrap. He found himself flustered by the sight of skin and a collarbone and the hint of breasts under the thin garment, and he forgot what he’d intended to say.

  “Sorry,” he blurted, jerking his gaze to her face.

  He didn’t know if he was apologizing for noticing skin and breasts or for being a mage. Or for all of it. Had he been staring long? He didn’t think so, but he’d panicked.

  Her forehead creased. “For what?”

  “Uhm, everything you feel I should be sorry for.”

  The forehead crease deepened. “My biggest grievance has always been that you’re your mother’s son, but I suppose there’s not much you can do about that.”

  “No. That started before I was born.”

  “Yes.”

  She fell silent. He had no idea what to say. Why hadn’t he rehearsed this while he’d been standing in front of her door for five minutes?

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  She hesitated and glanced over her shoulder. It hadn’t occurred to him to check if she already had a visitor, and he swept his senses into the cabin. No, it was empty. Maybe she simply preferred her privacy and didn’t want him in her cabin. She’d managed to wrangle a solo room for the trips they’d shared together, either because nobody dared assign her a roommate or because she’d glared daggers at whoever had temporarily been assigned, and they’d fled.

  “Or you could come to my cabin,” Yanko offered. “Or, uh, the passageway is nice too.” As he waved at it, Dak came down from above, ducking to head toward his cabin.

  Yanko stepped back to make room for Dak to squeeze past. Dak glanced at Jhali but didn’t comment on their conversation. Such as it was.

  “Come in.” Jhali stepped back and waved him into the small room. It contained a built-in bed and a chest currently locked to the deck. A cloth Land-and-Seas board lay atop it with the familiar tri-colored polished stones of the strategy game. She appeared to be in the middle of a solitaire game.

  “Thanks,” Yanko said. “I don’t want to bug you. I just wanted to make sure, uhm, that we’re all right. As all right as we get.” He cast her a nervous smile. “You had a look on your face after the kraken thing. I couldn’t read it. But I know it’s irritated you in the past when I’ve coerced sea life into defending me.”

  “Because I was on the receiving end of that last time.”

  “Yes, but you weren’t this time, and you still looked—” He waved at her face. “I mean you always look—well, you’re hard to read.”

  “Mage hunters are supposed to be hard to read. Mentally and outwardly.”

  “I know.” He waited, thinking she might explain what she had been thinking. But she merely gazed at him. Maybe he was pestering her. “Sorry. I’m bothering you.” He backed toward the door. “I’ll go. But if you have any problem with me, I hope you’ll let me know. I don’t want to be—or represent—what you hate about mages. I don’t like attacking people who aren’t strong enough to fight back, even when they started it.” Feeling he was making excuses, he turned toward the door.

  “Yanko.”

  “Yes?” He looked warily back at her.

  “I know you don’t and that you aren’t like most mages. Or any of the ones I’ve known. It was hard for me to see that—I didn’t want to see that since it would get in the way of my mission—but…” She shrugged.

  “Oh.”

  “I wasn’t irritated today. I was just looking at you because—” She shrugged again. “What you can do is alarming, and I sometimes wonder if you’re truly as innocent as you seem or if you have a master plan. I can’t read you either, you know.”

  “A master plan?” He gripped the doorjamb.

  By the turtle god, someone thought he had a plan at all? A clue as to what he intended to do beyond the next day? As if he could claim that kind of wisdom.

  “Most of the time, I don’t think that. I’m pretty sure you are innocent. And naive. As I’ve accused you of.”

  “I remember. You’re not the only one.”

  “But it sounded like that woman wants you to try to take the Great Land for yourself. And I guess I wonder sometimes if it’s an act, especially since that came up. If you and she have some plans. I don’t want to mistrust you…” She looked toward the cabin’s single porthole.

  “I don’t have plans,” Yanko blurted. “Not about that. That’s my moth—Pey Lu’s idea. I honestly don’t know where she got it, as there’s no way it could happen even if I was megalomaniacal. My plan is to fix that continent out there. To use my earth magic to gradually turn it into an agricultural paradise. To create amazing soil and plant trees and grow crops and make it the place it must have been a thousand years ago, before the Kyattese destroyed it in their war and plague, and sank it under the sea.”

  Jhali looked back to him, that crease returning to her brow. “You don’t think it’s megalomaniacal to believe you can alter an entire continent?”

  “Well.” Yanko scratched his jaw. She had a point. “It’s a small continent.”

  She laughed.

  Yanko stared. She’d never laughed before, not where he could see or hear. He wouldn’t have guessed she could. It seemed like the kind of thing mage-hunter training would stamp out, the ability to enjoy life or have fun.

  “I’m going to trust you and hope it works out,” she said.

  Jhali stepped forward and hugged him. He was so delighted that she wasn’t irked with him that he couldn’t come up with a response. Remembering how he’d stood stupidly while she kissed him, too stunned to react, he hurried to at least return the hug. She might stop touching him if he never reacted.

  “Smoke ahead,” came a call from above decks.

  Dak charged into the passageway, making Yanko realize he hadn’t closed the door.

  Jhali released him and stepped back. He jerked his arms down out of some instinct that it was wrong to hug a girl when there might be witnesses. Admittedly, she wasn’t just “a girl.”

  Dak glanced in as he jogged past the cabin, but again, he didn’t say anything.

  “I’ve decided to trust you too,” Yanko offered, feeling he had more reason than she to question the other person’s motives.

  “I know. I find that odd.”

  He snorted. “And me too?”

  “Oh, definitely.”

  “Yanko,” came Tynlee’s voice from above. “We’ve found some competition for your continent.”

  Yanko groaned. “More of it?”

  He waved to Jhali, not sure if she would follow him up, and jogged up to the deck. Dak, Tynlee, and the captain stood at the railing at the bow, looking toward the horizon. The sun was setting behind the yacht, but enough light remained to see the smoke ahead of them.

  A rocky point jutted out in the water, hiding the source of those gray puffs, but it looked like the plumes from smokestacks. Multiple smokestacks.

  Yanko reached out with his senses and detected people right away. The crews of numerous ships. Six? No, eight.

  “I can’t tell if they’re pirates or Turgonians
from here.” Tynlee looked at Yanko. “But the ships do seem to have skeletal crews, given their size. Twenty or thirty on each one, I believe. If we get closer, I can mind-snoop.”

  Twenty or thirty hardly seemed skeletal—that had been the crew size of the pirate ship—but Yanko could tell that these craft were larger. His senses didn’t allow him to see as well as his vision, and he wouldn’t have minded a bird’s-eye view, but he had no intention of sending Kei ahead to scout. Not after the poor bird’s last experience visiting another ship.

  “That’s how many people I sense,” Yanko said. “Over two hundred total.”

  Dak wore his rifle on a strap, but he didn’t ready the weapon as the yacht sailed closer to the point. Did he suspect those were his people? Yanko worried it was the rest of the fleet of those privateers.

  “If we wait until dark, I could create some fog on the water to hide us,” he said. “If they don’t have a perceptive mage who’s paying attention, we could sail past without them noticing us.”

  “If your goal is to claim the land, you’ll have to ensure people notice you,” Tynlee said. “And that they then run away in fear.”

  Yanko doubted anyone would ever do that, even if he wore the warrior-mage robe. “Before attempting to claim anything, I’d like to circumnavigate the whole continent and see how many ships we’re dealing with and from where. We’re not even halfway around yet, are we?”

  “Less than a quarter, I’d guess,” Dak said.

  Yanko assumed Dak’s guess would be fairly accurate. He’d mapped out the area—previously known as the Deadly Shoals—before they’d raised the continent.

  “We’ve already encountered a lot of ships in that quarter,” Yanko said.

  “This northern side of the continent is the closest shoreline for both Turgonia and Nuria,” Dak said. “Kyatt, too, for that matter. We’re well south of the equator. It makes sense that most ships would be on this side.”

  Jhali and Lakeo came up on deck and joined them.

  Kei remained in the cabin. Earlier, Yanko had stuffed his belly full of all the seeds he could find on the yacht, feeling bad that he’d been caught in the middle of battling mages. At least the parrot hadn’t been hurt, just scared. He’d been napping ever since his feast.