That only made his face darken faster. “Damn it, Yanko.”
“Sorry, I did tell her you forbade it. She was unimpressed.”
“I need to—” Dak scowled, took a step in the direction of the bay, and stopped, maybe remembering that they had been ordered not to risk infecting the people on the ships.
“She wants to examine the bodies,” Yanko said. “She has more medical experience than I do and thought she could tell more.”
“That wouldn’t take much. You didn’t even look at them.”
“I looked with my mind.”
“Damn it, Yanko,” Dak repeated.
“Do you want to stay here to greet her? See if she needs help with the Turgonians?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to send you into possible danger without a bodyguard.”
Lakeo cleared her throat—she was leaning against a nearby vehicle. “I’m still here.”
“You’re not armed,” Dak said.
“I can punch and kick anyone that tries to get in the way of his magely things.”
Dak shook his head.
“I’ll tell Jhali I need her,” Yanko said. “She’s still armed.”
Dak looked toward the bay, then to Yanko, and then up to the mountain, clearly torn.
“Your genius will probably be more useful down here,” Yanko added. “I bet you and Tynlee will make a good team. I can bring you back a detailed report of what I find up there.”
“My genius.” Dak grunted.
“The general isn’t wrong about it.” Yanko smiled, trying to be encouraging.
Dak was smart. If he’d had a different name, one he didn’t share with a legendary military strategist, Yanko was sure his superiors would have learned to appreciate him a great deal.
“All right, Yanko,” Dak said. “Go up there with Lakeo and Jhali, if you can get her. I’ll work with Tynlee down here. Be careful.”
8
Yanko searched the surrounding area with his senses as he and Lakeo headed up the mountain with the two soldiers trailing behind them. Dak was heading back toward the bay to meet Tynlee partway. Yanko hoped this trip would result in useful information that would help them figure out some answers, but first, he hoped he could find…
There she was.
Jhali crouched atop a ridge, grime-covered boulders on either side of her and the terrain almost hiding her from view. From the elevated position, she watched Yanko’s group. Protectively? If so, that touched him.
I need your help, please, he spoke into her mind, hoping he could get through. She was closer than Tynlee had been, but Tynlee was extremely receptive to mental contact whereas Jhali’s skull was almost as thick as Dak’s.
It’s disconcerting how easily you find me, she replied.
Sorry, but you’ve found me too.
You never disappeared. I’ve been watching to make sure they didn’t drag you off for torture. It was difficult to tell when they stuck you in the tent, but I didn’t hear any screams.
No, the Turgonians are distracted. They’re not up to their usual standards for interrogations right now. Yanko waved at the path ahead. I’m going up to investigate a dead body in a tunnel. Will you come watch my back in case I need to use my power? They took Lakeo’s weapons.
I will come. Do you wish me to deal with the guards following you?
Does deal with mean kill?
It need not. Are you being diplomatic?
Well, I’m not throwing fireballs around. It’s probably better if we have a couple of Turgonians with us when we walk into their mining camp.
Ah, you know they are mining up there? Jhali moved away from the boulders, slipping down the back side of the ridge to head down toward them. I was going to inform you. I have been scouting.
I sensed their people up there when we first walked in, and we saw a geologist with some freshly mined ore.
It is difficult to act as a scout for someone who can wiggle his fingers and see with his mind what it takes me hours to see with my eyes.
I’m sorry, Yanko said. I didn’t realize you were scouting. I thought you just objected to the Turgonians taking your weapons.
I did. It seemed a good reason to go scout.
Yes. We’ve been talking for ten minutes, haven’t we, Jhali?
She paused. I wasn’t timing it.
At least five, I should think.
Yes. The connotation that she thought he was odd came through with the word.
Yanko smiled and decided he wouldn’t let Dak know that Jhali was chattier in private conversations with him. This was, after all, a new development. I appreciate that you watched out for me and are out here scouting. This isn’t really your mission.
I no longer have anyone to send me on missions, she thought glumly.
I know. He was sorry he’d brought it up, though not sorry he’d thanked her. What will you do when we return to the mainland and the issue of Great Chief is—I hope—settled?
I don’t know yet.
I’ve promised to help Lakeo find a way to pay for tuition at the Kyattese university, if I end up in a position to do so. I know you wouldn’t want to study magic, but if you’re interested in switching careers and studying a new field… Well, I’m sure you could find a way on your own, but if I end up with the resources to help, I will.
Jhali didn’t answer as she continued to pick her way across the terrain toward them.
The soldiers spotted her, blurted startled oaths, and shifted their weapons toward her. Yanko used his power to jerk the rifles upward, so that if they fired, the bullets would go toward the sky. They didn’t fire. They gaped, first at her and then at him. And then they shared we’re-in-big-trouble looks with each other.
“This is Jhali,” Yanko said, since these two soldiers hadn’t been with them earlier. “She’s… my bodyguard.”
He glanced at her to see if she objected to the label. She crouched, throwing stars in hand, and glared at the soldiers. He knew she could have come up behind them without them seeing her and was glad he’d caught them before they’d fired.
“Yes,” Jhali said.
“They can’t understand you,” Lakeo said.
“The general said you were a healer,” one soldier said in heavily accented Nurian. He scowled as he tried to tug his rifle back into a ready position.
“Or maybe they can,” Lakeo said.
Yanko wasn’t surprised the general would have chosen someone who could understand them to guard them.
“I’m a few things.” Yanko tried to telepathically impart the idea that the soldiers should forget about Jhali—and that he could do things that healers often couldn’t. “Why don’t you two lead? I don’t know exactly where the camp is.”
He tilted his head toward the rocky slope they were climbing. Though he could have found the camp easily enough, he would prefer that those two with their weapons go first, and now that they were out of sight of the main camp, he used a hint of mind manipulation to make them more interested in complying. He also released his hold on their rifles, thinking that would make them more amenable to cooperation.
“Mage,” one of them muttered darkly in Turgonian.
Yanko knew that word.
“The general said he could help,” the other said in Nurian as he took the lead.
Neither man looked at Jhali again. Jhali watched them from her ready crouch, her weapons still in hand, as if she expected them to object far more to her presence.
Lakeo’s brow furrowed. “Are you getting better at manipulating people’s brains, Yanko?” she asked quietly. “Or are you just more charming this month than you were last?”
“I’m the same degree of charming as I always was.”
“So, brain manipulation, it is.”
“Yes.” Yanko started after the soldiers, figuring his suggestions would only work if they followed them.
Jhali finally accepted that they weren’t going to attack her, and she sheathed her throwing stars and jogged to catch up with Yanko and Lak
eo, pointedly walking on the opposite side of him from Lakeo.
“It doesn’t smell as bad up here,” Lakeo said, “but it’s still ugly.”
She waved toward brown-and-gray bumpy growths protruding from the ground to either side of the silty path they followed. Yanko would have guessed they were the remains of some kind of coral, but he recalled Dak’s lecture on how far down coral grew—and didn’t. Whatever the bumps were, the landscape was definitely strange and alien.
At least, as Lakeo had pointed out, more of the sea breeze reached their noses up here, sweeping away the odor of decay. His nose and stomach were pleased.
Jhali touched Yanko’s sleeve. Can you still hear me?
Yes. I can monitor you whenever you alert me to do so.
Not all the time?
I assume you wouldn’t want that, but regardless, it takes effort to listen to someone’s thoughts, so I wouldn’t do it without reason.
She nodded, and he thought she looked pleased. Which would make sense. Who wanted a mage snooping in their mind around the clock?
I appreciate your offer, but I would not be comfortable accepting monetary assistance. I also have no desire to go to the same school as Lakeo.
You could study in Nuria.
I have had so much training in my life that I am not eager to endure more right now. I know so much about combat, that I could teach, rather than being a pupil.
Ah. It was just a thought. I would think schoolwork more interesting than practicing how to perforate people with throwing knives.
You would? We’re very different people, Yanko.
He smiled at her. I’m positive that’s true.
Lakeo scowled over at him, catching the smile, and Yanko affixed his face in a neutral expression. He was debating whether he should take her aside and have a frank chat with her about Jhali when a guard called out to the soldiers leading the way. They had reached the camp.
Four tents were grouped on a flat area between looming ridges, one with a twisting canyon cutting through it. The plinks of a pickaxe drifted out of the canyon.
The tents were smaller than the large ones in the camp below but big enough to house about a dozen men. Yanko glimpsed blankets through an open flap. At the back of another tent, a simple kitchen was set up, with jugs of water and crates of food. That suggested the men had no reason to tramp up and down every day, so they likely weren’t often in contact with that lake. Yanko reluctantly let go of the idea that those plants were the reason for the problem.
Not just a problem, he reminded himself. Whatever was responsible had killed people, and he and his friends might be next. His heart was heavy at the thought that this continent he’d fought so hard to find might be a deathtrap.
While the soldiers conversed with each other, pointing at him often, Yanko looked around for the body that was up here. Would they have brought it into one of the tents?
“You forgot your translator, Yanko,” Lakeo said as the soldiers spoke, nobody bothering to explain things to him.
Yanko caught the gist from their surface thoughts and gestures. The men working up here hadn’t yet heard about Yanko’s group and were flummoxed that Nurians had been brought in to investigate. One of them finally threw his hands up and waved for Yanko to follow him.
“Our new guide seems happy to lead us around,” Lakeo muttered as they trailed the man into the canyon.
The Nurian-speaking soldier also followed, though his buddy stayed behind, eyeing the silty rock walls all around them with unease. As accustomed to war and dying as the Turgonians were, they all seemed nervous about succumbing to some mysterious illness out here. Who wouldn’t be?
Yanko, Lakeo, and Jhali passed numerous holes—caves?—drilled into the walls of the canyon. Here and there, he spotted boxes of blasting sticks. The Turgonians weren’t limiting themselves to pickaxes. He didn’t see any of the large mining machinery that Dak had mentioned, but maybe they would wait until they had claimed the continent for themselves to presume to bring that in.
Not that they would claim the continent. Yanko firmed his jaw. Nothing that had happened had yet convinced him that he wanted to relinquish it without a fight.
They reached a cave that wasn’t like the others, and he stopped to stare. It was much larger, letting in copious sunlight that shone over dead vegetation carpeting the bottom, but the main difference was in the rounded edges of the opening. The rock had been worn smooth by years—centuries—in the water.
“A natural cave?” Yanko asked his guide.
The Nurian-speaking soldier translated. “This one was here when we came. We thought it was natural, but when we explored deeper, there were signs that it was dug out by man long ago.”
Their guide trotted to the side and returned with what Yanko first thought was a gray rock. The man handed it to him, and Yanko grunted at the heft. It was somewhat pointy at the ends, and he realized it was metal with mineral deposits coating it.
“A pickaxe head,” the soldier translated. “There was another one that our people scraped the gunk off. It was made of bronze. Our people found it promising that the Kyattese were already mining here. We figured it meant there were some good veins. We came in and…” He frowned at Yanko, seeming to remember he was speaking to a Nurian rather than one of his colleagues. He shrugged and finished with, “This is an old Kyattese tunnel. It’s where we found Lieutenant Horf this morning.”
“An officer?” For some reason, Yanko had imagined eighteen-year-old grunts were the ones who were wandering off and getting themselves killed. Not that a disease would care if one were educated or not.
“Yes, engineering unit.”
“The body is still inside?” Yanko asked. “Show me?”
The guide hesitated, but at a word from the translator and a gesture in the direction of the base camp, maybe to indicate the general, he sighed and headed inside. Yanko could tell he had no interest in ever going back in there, not with people dying.
“I might stay out here and admire the scenery,” Lakeo said. “Unless you think you’ll be attacked by vile tunnel monsters and need a bodyguard.”
“No.” Yanko waved in agreement she could stay outside.
She might be the only one of them who would avoid getting infected, since she’d been smart enough not to get too close to any of the bodies or the lake.
“I will go with you,” Jhali said.
“Good.” Lakeo patted her shoulder. “Have fun in there. Breathe the air very deeply.”
Jhali glared at the hand and stepped out of reach. Without a word, she headed into the passage after the soldier.
Yanko hurried to walk at her side. The tunnel was wide enough for it, the ground lumpy but relatively level.
“That woman vexes me,” Jhali stated.
“I’ve noticed.” Yanko wondered if he should apologize for Lakeo’s gruffness, but could he truly blame her for holding a grudge? He was positive Lakeo also found Jhali vexing. “Maybe someday, she’ll get past the somewhat fraught circumstances of our first meetings.”
“Somewhat fraught? White Fox, you have a perennially optimistic way of looking at life.”
“Yanko, please.” He’d thought they had transitioned to using first names sometime before she’d kissed him, but she seemed to like calling him by his last name. He might have thought it was a way to create distance between them, but she smiled slightly—fondly?—at him. Maybe she liked his optimism. Or found it cute. Though he would prefer to be alluringly handsome over cute.
“Yanko.” She touched his arm.
He checked to see if that meant she was forming words in her mind and wanted to communicate without their guide overhearing. The soldier stopped at a small crate to grab a lantern and light it.
You can hear me? Jhali asked silently.
Yes.
It is not only that we were enemies. You know this, right? She has feelings for you.
Yanko shook his head as the soldier continued on. Dak had thought that once, too, but Lakeo
was always punching him and teasing him. Only among eight-year-olds would that be considered a sign of affection.
I don’t think that’s true, he told her. We’ve known each other a while, and we’re friends, but that’s all. She’s protective and—
That is not all. How odd that a telepathic mage would not know this.
Yanko wanted to say that it was because he was a telepathic mage that he knew Lakeo did not have feelings for him, not romantic feelings. But he hadn’t poked around in her mind that often.
I don’t invade my friends’ privacy by trying to read their thoughts.
No? She arched her eyebrows. You continue to be different from the other mages I’ve met. Sun Dragon read the thoughts of all those around him. So he wouldn’t be taken by surprise, he said, but I saw that he liked that it made people afraid of him.
Well, I’m glad not to be like him. Yanko didn’t think he was truly that unique among mages, other than his interest in earth magic over fire magic, but he admitted liking that Jhali thought so. That fond smile was so much more appealing than the stony glares she had given him for so long.
He had to remind himself that they were investigating deaths and that this wasn’t the time to think of how a kiss might go if he were more prepared for it, if he were to lean in and be the one to instigate pressing his lips to—
He tripped over the uneven ground and flailed, barely managing to remain upright.
The soldier looked back, pointed at the ground, and offered what sounded like a warning to watch his step.
“Yes, thank you,” Yanko said, avoiding Jhali’s gaze, though he could see her eyes twinkling in his peripheral vision.
He told himself there was no way she could have known what he was thinking. The tunnel grew narrower ahead, such that they would have to continue in single-file, but she stepped close first and patted him on the butt. He managed not to gawk and trip again. Barely.
Wordlessly, she stepped back, letting him follow after the soldier while she guarded them from behind. Guarded him.
Great Chief Page 11