Snake Heart

by Lindsay Buroker

  Chapter 2

  The sun was warm, the salty breeze pleasant, and yet Yanko had an uneasy feeling as he and Dak rowed through the cove. Adobe buildings lined a black sand beach and perched upon rocky outcroppings that cupped the sheltered hollow. Shutters banged in the breeze, the only movement. Neither animal nor human voices arose from the village, and the fishing boats tied to the single pier with enough slack to rise and fall with the tide did not look like they had been used for a while.

  Using his mental powers, Yanko searched the palm and koa trees behind the dwellings. He did not detect anyone out there. Even the animal life was scant, with nothing larger than rats lurking near the beach.

  “Those don’t look like ruins where treasures would be buried,” Minark said.

  He, Lakeo, and Arayevo were also in the rowboat, sitting while Dak and Yanko manned the oars. Several of the captain’s crew followed in a second boat. Lakeo had offered to row, but Yanko had a notion that men shouldn’t sit idle while women worked. Besides, this had given him the opportunity to roll up his sleeves so Arayevo could admire the rippling muscles of his forearms. Unfortunately, she was sitting next to Minark and looking at the dwellings instead of at his physique.

  “I’m talking to you, bodyguard,” Minark added when nobody responded.

  Dak kept rowing. “I said nothing about ruins.”

  “No, you said nothing about nothing. As usual. I’m the one making observations. What kind of pirates would bury their treasure in a populated village?”

  “It’s not populated now,” Yanko said quietly.

  Arayevo tilted her head. “Are you sure? I thought the people might be hiding. If there’s frequent pirate activity out here...”

  “Nobody’s in the village. I’m not sure if anyone’s on the island at all. I can’t sense all the way to the other side, but maybe—” Yanko looked to where Kei perched at the stern of the boat.

  He reached out to the parrot with his mind and found him thinking about nuts and seeds that he might hunt for on the beach. Yanko planted the suggestion that there might be more nut trees inland, asked Kei to look, and also to let him know if he spotted anyone along the way.

  The parrot squawked and sprang into the air, flying inland.

  “Did you do that?” Minark asked. “Or did it suddenly get an itch to go look for a mate?”

  “He’s more interested in food than mates, as far as I can tell,” Yanko said, avoiding the question. The captain might have seen him use magic often enough that he wouldn’t be surprised to learn Yanko could communicate with animals, but it did not hurt to keep a few secrets to himself.

  “Judging by the way he beats Yanko in the head with his wings, it’s possible he thinks Yanko is his mate,” Lakeo said.

  “Have I mentioned how glad I am that you accompanied me from Kyatt?” Yanko muttered.

  “Have I mentioned that Kei left a gift on the back of your shoulder the last time he visited?”

  Yanko sighed.

  “There.” Dak nodded toward the end of the pier, a single wooden boardwalk stretching into the cove. Nets and buoys decorated the wooden posts, the rope frayed and worn. He pulled the rowboat close enough to tie it, but he paused in the middle of the task, turning his head toward the beach and sniffing the air.

  “What is it?” Yanko climbed onto the dock, the sword he had borrowed from the ship’s limited armory bumping against the edge. He sniffed, too, but couldn’t smell more than dead fish and seaweed.

  “I don’t think the villagers left.” Dak pulled his rifle off his back, checked his ammunition, and strode down the pier, not waiting for the other boat to be tied.

  Yanko trotted after him. “What do you mean?”

  “I’d hoped to talk to these people and ask if any of the elders remembered Heanolik Tomokosis,” Dak said, giving the Kyattese name for the Mausoleum Bandit. “Reports I got from the police archives said he came here often to resupply and visit a woman. The Kyattese tried to lay a trap for him in this cove once, before they ultimately got lucky and sank his ship elsewhere. Someone here might remember him and have an idea if he had a cache on this island.”

  “Are we sure there is a cache?” Yanko asked as they neared the head of the pier.

  “None of the items he stole from the museum were recovered with the wreck. If he’d sold the purloined items, some of them should have turned up in personal collections and made their way back to Kyatt over the years. I did some research while you were hiding in the volcano, and I can confirm that nobody has seen that lodestone in decades.”

  “We weren’t hiding. We were fleeing for our lives from a lava flow.” Yanko shuddered at the memory—he had lost his only pair of good walking shoes to that lava and was stuck treasure hunting in sandals. “In a brave and manly way.”

  “Lakeo was being manly?”

  “She’s better at it than I am.”

  “I heard that,” Lakeo called from behind them.

  She and Arayevo were heading up the pier behind Yanko and Dak while Minark and his crew members discussed something back at the rowboats—probably a strategy for clubbing Yanko over the head as soon as he found the treasure.

  The dead fish scent grew stronger. Yanko half expected to see the carcass of a seal or other large creature washed up on the beach. Only dried palm fronds littered the sand. A door banged against a wall somewhere in the village, and a creaking noise drifted on the breeze.

  Dak led the way toward a dirt road that traveled from the pier to the houses. The scent of death increased as they grew closer to the dwellings, and the uneasy feeling that had been nagging at Yanko grew more prominent. He began to grasp what Dak had meant when he said that the villagers hadn’t left.

  Dak pushed at a partially open door with the tip of his rifle. Crows squawked and flew out, and Yanko stumbled back, readying his magical defenses before his mind caught up to his instincts.

  “Just some birds,” he whispered to himself, but that didn’t make him feel any better. With the door open, the stench of death increased, and he had to fight the urge to gag.

  “Who died in this remote hole?” Lakeo asked, curling her lip.

  “This person, for one.” Dak pointed his rifle into the house’s interior.

  Surprise flashed across Lakeo’s face. Maybe she hadn’t realized how accurate her question had been.

  Yanko doubted he wanted to see the house’s contents, but he leaned close enough to peer around the jamb. A gray-haired woman in a dress dangled from a rope tied to a ceiling beam, her bare feet swaying slightly, disturbed by the crows. Her eyes had been pecked out, and her flesh had started to rot.

  The stench assailed Yanko’s nose, forcing him back. He gripped his belly. He did not want to throw up, not in front of Dak, and not in front of Arayevo or Minark, either. They were walking up the beach together, and he waved for them to stay back. It gave him an excuse to take several more steps from the house and the sight—and smell—of the dead woman.

  Dak walked into the room.

  “Turgonians,” Yanko muttered. Death probably did not bother him at all. Yanko wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Turgonian cologne that mimicked the stench of a battlefield.

  Dak soon walked out and moved on to the house across the street. Yanko followed him but paused when he spotted a coconut husk doll lying on the clay tile floor inside the threshold. He stopped and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to come face to face with children strung up from the ceiling beams.

  Yanko dropped his chin onto his fist, staring bleakly at the packed earth outside of the house, the stink of death all around him. He didn’t know these people, but he couldn’t help but empathize with them, especially when his own village had so recently been destroyed, his own home burned. He had no idea if his brother and cousins and great uncle and father were alive or dead, and he had no way to get in touch with someone who could tell him.

  Dak walked out of the house, shaking his head slightly when he met Yanko’s eyes. He did not say a word, bu
t his grim face spoke for him, saying, Don’t go in there.

  Yanko could have kept following him and helped him search, but Dak did not request help, and his face darkened more and more with each home he exited. Yanko walked back out to the beach to where Arayevo and Minark had stopped. Lakeo came with him, her face a few shades paler than usual.

  “Are you all right, Yanko?” Arayevo asked.

  He shook his head. “Better than the people who live here. Lived here.”

  “There’s not some disease that killed everyone, is there?” Minark fingered one of the charms at his waist as he watched Dak stalk from building to building.

  Sometimes, Dak came right out, but sometimes he remained inside for longer. Once, he folded a paper as he exited a home. He tucked it into a pocket and continued searching.

  “Not unless the disease required them to hang themselves as they died,” Yanko said, haunted by the memory of the woman on the rope.

  “People have weird funeral practices,” Minark said. “And weird superstitions to ward off death.”

  “Someone came here and killed them. I can’t imagine why.” Yanko considered the beach and the village. There was nothing of great value. Who would have bothered killing these people, and why?

  “Why is your bodyguard looking in houses?”

  “Searching for clues, I think,” Yanko said.

  “Why does he need clues?” A dangerous edge came to Minark’s voice. “I thought he knew where the treasure is. It’s in one of six spots, he said, when he led us to the first island.”

  Yanko was fairly certain Dak had said that to buy time, perhaps in the hope that he would find an answer on one of those islands.

  “He’s trying to narrow it down so we don’t have to look on every island.”

  “Or is it that he doesn’t know where this supposed treasure is? Is that it, kid?” Minark asked. “I’ve been thinking about how you showed up on my gangplank last week, and I think you would have said anything to escape that harbor before the police showed up.”

  “It wasn’t the police I was worried about.” A warrior mage that wanted him dead, a mage hunter that wanted him dead, two nations that now considered him a criminal... those were things to worry about.

  “Yanko is honest, Minark.” Arayevo laid her hand on her captain’s arm and smiled. “If he says there’s a treasure out here to find, you can trust him.”

  The endorsement didn’t make Yanko feel that good, especially since Minark was close to the truth. Yanko would have said almost anything to escape that harbor before Sun Dragon came to kill him. Dak, however, had been the one to promise a treasure and negotiate a percentage with the smugglers. Yanko didn’t even know how much a bunch of artifacts stolen from a museum basement might be worth. His only interest was the lodestone.

  “I’m not staying here after dark, not in a haunted, diseased village full of dead people,” Minark said, lowering his voice, his words for Arayevo.

  He stared intently into her eyes as he spoke, and Yanko shifted uneasily. He hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that those two had a relationship that went beyond captain and sailor, but he also hadn’t looked hard for evidence to support that. He didn’t know where Arayevo’s cabin was on the ship, nor had he ever tried to find her after dark. The idea of her sleeping with the bald, sarcastic captain made him feel hurt and betrayed—and frustrated. What could she see in him? He had to be fifteen years older than she was, and he was a smuggler.

  “It’s not diseased,” Yanko muttered, turning away from them and looking toward the sea. This was an inappropriate time to worry about who was sleeping with whom—or who wasn’t sleeping with him.

  “You don’t know that. It’s—” Minark broke off as Dak approached.

  Dak still carried his rifle, but from the way it drooped at his side, Yanko doubted he expected to find trouble. Living trouble.

  “Everyone who was in the village when they came is dead,” Dak said. “Some of the men and women look to have been tortured before they were hanged. A few of the houses are empty. It’s possible some people escaped into the jungle or took boats to other islands, but none of the prints are fresh.”

  “Tortured?” Yanko asked. “For what reason? And by whom?”

  “I don’t know. This is all I found that I know didn’t originate on this island.” Dak held out a tobacco tin with a burly lumberjack painted on the front.

  “That looks Turgonian.”

  Dak nodded. “It’s a popular brand back home. It’s exported to Kendor, the desert city-states, and the Kyatt Islands, so its presence doesn’t necessarily mean my people were here.”

  “I doubt the Kyattese did this.” Lakeo jerked a thumb toward the houses.

  “Probably not,” Dak said. “Their methods of getting information are more subtle.” His lips thinned.

  “Dak, can I ask you something?” Yanko tilted his head toward the beach to suggest he wanted privacy. Lakeo gave him an irritated look but did not follow. He thought about waving for her to join them—Minark was the only one he didn’t want to listen in—but she sniffed and turned her back first.

  “I don’t think it was Turgonians,” Dak said as soon as they were alone.

  “That’s not what I was going to ask, but why?”

  “My people are willing to use torture to learn what they need to know, but not outside of a military context, and there are rules against torturing women.”

  “Rules about who it’s all right to torture? How noble.” Yanko bit on his tongue to keep from voicing more sarcasm. He would be naive to believe his own people did not engage in such practices. He knew that mind mages who served in the Great Chief’s armies learned ways to forcefully take information from enemies. “Sorry. Who do you think it was if not Turgonians?”

  “Someone who wanted information.”

  “That’s vague. Can you tell how long ago this happened?”

  “A week perhaps. Bodies decompose quickly in this heat.” Dak pinned Yanko with his gaze. “How many other people know what Prince Zirabo told you in that letter?”

  Yanko leaned back on his heels, resisting the urge to touch the letter nestled under his clothing and against his chest. “Are you implying that these people were tortured and killed by someone else looking for the lodestone?”

  Dak spread a hand. “What else could villagers out here know? Besides, when I was picking out texts to borrow from the Polytechnic library, I noticed that a number of articles from the time period I was researching had already been removed. I had to go down to the basement to find other copies.”

  Yanko’s stomach clenched. “Removed? Not checked out?”

  “Stolen, yes.” Dak shrugged his big shoulders. “They could have been taken years ago, but I doubt it.”

  Yanko rubbed his face. “I’m not sure how many people know. My brother was followed when he left the Great City with Prince Zirabo’s note, and he was attacked twice before he made it home to deliver it to me. The prince wrote that there were spies in the capital and that enemies might have found out about his research. Sun Dragon, the warrior mage who’s after me, implied he worked for the rebels, one of the factions that would like to see the Great Chief replaced.”

  Yanko hadn’t even known that there were multiple factions among the rebels until Dak had told him as much when they had started traveling together. He’d been utterly unprepared when rebels had shown up to claim the salt mine. If someone had warned him earlier, maybe Yanko could have been ready, could have shored up the mine’s defenses and found mages to help fight. Instead, Uncle Mishnal and countless miners were dead. Yanko blinked his eyes, fighting back tears that wanted to form. He had gone eighteen years without seeing much death only to be inundated with it these last few weeks. Why had Prince Zirabo thought he was the person to handle all of this?

  “I didn’t know the mage had spoken to you.” Dak frowned in censure, as if Yanko had chosen to chat with his enemy without telling his bodyguard.

  “Sun Dragon likes to pop into my
head and make threats.”

  Dak glanced toward Arayevo and Minark, who were arguing while Lakeo looked on. The crew members Minark had brought were skipping stones in the cove, apparently unmoved by all the death in the village behind them.

  “Our captain is superstitious,” Dak said, watching Minark fiddle with his charms.

  “A village full of death could make anyone superstitious,” Yanko said, eyeing the trees in the distance.

  Kei hadn’t returned yet. Yanko hoped it was because he had found a particularly fruitful nut tree, not because he had run into trouble.

  “I’m going to check on something.” Dak turned toward the trees behind the village.

  “Wait,” Yanko said. “What was on that paper? The one you put in your pocket?”

  “A map. It was crumpled and in a waste bin.” Dak removed the paper from his pocket and unfolded it.

  Yanko leaned close, noticing the light was fading, that shadows had grown long across the beach. He could understand why Minark wouldn’t want to spend the night here, among the spirits of the dead.

  “Is that Kyattese?” Yanko asked, touching a name or a title in the center.

  “Yes, it says Oracle Hill.”

  “Were these people Kyattese?” Yanko thought of the woman, trying to gauge what her skin color had been before death and scavengers had marred it.

  “I believe this was a colony that broke away a couple hundred years ago. I didn’t see a library. You’d expect one in a modern-day Kyattese settlement.” Dak waved the paper. “What you wouldn’t expect them to have is a religion that spoke of oracles. The Kyattese believe in a single god, and their belief doesn’t allow for others in the heavens.”

  “Only one god? That’s so strange.”

  Dak grunted, and Yanko recalled that Turgonians were atheists. Even stranger. Who answered their songs of prayer?

  “There wasn’t a body in this house, but judging by a portrait on the wall, the owner was quite old. Perhaps old enough to remember when Tomokosis came through.” Dak folded the paper and returned it to his pocket. “I’m going to follow the map, see if he might have been visiting their oracle when this happened.”