Snake Heart

by Lindsay Buroker

  “I nearly drowned lugging that through the pool, and now those pirates have it.”

  He lowered his voice to a murmur barely audible above the roar of the ocean beyond the lagoon. “Any chance you found the lodestone?”

  “Not unless it was in that bag of interesting stuff I grabbed. Either way, that bag is on the bottom of the pool. I couldn’t swim with everything.”

  “Ah.” Yanko stared down at his feet, unable to hide his disappointment. He supposed it wouldn’t have mattered if she had found it, since the pirates had taken all of their belongings.

  “There wasn’t much time to rummage around with you and that rock monster tramping around the cave,” Lakeo said defensively. “What was that thing?”

  “A soul construct.”

  She let out a low whistle. “I thought those were just things of legend.”

  “They’re supposed to be. Nobody makes them anymore.”

  “Not nobody.”

  Yanko sighed, feeling tired and defeated as the rowboats traveled across the dark lagoon, toward one of the large black ships now anchored beyond the reef. He should have known from the beginning that this was the Midnight Fleet. No wonder Captain Minark had fled. A small part of him wanted to hope that Pey Lu would treat him well because he was her son, but it was hard to foster that hope. She had abandoned the family and destroyed its honor. Why would she care one way or another about him now?

  “At least it wasn’t Sun Dragon who caught up with us,” Lakeo said. “We’d be dead for sure. There are only so many times you can outrun molten lava.”

  Yanko tried to find this heartening and to agree, but it was hard to feel anything but defeat as the black ships loomed larger as they drew near, lanterns lit along the deck to welcome their prisoners.

  Something bumped the bottom of the boat. A rock? Yanko looked back at the beach. They were quite far out to be hitting rocks, but the lagoon could be shallow all the way out to the reef.

  The pirates kept rowing and did not comment.

  Less than three seconds later, an explosion ripped through the night. It did not come from their boat but from one of the boats behind them, the one with the fire mage in it. Yanko nearly fell off his seat as he turned to look. The night lit up, as it had when his mother had hurled that fireball, but he hadn’t sensed magic being used. This was a mundane attack. An effective one. The boat was blown into thousands of pieces. Screaming men flew through the air, flailing their arms until they splashed down several meters away.

  The pirates in Yanko’s boat cursed and shouted, and the oarsmen rowed harder. A wave surged toward them from the explosion site. It slammed into the back of the boat, and Yanko was dumped out of his seat. He caught himself on the side to keep from going overboard, but then realized that was the opposite of what he should be doing. Nobody was looking at him. He hit Lakeo on the shoulder, jerked his head, then dove into the water.

  He started swimming before he was fully submerged, paddling and kicking to put as much distance between him and the boats as he could before coming up. By the time he ran out of air, he had gone fifty meters. He turned and spotted the burning remains of the mage’s boat. The other two craft were still afloat. One rowed toward people in the water, some waving, some floating, their bodies still. Yanko could not tell if the mage was alive or not.

  The other boat... He gulped. It was coming toward him. Two men stood with pistols raised, aiming toward the water between Yanko and them, the water where Lakeo had come up.

  She gulped in air and looked like she would dive below the surface again, but the pirates started shooting. Yanko rounded up water the same way he did air, and he channeled it into a wave. He hurled that at the boat. It rose over the sides, splashing into the pirates with enough force to startle them. One went over the side.

  “Lakeo,” Yanko shouted. “Get down and—”

  Something grabbed his foot.

  Before he could do more than suck in a quick breath, he was pulled underwater. His first thought was of the kraken he had convinced to attack Sun Dragon’s ship, but his senses told him that a human had sneaked up on him. Sneaked up from below.

  Though he was confused and his instincts wanted him to struggle, he recognized Dak’s aura. Yanko might not trust Dak to do what was best for Nuria, but he trusted him to help with pirates.

  Still, it concerned him that Dak wanted to pull him down. He could understand if Dak were yanking him toward the shore, but he was dragging Yanko toward the bottom of the lagoon. He couldn’t imagine what good that would do, since he could only hold his breath for a limited time. Surely, the pirates would not leave in the next minute and a half. And how was Dak able to hold his breath all this time?

  He tried to touch Dak’s mind, the way he did with animals, to share his bewilderment and hope that Dak might communicate a response, the way Kei sometimes did. Unfortunately, trying to communicate telepathically with Dak was like trying to communicate with a brick wall. He got nothing from the man, nor could he tell if Dak sensed his feelings.

  He had no choice but to trust him at this point, so he twisted around and swam in the direction Dak had been pulling him. Yanko’s ears ached as they descended, but they finally reached the bottom and leveled out. He had lost his sense of direction and did not know if they were heading toward the beach or the reef.

  As they continued to swim along the sandy floor of the lagoon, a faint light penetrated his blurry underwater vision. It didn’t come from the surface but from the bottom. The urge to breathe grew in Yanko’s chest, but he was somewhat reassured by the fact that they didn’t seem to be that deep. Fifteen feet? He could make it back to the surface if he needed to, but he followed Dak.

  As the light grew, he picked out a blurry black cylinder and realized what waited for them. The underwater boat. How had Dak gotten it over here? And could a person enter it when it wasn’t on the surface? Wouldn’t it flood?

  Dak pushed him toward a hatch on the side. Thanks to the light, Yanko could now see that he wore a strange helmet that swallowed his whole head. Before he could further assess it, Dak shoved him through the hatchway. He entered a tiny, water-filled... closet. He was sure that there was no Nurian term for whatever the Turgonians and Kyattese called it. There was another hatch on the inner side, but it was closed.

  Dak pressed a gloved hand to Yanko’s chest and held up his hand in a stay-there motion. Then he disappeared, pushing off the bottom and leaving bubbles behind.

  Yanko stared after him for a moment. He must be going to get Lakeo. Yanko understood that, but his lungs were already demanding air. How long was he supposed to wait? He turned toward the inner hatch, which presumably led into the underwater boat, and tried to turn the circular handle. It did not budge.

  For the first time, fear trickled into him, making his heart beat faster, harder. Was he using more of what little air he had left? He tried the hatch again. Still, it didn’t move. He tried knocking on it, as if there were someone inside who might answer. To his surprise, someone knocked back. He reached out with his mind. Arayevo? Yes, it was her. She was right on the other side of the hatch. He knocked back. Why wouldn’t she open it and let him in? He tried to brush her mind, to suggest that opening the hatch would be a very good thing. By now, his lungs were screaming for air, and panic had him thinking about pushing out of the tiny chamber and swimming to the surface as quickly as he could. He didn’t even care if the pirates were waiting to shoot him.

  A hesitant, uncertain feeling came to him from Arayevo. He knocked again, silently pleading with her. Just as he was certain he could hold his breath no longer, a shadow fell across the doorway. Lakeo was pushed into the space with Yanko, mashing him against the wall. Dak with his big helmet came in behind him, cramming into a spot that surely was meant for one person, not three. He shut the outer hatch behind them, plunging them into darkness. Sheer terror filled Yanko, and he wanted to thrash, to find a way out, but his arms were pinned.

  A clank sounded, then a whooshing sou
nd. A trickling followed it, like water draining into the pipes under a shower. Yanko closed his eyes, trying to find some meditative state that would let him control his lungs. He could feel them on the verge of gasping, even though his brain knew that nothing but water surrounded him.

  The coolness of air touched the top of his head. He did not understand what was happening, but he jumped up, trying to find that air. His lips broke the surface at the same time as his head cracked the top of the strange closet. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew air when he felt it against his damp skin. He tilted his head back so that his lips broke the surface and sucked in a deep breath. There could not have been more than four inches of air, but it was enough. He inhaled long and deep.

  A sputter and a cough came from beside him.

  “Lakeo?” he rasped.

  “Who else do you think is jammed into this coffin with you?” she demanded between coughs and gasps.

  “Isn’t Dak the one smashing you into me?”

  “Yeah, but he’s got a fishbowl on his head. I don’t think he needs air.”

  Was that what the helmet did? Yanko had never heard of such a thing.

  “Just when you thought Turgonians couldn’t get any uglier,” Lakeo went on. “I thought some kind of bulbous squid monster had grabbed me.”

  “Ugly? Didn’t you once say he was handsome from the lips down?”

  Lakeo snorted. “Maybe. Do you think he can hear with his fishbowl on?”

  The water level was falling quickly, and Yanko could now stand on the deck with his head out of the water. He assumed Dak’s head was above the surface. As tall as he was, he probably had to hunch to fit into the tiny chamber.

  “Probably,” Yanko said, “but I’m sure he already knows about his attributes.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Whether Dak could hear them or not, he did not speak as the water continued to drain out. Finally, only Yanko’s feet remained under the water. It was a good thing his sandals had a strap that fastened around his ankle, or he would have lost another pair of footwear during this crazy night. Given the cramped confines of the cubicle, he felt relieved that nobody was standing on his feet. Dak’s shoulder was mashed into his ear, and Lakeo’s hair kept tickling his nose.

  A second clank sounded. The inner hatch creaked as the wheel finally turned. A crack of light appeared, and Yanko, still pressed against the hatch, stumbled into a corridor. Half blinded after being in the darkness, he would have fallen if someone had not gripped his shoulder.

  “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

  Dak 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.