Snake Heart

by Lindsay Buroker

  A second after the communication broke off, a great boom came from somewhere above. It was too loud to be a cannon firing. Yanko hoped someone had blown up Sun Dragon’s ship.

  Lakeo snatched up a chest, the same one she had been carrying earlier, before the pirates had taken all of their gear. “Mine,” she snarled.

  Someone leaped down from above, landing on the treasure pile and swinging a hatchet at her head. Startled, Lakeo scrambled back. She lifted her machete as two more pirates jumped through the hole in the ceiling. All three sprang toward her.

  With fear swelling in his throat, Yanko launched an attack, again reacting on instinct instead of thinking it through. All three pirates flew backward, slamming into each other and into the corner of the cabin. Lakeo sprinted for the door, and Yanko charged after her. He was the last one out of the cabin, so he pulled the door shut, wishing he could lock it.

  There was no room in the passageway. Dak might be wounded, but he was still fighting, keeping the pirates back with determination and skill.

  “We have to get back to that doorway,” Arayevo said, waving the pistol at the officer’s cabin where they had come up from the deck below.

  Bodies half blocked the way, and they would have to cut through at least two pirates to reach it. Other men waited behind those two, firing when they could.

  Dak was keeping the pirates from advancing, but even he couldn’t press so many back, especially not with the floor at his feet littered with obstacles. Yanko tried to summon the same force he had used on the men in the cabin, a wave of energy he had almost reflexively hurled, but that easy, instant power eluded him now. He concentrated on building it again, methodically, carefully funneling the air around Dak.

  A bang came from behind him. Arayevo shot at one of the pirates trying to escape the cabin.

  “A lock would be good,” Lakeo said, kicking at someone. Arayevo’s pistol drove them back, for the moment.

  Yanko unleashed the wave of power he had been crafting. Dak’s clothes rustled as the wind blasted past him on either side. The power struck the pirates, knocking them back several meters, as if an ocean wave had slammed into them.

  Dak sprang over the bodies and ran past the cabin door they needed to enter. Making room for Yanko and the others to go inside while he protected them. Yanko wanted to yell at him to go through first, that he was the only one who could pilot the underwater boat, if it was even still attached, but there was no time, not with pirates coming at them from both sides. Yanko lunged into the cabin first. He waved for Arayevo and Lakeo to follow him, turning as soon as he got inside so he could watch the door to Pey Lu’s cabin. The pirates had been driven back by the pistol fire, but they were sure to try to get out again. He readied an attack to hurl if the door opened.

  “Dak,” Yanko called as soon as Arayevo and Lakeo joined him in the cabin. He waved them toward the hole in the deck. “We’re waiting on you.”

  The pirates flung Pey Lu’s door open as Dak reached the officer’s cabin. Yanko couldn’t fling his attack with Dak standing in front of the doorway. He sensed one man lifting a pistol to fire. With his back to them, Dak couldn’t see it, couldn’t dodge.

  “Move,” Yanko barked and hastily constructed a barrier between Dak and the shooter, as he had done to thwart the trap. He didn’t know if it would be enough to stop a pistol ball and was glad when Dak leaped sideways into the room.

  The pistol fired. The ball halted in midflight, lodging in Yanko’s wall of air. It hung there until Dak shut the door, and Yanko’s concentration disappeared. Arayevo and Lakeo had already gone through the hole.

  “Go,” Dak said, throwing the lock on the door.

  Yanko hesitated. Blood saturated Dak’s shirt in front of his shoulder—one of those bullets had caught him. There were numerous other rips, showing gashes in his arms and torso.

  “Maybe you should—”

  “Go,” Dak ordered, grabbing Yanko and propelling him toward the hole.

  Something—or someone—slammed into the door. It held, but Yanko remembered Dak knocking open the other door and knew it would not stand against much of an assault. He jumped through the hole into the brig, only to find Arayevo and Lakeo fighting two pirates. Lakeo was holding her own, but the big brute facing Arayevo was pushing her back.

  Yanko took several steps to get out of the way and give himself space to formulate an attack. He channeled a tiny stream of air and aimed it at the pirate’s sword hand. The man dropped his weapon as if bitten and jerked his hand back. His eyes widened as he glanced at Yanko.

  “Wizard,” he shouted over his shoulder, backing away from Arayevo since he no longer had a weapon. “There’s another wizard. Get—”

  Lakeo was close enough to him to break away from her opponent and slash him across the shoulder blades. That quieted him and knocked him to the deck. He scrambled away on his hands and knees. Dak landed beside Yanko, as a bang came from above, someone slamming that locked door open.

  Without hesitating, Dak charged past Lakeo and Arayevo. In a blur of movement that seemed impossibly fast for someone so big, he cut down both of their opponents. He raced toward the stairs that led back into the hold, a hold now nearly flooded with water. Voices came from within it, orders to seal the hole. Dak ran down the stairs, splashing after the first couple of steps. Shouts and the clangs of swords sounded as he engaged the pirates.

  “Yanko,” a voice full of controlled fury called from the other end of the passageway.

  He had been about to follow Dak down the stairs, but he looked up at his name, not surprised to see Pey Lu there, framed by the sunlight. Energy crackled around her. Had she been coming to fight him? Or to do something about the hole?

  “Move, move,” Lakeo whispered, pushing him from behind.

  Pey Lu lifted a hand, visible energy dancing between her fingertips like lightning. Yanko threw up another wall of air, reacting again. There was no time for anything else.

  White lightning streaked through the air, turning the dim passage to daylight. It was aimed at Lakeo, not Yanko, but his barrier absorbed the attack, the power almost driving him to his knees. Even though the lightning did not get through, it was like blocking one of Dak’s sword blows—it jolted every joint in his body.

  Yanko set his jaw and channeled more power into the shield, fully expecting to have to block another attack. He stepped away from the stairs, so Arayevo and Lakeo could get down.

  Pey Lu’s eyes were as dark and hard as obsidian, though the rage she must have felt at having her ship sabotaged did not show on her face. She merely raised her hand for another attack.

  Lakeo scrambled down the stairs. Arayevo paused behind Yanko’s shoulder. He could not say anything or look at her. More lightning coursed down the passageway toward them. This time, absorbing the power drained him so that he dropped to one knee. His entire body trembled from the effort of maintaining the barrier.

  “Yanko?” Arayevo whispered.

  “Go,” he barked and thrust the journal back toward her. “Help our people.”

  She hesitated, and he shouted, “Go,” again as his mother readied another attack.

  Arayevo grabbed the journal and raced down the stairs. The shouts and bangs of metal in the hold had stopped. Yanko hoped that meant Dak had made it through the pirates, that he was leading Arayevo and Lakeo out the hole and to the safety of the Kyattese vessel.

  Pey Lu strode toward Yanko. He braced himself, not sure if he could handle a third blast of energy. If his barrier failed, he knew that much power would kill him.

  “Captain,” called a voice from the deck above them. “They’re going to ram us. It’s the ironclad. We can’t outrun it. We’re too sluggish.”

  Hoping the words would distract her, Yanko lunged for the stairs. He imagined himself sprinting down them and diving into the water, swimming through the hole to join his friends. But an invisible grip fastened around his neck, holding him in place as surely as an iron shackle chained to a wall.

&
nbsp; Pey Lu reached him and grabbed his arm with her hand. She carried a cutlass in her other hand, and he fully expected her to cut off his head with it. He threw all of his remaining energy at her, an unfocused blast that had no finesse or thought behind it.

  She stepped back with one leg, as if bracing herself against a great gust of wind. Yanko might have felt a modicum of satisfaction that he had affected her, but neither her physical grip on his arm nor her magical grip on his throat lessened. Still holding him, she stepped to the edge of the stairs. Once again, he noticed that she was shorter than he was. How little that mattered in this battle.

  Her eyes narrowed, and she glared at the hold full of water. No, she did more than glare at it. The water started swirling in a circle, as if it were being sucked down a drain in a sink. It picked up speed, spinning around the hold, dead pirates, clothing, and broken bits of wood rushing past. Yanko hoped Dak and the others had already fled out the hole and weren’t under the surface, caught up in that current.

  The water level lowered, draining much faster than it had entered. Yanko was caught up in staring at it and wondering if he could ever do such a thing. It took him a moment to realize that the force around his neck had disappeared. As powerful as Pey Lu was, she could not concentrate on multiple tasks at once, either. He eyed the fingers wrapped around his arm and the sword in her other hand. Was it possible that he could grab it while she was concentrating, and do something effective with it? His mind shied away from the idea of killing her, but if he could surprise her long enough to get away, maybe he could catch up with the others.

  He was a half second from trying when something smashed into the ship so hard that it hurled both of them against the wall.

  “Pie-Face, Jorgan,” Pey Lu yelled. “Get down here and plug up this hole.”

  As Yanko staggered to his feet, several pirates poured into the passageway. A few carried hammers and nails and buckets of pitch or some other adhesive. Pey Lu had released Yanko when they had been rammed, and he stepped toward the stairs, still thinking of escape.

  Pey Lu frowned at him and waved two fingers. He felt the attack coming but couldn’t defend himself in time. He wasn’t sure he had the strength left to do so, anyway. He was flattened against the wall and could do nothing but watch as the pirates ran down into the hold. Pey Lu stood at the top of the stairs and went back to draining the water.

  Shouts and gunshots came from the deck above, once again. The pirates attacking a boarding party? Yanko had been focusing on his problems and had no idea how the overall battle had been going.

  As the last of the water drained, the pirates covered the hole and sealed it. With each bang, Yanko knew his chances of escaping were diminishing. Maybe they had already ceased to exist, disappearing as soon as his mother had shown up.

  She grabbed his arm again and pushed him toward the sunlight pouring down from the steps leading to the upper decks. Yanko sent a long look over his shoulder as they walked, but he had to accept the inevitable. He had been taken prisoner, and he had no idea if his captors were winning or losing the battle.

  Chapter 12

  Yanko did not make trouble for Pey Lu as she led him onto the main deck. For one thing, she still had him by the arm, like a mother dragging a wayward toddler around at the weekly market. For another, with Dak, Arayevo, and Lakeo gone with the journal, there seemed little point. If they had made it back to the underwater boat, they would have pulled away by now. They would be hiding beneath the waves somewhere out there. If they hadn’t made it because the boat hadn’t been attached anymore when they swam out... Yanko did not want to think about that.

  Once he had a view of the ocean, he located the island. They were much farther out than he expected. He shouldn’t be shocked that the ships had moved during their combat maneuvering, but he winced at the idea of his friends having to swim that far to reach the shore. The island had to be two or three miles away now. He prayed to the ferret god that they were safely in the Kyattese vessel.

  The commotion he had expected in the wake of the ramming incident was non-existent. Pey Lu’s other two ships were visible, forming a triangle with this one, and they appeared to be in decent shape. If anything, this vessel had taken the most damage. Sun Dragon must have known it was most likely to hold the lodestone. Except that it hadn’t held it.

  The Turgonian ironclad floated off to the port side, attached by a couple of ropes. The other two Kyattese ships... at first, Yanko did not see them at all, but then he spotted their remains. One was sinking, the broken mast tipped over on its side. The other was in little better shape. Their crews had lowered their boats and were rowing away.

  Yanko watched Pey Lu out of the corner of his eye as an older man came up, wringing his hands as he reported to her. He did not seem as competent as the gray-haired Turgonian at the pool had. Maybe that had been another ship commander rather than her first mate, as he had guessed.

  Her face was flinty but unemotional. She listened to a damage report of her other two ships, followed by something that surprised Yanko.

  “The ironclad is empty, Captain. We’ve got a boarding party going over it again, but they didn’t find anyone.”

  “Get our people out of there now and cut those ropes,” Pey Lu said.

  “But, if someone’s hiding—”

  “Now. Those weren’t Turgonians attacking us, but that’s a Turgonian ship. It may have the means to blow itself up. Why else would they ram us with an empty vessel?”

  The man’s eyes grew round. He cursed and sprinted away, yelling orders over the railing.

  Yanko couldn’t see the exterior of Pey Lu’s craft from the deck, but wondered how much damage had been done when the ironclad struck. They weren’t sitting low in the water, not after Pey Lu had drained the hold, and nobody appeared too worried. The ironclad did not appear overly damaged, either, not like the wrecks floating in the distance. Why would Sun Dragon have abandoned it? It was the only vessel that could have taken him and his crew back to Kyatt—or wherever he intended to go next. Was he even still alive? How long had it been since he’d spoken into Yanko’s head? Ten minutes?

  As the lines were being cut and the ship turned away from the ironclad, Pey Lu turned toward Yanko for the first time.

  “I have questions for you,” she said.

  Yes, he had been afraid of that. What would happen if he didn’t answer them willingly?

  “Are you going to be reasonable or difficult?” she added. Her voice was calm. She did not appear pleased about anything that was going on, but she also did not appear daunted. It was almost as if attacks, thefts, and sabotage were normal parts of her life, a life she enjoyed.

  “That probably depends on the questions,” Yanko said. “If you’re wondering how Father is doing, I don’t know. He was missing when I left, as were many of my friends and kin in the village. Our family has been on the wrong side of... just about everything since I was born. There are rebels trying to take the Great Chief off the dais, even now.”

  He thought mentioning Father and home might cause a reaction, if only a masking of her features or a wistful look in her eyes, but she merely listened blandly, as if he were talking about people she had never met.

  “I’m mostly wondering who those people are who just attacked us,” she said dryly.

  “They didn’t tell you before they started shooting? That was inconsiderate.” Stoat’s teats, he sounded like Lakeo. He wasn’t ever sarcastic with his elders. Why was he treating her so? Because she was the enemy? Because he resented her?

  “I thought so,” she said in the same bland tone.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, looking away. Even if he did resent her, he should treat her as he would wish to be treated. Honor was for enemies as well as allies. It was even for people who were... disappointing.

  Her eyebrows shifted, but she did not ask what he was apologizing for. Maybe she already knew. Maybe she just didn’t care.

  “I will give you all the information I k
now about them,” Yanko said, “if you’ll tell me who’s offering to pay you for the lodestone.”

  An explosion came from the port side of the ship, a horrible rending of metal that made Yanko cover his ears with his hands. The ironclad.

  A great ball of fire reached up from the bowels of the ship, its steel deck peeled back like flower petals, allowing the flames to surge out. Dark gray smoke billowed into the air in thick clouds. It took a few seconds for the pieces of wreckage to start pelting down, but when they did, they hit the deck of Pey Lu’s ship, as well as the water all around the ironclad. Pirates scurried, taking cover. Pey Lu twitched her fingers and an umbrella of pure energy formed above her and Yanko. The few pieces that struck it bounced off.

  After lamenting that he couldn’t craft barriers so quickly or easily, Yanko decided it wasn’t manly to be jealous of one’s mother.

  “Good thing we got away before it blew,” someone muttered behind them.

  “Turgonians worship some crazy dead ancestors,” another pirate said.

  A familiar presence brushed Yanko’s mind. He looked toward the island, hardly believing the parrot had found him all the way out here, but there was the familiar blue and red form, flapping its way over the sea. Kei skirted the smoking ironclad—the smoking wreck—and circled the pirate ship before spotting Yanko and soaring down toward him. He braced himself, or rather his shoulder, for the sharp talons.

  Pey Lu frowned and lifted a hand.

  Sensing that she meant to attack, or at least deter Kei from landing, Yanko risked her ire by grabbing her arm. “He’s not a threat.”

  Pey Lu looked down at her arm where he gripped her, then regarded him.

  Yanko let her go, but he remained on the alert, in case she threw an attack at Kei. There was nothing magical about the bird. He couldn’t defend himself against a wizard. “He’s not even mine. I might be in a lot of trouble with important people back on Kyatt if I let him die.”

  True, he wasn’t certain how much of an honored pet the Komitopis family considered the mouthy parrot, but he doubted they wanted Kei to die, especially when they had fed and housed the bird for years after the grandfather died.