Snake Heart (16 page)

“So, what happens if I just trigger it?” he wondered.

Would the trap disappear once he did? Or would it reset itself? Wouldn’t his mother have already peeked inside? Maybe the other ships had arrived before she got a chance. He might be able to trigger it from a distance, from far enough away that he wouldn’t be affected by the magic.

Yanko backed up a few steps. He created a wall of air across the corner of the cabin, sealing the pile of loot behind it. At the same time, he nudged the latch upward with his meager telekinetic power. It twitched and wobbled, but he struggled to make the lid rise while also maintaining the barrier. Concentrating on two tasks at once was always difficult, and he was tempted to raise the lid, then quickly put the barrier in place, but that might be unwise.

As sword clashes and weapons fire continued in the passageway outside, he kept fiddling with the latch, trying to stay calm and tamp down frustration. The chest possessed a physical lock in addition to the magical protection. Seconds ticked past, and he sensed more men piling into the passageway outside.

He switched tactics and melted the latch instead of worrying about the lock. Metal turned molten and dripped down the side of the chest like candle wax. Finally, from four feet away, Yanko lifted the lid.

A fiery blast sprang from the box. It hammered against the barrier he had created and slammed into the ceiling with enough force to tear through the wood. Boards flew, and splinters rained down around him. Sunlight poured in from above, cutting through the smoke clouding the air around the treasure pile.

“Yanko,” Arayevo groaned. “What are you doing?”

“Triggering a trap.” Yanko slapped his forehead, cursing himself for not thinking to mold his barrier to cover the top of the pile. All he had wanted to do was protect himself and his comrades.
That
he had done, but—

A long-haired pirate peered through the hole in the ceiling. Yanko waved his hand, flinging smoke into the man’s eyes.

“We need to go,” Yanko called over his shoulder, as if the clangs and gunfire from the passageway hadn’t already told him that. The entire crew probably knew there were thieves in the captain’s cabin now.

Yanko darted forward, reaching for the chest. He hesitated before touching it, though he was tempted to simply grab it and run. First, he probed the outline with his mind, checking to see if the trap had reset. It hadn’t, but a sick feeling came over him. He no longer felt the presence of magic. The lodestone had to be magic if it could guide people to a missing continent. Had he simply been sensing the power of the trap itself?

“We have to go,” came Dak’s voice from the passageway.

He sounded calm, though the clash of swords punctuated his words. Arayevo grabbed a loaded flintlock pistol from the wall over the bed. She leaned around Dak and fired at someone. As Yanko picked up the box, he checked the passageway with his mind. Dead men sprawled all over the deck, three high in spots, but more were crowding into the area, trying to get at Dak. Trying to protect their
treasure
, Yanko realized grimly. They were so desperate to do so that they would throw their lives away. He never would have expected pirates to fight so fiercely.

Knowing they were out of time and already regretting how many deaths he was responsible for, Yanko opened the chest to see what they had found. A small book lay inside. He pulled it out, feeling stunned. A book? That was it? He checked again for a hint that it might be magical. It wasn’t. He dropped the chest and flipped through it quickly, enough to see that it was someone’s journal rather than a collection of Kyattese poetry or some such.

“Trap gone?” Lakeo asked, stepping up to his side.

“Yes, I—”

Someone grabbed Yanko’s arm. Arayevo.

“Dak’s hurt,” she said. “We have to go.
Now
.”

With nothing to show but the journal, Yanko nodded his agreement and followed her to the door. The lodestone wasn’t there. He would have felt it if it were. Unless this journal was the Mausoleum Bandit’s diary, this whole trip—all of this death and destruction—had been for nothing.

Don’t throw it away
, a voice spoke into Yanko’s head.

Sun Dragon
, he thought, not intending to respond but surprised into doing so.
Where are you?

I’ll be there soon. Keep the book for me, and maybe I’ll spare your life.

I see you’re more generous than ever, Honored Opponent.

That’s right, boy. Don’t forget to respect your elders. They—

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.

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.