Snake Heart (21 page)

“That never stops looking odd,” Gramon said.

Pey Lu laid her hand on the back of Yanko’s shoulder for a second. “That’s one log thwarted. Good.”

The log? He’d almost forgotten about it. It had been charred down to half its size and still smoldered, its blackened surface less visible against the dark water.

“Why—” Yanko paused, glancing back at Gramon. The Turgonian wasn’t as loathsome as a lot of the other pirates—even now, two shirtless brutes were engaged in a knife fight farther up the deck, and it did not look like
practice
. Still, Yanko felt uncomfortable asking questions about magic around him. He did not want to be mocked by strangers.

Pey Lu must have guessed at his reticence—or maybe she read his thoughts—for she waved Gramon away and stepped closer. “Yes?”

“I’ve noticed lately that it’s when I’m angry or frustrated that things come more easily. That’s the opposite of what I’d always been told, and the opposite of what I experienced most of the time when I was growing up.” Yanko waved toward the remains of the log. “I was annoyed.”

“Anger can be the enemy, especially when you haven’t mastered something—most people tend to flail ineffectively and just grow more frustrated. I think that with you, it is as I’ve said, and you already understand the basics—even more than the basics, as you’re more advanced than you seem to believe. Getting angry makes you forget to think and analyze. Your brain is getting in the way of your effectiveness. In addition to your tendency to analyze, you worry about the consequences a lot. Did you really warn the fish to get out of the way before you flung that?”

“There’s no reason to kill needlessly,” he said sturdily.

“They’re fish.”

“I feel it when they’re in pain.”

Her brow creased. Yanko braced himself for the disappointment or the mocking that Father had given him when he had long ago explained why he could train hounds for the hunt, but he couldn’t join in himself.

“That may be why you struggle with fire, then.” Pey Lu rubbed her chin as she considered him.

Yanko tried not to feel like she was pondering how to make use of a hound afraid of the hunter’s gun.

“Fire kills,” she said. “That’s how it is.”

“Yes. One could throw warning shots over an enemy’s head, but they would grow fearless, I assume, if you never hit them. And I don’t think I could...” His gaze drifted to the charred log, now growing distant as the ship continued sailing away. He couldn’t do that to people. He still had nightmares about the kraken.

“They do, indeed.” Pey Lu lowered her hand and drummed her fingers on the railing. “If you go through Stargrind and join the army, your instructors will do their best to desensitize you to that, especially since you have the potential to be very powerful. They’ll want you to be a pure weapon.”

Very powerful? Clearly she hadn’t seen him fumbling through the entrance exams. Though he wondered now if she was right, if he had more potential than he realized, and it was his mind that was getting in his own way.

“Is that what they did to you?” For the first time, he wondered if his mother’s indifference to human life was natural. Had she been born not feeling empathy for others, or had that been inculcated by her superiors? By instructors who had seen
her
potential and wanted to turn her into a pure weapon.

He shifted uneasily at these new thoughts. Falcon hadn’t been turned into a heartless monster in his two years in the army, but he wasn’t a mage. Nuria had always considered foot soldiers to be for little more than defending those who could manipulate the mental sciences.

“There was a war coming,” Pey Lu said. “They knew they would need weapons equal to the Turgonians’ technology.” She shrugged, not seeming bothered by the past. “I don’t remember ever caring one way or another about fish, so I doubt I was the challenge for them that you would be. Some animals can be broken and some are destroyed when it’s attempted. They might do that to you without even realizing it.” She frowned at him—disturbed by this image?

It certainly disturbed him.

“There aren’t any wars with Turgonia on the horizon,” he said, hoping that was true. What would happen if Dak found that lodestone before Yanko and took it to his homeland? Wouldn’t his people fight for that continent? Especially if it was lush enough to make excellent farmland?

“There’s a war even closer than the horizon,” Pey Lu said, “on our home soil.”

“The rebel factions.” Why did everybody know more about what was going on at home than he did? What worthless newspapers he and his uncle had been reading.

“I predict the Great Chief will be removed or killed within the year. And then? There are too many factions that want to try their hand at ruling the nation. The war for supreme power over it could be long and bloody. It could end up with the Great Land being divided into smaller countries, countries that would then be easy prey for other nations, if they couldn’t band together.” She shrugged, as if it mattered little to her. “Stargrind will be rushing candidates through and yes, making tools effective for war.”

Yanko would have been entering the first year of his schooling by now if he had passed those exams and gone away to the academy. Was his mother right? Would they already be trying to
break
him?

“Work on air and telekinetics,” she suggested. “Mind magic would be useful too. That can be more powerful even than fire. Fire can make a man run away and scream. Ideas can make him turn his entire army in another direction.”

Mind magic. She meant manipulation. Yanko could see throwing the image of flames into a captor’s mind for self-defense purposes, but he did not care for the idea of manipulating people to do as he wished. He supposed that in some circumstances, it would be better than incinerating someone. “I could stand to improve my telekinetics skills. You said that was one of your specialties?”

“Much more than telepathy and mind-to-mind skills, yes.” She nodded toward the waves. “I need to see where you are. Lift that kelp up and plop it on the deck.”

“Kelp? You trying to get the cook to pull out a new recipe?” Gramon asked, walking back over, a spyglass in his hand. He tilted his head, silently requesting a word with Pey Lu.

“I’ve heard Turgonians will eat anything.”

“Only soldiers, and only if it comes out of a package labeled Military Rations.”

“Such standards.” Pey Lu followed him away, stopping at the railing outside of earshot for Yanko.

The big Turgonian waved behind them with the spyglass, then offered it to her. She shook her head, merely gazing in the direction he had pointed, her eyes closing to slits.

Yanko wrangled the kelp bed with his mind, pulling it after the ship so he wouldn’t lose it, but he also tried to find what Gramon was pointing out. The sea rose and fell, and he didn’t have the view he would have from the crow’s nest, but he had been practicing his magic back here by the railing for the last two hours. If a ship were behind them, he should have seen it. The only ships in sight were the ones flanking the
Prey Stalker
, other vessels in his mother’s fleet. A pod of whales cruised past in the distance, shooting water from their blowholes. An impressive sight, but he doubted it was what Gramon had pulled Pey Lu aside to discuss.

Yanko shifted his attention slightly, watching the pair with his peripheral vision. He wouldn’t dare try to poke into his mother’s thoughts—even if she had admitted that mind magic was not a specialty of hers, she would surely feel a telepathic intrusion, especially from someone as inexperienced as he. But Gramon? Yanko doubted he’d had Dak’s training at turning aside magical attacks.

He frowned down at the kelp, hoping his mother would think his concentration was focused on the task she’d assigned if she looked over, but he tried to
hear
the Turgonian’s thoughts, the way he could hear an animal’s thoughts. He didn’t pry in; he just cupped his senses around the man’s head, like a mitt prepared to catch a ball.

An image of an underwater boat came to him. Yanko’s breath caught. Were Dak, Arayevo, and Lakeo following after them? If the craft was deep enough, that could explain why he hadn’t sensed it. Maybe it had surfaced long enough to ensure it was following the fleet and Gramon had glimpsed it then, that periscope popping briefly above the water.

When Yanko stretched out with his senses again, he directed them below the surface of the water. There, at the edge of his range, he detected the cylindrical metal craft, fish and octopuses swimming away from it in alarm. He tried to get a feel for the auras within, wanting to know if Dak and the others were there, or if this was another Kyattese vessel, sent to find the lodestone. The Kyattese presence on that island suggested that even if his mother had spoken truly, that their government was willing to pay her for retrieving it, the Kyattese would prefer to recover it themselves. To avoid the steep payment? Or to avoid being beholden to an infamous pirate?

Despite repeated attempts to sense the occupants, they were too far away for him to identify, and too much other life filled the ocean, nearly overloading his mind. It was unfortunate, because he wanted to assure Dak that he was all right, at least for the moment, and let him know that he and the others should focus on getting to the island ahead of the pirates. If they had the journal, they should know as much as Pey Lu did, and if they could get there first...

“Then the Turgonians get the rock,” he muttered to himself, realizing what he was hoping for. Should he truly be rooting for that? His people needed the lodestone. But, if he failed and that couldn’t happen, it would be better for the Kyattese to find it than the Turgonians.

“Where’s my kelp?” Pey Lu asked, her voice disapproving.

Yanko jumped. He had been concentrating so hard that he hadn’t noticed her returning. He also hadn’t noticed that the kelp bed had fallen too far behind the ship to see.

“Ah, it seems my telekinetics skills need even more work than my pyrotechnics.”

Her eyes narrowed, and he reminded himself that even if his mother was helping him, he could not forget that they were not allies in this. They could never be allies, not as long as she chose this life.

“We’ll find another target,” she said eventually. “I’ll give you some tips.”

Yanko smiled bleakly, fighting back the natural urge to thank her. She was the enemy. He had to keep reminding himself of that, even if she was teaching him. That did not change anything. It couldn’t.

He looked toward the sea behind them, thinking of his comrades. What would happen if they tried to rescue him, and he found himself in the middle?

“I’m ready,” he said, aware of Pey Lu watching him, but he feared that he was anything
but
ready.

Chapter 16

O
n the third night aboard the
Prey Stalker
, Yanko woke in the darkness, his heart hammering in his chest. He lay on his back, under a thin, coarse blanket, staring up at the dark ceiling of the cabin he had been given, the cabin of a man that Dak had killed, as Yanko had later learned. He didn’t hear anything except the creaking of the rigging and the spray of the water against the hull below his porthole, but something definitely felt off. His first thought was that the dead man’s spirit was here to haunt him.

A faint beam of moonlight slanted through the porthole. Kei slept on the back of the chair, his beak buried in his feathers. Whatever had woken Yanko had not disturbed the bird. Of course not. Why would a dead pirate haunt a parrot?

His second thought was that Dak, Arayevo, and Lakeo might have sneaked aboard the
Prey Stalker
. Perhaps not Dak, since he would need to pilot the underwater boat—the pirates had no battle to distract them this time, so the craft would not simply be able to clamp on and cut a hole in the hull. But Arayevo and Lakeo? Might they be sneaking around in the passageway right now, trying to find him? If so, they would be looking in the brig, not in the officers’ cabins.

Yanko reached out with his mind, trying to sense them. But he sensed something much closer than the brig, a presence alone with him in the room. And it wasn’t a ghost.

With his instincts screaming in his mind, he hurled himself out of his bunk. A shadow leaped through the air, landing on the spot he had vacated. A dagger slashed down, ripping into the pillow. Tiny goose feathers flew into the air, and Kei woke with a screech.

Yanko rolled across the floor, trying to put space between him and his silent assailant, but he soon crashed into the built-in wardrobe on the far side of the cabin. The shadow sprang toward him, having no trouble telling where he was in the dark room.

With the techniques he had been working on that day, Yanko used his mind to hurl the only piece of furniture that wasn’t bolted down. The chair flew upward, blocking his assailant’s path. Kei’s wings flapped uproariously as he was forced off his perch, and Yanko heard the smack of wood striking flesh. He used the distraction to jump to his feet.

For a second, the figure stood within the moonlight shining through the porthole, revealing white clothing and a wicked bone dagger in a gloved hand. Sensing another attack coming, Yanko hurled a wall of air, trying to knock the person back onto the bunk. The figure braced himself—no,
herself
. This was the mage hunter he had encountered on Kyatt. He couldn’t imagine how she had gotten here, but there was no time to ponder it. The air attack glanced off her, barely stirring her clothing. She leaped at Yanko, leading with that knife.

If he’d had his sword, he might have parried the attack, but he could only dodge. His foot caught on the fallen chair. He tried to fling himself over it and away from her, rolling across the floor, crashing against the base of the bunk, and cursing the lack of room. The door. If he could find two seconds, he could simply run out the door.

A thud sounded as something sank into the wood of the bunk right next to his ear. She’d flung her dagger? No, it was another weapon, a throwing star. He could hear the metal quivering as it reverberated an inch from his ear.