Snake Heart (31 page)

“May I examine the artifact, Admiral?” Sun Dragon asked, sounding more polite than Yanko had ever heard him, but Yanko felt the tease of magic being used.

“Yes,” Admiral Ravencrest said, his tone dull and wooden.

Yanko stirred uneasily, realizing Sun Dragon was using the mental sciences on the officer. And in a ship full of magic-dead Turgonians, who would know? Dak and the mage hunter, perhaps, but their training might only have made them attuned to magic being used against them, not people near them.

Dak’s single eye did close to a slit as he watched Ravencrest hand the lodestone to Sun Dragon.

“Is he controlling that Turgonian?” Lakeo whispered.

“If so, he controls this entire fleet of ships,” Yanko murmured, his heart sinking further. His earlier hope that Dak might ultimately be in charge faded.

Sun Dragon smiled over at Yanko, that triumphant expression on his face again, as he wrapped his fingers around the lodestone. “This is, indeed, the item we’ve been seeking.” He rubbed the golden rock with his thumb, as he might caress a lover’s cheek. Then he turned toward the south, the lodestone directing him, the same way it had directed Yanko. “And it looks like we have a new course.”

“A new course?” Ravencrest asked.

“To find a long-forgotten continent. You, my good Turgonian admiral, are about to be a part of history.” He flicked a glance at Dak, but did not make the same promise to him. Most likely, he still thought Dak was nothing more than Yanko’s bodyguard.

Ravencrest’s brow furrowed, and he waved toward Dak. “We just have orders to pause our training exercise and pick up—”

“I’m positive your superiors will want you to investigate this, and you need my help to do so, as I don’t believe any of your people have the magical aptitude to use this device.”

“I guess it won’t hurt to take a look,” Ravencrest said, his tone wooden again.

Yanko was confused as to why Sun Dragon wanted to take a Turgonian ship—a
lot
of Turgonian ships—to investigate. Was it only because that was all he had been able to finagle access to? His first vessel had been destroyed, as had the ships he had scrounged up to send after Pey Lu. He was going through vessels like someone lighting matches in the rain. Could Sun Dragon have some deal with the Turgonian government? With the president himself? What if the Turgonians wanted to see the Great Chief and the current regime overthrown? What if they wanted Sun Dragon’s band of rebels, whoever they were, to win the civil war brewing in Nuria?

Sun Dragon did nothing but smile at the admiral’s response. He shared that smile with Yanko, pinning him from across the deck.

Don’t think you’ll get away without being punished
, the mage spoke into his mind.

What?
Yanko asked, startled by the contact, as well as the fact that a man more than twice his age apparently felt the need to gloat and threaten.

I haven’t forgotten that you dishonored me and cast doubt upon my command abilities.

Dishonored you? I was defending myself. You tried to kill me!

Because you are the spawn of that vile, disgraceful woman, and you’ve been in my way from the beginning. In the past, your family would have been put to death for her crimes. You should have been dead long ago. When the Great Chief and his kin are gone, and I rule, I will see to it that the White Foxes are no more, and I’ll also make sure that pirate bitch is truly dead.

Yanko was too stunned to respond, more because the man claimed that he would take the Great Chief’s place than by anything else he had said.

Dak walked up to him, blocking his view of the mage. It didn’t matter. Sun Dragon was done with his threats.

“This way,” Dak said, speaking Nurian again and nodding toward a hatch. He gestured to include Arayevo and Lakeo.

Yanko followed him, though he couldn’t keep from glancing back toward Sun Dragon. He wore the most blissful expression as he held the lodestone and gazed to the south. Yanko wished he had stayed on the island and hidden from the Turgonians.

Chapter 22

Y
anko lay on his back on a bunk wider than the one he had been given on the
Prey Stalker
and much wider than his cot on Minark’s ship. As he stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, he wished he were back on Minark’s vessel now. At least there, he had held his fate in his hands. Now, it lay in the Turgonians’ hands. Or perhaps Sun Dragon’s hands, since he seemed to be controlling the only Turgonian that mattered.

Well, not the
only
one.

Yanko looked through the doorway in the two-room cabin. Dak sat at a desk, a lantern burning next to him as he studied the atlas he’d taken from Tomokosis’s cave. He did not appear overly worried that Yanko would try some evil magic on him. Even though Dak was a Turgonian and was the reason these ships had come, Yanko couldn’t find it within himself to be irritated at him. Though Dak hadn’t spoken more than three words since they had been ensconced here together, Yanko had the sense that this situation hadn’t turned out as he would have wished, either. A Nurian mage invited onto a Turgonian ship and chatting amiably with the admiral had to be unprecedented.

Yanko wished Arayevo and Lakeo were sharing the cabin with them. He needed someone to talk to, someone he could trust to listen and to advise him on his foolish ideas. He couldn’t lie on this bunk and wait for Sun Dragon to come kill him, though it surprised him that the mage hadn’t tried yet, especially if he had the fleet admiral under his thumb. What was stopping him? Maybe he intended to send his properly chastened mage hunter to try again. To practice. She’d need practice if she was going to serve him on the Great Chief’s dais.

With an irritated growl, Yanko swung his legs over the side of the bunk. All this thinking with no chance for action would make him crazy. Hadn’t his mother said that his brain was his worst enemy?

Dak leaned back in his chair to peer through the doorway at him, but returned to the atlas after a glance. Kei, who had claimed the back of a second chair as a perch, ruffled his feathers but did not open his eyes.

“Dak, are you here to keep me from escaping or to protect me from the mages and mage hunters wandering around your Turgonian warship?”

“I’m supposed to keep you from harming the Nurian diplomats and from doing dastardly things to the rock.”

“
Diplomats?
” Yanko stood up so he could properly gape through the doorway at Dak. “Surely, you’re talking about some other Nurian diplomats, because you can’t mean Sun Dragon and his assassin.”

The atlas had to be extremely interesting, because Dak did not respond to the gape or the comment. Yanko did not know if he was trying to put some distance between himself and Yanko, now that he was back among his own people, or if he was simply engrossed in the project.

“What do you mean
supposed
to?” Yanko asked quietly—reasonably.

He wasn’t going to throw a tantrum. He just wanted to know. Maybe he should be trying to negotiate with Dak. Nobody else here was going to listen to him. And if Dak was somebody among the Turgonians, couldn’t he possibly do something?

Yanko looked toward the wall, wondering if Arayevo and Lakeo were in the next cabin or if they had been given something less sophisticated. This double-cabin wasn’t exactly luxurious—the Turgonians liked hard edges and gray paint a lot—but it was roomy, and space was a luxury on a ship, even a big ironclad. Yanko had no doubt that it was Dak who warranted the special treatment, not him.

“I’m not pleased with the situation, either, Yanko,” Dak said. “I don’t know how Sun Dragon finagled himself aboard, and when I talked to Ravencrest, he just said something about an order from the Turgonian embassy on Kyatt. There’s not a communication orb on here, so I can’t contact anyone.”

“Anyone? Like the Turgonian president, perhaps?”

“You think a stowaway diplomat warrants his attention?”

“A lost continent being discovered might. Besides, I figured you two might chat regularly about life, the universe, pretty women, oh, and about how lovely it is to share a surname with the man.”

“If a lost continent appears, I’ll be happy to talk to him about it. I’m still highly skeptical the rock will lead us to that.”

So skeptical he was perusing that atlas like a student cramming for an exam that started in ten minutes? “And the other things?”

“Rias has been happily married for more than twenty years, and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that he’s even aware that other women exist.”

Rias? Was that their president’s name? If so, it wasn’t the one the newspapers used. A nickname?

“And Turgonians don’t usually philosophize about life and the universe unless a lot of alcohol is involved. He doesn’t have time to drink.”

“So... how closely are you related? To
Rias
?”

Dak leaned his arm on the back of the chair and sighed at him. At least he had stopped looking at the atlas.

“Look, I’d just like to know so I can better formulate my negotiating tactics,” Yanko said.

“We’re negotiating?”

“I haven’t started yet, but I intend to.”

“Ah.”

“Brother?” Yanko guessed.

Dak’s eye widened. “Do I look that old?”

“Too old to be one of his children. I’ve heard they’re closer to my age.”

“You’ve
heard
? Yanko, you met two of them.”

“I? Oh.” The kids who had been so eager to defend their homestead against invaders. Yanko rubbed his forehead. “I was distracted that night. And I didn’t speak the language.”

“He’s my father’s brother, and he spent most of my adult life at sea or in Kyatt with his Kyattese wife.”

“So you don’t know him that well?”

“I know him better now than I did a couple of years ago, but he’s not going to jump in front of a steam wagon for me. And it doesn’t matter insofar as your negotiations. A blood relation to someone powerful doesn’t make you someone important in the empire. I’m just a soldier, like I said.”

“Your clan doesn’t receive increased status because of his war fame and presidency?”

Dak’s expression grew sour. “Our
status
was fine before he came along.”

For the first time, Yanko got a hint as to why Dak might be... surly, as Lakeo said. Or maybe the term was bitter. Had he grown up in his uncle’s shadow? Long before Turgonia had switched from an empire to a republic that had needed a president, Fleet Admiral Sashka Federias Starcrest had been famous—infamous, from the Nurian point of view—for his battle tactics. He had sunk countless Nurian ships during the war. He might have even encountered Pey Lu. Yanko had no way to know who had come out ahead in that encounter, but the senior Starcrest clearly hadn’t been utterly destroyed.

“Did you become a soldier because of him?” Yanko asked, then wondered if he should have dropped it and moved on to the proposition that was tinkling around in the back of his head, a proposition that could get him killed back home if anyone heard about it. Any minute, he expected Dak to decide the conversation was over and return to studying the atlas.

“I suppose. My father works in the orchard and spends his days mixing hard ciders to produce the best varietals for the family business. I thought it was incredibly boring and was enraptured by the stories that made it home about my uncle’s exploits. I studied math and engineering in school, with a notion of following in his footsteps, but by the time I was graduating from the military academy—not four years early, as he’d done—the Western Sea Conflict was over, and nobody thought there would be open trouble with Nuria again for a while. I also found that the expectations, wherever I went, were insane, just because I was his relative. I couldn’t imagine commanding soldiers and having them expect his brilliance from me.” And then disappointing them, the sour, almost pained look in Dak’s eye said, even if he didn’t speak the words. “I went into intelligence instead. Your work is less visible, and you’re not commanding hordes of men on a ship or a battlefield. That’s where I had languages training.”

“And mage-hunter training?” Yanko could see where that would be useful for someone who would be an operative working in countries where magic was accepted and commonplace. It would be hard to be a spy if every telepath could read one’s thoughts.

“Just the resisting magic part of it. They’ve got a mage hunter who defected after the war, because of family dishonor, I believe.” Dak raised his eyebrows at Yanko. What did that mean? That he thought
Yanko
should defect? “He teaches the soldiers in the program who have an aptitude for it. I had a hard skull and took to it naturally.” He snorted. “What a skill.”

“It’s been useful for you here in this mission.”

“
This
mission? This is
your
mission. I was sent to your country to gather information about the rebel factions and to free prisoners of war, wrongfully taken ones. We have a treaty with your people right now and are not at war.” Dak’s stare grew cool.

As if Yanko had been the one to capture Turgonians and throw them into the salt mine. He doubted his uncle had had anything to do with that, either. He’d likely just put them to work when they had shown up, along with the criminals. For all he knew, the Turgonians had
been
criminals.

Dak’s gaze shifted back toward the atlas. Bored with the conversation, was he?

Yanko paced on the hard metal floor, aware of the coldness under his bare feet. Didn’t Turgonians believe in rugs? Kei ruffled his feathers again and made a few chirping noises, probably letting Yanko know he was interrupting the bird’s sleep.

While he paced, he debated what he wanted to propose—what he
dared
propose. Perhaps he could ask for Dak’s help without proposing anything, but it sounded like attacking Sun Dragon or, as Yanko would settle for, throwing Sun Dragon overboard, might violate Dak’s orders and put his former bodyguard at odds with the chain of command on this ship.

“If you were studying the rebels,” Yanko said slowly, “then you know more than I do about what’s going on at home. Is there a certain faction that your people want to come out on top? Or are you hoping that it will all die down before the real fighting begins and that the Great Chief will remain in control?” That would be ideal, because Yanko could support that without betraying anyone.