Snake Heart (2 page)

“What is it?” Yanko wondered.

At first, he assumed it was something stationary sticking up from the bottom of the ocean—the water must be growing shallower as they sailed closer to the island. Then he reached out with his senses, brushing past schools of fish, and found something unexpected underneath the water.

“There are people under it,” he blurted as he detected four distinct human presences. None of them were familiar, but that did not fill him with relief. Sun Dragon may have sent them.

“It’s a
flugnugstica
,” came Dak’s voice from behind them. “An underwater boat.”

He stood a few steps away, a stuffed rucksack on his back, a short sword strapped to his waist, and a repeating rifle in hand. Even if his size, musculature, and olive skin hadn’t promised he was Turgonian, the firearm and his factory-made cotton clothing would have implied it.

“That piece sticking up is the periscope,” Dak added. “They’re able to look all around on the surface with it.”

“An underwater boat. The Turgonians are following us?” Yanko slumped against the railing.

He had been expecting the Nurians, but were Turgonians after him too? Yanko had accepted that his bodyguard was probably a spy for the Turgonian government, and knew that he might have to fight him for the lodestone someday, but what could he do? Without Dak’s help, Yanko would not have a chance of finding the lodestone. He couldn’t even
read
the Kyattese texts Dak was using for research.

“It could be Turgonians,” Dak said, his single eye pointed toward the tube. The device disappeared beneath the surface as he finished the statement, leaving nothing but the waves behind. “It could also be the Kyattese.”

“Which do you think is more likely?” Yanko watched his face carefully, positive that Dak had reported in to his embassy when they had been on Kyatt.

As usual, Dak’s face gave away little, and Yanko shifted uneasily when that one eye turned to regard him. Standing nearly six and a half feet tall, with broad shoulders and muscular arms, Dak would have been intimidating even without any battle wounds, but several scars and the missing eye left little doubt that he was a veteran soldier. Why he didn’t bother wearing an eye patch, Yanko did not know, but meeting the man’s gaze always made him uncomfortable. Maybe that was why Dak didn’t bother.

“The Kyattese have been known to be secretive about their past,” Dak said, “which isn’t as peaceful as they would like the modern world to believe. They may not wish anyone to find evidence of their past failures. Or they may want to keep their lost continent to themselves, if such a thing truly exists.” He sniffed, as if he believed that unlikely. For someone who felt that way, he was spending a lot of hours in the cabin researching the lodestone.

“How would the Kyattese have come to know of my quest?” Yanko asked quietly, moving away from the smuggler with the spyglass. “Would Mela have told others?”

Dak snorted. “Maybe, maybe not, but what you’re up to isn’t much of a secret anymore, not with the authorities from multiple nations on your heels.”

Yanko grimaced. He did not know if Dak was trying to direct him away from the idea that the Turgonians were following him, but maybe it didn’t matter. Whether it was the Kyattese or the Turgonians, Yanko had to ensure that
he
found the lodestone first.

A boom sounded from one of the aft cannons, and Yanko jumped. The projectile lofted away and splashed into the water near where the periscope had poked up. Minark jogged into sight and stopped beside the artilleryman. The second aft cannon fired from Yanko’s other side.

Out in the water, the periscope did not reappear. Yanko sensed startled fish diving toward coral on the ocean floor, and one scared octopus plastered itself to the side of the
Falcon’s Flight
. He also sensed the humans traveling away from the schooner. The cannonballs had not splashed down near the underwater boat.

“That’ll teach those Turgonians not to spy on us,” Minark said, tossing a glower in Dak’s direction.

“Kyattese,” Dak said.

“What?”

“Kyattese spies. Or scientists, more likely.”

“How can you tell?”

Yanko wondered that, too, since a moment ago, Dak had not been certain.

Dak narrowed his eye at the captain. “If you had fired at my people, they would have fired back and sunk your ship.” Dak stalked toward a pair of rowboats that could be lowered for transport, passing Minark as he went. “There’s a cove on the north side of the island. Anchor there so we can row ashore.”

“I don’t care for taking orders from your bodyguard, White Fox,” Minark growled at Yanko.

Yanko shrugged. “He’s the one with the maps.”

“Maybe not for long,” Minark muttered under his breath, stalking off.

Chapter 2

T
he sun was warm, the salty breeze pleasant, and yet Yanko had an uneasy feeling as he and Dak rowed through the cove. Adobe buildings lined a black sand beach and perched upon rocky outcroppings that cupped the sheltered hollow. Shutters banged in the breeze, the only movement. Neither animal nor human voices arose from the village, and the fishing boats tied to the single pier with enough slack to rise and fall with the tide did not look like they had been used for a while.

Using his mental powers, Yanko searched the palm and koa trees behind the dwellings. He did not detect anyone out there. Even the animal life was scant, with nothing larger than rats lurking near the beach.

“Those don’t look like ruins where treasures would be buried,” Minark said.

He, Lakeo, and Arayevo were also in the rowboat, sitting while Dak and Yanko manned the oars. Several of the captain’s crew followed in a second boat. Lakeo had offered to row, but Yanko had a notion that men shouldn’t sit idle while women worked. Besides, this had given him the opportunity to roll up his sleeves so Arayevo could admire the rippling muscles of his forearms. Unfortunately, she was sitting next to Minark and looking at the dwellings instead of at his physique.

“I’m talking to you, bodyguard,” Minark added when nobody responded.

Dak kept rowing. “I said nothing about ruins.”

“No, you said nothing about nothing. As usual. I’m the one making observations. What kind of pirates would bury their treasure in a populated village?”

“It’s not populated now,” Yanko said quietly.

Arayevo tilted her head. “Are you sure? I thought the people might be hiding. If there’s frequent pirate activity out here...”

“Nobody’s in the village. I’m not sure if anyone’s on the island at all. I can’t sense all the way to the other side, but maybe—” Yanko looked to where Kei perched at the stern of the boat.

He reached out to the parrot with his mind and found him thinking about nuts and seeds that he might hunt for on the beach. Yanko planted the suggestion that there might be more nut trees inland, asked Kei to look, and also to let him know if he spotted anyone along the way.

The parrot squawked and sprang into the air, flying inland.

“Did you do that?” Minark asked. “Or did it suddenly get an itch to go look for a mate?”

“He’s more interested in food than mates, as far as I can tell,” Yanko said, avoiding the question. The captain might have seen him use magic often enough that he wouldn’t be surprised to learn Yanko could communicate with animals, but it did not hurt to keep a few secrets to himself.

“Judging by the way he beats Yanko in the head with his wings, it’s possible he thinks Yanko is his mate,” Lakeo said.

“Have I mentioned how glad I am that you accompanied me from Kyatt?” Yanko muttered.

“Have
I
mentioned that Kei left a gift on the back of your shoulder the last time he visited?”

Yanko sighed.

“There.” Dak nodded toward the end of the pier, a single wooden boardwalk stretching into the cove. Nets and buoys decorated the wooden posts, the rope frayed and worn. He pulled the rowboat close enough to tie it, but he paused in the middle of the task, turning his head toward the beach and sniffing the air.

“What is it?” Yanko climbed onto the dock, the sword he had borrowed from the ship’s limited armory bumping against the edge. He sniffed, too, but couldn’t smell more than dead fish and seaweed.

“I don’t think the villagers left.” Dak pulled his rifle off his back, checked his ammunition, and strode down the pier, not waiting for the other boat to be tied.

Yanko trotted after him. “What do you mean?”

“I’d hoped to talk to these people and ask if any of the elders remembered Heanolik Tomokosis,” Dak said, giving the Kyattese name for the Mausoleum Bandit. “Reports I got from the police archives said he came here often to resupply and visit a woman. The Kyattese tried to lay a trap for him in this cove once, before they ultimately got lucky and sank his ship elsewhere. Someone here might remember him and have an idea if he had a cache on this island.”

“Are we sure there
is
a cache?” Yanko asked as they neared the head of the pier.

“None of the items he stole from the museum were recovered with the wreck. If he’d sold the purloined items, some of them should have turned up in personal collections and made their way back to Kyatt over the years. I did some research while you were hiding in the volcano, and I can confirm that nobody has seen that lodestone in decades.”

“We weren’t
hiding
. We were fleeing for our lives from a lava flow.” Yanko shuddered at the memory—he had lost his only pair of good walking shoes to that lava and was stuck treasure hunting in sandals. “In a brave and manly way.”

“Lakeo was being manly?”

“She’s better at it than I am.”

“I heard that,” Lakeo called from behind them.

She and Arayevo were heading up the pier behind Yanko and Dak while Minark and his crew members discussed something back at the rowboats—probably a strategy for clubbing Yanko over the head as soon as he found the treasure.

The dead fish scent grew stronger. Yanko half expected to see the carcass of a seal or other large creature washed up on the beach. Only dried palm fronds littered the sand. A door banged against a wall somewhere in the village, and a creaking noise drifted on the breeze.

Dak led the way toward a dirt road that traveled from the pier to the houses. The scent of death increased as they grew closer to the dwellings, and the uneasy feeling that had been nagging at Yanko grew more prominent. He began to grasp what Dak had meant when he said that the villagers hadn’t left.

Dak pushed at a partially open door with the tip of his rifle. Crows squawked and flew out, and Yanko stumbled back, readying his magical defenses before his mind caught up to his instincts.

“Just some birds,” he whispered to himself, but that didn’t make him feel any better. With the door open, the stench of death increased, and he had to fight the urge to gag.

“Who died in this remote hole?” Lakeo asked, curling her lip.

“This person, for one.” Dak pointed his rifle into the house’s interior.

Surprise flashed across Lakeo’s face. Maybe she hadn’t realized how accurate her question had been.

Yanko doubted he wanted to see the house’s contents, but he leaned close enough to peer around the jamb. A gray-haired woman in a dress dangled from a rope tied to a ceiling beam, her bare feet swaying slightly, disturbed by the crows. Her eyes had been pecked out, and her flesh had started to rot.

The stench assailed Yanko’s nose, forcing him back. He gripped his belly. He did not want to throw up, not in front of Dak, and not in front of Arayevo or Minark, either. They were walking up the beach together, and he waved for them to stay back. It gave him an excuse to take several more steps from the house and the sight—and smell—of the dead woman.

Dak walked into the room.

“Turgonians,” Yanko muttered. Death probably did not bother him at all. Yanko wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Turgonian cologne that mimicked the stench of a battlefield.

Dak soon walked out and moved on to the house across the street. Yanko followed him but paused when he spotted a coconut husk doll lying on the clay tile floor inside the threshold. He stopped and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to come face to face with children strung up from the ceiling beams.

Yanko dropped his chin onto his fist, staring bleakly at the packed earth outside of the house, the stink of death all around him. He didn’t know these people, but he couldn’t help but empathize with them, especially when his own village had so recently been destroyed, his own home burned. He had no idea if his brother and cousins and great uncle and father were alive or dead, and he had no way to get in touch with someone who could tell him.

Dak walked out of the house, shaking his head slightly when he met Yanko’s eyes. He did not say a word, but his grim face spoke for him, saying,
Don’t go in there.

Yanko could have kept following him and helped him search, but Dak did not request help, and his face darkened more and more with each home he exited. Yanko walked back out to the beach to where Arayevo and Minark had stopped. Lakeo came with him, her face a few shades paler than usual.

“Are you all right, Yanko?” Arayevo asked.

He shook his head. “Better than the people who live here.
Lived
here.”

“There’s not some disease that killed everyone, is there?” Minark fingered one of the charms at his waist as he watched Dak stalk from building to building.

Sometimes, Dak came right out, but sometimes he remained inside for longer. Once, he folded a paper as he exited a home. He tucked it into a pocket and continued searching.

“Not unless the disease required them to hang themselves as they died,” Yanko said, haunted by the memory of the woman on the rope.

“People have weird funeral practices,” Minark said. “And weird superstitions to ward off death.”

“Someone came here and killed them. I can’t imagine why.” Yanko considered the beach and the village. There was nothing of great value. Who would have bothered killing these people, and why?

“Why is your bodyguard looking in houses?”