Snake Heart Page 21

  “Well, I thank you for arguing for coming to get me.” He wanted to thank her for leaning her hip against his so enticingly, too, but that seemed less appropriate. “How did you change his mind? I assume you weren’t able to force him to do anything.”

  “That was Lakeo actually. After we’d nagged—it’s all right to call it nagging, because that’s what it was—to no effect, she pointed out that he’d probably get a bunch of awards in Turgonia if he was the one to take down Captain Snake Heart.”

  “Ah.” Yanko couldn’t manage more of a response. He had only been on Pey Lu’s ship for three days, but they had been a strange three days, with her giving him the gift of her robe and teaching and advising him. She’d made it clear that they were at odds, competing on the same mission, but somewhere during those days, he’d also stopped thinking of her as his enemy.

  “I think he likes you, too, because I did catch him sketching out tactics in a notepad, like he’d been thinking about attacking or launching some kind of rescue, even before we brought it up. But I wouldn’t count on that keeping you alive if his people show up and give him an order. Like an order to chop off your head.”

  “No, I wouldn’t presume that he would put me above his people.” Yanko wished he could presume that, that he could count on Dak not to betray him, to be someone he could trust, because... he wasn’t even sure. It was just nice being able to depend on him, the way he had started to depend on Uncle Mishnal.

  “We better return, or he’ll get suspicious,” Arayevo said. “He seems to think I’m particularly shifty.”

  “Well, you are.” Yanko managed a smile for her.

  She ruffled his hair and lowered her arm. Yanko winced because that was surely a gesture one gave to one’s little brother, not the love of one’s life.

  “Arayevo?” he asked, stopping her before she turned away.

  She glanced toward the others. Lakeo was pointing at a bush growing from the base of the cairn and gesturing.

  “Yes?” Arayevo asked.

  “I wanted to tell you, in case something happens and we’re separated again... or even in case it doesn’t—”

  Yanko took a deep breath, unable to believe how nervous he felt. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t like her response, but he couldn’t seem to let go of the hope that he would be wrong. That all he had to do was express his true feelings and she would be overwhelmed with emotion and realize she felt the same way. Or that she could grow to feel the same way in time. One way or another, he had to know. He couldn’t go on fantasizing about her and driving himself crazy when she looked at other men without ever having told her...

  “I love you,” Yanko said, the words tumbling out so quickly that he didn’t know if she would understand them. “I love you,” he said again, more slowly. Carefully.

  He expected surprise, stunned silence. Gaping. Staring. Disbelief.

  Instead, Arayevo smiled sadly and said, “I know you do, Yanko.”

  “Oh.” He groped for the next thing to say, but all useful words and thoughts had fled his brain. “Have you always known?”

  She tilted her head. “Have you always felt that way?”

  “Almost always. Ten years at least.”

  “Since you were eight?”

  “Yes. That’s not odd, is it?”

  “No odder than the rest of you.” She smiled and squeezed his shoulder before lowering her arm. Their hips no longer touched.

  Yanko sighed sadly. “Good to know.”

  “I’m sorry, Yanko. I’ve tried not to be... encouraging, but sometimes I forget. I have come to think of you as a friend, not just the little pest who was always wandering off into the forest and disappearing for hours when I was in charge of you—do you know how many times your father came home and asked where you were and I couldn’t produce you?”

  “Uhm. Three?”

  “More like thirty-three. I was shocked he kept inviting me back for babysitting duty. I think it was only because you kept requesting me.”

  Yanko scuffed the ground with his foot. He didn’t want to share memories of him as a child with Arayevo. He wanted to make new memories with her, and for her to see him as a man, though he supposed he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  “My point is that I care about you,” Arayevo said, “and you are a really good friend. I just can’t imagine... I don’t see you romantically. To me, you’re still the little boy who ran around calling me ‘Yevo and pulling my hair when I picked you up.”

  He lifted his chin. He was not that little boy anymore.

  “I’m sorry. I know that’s not fair, but we don’t get to choose who we fall in love with. And who we don’t.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “That doesn’t mean I won’t always care about you. And I’ll always be there if you need to be rescued from pirates.”

  “Thank you.” Yanko thought about pointing out that he hadn’t needed rescuing, that his mother had been trying to recruit him for her fleet. But what was the point? That wouldn’t change how she saw him. “I’m going to try to avoid needing to be rescued in the future.”

  “Good. That sounds healthy.” She patted him on the back and headed to the cairn.

  Yanko took a couple of moments—and a couple of deep breaths—to collect himself. He hadn’t broken into tears. Maybe that was something. Or maybe he’d known in his heart for a long time that this would never be. Why did hearts sometimes know things before brains could accept them?

  His neck hairs stirred at someone drawing upon the mental sciences nearby.

  Yanko spun toward the cairn as the bush at its base burst into flames. Lakeo stood with her fingers splayed, and a triumphant expression on her face.

  Something squealed in pain from within the fire, and Yanko cringed, sensing a pair of rodents that had been hiding under the boughs. They died before he could do anything to squelch the flame or help them.

  “Oops,” Lakeo said, lowering her hands.

  Dak clanked the cairn with his machete. “I could have simply cut away the branches.”

  “I wanted to practice.”

  Yanko walked over, trying to keep the judgment off his face as the flames died out. Dak grumbled something under his breath and cut away the charred branches. Someone had carved geometric images into the rock, a series of overlapping triangles that created other shapes within their lines. Symbols that Yanko recognized as numbers, if not numbers in his own language, marked some of the sides.

  “A puzzle?” Arayevo asked, also not mentioning the dying squeals of the rodents.

  “It looks like a math problem.” Dak dug into a pocket of his pack and pulled out the journal that Yanko had only briefly seen. “The Kyattese like math.”

  Turgonians supposedly liked math, too, those who studied engineering instead of war, anyway.

  “Would a Kyattese thief assume pirates or other thieves wouldn’t like math?” Arayevo asked.

  “Probably a good assumption,” Lakeo muttered.

  “What are we supposed to solve for?” Yanko asked. There wasn’t any other writing on the flat surface, nor did he see any place to input one’s answer.

  “It’s not mentioned.” Dak closed the journal and crouched to study the shapes more closely.

  Yanko took the opportunity to check on the pirate ships with his mind. They were at the far edge of his range, but there were people closer. Three boats were being rowed around the island toward a beach, and he recognized two of the auras in the lead one.

  “Pey Lu is coming,” Yanko said. “With her Turgonian second-in-command and three rowboats of pirates.”

  “Of course she is,” Lakeo said.

  Dak did not speak. Yanko was tempted to ask him when he expected his Turgonian allies to arrive, but he kept his mouth shut. If he had to fail in his mission, it might be better to lose the lodestone to his mother, if she had been speaking the truth and meant to give it—or sell it—back to the Kyattese. When considering this from a distant point of view, wouldn’t
the Kyattese be better stewards for a new-old continent than the Turgonians?

  Dak pushed on a small triangle sitting within the larger triangles. Rock ground against rock, and the cairn shuddered.

  Yanko stepped back. The cairn split in half, tearing up the roots of the bush that must have grown up since the rocks had originally been piled there. A square-shaped hole was revealed, with a tunnel slanting into the ground at a steep angle. The sides of the passage were lined with skulls, the eyeholes turned outward so they could watch whoever passed through. The Mausoleum Bandit had possessed macabre decorating tastes.

  Chapter 19

  “The passage is paralleling the cliff,” Dak said, crouching to examine the tunnel under the cairn, “at least to start with. You would expect it to turn deeper into the butte.”

  “Maybe,” Yanko said. “I can feel the artifact, and it’s over that way.” He waved toward a pair of trees about ten feet from the edge of the cliff and past the place where he and Arayevo had been speaking. “That way and down quite a bit.”

  “I’ll go first.” Dak removed his pack and pulled out a lantern.

  “I can make a light,” Yanko offered.

  “Good.” Dak lit his lantern and dropped into the passage, his broad shoulders bumping against the skulls.

  “He’s probably afraid you would turn out the lights when the artifact was close and grab it for yourself,” Arayevo whispered.

  Yanko hadn’t considered doing that, but admitted that it would have been an easy way to make sure he was the one to snatch it, especially since he could sense his way with his mind. Well, he could still snuff out Dak’s lantern, if the opportunity arose.

  “Will you two stay here, guard the entrance, and warn me if the pirates get close?” Yanko hated to leave Lakeo and Arayevo behind, especially with the mage hunter skulking around somewhere on the island, but this didn’t look like a passage that had a back door, so he and Dak would have to return the same way. He didn’t want to step out and into the arms of thirty pirates. “I’ll reach out to you periodically.” He touched his temple.

  “When did you learn how to do that with people?” Arayevo asked. “I felt you in my head when we were on the underwater boat.”

  “I’ve always known how to do it with animals. I’m trying to expand my abilities, so I can convince women to unlock hatch doors that are trapping me in closets full of water.” Yanko lamented that he had never recovered the prison mage’s book on mind magic. It had actually been moderately useful, and since Pey Lu had suggested that he learn how to do more along that track, he could have continued to study it.

  “I can see where that would be a useful gift,” Arayevo said.

  “I’ll wait here.” Lakeo glanced at the skulls. “But I expect you to bring me back something shiny and made from gold. Or diamonds.”

  “Whatever pays the tuition at the Polytechnic?”

  “Exactly.”

  Yanko avoided looking at the remains of the burned bush. Being enrolled in a college that trained practitioners and emphasized control would be good for her.

  Aware of the pirates encroaching, he waved, then dropped into the hole behind Dak. Already several paces down the tunnel, Dak’s body blocked the scant lantern light, and Yanko created a bright sphere to illuminate the way. Dak had to walk in a hunch, his knees bent deep, his short hair brushing the ceiling. Even Yanko had to duck his head.

  He stretched out with his mind, looking for magical traps such as had awaited them in the other cave. He did not find any. Aside from the artifact itself, which beckoned him with its powerful vibe, the cave and the entire island seemed devoid of magic.

  Dak stopped, the tunnel coming to a dead end. He examined a gap in the wall between the rows of skulls. “More math problems.”

  Yanko scooted forward, trying to get a glimpse of carvings in the stone. Not that he would be much help with Kyattese math problems, unless Dak translated the numbers and symbols for him. But Dak did not ask for help. He gazed thoughtfully at equations carved into the stone, then pressed something on the wall.

  A grinding sound came, and a portion of the wall shifted inward. Yanko followed, glad for Dak’s help, but wishing the traps and obstacles were magical and that he could be the one to thwart them. He never would have found the first island—or this one—without Dak’s help, and the thought of taking the artifact when he had done so little to locate it made him uncomfortable. Pey Lu might not be bothered by the idea of laying an ambush to take it from whoever found it, but it did bother Yanko.

  Dak paused again, eyeing a skull that leaned farther out of the wall than the others. An old stone knife stuck out of its cracked and yellowed cranium.

  Just decor designed to scare trespassers, Yanko told himself. That did not keep him from muttering the Song of Courage under his breath.

  Dak looked back at him. “Are you humming or calling up some magic?”

  “I’m calling up courage. In my off-key way.”

  Dak held his gaze for a long minute, his eye narrowed again. Maybe he believed they were close to the artifact and that Yanko was planning some treachery. All Yanko could do was shrug at him, since he was thinking of treachery, or at least about how he could claim the lodestone for himself. He just hadn’t figured out how to do it yet. If his mother, with all her power, hadn’t managed to crush Dak with her mind, Yanko would not be able to thwart him, either. He might drop the ceiling, but the idea of thanking Dak for all of his help by burying him under a rockfall made Yanko sick.

  “Look,” he said, since Dak hadn’t moved, and since the rows of sightless eyes staring at them were making him uncomfortable, “let’s make a deal. We’ll get the lodestone, assuming it’s actually in here, get down to the beach without killing ourselves or each other on the climb, and then... then we can fight over it. Or make a deal. Whatever makes sense, given that pirates and mage hunters may be down there waiting to kill us.” Granted, the mage hunter probably only had orders to kill him, but the pirates ought to be more likely to go after Dak.

  Dak stared at him for a thoughtful moment, then stuck out his hand. Yanko clasped his wrist.

  “I agree with your terms,” Dak said, squeezing his arm briefly, then releasing him and turning back to an old door set between the walls of skulls.

  “Just to be fair and offer a warning, I don’t need to sing to call up my magic,” Yanko said.

  “I thought not, but I wasn’t sure that was singing. Can’t all Nurians hold a tune? I thought that was required.”

  “It’s only required if you’re going to become a holy mage and communicate with the gods on people’s behalf. The rest of the time, singing off-key just gets you mocked.”

  Dak traced a few more symbols, these carved into the door. This time, they appeared to be the Kyattese language rather than part of a math problem, though perhaps an older version of the language than Yanko had seen before. Had it changed in the seventy years since the Mausoleum Bandit had lived? Or had he deliberately chosen some historic version to use?

  Dak sighed. “I can only read half of this. Math would have been better.”

  Not sure how to help, Yanko did another check for magical traps. Once again, he found nothing. He started to lean against the wall, but realized he was leaning against skulls, and jerked away.

  “He had Tikaya,” Dak grumbled under his breath.

  “Pardon?”

  “Just... trying to find something that a relative couldn’t.”

  “Because it’s a matter of honor?”

  “Because it’s a matter of wanting to be someone for once. Stand back. I think the door is warning us not to open it.”

  Yanko scooted back. “So you’re going to?”

  “The artifact is on the other side, right?”

  “Yes, very close now.” Yanko could almost feel it humming with energy from a hollowed out chamber behind the door.

  “Do you sense any magical traps?”

  “None.”

  Dak gave him another long, a
ppraising look.

  Yanko wanted to tell him that once he gave his word, he didn’t go back on it. All he said was, “I’ll go first if you want.”

  Dak reached for the knob, but paused before his hand touched it. He eyed the skulls filling the walls on either side, then turned toward one of those walls. He gripped a skull and pulled it from its resting place with a soft crunch.

  Yanko jumped, alarmed at the idea of disturbing the dead, even if these bones had already been disturbed long ago. Dak pulled out another skull, and another. He dropped them on the ground as he continued. Yanko found himself mumbling the refrain of another song.

  “What are you singing about now?” Dak lifted his lantern, peered into the gap, and pulled out more skulls, clearing the wall vertically next to the door.

  “It’s the graveyard song. You apologize to the dead for walking through and disturbing their rest. I’m not sure if it works if you’re mutilating their bones, but I thought I’d try to protect your soul from their ire.”

  “Thoughtful.” Dak dropped more skulls on the floor.

  Yanko had known Turgonians were atheistic when it came to gods, but he hadn’t realized they were so blithe about the souls of the deceased. Didn’t they have shrines where they burned offerings for their ancestors? Maybe only Dak was so blithe.

  Apparently, he didn’t find what he was looking for because he turned around to pull skulls from the wall on the other side of the door. This time, he only tugged out four before stopping. He peered into the gap he had created, set his lantern down, reached between the remaining skulls, and turned something.

  Though Yanko doubted it was good to stand close to someone who was accumulating the ire of the dead, he couldn’t help but inch closer to see what Dak was doing.

  A soft click came from under his hands as he pulled a slender metal bar to the side, one that paralleled the door. Next came a thunk from behind the door, followed by what sounded like a lock disengaging. A few more clunks followed, then a hiss. The door swung inward.

  Dak stepped back, almost landing on Yanko’s foot.

  “You unlocked it?” Yanko asked.