Snake Heart Page 3

  Yanko started to follow him, but he paused when a parrot flew into view.

  Kei? He tried to get a sense of what the bird had seen.

  “Puntak, puntak!” the parrot blurted, landing on Yanko’s shoulder and filling his mind with imagines of green pinecones that he had thoroughly de-seeded. Kei made a contented cooing sound, then shared an image of Yanko also eating seeds.

  “Did he see anything?” Lakeo asked, walking over now that Yanko’s conversation with Dak had broken up.

  “He saw a lot of seeds.”

  “Well, that’s important, isn’t it?”

  “I think he’s disappointed that I didn’t come inland to feast with him.”

  “Because he thinks of you as his mate. Mates eat together.”

  “Ha ha.” Yanko jogged after Dak, debating if the parrot felt heavier on his shoulder. “Any chance you saw any humans while you were gorging yourself, Kei?”

  “Sea monkeys,” Kei announced.

  Yanko’s step faltered. “That’s Kyattese slang for a sailor, isn’t it?”

  “By slang, you mean an offensive term that land lovers use to describe those who scurry about in rigging, right?” Lakeo asked.

  “Yes, most of what comes out of Kei’s mouth is offensive.”

  “That’s not a nice thing to say about your mate.”

  Yanko sighed at her.

  Lakeo lifted her hands. “Sorry, I’m just jealous because I don’t have anyone, furred, feathered, or skinned to share my hammock at night. I didn’t get much of a chance to look for company on Kyatt, and most of these smugglers have missing teeth.”

  “Missing teeth aren’t acceptable, but fur and feathers would be?” Yanko picked up his pace so he could catch up with Dak, who had started up a trail through the trees, heading toward a rocky rise that overlooked the village and the sea.

  “It’s not an ideal world that we live in. You can’t be too choosy if you want love to find you.”

  Yanko glanced toward the pier as they started up the trail. One of boats was being rowed back toward the ship while the rest of Minark’s men prepared the second boat. He thought he spotted people scurrying about on the deck of the Falcon’s Flight too. Making ready to sail?

  “Lakeo?” Yanko held out a hand to stop her. “I’m going to follow Dak, but would you do me a favor?”

  “Make sure they don’t leave without us?” She frowned down the hill toward the end of the pier.

  “Yes.” Yanko shuddered at the notion of being left on this island and having to spend the night near the village.

  Lakeo thumped a fist into her open palm. “They had better not be.” She nodded curtly and jogged toward the pier.

  Yanko hurried after Dak. He doubted anyone would be lingering on this Oracle Hill if the villagers had been killed a week ago, but he, too, longed for clues and hoped against logic that they might find some.

  The slope grew steeper, the trail turning to switchbacks. As he gained elevation, Yanko could see the beach, village, and cove spread out below, as well as the sea to either side of the island. Lakeo had reached the end of the pier and looked to be arguing with the men there. Arayevo and Minark stood on the beach near the head of the pier. She had her hands planted on his chest and her feet spread. Trying to keep him from leaving?

  Yanko picked up his pace. “Dak?”

  They might have to forgo this side trip.

  Down on the beach, Arayevo appeared to switch tactics. She stopped Minark by clasping his hand and pulling him away from the pier. Yanko couldn’t hear their words, but the captain went with her. They headed toward palm trees rising from a hillock at the end of the beach. Arayevo pulled Minark between two of them, leaned her back against a trunk, and rested her hands on his waist. She said something, then pulled him close, and they kissed.

  Yanko tripped over a root and fell face-first to the ground. Kei squawked and flew off his shoulder.

  Yanko groaned and climbed to his feet quickly, his face hot as he wondered if anyone had seen. He had missed the switchback, walked off the trail, and was lucky he hadn’t tumbled down the slope. He brushed dirt off his hands. Arayevo and Minark were too busy kissing to have noticed his fall.

  He turned up the trail, putting his back to them, and ran faster than he had been before. Maybe Arayevo was just trying to help him, distracting Minark so he wouldn’t leave, but even if that was her motivation, Yanko could not bear to watch. By the time he crested the ridge, he was sprinting. He leaped over roots and fronds stretching across the trail, his only thought that he wanted to get away, so far away that he couldn’t look back and see Arayevo kissing someone else.

  Chapter 3

  When Yanko reached the top of the hill, he rounded a bend and would have crashed into his bodyguard if Dak hadn’t turned and caught him.

  “What is it?” Dak took in Yanko’s sweaty face and heavy breathing. “Trouble?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know yet.” Yanko did not want to admit that the reason he had been running was because the love of his life was kissing another man. “The captain is sending his people back and looks like he’s ready to go.”

  Ready to go... or ready to lie down in the tall grass and make love to Arayevo...

  Yanko snarled at himself, annoyed that he couldn’t push the image out of his mind or stop thinking about it.

  Dak jogged over to a large square rock on the crown of the hill. It probably gave him an excellent view of the cove and everything around it. Everything.

  “I see,” Dak said, hopping down.

  Yanko realized that the rock wasn’t simply some boulder. It was one of several black cubes that had been carved from lava rock and hauled up to the top of this hill. They formed a circle around brick pavers laid in the shape of a turtle. Yanko thought of the turtle goddess, even though it wasn’t the same symbol the Nurians used. Three columns rose behind the pavers, and crumbled blocks on the ground surrounding them suggested there might have been a roof once. A squat ceramic pot with a lid rested between two of the columns.

  “I came to tell you that there’s not time to visit this Oracle Hill,” Yanko said, trying to make his voice more composed as his breathing slowed down, “but I guess we’re already here.”

  “It seems so.” Dak walked around the outside of the turtle, examining the grass trimmed back from the pavers. Looking for tracks?

  Yanko found his gaze turning in the direction of the beach, even though he was too high to see it without walking over to the rock Dak had stood on. He firmed his chin and did not walk in that direction. Instead, he stepped onto the brick turtle, wondering what gods the people who had lived here had worshipped. None that had helped them when they had needed it.

  A faint tingle ran across his skin, the air seeming to hum around him. At first, he thought himself the target of some spell, and he turned in all directions, but nothing stirred except wind whispering through the grass and rustling leaves on nearby trees. He reached out with his senses. A fox watched them from another hill, but Yanko and Dak were the only humans here.

  Yanko knelt and touched the bricks. They seemed to be the source of the power he felt. Perhaps this was a sacred place, something once used by the gods. He slid his hand along the pavers, wondering at their age. Was it possible that Nurian gods had been here once? His people had long traveled the seas, since before the Kyattese and the Turgonians had found their respective lands.

  A soft scrape sounded, Dak removing the lid and looking in the pot.

  He snorted. “I suppose this is the true source of the oracle’s wisdom.”

  “What do you mean?” Yanko walked over to join him. As soon as he stepped off the turtle patio, the tingling sensation left him.

  Dak pulled out a dried plant that reminded Yanko of rosemary, if there was such a thing as blue rosemary. He looked at some artwork etched into the column behind the pot.

  “It looks like you chew on this before sitting in the circle—on the turtle.” Dak waved to the pavers, his tone going dry as he
continued. “Somehow, I’m guessing you get a vision whether you pray to a god or an oracle or not.”

  Yanko wondered if Dak would think him a fool if he did just that, nibbling on the plant, then kneeling to pray for guidance. If the gods had a presence here, perhaps they could help. If they considered him worthy of help. Earlier in their journey, Yanko had wondered if some god might be guiding his steps, reuniting him with Arayevo, Lakeo, and Dak, so that he had the allies he needed to complete his quest. Now, as he stood in the cooling evening air, his cheeks still flushed with embarrassment from seeing Arayevo kissing that smuggler, he suspected such thoughts had been foolish. What did the gods care about him?

  “Want to give it a try?” Dak waved the blue rosemary.

  “It could be poisonous.”

  “The man on the column is flossing his teeth with it.”

  “You don’t think a column would lie?” Yanko took the dried sprig. It was probably meant to be consumed fresh, but nobody had been up here to replenish the pot. He rubbed it across the inside of his arm to see if it gave him hives or a welt. That was a good indication that ingestion would be a bad idea.

  Dak walked across the patio and hopped onto the rock again.

  “Is the ship still there?” Yanko looked at his skin in the fading light, but saw no sign that he was allergic to the plant.

  “Yes. The captain is distracted.”

  “Still?” Yanko couldn’t help it. The word came out as a whine. In all of his fantasies, he hadn’t imagined kisses with Arayevo lasting that long. Well, maybe in some. In some, the kisses had segued into other things.

  “Sorry, Yanko.” Dak sounded sincere.

  Yanko wondered what it meant that the Turgonian bodyguard that he’d manipulated into working with him treated him better than anyone else along on this mission. Probably that he would feel much more betrayed when Dak stabbed him in the back and took the lodestone to his people.

  Grumbling, Yanko chomped on the dried herb, hardly caring if it killed him, and stalked onto the pavers. It had a surprisingly minty taste, as if it belonged in a dessert instead of in a prayer pot.

  Out on the turtle, Yanko removed his sword belt and knelt, facing away from Dak, not wanting him to hear his off-key muttering of the Song of Prayer. Yanko took a deep breath and closed his eyes, sweeping thoughts of jealousy and women out of his head. He chanted softly and, as he had been taught as a boy by his great uncle, imagined pouring all of the thoughts out of his head, like water spilling from a pitcher. With his mind empty, he opened himself up for the wisdom of the gods.

  The breeze teased his hair and tugged at his shirt. The sweat he had developed sprinting up the hill cooled, and he shivered as the sun dropped lower.

  Yanko did not know how long he knelt upon the pavers, but his knees started to ache. He did not receive any visions. Finally, he sighed and opened his eyes. This side trip had been a waste of time.

  Twilight blanketed the island, and he wondered if he would be able to find his way back down to the beach. Before he rose to try, something stirred in the foliage between the trees. A branch snapped, a large branch. Yanko’s heart rate doubled.

  Behind him, a soft click sounded. Dak checking the readiness of his rifle’s ammunition.

  As Yanko climbed to his feet, he used his mage senses to investigate the shadows. Immediately, he held up a hand toward Dak.

  “It’s not dangerous,” he said.

  “It’s big enough to break a lot of bones if it steps on your foot.”

  Yanko snorted. Dak must have better sight than he had, or maybe he had seen the giant tortoise moving around in the trees earlier.

  “Did you receive a vision?” Dak asked neutrally. He sounded like a man who did not believe in such things trying to be polite to someone who did.

  Disappointment flooded Yanko. He wished he could say he had received a vision, that one of the gods had promised to help him.

  “No.”

  The giant tortoise shuffled out of the trees, flattening the grass as it ambled closer. It stopped at the edge of the pavers and stared at Yanko.

  With a start, he realized the gods might be communicating with him after all, or at least offering a means to help. He reached out to the tortoise, as he had done thousands of times with his hounds, trying to get a sense of its mind and of what it had seen in its life. He could not remember communicating with a tortoise before. Its mind was strange, much different from that of a hound. It seemed very orderly, the thoughts slow and steady, methodical.

  Yanko put an image of the village into its mind, wondering if it had been a silent witness to what had happened there. To his surprise, the tortoise thought of the moment the invaders had come right away, perhaps because it, too, had been concerned by the invaders. As if from the tortoise’s eyes, Yanko saw the arrival of black-painted boats at the pier, of intruders coming in the night, men and women carrying cutlasses and pistols. Three people wore robes, the symbols on the hems glowing with golden energy, and Yanko’s stomach twisted into a knot. Nurians. His own people had attacked the village?

  The others were not wearing uniforms, so they weren’t part of the military, rebels or otherwise. Some of the intruders had colorful clothing, yellow and red sashes wrapped around the waists of loose silks, but others appeared more Turgonian in dress, with factory-made garments. Still others wore clothing Yanko had never seen before.

  As one, the intruders charged into the village, breaking down doors and dragging people into the night. One of the last boats to arrive brought a woman in a fiery red robe, and Yanko’s jaw sagged open. It was the woman he had seen on a wanted poster in Kyatt, an older version of the woman his father kept a portrait of in his room.

  Yanko’s mother, Snake Heart Pey Lu, strode up the pier to the village, her power almost crackling in the air around her. A big man with a saber and a pistol trailed at her back. Her bodyguard?

  Pey Lu stopped with her arms folded over her chest as her people lined up the villagers on the beach, forcing them to kneel in the sand. Her men held swords to the natives’ throats. Her bodyguard and two other men tormented the people, questioning them and then dragging them up to their houses to hang them. Yanko wanted to tear his gaze away, but it was as if his mind was locked to the tortoise’s now. An unbreakable link held him, forcing him to watch. Any fantasies he might have had of his mother being misjudged by his people were dashed. There was nothing good about her. She stood and watched it all, her face hard and indifferent.

  Chapter 4

  When the pirates finally strode back toward their boats, leaving death in their wake, the tortoise’s vision ended. Yanko flopped onto his back. The coolness of the bricks bled through his shirt.

  After a couple of minutes, Dak appeared, looming over him, his head a dark silhouette against the deepening sky. “Were you communicating with that tortoise or were you mesmerized by looking into its eyes?”

  Yanko groaned. “You’re not going to accuse me of attracting animals that want me for a mate, are you?”

  “No.” Dak’s deadpan tone suggested it wouldn’t occur to him to make such a tasteless joke. Until he added, “But I suppose if you sought to do that, a hundred-year-old tortoise would be more reliable than a flighty bird.”

  Yanko rolled to his feet. “The tortoise showed me what happened, Dak. It was my—it was the pirate, Snake Heart.”

  He didn’t know why he switched from admitting that it had been his mother. Dak already knew that disgraceful family secret. Maybe he thought he could disassociate himself from her by using her name.

  “She was here? She tortured and killed those people?” Dak’s voice grew cold, as if he took the affront personally.

  “Yes, she oversaw it all. The tortoise showed me.” Yanko looked toward the heavens, wondering if the turtle god had sent the creature by at the right time to share its knowledge. In case he had, Yanko sent up a silent thank-you.

  “Did it see anything else interesting in the last seventy years or so?”


  Yanko froze as he realized what Dak was asking. Might the tortoise be that old? Was it possible that it had been a witness to the pirate thief’s visits all those years ago? Or maybe it had traveled across the entire island and knew where things might be hidden.

  Yanko rubbed his jaw. For some reason, the tortoise hadn’t moved. It had stopped with its feet on the pavers, waiting. Yanko couldn’t imagine how to dig into its memories to find some tidbit from decades in the past. Most animals lived in the moment, having no concept of the future and little concern about the past. Still, the tortoise had shown him the beach, something that had happened a week earlier.

  The creature shuffled closer, as if it wanted to share with Yanko.

  With another glance toward the heavens, Yanko crouched down beside it. Hoping the tortoise would not mind, he rested a hand on the cool shell. Close contact might help, but he did not know how to get the creature to think about something that had happened decades in the past.

  “Dak, you don’t have a picture of the Kyattese thief, do you? Something from one of the newspaper articles?”

  “I do.” Dak removed his pack, lit a lantern, and rummaged through his belongings. He walked over with the light and crouched, holding out a faded newspaper clipping.

  Yanko tried to turn the portrait into an image of a person in his mind, then shared it with the tortoise. He could feel the minutes tick past and the stars come out as the creature thought about it.

  Finally, the tortoise shared another image, and Yanko saw it, a younger and spryer tortoise hustling down a forest path that led toward the interior of the island. It passed rocks and trees, and skirted a ravine before slipping into a pool with a waterfall pouring into it. The tortoise paddled sedately across it, enjoying the sun warming its shell.

  As Yanko started to think that his divinely provided guide was distracted as easily as Kei, the tortoise noticed a human picking his way along the thick foliage at the pool’s edge. The man’s face was identical to the one from the Kyattese newspaper article, and he carried a bulging sack over his shoulder.