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