Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,115

woman—Jhali—was more dangerous than he.

The alarm continued to wail, and ominous black smoke poured from the stacks. Someone opened a hatch, and heat flowed out, momentarily making it feel like they were back in the tropics. Shouts came up from below, from whatever engine room powered the vessel.

Though he could feel the fear of the soldiers and knew the ship could blow up, Yanko’s gaze was drawn toward the horizon where more and more peaks and ridges poked above the water, growing upward like plants on a warm sunny day.

The ironclad’s helmsman must have figured out that the boiler wasn’t their only problem, that the vessel might be stranded on land thousands of miles from Turgonian shores, with no way off. The ship steamed northward, following the rest of the fleet, a dozen ironclad ships pouring ribbons of black smoke into the sky from their stacks. The other ships were outdistancing this one. Yanko rubbed his face, wondering what exactly Sun Dragon had done before being swallowed by lava. He also wondered if it was horrible that he looked upon the land rising from the ocean with awe and satisfaction, instead of seeing a problem. Being stranded would be problematic, but he couldn’t help but see that as a future with more possibilities than being taken back to Turgonia.

An alarmed squawk sounded as Kei flapped into sight and banked toward Yanko. Relieved to see the parrot, Yanko did not mind the pain that came with talons sinking into the bare flesh of his shoulder or the request for seeds that popped into his mind.

A couple of the soldiers twitched, the barrels of their rifles shifting toward the bird. What, did they think Kei was some vile wizard’s familiar? Yanko prepared to shield himself and the parrot in case one of the men fired, but they lowered their rifles to the original target: Yanko’s chest. They did shift uneasily, glancing from Yanko to Kei and back again.

“You made an impression on them,” Lakeo muttered.

“I liked it better when everybody dismissed me as a harmless boy with four chin hairs,” Yanko murmured back. He had no idea if any of these Turgonians spoke his language, but they might object to open chatting.

“Did you? That seemed to irk you.” Lakeo glanced at Arayevo, who did not respond to the conversation. She gazed toward the railing and the points of land rising from the sea all around them, the setting sun burnishing the wet earth a deep red.

“Because in my naive youth, I didn’t realize it was better to be underestimated than overestimated.” Yanko gripped his arms, resisting the urge to stuff his hands into his armpits. Fierce wizards probably weren’t supposed to shiver in front of their enemies, even if their robes had been stolen.

Lakeo eyed the rifles pointed toward Yanko. “Oh, I think they’re estimating you just about right. They may be underestimating me.” She sniffed.

“Jealous that you don’t have more firearms pointed at you?”

“Slightly.”

“Maybe a janitor will push a mop bucket past, and you can do nefarious things to it.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Lakeo folded her bare arms over her chest and gazed—or glared—out past the railing. She watched a ridge of land drift past as the ironclad continued north. “I hate to say it, Yanko, but your continent is ugly.”

“It is not.”

Yes, it was bare of the normal grasses and trees and shrubs that an island would typically have developed over thousands of years. Instead, it claimed a lot of silt, sand, and seaweed and kelp that would have floated colorfully under the water but which had now flattened onto the terrain, where it would die, deprived of its salt-water habitat. Starfish and other sea life that hadn’t been ambulatory enough to escape when the landmass arose would suffer the same fate. Yanko regretted that, but he also suspected that the earth that was left behind would be full of nutrients and welcoming to crops eventually. That would take time, and someone would probably have to start out planting species from coastal marshes that could thrive in salty soil, but in his lifetime, he could imagine this becoming a fertile land, so long as it had the right stewards.

“Turgonian stewards or Nurian stewards?” he wondered, glancing at the guards with the rifles. It was hard to imagine the burly soldiers as farmers.

“It looks like the gods vomited on a sandbar,” Lakeo said.

“I’m inclined to agree,” Arayevo said, “but I’m also hungry, so that may make my imagination less... imaginative. What are