Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,17

he paused. His face was masked as he gazed back, the mage light just illuminating him. Yanko looked down, trying not to feel like a wimp. He could have continued on, but more than ever, he felt it might be best if Lakeo got there first. What if that underwater boat could go right up the river to the pool and pick up Dak and his shiny new lodestone at the waterfall?

“It’s hard work communicating with tortoises,” Yanko said, feeling the need to make an excuse for his supposed weariness.

“Is it?”

Yanko wasn’t sure whether that question indicated skepticism or if Dak honestly wondered.

“Using the sciences for any extended period of time is, yes.” Yanko dragged his sleeve across his brow, wiping the sweat away. It did not cool off much here at night, not like in his mountain homeland.

Dak kept looking to the west, clearly agitated by the delay.

“What honor do you seek, Dak?” Yanko asked.

“What?”

“When I asked why you wanted to go on this treasure hunt, you told me, ‘You are not the only one who seeks honor.’”

“You have a good memory.”

“Should you sound so gruff and displeased when you give a compliment like that?”

Dak snorted. “Probably not. Nobody’s ever accused me of being tactful.”

“Do you have a father or someone who expects a great deal from you? A father who you’ve never been able to please?” It seemed strange asking someone with gray sprinkled in his hair if his parents’ good opinions still mattered, but Yanko couldn’t imagine that it ever stopped mattering. Maybe one eventually learned not to base one’s life around those opinions. He didn’t know yet.

“My father sits in a rocking chair with his gun, looking out over the orchard and shooting coyotes that come too close to the chicken coop. Sometimes, he shoots people who come too close to him. All he expects is to be left alone. He’s not overly concerned about my career anymore.”

“So... you inherited his grumpiness?”

Dak gave him a flat look.

Yanko probably deserved it. “Anymore, you said. Was there a time when he put pressure on you to be something other than what you wished to be?”

“He wanted me to be a soldier. It was all I wanted too.”

“And that’s what you are?”

“Yes.”

Prince Zirabo had implied that Dak was more than that, that he had some political or diplomatic significance. Yanko didn’t disbelieve Dak necessarily, but he doubted he was only a soldier. Turgonians had a warrior caste rather than honored families—it was their version of an aristocracy—and their military officers came out of it. At the least, Yanko suspected Dak was one of those people.

“A soldier who seeks honor,” Yanko said, realizing Dak hadn’t answered his original question.

“Yes.”

“I want honor returned to my family, not just because it’s what my father wants, but because over many generations, we earned a place of trust with the government leaders and had a say in major decisions. It’s not right that my mother—that one person destroyed that for us. But I also... Dak, my people are in trouble. If this lodestone could lead us to a new fertile land... I have to recover it.” He wasn’t sure why he was still talking, except that he would prefer it if Dak did not fight him over the lodestone. Maybe somehow, he could persuade Dak to look the other way when Yanko took it.

“I’m aware of the trouble of which you speak, but Nuria has been the predominant military power in the world for longer than my people have even had a homeland. I am skeptical that there truly is a lost continent—perhaps there is an island shrouded by magic somewhere—but if there is... Yanko, no other nation wants to see Nuria with more land that could be used to birth more armies, more mages. Turgonia isn’t the only nation that would fight to make sure that doesn’t come to pass.”

Yanko clenched his jaw. He should have valued Dak’s honesty over secrecy and lies, but it was hard to accept the blunt words. “The rest of the world wants to see us starve and for our nation to collapse into civil war?”

“My people would like to see Nuria cease to be a threat. How that happens doesn’t matter, just that it happens.”

“But preferably with great violence and upheaval?” Yanko couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. He remembered being a boy, out in the woods with Great Uncle Lao Zun, and questioning why some loggers targeted the largest and oldest trees in the