Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,30

was getting dusty in Father’s cabinet,” Yanko said. “I thought it might want to see daylight again.”

She snorted. “Possibly so. You’re young for it though. Which one are you?”

Which one are you? He couldn’t keep from gaping at her. Even though she had left when he was a baby and Falcon was only three, and he logically knew she couldn’t be expected to recognize him seventeen years later, it floored him that she wouldn’t know. He closed his mouth. At least he knew she wasn’t an expert in the mind sciences.

“Yanko,” he said.

“Sixteen?” she asked.

“Eighteen. Falcon is twenty.”

“Falcon?” Her eyebrows rose. Some of the pirates were exchanging befuddled looks, but nobody spoke.

“Shun Chu,” Yanko said, realizing she had been long gone when his brother had received his nickname. “He’s a faster runner. He was.” He grimaced, thinking of the last time he had seen Falcon, using a cane and limping because of an arrowhead recently pulled from his thigh. Would he ever run again?

“Was?”

“He’s not dead. He wasn’t when I saw him last, I mean, but he was injured. Our home was burned. Everyone in the village—” Yanko swallowed and scowled down at the rocks. He did not want to show his emotions in front of someone who was an enemy—it didn’t matter that she had given birth to him. To think of her as anything other than an outcast and an enemy would be a dishonor to his family. And to himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said firmly. And it probably didn’t to her. If the village and the family had mattered, she never would have left.

“Hm,” was all she said. “Red Tail, search them, and if you don’t find what we need, take them back to the ship. I’ll question them further there, if it’s necessary.” She looked to the waterfall again, probably waiting to see if her weapons-toting lover returned with the lodestone.

A scruffy pirate with several days’ worth of beard growth tugged Yanko’s pack off without any gentleness. Someone else came forward and grabbed his sword hand. He gritted his teeth, not wanting to let the weapon go, but what was the point? What could he do to resist against so many? Two other pirates were pulling Lakeo’s pack off, and a hundred more were in the area, including the two orange-robed fire mages. If it had just been the pirates, Yanko might have created an earthquake, something that would distract everyone while he ran away, but the sheer power his mother had used against the soul construct told him that fighting her would be useless. He would never win. She had been legendary during the war more than twenty years ago, and people’s powers rarely decreased over time. It was usually the other way around, with a mage learning refinement and subtly, how to draw upon less power to create greater effects.

“Quit touching my goods, you mouth-breathing leper,” Lakeo said, shrugging away from someone patting her up and down. Her gear, the treasure, and her utility knife had already been knocked to the ground. She must have lost her bow somewhere in the flight from the cave.

“Captain said for us to look over your goods.” Scruffy leered at her.

She twisted, getting an arm free for a second, and tried to punch him. The blow would have landed on his nose, but he saw it coming and dodged, grinning the whole time. The pirate behind Lakeo caught her arm and restrained her again.

Yanko clenched his fists, wanting so much to fight these people, to launch a magical blow that would stun them all. But Pey Lu looked on, her eyes narrowed. Seeing Lakeo and Yanko treated roughly and pawed over did not bother her. If even half of her reputation was deserved, he doubted much would bother her. He hadn’t forgotten the tortoise’s vision, the one that had shown her watching impassively as those villagers were interrogated, then killed. She must have been the one to order their deaths, though they had clearly told her what she wanted, or at least given a clue that had eventually led her to the waterfall.

The man Yanko had seen directing the group at the beach came forward to talk to Pey Lu. Not many of the pirates had pale skin, and the few who did wore cotton shirts and buckskin trousers more typical of Kendorians, but this blond man definitely looked Kyattese. Was he a prisoner? Not likely, since he had been giving directions, and he wasn’t bound or being