Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,33

He dropped to the ground and rolled down the beach.

Fire—real fire—blasted through the air just above him. He didn’t quite escape it, and it licked at his hair and the back of his shirt as he rolled. Heat bore through his clothing to his skin. He gasped in pain, but he kept rolling, trying to squelch the flames. He ended up in the lagoon, banging his foot against one of the rowboats. The flames went out, and the cold seawater eased the pain of being burned, but by the time he jumped to his feet, the pirates had recovered. They swarmed around him. Eight pistols pointing at Yanko’s chest left no question as to what his fate would be if he tried another magical attack. The orange-robed mage stood behind the men, a sneer riding his lips.

“Get in, you say?” Lakeo touched her knuckles to a split lip, her hand coming away bloody. Sand covered her clothes and hair, and she looked like she had taken as many blows as she had given.

“Whenever you feel like it,” one of the pirates said, “your yacht awaits.” He gestured at the boat Yanko had kicked.

Yacht, sure. He spotted at least ten places where holes in the bottom had been patched by tar.

Sighing, he clambered into the rowboat. At least he had avoided having his hands tied, for all the good it would do. Lakeo joined him, sitting beside him on the bench. Four pirates climbed in after them, two grabbing oars. Yanko was surprised they didn’t make their captives row, but maybe they wanted to keep him up front, where they could watch him. The other pirates and the fire mage filled other boats. Three craft headed out into the water, with the mage in the bow of the boat right behind Yanko’s boat. He could feel the man’s eyes boring into his back.

“Any chance your mama is going to put us in an officer’s suite and invite us to breakfast?” Lakeo asked.

“Do pirates have officers?” Yanko wished he could say they would get special treatment, but he truly had no idea. Maybe they were already getting special treatment. After all, they hadn’t been shot.

“I don’t know, but I want my chest back.”

Yanko glanced at the front of her vest.

“The chest full of coins I found.” She glowered at him.

“Oh.”

“I nearly drowned lugging that through the pool, and now those pirates have it.”

He lowered his voice to a murmur barely audible above the roar of the ocean beyond the lagoon. “Any chance you found the lodestone?”

“Not unless it was in that bag of interesting stuff I grabbed. Either way, that bag is on the bottom of the pool. I couldn’t swim with everything.”

“Ah.” Yanko stared down at his feet, unable to hide his disappointment. He supposed it wouldn’t have mattered if she had found it, since the pirates had taken all of their belongings.

“There wasn’t much time to rummage around with you and that rock monster tramping around the cave,” Lakeo said defensively. “What was that thing?”

“A soul construct.”

She let out a low whistle. “I thought those were just things of legend.”

“They’re supposed to be. Nobody makes them anymore.”

“Not nobody.”

Yanko sighed, feeling tired and defeated as the rowboats traveled across the dark lagoon, toward one of the large black ships now anchored beyond the reef. He should have known from the beginning that this was the Midnight Fleet. No wonder Captain Minark had fled. A small part of him wanted to hope that Pey Lu would treat him well because he was her son, but it was hard to foster that hope. She had abandoned the family and destroyed its honor. Why would she care one way or another about him now?

“At least it wasn’t Sun Dragon who caught up with us,” Lakeo said. “We’d be dead for sure. There are only so many times you can outrun molten lava.”

Yanko tried to find this heartening and to agree, but it was hard to feel anything but defeat as the black ships loomed larger as they drew near, lanterns lit along the deck to welcome their prisoners.

Something bumped the bottom of the boat. A rock? Yanko looked back at the beach. They were quite far out to be hitting rocks, but the lagoon could be shallow all the way out to the reef.

The pirates kept rowing and did not comment.

Less than three seconds later, an explosion ripped through the night. It did not come from their boat but from one of the boats