Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,34

behind them, the one with the fire mage in it. Yanko nearly fell off his seat as he turned to look. The night lit up, as it had when his mother had hurled that fireball, but he hadn’t sensed magic being used. This was a mundane attack. An effective one. The boat was blown into thousands of pieces. Screaming men flew through the air, flailing their arms until they splashed down several meters away.

The pirates in Yanko’s boat cursed and shouted, and the oarsmen rowed harder. A wave surged toward them from the explosion site. It slammed into the back of the boat, and Yanko was dumped out of his seat. He caught himself on the side to keep from going overboard, but then realized that was the opposite of what he should be doing. Nobody was looking at him. He hit Lakeo on the shoulder, jerked his head, then dove into the water.

He started swimming before he was fully submerged, paddling and kicking to put as much distance between him and the boats as he could before coming up. By the time he ran out of air, he had gone fifty meters. He turned and spotted the burning remains of the mage’s boat. The other two craft were still afloat. One rowed toward people in the water, some waving, some floating, their bodies still. Yanko could not tell if the mage was alive or not.

The other boat... He gulped. It was coming toward him. Two men stood with pistols raised, aiming toward the water between Yanko and them, the water where Lakeo had come up.

She gulped in air and looked like she would dive below the surface again, but the pirates started shooting. Yanko rounded up water the same way he did air, and he channeled it into a wave. He hurled that at the boat. It rose over the sides, splashing into the pirates with enough force to startle them. One went over the side.

“Lakeo,” Yanko shouted. “Get down and—”

Something grabbed his foot.

Before he could do more than suck in a quick breath, he was pulled underwater. His first thought was of the kraken he had convinced to attack Sun Dragon’s ship, but his senses told him that a human had sneaked up on him. Sneaked up from below.

Though he was confused and his instincts wanted him to struggle, he recognized Dak’s aura. Yanko might not trust Dak to do what was best for Nuria, but he trusted him to help with pirates.

Still, it concerned him that Dak wanted to pull him down. He could understand if Dak were yanking him toward the shore, but he was dragging Yanko toward the bottom of the lagoon. He couldn’t imagine what good that would do, since he could only hold his breath for a limited time. Surely, the pirates would not leave in the next minute and a half. And how was Dak able to hold his breath all this time?

He tried to touch Dak’s mind, the way he did with animals, to share his bewilderment and hope that Dak might communicate a response, the way Kei sometimes did. Unfortunately, trying to communicate telepathically with Dak was like trying to communicate with a brick wall. He got nothing from the man, nor could he tell if Dak sensed his feelings.

He had no choice but to trust him at this point, so he twisted around and swam in the direction Dak had been pulling him. Yanko’s ears ached as they descended, but they finally reached the bottom and leveled out. He had lost his sense of direction and did not know if they were heading toward the beach or the reef.

As they continued to swim along the sandy floor of the lagoon, a faint light penetrated his blurry underwater vision. It didn’t come from the surface but from the bottom. The urge to breathe grew in Yanko’s chest, but he was somewhat reassured by the fact that they didn’t seem to be that deep. Fifteen feet? He could make it back to the surface if he needed to, but he followed Dak.

As the light grew, he picked out a blurry black cylinder and realized what waited for them. The underwater boat. How had Dak gotten it over here? And could a person enter it when it wasn’t on the surface? Wouldn’t it flood?

Dak pushed him toward a hatch on the side. Thanks to the light, Yanko could now see that he wore a strange helmet that swallowed his whole head. Before