the mien of a soldier in a prisoner of war camp, awaiting a death sentence. Yanko shifted his weight from foot to foot, disturbed by the thought, even if he couldn’t articulate why.
She had tried to kill him not once but twice, here and in that cave on Kyatt where he had dropped rocks on top of her. He didn’t see signs of what must have been grievous injuries, at least not on her face. Little else of her body was exposed—the white silk and cotton garment, something between a robe and a wrap, hugged her torso and legs from wrist to ankle, also covering her neck. Sun Dragon must have had a healer among his people. She did have a faint scar above one eyebrow, but it appeared far older than one she might have received in that rockfall.
Her face was young, he realized with a start, looking straight at it for the first time. That intimacy didn’t seem such a presumption with her gazing at the wall beside him instead of challenging him with her own gaze. She couldn’t be much older than he. Twenty? Twenty-two? Certainly no older than Arayevo, but there was none of Arayevo’s warmth and zest for adventure in those cool detached eyes. Yanko decided she was pretty, even with much of her form hidden beneath her clothing, with delicate features that seemed at odds with her profession. She was about two inches shorter than he and appeared to be of pure Nurian descent, her fine bones making her thirty or forty pounds lighter than him. He was glad his mother had not come in when she had been pinning him to the deck and crushing his windpipe. Even if she was trained as an assassin, and he’d always spent more time with magic than practicing at battle, he would have been embarrassed to have been bested by her in a physical confrontation.
“Yanko?” Pey Lu asked.
Gramon snorted, and Yanko had the feeling she might have said his name more than once.
Lost in his own world, as usual. “Yes?” He hoped Pey Lu’s mage light did not show the pink tint to his cheeks.
“Go back to sleep,” she said.
“Pardon?”
Gramon snorted again. “Such a polite boy you have. Obtuse, but polite.”
Yanko scowled, more embarrassed than he might usually have been by the slight, perhaps because his mother was looking on. An assassin who wanted to kill him was also looking on.
“Not too obtuse,” Pey Lu said quietly, her eyelids lowering as she regarded Gramon through her lashes. A slight warning in that look? “He survived a mage hunter’s attack, after all.”
The mage hunter ignored the comment and the rest of the conversation, a faint tightening of her jaw the only indication that she heard them at all.
“She probably tripped over his bird,” Gramon said.
Pey Lu gripped Yanko’s shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning. It’s our last day at sea, so we’ll start early with your training.”
The mage hunter sneered slightly at that grip on Yanko’s shoulder. He had little doubt that she knew exactly who Pey Lu was, and was judging him for standing there and accepting her... camaraderie? He shook his head. Who cared? She’d been trying to kill him, and she didn’t even know him. Her judgment didn’t matter.
Still, Yanko found himself asking, “What are you going to do with her?” instead of walking obediently out. “Interrogate her?”
“Interrogate her and then kill her,” Gramon said. “Pirates who let assassins live don’t live long themselves.”
Yanko turned his back on the Turgonian. Nothing on his mother’s face suggested she disagreed. Yanko couldn’t fault the logic, but his stomach twisted at the idea of a cold-blooded killing. Captain Snake Heart Pey Lu might be known for such things, but he wasn’t, and this woman had come to kill him, not her.
“I’m the one who subdued her,” Yanko said. “I would like to question her before you kill her.”
He glanced at the woman, wondering what manner of sneer she might make at his claim and his request, but she was still looking at that spot on the wall, not acknowledging him.
“To what end?” Pey Lu asked. Did she sound suspicious? Maybe she thought this had something to do with the lodestone.
“We’ve never spoken before, and as far as I know, we’d never met before this all started, before she and her... employer—” Yanko was tempted to use a far more derogatory term for Sun Dragon, “—came to the homestead and burned it to the ground. I’d like