and thumped it against his thighs. No, he couldn’t do that. And he couldn’t let his mother attack Arayevo, either. Nor the others. He suspected that was exactly what she intended to do, now that she had the ship shielded.
Another boom came, this time from underwater. Yanko sensed his mother’s shield, a large barrier like the one he had made to protect Lakeo and Arayevo from her lightning attack. It extended all the way around the ship. Something struck it and exploded against it. Were these the weapons Dak had told them about? He felt his mother’s shield falter slightly under the power of that one. Whatever it was, it was far greater than a cannonball, greater even than the blasting sticks he’d heard about.
Yanko extended his senses all around the underwater boat, wondering if he might find some allies to help. He couldn’t see himself attacking his mother outright, even if that might be the right thing to do to help the world. But he couldn’t stand by and let Dak and the others suffer her retaliation, either.
“Did we hit them?” someone asked.
“No, they keep moving,” Pey Lu said. “And I can’t—I can’t attack the pilot, damn it. Keep trying with the charges. I’ll lower my shield so they can get through.”
The booms were scaring away the sea life, and Yanko couldn’t find anything large enough that might be of help. He delved lower with his mind, searching the depths near the bottom. He almost missed a huge jellyfish stretched among some rocks down there, doing its best to ignore the noise. With a kraken, he knew what he could offer it, what he might use to bribe it, but could he convince this creature to swim up and get into the fray? Between its body and its tentacles, it stretched more than fifty feet in diameter. He touched its mind, trying to envision it wrapped around the side of the ship, flinging some of those tentacles across the deck. Even if its touch wasn’t deadly, it would surely distract the pirates. He promised the creature that the noise would stop if it wrapped itself sufficiently around the ship.
Immediately, it started floating upward.
“Guess it really hates the noise,” Yanko muttered. Did jellyfish even have ears? Maybe it felt the jarring reverberations through the water.
Another boom erupted, this one closer to Yanko’s location. Water poured into the ship from somewhere below him. This time, the hole was much bigger than the one Dak had carved with a tool. He must be trying to sink this ship, not infiltrate it.
Aware of the jellyfish swimming closer, Yanko reached out, not to Dak, who would have his mind shut tighter than a clam against Pey Lu, but to Arayevo. He tried to convey that the large creature was coming and to get out of the way. But as soon as he brushed her mind, he felt the fear in her thoughts. For a moment, he glimpsed the world through her eyes. She was in the underwater boat, with Lakeo and Dak, as water poured through from broken seams. A horrible wrenching sound filled her ears.
Dak hit a button, and another projectile explosive launched. Pey Lu had lowered the shield she had crafted around the ship in order to attack the underwater boat, so the weapon slid through.
Yanko lunged for a bulkhead to support himself and cried, “Take cover!” to anyone who would listen.
As this new explosion erupted, Yanko had a flash of thought, a chilling one. What if Dak wasn’t trying to rescue him, but was simply trying to destroy the competition? What if he didn’t care that Yanko was aboard and might die in the attack?
Before the thought had been completed, Yanko was hurled into the air as more decking was destroyed under him. He did his best to wrap a buffer of air around himself, but he struggled to find the concentration for magic in the noise, fire, and sheer terror of the people around him. His head did not strike the ceiling as hard as it might have, but he still felt the clunk.
Light poured across him as he tumbled to the deck—what remained of it. He landed halfway through a hole, his legs dangling, and he had to claw his way to solid wood. Water poured in along with that light, and he realized that fire was not responsible for brightening the gun deck, not this time. Daylight surged inside, along with the sea. A giant hole gaped in