Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,78

still stuck inside. The air pocket had disappeared, and terror radiated from the woman, escaping those walls she kept around her mind.

Yanko patted his way to the gate, then down to the lock, empathizing with her even though she had come to kill him. Nobody deserved to die this way.

He gripped the bars on either side of the lock and stared at it with his eyes and his mind. Fire would melt the lock more quickly than anything else, but it needed air to burn. Or did it? He remembered his mother’s demonstration, turning the waves to flame. Was this another instance where his mind was getting in the way of his abilities?

A hand brushed his shoulder, and he almost let go to swim back, thinking she meant to try one more time to fulfill her mission. But fear guided that hand. She patted at him frantically, trying to get him to open the gate, he realized.

Giving up all rational thought, Yanko stared at the lock and hurled raw power at it with his mind. He wasn’t even sure if it was air, water, or fire that he called upon. Either way, it worked. Not only was the lock destroyed, but with a great wrenching of iron, his power tore the gate from its hinges.

His prisoner figured out what had happened immediately and swam out. Good. Yanko did not think he could have lingered longer to show her the way. His lungs demanded air, and he still had to navigate out of the ship.

Another explosion ripped through the ship, and a beam cracked above Yanko. He kicked as hard as he could. The beam almost crushed him as it collapsed in the passageway, a passageway that was breaking up all around him. Boards floated everywhere, and if not for his mental senses, he wouldn’t have known which way to go or even the difference between up and down.

By the time he squirmed out through one of several giant holes that had turned the hull into eyehole cheese, blackness encroached on the edge of his vision. He swam toward the light of the surface, hardly caring if he ran into the jellyfish or a boat full of pirates aiming pistols at him. All he cared about was breathing.

Yanko erupted at the crest of a wave, gasping air in so quickly that it hurt. He blinked several times, fighting back the blackness and sucking in more air. The Prey Stalker lay half on its side a few meters away, the jellyfish still draped across one end of it. Shouts came from all around him. He could only see when the waves lifted him up for a good view, but his senses told him that at least fifty other pirates had escaped the ship and treaded water nearby. Several boats were being rowed around to pick people up.

Yanko had no desire to be picked up. He wished it were still night, so he could disappear more easily. The island was still about two miles away, and he groaned, both at the idea of the long swim and at the realization that he could be spotted any time during that swim. Pey Lu’s ship might be a wreck now, but the four vessels accompanying it had not been damaged. The booms of cannons came from one of them. Yanko shook water out of his ears and swam toward the island, afraid they might be targeting him. One of the cannonballs splashed into the ocean about a hundred meters ahead of him.

“Yanko, is that you?” a familiar voice yelled.

“Arayevo?” he cried, forgetting his concern that he might be a target.

“Over here,” she called.

Yanko started swimming in that direction before he spotted her. She had to be on the surface with him. Had the underwater boat been destroyed? He remembered the vision he had glimpsed of it filling with water.

“Watch out for sharks, clodhopper,” Lakeo called.

Telltale fins dotted the water around the wreck. Yanko had received a few burns, but he had escaped the chaos without cuts that would spill blood into the water. Nevertheless, he tried to project with his mind, making nearby sea life think he was an uninteresting piece of driftwood rather than a tasty meal.

As the next wave lifted him to the crest, he spotted Arayevo, Lakeo, and Dak too. Yanko never would have expected to feel so relieved to see the big, dour-faced Turgonian. He manned the oars in an odd dinghy with a thin, angular hull that barely looked large