Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,80
eyed the boats around the wreck, hoping Pey Lu was distracted with saving her people. This lifeboat was flimsy, and it would not take a powerful mage to destroy it.
The boats had lifted most of the pirates out of the water, but were still collecting a few stragglers. The sharks circled, not scared away by the booms of the cannons, or the rifles and pistols being fired. The one Yanko had been fleeing was not far away, its fin visible to the port side of Dak’s boat.
“Did you get to talk to her?” Arayevo peered around Dak to look at Yanko. “Was she amazing?” That longing in her voice came through, even though water dripped from her hair into her eyes and she appeared as bedraggled as he.
She was still beautiful, even in that state, with cannonballs arcing toward them and sharks circling. Perhaps a touch crazy, but beautiful. The old familiar longing returned to Yanko’s heart, and he wished he could give her an answer that wouldn’t disappoint.
“She was... something,” Yanko murmured, not sure what else he could say.
He did not follow it up with the next statement that came to mind, that Pey Lu might take Arayevo into her crew if she asked. For one thing, Yanko did not want to give Arayevo up. True, she was not his, but he would never get his chance to confess his feelings to her if she ran off and joined Pey Lu. No matter what happened or where Arayevo went, Yanko knew beyond a doubt that he couldn’t join his mother’s crew. He could never become a pirate. He couldn’t do that to his father or to his people.
“Halfway there,” Dak said, his rowing never faltering. He would never be distracted by longing.
“Is the underwater boat utterly destroyed?” Yanko asked.
“Utterly,” Dak said. “The Kyattese finance department will probably find out and have a bill sent to the Turgonian embassy before I return.”
“How could they know?” Arayevo waved at the sea. “Unless the pirates tell them.”
Dak’s lips compressed in displeasure or maybe acknowledgment of the possibility. Did he know that Pey Lu might have been hired by the Kyattese?
The cannonballs grew less frequent as Dak rowed the dinghy out of range. Oddly, none of the ships were chasing after them. Perhaps Pey Lu realized that recapturing her wayward son would be inevitable—how could he escape from an island? Maybe she planned to let him assume the risk of finding the lodestone first and then take it from him later.
“Who’s that?” Arayevo pointed toward a figure swimming away from the ships and toward the island.
Yanko recognized the white clothes, the long black hair streaming behind as powerful strokes moved her through the waves. She was a strong swimmer and ought to make the island if nothing befell her. He didn’t spot any sharks following in her wake.
“Sun Dragon’s assassin,” Yanko said, wondering if he had done the right thing in freeing her. No, it had definitely been the right thing—he believed that. He just wasn’t sure if it had been the smart thing. “She tried to kill me.”
“And failed?” Dak asked.
“I’ll try not to find it disheartening that you sound surprised by that.” He scratched his jaw. “We never figured out how she got on Pey Lu’s ship.”
“The ironclad.”
“What?” Yanko asked before remembering what he referenced. The ship that had rammed the Prey Stalker before Pey Lu had moved away and it had exploded. Had it delivered a passenger before blowing up? “Oh.”
“Does that mean Sun Dragon is on his way then?” Lakeo asked.
And that he would distract Pey Lu by attacking her fleet again? Wishful thinking, Yanko decided. Sun Dragon’s ships had been destroyed in the last confrontation, and unless he’d had a few more hiding on the far side of that island, he couldn’t have followed them here, even if he did have a way of tracking his assassin.
“If you want to kill her,” Dak said, tilting his chin toward the swimming figure, “this would be the time.”
“Kill her?” Arayevo protested. “After she’s survived so far?”
“You don’t make it far in life if you don’t kill the assassins that are after you.” Dak said the words as if reciting some common Turgonian phrase. Maybe it was one. His people weren’t reputed to employ assassins often, but their emperors and military leaders had certainly been the targets of assassins—even Nurian mage hunters—over the centuries.
“She owes me her life,” Yanko said. “I’m hoping she’ll decide to thank me by not killing me.”