Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,88

to tell him that once he gave his word, he didn’t go back on it. All he said was, “I’ll go first if you want.”

Dak reached for the knob, but paused before his hand touched it. He eyed the skulls filling the walls on either side, then turned toward one of those walls. He gripped a skull and pulled it from its resting place with a soft crunch.

Yanko jumped, alarmed at the idea of disturbing the dead, even if these bones had already been disturbed long ago. Dak pulled out another skull, and another. He dropped them on the ground as he continued. Yanko found himself mumbling the refrain of another song.

“What are you singing about now?” Dak lifted his lantern, peered into the gap, and pulled out more skulls, clearing the wall vertically next to the door.

“It’s the graveyard song. You apologize to the dead for walking through and disturbing their rest. I’m not sure if it works if you’re mutilating their bones, but I thought I’d try to protect your soul from their ire.”

“Thoughtful.” Dak dropped more skulls on the floor.

Yanko had known Turgonians were atheistic when it came to gods, but he hadn’t realized they were so blithe about the souls of the deceased. Didn’t they have shrines where they burned offerings for their ancestors? Maybe only Dak was so blithe.

Apparently, he didn’t find what he was looking for because he turned around to pull skulls from the wall on the other side of the door. This time, he only tugged out four before stopping. He peered into the gap he had created, set his lantern down, reached between the remaining skulls, and turned something.

Though Yanko doubted it was good to stand close to someone who was accumulating the ire of the dead, he couldn’t help but inch closer to see what Dak was doing.

A soft click came from under his hands as he pulled a slender metal bar to the side, one that paralleled the door. Next came a thunk from behind the door, followed by what sounded like a lock disengaging. A few more clunks followed, then a hiss. The door swung inward.

Dak stepped back, almost landing on Yanko’s foot.

“You unlocked it?” Yanko asked.

“And disengaged a booby trap. I think.”

Yanko would have felt better if he hadn’t made that addendum. He sent his mage light ahead of Dak, into the chamber that now lay open before them. Dak picked up his lantern and walked through the doorway. He stepped carefully, eyeing the jamb and the threshold as if snakes might leap out, but nothing opposed him.

Yanko followed him into what turned out to be more of an office than a cave. The stone walls in the square room were perfectly normal, no skulls or bones stuck to them. A dusty oval rug lay on the lumpy rock floor, and a wooden desk and a chair rested near the far wall. A rickety bookcase leaned against another wall, several rows of dusty tomes on the shelves. More books were stacked in a corner, and several sat on the side of the desk that Yanko could see—Dak partially blocked his view. The scent of mildew promised that water had seeped into the chamber over the years.

Dak knelt to peel back the rug, presumably looking for more traps, and Yanko sucked in his breath as he got his first look at the lodestone. It rested next to the stack of books on the desk, looking nothing like magnetite. Instead, it was an egg-shaped golden rock that one might have mistaken for a paperweight, but a collection of paperclips stuck to it. Yanko did not know if that had simply happened when Tomokosis had dropped it on the desk, or if he had irreverently stuck them there. Either way, the rock sang with power that made the hair on Yanko’s arms stand up, as if they, too, had magnetic properties and were drawn to the stone.

A few other items lay on the desk, a sextant, a piece of a ship’s wheel, a sure-sight artifact, its magical power minuscule next to that of the lodestone. An atlas with yellowed pages was open to a large island—or small continent?

“Those are the items he stole from the museum,” Yanko realized, walking around the rug and toward the desk, drawn by the artifact.

There were no gold baubles, diamonds, or other valuables in sight to take back to Lakeo. This had been the bandit’s office, not his treasure repository. He must have been working