Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,99

course.”

“A new course?” Ravencrest asked.

“To find a long-forgotten continent. You, my good Turgonian admiral, are about to be a part of history.” He flicked a glance at Dak, but did not make the same promise to him. Most likely, he still thought Dak was nothing more than Yanko’s bodyguard.

Ravencrest’s brow furrowed, and he waved toward Dak. “We just have orders to pause our training exercise and pick up—”

“I’m positive your superiors will want you to investigate this, and you need my help to do so, as I don’t believe any of your people have the magical aptitude to use this device.”

“I guess it won’t hurt to take a look,” Ravencrest said, his tone wooden again.

Yanko was confused as to why Sun Dragon wanted to take a Turgonian ship—a lot of Turgonian ships—to investigate. Was it only because that was all he had been able to finagle access to? His first vessel had been destroyed, as had the ships he had scrounged up to send after Pey Lu. He was going through vessels like someone lighting matches in the rain. Could Sun Dragon have some deal with the Turgonian government? With the president himself? What if the Turgonians wanted to see the Great Chief and the current regime overthrown? What if they wanted Sun Dragon’s band of rebels, whoever they were, to win the civil war brewing in Nuria?

Sun Dragon did nothing but smile at the admiral’s response. He shared that smile with Yanko, pinning him from across the deck.

Don’t think you’ll get away without being punished, the mage spoke into his mind.

What? Yanko asked, startled by the contact, as well as the fact that a man more than twice his age apparently felt the need to gloat and threaten.

I haven’t forgotten that you dishonored me and cast doubt upon my command abilities.

Dishonored you? I was defending myself. You tried to kill me!

Because you are the spawn of that vile, disgraceful woman, and you’ve been in my way from the beginning. In the past, your family would have been put to death for her crimes. You should have been dead long ago. When the Great Chief and his kin are gone, and I rule, I will see to it that the White Foxes are no more, and I’ll also make sure that pirate bitch is truly dead.

Yanko was too stunned to respond, more because the man claimed that he would take the Great Chief’s place than by anything else he had said.

Dak walked up to him, blocking his view of the mage. It didn’t matter. Sun Dragon was done with his threats.

“This way,” Dak said, speaking Nurian again and nodding toward a hatch. He gestured to include Arayevo and Lakeo.

Yanko followed him, though he couldn’t keep from glancing back toward Sun Dragon. He wore the most blissful expression as he held the lodestone and gazed to the south. Yanko wished he had stayed on the island and hidden from the Turgonians.

Chapter 22

Yanko lay on his back on a bunk wider than the one he had been given on the Prey Stalker and much wider than his cot on Minark’s ship. As he stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, he wished he were back on Minark’s vessel now. At least there, he had held his fate in his hands. Now, it lay in the Turgonians’ hands. Or perhaps Sun Dragon’s hands, since he seemed to be controlling the only Turgonian that mattered.

Well, not the only one.

Yanko looked through the doorway in the two-room cabin. Dak sat at a desk, a lantern burning next to him as he studied the atlas he’d taken from Tomokosis’s cave. He did not appear overly worried that Yanko would try some evil magic on him. Even though Dak was a Turgonian and was the reason these ships had come, Yanko couldn’t find it within himself to be irritated at him. Though Dak hadn’t spoken more than three words since they had been ensconced here together, Yanko had the sense that this situation hadn’t turned out as he would have wished, either. A Nurian mage invited onto a Turgonian ship and chatting amiably with the admiral had to be unprecedented.

Yanko wished Arayevo and Lakeo were sharing the cabin with them. He needed someone to talk to, someone he could trust to listen and to advise him on his foolish ideas. He couldn’t lie on this bunk and wait for Sun Dragon to come kill him, though it surprised him that the mage hadn’t tried yet, especially