Clangs came from deeper within the ship. Yanko stood next to a kitchen and mess hall, and a single passageway led deeper, doors open and shut all along it. Cabins for the crew, he guessed. He glimpsed a circular stairwell in the corner of the mess hall leading to a lower level.
The smoke stirred to one side of the passageway, and Yanko lifted his hands and prepared a mental defense. Lakeo stepped out of a doorway, and he lowered his arms.
She lifted a pocket watch on a gold chain. “Is this real gold, Yanko? It looks valuable, don’t you think?”
“Yes.” He tried to think of a way to discourage her from looting the pirate ship while Dak and Sicarius were still killing pirates, but the clangs died down, so maybe they had finished. “And Turgonian. Those are their numerals on the face.”
“So? You think one of those agents would be willing to buy it off me? I don’t know how you plan to get around when we reach Nuria again, but I have zero money, and I don’t have a family who will put me up while I look for a job.” Her mouth twisted.
Yanko understood her concerns, but… “I think the agents are going to expect this ship to go back to Turgonia and the items inside to be returned to the families of the soldiers who were lost in the pirate attack.” Yanko wondered how that had happened, how some scruffy pirates had managed to steal the valuable craft from trained Turgonian soldiers.
“Yes,” a cool voice said from the smoky passageway.
Dak stepped out of the smoke and extricated the pocket watch from Lakeo’s fingers. Sicarius appeared behind him, and Yanko realized he was several inches shorter than Dak, and not that tall for a Turgonian man. Though he’d proven he was every bit as deadly as any other Turgonian. Even with his magic, Yanko wouldn’t want to face him again in battle. He wasn’t even sure he would bet on Dak to come out on top if the two of them squabbled.
Lakeo propped her fists on her hips. “Well, can’t I at least loot the pirates’ stuff? Nobody cares if their stolen loot goes back to their families, right?”
Dak looked at Yanko, as if he were responsible for Lakeo’s obsession with acquiring treasures. Sicarius also looked at Yanko. His face was spattered with blood but as impassive as ever, and Yanko had no idea what he was thinking.
“Is Amaranthe on the deck?” Sicarius asked.
“Tynlee asked her to join her on the Nurian ship,” Yanko replied. “She thought the Nurian captain had information you two should know.”
“And she offered it for free?” Sicarius said.
“I don’t know. It was a telepathic conversation, and they didn’t include me.”
“Rude,” Lakeo said.
Sicarius didn’t speak, merely slipping past them, barely stirring the smoke on his way out. He said nothing about the pocket watch or loot.
“We found the captain,” Dak told Yanko. “He was indeed a mage. A Kendorian, I believe.”
“Does found him mean killed him?” Yanko glanced down the passageway. He’d forgotten there was a mage aboard, one that had threatened him, and felt guilty for assuming Dak and Sicarius could deal with any trouble they found inside. Though it sounded like that had been a correct assumption.
“He didn’t expect to face two Turgonians with mage-hunter training.” Dak smiled tightly, but his brow soon furrowed. “There was another officer yelling orders when we first charged in. We haven’t found him yet. Can you tell if anyone is hidden?”
“There’s a whole second level under us.” Yanko pointed to the steps.
“Yes, the boilers, engines, furnaces, and other machinery will be down there.” Dak sounded like he was familiar with the design of the craft. He knew all about underwater boats, so why not airships?
Though a big room full of machinery sounded like a good place to hide, Yanko reached out with his senses, looking for signs of life on their current floor before peering down there. They wouldn’t want to leave pirates at their backs. Machinery also sounded more likely than crew cabins to be booby-trapped. He didn’t know if pirates would think to set explosives to blow up their ship if they were captured, but Turgonians were known for that. And some of the pirates had possessed typical Turgonian coloring.
“Did you check the last two cabins?” Yanko pointed down the passageway, sensing two people back there. Neither of them seemed to be injured. He sensed that they hoped the Turgonians wouldn’t find them, that they would leave, and that the pair could find a way to repair the ship and make it to some port.
“Yes.” Dak tilted his head. “Though we didn’t look under bunks.” Judging by his tone, he thought the idea of hiding under a bunk or elsewhere was unseemly.
Yanko didn’t admit that he would definitely hide under his bed if hulking Turgonians charged onto his ship. Instead, he tried to figure out how the two crew members had eluded Dak and Sicarius. They seemed to be in a box or—ah.
“There’s an armoire back there that will interest you.” Yanko pointed up the passageway again but paused with his finger dangling in the air. He also sensed someone in almost the same spot but on the lower level. Unlike the others, that someone was injured and in pain.
“An armoire?” Dak asked. “Do you think Tynlee finds my current wardrobe unacceptable?”
“It is monochromatic,” Yanko said distractedly. The man in pain didn’t seem to be hiding. It was more like he was pinned or otherwise unable to escape. Had some beam or strut fallen during the crash? “I sense someone down below. I’m going to look.”
Dak hesitated. “We should stay together. This is a Turgonian ship, regardless of who was piloting it today.”
“You’re thinking of booby traps too? You and Sicarius charged in rather recklessly.”
“It’s best to act quickly and decisively so the enemy doesn’t have time to formulate tactics,” Dak said, a touch stiffly. “And my concern is for you wandering around the ship alone, not me.”
“Because I’m more likely to be blown up by a Turgonian booby trap than you are?”
“Your robe looks like it would burn easily, but no. I trust my ability to recognize them.”
“You have your cocky moments, Dak,” Yanko said.
“Possibly.” He looked over Yanko’s shoulder.
“The person down there is injured and stuck,” Yanko said, reluctant to leave someone down there who might be on the verge of death. He doubted the men hiding in the armoire were going anywhere with so many people still outside.
He turned in the direction Dak was looking, expecting Lakeo, who had slunk off while they had been talking, no doubt looking for loot that Dak wouldn’t object to her keeping. But Jhali stood behind him. Yanko barely kept himself from jumping. He didn’t think he needed to be alarmed by Jhali showing up behind him anymore, but he wasn’t entirely certain about that.
Blood that didn’t appear to be hers smeared the sleeve of her wet white mage-hunter garb, so she must have found a battle somewhere.
“I will go with White Fox,” Jhali said.
“You’re offering to be his bodyguard and risk yourself to pull him out of harm’s way if there are booby traps?” Dak asked skeptically.
“I’m offering to help him retrieve an injured person,” Jhali said.
Dak shook his head and opened his mouth again.
“It’s fine.” Yanko lifted a hand. “There’s an armoire back there waiting for you. And if I had to guess, I’d say Tynlee is fond of blue and yellow.”
Dak’s lips thinned, but he shrugged and headed down the passageway.
Yanko hoped Dak’s reluctance to let him go off alone with Jhali didn’t mean he knew more about her intentions than Yanko did. Did he still believe Jhali was a threat to him? That, given the chance, she would sink a dagger between his shoulder blades? Was Dak better at reading people than he was? Nurian people? Yanko would like to say that was unlikely, but he couldn’t.
When he looked at Jhali’s cool expression, he abruptly had reservations about going into some dark boiler room alone with her. But he’d battled her and come out on top before,
he reminded himself. Besides, it would be cowardly to back out now.
“This way,” he murmured, heading for the stairs.
As they descended the spiral metal steps, Yanko told himself not to glance over his shoulder repeatedly. Just because a confined, smoky, windowless hold was a great place for an assassin to finish off her prey was no reason to find it alarming.
“What are you going to do when we reach home, Jhali?”
She didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t believe this was the time for small talk.
Yanko conjured a globe of light to guide them, but the smoke was worse down below and made it difficult to see. He relied more on his senses to investigate the open, lower level.
Machinery hummed and radiated heat. He realized that the purpose of the balloon had only been to give the craft lift and that it relied on engines to power propellers for forward momentum. Other contraptions allowed for steering. The airship seemed almost as complicated as the Turgonian underwater boats.
Jhali cleared her throat, maybe wondering why he had stopped at the base of the steps to stare into the smoke around them.
“He’s in the back in a little room,” Yanko said and glanced back.
He let out a startled squawk when he saw that Jhali had drawn her weapons and held a Turgonian pistol in one hand and her throwing stars in the other. He rushed to form a protective barrier around himself.
She raised her eyebrows and shifted the pistol so that it didn’t point at his back.
“You weren’t thinking of shooting me, right?” Yanko tried to smile and make it sound like a joke, but he doubted he succeeded.
If she had drawn the weapons in anticipation of danger ahead, why wouldn’t she have been pointing the pistol at the deck or at least away from him?
The way she hesitated before answering wasn’t encouraging. “I wasn’t going to shoot you, no.”
“But you were thinking about it?” Maybe he should have dropped it, but it would be better to know if he needed to watch himself around her going forward. Or part ways with her as soon as possible.
“I admit I was thinking that Mistress Zu Chey will be disappointed that I failed my mission. I will likely be punished when I return.”
“Maybe it’s time for an early retirement. No need to return, eh?”
She frowned at him. “It would not be right to abandon those who raised me after my parents were killed.”
“Ah. I didn’t realize…” Yanko, remembering the injured man, made himself turn and head toward the room he’d detected. “I don’t know much about your situation since you never talk about it. For instance, is being a mage hunter a job or a lifetime commitment?”
“It is not a job.” Jhali followed him, pointing the pistol toward the deck this time. Where had she even gotten a Turgonian weapon? “I owe much to Zu Chey and the other leaders in my sect.”
“And you still hate me because of who my mother is,” Yanko reasoned, trying to be logical, though it unnerved him that she’d been wrestling with herself back there. While holding a pistol in his direction.
“If Snake Heart indeed died from my throwing star, my need for vengeance will be satisfied.”
Yanko grimaced, remembering his mother’s pirate lover—Gramon—carrying her off that beach while she bled profusely from her throat. Had she survived the injury? Yanko had no way to know.
“Comforting,” he murmured. “But you still have an assignment to kill me, right? Or did that end with Sun Dragon’s death?”
“Sun Dragon is the one who hired the sect to send someone to kill you because he wanted no competition in retrieving the lodestone. Since I already had reason to hate your family, I was chosen. Sun Dragon paid the fee in advance, so his death is irrelevant. The sect will feel obligated to carry out the assassination and report its completion to his family.”
“That’s wonderful. So even if you don’t do it, someone else will?”
“Someone else will try. You are surprisingly difficult to kill.”
Yanko grunted, not in agreement, not when she’d had a pistol pointed at his back and he’d had his guard down.
“You will simply have to save the lives of all future mage hunters who are sent after you.”
Yanko glanced back at her face. Had that been a joke? He hadn’t witnessed a sense of humor from her yet.
Her face remained hard to read. Maybe the ability to convey a featureless expression was developed during mage-hunter training. Or a constantly dour expression, such as Dak favored.
“Is that why you’re not trying to kill me now?” he asked. “Because of the brig on the sinking ship?”
“It… has made this difficult.”
“Because you’re growing to appreciate my charisma and my noble desire to help our people?”
“No.” The flatness of the syllable made him suspect his charisma irritated her more than it appealed. “Because it isn’t honorable to kill someone who saved your life. I have been considering whether to give more weight to my duty to my mentors and surrogate family or my personal honor.”
She had called him naive before when he’d spoken of honor, but it was clear it meant something to her.
He decided to abandon the subject, both because they had reached the room in the back and because he didn’t want to irritate her when it sounded like she truly was wrestling with herself. Who was to say that the next time she stepped onto the mat that it would come out in his favor? Or what if she saved his life at some point? Would they be even then? He’d thought she might consider that to be the case after she’d helped him escape in Turgonia but perhaps not.
His yellow light shined through the smoke to reveal a solid metal door without a handle or knob. Yanko touched his fingers to it and found it warm. Heat from the nearby engines or some magical energy? He closed his eyes and examined it with his senses. If this was a Turgonian ship, any booby traps should be physical rather than magical, but the pirate captain had been a mage.
A weak cough came from inside.
Something magical plucked at his senses. A Made item. It didn’t seem to involve the door; it was inside the room with the man.
On the chance that they stood before a simple pocket door, Yanko rested his palms on the surface and tried to pull it aside. It didn’t budge.
Jhali pushed an inset lever that he hadn’t noticed. The door slid aside.
Lakeo would have made a sarcastic comment about his manhood. Jhali said nothing.
Inside, an old man lay curled up in the corner farthest from the door. Glowing red chains were attached to shackles around his wrists and ankles and also attached to a throbbing red panel embedded in the wall. They glowed not because they were hot but because they contained magical energy. Someone had thought this old man required more than steel for bindings? Why?
“That doesn’t look like part of the original Turgonian design,” Jhali noted.
“No.” Yanko examined the chains with his mind, hoping it would be a simple matter to break them with magic.
At the sound of their voices, the man looked up with bleary eyes. Sores and bruises marred the skin that was visible through the shredded remains of a black Turgonian uniform. There wasn’t any insignia or rank on it, but maybe he had been traveling with the soldiers when this ship had been stolen. Had he witnessed what happened to the crew?
He lifted his bearded chin and said something in Turgonian.
“I only speak Nurian,” Yanko said in case the prisoner understood. “Are you part of the original crew?”
The man was far older and frailer than the typical Turgonian soldier. Maybe he was an officer who’d refused to retire.
He said something else defiantly. Yanko recognized the Turgonian word for pirates.
“Actually, we’re not pirates. We’re…” Yanko paused. Yes, exactly what was he these days? “I’m Yanko White Fox.”
“I’m sure that’ll clear it right up for him,” Jhali said.
“We’re with the Nurian diplomat Tynlee Blue Heron. We st
opped the pirates.”
The man frowned at him. Yanko supposed there wasn’t any point in speaking to someone who didn’t understand his language.
But the man switched languages and said in perfect Nurian, “Since when do diplomats pick fights with pirates?”
“Well, we had three Turgonians on board.”
The old man snorted, more in acceptance than defiance.
“Will you go get Dak, please?” Yanko asked Jhali. “I’m going to try to break those chains.”
“With more effectiveness than you used on the door?”
There was the sarcasm he’d been waiting for.
“You’ve been spending too much time with Lakeo,” Yanko said.
Yanko thought a faint smile ghosted across her lips, but he had to be wrong. Jhali didn’t smile.
After she disappeared, he went farther into the room and knelt so that he was on eye-level with the glowing red panel that the chains were attached to.
“Who is Dak?” The man considered Yanko warily, maybe not ready to believe he wasn’t in the hands of more pirates.
“A Turgonian military officer.” Yanko wouldn’t give his name since Dak had kept it from him for so long. Spies, presumably, didn’t like to wander around tossing out their identities.
“And who are you, Yanko White Fox?”
“Nobody at the moment, I’m afraid.” He rested his hand on the panel, feeling the magic like a vibration against his fingers.
The man looked at his chest. “That robe suggests otherwise.”
“It was a gift.”
“That you didn’t earn?” Did the man know about Stargrind and what becoming a warrior mage entailed? His accent was so slight that Yanko would have believed he had spent time in Nuria.
“Not exactly,” he said.
“Too bad. When I first saw it, I was confident you could free me. Now, I’m wondering if you’re going to blow us both up.”
“I blew up the balloon. That’s the only explosion I aspire to today.”
The man sighed. “We should have listened to Admiral Starcrest. President Starcrest.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Many times, yes. Helium doesn’t have the lifting power of hydrogen, but it’s still lighter than air. I suppose mages would be less likely to cause helium to explode in a fiery inferno.”
Assassin's Bond (Chains of Honor, Book 3) Page 14
