Chapter 277

The lake gold and quiet. Boats going out. Old Pike tied at the end of the dock, and Njord in her, rod raised, head tilted toward a clear blue sky.

clear. And over it, faint as a watermark, tomorrow's sky: one small squall, drawn in pale lines, not there yet.

Njord's big fingers tying a knot in the cord of his rod, slow, careful, a fisherman's knot. And the watermark squall in the sky above him shrinking, pulled down into the cord, gone into the knot.

on the rod, a little tighter and darker than the cord round it, and a faint breath of wind whistling out of it, like something asleep.

in Old Pike's stern while nobody's looking, one eye shut, running his palm along her planks. Finding one a hair off. Pulling a plane from his apron and truing it, by hand, three long strokes, and ticking its underside in violet with his pencil.

(Nobody notices.)

Njord and Trollmage sitting side by side with their lines in the water. Neither speaking. The sun moving. The gulls moving. Nothing else moving for a very long time.

The sun across the sky. Njord and Trollmage in exactly the same positions. One fish in the bucket between them.

his head snapping up. His eyes moving like water, then wide. Looking out at the storm-wall across the lake, which hasn't moved, and at the watermark sky over it, which suddenly has.

Out of the storm-wall, a day early, a squadron of squalls peeling away and racing across the water toward Tidekant: small storms each the size of a house, black-bellied, with thunderhead sails and a dim drowned captain at a wheel of cloud in each one.

on his feet in Old Pike, furious at himself.

The squalls hitting the docks: wind ripping nets off their racks, rain like thrown gravel, boats lifted and smashed against the pilings, salt-cod flying. A drowned captain in a squall laughing as a shed's roof peels away.

punching a squall. His fist going straight through it. Rain on his face. Getting knocked down by a gust anyway.

Green lightning pouring off Vigolas's fist into the squall, a column of emerald fire thick as a tree trunk. And the squall swallowing it: the lightning crawling into the black belly of the cloud and turning grey-white, and the squall swelling, doubling, roaring, bigger.

staring up at a storm that just got bigger because he hit it.

its drowned captain leaning out of the cloud at Vigolas, sniffing, interested. Its face: a sodden man, beard of rain.

the lightning crawling back up his arms, as if it wanted to go to the storm and changed its mind.

Ivar in his hands, rain streaming off him, his eyes going gold. Seeing threads. Seeing them in the storms.

Each squall a black cloud, and inside each one a single thread, running from the swirl to its heart, where a drowned man stands at a wheel of cloud. The storm is just weather. The thread is the captain.

Kompis Subtick Shot: the world freezing, the shot relived, kept, fired once: a single bullet spiralling into the biggest squall's black belly along its thread, past the rain, past the wind, and into the drowned captain at its wheel.

its captain shot through, howling: and the whole storm raining away, collapsing into one great downpour on the dock, water and nothing else. Where the captain was, a faint shape looking up for a moment, almost relieved, and gone.

The crews turning it round: Kompis calling threads, everyone going for the eyes. Smurjan's shadow reaching into a squall's heart and pulling its captain out by the collar. Svala pointed at a captain, not the storm: one line, through. A second squall raining away. A third.

on the dock, in the path of a squall bearing down on a group of running children, going still. And the rain in her line of sight stopping: a whole storm's rain hanging in the air like glass beads, and the children running out from under it.

ISA (no breath; her face very still)

letting go: the frozen rain dropping all at once onto empty dock. The children gone up the hill. Isa gasping.

The last squalls turning, captains wheeling their clouds round, and racing away back across the lake toward the wall, leaving Tidekant soaked and smashed: six boats broken, nets everywhere, a dozen sheds roofless. No one drowned.

standing in Old Pike in the wreck of the morning, rain dripping off his beard, looking at the broken boats. At his village. His face very old.

beside him on the dock, looking at his own hands. At the green lightning, quiet now, coiled under his skin.

turning to him.

at the top of the dock, signing to Njord, and then stopping, her hands going still. Looking past him, out across the lake. Her face going white.

Far out, in front of the storm-wall, one storm moving out of it, alone, slowly. Bigger than all the squalls together. A storm the size of an island, black as tar, lightning grey-white in its belly, hail falling from it in a white curtain. And on it, sails: tier after tier of thunderhead canvas, a flagship's rig. And at the very heart of it, small, dim, a wheel, and a figure at it.

his pipe falling out of his mouth into the lake, his face gone white as his beard.