But Kip didn’t try to fix it. Later, maybe, each would be more receptive to reason, more flexible. Not in front of everyone, though.
Ben-hadad was trying to keep his temper, saying tightly, “I’ll make the best skimmer I can so the squad can be safe—”
“Cap’n! Captain! Sir!” the lookout cried out from above.
At the alarm in his voice, the squad reacted immediately. Low stances, spectacles flipped on, team fanning out, looking for threats, hands to weapons. That most of the calamities that might come upon them at sea would be impossible to oppose didn’t matter; this was instinct.
The galley had no proper crow’s nest, so the lookout merely stood atop the main yard, balancing himself with one hand on the rigging. Above the full-bellied sails, the man was pointing north.
“Fore!” Kip said.
They turned and looked but saw nothing.
“Go,” Cruxer ordered.
So they ran toward the prow, sliding or jumping down the steep stair-ladder from the rear castle, dodging cursing sailors, and dashing up onto the low forecastle as the captain bellowed at his sailors. The captain might be an ass, but he seemed a capable one. When they reached the prow, the Mighty spread out, each of them having drawn in his color, except Kip, who was slower. Kip was still swapping spectacles in and out of his hip case, stealing glances at the dirty white sails to soak up each color in turn.
“What is that?” Cruxer asked.
“Ben?” Ferkudi said.
“Uh-huh?” Ben-hadad said.
“We’re looking north, right?”
“North-northwest, technically, but—”
“Why is the sun rising in the north?”
Within moments, all of them saw it. At first, it looked like the sun on the horizon, but blinding yellow like the risen sun, not red as the sun on the horizon ought to. And as it rose, the orb deformed, elongated, like the longest finger of a great hand, then simply the first burgeoning cloud of a vast cloud bank rolling into view.
“Storm!” the lookout bellowed.
The sailors sprang into action. A storm they knew how to handle. Only the Mighty were frozen. They knew this was no normal storm.
This was a luxin storm, ravager of cities, slayer of armies, Orholam’s wrath, the gods’ lash. And it was coming straight for them.
As the luminous cloud bank filled the horizon, the sea reflected the sky with an unnatural clarity. Tiny bright needles flashed between sea and sky, as if knitting them together with light.
This was the consequence of the Seven Satrapies’ not having a Prism to balance the colors. Drafters inevitably caused imbalances, and these storms broke out spontaneously. No one understood yet why they happened where they did, what exactly sparked them, or why they ended.
“Breaker, Winsen,” Cruxer said. “How tight is that yellow?”
Winsen licked his lips. “Hard to tell from this distance, but uh… I think it’s better than I can do.”
Kip flipped on his yellow spectacles. “It’s all over the yellow spectrum. But some of it, yes, some of it’s solid.”
“Is it raining? Anyone?” Cruxer asked, though he had the best eyes of the Mighty.
They’d heard stories of a crystal storm in a little village in Atash. Blue luxin crystals the size of fists and sharp as razors had fallen from the sky and shredded everything within a day’s walk, but no farther. No one had known whether the tale was true. Solid yellow would be worse.
An odd wind started blowing at their backs, blowing them toward the storm front. It was like no wind Kip had ever felt. It was utterly constant. No gusts, no variation in its strength at all, just a simple constant hard push.
The distant seas in front of the storm fell flat in an expanding circle. No chop, no whitecaps, no variation at all. The sea became a perfect mirror for the bright clouds above. The great luminous clouds running straight against the wind seemed to crash into it as if it were a wall, and then the clouds flipped over that wall in a mass like pancake batter spreading on a griddle in concentric rings.
But everywhere the clouds folded over, the bright needles flashed again. As they got closer, they were mere needles no more, but tree trunks, massive pillars from the sea to the heavens.
At each point, the flat sea pulsed, throbbed yellow, gathering like a vortex, then cratering downward before exploding into the sky. Yellow luxin shimmered into light, but each pillar was also wreathed in chasing fires, spiraling into the sky.
Each pillar pulsed light for several heartbeats, then blew apart, falling into water and light onto seas now crisscrossed with tremendous waves expanding in rings from the luxin-lightning strikes.
“Orholam have mercy,” someone said.
“This is impossible,” Ben-hadad said.
“It’s happening,” Ferkudi pointed out helpfully.
“No, this is impossible,” Ben-hadad said.
“You smart guys,” Ferkudi said.
The wind died, and the sea abruptly went still and flat as the front edge of the light-storm passed over them.
“What do we do?!” the captain bellowed at them.
Kip tore his eyes away from the storm. Everything that could be secured on the ship had been. The sailors had reefed the sails, trying to give the ship enough propulsion to quarter the waves, but not so much resistance to the wind that the masts broke.
Then Kip saw that everyone was looking at him. As if he had the answers.
“Turtle,” Cruxer said.
At first, Kip thought Cruxer was talking to him, the turtle-bear, the ridiculous beast that he’d come up with as his own avatar and that had ended up somehow tattooed on his forearm, invisible except when he drafted. But the rest of the squad understood. They drew together around Kip, and the green and blue drafters among them began putting luxin shields up around them to protect all of them from the scything rain.
Going below would have been safer, but Cruxer thought Kip was going to figure this out.
We’re facing a force of nature, and they expect me to fix it. Orholam’s balls.
“Why’s it impossible, Ben?” Kip asked.
“Because it’s yellow.” He stopped, as if that were enough to explain the dread on his face.
“And?!” Cruxer demanded.
“The storms come from imbalances. Yellow is the center of the spectrum. It’s the fulcrum. It shouldn’t be possible for the center to be out of balance. So if it is, we are truly—”
But the rest of whatever he said was lost as the sailors screamed out. The captain shouted, “Secure yourselves to—”
A few hundred paces directly ahead, the sea was cratering. Lightning bolts raced low on the water toward the crater, and were sucked in.
With a concussion that shook the galley and knocked down most everyone standing on deck, the sea exploded upward. Fire spiraled around the pillar of light, discharging into bright clouds above.
Discharging.
Kip clambered to his feet. Water and yellow luxin dropped on the ship in bucketsful, sweeping several sailors and half the Mighty off their feet. But it was liquid yellow, thank Orholam. It flashed into light as it hit the deck, blinding but not killing anyone. Whether they would be lucky enough to be hit only by liquid yellow or whether there were solid razors of yellow yet to come, Kip had no idea.
Discharging. Because it was out of balance.
Kip left the turtle, rushing to the prow just in time to feel it rise as the galley climbed a mountainous wave.
“Breaker, get back—” Cruxer shouted.
But the wave was too massive, too fast for the galley to climb. The prow dug into it instead, slowing the ship as suddenly as if it had hit a wall. Winsen was thrown off his feet. Kip snatched his wrist as he tumbled and was drafting before he knew it. He manacled one of his own wrists to a line connecting the prow and mainmast and the other to Winsen’s wrist.
Then water hit them like the slap of a sea demon’s tail.