"Come with me," he said to her, his voice as bland and featureless as if nothing had happened, as if she had not witnessed anything. "You must help Kruach Aum."

As she left the room, trying not to stumble, trembling as she was, Bellis thought about what the Brucolac had said.

Where are we going?she wondered as she followed Uther Doul.

What is the plan?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

After long prevarication, the storm hit.

The tightly coiled mass of air unwound. The night was hot. The rain blasted Armada. Ropes and rigging arced and snapped against the flanks of the ships and buildings. There was thunder and lightning.

This was the first real squall that the city had faced in a long time, but the inhabitants responded with practiced expertise. Airships were quickly grounded, waiting out the weather in yards and under tarpaulins. The Trident, tethered to the Grand Easterly and too big to be covered, could only bob and shift uneasily in the gusts, its massive shadow rolling over the ships and houses below it.

Across the city, all except the very strongest bridges and tethers were unhitched at one end, in case the sea pulled the boats apart fast or far enough to snap their bonds. Traveling across Armada during a storm was impossible.

Channeled into canals between the vessels, Armada’s waters jerked and pitched violently but could not form waves. There were no such constraints on the sea that smashed against the city’s outer vessels. The boats that made the mouths of the Basilio and Urchinspine harbors were drawn together, enclosing and protecting the raiding or trading vessels-Armadan and guest-within. Beyond the city’s bounds, the fleet of fighters and tugs and pirates moved far enough away to avoid being driven into their home port’s walls.

Only those who patrolled the city’s undersides-the submersibles, the menfish, the seawyrms, and Bastard John the dolphin-were more or less untroubled. They sat below the surface and weathered the storm.

After peering from a window in the corridor of the Grand Easterly, Uther Doul looked back at Bellis.

"There’s a worse one than this to come," he said. At first Bellis had no idea what he was telling her. Then she remembered the story in Kruach Aum’s book: the summoning of the avanc, powered by lightning elementals.

We’re going to call up a hell of a storm, aren’t we?she thought.

Bellis set to teaching Aum an understanding of Salt, as instructed. It troubled her. She was conscious that this was a breach of the fundamental rules of anophelii containment, as maintained by Kohnid and Dreer Samher. And however venal their reasons for policing them, those rules were a protective response to one of the most notorious empires in Bas-Lag’s history. She had to remind herself that Aum was male, and old, and very far from being a threat to anyone.