She wanted to fight now.
To her surprise, it was Mite who piped up. “Can’t you throw a storm at the ships, Julian?”
“No, Maita.” Julian rubbed his eyes. “All Xavier’s warships are defended against magical attack.”
“Magical attack . . . ,” Noa murmured. Calculations flitted through her head. Astrae’s coordinates, the date, the season. If she was right . . . Julian and Mite watched her with nearly identical hopeful expressions.
Noa nodded. A smile was breaking across her face. “I have an idea.”
“Finally!” Mite said with what in Noa’s opinion was an unnecessary degree of exasperation.
“Follow me,” she said, and raced up the beach.
They ran across the hillside and onto the path that led to the Nose, the same place from which Noa had observed the mysterious island they had crashed into. It felt like years ago but had actually been only a few weeks. The shade cast by the scalesia forest was a welcome change from the beating sun, and the branches were alive with finches and warblers and flycatchers going about their day-to-day business, oblivious or indifferent to magical battles.
“We have something better than warships,” Noa said, panting. “Something Xavier will never expect. If you can reach them.”
A few minutes later, they arrived at the top. Noa leaned against the rock that crowned it, out of breath. Mite’s cheeks were bright red. She flopped facedown in the shade. “My side hurts!”
Noa turned slowly, peering in all directions. The mountaintop afforded a view of the entire island, as well as King Xavier’s warships. The dark cloud had completely covered the beach, and the wind carried the sound of screams all the way up the mountain. Noa wondered what new horrors the mages down there were dealing with. Had Gabriela made the walruses on the rocks look like ravenous sea serpents?
The cloud could reach anything above the water, change it, warp it. But it couldn’t touch anything below the water—it was a cloud, after all.
“Julian,” she said, “call the whales.”
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What?”
“Astrae is close to one of the migration paths,” Noa said. “I know where they are—at this time of year, there are hundreds of them heading south. If you can get one to collide with Xavier’s ship, you’ll capsize it!”
“Noa,” Julian said slowly, “I can’t call the whales. I can’t speak whale language.”
She grabbed his hand. “You don’t have to. Just—just lure them here. They follow the krill, you know.”
“I don’t, actually.”
“Julian.” Noa yanked on his arm, hauling him down so they were face-to-face. “You can make bees out of water. You can make your own reflection jump up and run around! You do this sort of flashy, show-offy stuff all the time! Now there’s actually a need for it.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed. “‘Flashy, show-offy’?”
“Oh, come on!” Noa said. “Just do it!”
“All right,” he said, after staring at her a moment longer. “But I want you to know that of all the mad plots you’ve come up with, this takes the cake.”
He turned to the sea and began to chant. It was the most ridiculous spell Noa had ever heard—he sounded like he had a lot of bubbles stuck in his throat, bubbles that fizzed and whistled and popped. Mite actually giggled. But after a moment, the sea around Xavier’s ships began to darken, as if a cloud was rising through the water. The cloud made the water writhe and foam, because it wasn’t a cloud at all but a swarm of tiny krill.
“That’s it!” Noa said. The cloud spread out from Astrae, forming something that resembled a path. Julian was creating the illusion of a feast the likes of which no whale would have seen before. Noa didn’t see how they could resist.
And indeed, one of them couldn’t. After only a few minutes, Noa caught a glimpse of a familiar shape off the coast of Astrae—a broad back curving out of the water like a wave given form, a hint of something massive and ancient, more force of nature than animal.
“You did it!” Noa shouted.
A smile spread across Julian’s face, the dark sort of smile he wore whenever he tossed someone to Beauty. “Now let’s see if we can’t give Xavier the surprise of his life.”
Bigger than any ship, bigger even than Beauty, the blue whale glided toward the island and the great krill cloud. Noa watched in helpless fascination. The whale exhaled, sending a tremendous geyser into the air. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
“Noa,” Mite said, tugging on her sleeve.
“What?” Noa said distractedly.
“Noa.” Mite yanked hard enough to pull her cloak off her shoulder.
Noa turned. The dark fog was creeping up the mountainside, and birds fled in a cacophony of chirrups and squawks. The trees near the foot of the mountain began to rustle, as if something very large was moving through the forest. Noa felt certain that some huge, horrible beast was making its way toward them. She shook her head. No. It was an illusion. It wasn’t real.
“Ignore the fog,” Julian said. He let out another stream of fizzy-bubbly words, and the krill began to encircle Xavier’s ship. “Nothing it shows us can hurt us.”
The fog swept over them. Noa tried to ignore whatever was moving through the trees, slowly yet surely getting closer and closer to the mountaintop. But it was harder this time. There was something different about this fog. Every time she took a breath, awful images rose in her mind. She saw Gabriela attacking the village, Xavier’s cannons tearing the castle apart. Julian gagged and chained, paraded across the deck of a ship while the king’s mages jeered at him. Mite locked in a dungeon. Her heart thundered, and she felt sick.
Mite, crouched at her side, was whimpering. Julian’s
