“Look,” said Tolya. “Smoke.”
“And riders,” added Tamar. “Seems like trouble.”
At the fringes of town near where the blight had struck, Nikolai could see a gathering of men on horseback. Angry voices carried on the wind.
“Those are Suli wagons,” said Zoya, the words hard and clipped.
A shot rang out.
They all shared the briefest glance, and then they were charging down the hill to the valley below.
Two groups of people stood in the shade of a large cedar tree, mere footsteps from where the blight had bled all life from the land. They were on the edge of a Suli encampment, and Nikolai saw the way the wagons had been arranged not merely for convenience but for defense. There was no child in sight. They’d been ready for a possible attack. Maybe because they always had to be ready. The old laws restricting Suli land ownership and travel had been abolished even before his father’s time, but prejudice was harder to wipe from the books. And it was always worse when times got hard. The mob—there was no other word for it, their rifles and fevered eyes made that clear—confronting the Suli was testimony to that.
“Stand down!” Nikolai shouted as they galloped nearer. But only a couple of people turned toward him.
Tolya charged ahead and drove his massive warhorse between the two groups. “Lay down your arms in the name of the king!” he bellowed. He looked like a warrior Saint come to life from the pages of a book.
“Very impressive,” said Nikolai.
“Show-off,” said Tamar.
“Don’t be petty. Being the size of an oak should have some benefits.”
Both the townspeople and the Suli took a step back, mouths agape at the sight of a giant, uniformed Shu man with tattooed arms in their midst. Nikolai recognized Kyril Mirov, the local governor. He’d made good money trading salt cod and producing the new transport vehicles rapidly replacing carriages and carts. He had no noble blood in him, but plenty of ambition. He wanted to be taken seriously as a leader, and that meant he felt he had something to prove. Always worrisome.
Nikolai took the opportunity Tolya had given him. “Good morning,” he said happily. “Are we all gathering for an early breakfast?”
The townspeople fell into deep bows. The Suli did not. They recognized no king.
“Your Highness,” said Mirov. He was a lean man with jowls like melted wax. “I had no idea you were in the area. I would have ridden out to greet you.”
“What’s happening here?” Nikolai said calmly, keeping accusation from his voice.
“Look what they did to our fields!” cried one of Mirov’s men. “What they did to the town! Ten houses vanished like smoke. Two families gone, and Gavosh the weaver as well.”
Vanished like smoke. They’d had the same reports from other parts of Ravka: a blight that struck out of nowhere, a tide of shadow that enveloped towns, farmland, ports, each thing it touched dissolving into nothing with no more ceremony than a candle guttering out. In its wake, the blight left fields and forests leached of all life. Kilyklava, he’d heard it called—vampire, after a creature from myth.
“That doesn’t explain why your guns are drawn,” Nikolai said mildly. “Something terrible has happened here. But it’s not the work of the Suli.”
“Their camp was untouched,” said Mirov, and Nikolai didn’t like the measured sound of his voice. It was one thing to calm a snapping dog, another to try to reason with a man who had dug himself a tidy trench and fortified it. “This … thing, this horror struck just days after they arrived on our land.”
“Your land,” said a Suli man standing at the center of the group. “There were Suli in every country this side of the True Sea before they even had names.”
“And what did you build here?” asked a butcher in a dirty apron. “Nothing. These are our homes, our businesses, our pastures and livestock.”
“They’re a cursed people,” said Mirov as if citing a fact—last year’s rainfall, the price of wheat. “Everyone knows it.”
“I hate to be left out of a party,” said Nikolai, “but I know no such thing, and this blight has struck elsewhere. It is a natural phenomenon, one my Materialki are studying and will find a solution to.” A heady combination of lies and optimism, but a bit of exaggeration never hurt anyone.
“They’re trespassing on Count Nerenski’s land.”
Nikolai let the mantle of Lantsov authority fall over him. “I am Ravka’s king. The count holds these lands at my discretion. I say these people are welcome here and under my protection.”
“So says the bastard king,” grumbled the butcher.
A hush fell.
Zoya clenched her fists and thunder rolled over the fields.
But Nikolai held up a hand. This was not a war they would win with force.
“Could you repeat that?” he asked.
The butcher’s cheeks were red, his brow furrowed. The man might well keel over from heart failure if his ignorance didn’t kill him first. “I said you are a bastard and not fit to sit that fancy horse.”
“Did you hear that, Punchline? He called you fancy.” Nikolai turned his attention back to the butcher. “You say I am a bastard. Why? Because our enemies do?”
An uncomfortable murmur passed through the crowd. A shuffling of feet. But no one spoke. Good.
“Do you call Fjerda your master now?” His voice rang out over the gathered townspeople, the Suli. “Will you learn to speak their tongue? Will you bow to their pureblood king and queen when their tanks roll over Ravka’s borders?”
“No!” cried Mirov. He spat on the ground. “Never!”
One down.
“Fjerda has loaded your guns with lies about my parentage. They hope you will turn your weapons on me, on your countrymen who stand at our borders even now, ready to defend this land. They hope you will do the bloody work of war for them.”
Of course, Nikolai was the liar here. But kings did what they wished; bastards did what they must.
“I’m no traitor,” snarled the butcher.
“You sure sound like one,” said Mirov.
The butcher thrust his chest out. “I fought for the Eighteenth Regiment and so will my son.”
“I bet you had quite a few Fjerdans running,” said Nikolai.
“Damn right I did,” said the butcher.
But the man behind him was less convinced. “I don’t want my children fighting in another war. Put them witches out front.”
Now Zoya let lightning crackle through the air around them. “The Grisha will lead the charge and I will take the first bullet if I have to.”
Mirov’s men took a step back.
“I should thank you,” Nikolai said with a smile. “When Zoya takes it into her head to be heroic, she can be quite frightening.”
“I’ll say,” squeaked the butcher.
“People died here,” said Mirov, trying to regain some authority. “Someone has to answer for—”
“Who answers for the drought?” asked Zoya. Her voice cut through the air like a well-honed blade. “For earthquakes? For hurricanes? Is this who we are? Creatures who weep at the first sign of trouble? Or are we Ravkan—practical, modern, no longer prisoners of superstition?”