The Kerch could have the ocean. The Zemeni would take the sky. Ravka had kept its word and delivered exactly what the Kerch wanted, but not what they needed. That was a lesson Nikolai had learned from his demon.
“The Kerch are going to be furious when they find out,” said Tamar.
“Making people happy isn’t the province of kings,” Nikolai noted. “Perhaps if I’d been born a baker or a puppeteer.”
As they watched, doors at the base of the airships opened and a froth of fine powder gusted downward in a gray-green cloud.
“Squallers!” Nadia bellowed, her face beaming now, her cheeks wet with tears, as Ravkan flyers in the air and Grisha soldiers on the ground directed the powdery antidote onto the regiment of addicted Grisha.
The antidote drifted down onto them like a fine coating of frost and Nikolai saw them turn their palms up, confused. Then they tilted their heads to the sky, breathing deeply. They were like children seeing snow for the first time. They opened their mouths, held out their tongues. He saw them turn to one another as if waking from a nightmare.
“To us!” commanded Tamar as she and Tolya advanced, laying down cover for the Grisha prisoners with their rifles.
Arm in arm, the sickly Grisha stumbled toward the Ravkan lines, toward home and freedom.
The Fjerdan officers called for their soldiers to open fire on the deserting Grisha, but Nikolai’s flyers were ready. They strafed the Fjerdan lines, forcing them to take cover.
Ravkan Grisha and soldiers moved forward to guide their weakened friends. Now they really did look like ghosts, strange spirits coated in silvery powder.
“Your Majesty?” Amelia said in confusion as Nikolai slung her arm around his shoulders. Her lashes were dusty with antidote, her pupils dilated.
Around them, Nikolai saw the Fjerdan ranks breaking in the tumult the Zemeni arrival had caused. The skies were thick with Ravkan and Zemeni flyers. Fjerda had lost their Grisha assassins, and half their tanks lay in smoldering pieces.
Nikolai and the others plunged back through the field, taking the Grisha prisoners with them. He handed Amelia off to a Healer, and then he was commandeering a horse and shouting to Tolya, “Come on!”
He wanted to see this from the air. When they reached the runway, they leapt into his flyer. It roared to life and they soared skyward.
The view from above was both heartening and terrible. The Fjerdan lines had broken and they were in retreat, but brief as the battle had been—barely a battle, a skirmish, really—the damage was shocking. The muddy basin below had been carved up by Grisha Fabrikators, the landscape pocked with deep wounds and furrows. The dead lay scattered in the mud: Fjerdan soldiers, Ravkan soldiers, Grisha in their bright kefta, the frail bodies of the sickly prisoners who hadn’t made it off the field.
It was just a taste of what was coming.
“This is going to be a different kind of war, isn’t it?” Tolya asked quietly.
“If we don’t stop it,” said Nikolai as they watched the Fjerdans fall back.
This tiny victory wouldn’t solve the problem of his parentage or fill their coffers or swell the ranks of their army, but at least the Fjerdans would have to recalibrate. Ravka couldn’t afford to rig the entire northern border with mines. But Fjerda had no way of knowing that, so they would have to waste valuable time sweeping potential incursion points. They could no longer rely on parem as a weapon against Ravka’s Grisha. And more importantly, the Zemeni had shown that Ravka was not alone. The Fjerdans had wanted to play quick and dirty. This day had shown them what this fight would really look like. See what your country thinks of war now that your soldiers will have to bleed too.
Nikolai let his flyer coast gently into the landing bay at the base of the largest airship, bringing it to an abrupt stop that taxed the little craft’s brakes.
Kalem Kerko was there to greet him and Tolya. He wore blue fatigues, his hair in short twists.
“Your Highness,” he said with a sharp bow.
Nikolai clapped Kerko on the back. “Let’s not stand on ceremony.” He had trained with Kerko’s family when he was learning the work of gunsmiths, and he was not remotely surprised to see the ways in which the Zemeni had improved upon Ravkan airships. “You just saved our asses.”
“You gave us the skies,” said Kerko. “We can at least help you keep this miserable country. Will you pursue the Fjerdans? They’re in retreat.”
“We can’t afford to. Not yet. But you’ve granted us valuable time.”
“We’ll travel with you to Poliznaya.”