Page 24 of Rule of Wolves

Nikolai remembered. Nadia had worked side by side with her in the labs before her capture.

Tamar seized Nadia by the shoulder, pulling her back. “You can’t help her now.”

“I have to try!”

But Tamar didn’t let go. “She’s as good as dead. I’ll put an axe in her heart before I let you fall into this trap.”

Amelia and the other dosed Fabrikators raised their hands, about to cause another earthquake.

“I have a clear shot,” said Tolya, his rifle raised.

“Hold,” said Nikolai. Again he looked to the west, hoping—because hope was all they had left.

“Take the damned shot!” Adrik said.

Nadia struck him with a gust of air. “They can’t make us kill our friends, our own kind! We’re doing the Fjerdans’ work for them.”

“Those aren’t our friends,” Adrik snapped. “They’re ghosts, sent back from the next life, haunted and hopeless and looking for blood.”

Nikolai signaled for the second wave of fighters to engage as their flyers tried to get close enough to the Fjerdan lines to fire on the transport without being blown from the sky themselves.

And then he heard it, a sound that echoed with a steady whump whump whump like a beating heart, too even and unyielding to be thunder.

Every head turned to the west, to the skies, where three vast airships—larger than anything Nikolai had ever seen airborne—emerged from the clouds. Their hulls weren’t emblazoned with Kerch’s flying fish. They bore the orange stars of the Zemeni naval flag.

“They came,” said Nikolai. “I think you owe me an apology.”

Tolya grunted. “Just admit you weren’t sure either.”

“I was hopeful. That’s not the same as unsure.”

Nikolai had known Zoya’s diplomatic mission to speak to the Kerch had been doomed from the start, as had she. The Kerch had always been led by one goal alone: profit, and they would remain neutral. But Ravka had needed to maintain the pretense of asking—quite desperately—for aid. They had needed Fjerda’s and Kerch’s spies to believe they were without allies.

Months before, Nikolai had given the Kerch exactly what they’d demanded: plans for how to build and arm izmars’ya, underwater ships that could be used to disrupt Zemeni trade routes and blow up Zemeni ships. And the Kerch had gone about doing just that. But what the Kerch didn’t know was that those ships they’d so successfully destroyed had been empty of men and cargo. They were phantom ships, decoys sent out to sea to give the Kerch the illusion of success, while the Zemeni had moved their trade routes up into the clouds with Ravkan airship technology.

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.