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?”