The Ravkan forces looked battered and flimsy compared to the metal beasts the Fjerdans commanded. Nina saw First Army soldiers climbing the rocks that bordered the low cliffs of the bay. Why not send Tidemakers? Had they been told to hold back? They had an antidote to parem now. Why wouldn’t they use Grisha to raise the waves and try to sink the Fjerdan boats before they landed? Maybe the Fjerdan invasion had arrived too suddenly for them to mount a proper defense.

Nina watched the invading Fjerdan fleet draw closer, like monsters from the deep, gray-backed and hungry.

“The first strike,” said Redvin. “We’ll drive inland, then close on Os Kervo from the south as Brum’s men close from the north. The soil will run red with Ravkan blood.”

But Nina wasn’t so sure. A thought had entered her head, equal parts dread and hope.

“Why do they meet no opposition?” Ylva asked.

“The Ravkans expected Sturmhond’s blockade to hold. The fools concentrated their forces to the north. All that remains in the south is a skeleton crew to meet our assault.”

Sturmhond’s blockade. Just how had the Fjerdans broken through?

Nina bent to a long glass and trained it on the Ravkan forces. It was hard to make out much from this distance, but they seemed unnaturally still. As if they were simply waiting. She focused the lens on the figures she saw standing on the rocks—and recognized a familiar head of raven hair, lifted by the wind.

Not an ordinary soldier. Not a Tidemaker. Zoya Nazyalensky. Ravka’s most powerful Squaller and Grisha general. If Ravka was making its stand on the northern front, what was Zoya doing here?

“Does it trouble you, Mila?” said Ylva. “I have long been a soldier’s wife. I’m used to the realities of battle. But we don’t have to watch.”

“No,” said Nina. “I want to see.”

“At last a bit of spine!” Redvin crowed. “You’ll enjoy this first taste of victory.”

The Fjerdan soldiers leapt into the waves, rifles in hand, charging toward the beach, a tide of violence.

One by one the soldiers on the rocks raised their hands. An army of Squallers.

Zoya was the last. Lightning forked through the skies—not the single bolts Nina had seen Squallers summon before, but a crackling web, a thousand spears of jagged light that turned the sky a vivid violet before they struck the water.

The crowd around Nina gasped.

“Sweet Djel,” shouted Redvin. “No!”

But it was too late.

The sea was suddenly alight, seething like a boiling pot, steam hissing off its surface. Nina could not hear the men in the shallows scream, but she could see their mouths open wide, their bodies shaking as current passed through them. The Fjerdan tank carriers seemed to crumple in on themselves, roofs collapsing in heaps of melted metal, treads welded together.