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.”

“The stockpile of antidote?” Nikolai asked.

Kerko gestured to a wall of what looked like grain sacks. “You can say that you hoped there would be more. I won’t be offended. Your soldier’s face shows the truth of it.”

“Tolya always looks that way. Except when he’s reciting verse, and no one wants that.” Nikolai tallied the sacks of antidote and sighed. “But yes, we hoped there would be more.”

“Parem is fairly easy to manufacture if someone manages the formula. But the antidote?” Kerko shrugged. “It requires too much raw jurda. Perhaps your Fabrikators can find a new way to process the plant.”

The formula had been the work of David Kostyk, Ravka’s most talented Materialnik, working with Kuwei Yul-Bo, the son of the very man who had invented parem. But the idea had come from the source of jurda, Novyi Zem, and a young boy who had grown up on a farm there. He’d told Kuwei that during the harvest, mothers would put balm from the stalks of the jurda plant on babies’ lips and eyelids to prevent the pollen from affecting them.