The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

She stared. Reality wavered like the air around the fire.

“Perhaps I am not the savior you want,” added the Bear, sly now, “but my noble brother could not come himself. You shattered his power when you shattered his blue jewel; and then spring came. He is less than a ghost. So he freed me and sent me. Went to a lot of trouble, really.” The single eye slid over her skin, and he pursed his lips. “No accounting for taste.”

“No,” was all she could manage. “He would not.” She was going to be sick, from terror and shock, from the animal-stink of the half-seen crowd, concealed by smoke.

The chyert reached into his ragged sleeve. With a look of distaste, he thrust a palm-sized wooden bird into her hand. “He gave me this to give you. A token. He traded his freedom for your life. Now we must go.”

The words seemed to run together in her mind; she couldn’t make sense of them. The wooden bird was carved, agonizingly, to look like a nightingale. She had seen the winter-king, the Bear’s brother, carving a bird once, beneath a spruce tree in the snow. Her hand closed about the carving even as she said, “You’re lying. You didn’t save my life.” She wished for a drink of water. She wished she could wake up.

“Not yet,” the Bear said and glanced up at the burning cage. The mockery vanished from his face. “But you will not escape the city, unless you come with me.” He caught her hand suddenly, grip sure. “The bargain was for your life. I have sworn it, Vasilisa Petrovna. Come. Now.”

Not a dream. Not a dream. He killed my father. She licked her lips, forced her voice to work. “If you are free, what will you do after you save my life?”

His scarred mouth quirked. “Stay with me and find out.”

“Never.”

“Very well. Then I will see you safe, as I promised, and the rest doesn’t concern you.”

He was a monster. But she didn’t think he was lying. Why would the winter-king do such a thing? Was she now to owe this monster her life? What would that make him? What would that make her?

With death all around her, Vasya hesitated. Shrieks rose suddenly from the crowd and she flinched, but they were not screaming at her. A mass of horsemen was beating a way through the mob. Eyes turned from the fire to the riders; even Medved glanced up.

Vasya jerked herself away and ran. She didn’t look back, for if she did, she would stop, would yield in her despair to her enemy’s promises or to the death still beating at her back. As she ran, she tried to be like a ghost, like a chyert herself. Magic is forgetting the world was ever other than as you willed it. And perhaps it worked. No one called out; no one so much as glanced in her direction.

“Fool,” said the Bear. His voice was in her ear, though a whole mass of people stood between them. His weary amusement was worse than rage. “I am telling you the truth. That is what frightens you.” Still she darted through the crowd, a fire-smelling ghost, trying not to hear that dry, metallic voice. “I will let them kill you,” said the Bear. “You can leave here with me, or you will not leave at all.”

That she believed. Still she ran, sinking herself deeper in the crowd, sick with terror, sick at the stink, expecting every instant to be seen, to be seized. The carved nightingale felt cold and solid in her sweaty fist: a promise she didn’t understand.

And then the Bear’s voice was raised up again, not directed at her. “Look! Look—what is that? A ghost—no—it is she the witch; she has escaped the fire! Magic! Black sorcery! She is there! She is there!”

Vasya realized with horror that the crowd could hear him. A head turned. Then another. They could see her. A woman screamed, just as a hand closed on Vasya’s arm. She pulled away, thrashing, but the hand only tightened its grip. Then a cloak was flung over her shoulders, concealing her blackened shift. A familiar voice spoke in her ear, even as the hand dragged her deeper into the crowd. “This way,” it said.

Vasya’s savior yanked the hood over the girl’s charred hair, hiding everything except her feet. The crush of people hid them; most people were trying not to be trampled. It was too dark to see her red footprints. Behind her the Bear’s voice rose, savage now: “There! There!”

But even he could not guide a crowd in such confusion. Sasha and Dmitrii and the Grand Prince’s riders had finally arrived, had won their way through to the pyre, shouting. They tore the burning logs away, swearing as they scorched their hands; one man caught fire and shrieked. All around Vasya, people were surging, fleeing, crying out that they had seen the witch’s ghost, that they had seen the witch herself, escaped from the fire. No one remarked a skinny girl, stumbling in a cloak.

Her brother’s voice soared over the din; she thought she heard the strident tones of Dmitrii Ivanovich. The crowd surged backward from the riders. I must go to my brother, Vasya thought. But she could not bring herself to turn; her every sense was bent on escape, and somewhere at her back was the Bear…

The hand on her arm continued to drag her along. “Come,” said that familiar voice. “Hurry.”

Vasya lifted her head, stared uncomprehending into Varvara’s grim, bruised face.

“How did you know?” she whispered.

“A message,” said Varvara jerkily, still dragging her.

She didn’t understand. “Marya,” Vasya managed. “Are Olga and Marya—”

“Alive,” said Varvara, and Vasya sagged in gratitude. “Unhurt. Come.” She pulled Vasya on, half-carrying her through the retreating crowd. “You have to leave the city.”

“Leave?” Vasya whispered. “How? I have—I have not…”

Solovey. She could not form the word; grief would take the last of her strength.

“You do not need the horse,” said Varvara, voice hard. “Come.”

Vasya said nothing more; she was fighting a desperate battle to stay conscious. The ends of her ribs ground together. Her bare feet didn’t hurt anymore, numbed on the ice. But they didn’t work very well either, and so she stumbled and stumbled again, until Varvara’s arm was the only thing keeping her from falling.

The crowd churned behind them, scattering under the whips of Dmitrii’s men-at-arms. A voice called to Varvara, asking if the girl was sick, and Vasya felt a new bolt of terror.

Varvara returned a cool explanation, of a niece who’d fainted with the bloodletting, and all the while her hand made more bruises on Vasya’s arm as she dragged her up from the riverbank and into the darkness of the sapling woods that grew beside the posad. Vasya tried to understand what was happening.

Varvara halted abruptly near an oak-sapling, bare with the end of winter. “Polunochnitsa,” she said to the dark.