The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

The floor was wood. Of course it was—wood smooth-planed and dark. But when he straightened, Morozko nonetheless held a handful of snow. He breathed on it once, and the snow became ice.

Vasya bent nearer, fascinated. His long, thin fingers shaped the ice as though it were clay. In his face was an odd light, the joy of creation. After a few minutes, he held a comb that looked as though it had been carved from diamonds. The back of it was shaped like a horse, long mane streaming along its straining neck.

Morozko handed it to Vasya. The coarse hair of the beast’s back, done in ice-crystals, scraped on her calloused fingertips.

She turned the lovely thing over and over in her fingers. “Will it break?” It lay cool as stone and perfect in her hand.

He sat back. “No.”

Tentatively, she began to work at the snarls. The comb slid like water down the whorls of her hair, pulling them smooth. She thought he might be watching her, though whenever she looked, his glance was fixed on the fire. At the end, when her hair was smooth-plaited, wound with a little strip of leather, Vasya said, “Thank you,” and the comb melted to water in her hand.

She was still staring at the place where it had lain when he said, “It is little enough. Eat, Vasya.”

She had not seen his servants come, but now the table held porridge, golden with honey and yellow with butter, and a wooden bowl. She sat down, heaped the bowl with steaming porridge, and tore into it, making up for the night before.

“Where do you mean to go?” he asked her as she ate.

Vasya blinked. Away. She had not thought further than away.

“South,” she said slowly. As she spoke, she knew her answer. Her heart leaped. “I wish to see the churches of Tsargrad, and look upon the sea.”

“South, then,” he said, oddly agreeable. “It is a long way. Do not press Solovey too hard. He is stronger than a mortal horse, but he is young.”

Vasya glanced at him in some surprise, but his face revealed nothing. She turned toward the horses. Morozko’s white mare stood composedly. Solovey had already eaten his hay, with a good measure of barley, and was now edging back to the table, one eye fixed on her porridge. She began eating rapidly, to forestall him.

Not looking at Morozko, she asked, “Will you ride with me, a little way?” Her question came out in a rush, and she regretted it as soon as she voiced it.

“Ride at your side, nurse you with pap, and keep the snow off at night?” he asked, sounding amused. “No. Even if I had not other things to do, I would not. Go out into the world, traveler. See what the long nights and hard days feel like, after a week of them.”

“Perhaps I will like them,” Vasya retorted, with spirit.

“I sincerely hope not.”

She would not dignify that with an answer. Vasya put a little more porridge in the bowl and let Solovey lick it up.

“You will have him fat as a broodmare at this rate,” Morozko remarked.

Solovey’s ears eased back, but he did not relinquish the porridge.

“He needs filling out,” Vasya protested. “Besides, he’ll work it off, on the road.”

Morozko said, “Well, if you are set on this, then I have a gift for you.”

She followed his glance. Two bulging saddlebags lay on the floor beneath the table. She did not reach for them. “Why? My great dowry is lying in that corner, and surely a little gold will buy all that is needful.”

“Naturally you can use the gold of your dowry,” Morozko returned coolly. “If you intend to ride into a city you do not know, where you can purchase things you have never seen, riding your war-stallion and dressed as a Russian princess. You may wear the white furs and scarlet if you like, so that no thief in Rus’ will be the poorer.”

Vasya lifted her chin. “I prefer green to scarlet,” she said coldly. “But perhaps you are right.” She put a hand to the saddlebags—then paused. “You saved my life in the forest,” she said. “You offered me a dowry; you came when I asked you to rid us of the priest. Now this. What do you want of me in return, Morozko?”

He seemed to hesitate, just an instant. “Think of me sometimes,” he returned. “When the snowdrops have bloomed and the snow has melted.”

“Is that all?” she asked, and then added, with wry honesty, “How could I forget?”

“It is easier than you would think. Also—” He reached out.

Startled, Vasya kept perfectly still, though her traitorous blood rushed out to her skin when his hand brushed her collarbone. A silver-backed sapphire hung round her neck; Morozko hooked a finger beneath its chain and drew it forth. This jewel had been a gift from her father, given to her by her nurse before she died. Of all Vasya’s possessions, the sapphire was her most prized.

Morozko held the jewel up between them. It threw pale icicle-light across his fingers. “You will promise me,” he said, “to wear this always, no matter the circumstances.” He let the necklace fall.

The brush of his hand seemed to linger, raw on her skin. Vasya ignored it angrily. He was not real, after all. He was alone, unknowable, a creature of black wood and pale sky. What had he said?

“Why?” she asked. “My nurse gave it me. A gift from my father.”

“It is a talisman, that thing,” Morozko said. He spoke as though he were choosing his words. “It may be some protection.”

“Protection from what?” she asked. “And why do you care?”

“Contrary to what you believe, I do not want to come for you, dead in some hollow,” he returned coldly. A breeze, soft and bone-chilling, filtered through the room. “Will you deny me this?”

“No,” said Vasya. “I meant to wear it anyway.” She bit her lip and turned away a little too quickly to untie the flap of the first saddlebag.

It held clothing: a wolfskin cloak, a leather hood, a rabbit-fur cap, felt-and-fur boots, trousers lined with fleece. The other held food: dried fish and bread baked hard, a skin of honey-wine, a knife, and a pot for water. Everything she would need for hard travel in a cold country. Vasya stared down at these things with a delight she had never felt for the gold or gems of her dowry. These things were freedom; Vasilisa Petrovna, Pyotr’s highborn daughter, would never have owned such things. They belonged to someone else, someone more capable and more strange. She looked up at Morozko, face alight. Perhaps he understood her better than she’d thought.

“Thank you,” Vasya said. “I—thank you.”

He inclined his head but did not speak.

She didn’t care. With the skins came a saddle of no kind that she had ever seen before, little more than a padded cloth. Vasya leaped up eagerly, already calling to Solovey, the saddle in one hand.

BUT SADDLING THE HORSE was not so easy. Solovey had never worn a saddle—even this skin that passed for one—and did not like it much.

“You need it!” Vasya finally burst out, exasperated, after a good deal of fruitless sidling about the fir-grove. So much for the brave and self-sufficient wanderer, she thought. Solovey was no nearer to being saddled than when they began. Morozko was watching from the doorway. His amused glance bored into her back.

“What will happen if we are going all day for weeks on end?” Vasya demanded of Solovey. “We’ll both be chafed raw, and besides, how will we hang the saddlebags? There is grain for you in there, too. Do you want to live on pine-needles?”