The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

When Morozko slid back through the curtain of spruce, he found her smashing nuts with the flat of her belt-knife and scrabbling hungrily for the nut-meats with dirty fingers.

“Here,” he said, a wry note in his voice.

Her head jerked up. The carcass of a big rabbit, gutted and cleaned, hung incongruously from his elegant fingers.

“Thank you!” Vasya gasped with bare politeness. She seized the thing at once, spitted it, and set it over the fire. Solovey put his head curiously under the spruce, eyed the roasting flesh, shot her an offended look, and disappeared again. Vasya ignored him, busy toasting her bread, while she waited for the meat. The bread browned and she gobbled it steaming, with cheese running down the sides. Earlier she had not been hungry, dying as she was, but now her body reminded her that her hot meal in Chudovo was long ago, and the hard, cold days had reduced her flesh to bone and skin and strings. She was ravenous.

When at last Vasya came up for air, licking bread-crumbs from her fingers, the rabbit was almost done and Morozko was looking at her with a bemused expression. “The cold makes me hungry,” she explained unnecessarily, feeling more cheerful than she had in days.

“I know,” he returned.

“How did you take the rabbit?” she asked, turning the meat with deft, greasy hands. Nearly ready. “There was no mark on it.”

Twin flames danced in his crystalline eyes. “I froze its heart.”

Vasya shuddered and asked no more.

He did not speak while she ate the meat. At last she sat back and said “Thank you,” once more, although she couldn’t help adding with some resentment, “Although if you meant to save my life you could have done it before I was dying.”

“Do you still wish to be a traveler, Vasilisa Petrovna?” he returned, only.

Vasya thought of the archer, the whine of his arrow, the grime on her skin, the killing cold, the terror of being ill and alone in the wilderness. She thought of sunsets and golden towers and of a world no longer bounded by village and forest.

“Yes,” she said.

“Very well,” said Morozko, his face growing grim. “Come, are you fed?”

“Yes.”

“Then stand up. I am going to teach you to fight with a knife.”

She stared.

“Did the fever take your hearing?” he demanded, waspish. “On your feet, girl. You say you mean to be a traveler; very well, better you not go defenseless. A knife cannot turn arrows, but it is a useful thing sometimes. I do not mean to be always running about the world saving you from folly.”

She rose slowly, uncertain. He reached overhead, where a fringe of icicles drooped, and broke one off. The ice softened, shaped to his hand.

Vasya watched, hungry-eyed, wishing she could also perform wonders.

Under his fingers, the icicle became a long dagger, hard and perfect and finished. Its blade was of ice, its hilt of crystal: a cold, pale weapon.

Morozko handed it to her.

“But—I do not—” she stammered, staring down at the shining thing. Girls did not touch weapons, beyond the skinning-knife in the kitchen or a little axe for chopping wood. And a knife made of ice…

“You do now,” he said. “Traveler.” The great blue forest lay silent as a chapel beneath a risen moon, and the black trees soared impossibly, merging with the cloudy sky.

Vasya thought of her brothers, having their first lessons in bow or sword, and felt strange in her own skin.

“You hold it thus,” Morozko said. His fingers framed hers, setting her grip aright. His hand was bitingly cold. She flinched.

He let her go and stepped back, expression unchanged. Frost-crystals had caught in his dark hair and a knife like hers lay loose in his hand.

Vasya swallowed, her mouth dry. The dagger dragged her hand earthward. Nothing made of ice had a right to be so heavy.

“Thus,” Morozko said.

The next moment, she was spitting out snow, hand stinging, her knife nowhere to be seen.

“Hold it like that and any child could take it from you,” the frost-demon said. “Try again.”

She looked for the shards of her knife, sure it had fallen to pieces. But it lay whole, innocent and deadly, reflecting the firelight.

Vasya grasped it carefully, as he had shown her, and tried again.

She tried many times, all through that long night, and through another day, and another night that followed. He showed her how to turn another blade with hers, how to stab someone unsuspecting, in several ways.

She was not without speed, she soon discovered, and was light on her feet, but she had not the strength of a warrior, built up from childhood. She tired quickly. Morozko was merciless; he did not seem to move so much as drift, and his blade went everywhere, silken, effortless.

“Where did you learn it?” she gasped once, nursing her aching fingers after yet another fall. “Or did you come into the world knowing?”

Without replying, he offered her a hand. Vasya ignored it and clambered to her feet. “Learn?” he said then. Was that bitterness in his voice? “How? I am as I was made: unchanging. Long ago, men dreamed a sword into my hand. Gods diminish, but they do not change. Now try again.”

Vasya, wondering, hefted her knife and said nothing more.

That first night they stopped only when Vasya’s arm shook and the blade fell from her nerveless fingers. She leaned on her thighs, panting and bruised. The forest creaked in the darkness outside their ring of firelight.

Morozko shot the fire a glance and it leaped up, roaring. Vasya gratefully sank down onto her heap of boughs and warmed her hands.

“Will you teach me to do magic, too?” she asked him. “To make fire with my eyes?”

The fire flared sudden and harsh on the bones of Morozko’s face. “There is no such thing as magic.”

“But you just—”

“Things are or they are not, Vasya,” he interrupted. “If you want something, it means you do not have it, it means that you do not believe it is there, which means it will never be there. The fire is or it is not. That which you call magic is simply not allowing the world to be other than as you will it.”

Her weary brain refused to comprehend. She scowled.

“Having the world as you wish—that is not for the young,” he added. “They want too much.”

“How do you know what I want?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Because,” he replied between his teeth, “I am considerably older than you.”

“You are immortal,” she ventured. “Do you not want anything?”

He fell suddenly silent. Then he said, “Are you warm? We will try again.”

LATE ON THE FORTH NIGHT, when Vasya sat bruised beside the fire, aching too much even to find her bedroll and solace in sleep, she said, “I have a question.”

He had her knife over his knee, running his hands over the blade. If she caught him out of the corner of her eye, she could see frost-crystals, following the line of his fingers, smoothing the blade.

“Speak,” he replied, not looking up. “What is it?”

“You took my father away, didn’t you? I saw you ride off with him after the Bear—”

Morozko’s hands stilled. His expression invited her, firmly, to be quiet and go to sleep. But she could not. She had thought of this much, through the long nights of her riding, when the cold kept her awake.