The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

So saying, the Grand Prince rose, while all the staring folk bowed, and led the way into another room, blessedly empty of people. Vasya drew a relieved breath.

A table stood between stove and window, and at Dmitrii’s wave, a serving-man began to pile it with cakes and soup and platters. Vasya watched with unabashed longing. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to not be hungry. No matter what she had eaten the past fortnight, the cold always sapped the nourishment away. She had counted each of her ribs, in the bathhouse.

“Sit down,” Dmitrii said. His coat was shot with silver and stiff with gems and red gold; his hair and beard had been washed and oiled. In his fine clothes, he had acquired a new air of authority, sharp and precise and a little frightening, though he still concealed it beneath his round-cheeked smile. Vasya and Sasha took places at the narrow table. Cups of hot and sweet-smelling wine lay to hand. The center of the table was crowned with a great pie, studded with cabbage and egg and smoked fish.

“The boyars are coming tonight,” said the Grand Prince. “I must feast them all, piggish things, and send them home dazed with the meat. They must get their fill of flesh before the great fast begins.” Dmitrii’s glance took in Vasya, who hadn’t managed yet to peel her eyes from the platters. His face softened a little. “But I did not think our Vasya could wait for supper.”

Vasya nodded, swallowed, and managed, “I have been a bottomless pit, since the road, Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

“As it should be!” cried Dmitrii. “You haven’t nearly your growth yet. Come, eat and drink, both of you. Wine for my young cousin, and for the warrior-monk—or are you fasting already, brother?” He gave Sasha a look of wry affection and shoved the pie in Vasya’s direction. “A slice for Vasilii Petrovich,” Dmitrii told the servant.

The slice was cut, and Vasya started on it with delight. Sour cabbage, rich eggs, and the salt of the cheese on her tongue…She attacked wholeheartedly and began to relax with the weight of food inside her. Her pie inhaled, she fell like a dog upon stewed meat and baked milk.

But Dmitrii’s good-natured hospitality had not deceived Sasha. “What has happened, cousin?” he asked the Grand Prince, while Vasya ate.

“Good news and bad, as it happens,” said Dmitrii. He leaned back in his chair, clasped his ringed hands, and smiled with slow satisfaction. “I may forgive my foolish wife for weeping and imagining ghosts now. She is with child.”

Vasya’s head jerked up from her supper. “God protect them both,” said Sasha, clasping his cousin’s shoulder. Vasya stammered congratulations.

“God send she throws me an heir,” said Dmitrii, gulping at his cup. His air of buoyant carelessness slowly leached away as he drank, and when he glanced up again, Vasya felt she could see him for the first time: not the lighthearted cousin from the road but a man tempered and burdened beyond his years. A prince who held the lives of thousands in his steady grip.

Dmitrii wiped his mouth and said, “Now for the bad news. A new ambassador has come from Sarai, from the court of the Khan, with horses and archers in his train. He is installed in the emissary’s palace and demanding all taxes owed forthwith, and more. The Khan is finished with delays, he says. He also says, quite openly, that if we do not pay, General Mamai will lead an army up from the lower Volga.”

The words fell like a hammer.

“It might be just bluster,” Sasha said, after a pause.

“I am not sure,” said Dmitrii. He had mauled his food about more than eating it; now he put his knife aside. “Mamai has a rival in the south, I hear, a warlord called Tokhtamysh. This man is also putting forth a claimant for the throne. If Mamai must go to war to put down this rival—”

A pause. They all looked at each other. “Then Mamai must have our taxes first,” finished Vasya suddenly, surprising even herself. She’d been so caught up in the conversation that she had forgotten her shyness. “For money to fight Tokhtamysh.”

Sasha shot her a very hard look. Be silent. Vasya made her face innocent.

“Clever boy,” said Dmitrii, distractedly. He grimaced. “I have not sent tribute for two years, and no one noticed. I did not expect them to. They are too busy poisoning each other, so that they or their fat sons may have the throne. But the generals are not so foolish as the pretenders.” A pause. Dmitrii’s glance met Sasha’s. “And even if I decide to pay, where am I to get the money now? How many villages burned this winter, before Vasya tracked those bastards to their lair? How are the people to feed themselves, much less muster up a tax for another war?”

“The people have done it before,” Sasha pointed out, blackly. The atmosphere around the table made a strange counterpoint to the cheerful shrieks of the city outside.

“Yes, but with the Tatars divided between two warlords, we have a chance to worm free of the yoke—to make a stand—and every wagon that goes south weakens us. Why should our taxes go to enrich the court at Sarai?”

The monk did not speak.

“One smashing victory,” Dmitrii said, “would put an end to all this.”

It sounded to Vasya as though they were continuing an old argument.

“No,” retorted Sasha. “It wouldn’t. The Tatars could not let a defeat stand; there is still too much pride there, even if the Horde is not what it was. A victory would buy us time, but then whoever takes control of the Horde would come back for us. And they would not want to simply subdue us, but to punish.”

“If I am to raise the money,” the Grand Prince said slowly, “we will have to starve some of those peasants you rescued, Vasya. Truly, Sasha,” he added to the monk, “I value your advice. Let all know it. For I am weary of being these pagans’ dog.” The last syllable came out sharp as broken ice, and Vasya flinched. “But”—Dmitrii paused, and added, lower—“I would not leave my son a burnt city.”

“You are wise, Dmitrii Ivanovich,” said Sasha.

Vasya thought of hundreds of Katyas in villages across Muscovy, going hungry because the Grand Prince must pay a tax to the lord of the same people that had burned their homes in the first place.

She made to speak again, but Sasha shot her a vicious glance across the table and this time she bit the words back.

“Well, we must greet this ambassador in any case,” said the Grand Prince. “Let it not be said that I failed in hospitality. Finish your supper, Vasya. You are both coming with me. And our Kasyan Lutovich, with his fine looks and fine clothes. If I must placate a Tatar lord, I may as well do it properly.”

A PALACE SMALL AND FINELY MADE stood a little by itself, near the southeast corner of the kremlin. Its walls were higher than those of the other palaces, and something in its shape or situation breathed out an indefinable sense of distance.

Vasya and Sasha and Kasyan and Dmitrii, with several of the chief members of the latter’s household, all walked there from the Grand Prince’s palace, with guards to deter the curious.

“Humility,” said Dmitrii to Vasya with black humor. “Only a proud man rides. One is not proud to the lords from Sarai, or you will be dead, your city burned, your sons disinherited.”

His eyes filled with bitter memory, older than he. It was nearly two hundred years since the Great Khan’s warriors first came to Rus’, and threw down her churches, and raped and slaughtered her people into acquiescence.