The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

“I will not!” she cried. “I want nothing of you. I want no one. The world is wide; surely you will find another. Perhaps this time you will not use her unknowing.”

“If you leave me now,” he answered, just as evenly, “you will be in terrible danger. The sorcerer will find you.”

“Help me, then,” she said. “Tell me what Kasyan means to do.”

“I cannot see. He is wound about with magic, to keep me out. Better to leave, Vasya.”

Vasya shook her head. “Perhaps I will die here, as others have died. But I will not die your creature.”

Somehow the wind had risen in the space between her heartbeats, and to Vasya it seemed they stood alone in the snow, that the stinks and the shapes of the city were gone. There were only herself and the frost-demon, in the moonlight. The wind shrieked and gibbered all around them, yet her plait did not stir in the gusts.

“Let me go,” she said. “I am no one’s slave.”

Her hand opened and the sapphire fell; he caught it. It melted in his hand until it was not a jewel at all but a palmful of cold water.

Abruptly, the wind died and all around was churned-up snow and hulking palaces.

She turned away from him. The dooryard of the prince of Serpukhov had never seemed so large, the snow so deep. She did not look back.

24.

Witch

After the horse-race, six of Dmitrii’s men-at-arms took Sasha to the monastery of the Archangel, where they put him in a small cell. There they left him, to walk the circle of his own thoughts. These centered chiefly on his sister, stripped and shamed before all Moscow, but her courage unbowed, her care only for him.

“You will be sent before the bishops,” Andrei told him that night, when supper was brought. Then, darkly, he added, “And put to the question. If you are not slain in the dark; Dmitrii might well come and cut your head off himself. He is that angry. His grandfather would have. I will do what I can, but that is not much.”

“Father, if I die,” said Sasha, putting out a hand just before the door closed, “you must do what you can for my sister. Both my sisters. Olga did what she did unwillingly, and Vasya is—”

“I do not want to know,” Andrei put in acidly, “what your Vasya is. If you were not vowed to God, you would be dead already, for the lies you told on that witch’s behalf.”

“At least send word to Father Sergei,” Sasha said. “He loves me well.”

“That I will do,” said Andrei, but he was already walking away.

THE BELLS RANG OUTSIDE, the footsteps passed, the rumors swirled. Jagged, incoherent prayers rose to Sasha’s lips and broke off again, half-voiced. Dusk had melted into night, and Moscow was drunk and cheerful under a blaze of new-risen moonlight when footsteps sounded in the cloister, and Sasha’s door rattled.

He got to his feet and put his back to a wall, for what good it would do.

The door opened, softly. Andrei’s fat, anxious face showed again in the gap, beard bristling. Beside him stood a sturdy young man in a hood.

An instant of disbelieving stillness, and then Sasha strode forward. “Rodion! What do you here?” For Andrei carried a torch in one anxious hand; by its light Sasha saw his friend’s face worn all to rags, a mark of frostbite on his nose.

Andrei looked angry, exasperated, afraid. “Brother Rodion has come hotfoot from the Lavra,” he said, “with news that concerns the Grand Prince of Moscow.” A pause. “And your friend, Kasyan Lutovich.”

“I have been to Bashnya Kostei,” put in Rodion. He was looking uneasily at his friend, in the cold and narrow cell. “I rode two horses to death to bring you the news.”

Sasha had never seen such a look in Rodion’s face before. “Come in, then.”

He was in no position to command, but they entered the cell without a word and fastened the door behind them.

Rodion proceeded, softly, to tell a tale of dust and bones and horrors in the dark. “It deserves its name,” he finished. “Bashnya Kostei. The Tower of Bones. I do not know what manner of man is this Kasyan Lutovich, but his house is no dwelling for a living man. And if that weren’t enough, it was Kasyan who—”

“Paid Chelubey to pass himself off as an emissary, to get his men into the city,” finished Sasha, thinking with a pang of Vasya. “I know. Rodya—you must leave at once. Do not say you’ve seen me. Go to the Grand Prince. Tell him—”

“What emissary? Kasyan paid those bandits to burn villages,” Rodion interrupted. “I found their agent in Chudovo, their go-between to buy their blades and horses.”

Rodion had been busy. “Hire bandits to burn his own?” Sasha asked sharply. “To profit in girls?”

“I suppose,” said Rodion. His frost-nipped face was grim.

Andrei stood silent near the door.

“Perhaps Kasyan used the burning to lure the Grand Prince out into the wild so that the impostor might slip in the easier,” Sasha said slowly.

Rodion’s glance shifted between Sasha and Andrei. “Am I too late in my errand? I see some evil has touched you already.”

“My own pride,” said Sasha, with a ghost of dark humor. “I misjudged my sister and Kasyan Lutovich both. But enough. Go. I do well enough here. Go and warn—”

A clamor cut him off. There came a flaring of torches, shouts from the gate, the sound of running feet and slamming doors.

“What now?” muttered Andrei. “Fire? Thieves? This is the house of God.”

The noise gained in pitch; voices shouted and answered one another.

Muttering, Andrei heaved himself through the door, turned back to bolt it, then hesitated. He gave Sasha a dark look, not entirely unfriendly. “Do not escape in the meantime, for the love of God.” He bustled off, leaving the door unlocked.

Rodion and Sasha looked at each other. The rushing darkness, flickering between the torches, stippled both their tonsured heads. “You must warn the Grand Prince,” said Sasha. “Then go to my sister, the Princess of Serpukhov. Tell her—”

Rodion said, “Your sister’s child is coming. She has gone into the bathhouse.”

Sasha stilled. “How do you know?”

Rodion bowed his head. “The priest, Konstantin Nikonovich—the one that knew her father at Lesnaya Zemlya—he received a messenger, and left to minister to her. I heard as I was coming.”

Sasha turned away sharply, looking down at hands bruised still from that day’s fighting. They would not call a priest to a laboring woman unless her end was near. That he—that cold-handed creature—should be with my sister dying…“God keep her, in life or death,” said Sasha. But in his eyes was a flash that would have had the prudent Andrei panting back to treble-bolt the door.

The noise without had not diminished. Over the clamor suddenly rose, clear and incongruous, a voice that Sasha knew.

Sasha thrust Rodion aside with a well-placed shoulder and flew down the corridor of the cloister, pursued by his friend.

VASYA STOOD IN THE DOORYARD just behind the gate, wearing a dirty cloak, hands folded before her, looking pale and unlikely in the nighttime monastery. “I must see my brother!” she snapped, her light voice a counterpoint to the angry rumbling all around.