The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

Vasya scratched the soft place beneath his jaw and murmured, “I must stay—I want to see my sister, but you—I could let you go. Take you back into the forest. You needn’t—”

I will stay here if you do, interrupted Solovey, though he was trembling, lashing his flanks with his tail.

Dmitrii flung his reins to a groom and dropped to the ground, his horse as unmoved by the crowd as he. Someone thrust a cup into his hand; he drank it off and pushed his way to Vasya. “Better than I expected,” he said. “I was sure you’d lose him the second we passed the gates.”

“You thought Solovey would bolt?” Vasya demanded indignantly.

“Of course I did,” said Dmitrii. “A stallion, bridleless and no more used to crowds than you? Take that outraged look off your face, Vasilii Petrovich; you look just like a maiden on her wedding night.”

A flush crept up her neck.

Dmitrii slapped the stallion’s flank. Solovey looked affronted. “We will put this one to my mares,” said the Grand Prince. “In three years my stable will be the envy of the Khan at Sarai. That is the best horse I have ever seen. Such a temperament—fire, but obedience.”

Solovey turned a mollified ear; he was fond of compliments. “Better a paddock for him now, though,” Dmitrii added practically. “He’ll kick my stable down otherwise.” The prince gave his orders, and then added aloud, “Come, Vasya. You will bestow the beast yourself, unless you think a groom might be able to halter him. Then you will bathe in my own palace, and wash off the grime of the road.”

Vasya felt herself turn pale. She groped for words. A groom sidled near with a rope in one hand.

The horse snapped his teeth, and the groom dropped hurriedly back.

“He doesn’t need a halter,” said Vasya, a trifle unnecessarily. “Dmitrii Ivanovich, I would like to see my sister at once. It has been so long; I was only a child when she went away to marry.”

Dmitrii frowned. Vasya wondered what she would do about bathing, if he insisted. Say she was concealing a deformity? What sort of deformity would make a boy—?

Sasha came to her rescue. “The Princess of Serpukhov will be eager to see her brother,” he said. “She will want to give thanks for his safe arrival. The horse can stay in her husband’s stable, if you permit, Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

Dmitrii frowned.

“Perhaps we should leave them to their reunion,” said Kasyan. He had handed over his reins and stood sleek as a cat in the middle of the tumult. “There will be time enough for putting the beast to mares, when he is rested.”

The Grand Prince shrugged. “Very well,” he said in some irritation. “But come to me, both of you, when you have seen your sister. No, don’t look like that, Brother Aleksandr. You are not going to ride with us all the way to Moscow and then cry up monkish solitude as soon as you have passed the gates. Go to the monastery first if you wish; flog yourself, and cry prayers to heaven, but come to the palace after. We must give thanks, and then there are plans afoot. I have been too long away.”

Sasha said nothing.

“We will be there, Gosudar,” Vasya interjected hastily.

The Grand Prince and Kasyan disappeared together into the palace, talking, followed by servants and by jostling boyars. Just at the doorway, Kasyan glanced back at her before disappearing into the shadows.

“THIS WAY, VASYA,” SAID SASHA, shaking her from contemplation.

Vasya remounted Solovey. The horse walked when she asked, though his tail still swished back and forth.

They turned right out of the Grand Prince’s gates and were instantly caught in the swirl of the moving city. The two riders rode abreast beneath palaces taller than trees, across earth turned to muck, the dirty snow pushed aside. Vasya thought her head would twist off from staring.

“Damn you, Vasya,” said Sasha as they rode. “I begin to have sympathy for your stepmother. You might have pleaded sickness instead of agreeing to sup with Dmitrii Ivanovich. Do you think Moscow is like Lesnaya Zemlya? The Grand Prince is surrounded by men all vying for his favor, and they will resent you for being his cousin, for leaping over them to land so high in his good graces. They will challenge you and set you drunk; can you never hold your tongue?”

“I couldn’t tell the Grand Prince no,” replied Vasya. “Vasilii Petrovich wouldn’t have told him no.” She was only half-listening. The palaces seemed to have tumbled from heaven, in all their sprawling glory; the bright colors of their square towers showed through caps of snow.

A procession of highborn ladies passed them, walking together, heavily veiled, with men before and behind. Here blue-lipped slaves ran panting about their business; there a Tatar rode a fierce and stocky mare.

They came to another wooden gate, less fine than Dmitrii’s. The door-ward must have recognized Sasha, for the gate swung open immediately, and they were in the dooryard of a quiet, well-ordered little kingdom.

Somehow, despite all the noise at the gates, it reminded her of Lesnaya Zemlya. “Olya,” Vasya whispered.

A steward came to meet them, soberly garbed. He did not turn a hair when confronted with a grubby boy, a monk, and two weary horses. “Brother Aleksandr,” he said, bowing.

“This is Vasilii Petrovich,” said Sasha. A hint of distaste rippled his voice; he must be deathly weary of the lie. “My brother before I became a brother in Christ. We will need a paddock for his horse, then he wishes to see his sister.”

“This way,” said the steward after an instant’s startled hesitation.

They followed him. The prince of Serpukhov’s palace was an estate in and of itself, like their father’s, but finer and richer. Vasya saw a bakery, a brewery, a bathhouse, a kitchen, and a smoking shed, tiny beside the sprawl of the main house. The palace’s lower rooms were half-dug into the earth, and the upper rooms could be accessed only by outside staircases.

The steward took them past a low, neat stable that breathed out sweet animal-smells and gusts of warm air. Behind it lay an empty stallion-paddock with a high fence. It held a little, square shelter, meant to keep off the snow, and also a horse-trough.

Solovey halted just outside the paddock and eyed the arrangement with distaste.

“You needn’t stay here,” Vasya murmured to him again, “if you do not wish to.”

Come often, the horse said only. And let us not stay here long.

“We won’t,” Vasya said. “Of course we won’t.”

They wouldn’t, either. She meant to see the world. But Vasya did not want to be anywhere else just then, not for gold or jewels. Moscow lay at her feet, all its wonders ready for her eyes. And her sister was near.

A groom had come up behind them, and at the steward’s impatient gesture, he let down the bars of the paddock-fence. Solovey deigned to be led inside. Vasya undid the stallion’s girth and slung the saddlebags over her own shoulder.

“I will carry them myself,” she said to the steward. On the road, her saddlebags were life itself, and she found now that she could not relinquish them to a stranger in this beautiful, frightening city.

A little mournfully, Solovey said, Be careful, Vasya.

Vasya stroked the horse’s neck. “Don’t jump out,” she whispered.