The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

Vasya could not think of a worthy reply, but perhaps her face conveyed sympathy, for the Grand Prince said gruffly, “Never mind, boy. There are worse things one must do to be Grand Prince, and worse still to be Grand Prince of a vassal-state.”

He looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. Vasya remembered his laughter during the long days, when the snow fell in the trackless wood. On sudden impulse, Vasya said, “I will serve you in any way I can, Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

Dmitrii paused in his walking; Sasha stiffened. Dmitrii said, “I may call upon it, cousin,” with the unassuming ease of a man who had been crowned at sixteen years old. “God be with you.” He laid a brief hand on Vasya’s hooded head.

Then they were walking again. Dmitrii added, low, to Sasha, “I may grovel all I like, but it won’t grow my coffers a jot. I hear your counsel, but—”

“Humility may postpone the reckoning in any case,” Sasha murmured back. “Tokhtamysh may strike Mamai sooner than we expect; every delay may buy you time.”

Vasya, keen-eared and walking just behind her brother, thought, No wonder Sasha never came home to our father’s house. How could he, when the Grand Prince needs him so? Then she thought, with foreboding, But Sasha lied. For me, he lied. Where will that leave him with his prince when I am gone?

They came to the gates, were admitted, stripped of their guards, and shown to the finest room Vasya had ever seen.

Vasya had no notion of luxury—she barely had a word for it. Mere warmth was luxury to her, and clean skin and dry stockings and not being hungry. But this—this room gave her an inkling of what luxury might mean, and she stared about her, delighted.

The wooden floor had been laid down with care and polished. Spread upon it were figured carpets, free of dust, of a kind she did not know, vivid with snarling cats.

The stove in the corner had been tiled and painted with trees and scarlet birds, and its fire burned hotly. In an instant, Vasya was too warm; a bead of sweat rolled down her spine. Men stood arrayed like statues against the walls, wearing cerise coats and strange hats.

I will see this city, Sarai, Vasya thought, feeling her gorgeous kaftan a gaudy, ill-made thing in all this elegance. I will go far, with Solovey, and he and I will see it.

She breathed a scent (myrrh, though she did not know it) that made her nose itch; frantically she suppressed a sneeze and almost ran into Sasha when the party halted a few paces from a carpeted dais. Dmitrii knelt and bent his head to the floor.

Her eyes watering, Vasya could not see the ambassador clearly. She heard a quiet voice bidding the Grand Prince of Moscow to rise. She listened in silence while Dmitrii conveyed his greetings to the Khan.

She hardly recognized the bold prince in this lord who murmured his apologies, bowing, and handed off his gifts to the attendants. The greetings went on—“on all your sons, your wives, may God protect”—Vasya snapped back to attention only when Dmitrii’s voice shifted. “Village after village,” Dmitrii said in respectful but ringing tones, “robbed, left in flames. My people will have enough to do to survive the winter, and there is no more money. Not until next fall’s harvest. I mean no disrespect, but we are men of the world, and you understand—”

The Tatar replied in his own tongue, voice sharp. Vasya frowned. She had not raised her eyes yet beyond the interpreter at the foot of the platform. But something in the voice drew her glance upward.

And then she stood transfixed, appalled.

For Vasya recognized the ambassador. She had last seen him in the dark, behind the vicious downstroke of a curving sword, while that same voice summoned his men with a war-cry.

He glittered now in silk velvet and sable, but she could not mistake the broad shoulders, the hard jaw and hard eye. He was speaking to the translator with a steady voice. But for an instant the Tatar ambassador—the bandit-captain—turned his eyes to hers, and his lip curled in an expression of half-laughing hatred.

VASYA LEFT THE AUDIENCE-HALL ANGRY, afraid, and doubting her own senses. No. It cannot be he. That man was a brigand. Not a highborn Tatar, not a servant of the Khan. You are mistaken. You saw him once by firelight, and again in the dark. You cannot be sure.

Was she? Could she really forget the face she had seen behind the stroke of a sword, the face of a man who had almost killed her?

That this man would mouth oily things about alliance and Dmitrii’s ingratitude while Russian blood still stained his hands…

No. It wasn’t he. How could it be? And yet…Could a man be a lord and a bandit? Was he an impostor?

Dmitrii’s party was going back the way it had come, crossing the kremlin at a quick pace. All about them dinned the careless noise of a city on the cusp of festival: laughter, shouting, a snatch of song. The people gave way when the Grand Prince passed, and shouted his name.

“I need to speak with you,” Vasya said to Sasha with quick decision. Her urgent hand closed about her brother’s wrist. “Now.”

The gates of Dmitrii’s palace materialized before them; the first torches were lighting. Kasyan shot them a curious glance; brother and sister walked with their heads close together.

“Very well,” said Sasha, after an instant’s hesitation. “Come, back to the palace of Serpukhov. There are too many ears here.”

Chewing her lip, Vasya waited while her brother made a swift excuse to a frowning Dmitrii. Then she followed her brother.

The day was drawing on; golden light made torches of Moscow’s towers, and shadows pooled in the space around the palaces’ feet. A bone-cracking breeze whistled between the buildings. Vasya could barely keep her feet in the tumult of the streets now: so many folk charged to and fro laughing or frowning or merely hunched against the chill. Lamps and hot irons smoothed the snow-slides; hot cakes sizzled in fat. Vasya turned her head once, smiling despite herself, at the splat and howl of flung snowballs, all beneath a sky turning fast to fire as the day waned.

By the time they came to Solovey’s paddock, in a quiet corner of Olga’s dooryard, Vasya was hungry again. Solovey’s white-starred head jerked up when he caught sight of her. Vasya clambered over the fence and went to him. She felt him over, combed his mane with her fingers, let him nuzzle her hands, all the while searching for words to make her brother understand.

Sasha leaned against the fence. “Solovey does well enough. Now what do you mean to say to me?”

The first stars had kindled in a sky gone royally violet, and the moon heaved a faint silver curve over the ragged line of palaces.

Vasya took a deep breath. “You said,” she began, “when we were chasing the bandits—you said it was strange that the bandits had good swords, finely forged, that they had strong horses. Odd, you said, that they had mead and beer and salt in their encampment.”

“I remember.”

“I know why,” said Vasya, speaking faster still. “The bandit captain—the one who stole Katya and Anyushka and Lenochka—he is the one they are calling Chelubey, the emissary from General Mamai. They are one and the same man. I am sure of it. The emissary is a bandit—”

She paused, a little breathless.

Sasha’s brows drew together. “Impossible, Vasya.”

“I am sure of it,” she said again. “When last I saw him, he was swinging a sword at my face. Do you doubt me?”