The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

Slowly Sasha said, “It was dark. You were frightened. You cannot be sure.”

She leaned forward. Her voice came grinding out with her intensity of feeling. “Would I speak if I were not sure? I am sure.”

Her brother tugged his beard.

She burst out, “He is mouthing things about the Grand Prince’s ingratitude while he profits from Russian girls. That means—”

“What does it mean?” Sasha retorted with sudden and cutting sarcasm. “Great lords have others to do their dirty work; why should an emissary be riding about the countryside with a pack of bandits?”

“I know what I saw,” said Vasya. “Perhaps he is not a lord at all. Does anyone in Moscow know him?”

“Do I know you?” retorted Sasha. He dropped like a cat from the fence. Solovey threw his head up when the monk’s booted feet struck the snow. “Do you always tell the truth?”

“I—”

“Tell me,” said her brother. “Whence came this horse, this vaunted bay stallion that you ride? Was it Father’s?”

“Solovey? No—he—”

“Or tell me this,” said Sasha. “How did your stepmother die?”

She drew in a soft breath. “You have been talking to Father Konstantin. But that has nothing to do with this.”

“Doesn’t it? We are talking about truth, Vasya. Father Konstantin told me the whole tale of Father’s death. A death you caused, he says. Unfortunately, he is lying to me. But so are you. The priest will not say why he hates you. You have not said why he thinks you a witch. You have not said whence came your horse. And you have not said why you were mad enough to stray into a bear’s cave in winter, nor why Father was foolish enough to follow you. I would never have believed it of Father, and after a week’s riding, I do not believe it of you, Vasya. It is all a pack of lies. I will have the truth now.”

She said nothing, eyes wide in the newborn dark. Solovey stood tense beside her, and her restless hand wound and unwound in the stallion’s mane.

“Sister, the truth,” said Sasha again.

Vasya swallowed, licked her lips and thought, I was saved from my dead nurse by a frost-demon, who gave me my horse and kissed me in the firelight. Can I say that? To my brother the monk? “I cannot tell you all of it,” she whispered. “I barely understand all of it myself.”

“Then,” said Sasha flatly, “am I to believe Father Konstantin? Are you a witch, Vasya?”

“I—I do not know,” she said, with painful honesty. “I have told you what I can. And I have not lied, I have not. I am not lying now. It is only—”

“You were riding alone in Rus’ dressed as a boy, on the finest horse I have ever seen.”

Vasya swallowed, sought an answer, and found her mouth dust-dry.

“You had a saddlebag full of all you might need for travel, even a little silver—yes, I looked. You have a knife of folded steel. Where did you get it, Vasya?”

“Stop it!” she cried. “Do you think I wanted to leave? Do you think I wanted any of this? I had to, brother, I had to.”

“And so? What are you not telling me?”

She stood mute. She thought of chyerti and the dead walking, she thought of Morozko. The words would not come.

Sasha made a soft sound of disgust. “Enough,” he said. “I will keep your secret—and it costs me to do it, Vasya. I am still my father’s son, though I will never see him again. But I do not have to trust you, or indulge your fancies. The Tatar ambassador is no bandit. You will make no further promises of service to the Grand Prince, tell no more lies than you can help, stop speaking when you should keep silent, and perhaps you will finish this week undiscovered. That is all that should concern you.”

Sasha vaulted the paddock’s bars with lithe grace.

“Where are you going?” Vasya cried, stupidly.

“I am taking you back to Olga’s palace,” he said. “You have said, done, and seen enough for one night.”

Vasya hesitated, protests filling her throat. But one look at his taut back told her that he would not hear them. Her breathing ragged, Vasya touched Solovey’s neck in parting and followed.

17.

Marya the Pirate

Vasya’s room in the men’s quarters was small, but warm and far cleaner than anything in Dmitrii’s palace. Some wine had been kept hot on the oven beside a little stack of butter-cakes, only a little gnawed by an adventurous mouse.

Sasha brought her to the threshold, said “God be with you,” and left.

Vasya sank onto the bed. The sounds of Moscow in festival filtered in through her slitted window. She had ridden all day every day for weeks on end, endured both battle and sickness, and was bone-weary. Vasya bolted the door, cast off cloak and boots, ate and drank without tasting, and climbed beneath the mound of fur coverlets.

Though the blankets were heavy and the stove sent out steady warmth, still she shook and could not fall asleep. Again and again she tasted the lies on her own tongue, heard Father Konstantin’s deep, plausible voice telling her brother and sister a tale that was—almost—true. Again she heard the bandit-captain’s war-cry and saw his sword flash in the moonlight. Moscow’s noise and its glitter bewildered her; she did not know what was true.

Eventually Vasya drifted off. She awoke with a jolt, in the still hour after midnight. The air had a thick tang of wet wool and incense, and Vasya stared bewildered into the midnight rafters, longing for a breath of the clean winter wind.

Then her breath stilled in her throat. Somewhere, someone was weeping.

Weeping and walking, the sound was coming nearer. Sobs like needles stabbed through the palace of Serpukhov.

Vasya, frowning, got to her feet. She heard no footsteps, just the gasp and choke of tears.

Nearer.

Who was crying? Vasya heard no sound of feet, no rustle of clothes. A woman crying. What woman would come here? This was the men’s half of the house.

Nearer.

The weeper paused, right outside her door.

Vasya nearly ceased to breathe. Thus the dead had come back to Lesnaya Zemlya, crying, begging to be taken in out of the cold. Nonsense, there are no dead here. The Bear is bound.

Vasya gathered her courage, drew her ice-knife to be cautious, crossed the room, and opened the door a crack.

A face stared back at her, right up against the doorframe: a pale, curious face with a grinning mouth.

You, it gobbled. Get out, go—

Vasya slammed the door and flung herself backward to the bed, heart hammering. Some pride—or some instinct of silence—buried her scream, though her breath snarled in and out.

She had not bolted the door, and slowly it creaked open.

No—now there was nothing there. Only shadows, a trickle of moonlight. What was that? Ghost? Dream? God be with me.

Vasya watched a long time, but nothing moved, no sound marred the darkness. At length, she gathered her courage, got up, crossed the room, and shut the door.

It was a long time before she fell asleep again.

VASILISA PETROVNA AWOKE ON the first day of Maslenitsa, stiff and hungry, remorseful and rebellious, to find a pair of large dark eyes hanging over her.

Vasya blinked and gathered her feet beneath her, wary as a wolf.