The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

Kasyan lingered still, a line between his red brows. “Vasya,” he began again. “Last night—”

“Have you no horse to see to yourself?” Vasya asked sharply. “We are rivals now; are we to share confidences?”

Kasyan, mouth twisted, looked her in the face a moment. “Will you—” he began.

But again he was interrupted by a visitor, this one dressed plainly as a sparrow. His hood was up against the chill, his face stern. Vasya swallowed, turned, and bowed. “Brother,” she said.

“Forgive me, Kasyan Lutovich,” said Sasha. “I wish to speak to Vasya alone.”

Sasha looked as though he had been awake a great while, or had never gone to bed.

“God be with you,” Vasya said to Kasyan in polite farewell.

Kasyan looked for a moment taken aback. Then he said, in a cold, strange voice, “You would have done better to heed me,” and stalked away.

A small silence fell when he had gone. That man smells strange, said Solovey.

“Kasyan?” Vasya asked. “How?”

Solovey shook his mane. Dust, he said. And lightning.

“What did Kasyan mean?” Sasha asked her.

“I have no idea,” Vasya replied honestly. She peered into her brother’s face. “What have you been doing?”

“I?” he said. He leaned wearily on the fence. “I am looking for rumors about this man Chelubey, the ambassador of Mamai. Great lords do not just emerge from the woods. In all this city someone should have heard tell of him, even fourth-hand. But for all his magnificence, I can get no news at all.”

“And so?” Vasya rejoined. Green eyes met gray.

“Chelubey has the letter, the horses, the men,” said Sasha slowly. “But he has not the reputation.”

“So you suspect the ambassador is a bandit now, do you?” Vasya asked childishly. “Do you believe me at last?”

Her brother sighed. “If I can come to no better explanation, then yes, I will believe you. Although I have never heard of such a thing.” He paused and added, almost to himself, “If a bandit—or whoever he is—has duped us all so thoroughly, then he must have had help. Where did he get money and scribes and papers and horses and finery to pass himself off as a Tatar lord? Or would the Khan send us such a man? Surely not.”

“Who would possibly help him?” Vasya asked.

Sasha shook his head slowly. “When the race is done, and Dmitrii Ivanovich can be persuaded to heed, you will tell him everything.”

“Everything?” she asked. “Kasyan said we needed proof.”

“Kasyan,” retorted her brother, “is too clever for his own good.”

Their eyes met a second time.

“Kasyan?” she said, answering her brother’s look. “Impossible. Those bandits burned his own villages. He came to Dmitrii Ivanovich to ask for help.”

“Yes,” said Sasha slowly. His face was still troubled. “That is true.”

“I will tell Dmitrii all I know,” said Vasya in a rush. “But—afterward—I am going to leave Moscow. I will need your help for that. You must look after the filly—my Zima—and be kind to her.”

Her brother stiffened, looked into her face. “Vasya, there is nowhere to go.”

She smiled. “There is the whole world, brother. I have Solovey.”

When he said nothing, she added, with impatience to mask pain, “You know I am right. You cannot send me to a convent; I am not going to marry anyone. I cannot be a lord in Moscow, but I will not be a maiden. I am going away.”

She could not look at him and started instead to comb Solovey’s mane.

“Vasya,” he began.

She still would not look at him.

He made a grinding sound of irritation and stepped between the bars of the fence. “Vasya, you cannot just—”

She turned on him. “I can,” she said. “I will. Lock me up if you want to hinder me.”

She saw him taken aback and then realized that tears had sprung into her eyes.

“It is unnatural,” Sasha said, but in a different voice.

“I know,” she said, resolved, fierce, miserable. “I am sorry.”

Even as she spoke, the great cathedral-bell tolled. It was time. “I will tell you the true story,” Vasya said. “Of Father’s death. Of the Bear. All of it. Before I go.”

“Later,” was all Sasha said, after a pause. “We will talk later. Watch for tricks, little sister. Be as careful as you can. I—I will pray for you.”

Vasya smiled. “Kasyan has no horse, I’ll wager, to match Solovey,” she said. “But I will be glad of your prayers.”

The stallion snorted, tossing his head, and Sasha’s grim expression softened. They embraced with sudden ferocity, and Vasya was enveloped in the childhood-familiar smells of her older brother. She wiped her wet eyes surreptitiously on his shoulder. “Go with God, sister,” murmured Sasha into her ear. Then he stepped back, raising a hand to bless her and the horse. “Do not take the turns too fast. And do not lose.”

A new crowd of watchers had begun to gather at the paddock-fence: the grooms of Olga’s household. Vasya vaulted to Solovey’s back. The wise ones got themselves out of the way. The fools stood gaping, and Vasya set Solovey at the fence. He cleared it, and was obliged as well to leap several heads, when their owners did not move. Sasha swung into Tuman’s saddle. Brother and sister trotted together through the gate.

Vasya looked back, just as she passed through, and she thought she saw a queenly figure, watching from a tower-window while a smaller one clung to her skirts and yearned toward the light. Then she and her brother were out in the street.

Crowds came thronging behind them. Vasya thrilled to the people’s cheers; she lifted a hand to the crowd, and the people roared in answer. Peresvet! she heard, and Vasilii the Brave!

From the direction of his palace, the Grand Prince of Moscow appeared, trailing boyars and attendants, preceded by the roars of the crowd. “Are you ready, Vasya?” demanded Dmitrii, falling in beside them. His train fell back, making room. All the great lords of Moscow jostled for position behind. “I have a great wager riding on you.”

“I am ready,” Vasya returned. “Or Solovey is, at least, and I will cling to his neck and try not to disgrace him.”

Indeed, Solovey was glorious on the bright morning, with his coat like a dark mirror, his fall of mane, his unbridled head. The prince looked the horse over and laughed. “Mad boy,” he said with affection.

The boyars behind looked jealously at the clever-handed siblings that had Dmitrii’s favor.

“If you win,” Dmitrii told Vasya, “I will fill your purse with gold and we will find you a pretty wife to bear your children.”

Vasya gulped and nodded.

THE NOISE DROPPED. VASYA looked back up the snowy street, to where Kasyan came riding, down from the top of the hill, alone.

Dmitrii, Vasya, Sasha, and all the boyars went very still.

Vasya had seen Solovey in his glory, running over the snow, and she had watched Morozko’s white mare rearing in the dawn light. But she had never seen a horse to equal the golden creature Kasyan was riding.

The mare’s coat was a true, brilliant fire-color, dappled on the flank. Her mane poured over her neck and shoulder, only a shade or two lighter. She was long-limbed and tautly muscled, taller even than Solovey.