The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

She wanted to fold herself in his cloak and disappear. She wanted to crumple against him and cry. She held herself still. “Have what?” she whispered.

“Let you face this day alone,” he said.

She sought to read his eyes in the dark, and he drew back, so that the gesture died unfinished. For an instant, his face might have been human, and an answer was there, in his eyes, just beyond her understanding. Tell me. But he did not. He tilted his head, as though listening. “Come away, Vasya. Ride away. I will help you escape.”

She could go and get Solovey. Ride away. With him. Into the moon-silvered dark, with that promise lurking, as though despite him, in his eyes. And yet—“But my brother and sister. I cannot abandon them.”

“You aren’t—” he began.

A heavy step in the corridor sent Vasya whirling round. She turned to face the door just as the bolt shot back.

Olga looked wearier than she had that morning: pale, waddling with the weight of her unborn child. Varvara stood at her shoulder, glaring. “Kasyan Lutovich has come to see you,” Olga said curtly. “You will give him a hearing, sister.”

The two women bustled into Vasya’s chamber, and when the light scoured its corners, the frost-demon was gone.

VARVARA ARRANGED VASYA’S TOUSLED plait so that it lay smoothly and bound an embroidered headdress around her brows, so that icy silver rings hung down and framed her face. Then Vasya was herded out onto the frozen staircase. She descended between Olga and Varvara, blinking. They went down a level, where Varvara opened a new door; they crossed an antechamber and entered a sitting-room that smelled of sweet oil.

At the threshold, Olga said, bowing, “My sister, Gospodin,” and stood aside for Vasya to pass.

Kasyan was newly bathed and dressed for the festival, in white and pale gold. His hair curled vividly against his embroidered collar.

He said gravely, “I beg you will leave us, Olga Vladimirova. What I have to say to Vasilisa Petrovna is best said alone.”

It was impossible, of course, that Vasya should be left alone with any man not her betrothed, now that she was a girl again. But Olga nodded tightly and left them.

The door shut with a soft snick.

“Well met,” Kasyan said softly, a little smile playing about his mouth, “Vasilisa Petrovna.”

Deliberately she bowed, as a boy would have. “Kasyan Lutovich,” she said icily. Sorcerer. The word beat in her head, so strange and yet…“Was it you who sent men after me in the bathhouse in Chudovo?”

He half-smiled. “I am astonished you didn’t guess before. I killed four of them for losing you.”

His eyes skimmed her body. Vasya crossed her arms. She was clothed from head to foot, and she had never felt more naked. Her bath seemed to have washed away recourse and ambition both; she must watch now, and wait, and let others act. She was naked with powerlessness.

No. No. I am no different than yesterday.

But it was hard to believe. In his eyes was a monumental and amused confidence.

“Do not,” Vasya said, almost spitting, “come near me.”

He shrugged. “I may do as I like,” he replied. “You gave up all pretense to virtue when you appeared in the kremlin dressed as a boy. Not even your sister would prevent me now. I hold your ruin in the palm of my hand.”

She said nothing. He smiled. “But enough of that,” he added. “Why should we be enemies?” His tone turned placating. “I saved you from your lies, now you are free to be yourself, to adorn yourself as a girl ought—”

Her lip curled. He broke off with an elegant shrug.

“You know as well as I that it is a convent for me now,” Vasya said. She put her arms behind her and pressed her back against the door, the wood driving splinters into her palms. “If I am not put in the cage and burned as a witch. Why are you here?”

He ran a hand through his russet hair. “I regretted today,” he said.

“You enjoyed it,” Vasya retorted, wishing her voice were not thin with remembered humiliation.

He smiled and gestured to the stove. “Will you sit down, Vasya?”

She did not move.

He huffed out a laugh and sank onto a carved bench beside the fire. A wine-jar studded with amber sat beside two cups; he poured one for himself and drank the pale liquid down. “Well, I did enjoy it,” he admitted. “Playing with our hotheaded prince’s temper. Watching your self-righteous brother squirm.” He slanted a look at where she stood, frozen with disgust, by the door and added more seriously, “And you yourself. No one would ever take you for a beauty, Vasilisa Petrovna, but then no one would ever want to. You were lovely, fighting me so. And charming in your boy’s clothes. I could hardly wait as long as I did. I knew, you know. I always knew, whatever I might have told the Grand Prince. All those nights on the road. I knew.”

He made his glance tender; his tone invited her to soften, but there was still laughter in the back of his eyes, as though he mocked his own words.

Vasya remembered the icy kiss of the air on her skin, the boyars’ leering, and her flesh crept.

“Come,” he went on. “Are you telling me you didn’t enjoy it, wild-cat? The eyes of Moscow upon you?”

Her stomach turned over. “What do you want?”

He poured more wine and raised his gaze to hers. “To rescue you.”

“What?”

His glance returned, heavy-lidded, to the fire. “I think you understand me very well,” he said. “As you said yourself, it is the convent or a witch-trial for you. I met a priest not so long ago—oh, a very holy man, so handsome and pious—who will be quite willing to tell the prince all about your wicked ways. And if you are condemned,” he went on musingly, “what price your brother’s life? What price your sister’s freedom? Dmitrii Ivanovich is the laughingstock of Moscow. Princes who are laughed at do not hold their realms long, and he knows it.”

“How,” Vasya asked, between gritted teeth, “do you mean to save me?”

Kasyan paused before replying, savoring his wine. “Come here,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

She stayed where she was. He sighed with kindly exasperation, took another swallow. “Very well,” he said. “You have but to tap on the door; the slave will come and take you back to your room. I will not enjoy watching the fire take you, Vasilisa Petrovna, not at all. And your poor sister—how she will weep, to say farewell to her children.”

Vasya stalked to the fire and sat on the bench opposite him. He smiled at her with unconcealed pleasure. “There you are!” he cried. “I knew you could be reasonable. Wine?”

“No.”

He poured her a cup and sipped at his own. “I can save you,” he said. “And your brother and sister in the bargain. If you marry me.”

An instant of silence.

“Are you saying you mean to marry this witch-girl, this slut who paraded about Moscow in boy’s clothes?” Vasya asked acidly. “I don’t believe you.”

“So untrusting, for a maiden,” he returned cheerfully. “It is unbecoming. You won my heart with your little masquerade, Vasya. I loved your spirit from the first. How the others did not suspect, I cannot think. I will marry you and take you to Bashnya Kostei. I tried to tell you as much this morning. All this could have been avoided, you know…but no matter. When we are wed, I will see that your brother is freed—to return to the Lavra, as is proper, to live out his days in peace.” His face soured. “Politicking is not the work of a monk, anyway.”