The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

“Well, then, let her live,” said Olga simply, and put out a hand.

Vasya could not bear it. “No!” she cried, and flung herself on Olga, struck the outstretched hand away, wrapped her sister in her arms. “Live, Olya,” she whispered. “Think of Marya and Daniil. Live, live.”

The death-god’s eyes narrowed.

“I will die for my child, Vasya,” Olga said. “I am not afraid.”

“No,” Vasya breathed. She thought she heard Morozko speak. But she did not care what he said. Such a current of love and rage and loss ran between her and her sister at that moment that all else was drowned and forgotten. Vasya put forth all her strength—and she dragged Olya by force back to the bathhouse.

Vasya came to, staggering, and found that she was leaning against the bathhouse wall. Splinters pricked her hands; her hair stuck to her face and neck. A thick, sweating crowd hovered around Olga, seeming to strangle her with their many arms. Among them stood one fully dressed, in a black cassock, intoning the last rites in a voice that carried easily over them all. A streak of golden hair gleamed in the dark.

Him? Vasya, in a quick rage, stalked across the writhing room, pushed past the crowd, and took her sister’s hands in hers. The priest’s deep voice stopped abruptly.

Vasya had no thought to spare for him. In her mind’s eye, Vasya saw another black-haired woman, another bathhouse, and another child who had killed her mother. “Olya, live,” she said. “Please, live.”

Olga stirred; her pulse leaped up under Vasya’s fingers. Her dazed eyes blinked open. “There is its head!” cried the midwife. “There—one more—”

Olga’s glance met Vasya’s, and then widened with agony; her belly rippled like water in a storm, and then the child came slithering out. Her lips were blue. She did not move.

An anxious, breathless hush replaced the first cries of relief, as the midwife cleared the scum from the girl-child’s lips and breathed into her mouth.

She lay limp.

Vasya looked from the small gray form to her sister’s face.

The priest thrust his way forward, knocking Vasya aside. He smoothed oil over the baby’s head, began the words of the baptism.

“Where is she?” stammered Olga, groping with feeble hands. “Where is my daughter? Let me see.”

And still the child did not move.

Vasya stood there, empty-handed, jostled by the crowd, sweat running down her ribs. The heat of her fury cooled and left the taste of ashes in her mouth. But she was not looking at Olga. Or the priest. Instead, she was watching a black-cloaked figure put out a hand, very gently, take up the chalky, bloody scrap of humanity, and carry it away.

Olga made a terrible sound, and Konstantin’s hand fell, the baptism finished: the only kindness anyone would ever do the child. Vasya stood where she was. You are alive, Olya, she thought. I saved you. But the thought had no force.

OLGA’S EXHAUSTED EYES SEEMED to stare through her. “You have killed my daughter.”

“Olya,” Vasya began, “I—”

An arm, black-robed, reached out and seized her. “Witch,” hissed Konstantin.

The word fell like a stone, and silence rippled out in its wake. Vasya and the priest stood in the center of a faceless ring, full of reddened eyes.

The last time Vasya had seen Konstantin Nikonovich, the priest had cowered while she bade him go: to return to Moscow—or Tsargrad or hell—but to leave her family in peace.

Well, Konstantin had indeed come to Moscow, and he looked as though he’d endured the torments of hell between there and here. His jutting bones cast shadows on his beautiful face; his golden hair hung knotted to his shoulders.

The women watched, silent. A baby had just died in their arms, and their hands twitched with helplessness.

“This is Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Konstantin, spitting out the words. “She killed her father. Now she has killed her sister’s child.”

Behind him, Olga shut her eyes. One hand cradled the dead infant’s head.

“She speaks to devils,” Konstantin continued, not taking his eyes from her face. “Olga Vladimirova was too kind to turn her own lying sister away. And now, this has come of it.”

Olga said nothing.

Vasya was silent. What defense was there? The infant lay still, curled like a leaf. In the corner, a twist of steam might almost have been a small, fat creature, and it was weeping, too.

The priest’s glance slid to the faint figure of the bannik—she could swear they did—and his pale face grew paler. “Witch,” he whispered again. “You will answer for your crimes.”

Vasya gathered herself. “I will answer,” she said to Konstantin. “But not here. This is wrong, what you do here, Batyushka. Olya—”

“Get out, Vasya,” said Olga. She did not look up.

Vasya, stumbling with weariness, blinded with tears, made no protest when Konstantin dragged her out of the inner room of the bathhouse. He slammed the door behind them, cutting off the smell of blood and the sounds of grief.

Vasya’s linen shift, soaked to transparency, hung from her shoulders. Only when she felt the chill from the open outer door did she dig in her heels. “Let me put on clothes at least,” she said to the priest. “Or do you want me to freeze to death?”

Konstantin let her go suddenly. Vasya knew he could see every line of her body, her nipples hard through her shift. “What did you do to me?” he hissed.

“Do to you?” Vasya returned, bewildered with sorrow, dizzy with the change from heat to cold. The sweat stood on her face; her bare feet scraped the wooden floor. “I did nothing.”

“Liar!” he snapped. “Liar. I was a good man, before. I saw no devils. And now—”

“See them now, do you?” Shocked and grieving as she was, Vasya could muster nothing more than bitter humor. Her hands stank with her sister’s blood, with the ripe, ugly reality of stillbirth. “Well, perhaps you did that to yourself, with all your talk of demons; did you think of that? Go and hide in a monastery; no one wants you.”

He was as pale as she. “I am a good man,” he said. “I am. Why did you curse me? Why do you haunt me?”

“I don’t,” said Vasya. “Why would I want to? I came to Moscow to see my sister. Look what came of it.”

Coldly, shamelessly, she stripped off her wet shift. If she was to go out into the night, she did not mean to court death.

“What are you doing?” he breathed.

Vasya reached for her sarafan and blouse and outer robe, discarded in the anteroom. “Putting on dry clothes,” she said. “What did you think? That I am going to dance for you, like a peasant girl in spring, while a child lies dead just there?”

He watched her dress, hands opening and closing.

She was beyond caring. She tied her cloak and straightened her spine. “Where do you wish to take me?” she inquired, with bitter humor. “I don’t think you even know.”

“You are going to answer for your crimes,” Konstantin managed, in a voice caught between anger and bewildered wanting.

“Where?” she inquired.

“Do you mock me?” He gathered some measure of his old self-possession, and his hand closed on her upper arm. “To the convent. You will be punished. I promised I would hunt witches.” He stepped nearer. “Then I will see devils no longer; then all will be as it was.”