21.

The Sorcerer’s Wife

Varvara was not slow to bring Olga the news. Indeed, she was the first to come clattering into the princess’s workroom, grim with the weight of disaster, snow in her faded plait.

Olga’s terem strained to bursting with women and their finery. This was their festival, there in that close-packed tower, where they ate and drank and impressed each other with silk brocades and headdresses and scents, listening to the roar of the revel outside.

Eudokhia sat nearest the oven, preening dourly. A few admirers sat about her, praising her pregnancy and begging favors. But even Eudokhia’s unborn child could not compete with this famous horse-race. A good deal of furtive, giggled betting had marked the morning, while the pious ones pinched their lips.

Will it be that handsome stripling—Olga’s younger brother—who carries the prize? they asked one another, laughing. Or the fire-haired prince, Kasyan, who—so the slaves say—has a smile like a saint’s and strips like a pagan god in the bathhouse? Kasyan was the general favorite, for half the maidens were in love with him.

“No!” Marya cried doughtily, while the women fed her cakes. “It will be my uncle Vasilii! He is the bravest and he has the greatest horse in all the world.”

The roar of the start seemed to shake the terem-walls, and the screaming of the race wrapped the city in noise. The women listened with heads close together, following the riders by the sounds of their passing.

Olga took Marya onto her lap and held her tightly.

Then the clamor died away. “It is over,” the women said.

It was not over. The noise started up again, louder than before, with a new and ugly note. This noise did not fade; it slipped nearer and nearer the tower, to curl around Olga’s walls like a rising tide.

On this tide, like a piece of flotsam, came Varvara, running. She slid into the workroom with well-feigned calm, went straight to Olga, and bent to whisper in her ear.

But though Varvara was first, though she was fast, she was not quick enough.

Word came up the stairs like a wave, breaking slowly, then all at once. No sooner had the slave whispered disaster in Olga’s ear than a murmur like a moan rose from the women, carried on the lips of other servants. “Vasya is a girl!” Eudokhia shrieked.

No time, no time for anything—certainly not for Olga to empty her tower—not even time to calm them.

“Coming here, you said?” Olga asked Varvara. She fought to think. Dmitrii Ivanovich must be in a rage. To send Vasya here would only tie Olga—and her husband—in with the deceit, would only inflame the Grand Prince more. Whose idea was that?

Kasyan, Olga thought. Kasyan Lutovich, the new player in this game: our mysterious lord. What better way to worm his way nearer the Grand Prince’s side? This will displace Sasha and my husband both. Fools, not to see it.

Well, that was their mistake, and she would have to make the best of it. What else could she do, a princess in a tower? Olga straightened her spine and put calm into her voice.

“Bid my women attend me,” she said to Varvara. “Prepare a chamber for Vasya.” She hesitated. “See that there is a bolt on the outside.” Olga had both hands laced over her belly, knuckles white. But she held her self-possession and would not relinquish it. “Take Masha with you,” she added. “See that she is kept out of the way.”

Marya’s small, wise imp’s face was full of alarm. “This is bad, isn’t it?” she asked her mother. “That they know that Vasya is a girl?”

“Yes,” said Olga. She had never lied to her children. “Go, child.”

Marya, white-faced and suddenly docile, followed Varvara out.

Word had passed among Olga’s guests with the speed of a new-lit fire. The more virtuous were gathering up their things, mouths pursed up small, preparatory to hurrying away.

But they fussed overlong with their headdresses and cloaks, with the lay of their veils, and that was not to be wondered at, for soon more steps—a great procession of steps—were heard on the stairs of Olga’s tower.

Every head in the workroom swiveled. The ones who’d been about to leave sat back down with suspicious alacrity.

The inner door opened, and two men of Dmitrii’s household stood in the doorway, holding Vasya by the arms. The girl hung between them, wrapped awkwardly in a cloak.

A sound of appalled delight ran among the women. Olga imagined them talking later, Did you see the girl, her torn clothes, her hair hanging loose? Oh, yes, I was there that day: the day of the ruin of the Princess of Serpukhov and Aleksandr Peresvet.

Olga kept her eyes on Vasya. She would have expected her sister to come in subdued—repentant, even—but (fool, this is Vasya) the girl was starry-eyed with rage. When the men flung her contemptuously to the floor, she rolled, turning her fall into something graceful. All the women gasped.

Vasya got to her feet, the stormy hair hanging all about her face and cloak. She tossed it back and stared down the scandalized room. Not a boy, but also as unlike the buttoned, laced, and tower-bred women as a cat from chickens.

The guards hovered a pace behind, leering at the girl’s slenderness and the glossy darkness of her hair. “You have finished your errand,” Olga snapped at them. “Go.”

They did not move. “She must be confined, by the Grand Prince’s orders,” said one.

Vasya shut her eyes for the barest instant.

Olga inclined her head, crossed her arms over a belly heavy with child, and—with a look that gave her a sudden and startling resemblance to her sister—she gazed coldly at the men until they squirmed. “Go,” she said again.

They hesitated, then turned and left, but not without a touch of insolence; they knew which way the wind was blowing. The set of their shoulders told Olga much about feeling outside her tower. Her teeth sank into her lower lip.

The latch clattered down; the outer door was shut. The two sisters were left staring at each other, the whole avid mob of women watching. Vasya clutched the cloak around her shoulders; she was shivering hard. “Olya—” she began.

The room had fallen perfectly silent, so as not to miss a word.

Well, they had enough gossip already. “Take her to the bathhouse,” Olga ordered her servants, coolly. “And then to her room. Lock the door. See that she is guarded.”

GUARDS—DMITRII’S MEN—FOLLOWED VASYA TO the bathhouse and stood outside the door. Inside, Varvara was waiting. She stripped away Vasya’s torn clothes, hands brisk and impersonal. She didn’t even bother to peer at the sapphire necklace, although she looked long at the great flowering of bruises on the girl’s arm. For her part, Vasya could scarcely stand the sight of her own winter-pallid flesh. It had betrayed her.

Then Varvara, still not speaking, ladled water over the hot stones of the oven, shoved Vasya into the inner room of the bathhouse, closed the inner door, and left her alone.

Vasya sank onto a bench, naked in the warmth, and allowed herself, for the first time, to cry. Biting her fist, she made no sound, but she wept until the spasm of shame and grief and horror had eased. Then, gathering herself, she raised her head to whisper to the listening air.

“Help me,” she said. “What should I do?”

She was not quite alone, for the air had an answer.

“Remember a promise, poor fool,” said Olga’s fat, frail bannik, in the hiss of water on stone. “Remember my prophecy. My days are numbered; perhaps this will be the last prophecy I ever make. Before the end of Maslenitsa it will all be decided.” He was fainter than the steam: only a strange stirring in the air marked his presence.

“What promise?” Vasya asked. “What will be decided?”

“Remember,” breathed the bannik, and then she was alone.

“Damn all chyerti anyway,” said Vasya, and closed her eyes.

Her bath went on for a long time. Vasya wished it might last forever, despite the soft, crude jokes of the guards, clearly audible outside. Every breath of the oven’s steam seemed to wash away more of the smell of horse and sweat: the smell of her hard-won freedom. When Vasya left her bath, she would be a maiden once more.

Finally Vasya, birth-naked and sweating, went into the antechamber to be doused with cold water, dried, salved, and dressed.

The shift and blouse and sarafan they found her smelled thickly of their previous owner, and they hung heavy from Vasya’s shoulders. In them she felt all the constraint she had shaken off.

Varvara plaited the girl’s hair with swift yanking hands. “Olga Vladimirova has enemies who would like nothing better than to see her in a convent, when her babe is born,” she growled at Vasya. “And what of the babe itself? Such shocks its lady mother has had since you came. Why could you not go quietly away again, before making a spectacle of yourself?”

“I know,” Vasya said. “I am sorry.”

“Sorry!” Varvara spat with uncharacteristic emotion. “Sorry, the maiden says. I give that”—she snapped her fingers—“for sorry, and the Grand Prince will give less, when he decides your fate.” She tied off Vasya’s plait with a scrap of green wool and said, “Follow me.”

They had prepared a chamber for her in the terem: dim and close, low-ceilinged, but warm, heated from below by the great stove in the workroom. Food waited for her there—bread and wine and soup. Olga’s kindness stung worse than anger had done.

Varvara left Vasya at the threshold. The last thing Vasya heard was the sound of the bolt sliding home, and her swift, light step as she walked away.

Vasya sank onto the cot, clenched both her fists, and refused to weep again. She didn’t deserve the solace of tears, not when she had caused her brother and sister such trouble. And your father, mocked a soft voice in her skull. Don’t forget him—that your defiance cost him his life. You are a curse to your family, Vasilisa Petrovna.

No, Vasya whispered back against that voice. That is not it, not it at all.

But it was hard to remember exactly what was true—there in that dim, airless room, wearing a stifling tent of a sarafan, with her sister’s frozen expression hanging before her eyes.

For their sake, Vasya thought, I must make it right.

But she could not see how.

OLGA’S VISITORS DEPARTED AS soon as the excitement was over. When they had all gone, the Princess of Serpukhov walked heavily down the steps to Vasya’s room.

“Speak,” Olga said, as soon as the door swung shut behind her. “Apologize. Tell me that you had no idea this would happen.”

Vasya had risen when her sister entered, but she said nothing.

“I did,” Olga went on. “I warned you—you and my fool of a brother. Do you realize what you have done, Vasya? Lied to the Grand Prince—dragged our brother in—you will be sent to a convent at best now; tried as a witch at worst, and I cannot prevent it. If Dmitrii Ivanovich decides I have had a hand in it, he will make Vladimir put me aside. They will put me in a convent, too, Vasya. They will take my children away.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

Vasya’s eyes, wide with horror, did not leave Olga’s face. “But—why would they send you to a convent, Olya?” she whispered.

Olga shaped her answer to punish her idiot sister. “If Dmitrii Ivanovich is angry enough and thinks I am complicit, he will. But I will not be taken from my children. I will denounce you first, Vasya, I swear it.”

“Olga,” said Vasya, bowing her shining head. “You would be right to. I am sorry. I am—so sorry.”

Brave and miserable—suddenly her sister was eight again, and Olga was watching her with exasperated pity while their father thrashed her, resignedly, for yet another foolishness.

“I am sorry, too,” Olga said then, and she was.

“Do what you must,” Vasya said. Her voice was hoarse as a raven’s. “I am guilty before you.”

OUTSIDE THE HOUSE OF the prince of Serpukhov, that day passed in a glorious exchange of rumors. The heave and riot of festival—what better breeding-ground for gossip? Nothing so delicious as this had happened for many a year.

That young lord, Vasilii Petrovich. He is no lord at all, but a girl!

No.

Indeed it is true. A maiden.

Naked for all to see.

A witch, in any case.

She ensnared even holy Aleksandr Peresvet with her wiles. She had mad orgies in secret in the palace of Dmitrii Ivanovich. She had them all as she liked: prince and monk, turn and turn about. We live in a time of sinners.

He put a stop to all that, did Prince Kasyan. He revealed her wickedness. Kasyan is a great lord. He has not sinned.

Gaily the rumors swirled all through that long day. They reached even a golden-haired priest, hiding in a monk’s cell from the monsters of his own memory. He jerked his head up from his prayers, face gone very pale.

“It cannot be,” he said to his visitor. “She is dead.”

Kasyan Lutovich was considering the yellow embroidery on the sash about his waist, lips pursed in discontent, and he did not look up when he replied. “Indeed?” he said. “Then it was a ghost; a fair, young ghost indeed, that I showed the people.”

“You ought not to have,” said the priest.

Kasyan grinned at that and glanced up. “Why? Because you could not be there to see it?”

Konstantin recoiled. Kasyan laughed outright. “Don’t think I don’t know where your mania for witches comes from,” he said. He leaned against the door, casual, magnificent. “Spent too much time with the witch-woman’s granddaughter, did you; watched her grow up, year by year, had one sight too many of those green eyes, and the wildness that will never belong to you—or to your God, either.”

“I am a servant of God; I do not—”

“Oh, be quiet,” said Kasyan, heaving himself upright. He crossed over to the priest, step by soft step, until Konstantin recoiled, almost stumbling into the candlelit icons. “I see you,” the prince murmured. “I know which god you serve. He has one eye, doesn’t he?”

Konstantin licked his lips, eyes fastened on Kasyan’s face, and said not a word.

“That is better,” said Kasyan. “Now heed me. Do you want your vengeance, after all? How much do you love the witch?”

“I—”

“Hate her?” Kasyan laughed. “In your case, it is the same thing. You will have all the vengeance you like—if you do as I tell you.”

Konstantin’s eyes were watering. He looked once, long, at his icons. Then he whispered, without looking at Kasyan, “What must I do?”

“Obey me,” said Kasyan. “And remember who your master is.”

Kasyan bent forward to whisper into Konstantin’s ear.

The priest jerked back once. “A child? But—”

Kasyan went on talking in a soft, measured voice, and at last Konstantin, slowly, nodded.

VASYA HERSELF HEARD NO RUMORS, and no plotting, either. She stayed locked in her room, sitting beside the slit of a window. The sun sank below the walls as Vasya thought of ways to escape, to make it all right.

She tried not to think of the day she might have had, down in the street below, had her secret been kept. But thoughts of that kept creeping in, too; of her lost triumph, the burn of wine inside her, the laughter and the cheering, the prince’s pride, the admiration of all.

And Solovey—had he been walked cool and cared for after the race? Had he even suffered the grooms to touch him, after the first exhausted yielding? Perhaps the stallion had fought, perhaps they had even killed him. And if not? Where was he now? Haltered, bound, locked in the Grand Prince’s stable?

And Kasyan—Kasyan. The lord who had been kind to her and who had, smiling, humiliated her before all Moscow. The question came with renewed force: What does he gain from this? And then: Who was it who helped Chelubey pass himself off as the Khan’s ambassador? Who supplied the bandits? Was it Kasyan? But why—why?

She had no answer; she could only think herself in circles, and her head ached with suppressed tears. At last she curled herself onto the cot and drifted into a shallow sleep.

SHE JOLTED AWAKE, SHIVERING, just at nightfall. The shadows in her room stretched monstrously long.

Vasya thought of her sister Irina, far off at Lesnaya Zemlya. Before she could prevent it, other thoughts crowded hard upon: her brothers beside the hearth of the summer kitchen, the golden midsummer evening pouring in. Her father’s kindly horses, and the cakes Dunya made…

Next moment, Vasya was crying helplessly, like the child she certainly was not. Dead father, dead mother, brother imprisoned, home far away—

A hissing whisper, as of cloth dragged along the floor, jarred her from her weeping.

Vasya jerked upright, wet-faced, still choking on tears.

A piece of darkness moved, moved again, and stopped just in the faint beam of twilight.

Not darkness at all, but a gray, grinning thing. It had the form of a woman, but it was not a woman. Vasya’s heart hammered; she was on her feet and backing away. “Who are you?”

A hole on the gray thing’s face opened and closed, but Vasya heard nothing. “Why have you come to me?” she managed, gathering her courage.

Silence.

“Can you speak?”

A monstrous black stare.

Vasya simultaneously wished for light and was glad of the darkness, to hide that lipless countenance. “Have you something to tell me?” she asked.

A nod—was that a nod? Vasya thought a moment, and then she reached into her dress, where the cool, blue sharp-edged talisman hung. She hesitated, then dragged the edge along the inside of her forearm. The blood welled out between her fingers.

As it pattered on the floor, the ghost held out a bony hand, snatching at the jewel. Vasya jerked back. “No,” she said. “It is mine. No—but here.” She held her bloody arm out to the horror, hoping that she was not being foolish. “Here,” she said again, clumsily. “Blood helps sometimes, with things that are dead. Are you dead? Will my blood make you stronger?”

No answer. But the shadow crept forward, bent its jagged face to her arm, and lapped at the welling blood.

Then the mouth fastened hard and sucked greedily, and just when Vasya was on the point of prying it off, the ghost let go and staggered back.

Its—her, Vasya realized—looks were not improved. She had a little of the appearance of flesh now, but it was flesh desiccated and mummified by airless years—gray and brown and stringy. But the pit of a mouth had a tongue now, and the tongue made words.

“Thank you,” it said.

A polite ghost at least. “Why are you here?” Vasya returned. “This is not a place for the dead. You have been frightening Marya.”

The ghost shook her head, “It is not—a place for the living,” she managed. “But—I am—sorry. About the child.”

Vasya felt again the walls about her, between her skin and the twilight, and bit her lips. “What have you come to tell me?”

The ghost’s mouth worked. “Go. Run. Tonight, he means it for tonight.”

“I cannot,” said Vasya. “The door is barred. What happens tonight?”

The bony hands twisted together. “Run now,” it said, and pointed at herself. “This—he means this for you. Tonight. Tonight he will take a new wife; and he will take Moscow for himself. Run.”

“Who means that for me?” Vasya asked. “Kasyan? How will he take Moscow for himself?”

She thought then of Chelubey, of his palace full of trained riders. A terrible understanding dawned. “The Tatars?” she whispered.

The ghost’s hands twisted hard together. “Run!” she said. “Run!” Her mouth was open: a hellish maw.

Vasya could not help it; she recoiled from that horror, panting, swallowing a scream.

“Vasya,” said his voice from behind her. A voice that meant freedom and magic and dread, that had nothing to do with the stifling world of the tower.

The ghost was gone, and Vasya wrenched round.

Morozko’s hair was part of the night, his robe a sweep of lightless black. There was something old and dire in his eyes. “There is no more time,” he said. “You must get out.”

“So I hear,” she said, standing still. “Why have you come? I called—I asked—Mother of God, when I was naked before all Moscow! You could not be bothered then! Why help me now?”

“I could not come to you today at all, not before now,” he said. The frost-demon’s voice was soft and even, but his eyes slid, once, from her tear-tracked cheeks to her bleeding arm. “He had gathered all his strength, to shut me out. He planned this day well. I couldn’t go near you today, before your blood touched the sapphire. He can hide from me: I didn’t know he had come back. If I had, I would never have let—”

“Who?”

“The sorcerer,” said Morozko. “This man you call Kasyan. He has been long in strange places, beyond my sight.”

“Sorcerer? Kasyan Lutovich?”

“In other days, men called him Kaschei,” said Morozko. “And he can never die.”

Vasya stared. But that is a fairy tale. So is a frost-demon.

“Cannot die?” she managed.

“He made a magic,” said Morozko. “He has—hidden his life outside his body, so that I—that death—may never go near him. He can never die, and he is very strong. He kept me from seeing him; he kept me away today. Vasya, I would not have—”

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.”

Vasya made no reply.

His eye found hers; he leaned forward and added, more softly, “Olga Vladimirova may live out her days in her tower with her children. Safe as walls can make her.”

“You think our marriage will calm the Grand Prince?” Vasya returned.

Kasyan laughed. “Leave Dmitrii Ivanovich to me,” he said, eyes gleaming beneath lowered lids.

“You paid the bandit-captain to pass himself as the ambassador,” Vasya said, watching his face. “Why? Did you pay him to burn your own villages, too?”

He grinned at her, but she thought she saw something harden in his eyes. “Find out for yourself. You are a clever child. Where is the pleasure otherwise?” He leaned nearer. “Were you to wed me, Vasilisa Petrovna, there would be lies and tricks aplenty, and passion—such passion.” Kasyan reached out and stroked a finger down the side of her face.

She drew away and said nothing.

He sat back. “Come, girl,” he said, brisk now. “I do not see you getting any better offers.”

She could hardly breathe. “Give me a day to think.”

“Absolutely not. You might not love your siblings enough; you might bolt, and leave them in the lurch. And leave me, too, for I am quite overcome with passion.” He said this composedly. “I am not such a fool as that, vedma.”

She stiffened.

“Ah,” he said, reading her face before the question formed. “Our wise girl with her magic horse; she has never learned who she is, has she? Well, you might learn that as well, if you were to marry me.” He sat back and looked at her expectantly.

She thought of the ghost’s warning, and Morozko’s.

But—what about Sasha, and Olya? What about Masha? Masha who sees things as I do, Masha who will be branded a witch herself if the women discover her secret.

“I will marry you,” she said. “If my brother and sister are kept safe.” Perhaps later she could devise her escape.

His face broke into a glittering smile. “Excellent, excellent, my sweet little liar,” he said caressingly. “You won’t regret it, I promise you.” He paused. “Well, you might regret it. But your life will never be boring. And that is what you fear, is it not? The gilded cage of the Russian maiden?”

“I have agreed,” Vasya said only. “My thoughts are my own.” She was on her feet. “I am going now.”

He did not stir from his chair. “Not so fast. You belong to me now, and I do not give you leave to go.”

She stood still. “You have not bought me yet. I named a price and you have not met it.”

“That is true,” he said, leaning back in his chair and putting together his fingertips. “And yet, if you are disobedient, I can still toss you back.”

She stayed where she was.

“Come here,” he said, very softly.

Her feet carried her to a spot beside his bench, though she was scarcely aware of it, so angry was she. Yesterday a lord’s son, and nobody’s dog, today she was meat for this schemer. She fought to keep her thoughts from her face.

He must have seen her inward struggle, for he said, “Good, that is good. I like a little fight. Now kneel.” She stilled and he said, “Here—between my feet.”

She did so, brusquely, stiff-limbed as a doll. The bewildering, scathing sweetness of a frost-demon in the moonlight had in no wise prepared her for the dusty, animal smell of this man’s perfumed skin, his half-choked laughter. He cupped her jaw, traced the bones of her face with his fingers. “Just alike,” he murmured, voice gone rough. “Just like the other. You’ll do.”

“Who?” asked Vasya.

Kasyan didn’t answer. He pulled something from a pouch. It gleamed between his heavy fingers. She looked and saw it was a necklace, made of thick gold, hung with a red stone.

“A bride-gift,” he murmured, almost laughing, breathing into her mouth. “Kiss me.”

“No.”

He lifted a languid brow and pinched her earlobe so that her eyes watered. “I will not tolerate a third disobedience, Vasochka.” The childish nickname lay ugly on his tongue. “There are biddable maidens in Moscow who would be happy to be my bride.” He leaned forward again and murmured, “Perhaps if I ask, the Grand Prince will have you all three burned together—so cozy, the children of Pyotr Vladimirovich—while your niece and nephew look on.”

Her stomach roiled, but she leaned forward. He was smiling. With her kneeling, their faces were on a level.

She put her mouth to his.

His hand shot up, seizing her behind her head, at the base of her plait. She jerked back instinctively, breath coming short in disgust, but he only tightened his grip and, leisurely, put his tongue in her mouth. She controlled herself, barely; she did not bite it off. The necklace sparkled in his other hand. He was going to drop it over her head. Vasya jerked away a second time, full of a new fear that she didn’t understand. The golden thing swung heavily from his fist. He wrenched her head back—

But then Kasyan swore, and the jewel in his hand clattered to the floor. Breathing fast, he dragged out Vasya’s sapphire talisman. The stone was glowing faintly; it threw blue light between them.

Kasyan hissed, dropped her charm, and cuffed her across the face. Her vision filled with red sparks and she tumbled back onto the floor. “Bitch!” he snarled, on his feet. “Idiot! You of all people—”

Vasya scrambled upright, shaking her head. Kasyan’s would-be gift lay like a snake on the ground. Kasyan gathered it up tenderly, frowning, and stood. “I suppose you let him do it,” he said. His eyes were bright with malice now, though somewhere, lurking deep down, she thought she saw fear. “I suppose he persuaded you to wear it, with his blue eyes. I’m surprised, girl, truly, that you would allow that monster to enslave you.”

“I am no one’s slave,” Vasya snapped. “That jewel was a gift from my father.”

Kasyan laughed. “Who told you that?” he asked. “Him?” The laughter disappeared from his face. “Ask him, fool. Ask him why a death-god befriends a country girl. See what he answers.”

Vasya was afraid in ways she could not understand. “The death-god told me you have another name,” she said. “What is your true name, Kasyan Lutovich?”

Kasyan smiled a little, but he made no answer. His eyes were quick and dark with thought. Abruptly he strode forward, caught her by the shoulder, crowded her against the wall, and kissed her again. His open mouth ate at her leisurely and one hand closed painfully on her breast.

She endured it, standing rigid. He did not try to put the necklace on her again.

Just as suddenly he stepped aside and flung her away from him, back into the room.

She kept her feet but without grace, breathing fast, her stomach heaving.

He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Enough,” he said. “You’ll do. Tell your sister you have accepted the match, and that you are to be confined until the wedding.” He paused, and his voice hardened. “Which will be tomorrow. By then, you will have taken that charm—that abomination—off and destroyed it. Any disobedience, and I will see your family punished, Vasya. Brother and sister and little children alike. Now go.”

She stumbled for the door, routed, sick, the taste of him sour in her mouth. His soft, satisfied laughter chased her into the hall when she fled the room.

Vasya cannoned into Varvara the instant she was away, then bent over in the hall, retching.

Varvara’s lip curled. “A handsome lord means to save you from ruin,” she said, the sarcasm sharp. “Where is your gratitude, Vasilisa Petrovna? Or did he have your virtue there beside the oven?”

“No,” Vasya retorted, straightening with a supreme effort. “He—he wants me to be afraid of him. I think he succeeded.” She scrubbed a hand across her mouth and was almost sick again. The hall was full of a beating, eager darkness, only a little repelled by the lamp in Varvara’s hand—although that was perhaps the darkness in her own head. Vasya wanted to press her knees together, and she wanted to weep.

Varvara’s lip curled the more, but she only said, “Come, poor thing, your sister wants you.”

OLGA WAS ALONE IN the workroom. She held her distaff in her hands, turning it over and over, but she was not working. Her back pained her; she felt old and worn. She looked up at once when Varvara led Vasya in.

“Well?” she said, without preamble.

“He asked me to marry him,” said Vasya. She did not come properly into the room, but stood off, in the shadows near the door, her head tilted proudly. “I agreed. He says that if I marry him, he will intervene with the Grand Prince. Have Sasha spared, and you absolved of blame.”

Olga considered her sister. There were dozens of prettier girls in Moscow, better born. Kasyan could not want her for her virtue. Yet he wanted Vasya enough to marry her. Why?

He desires her, Olga thought. Why else would he behave so? And I left her alone with him…

Well, and so? She’s been roaming the streets in his company, dressed as a boy.

“Come in, then, Vasya,” Olga said, irritable with vague guilt. “Don’t hang about the door. Tell me, what did he say to you?” She laid her distaff aside. “Varvara, build up the fire.”

The slave went about it, soft-footed, while Vasya came forward. The fierce color in her face from that morning was quite gone; her eyes were big and dark. Olga’s limbs ached; she wished she felt less old, less angry, and less sorry for her sister. “It is better than you deserve,” she said. “An honorable marriage. You were a breath away from the convent, or worse, Vasya.”

Vasya nodded once, her lids veiled with a sweep of black lashes. “I know, Olya.”

Just then, a roar, as though in agreement, came from outside the prince of Serpukhov’s gates. They had just flung the effigy of Lady Maslenitsa onto the fire; her hair streamed away in torrents of fire and her eyes shone, as though alive, as she burned.

Olga fought her irritation down, trying to keep both the anger and the pity from her face. A sharp pain stabbed through her back. “Come, then,” she said, as kindly as she could. “Eat with me. We will call for cakes and honey-wine, and we will celebrate your marriage.”

The cakes came, and the sisters ate together. Neither could swallow much. The silence stretched out.

“When I first came here,” said Olga, abruptly, to Vasya, “I was a little younger than you, and I was very frightened.”

Vasya had been looking down at the untasted thing in her hand, but now she glanced up quickly. “I knew no one,” Olga went on. “I understood nothing. My mother-in-law—she had wanted a proper princess for her son, and she hated me.”

Vasya made a sound of painful sympathy, and Olga lifted a hand to silence her. “Vladimir could not protect me, for it is not the business of men, what goes on in the terem. But the oldest woman in the terem—the oldest woman I have ever known—she was kind to me. She held me when I wept; she brought me porridge when I missed the taste of home. Once I asked her why she bothered. ‘I knew your grandmother,’ she replied.”

Vasya was silent. Their grandmother—said the story—had come riding into Moscow one day all alone. No one knew where she came from. Word of the mysterious maiden reached the ears of the Grand Prince, who summoned her for sport and fell in love. He married her, and the girl bore their mother, Marina, and died in the tower.

“ ‘You are fortunate,’ this old woman said to me,” Olga continued, “ ‘that you are not like her.’ She—she was a creature of smoke and stars. She was no more made for the terem than a snowstorm is, and yet…she came riding into Moscow willingly—indeed, as though all hell pursued her—riding a gray horse. She wed Ivan without demur, though she wept before her wedding night. She tried to be a good wife, and perhaps would have been, but for her wildness. She would walk in the yard, looking at the sky; she would talk with longing of her gray horse, which vanished on the night of her marriage. ‘Why do you stay?’ I asked her, but she never answered. She was dead in her heart long before she died in truth, and I was glad when her daughter, Marina, married away from the city—”

Olga broke off. “That is to say,” she went on, “that I am not like our grandmother, and I am a princess now, the head of my house, and it is a good life, sweet mixed with bitter. But you—when I saw you first, I thought of that tale of our grandmother, riding into Moscow on her gray horse.”

“What was our grandmother’s name?” asked Vasya low. She had asked her nurse, once. But Dunya would never tell her.

“Tamara,” said Olga. “Her name was Tamara.” She shook her head. “It is all right, Vasya. You will not share her fate. Kasyan has vast lands, and many horses. There is freedom in the countryside that Moscow does not offer. You will go there, and be happy.”

“With a man who stripped me naked before Moscow?” Vasya asked sharply. The half-eaten cakes were being taken away. Olga made no answer. Vasya said, “Olya, if I must marry him to make this right, then I will marry him. But—” She hesitated, and then finished in a rush, “I believe that it was Kasyan who paid the bandits, who turned them loose on the villages. And—the bandit-captain is in Moscow now, posing as the Tatar ambassador. He is in league with Kasyan, and I think they intend to depose the Grand Prince. I think it is to happen tonight. I must—”

“Vasya—”

“The Grand Prince must be warned,” Vasya finished.

“Impossible,” Olga said. “None of my household can go near the Grand Prince tonight. We are all colored by your disgrace. It is all nonsense anyway—why would a lord pay men to burn his own villages? In any case, could Kasyan Lutovich expect to hold the patent for Moscow?”

“I don’t know,” said Vasya. “But Dmitrii Ivanovich has no son—only a pregnant wife. Who would rule, if he died tonight?”

“It is not your place or your business,” Olga said sharply. “He is not going to die.”

Vasya did not seem to have heard. She was pacing the room; she looked more like Vasilii Petrovich than her own self. “Why not?” she murmured. “Dmitrii is angry with Sasha—for Kasyan took up the lie—the weapon I put into his hand. Your husband, Prince Vladimir, is not here. So the two men the Grand Prince most trusts are set at remove. Kasyan has his own people in the city, and Chelubey has more.” Vasya stilled her pacing with a visible effort, stood light and restless in the center of the room. “Depose the Grand Prince,” she whispered. “Why does he need to marry me?” Her eyes went to her sister.

But Olga had stopped listening. Blood was beating like wings in her ears, and a great sinking pain began to eat her from the inside. “Vasya,” she whispered, a hand on her belly.

Vasya saw Olga’s face, and her own face changed. “The baby?” she asked. “Now?”

Olga managed a nod. “Send for Varvara,” she whispered. She swayed, and her sister caught her.