“You didn’t ask me,” said the Grey Wolf, unconcerned, “and I didn’t think it was important.”
“Are you two arguing again?” said Mar’ya Morevna as she reined Sivka to a halt behind them, “or is it a discussion this time?”
“Just a difference of unsolicited opinion, Mar’yushka,” said Ivan, and found himself wanting to smile at the foolishness of it all. He hadn’t been so expertly made game of since his sisters married and left home, and the Grey Wolf could have given lessons in the art to all of them. “It seems my new servant won’t provide an answer unless I ask the proper question first.”
“Unless I think my views are relevant,” said the Grey Wolf.
“Of course,” said Mar’ya Morevna, dismounting neatly and accepting the courteous salutes of the guards with a little nod of her head. “Well, announce us, someone.”
The Grey Wolf took on that duty with undisguised relish. “From my master Prince Ivan Aleksandrovich Khorlovskiy, and his wife the Princess Mar’ya Koldunovna Morevna to the Countess Vasilisa Kurbit’yevna in whose hunting-park they travel, greeting! My master demands guest-right and—”
“And I demand nothing of the sort.” Ivan laid a hand on the Grey Wolf’s long muzzle, regardless of how close his fingers were to those enormous teeth, then made a very small bow towards the guards. “Prince Ivan and his wife request guest-right of the lady of this kremlin, if it pleases her. Manners, Volk Volkovich, are something that wolves plainly haven’t learned.”
“Say ‘don’t often need’ and you’d be closer to the truth.”
“Say ‘have no time for’ and you’d be striking the target fair and square,” said Sivka’s huge voice. That at least provoked more than polite reaction from the guards. Though they were familiar with a talking wolf who stood as big as a horse, a talking horse who stood bigger still was something new. Ivan, Mar’ya Morevna, Sivka and the Grey Wolf were all bidden enter the red kremlin, or the red hunting lodge as it seemed to be, while one of the guards straightened his livery coat then went dashing off into the principal building.
When he returned the Countess was right behind him, and when they saw her, Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna exchanged a significant glance. Vasilisa Kurbit’yevna was little, birdlike and twittery, and showed no surprise that they had come from beyond the Summer Country. She was evidently eager for whatever news and gossip they might have, but both of them had met such persons at court, and knew they would get no information in exchange.
It wasn’t strictly accurate, though the usefulness of the information was another matter entirely, for the twittering Countess wasn’t alone in her kremlin-shaped hunting lodge. A small dinner-party was in full swing when they were ushered into the building’s Great Hall, and if that hall was smaller than some they had seen, it more than compensated with the splendour of its decoration. Countess Vasilisa or her architect had apparently visited Greek Byzantium at some stage, although by what route Ivan couldn’t guess, and had been so taken with the vaulted ceilings of the St Sofia they had recreated them in miniature.
During the meal, a simple rustic repast of six courses and six wines, Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna took turns at entertaining the company with gossip and witty conversation. It was unfortunate that the other guests were much of a kind with their hostess, and had started their drinking much earlier in the day, otherwise the exclamations and squeals of delight at each story would have been most gratifying.
As it was, Prince Ivan soon concluded he could gain much the same response by reciting the books of the Old Testament, so long as he accompanied each chapter and verse with salacious eyebrow-play. Finally, he gave up and turned his full attention to the quite excellent cooking. The day’s hunting had been successful, for there was an assortment of birds cooked in an assortment of ways, and a great deal of game in the form of roast venison with berry-sauce, braised rabbit with sour cream, and vinegared wild boar with enough garlic in its dressing to lift his hat off if he hadn’t lost it already.
Ivan listened with one ear as Mar’ya Morevna tried to turn the giggling and tipsy conversation around to something worth hearing. Firebirds were mentioned several times, as were perches of gold and iron for them to sit on, but he could also hear a consistent refusal to loan such things to strangers. The only reason given was a vague declaration that to do so was ‘not quite proper’, and Ivan knew well enough that where etiquette was concerned, people could be as inflexible as about religion. Mar’ya Morevna knew it too, and stopped asking before her persistence became an irritation. She looked at Ivan, rolled her eyes expressively and returned to pointless gossip for the rest of the evening.
They spent the night between cool linen sheets in a bed not quite as large as a principality, and woke refreshed early the next morning. “No point in asking about the perch again,” said Mar’ya Morevna as she looked out of their bedroom window, “even though it’s right there for the taking.”
Ivan looked over her shoulder and muttered something under his breath. The perch, wrought iron and filigree gold, was in the shape of a capital letter T, with handles on each side. Once the perch was occupied it could be brought into the hall, where the Firebird could relate its news of what was happening across the Summer Country. The handle suggested something else as well, a question that had niggled at the back of Ivan’s mind ever since his hand closed on that bright, burning tail-feather.
“They’re not hot all the time,” he said. Mar’ya Morevna looked at him. “Firebirds. You thought they could moderate their heat, though we’ve never seen proof of it. Well, there’s your proof.” He pointed at the handles, two curves of iron inlaid with gold that came around to meet plain wooden grips in the middle. “The gold hasn’t melted out, and the wood isn’t charred.”
“Useful to know,” said Mar’ya Morevna, “if we ever get the chance to borrow one.”
“They kept saying ‘no’ all evening?”
“You heard most of it, and what you didn’t hear was just the same. We’re travellers from Moist-Mother-Earth to the Summer Country; interesting curiosities, sources of news and stories – but we’re uneducated strangers. We can’t be loaned a perch-of-honour in case we, as the Countess put it, ‘fail by ignorance rather than malice to treat the Firebird with respect’. I gather if the thing’s offended, it stays away from where the offence was given. They can’t be compelled, so a visit from a Firebird confers prestige.”
“As if a Prince stops to take wine in a merchant’s house?”
“Something like. But if that merchant repainted his house and invited all his friends, then the Prince rode by without stopping, think how he’d look. No matter how magnificent the perch or falcon-block you set out for the Firebirds, if they don’t use it, your reputation suffers. It suffers even more if they used to come calling, then stop because you’ve annoyed them.”
“Like pulling feathers out of their tails?”
“Almost certainly. But I wouldn’t mention that, even though we’re going to give it back. Oh well. Foreign parts, foreign notions.”
Ivan pulled his shirt over his head and tucked it into his breeches, then looked for the one boot that always took refuge underneath the bed. “So we’re wasting our breath?” he said in a muffled voice.
“Perhaps, or perhaps not. Vasilisa Kurbit’yevna told me that not everyone has such rigid views. She just couldn’t remember anyone with flexible ones by the time I thought to ask.”
“I’m surprised,” said Ivan unsympathetically, “that she could even remember her own name, never mind anyone else’s. For such a small person she was pouring down a lot of wine.”
“That’s what drinking parties are about, or hadn’t you noticed?” Mar’ya Morevna glanced out of the window again, up towards the sky, and her face turned serious. “And never mind wasting breath. We can’t spare time for another wasted night like the last one. Remember what I told you about the risks of staying too long in the Summer Country. I’m allowing us two more days, and that’s all.”
“You said something about the waxing and waning of the moon,” said Ivan. “That’s more like thirty days, surely?”
“Time runs faster here.” She began sorting her own garments from the mess of tangled bedclothes. “Two days. Then we have to leave, with the perch and the Firebird or not.”
*
They left the hunting lodge a little later in the morning after offering courteous thanks and farewells to the Countess Vasilisa Kurbit’yevna. Those farewells were particularly courteous by being delivered in soft voices, for the birdlike little Countess had the rumpled look of a songbird mauled by a cat, and from the knotting of her delicate brows and the dainty way she pressed her hand to her temples her head seemed to be giving her considerable trouble.
Ivan looked back from the crest of the ridge overlooking the red hunting lodge and smiled sourly at a distant figure striding down out of the woods with a long bundle of something resting on one shoulder. “Another hunter, I suppose,” he said. “Bringing meat, looking for money. Well, I wish him better luck than we had at getting what he wants from that drunken little sparrow. Damned stupid perches. You’d think we wanted to steal one.”
The Grey Wolf paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Then do it,” he said. “Next time you see one of these perches, don’t ask.”
Ivan stared back at the Grey Wolf and straightened his back from the comfortable slouch he adopted while he rode. “I’m a Tsar’s son,” he said, very much on his dignity – perhaps too much so, since the Grey Wolf’s suggestion had already crossed his mind. “I don’t steal.”
The Grey Wolf sighed. Had he been an ordinary wolf, that would have been no more than an expulsion of breath. As it was, the sound was expressive of many things. “All right,” he said equably, “then borrow one. You can always put it back after you’ve found out what you need to know. If you don’t intend to keep what you’ve taken, nobody can call it stealing.”
Ivan snorted, and said nothing.
Their destination this time was something other than a hunting lodge. The Countess had directed them to the kremlin of Tsar Vyslav Andronovich, and whether he was the ruler of the entire Summer Country or, like Ivan’s father, held his domain as only a part of it, hadn’t been made clear. It hardly mattered now. Whether he was a great ruler or a petty one, everything hinged on how he responded to the request for a Firebird perch put to him courteously but directly, as from one Prince to another.
But the Tsar wasn’t there. Vyslav Andronovich was spending the night in his hunting lodge, and none of the kremlin officials could say when he would return.
With only a day left before Mar’ya Morevna insisted they left the Summer Country, theft – or as the Grey Wolf put it, borrowing – became far more than just a quickly silenced option. It was the only practical way to achieve what had brought them here. Prince Ivan knew he could have requested a Firebird’s perch from one of the palace officials but, if that request was refused, the Tsar would likely uphold the decision when he finally returned. It took a while to beat his conscience into submission, but Ivan concluded that dishonourable success was better than honourable failure. Soft boots and his darkest coat became the order of the day.
Or more correctly, the order of the night.
He leaned down to where Mar’ya Morevna was sleeping and kissed her lightly on the forehead, then slipped out of the handsome suite of rooms that Tsar Vyslav Andronovich’s High Steward had granted as guest-right. As the door closed he looked back at her face in the lamplight, wondering anxiously if this was the proper thing to do. Then he squared his shoulders and went to do it.
Vyslav Andronovich’s fortress was laid out in a style familiar to one who had grown up in such a place: main gate here, secondary gates there and there, towers at intervals along the walls, and the kremlin palace itself facing the square. Ivan had spent what remained of the daylight strolling idly about, fixing locations in his mind and one location in particular. The perch-of-honour, all dark burnished iron and glinting yellow gold, was set on a stone pedestal to one side of the square, high enough that when one of the fire-elementals gave out its news it could be heard clearly, but not so high that it was beyond reach.
He had said nothing about this to Mar’ya Morevna, knowing full well she would present him with a dozen sound reasons why he should keep his hands to himself. Ivan preferred to present her with the perch. It would leave the pedestal, of course, but not Tsar Vyslav’s kremlin, and if all went swift and smoothly he would return it before anyone noticed it had gone. After that, with the Firebird’s cooperation assured, the blacksmiths and goldsmiths of Khorlov could make an equally honourable perching-block for when it appeared before his father and the other Princes.
The streets were very dark after full night had fallen, illuminated fitfully by the firefly gleam of lanterns hung above house-doors. Since the householders and not the city fathers put up those lamps, no two were of the same design, and no two cast the same amount of light. Once his eyes became accustomed to the gloom Ivan could see well enough not to trip over things, but the thought of having to run from a hue and cry through such darkness was a great deterrent to being caught.
The few people he met, including the kremlin guards, nodded greeting to him with such friendliness and trust that Ivan felt a little knot of guilt form in his belly. As the guilt increased and began eroding his armour of self-assurance he quickened his steps across the square, glanced once at the kremlin palace and once at the shadowed walls, then grabbed the gold-worked crossbar of the perch and tried to lift the whole thing from its iron brackets. It refused to move.
And when he tried to shift his grip, Ivan’s hand refused to open.
He wrenched once, throwing his full weight behind the effort hard enough to send a jab of protest through the joints of wrist, elbow and shoulder, and then the knot of guilt became a leaden ball of cold fear hanging in his guts. It was still there, and he was still there, after ten minutes that lasted a lifetime. Then there was a rattle of hoofbeats and a group of people on horseback came cantering into the square. Dressed in the greens and browns of hunting costume, they chattered together and were as cheerful as anyone else he had seen in the kremlin of Tsar Vyslav Andronovich.
The cheerfulness lasted until they saw him, then shattered like a sheet of glass.
They reined in their horses and stopped in their tracks, not believing what they saw, and this time there was no friendly nod of greeting. Even in the pale glimmer of a starry sky Ivan could see the expressions of shock and betrayal on their faces, and shame turned him scarlet to the roots of his hair. If one of them had said something angry it would have been easier to bear, but even when two mailed guards came forward to release him – his fingers uncurled from the chilly metal perch the instant they took him by the arms – the hunting-party spoke not a word.
Being flung into a cell would also have made things easier, but instead, though their firm grip on his biceps never slackened, the guards led him back into the kremlin palace and upstairs to the guesting-rooms, and there they knocked on the door.
Mar’ya Morevna answered the polite rapping, and the way she stared at Ivan when the guards escorted him inside was dreadful. Their silence and his shame-faced expression told her at once what he had tried and failed to do. He heard the door click shut and the rattle of a key as it was locked from the outside, then Mar’ya Morevna reached out and took his cold hands in her warm ones.
“You were acting for the best, Vanya,” she said. “But you should have waited. You should have asked me what to do. Instead you did it anyway.” She sat down on the bed and looked him up and down, very slowly, as if she hadn’t seen him before. “I’m a warrior, and a commander of armies. I do what must be done. But you…you were never so thoughtless before. Where has the honour of the Tsar’s son gone?”
And that was worst of all.
*
Tsar Vyslav Andronovich was waiting for Prince Ivan in the Council Chamber of his kremlin at first light next morning. Mar’ya Mor
evna was there, seated to one side with the Grey Wolf lying at her feet and Sivka, haltered, was behind her chair. There were six soldiers armed with halberds around them, no over-ornamented useless weapons this time, just simple ashwood tipped with steel. The low sunlight shining through the chamber windows glittered from the interlace of bright scratches where their blades had been newly sharpened.
Ivan looked along the Council Chamber, and saw the gold-worked iron perch sitting squarely in the middle of the floor. The Tsar was reading a scroll that he allowed to snap shut as Ivan was escorted into the room, and despite a shame-faced inclination to keep his gaze lowered, Ivan couldn’t help but stare at him.
Vyslav Andronovich was the first person in the Summer Country who truly looked as though he belonged in a world other than that of Russia. The Tsar was a giant. Ivan was a handspan under six feet in height, and sturdily built; Tsar Vyslav Andronovich was nearer seven feet, and massive. Some hunting accident had broken his long, straight nose and it had set crooked; the same accident had left a webwork of white scars over his high cheekbones.
An ordinary man of ordinary height would have been ugly in the attractive way some ugly people are, for beneath the scars and the smashed nose his face was kindly and his mouth wide, full-lipped and prone to smile. Instead he had enhanced that appearance with a head shaven in the Turkish manner and a great black spade-shaped beard, so now instead of ugly he was awesome. And he wasn’t smiling.
The two men-at-arms who served as Ivan’s escort touched his shoulders gently as a signal he should stop in front of the perch and the great chair of state. Ivan wouldn’t have believed he could feel any worse than at the moment of his arrest, but every time he was treated with more respect than a criminal deserved, his shame grew deeper still.
Vyslav Andronovich consulted the scroll again, then stared in silence at Prince Ivan for some minutes. All the muscles of his face seemed frozen in position, making it impossible to hazard a guess at what he might be thinking, but Ivan felt sure that there were questions being asked behind those cool eyes as to why a young man who called himself a Prince and had been granted proper guest-right should then be captured thieving from the public square.
Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 26