“This is more comfortable,” he said. “But I dislike having unanswered questions hanging over a discussion.”
“So no was the right answer after all,” said Ivan. “I’d begun to wonder.”
Tsar Vyslav Andronovich smiled slightly, revealing square, strong white teeth amid that thicket of black beard. “No need to wonder. The test was crude, but necessary. I had to be sure of your motives, Prince Ivan. Noble reasons for a theft are easy to claim, but hard to maintain. Two wrongs don’t make a right, you said. A thief wouldn’t think that way. I ask pardon of you both, and offer food and drink as recompense.”
He clapped his hands once more and gave rapid instructions to the servants who came hurrying in. Within minutes two small tables already set with silver and crystal were whisked in and set down before Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna. She fell to with a will, but Ivan contented himself with merely eyeing the food before lifting an ice-encrusted vodka flask instead.
“If our explanation satisfies you, Majesty,” he said, pouring three fingers’ depth of the icy spirit into a glass, “then might we ask again for the loan of the Firebird’s perch?”
Vyslav Andronovich sipped daintily at his own cup, a handsome thing of onyx and silver, and looked at him over the rim. “I can do better than that. I’ll give you a proper perch-of-honour, so that the Firebird can ride with you when you return to the wide white world. If your intent is still to prevent an impending war, well and good, but if you need to put a stop to one already being waged,” the cool, disinterested way in which he spoke of the unspeakable made Ivan shiver, “then delay should be avoided at all costs.”
“In that case, Majesty,” he said after putting his vodka down the proper way, in a single gulp, “how can we make certain that the Firebird who next visits your kremlin is the one we need?”
The Tsar’s moustache moved as his mouth formed a thin smile. “The lady your wife knows. Don’t you?”
“Do I?” said Mar’ya Morevna. For just a moment she looked rather less confident than the Tsar’s words made her appear, and then she nodded. “Set the usual forms of invitation before the perch: fragrant wood, fine vodka, a gold coin – and the tail feather.”
“Just so,” said Vyslav Andronovich. “The tail feather most of all.”
“But no spells?” said Ivan. “Nothing to command it to come here? You said yourself, Majesty, delays should be avoided.”
“There’ll be no delays. But making this particular Firebird angry with you is something to be avoided even more.” The Tsar laughed. “By the sound of what you’ve told me, it’s probably not in the best of humour at the moment, and trying to give it still more orders won’t improve its temper. Do your people have the proverb about catching wasps?”
Ivan poured himself more vodka and thought for a moment. “Is that the one about using honey, not vinegar?”
“Exactly. I could quote you pieces of wisdom in that vein for an hour, until you fled screaming.”
“No need, Majesty. When I was younger, my tutor was also my father’s High Steward and First Minister.”
The Tsar grunted in sympathy. “Then you know exactly what I mean. But the honey, in this instance at least, is the feather. The Firebird will want it back.”
“And how will it respond to the man who pulled that feather out?”
Vyslav Andronovich glanced at him, drew breath to say something encouraging, then abandoned the attempt. “If I knew, I would tell you. But…well, you’re returning property to its rightful owner without any attached conditions – which I would strongly advise, if you were considering anything else – and you intend asking help from an invited guest rather than demanding duty from a slave. Those will all stand in your favour.”
“I see. Thank you.” Even when Mar’ya Morevna gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, Ivan didn’t feel very happy at the prospect of meeting the Firebird if it was already ‘out of humour’, as the Tsar so coyly put it. He’d seen what it could do. The second glass of vodka went the same way as the first.
“Don’t worry, Vanyushka.” Mar’ya Morevna grinned at him with a cheery confidence that had to be real, because he knew she wasn’t that good an actress. “At least when you ask for something, you do it more politely than Baba Yaga.”
“Yes, Baba Yaga,” said Sivka, who had been listening in silence except for the occasional flick of an ear. “Of all the things that could be summoned to do her bidding, why something so splendid as a Firebird? When I was a grubby colt behind the other Baba Yaga’s stable, I never saw anything but dirt and foulness.”
The Grey Wolf raised his head from his paws and grinned with all his teeth. “That,” he said softly, “is the point. This witch is arrogant. She wanted the satisfaction of the vile when they bend the beautiful to their will. And it gave her more than that. Her own hand was hidden.” He looked at Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna, and all but wagged his tail. “If I were other than a wolf, and carried gold, I’d wager that you never thought of Baba Yaga until I mentioned her by name.”
“The Baba Yaga that I knew is dead,” said Ivan. “I saw her fall into the burning river with my own eyes; and the notion of an ancient hag like that having any living relatives never even crossed my mind.”
“It seems, Prince Ivan,” said Tsar Vyslav Andronovich, “that even ancient hags have mothers. And I suspect that though this Baba Yaga of yours has never loved anything but herself, she wants revenge on you just for its own sake. Her daughter’s death is just an excuse, and whatever rewards she has gained from these, these…?”
“Teutonic Knights, Majesty.”
“Thank you. So long as there was a chance to hurt her enemies – you, and everything you hold dear – I’m sure she would pay them.”
“She’s been stealing, or having the Firebird steal, books of magic and the like,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “That would also divert suspicion from their involvement, since from the little I know of the military Orders, they don’t approve of sorcery.”
“You mean, dear lady,” said Tsar Vyslav Andronovich with a vast and gentle cynicism, “that their public voice claims not. The private attitude of their high and mighty will be quite different.”
Ivan snapped a last shot of vodka down his throat and stood up. “We should begin, Majesty. If it won’t stick to my hand again, I’ll take the Firebird’s perch back out to the square and—”
“No need for that. This won’t be like the normal way the Firebirds fly from one place to another in the Summer Country. I don’t think flying is involved at all. Prepare the perch-of-honour to welcome it right here and, whether you believe this or not, it will just—” the Tsar waved both hands in an expansive, descriptive gesture, “—appear.”
Glancing quickly at Mar’ya Morevna, Ivan smiled. “Just appear?” he said softly, half to himself. The blisters on his hand weren’t yet fully healed. “Yes, Majesty, I think I can believe it.”
“Once the gifts are prepared, I’ll have the doors closed and guarded. In the bad times, before my father’s father’s time, my Council Chamber was the strong place of this kremlin; a redoubt where the Tsar and his family could hold out against their enemies until rescuers arrived. There hasn’t been war or raiding in the Summer Country for half a century, so I use it as a room for private discussions.”
Mar’ya Morevna had studied the door earlier. It was triple-ply oak, with every second layer of planks running at right angles to the one above so that they couldn’t be split along the grain. Lock and hinges were of black steel, with large, imposing rivets, and the bolt on the inside was a bar of forged iron thicker than her wrist. She approved of such security, but at the same time it was scarcely courteous either to the Tsar or his subjects to assume such steps were necessary. “I can see how privacy could be assured,” she said, “but is there so much need for it?”
“That depends,” said Vyslav Andronovich, “on how sensitive you regard your own affairs.”
“In Russia, very. Here…hardly at all. A token pair of guards outside
the door will be enough.”
“So be it.” The Tsar clapped his hands again. When the servants came in to clear away the small tables, two others were with them. One carried a gold plate piled high with chips of fresh-cut cedar and sandalwood so fragrant that Ivan could smell it at once. The other carried a flask of vodka in one hand and a fine silver cup in the other. He set it down in front of the perch and then, though from its size it was meant for ale, the man filled it to brimming with the best ‘Tsar’s vodka’ distilled from wheat, innocently clear and thick with cold. The metal immediately began to frost white until its embossed design resembled something carved from a block of snow. Misty vapour rolled down its sides and drifted on the floor.
“Thirsty creatures, Firebirds,” said Ivan to nobody in particular, “and cheaper to keep for a week than a fortnight.”
Vyslav Andronovich himself provided the gold coin, an odd, old, heavy thing that he chose with care from among the selection presented to him by the servant who had carried in the plate.
“A medallion?” asked Mar’ya Morevna, looking at its lumpy outline curiously. The Tsar held it up between finger and thumb.
“No,” he said. “A coin from the old Greek times, a gold stater of Aleksandr the Macedonian, who thought he had conquered the world. It seems appropriate to use it against these German knights who seem to have such similar notions.”
“Mother Russia isn’t the whole world.”
“Tell that to our peasants,” said Ivan. “It’s all they have.”
Mar’ya Morevna raised her eyebrows and turned to look at him, seeming not too annoyed at being corrected. “Spoken like your father. You may well prove a Princely ruler after all. Blood will out.”
Ivan leaned over to pat her gently on the cheek. “I’d much rather it stayed where it is, thanks.”
The Firebird’s feather was in one of the saddlebags stacked neatly to one side of the Council Chamber, carefully laid between two flat pieces of wood to keep its quill and barbs from being damaged, then bound in strips of leather. When Ivan opened it, there was only the slightest delicate singe-mark in the face of the wood, a perfect pokerwork representation of quill, barbs and down. Even though it had long cooled from its original furnace-throated glow, like the stolen grimoire Enciervanul Doamnisoar, it had never grown completely cold, and the confinement of what little heat remained had turned the feather warm again.
Prince Ivan hefted it thoughtfully in his hand, feeling that same strange not-quite-there sensation as before. Both his father and Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin had told him – frequently, oh so very frequently – about how much there was in the world that he didn’t yet know but had to learn before he could be a good Tsar. And then he encountered something like this. No matter how much one learned, there was always more.
Once all was prepared and everything in its place, as Vyslav Andronovich had said, all they had to do was wait. So they waited. Conversation was shallow, bright and pointless, because every few minutes either Prince Ivan’s or Mar’ya Morevna’s eyes would slide sideways to stare at the iron-and-gold cruciform of the perch, and they would lose the thread of whatever they were saying. Ivan wished he’d kept a tighter hold on the vodka-flask and not let the servants make away with it so easily. The fierce spirit wouldn’t have helped matters, indeed he doubted if even the huge measure set out for the Firebird would make him drunk right now, but at least it would give him something to do with his hands besides a craving to bite his nails.
Suddenly, Mar’ya Morevna sat up very straight, her head on one side as if she was listening to something, and raised her hand for silence. All three of them heard the sound at the same time, but only Ivan recognized it. The last time he’d heard that thin hissing, like a forge-bellows or the pouring of molten metal, the circumstances had been such as to make him remember.
A blast of wind hammered at the air of the Council Chamber, driving heat and glare before it like leaves in an autumn gale, and the source of that wind expanded out of the heart of darkness lying behind the light to become a pair of monstrous, glowing wings. Sivka squealed and reared up, raking at the gust of hot air with his great hoofs, while the Grey Wolf chose the part of more discretion and lay as flat as he was able.
The Firebird hovered before them for a moment, like a kestrel made all of gold and flame, then settled onto the arms of the perch with a rasping clank of claws on iron and folded its wings with all the leisured haughtiness of a Prince arranging his robes to best advantage around his throne. Sparks flew, but they were only such sparks as might be struck from flint by steel, and though the room had grown much warmer than before it wasn’t enough for discomfort.
All the discomfort, for Ivan at least, was centred around the look in the Firebird’s eyes. Despite his armour during their last encounter, it knew him. He was prepared as best he could be for almost anything except what happened, because it just sat there as quietly as a falcon on its perching-block, watching them, doing and saying nothing. The heat it radiated, though much less than the furnace-blast Ivan remembered all too well, quickly melted the ornamental frost coating the cup of vodka and brought the alcohol in it to a bubbling, blue-flaming boil. The Firebird thrust its beak into the inferno and drank daintily, throwing its head back with each sip so an arc of spitting sapphire droplets sprayed across the floor. It was just as well, thought Ivan, that the Council Chamber was tiled rather than timbered; if Tsar Vyslav Andronovich was in the habit of entertaining fire-creatures those tiles were a necessity.
When its vodka was finished, and the Firebird actually picked up the cup in its beak and tilted it so that the last few drops could trickle blazing down its throat, it set about the pieces of wood and soon filled the air with a scent like burning incense. After that it preened for a moment, snapped up and swallowed the gold Greek stater almost as an afterthought, then spread its wings and tail out like something on a banner and bowed low to the Tsar.
“Hail, Vyslav Andronovich!” it said. “And greeting to your guests.”
Prince Ivan heard no threat in the Firebird’s voice. It was a harsh sound, almost metallic but not unpleasant, and he guessed the creature was waiting for the Tsar’s advice before reacting to their presence one way or the other. Everything about it seemed restrained by comparison with what he’d last seen: less hot, less bright, less shrill and above all less savage. It was almost as if enough vodka to put three strong men under the table, a golden snack and the presence of at least one friend had restored the Firebird’s good mood.
“Hail, Firebird!” said Vyslav Andronovich, “and be welcomed as another guest.”
The Firebird looked at them again, or rather it spared just a glance for Mar’ya Morevna, then put its head first on one side and then the other as it studied Ivan up and down. “Guest?” it said shrewdly. “Or performer of favours?”
“That depends entirely on you, noble Firebird,” said Ivan. “I ask only that you hear my – our request.”
“Listening can’t hurt,” prompted the Tsar, and the Firebird’s head snapped around to shoot him the same spiky stare down the curved blade of its beak as had pinned Ivan in place that last time.
“No. But other things can.” The stare transferred itself to Prince Ivan and, if anything, intensified until he felt as if he was being glared at by matching black gemstones with hot coals at their centres. “My feather, Prince Ivan?”
Rather than setting it in front of the perch with all the other gifts, Ivan had kept the long, glowing plume cradled in his hand. Now he looked down at it and flinched just a little, realizing that returning it was to be a physical gesture rather than the feather simply reappearing in its proper place.
“Where, ah, where do I… put it?” he said.
The Firebird snapped its beak in irritation, but when it also gave him a long, slow blink Ivan felt his apprehension fade away. That protracted blink had been a sign of amusement, deliberately human enough for him to understand. “You wouldn’t like it if I told you what that question b
rought to mind,” it said. “But lay it in front of me. I must eat it before another will grow.”
Ivan walked closer, still on his guard, and leaned over to set the feather gently on the plate that had contained the wood-chippings. As he straightened, the Firebird’s head shot out on its long neck almost too fast for his eyes to follow. Ivan reacted more to movement sensed than seen and flung himself sideways as he might have ducked a sword-stroke.
He wasn’t quick enough.
“That’s what it feels like,” said the Firebird, muffled because the hank of Ivan’s hair it had just wrenched out was still in its beak and beginning to singe most nastily. It spat the hair out, stamped its feet once or twice so that more sparks went skipping over the floor, and then settled the plumage ruffled by its lunge. “Now you know it, now we’re even, now we can talk.”
Ivan Aleksandrovich sat up from where his dive and roll had sent him and managed by great strength of character and a lot of common sense not to shoot the bird the sort of glare that it deserved. Of course, it didn’t deserve anything of the sort. He’d been paid back in kind, as the Firebird and the raw patch on his scalp both told him, but landing hard on the tiled floor then rolling over the even harder pommel of his sabre had put interest on the payment. He investigated the plucked spot with one finger, winced, and said several things vehemently under his breath. It didn’t ease the sting, but it relieved his feelings.
Their discussion with the Firebird made him feel still better. Ivan had never dared to hope it would be so amenable to their requests, but a lot of that had to do with its own barely suppressed fury at having been made such use of. He had a feeling it would have agreed to anything if that agreement let it break free of Baba Yaga’s malign influence, and that being presented to the Princes of the Rus as this year’s reason why they shouldn’t fight was a small price to pay.
Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 28