by Naomi Novik
And now here I was dragging him along like a careless child bumping a broken doll along behind her, bargaining with the demon that sat in his belly for the sake of the kingdom he didn’t care about, as if he weren’t even there. As if he didn’t matter, as he’d never mattered to anyone. No wonder he hated me for it.
It couldn’t make me sorry for what I’d done. I was sorry for it already. Miryem had cried out to me over the horror in that tower room below, chaining up a sacrificial victim to be devoured over and over by a demon of flame, and I hadn’t needed her to tell me it was evil. But I could be sorry only with my father’s kind of regret. I had pity for Staryk children, and I would have stopped their winter king some other way, if I could. I would have set Mirnatius free, if I had the chance, instead of adding to his chained-slave misery. But the world I wanted wasn’t the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.
I couldn’t even apologize to him. He wouldn’t have believed me, and he shouldn’t have. There was still a fault line in Lithvas to be healed, and a demon sitting on our throne. I was glad to have the winter broken no matter how it had been done, but I wasn’t a fool to think we could make an ally of a thing like Chernobog. Last night it had become a choice between helping him, or letting the Staryk king bury us in ice, so I’d chosen—not the lesser evil, but the less immediate one. But I knew that when Chernobog finished drinking up Staryk lives, he’d turn and come right back for us, and I wasn’t going to leave Lithvas bare before him.
So tomorrow, when Casimir arrived, still more enraged than Ulrich, my father would whisper a promise of treachery into his ear. And when finally the Staryk king had been devoured to nothing, down below, they and Ulrich would go all three together and speak to the old priests who twenty years ago had brought the saint-blessed chains out of the cathedral to bind a witch-tsarina for the flame. And that day at dawn, when the demon went into hiding from the sun, they would take my husband to the stake and burn him like his mother, to set us all free of its grasp.
I knew all of it would happen, and I wouldn’t put out my hand to stop it, even now that I knew Mirnatius himself was innocent. I still wouldn’t save him, in his half-life, and condemn Lithvas to the flame in his place, any more than I would try to save Staryk children with a bargain that used the lives of my own people as surety. I was cold enough to do what I had to do, so I could save Lithvas.
But it would leave me cold inside again, too. I looked at Vassilia and at Ilias, who was leaning over to her and whispering and making her blush, and I envied her as much as ever she might have wanted, now when I couldn’t let myself dream anymore, even half unwilling, of warmth in my own marriage bed. That was the only thing I could do for Mirnatius. I wouldn’t pretend to offer him kindness. I wouldn’t ask him again for gratitude or forgiveness or civility. And I wouldn’t look at him and want something for myself, like another hungry wolf licking my chops over an already-exposed red bone.
So I sat in silence during the meal, except to speak to Ulrich on my other side and offer him the best of everything, flattering and soothing him as much as I could. When the hour grew late and the sun began to sink beneath the windows, Mirnatius rose, and we all delivered the happy couple in a procession to their bedchamber down the hall from our own. Ulrich saw the other men of Mirnatius’s family settling themselves in the room on the other side, and Vassilia smiling at Ilias, who had drawn her arm through his and was kissing the tips of each of her fingers in turn, both of them flushed pink with wine and triumph. And Ulrich ground his jaw, but then he accepted my father’s invitation to come to his study and drink a toast of the good brandy to both their future grandchildren, so at least he had given up, even if he was not yet reconciled.
“But you, I’m afraid, my own darling bride, must resign yourself to a cold bed,” Mirnatius said in savage mockery of us both, when we were alone in our room, as he tossed aside his circlet and scattered the rings from his fingers over the dressing table. The sun’s rays were going down through the balcony. “Unless you’d like to send for that enthusiastic guard of mine; if so, you’ll have a good couple of hours to enjoy yourselves. It’s rather a tiresome walk there and back, and I imagine my friend will want to linger over his meal.”
I let him spit the words at me, and said nothing. He scowled at me and then suddenly he smiled, red, and oh, I would rather have had him scowling. “Irina, Irina,” Chernobog sang at me, smoky. “Once again I ask. Will you not take some high gift of me, in exchange for the winter king? Give him to me, name your price, I will give you anything!”
There was no temptation in it. Mirnatius had saved me from that forever. I don’t think I could ever have wanted anything enough to take it from his hands, with a demon smiling out of his hollowed-out face at me. I tried to imagine something that would make me do it: a child whose face I had not yet seen dying in my arms; war about to devour Lithvas whole, the hordes on the horizon and my own terrible death coming. Not even then, perhaps. Those things had an end. I shook my head. “No. Only leave us all alone, me and mine. I want nothing else of you. Go.”
He hissed and muttered and glared at me redly, but he went seething out the door. Magreta crept in as soon as he had left, as if she’d hidden somewhere just outside waiting. She helped me undress, and put aside the crown, and ordered tea, and after it came I sat down on the floor beside her chair and rested my head in her lap, the way I never had when I was a little girl, because there had always been work there. But tonight she had nothing, no sewing or knitting for once, and she stroked my head and said softly, “Irinushka, my brave one. Don’t sorrow so. The winter is gone.”
“Yes,” I said, and my throat ached. “But it is gone because I have fed the fire, Magra, and it wants more wood.”
She bent and kissed my head. “Have some tea, dushenka,” she said, and made my cup very sweet.
*
There were no more stars carved in the walls for me to follow, only a straight line, but I still went slowly. I tried to stay in the very middle of the earthen tunnel, and stepped as lightly as I could, and I let my cloak drag behind me to smooth my footprints: it was long, and its hem had trailed in the wet of the sewer. I hadn’t gone far when the dark began to break, a faint light in the distance coming around a curve, making the dirt walls take a comforting real shape, full of pebbles and tree roots: I wasn’t walking blind anymore, and there was a strong smell of smoke building in my nostrils. A hundred steps more, and I was looking at a star of yellow candlelight far in the distance.
It was so bright against the dark of the tunnel, I couldn’t see anything else anymore. I started walking towards it. The light grew bigger, and my steps slowed; the question was getting louder in my ears with every one. It had been easier to tell my father and mother that I had to be brave when I was safe in a room with them, with my mother’s hand holding mine. It had even been easier to stand in front of the Staryk and refuse to bend before him. At least I’d been angry, then; I’d had vengeance and desperation on my side, and nothing to lose that I valued. Now the scales had a heavy weight on them: my people, my grandfather, my family; Wanda and her brothers, who had saved me. My own life, my life that I’d fought to win back. I didn’t have to do this. I could go back and walk out of this tunnel and still be myself, as clever and brave as I wanted to be.
But as I came slowly closer, so close that I began to see the stone walls of the room at the end of the tunnel and the candlelight shining steady on them, suddenly at my back there came a strong breath of hot wind flowing, and the light inside the room flickered with it. My skin crawled under it, and I knew what was there behind me. What had opened a door behind me, and now was coming down this tunnel, coming to this room.
There was a moment still to ask the question one more time. By now I was standing all the way at the far side of the city. It wasn’t far back to the sewer, and it was a long way from here to the ducal palace. I had time still to turn around and run ba
ck. No one would ever know that I had been here. But I hurried forward instead, to the archway, as silently as I could. I peered quick around the edge and I didn’t see a guard, only the curve of a ring of candles, dripping low to stubs, and beyond it a glowing line of burning coals in the ground. There was smoke in the air, though not as much as I would have expected: there was a draft going up.
Then I drew a breath and I stepped into the room, and the Staryk turned and saw me. He went very still a moment, and then he bowed his head slightly to me. “Lady,” he said. “Why have you come?”
He was standing alone inside the ring of coals, flames licking around him. The silver chain was wrapped around him tight enough to press imprints into his silver clothing. I still wanted to hate him, but it was hard to hate anyone chained, waiting for that thing down the tunnel. “You still owe me three answers,” I said.
He paused and said, “So I do, it seems.”
“If I let you go,” I said, “will you promise not to bring back the winter? To leave my people alone, and not try to starve them all to death?”
He flinched back from me, and straightened glittering and said coldly, “No, lady. I will not give you that promise.”
I stared at him. I’d thought out my questions carefully, all that way in the dark. One to make him end the winter, one to make him leave me be, one to make him promise to stop the raiding forevermore. I had as good a bargaining position as I could have. It hadn’t even occurred to me as a chance to consider that even now—he was bound, bound to his death, to all their deaths, and he still wouldn’t—“So you want us all dead so badly,” I choked out, in horror, “even more than you want to save your own people—you hate us so that you would rather die here, feasted on—”
“To save my people?” he said, his voice rising. “Do you think I have spent my strength, spent the treasure of my kingdom to the last coin, and given my hand to as I thought an unworthy mortal,” and even angry, he paused and inclined his head to me as if in fresh apology, “for any lesser cause than that?”
I stopped talking. My throat had closed on words. He glared at me and added bitterly, “And after all this that I have done, now you come and ask me a coward’s question, if I will buy my life, with a promise to stand aside and let him take them all instead? Never,” and he was snarling it, hurling the words at my head like stones. “I will hold against him as long as my strength lasts, and when it fails, when I can no longer hold the mountain against his flames, at least my people will know that I have gone before them, and held their names in my heart until the end.” He shook his head savagely. “And you speak to me of hate. It was your people who chose this vengeance against us! It was you who crowned the devourer, named him your king! Chernobog had not the strength to break our mountain without you behind him!”
“We didn’t know!” I burst out, horror bringing my voice out again. “None of us knew that the tsar had bargained with a demon!”
“Are your people such fools, then, to unwitting give Chernobog power over you?” he said contemptuously. “You will be well served for it. Do you think he will be true? He clings to the forms for protection, but when he sees a chance to slake his thirst, he abandons them again without hesitation. When he has drained us to the dregs, he will turn on you, and make your summer into desert and drought, and I will rejoice to think that you have brought yourselves low with me and mine.”
I put my hands on my temples, pressed my palms flat against them, my head pounding with smoke and horror. “We aren’t fools!” I said. “We’re mortals, who don’t have magic unless you ram it down our throats. Mirnatius was crowned because his father was the tsar, and his brother died; he was next in line, that’s all. We can’t see a demon hiding in a tsar; there’s no high magic protecting us, whether we’re true or not! You didn’t need my name to threaten me and drag me from my home. And you thought that made me unworthy, instead of you.”
He flinched as if I’d struck him, and went sharp and jagged-edged in his prison. “You have thrice shown me wrong,” he said after a moment, through a grinding of his teeth like floes of ice scraping against one another. “I cannot call you liar now, however I want to. But still I hold to my answer. No. I will not promise.”
I tried to think, desperately. “If I let you go,” I said finally, “will you promise to stop the winter once Chernobog is off the throne, and help us find a way to throw him down? The tsarina will help!” I added. “She wants him gone herself; you saw she wouldn’t take anything from him. She’ll help as long as it doesn’t mean all of us frozen into ice! All the lords of Lithvas will, to have an end to winter. Will you help us fight him, instead of just killing us to starve him of his prey?”
He couldn’t move, inside the silver chain; so instead he stamped his foot and burst out, “I had defeated him! I had thrown him down and bound him with his name! It is by your act that he was unleashed again!”
“Because you tried to drag me away screaming to make more winter for you the rest of my life, and threatened to murder everyone I love!” I shouted back at him. “Don’t you dare try to say it’s my fault—don’t you dare say any of it is our fault! The tsar was only crowned seven years ago. But you’ve been sending your knights to steal gold ever since mortals came here to live in the first place, and who cared if they murdered and raped for their amusement while they were at it: we weren’t strong enough to stop you, so you looked down your nose from your glass mountain and decided we didn’t matter! You deserve to be bound here and eaten by a demon, and so here you are! But Flek’s daughter doesn’t deserve it! I’ll save you for her sake, if you’ll help me save the children here!”
He was about to answer, and then he hesitated, and looked towards the tunnel. I looked back in the pitch depths: there was a faint red glow down there coming nearer, a fire building, and he turned to me and said, “Very well! Free me, and this I will promise, not to hold the winter once Chernobog is thrown down and my people safe from his hunger, and to aid you to defeat him. But until that is done, I give no word!”
“Fine!” I snapped. “And if I free you, will you promise—” and then I stopped, realizing suddenly I had only one question left, not two. Hastily I changed it, and finished, “will you promise for yourself and all the Staryk to leave me and all my people—to leave Lithvas—alone? No more raiding, no more coming out to rape and murder us for gold or any other cause—”
He looked at me, and then he said, “Free me, and this I will promise: there will be no more hunting your people in winter wind; we will come, and ride the forest and the snow-driven plains, and hunt the white-furred beasts that are ours, and if any are fool enough to come in our way or trespass on the woods, they may be trampled; but we will seek no mortal blood and take no treasure, not even sun-warmed gold, save in just vengeance for equal harm given first, and we shall take no woman unwilling who has refused her hand.”
“Not even you,” I added pointedly.
“So I have said!” He looked towards the door again, and the light was getting brighter, red and leaping on the walls. It was coming quickly now. “Break the rings of fire!”
I bent down and tried to blow out one of the candles, but the flame only jumped and wouldn’t go out. It was melted so thickly to the ground I couldn’t even pry it off. I had to run to the tunnel mouth and scrape up dirt with my hands and pour it down, smothering it like a kitchen fire of hot oil, and it burned my hands at the last before it went out. But the coals were so hot that all the dirt I could hold in my two hands together did nothing to stop them burning, so instead I took off my cloak and folded it over so the damp part was on the bottom, and I threw it down over the ring.
“You must draw me out!” he said, and I reached over the scorching-hot ring and snatched the rope and pulled him out over the cloak, just in time; it caught fire under his foot as he stepped off, flames licking up with such fury that the long curling tip of his boot ignited. The whole thing scorched off his leg in a sudden burst of flame and smoke, and he stumbled into
me gasping. I nearly fell over with his weight, and only just managed to turn him to lean against the wall. He was shivering, his eyes nearly shut, and gone translucent with pain; faint reddish lines were climbing spiderwebs over his whole foot and up to his knee, where the scorched end of his breeches hung, still smoking faintly.
I seized the silver chain and tried to pull it off over his head, and then I tried to thrust it down, but even with all my weight, it wouldn’t move. I looked around in desperation; there was a shovel there, thrust into a waiting wheelbarrow full of coals. I took him by the shoulders and tipped him down lying on the ground so I could set the shovel’s tip onto one of the silver links. I stepped down onto the blade with my foot like someone digging, trying to push into the ground, catching the link between hardened iron and the stone floor: it was only an inch long, not nearly as thick around as my little finger, but it wouldn’t open: it wouldn’t open, and behind my back I heard a sudden distant shriek of rage.
I didn’t look: what was the use in looking? I lifted up the shovel and jammed it down again in desperation, and then I dropped it and knelt and seized the silver chain in my hands. I tried to change it; I shut my eyes and remembered the chests in the storerooms, remembered the feeling of silver sliding into gold under my hands, the world gone slippery in my fingers because I willed it so. But the chain only grew hot in my hands, almost burning. There were footsteps running towards us down the tunnel, and the coals all suddenly burst into roaring flame, even the ones in the wheelbarrow, thick black smoke billowing around us.
And then he stirred in my hands and whispered, “The shovel. Quickly. Put the blade on my throat. Kill me, and he cannot devour my people through me.”
I stared at him in horror. I’d wanted him dead, but not bloody under my own hands; I hadn’t wanted to be that much like Judith, hacking off a man’s head. “I can’t!” I croaked out. “I can’t—look down at you and push a shovel through your neck!”