“Let me go,” she said. “I am no one’s slave.”
Her hand opened and the sapphire fell; he caught it. It melted in his hand until it was not a jewel at all but a palmful of cold water.
Abruptly, the wind died and all around was churned-up snow and hulking palaces.
She turned away from him. The dooryard of the prince of Serpukhov had never seemed so large, the snow so deep. She did not look back.
24.
Witch
After the horse-race, six of Dmitrii’s men-at-arms took Sasha to the monastery of the Archangel, where they put him in a small cell. There they left him, to walk the circle of his own thoughts. These centered chiefly on his sister, stripped and shamed before all Moscow, but her courage unbowed, her care only for him.
“You will be sent before the bishops,” Andrei told him that night, when supper was brought. Then, darkly, he added, “And put to the question. If you are not slain in the dark; Dmitrii might well come and cut your head off himself. He is that angry. His grandfather would have. I will do what I can, but that is not much.”
“Father, if I die,” said Sasha, putting out a hand just before the door closed, “you must do what you can for my sister. Both my sisters. Olga did what she did unwillingly, and Vasya is—”
“I do not want to know,” Andrei put in acidly, “what your Vasya is. If you were not vowed to God, you would be dead already, for the lies you told on that witch’s behalf.”
“At least send word to Father Sergei,” Sasha said. “He loves me well.”
“That I will do,” said Andrei, but he was already walking away.
THE BELLS RANG OUTSIDE, the footsteps passed, the rumors swirled. Jagged, incoherent prayers rose to Sasha’s lips and broke off again, half-voiced. Dusk had melted into night, and Moscow was drunk and cheerful under a blaze of new-risen moonlight when footsteps sounded in the cloister, and Sasha’s door rattled.
He got to his feet and put his back to a wall, for what good it would do.
The door opened, softly. Andrei’s fat, anxious face showed again in the gap, beard bristling. Beside him stood a sturdy young man in a hood.
An instant of disbelieving stillness, and then Sasha strode forward. “Rodion! What do you here?” For Andrei carried a torch in one anxious hand; by its light Sasha saw his friend’s face worn all to rags, a mark of frostbite on his nose.
Andrei looked angry, exasperated, afraid. “Brother Rodion has come hotfoot from the Lavra,” he said, “with news that concerns the Grand Prince of Moscow.” A pause. “And your friend, Kasyan Lutovich.”
“I have been to Bashnya Kostei,” put in Rodion. He was looking uneasily at his friend, in the cold and narrow cell. “I rode two horses to death to bring you the news.”
Sasha had never seen such a look in Rodion’s face before. “Come in, then.”
He was in no position to command, but they entered the cell without a word and fastened the door behind them.
Rodion proceeded, softly, to tell a tale of dust and bones and horrors in the dark. “It deserves its name,” he finished. “Bashnya Kostei. The Tower of Bones. I do not know what manner of man is this Kasyan Lutovich, but his house is no dwelling for a living man. And if that weren’t enough, it was Kasyan who—”
“Paid Chelubey to pass himself off as an emissary, to get his men into the city,” finished Sasha, thinking with a pang of Vasya. “I know. Rodya—you must leave at once. Do not say you’ve seen me. Go to the Grand Prince. Tell him—”
“What emissary? Kasyan paid those bandits to burn villages,” Rodion interrupted. “I found their agent in Chudovo, their go-between to buy their blades and horses.”
Rodion had been busy. “Hire bandits to burn his own?” Sasha asked sharply. “To profit in girls?”
“I suppose,” said Rodion. His frost-nipped face was grim.
Andrei stood silent near the door.
“Perhaps Kasyan used the burning to lure the Grand Prince out into the wild so that the impostor might slip in the easier,” Sasha said slowly.
Rodion’s glance shifted between Sasha and Andrei. “Am I too late in my errand? I see some evil has touched you already.”
“My own pride,” said Sasha, with a ghost of dark humor. “I misjudged my sister and Kasyan Lutovich both. But enough. Go. I do well enough here. Go and warn—”
A clamor cut him off. There came a flaring of torches, shouts from the gate, the sound of running feet and slamming doors.
“What now?” muttered Andrei. “Fire? Thieves? This is the house of God.”
The noise gained in pitch; voices shouted and answered one another.
Muttering, Andrei heaved himself through the door, turned back to bolt it, then hesitated. He gave Sasha a dark look, not entirely unfriendly. “Do not escape in the meantime, for the love of God.” He bustled off, leaving the door unlocked.
Rodion and Sasha looked at each other. The rushing darkness, flickering between the torches, stippled both their tonsured heads. “You must warn the Grand Prince,” said Sasha. “Then go to my sister, the Princess of Serpukhov. Tell her—”
Rodion said, “Your sister’s child is coming. She has gone into the bathhouse.”
Sasha stilled. “How do you know?”
Rodion bowed his head. “The priest, Konstantin Nikonovich—the one that knew her father at Lesnaya Zemlya—he received a messenger, and left to minister to her. I heard as I was coming.”
Sasha turned away sharply, looking down at hands bruised still from that day’s fighting. They would not call a priest to a laboring woman unless her end was near. That he—that cold-handed creature—should be with my sister dying…“God keep her, in life or death,” said Sasha. But in his eyes was a flash that would have had the prudent Andrei panting back to treble-bolt the door.
The noise without had not diminished. Over the clamor suddenly rose, clear and incongruous, a voice that Sasha knew.
Sasha thrust Rodion aside with a well-placed shoulder and flew down the corridor of the cloister, pursued by his friend.
VASYA STOOD IN THE DOORYARD just behind the gate, wearing a dirty cloak, hands folded before her, looking pale and unlikely in the nighttime monastery. “I must see my brother!” she snapped, her light voice a counterpoint to the angry rumbling all around.
Dmitrii’s guards, who had stayed more for Andrei’s good beer than to watch Sasha’s bolted door, groped blearily for their swords. Some of the monks had torches; all of them looked outraged. Vasya was at the center of a growing crowd.
“She must have climbed the wall,” one of the guards was stammering defensively. He made the sign of the cross. “She appeared out of nowhere, the unnatural bitch.”
The wall had been built more to preserve the sanctity of the monks’ devotions than to keep out the determined. But it was reasonably high. Gathering himself, Sasha stepped into the ring of torchlight.
Cries of startled anger met him, and one of the guards tried to put his sword to Sasha’s throat. Sasha, barely looking, disarmed the man with a twist and an open palm. Then he was holding a sword in his bare fist, and all the monks fell back. The men-at-arms groped for their own blades, but Sasha barely saw them. There was blood on his sister’s hands.
“Why have you come?” he demanded. “What has happened? Is it Olya?”
“She lost her child,” replied Vasya steadily.
Sasha seized his sister’s arm. “Is she alive?”
Vasya made a small, involuntary sound. Sasha remembered that Kasyan had also gripped her there, when he stripped her before the people. He let her go slowly. “Tell me,” he said, forcing calm.
“Yes,” said Vasya fiercely. “Yes, she is alive, and she will live.”
Sasha let out a breath. Great arcs of pain shadowed his sister’s eyes.
Andrei pushed his way through the crowd. “Be silent, all of you,” said the hegumen. “Girl—”
“You must listen to me now, Batyushka,” Vasya interrupted.
“We will not!” replied Andrei i
n anger, but Sasha said, “Listen to what, Vasya?”
“It is tonight,” she said. “Tonight, when the feasting is at its pitch, and all Moscow is drunk, Kasyan means to kill the Grand Prince, send Moscow into chaos, and emerge triumphant as Grand Prince himself. Dmitrii has no son; Vladimir is in Serpukhov. You must believe me.” She turned suddenly to Rodion, who stood behind the monks. “Brother Rodion,” she said in that clear voice. “You have come quick to Moscow. What brought you in haste? Do you believe me, Brother?”
“Yes,” Rodion said. “I have come from Bashnya Kostei. Perhaps a week ago I would have laughed at you—but now? It is perhaps as you say.”
“She is lying,” said Andrei. “Girls often lie.”
“No,” said Rodion slowly. “No, I do not think she is.”
Sasha asked, “You left Olya to come to me? Surely our sister needs you now.”
“She threw me out,” said Vasya. Her eyes did not leave her brother’s, though her voice caught on the words. “We must warn Dmitrii Ivanovich.”
“I cannot let you go, Brother Aleksandr,” broke in Andrei, desperately. “It is as much as my place and my own life are worth.”
“He certainly cannot,” put in one of the guards, thickly.
The monks looked at each other.
Sasha and Rodion, old campaigners both, looked from the hegumen to each other, to the drunken ring of men. Vasya waited, head tilted, as though she could hear things they could not.
“We will escape,” said Sasha gently and low to Andrei. “I am a dangerous man. Bar the gates, Father. Set a watch.”
Andrei looked long and hard into the younger man’s face. “I never faulted your judgment, before today,” he murmured back. Lower still, he added. “God be with you, my sons.” A pause. Then, grudgingly, “And you, my daughter.”
Vasya smiled at him then. Andrei shut his mouth with a snap. His eyes met Sasha’s. “Take them,” he said aloud. “Put Brother Aleksandr—”
But Sasha already had his sword up; three strokes disarmed the drunken guards and they bulled through the rest. Rodion used the haft of his ax to clear a path, and Vasya stayed sensibly between them. Then they were clear of the ring of people and running down the cloister to the postern-gate that would take them out into Moscow.
THE PAIN FROM VASYA’S blow had blinded Konstantin; for a moment he stood doubled over in the reeking bathhouse, with red lights flashing before his eyes. He heard the door open and slam. Then silence, save for the sounds of weeping in the inner room.
Feeling sick, he opened his eyes.
Vasya was gone. A wispy creature sat studying him with grave curiosity.
Konstantin jerked upright so fast his vision darkened once more.
“You have been touched by the one-eyed god,” the bannik informed the priest. “The eater. So you see us. I haven’t met one of your sort in a long time.” The bannik sat back on his fat, naked, foggy haunch. “Would you like to hear a prophecy?”
Icy sweat broke out over all Konstantin’s body. He stumbled upright. “Back, devil. Get away from me!”
The bannik did not stir. “You will be great among men,” he informed the priest, maliciously. “And you will get only horror of it.”
Konstantin’s sweaty hand lay heavy on the latch. “Great among men?”
The bannik snorted and hurled a ladleful of scalding water. “Get out, poor hungry creature. Get out and leave the dead in peace.” He hurled more water.
Konstantin screamed and half-fell, dripping and burned, out of the bathhouse. Vasya—where was Vasya? She could lift this curse. She could tell him—
But Vasya was gone. He stumbled around the dooryard awhile, searching, but there was no sign of her. Not even footprints. Of course she was gone. Was she not a witch, in league with demons?
Kasyan Lutovich had promised him vengeance, if only he would perform one little task. “Hate the little witches?” Kasyan had said. “Well, your Vasya is not the only witch in Moscow. Do this thing for me. Afterward, I will help you—”
Promises, empty promises. What matter what Kasyan Lutovich said? Men of God did not take vengeance. But…
This is not vengeance, Konstantin thought. Battle against evil, as was good in the sight of God. Besides, if all that Kasyan said was true—then Konstantin might indeed become a bishop. Only first—
Konstantin Nikonovich, with bitterness in his soul, went off toward the tower of the terem. It was almost empty, its fires guttering. Olga’s women were all with the princess, in the bathhouse at his back.
But not quite empty. A black-eyed girl-child slept in the terem, with ghosts in her innocent eyes. Her guard on that tumultuous night was a fond old nurse who would never question his authority as a priest.
SASHA AND RODION AND VASYA paused an instant to breathe in the shadow of the monastery wall. The monastery behind them muttered like a spring-flood; it was only a matter of time before Dmitrii’s guards burst forth in angry pursuit. “Hurry,” Vasya said.
The revel was dying away now, as the drunks staggered home. The next day was the Day of Forgiveness. The three ran up the hill unremarked, keeping to the shadows. Sasha carried his stolen sword, and Rodion had an ax.
The Grand Prince’s palace stood blocky and impregnable at the crown of the hill. Torches lit the wooden gate, and two shivering guards flanked it, ice in their beards. It certainly did not look like a palace in imminent danger.
“Now what?” whispered Rodion, while they skulked in the shadow of the wall opposite.
“We must get in,” said Vasya impatiently. “The Grand Prince must be woken and warned.”
“How can you be—” Rodion began.
“There are two smaller gates,” cut in Sasha, “besides the main one. But they will be barred from the inside.”
“We must go over the wall,” said Vasya shortly.
Sasha looked at his sister. He had never thought of her as girlish, but the last trace of softness was gone. The quick brain, the strong limbs were there: fiercely, almost defiantly present, though concealed beneath her encumbering dress. She was more feminine than she had ever been, and less.
Witch. The word drifted across his mind. We call such women so, because we have no other name.
She seemed to catch his thought; she bent her head in troubled acknowledgment. Then she said, “I am smaller than either of you. If you help me, I can get over the wall. I will open a gate for you.” Her eye traveled once more over the snowy, silent street. “Watch for enemies in the meantime.”
“Why are you giving orders?” Rodion managed. “How do you know all this?”
“How,” interrupted Sasha with impatience of his own, “do you mean to open a gate for us?”
Both men distrusted Vasya’s answering smile; wide and careless. “Watch,” she said.
Sasha and Rodion glanced at each other. They had seen men on battlefields wear that face, and it rarely ended well.
Vasya ran like a wraith for the Grand Prince of Moscow’s walls. Sasha followed her. In her face was a fitful light that he did not like. “Lift me up,” she said.
“Vasya—”
“There is no time, brother.”
“Mother of God,” Sasha muttered, and bent to take her weight. She was bird-light when she stepped to his back, and then, as he straightened, to his shoulders. She was still short of the wall, but then she jumped unexpectedly, sending him sprawling backward, and caught the wall-top with the first two joints of her strong fingers. She had no mittens. She pulled herself up by main force. One booted foot rose to touch the wall-top. An instant Vasya crouched there, almost invisible. Then she dropped into the deep snow on the other side.
Sasha got to his feet, brushing off snow. Rodion came up behind him, shaking his head. “When I met her at Lesnaya Zemlya I was lost in the rain,” he said. “She was gathering mushrooms, wet as a water-spirit, and riding a horse with no bridle. I knew she was not a girl formed for convents but—”
“She is herself,” said Sasha. “Doom a
nd blessing both, and it is for God to judge her. But in this, I will trust her. We must watch for enemies, and wait.”
VASYA DROPPED FROM THE WALL into a snowbank and rose to her feet unhurt. Now she got some good out of her silly footrace around Dmitrii Ivanovich’s palace—it seemed so long ago—for she was reasonably sure of her ground. There—stables. There—brewery. Smokehouse, tannery, blacksmith. The palace itself.
Above all, Vasya wanted her horse. She wanted his strength, his warm breath, his uncomplicated affection. Without him, she was a lost girl in a dress; on his back, she felt invincible.
But first there was another boon from that footrace, and she must use it.
With freezing fingers, Vasya reopened the cut on her wrist, that had given the ghost suck earlier. She let three drops fall into the snow.
A dvorovoi is a dooryard-spirit, rarer than a domovoi, less understood and sometimes vicious. This one peeled softly out of the starlight and the muddy earth, looking like a heap of filthy snow, faint as all the chyerti in Moscow were faint.
Vasya was glad to see him.
“You again,” it said, baring its teeth. “You have broken into my yard.”
“To save your master,” Vasya returned.
The dvorovoi smiled. “Perhaps I want a new master. The red sorcerer will wake the sleeper and silence the bells, and perhaps then folk will leave gifts for me again.”
The sleeper…Vasya shook her head sharply. “You do not pick and choose,” she told him. “You are bound to your people for good and for ill, and you must help them at need. I mean no harm. Will you help me now?” She reached out, gingerly, and pressed her bloody fingers to the dvorovoi’s cold, misshapen face.
“What would you have me do?” asked the dvorovoi warily, smelling of her blood. He was more flesh than snow now.
Vasya smiled at him, coldly. “Make noise,” she said. “Rouse the whole cursed palace. The time for secrets is past.”
A DRINK-SODDEN HUSH LAY over the palace of the Grand Prince, and the city outside had gone quiet. But it was not a peaceful quiet, as was proper after days of cakes and drink. A tension ran through the silence, and Vasya’s skin prickled. The dvorovoi had heard her out, narrow-eyed, then abruptly disappeared.
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