“There’s no one here,” Irina said, after a moment, looking back at us.
I went inside after her: it was easy to see it was all empty. There was only one room, with a single small cot heaped with a pile of straw. Irina covered it with the cloak I had put on Magra, and Shofer very reluctantly came in and put the old woman down on it, his eyes always on the oven’s shut door, the tiny flicker of light around it, and as soon as he had laid her down, he retreated back to the threshold in a rush. There was a box heaped with firewood beside the oven, and I opened the oven door and found a pot inside, full of fresh hot porridge.
“Let me give her some,” Irina said, and on a shelf we found a wooden bowl and spoon. She put a good helping of the porridge inside, steam rising off it into the air, and knelt by the cot. She fed it to Magra, who stirred and roused with the smell, enough to eat it in small spoonfuls. Shofer was flinching with every bite, as if he were watching someone deliberately eat poison. He looked at me and his mouth worked, as though he wanted to say something and only a worse fear stopped his tongue. I kept waiting for something dreadful to happen: I looked in every corner of the room to make sure there was nothing hiding there, and then I went outside and looked all around the yard, too. Someone should have been nearby, with a fire going and hot food ready, but I didn’t even see a footprint in the snow all around the house, except the trail going back to the sleigh where Irina and I had gone floundering through the drifts. A Staryk wouldn’t have left a trail, of course. But…
“This isn’t a Staryk house,” I said to Shofer, a statement and not a question. He didn’t nod, but he also didn’t look at me puzzled or surprised, the way Flek and Tsop did when I’d gotten something wrong. I looked down at the garden again. The house stood directly upon the line: one half of the garden was in twilight, and the other in full night, caught between the two. I looked at him and said, “I’m going to close the door.”
“I will stay outside,” he said instantly, which gave me hope. I went inside and picked up the door and propped it back into place, and then I waited a little while and then with a quick jerk pulled it aside again—
But I was only looking back out onto the empty yard, with Shofer standing there waiting and anxious. He had retreated even farther, to the other side of the garden wall. I turned back inside, disappointed. Magra had opened her eyes, and she was holding Irina’s hands in hers. “You are safe, Irinushka,” she whispered. “I prayed you would be safe.”
Irina looked at me. “Can we stay here?”
“I don’t know if it’s safe,” I said.
“It’s not less safe than where we were.”
“Did the tsar refuse to marry you?” I asked. I thought the duke might have been angry with her if he had: he hadn’t seemed like a man to be satisfied if his plans went awry.
“No,” she said. “I am tsarina. For as long as I live.” She said it dryly, as if she didn’t expect that to last long. “The tsar is a black sorcerer. He is possessed by a demon of flame that wants to devour me.”
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t mirth, it was bitterness. “So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.”
I said it savagely, an angry joke, but then Irina said slowly, “The demon said I would quench its thirst a long time. It wants me because…I am cold.”
“Because you have Staryk blood, and Staryk silver,” I said, just as slowly. She nodded. I leaned into the door and peered through a crack: Shofer was still far back from the house, well out of earshot, with no sign at all that he was inclined to come any closer. I took a deep breath and turned back. “Do you think the demon would bargain? For the chance to devour a Staryk king instead?”
* * *
Irina showed me how the Staryk silver let her go back and forth: together we went out back and found a big washtub behind the house. We poured hot water into it, over the snow heaped inside, to make a pool with a reflection in it. She stared down into it and said, “I see the same place we came from: a bedroom in the palace. Do you see it?” she asked me, but I only saw our faces floating pale in the shifting water, and when she took my hand and tried to put it through, I got wet to the wrist, even as Irina drew her own hand out dry and without a drop. She shook her head. “I can’t bring you through with me.” As if I had stopped existing in the real world at all, as if the Staryk king had ripped me out of it by the roots.
“I’ll need to persuade him to bring me over,” I said grimly: just as he’d told me. I didn’t care to be on this side of the water when and if my husband was successfully introduced to his untimely end. I didn’t think the rest of the Staryk would accept me as queen in his stead, at least not until I’d learned to make endless winters myself and pop up snow-trees out of the earth or whatever else he’d demanded.
We finished our planning quickly: there wasn’t much to plan, only a time and place, and all the rest just a desperate lunge at the only hope either one of us had. “The demon can’t come during the day,” Irina said. “He only appears at night. I don’t know why, but if he could, he’d surely have tried to take me before now: he had me alone today, or close enough.” She paused and added, thoughtfully, “When the tsar’s mother was condemned for sorcery, they took her and burned her all in one day, before the sun set.”
“At night, then.” I was silent, thinking what excuse I could give a Staryk king that he’d accept, for why I wanted him to take me back. “Could you persuade the tsar to go back to Vysnia?” I asked slowly. “In three days’ time?”
“If I can persuade him to do anything at all but kill me,” she said.
When we were done, Irina went back inside to her nurse, and I walked back to the sleigh. Shofer asked no questions; he was too eager to be gone. I sat unseeing for the whole drive back, my head running in circles and my stomach churning and hot with gall.
Of course I was terrified. Of trying, of failing, of success. It felt like murder—no, I wouldn’t lie to myself; it was murder, if it worked. But after all, the Staryk seemed to think it perfectly reasonable to murder me, and I hadn’t made him any promises, either; I wasn’t sure I was even really married. He’d given me a crown, but there certainly hadn’t been a marriage contract, and we hadn’t known each other. I’d ask a rabbi, if I ever had the chance to talk to one again. But married or not, I was reasonably sure that the rabbis would tell me that I might justly take Judith for my model, and take off the Staryk’s head if he gave me the opportunity. He was the enemy of my people, not just me alone. But that only left me the enormous difficulty of doing it.
Shofer stopped the sleigh at the foot of the steep walkway to my chambers: Tsop was sitting on a low stone there, as if she’d been all day waiting for me to come back—anxiously, judging by the look of relief that crossed her face when she saw me. I climbed out stiffly: it had been a long time driving, and my whole body was sore. Tsop led me back up to my room at a pace quick enough to make me out of breath, and flinched back and forth with visible impatience when she had to pause. She kept looking downwards, and I followed the line of her gaze to the grove of trees: the white blooms were all closing softly, as if that was what marked the night coming on. I suppose the king would have been upset if I hadn’t been home in time for him to deliver his three answers. Then it occurred to me he might feel obligated to provide marital services after all, if he missed his nightly chance, so I quickened my steps as much as I could.