I couldn’t so much as twitch without agony, and my throat was raw as though I’d drunk broken glass, but of course that had nothing to do with anything truly being wrong. The demon seems to feel the need to keep the terms of the original bargain for beauty, crown, and power, no matter how the circumstances have changed, and I suppose leaving me festooned with scars wouldn’t fit. But it’s grown quite adept over the years at managing to produce the sensation of lingering damage without leaving any actual marks behind.
“The king of the Staryk, instead of her,” I said, and my voice sounded perfectly normal. A considerable effort was required not to let it waver, but the demon likes tears and misery, so I do my best not to produce them; the last thing I want is to encourage it to extend its entertainments. These days I’ve become more of a boring convenience than an exciting toy. I’ve found the line to tread between servility, which it enjoys too much, and provocation, which makes it fly into rages. It had been almost a year since it had bothered to beat me. Until darling Irina appeared on the scene, that is. If something else drives it into a frenzy, and I’m the nearest target to hand—as I rather inevitably am—then there’s not much I can do about it.
I was more than a little reluctant to risk prodding it further, but Irina’s offer had a remarkable effect: the demon came flowing back out of the fireplace and went coiling around me like a purring cat. Its flames still came licking at my skin, but only incidentally; it wasn’t trying to hurt me anymore. Still, there was nothing to shield me from the stinging tendrils, as it had done very permanent damage to my clothes. Irina had sniffed quite censoriously when I made a point of ensuring she didn’t wear the same gown twice. I suppose she’d rather scatter alms to the poor or endow a bunch of droning monks somewhere; it would go far better with the holier-than-thou drivel she attempted to feed me. But I’ve gone to great lengths to ensure everyone knows that I never appear in the same ensemble twice. The last thing I need is for anyone to start wondering what’s happened to my favorite pair of trousers or those expensive riding boots I wore three days ago. I’d rather be thought a mad spendthrift than a sorcerer—and it would look odd if I didn’t insist on my tsarina matching me for style.
“How?” the demon breathed out over my ear, claws of flame curling around my shoulder, a grip that shot fresh agony down my back. I clenched my teeth down over a howl; it would let go of me in a moment if I didn’t stir up its interest. “How will she give him to me…?”
“She was thin on the details,” I managed to force out. “She says he’s making the winters longer.”
The demon made a low roaring noise in its throat and prowled away from me again, leaving smoking trails in the carpets on its way back to the fireplace. I shut my eyes and breathed a few times before gathering myself to push back up. “She’s certainly lying about any number of things, but she’s been hiding somewhere,” I said. “And two blizzards since Spring Day does rather stretch the bounds of chance.”
“Yes, yes,” it crackled to itself, gnawing idly on a log. “He has locked them away beneath the snow, and there she flees where I cannot go…but can she bring him to me?”
As little as I cared to trust Irina’s too-clever explanations—not for a second did I imagine she had my welfare anywhere remotely near at heart—she had made a few excellent arguments. “If she can’t, we’re no worse off for her trying,” I said. “Are you sure you can defeat him, if she does manage it?”
It made its sputtering crackle of laughter. “Oh, I will slake my thirst, I will drink so deep,” it muttered. “Only he must be held fast! A chain of silver to bind him tight, a ring of fire to quench his might…bring him to me!” it hissed at me. “Bring him to me and make ready!”
“She wants your promise, of course,” I said. Irina seemed rather eager to rely on the word of an unholy creature, for all her cleverness and sanctimony, but then she’d plainly decided that I’d made a bargain with it myself to get the throne, and fair enough, here I was upon it, for all the delights it afforded me. I would have thought my situation rather an object lesson in being careful what you wished for.
“Yes, yes,” the demon said. “She will be tsarina with a golden crown, and whatever she desires will be hers, only let her bring him to me!”
So I’d been quite right: I was going to be stuck with delightful darling Irina for the rest of my days, and much say I was going to get in any aspect of the matter.
* * *
My Irina went back to the demon in the morning. I had knitted away the night too quickly. After she had gone, I smoothed my hands over the wool, my fingers trembling as they had not done while I worked. I had made flowers and vines, a cover for a wedding-bed, and it seemed to me that whenever I closed my eyes, they kept growing on their own, quicker than my hands could have made them. I drowsed beneath the heavy weight of the cover in my lap by the fire, until the door swung shut and Irina’s hand was on my shoulder again. “Irinushka, you gave me a fright. Is it night again already?” I said.
“No,” she said. “The bargain is made, Magreta. He will leave me alone, and take the Staryk king in my place. Come. We’re leaving for Vysnia right away. We have to be there in two days’ time.”
I left the knitting on the bed when I went with her. Maybe someone else would come to this little house and need it someday. I didn’t argue. Her father was in her face, then, though she did not know it, and I knew there wasn’t any use. He had looked so in the old duke’s study, and he had looked so when he had taken Irina down to the chapel to be married to the tsar: his feet were on a path and he was walking, and if there were turns, he would not take them aside. That was how she looked, now.
I only hoped not to be so cold anymore, when she brought me out into the palace, in a room full of shining mirrors and silence and a golden harp no one was playing. But there was snow high on the windowsills, and there was no fire in that dark room to warm my hands. There was no chance to find another one lit. The household was all in a frenzy when we came out, servants running in the halls, except when they saw Irina, and then they stopped and bowed to her. She asked each one of them their name, and when they were gone she said it over to herself three times—a trick her father used also, whenever new men came to his army. But what good would scullery-maids and footmen do her, with a demon and a devil on either side?
I followed after her to the courtyard: a royal sleigh was made ready, a great chariot of gilt and white painted fresh, perhaps that morning, and the tsar stood beside it in black furs with golden tassels and gloves of red wool and black fur; oh that vain boy, and his eyes were on my girl, and I could not hide her from him anymore.
“Magra, the tsar is a sorcerer,” she had said to me: ten years old, with her hair already a flowing dark river under the silver brush as we sat by the fire in a small room in the old tsar’s palace. “The tsar is a sorcerer,” just in such a way she said it, calmly out loud, as if that were a thing anyone might say at any time with nothing ill to come of it, as if a girl might say it at the dinner table in front of the whole court just as easily as she said it fresh out of her bath to only her old nanusha; a girl who was only the daughter of a duke whose new wife already had a great belly.
But it was even worse than that: after I slapped her cheek with the brush and told her not to say such things, she put her hand up to her cheek where the color was already fading, and stared at me, and said, “But it’s true,” as though that mattered, and added, “He is leaving dead squirrels for me.”