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 back. 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?”