“God send she throws me an heir,” said Dmitrii, gulping at his cup. His air of buoyant carelessness slowly leached away as he drank, and when he glanced up again, Vasya felt she could see him for the first time: not the lighthearted cousin from the road but a man tempered and burdened beyond his years. A prince who held the lives of thousands in his steady grip.
Dmitrii wiped his mouth and said, “Now for the bad news. A new ambassador has come from Sarai, from the court of the Khan, with horses and archers in his train. He is installed in the emissary’s palace and demanding all taxes owed forthwith, and more. The Khan is finished with delays, he says. He also says, quite openly, that if we do not pay, General Mamai will lead an army up from the lower Volga.”
The words fell like a hammer.
“It might be just bluster,” Sasha said, after a pause.
“I am not sure,” said Dmitrii. He had mauled his food about more than eating it; now he put his knife aside. “Mamai has a rival in the south, I hear, a warlord called Tokhtamysh. This man is also putting forth a claimant for the throne. If Mamai must go to war to put down this rival—”
A pause. They all looked at each other. “Then Mamai must have our taxes first,” finished Vasya suddenly, surprising even herself. She’d been so caught up in the conversation that she had forgotten her shyness. “For money to fight Tokhtamysh.”
Sasha shot her a very hard look. Be silent. Vasya made her face innocent.
“Clever boy,” said Dmitrii, distractedly. He grimaced. “I have not sent tribute for two years, and no one noticed. I did not expect them to. They are too busy poisoning each other, so that they or their fat sons may have the throne. But the generals are not so foolish as the pretenders.” A pause. Dmitrii’s glance met Sasha’s. “And even if I decide to pay, where am I to get the money now? How many villages burned this winter, before Vasya tracked those bastards to their lair? How are the people to feed themselves, much less muster up a tax for another war?”
“The people have done it before,” Sasha pointed out, blackly. The atmosphere around the table made a strange counterpoint to the cheerful shrieks of the city outside.
“Yes, but with the Tatars divided between two warlords, we have a chance to worm free of the yoke—to make a stand—and every wagon that goes south weakens us. Why should our taxes go to enrich the court at Sarai?”
The monk did not speak.
“One smashing victory,” Dmitrii said, “would put an end to all this.”
It sounded to Vasya as though they were continuing an old argument.
“No,” retorted Sasha. “It wouldn’t. The Tatars could not let a defeat stand; there is still too much pride there, even if the Horde is not what it was. A victory would buy us time, but then whoever takes control of the Horde would come back for us. And they would not want to simply subdue us, but to punish.”
“If I am to raise the money,” the Grand Prince said slowly, “we will have to starve some of those peasants you rescued, Vasya. Truly, Sasha,” he added to the monk, “I value your advice. Let all know it. For I am weary of being these pagans’ dog.” The last syllable came out sharp as broken ice, and Vasya flinched. “But”—Dmitrii paused, and added, lower—“I would not leave my son a burnt city.”
“You are wise, Dmitrii Ivanovich,” said Sasha.
Vasya thought of hundreds of Katyas in villages across Muscovy, going hungry because the Grand Prince must pay a tax to the lord of the same people that had burned their homes in the first place.
She made to speak again, but Sasha shot her a vicious glance across the table and this time she bit the words back.
“Well, we must greet this ambassador in any case,” said the Grand Prince. “Let it not be said that I failed in hospitality. Finish your supper, Vasya. You are both coming with me. And our Kasyan Lutovich, with his fine looks and fine clothes. If I must placate a Tatar lord, I may as well do it properly.”
A PALACE SMALL AND FINELY MADE stood a little by itself, near the southeast corner of the kremlin. Its walls were higher than those of the other palaces, and something in its shape or situation breathed out an indefinable sense of distance.
Vasya and Sasha and Kasyan and Dmitrii, with several of the chief members of the latter’s household, all walked there from the Grand Prince’s palace, with guards to deter the curious.
“Humility,” said Dmitrii to Vasya with black humor. “Only a proud man rides. One is not proud to the lords from Sarai, or you will be dead, your city burned, your sons disinherited.”
His eyes filled with bitter memory, older than he. It was nearly two hundred years since the Great Khan’s warriors first came to Rus’, and threw down her churches, and raped and slaughtered her people into acquiescence.
Vasya could not think of a worthy reply, but perhaps her face conveyed sympathy, for the Grand Prince said gruffly, “Never mind, boy. There are worse things one must do to be Grand Prince, and worse still to be Grand Prince of a vassal-state.”
He looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. Vasya remembered his laughter during the long days, when the snow fell in the trackless wood. On sudden impulse, Vasya said, “I will serve you in any way I can, Dmitrii Ivanovich.”
Dmitrii paused in his walking; Sasha stiffened. Dmitrii said, “I may call upon it, cousin,” with the unassuming ease of a man who had been crowned at sixteen years old. “God be with you.” He laid a brief hand on Vasya’s hooded head.
Then they were walking again. Dmitrii added, low, to Sasha, “I may grovel all I like, but it won’t grow my coffers a jot. I hear your counsel, but—”
“Humility may postpone the reckoning in any case,” Sasha murmured back. “Tokhtamysh may strike Mamai sooner than we expect; every delay may buy you time.”
Vasya, keen-eared and walking just behind her brother, thought, No wonder Sasha never came home to our father’s house. How could he, when the Grand Prince needs him so? Then she thought, with foreboding, But Sasha lied. For me, he lied. Where will that leave him with his prince when I am gone?
They came to the gates, were admitted, stripped of their guards, and shown to the finest room Vasya had ever seen.
Vasya had no notion of luxury—she barely had a word for it. Mere warmth was luxury to her, and clean skin and dry stockings and not being hungry. But this—this room gave her an inkling of what luxury might mean, and she stared about her, delighted.
The wooden floor had been laid down with care and polished. Spread upon it were figured carpets, free of dust, of a kind she did not know, vivid with snarling cats.
The stove in the corner had been tiled and painted with trees and scarlet birds, and its fire burned hotly. In an instant, Vasya was too warm; a bead of sweat rolled down her spine. Men stood arrayed like statues against the walls, wearing cerise coats and strange hats.
I will see this city, Sarai, Vasya thought, feeling her gorgeous kaftan a gaudy, ill-made thing in all this elegance. I will go far, with Solovey, and he and I will see it.
She breathed a scent (myrrh, though she did not know it) that made her nose itch; frantically she suppressed a sneeze and almost ran into Sasha when the party halted a few paces from a carpeted dais. Dmitrii knelt and bent his head to the floor.
Her eyes watering, Vasya could not see the ambassador clearly. She heard a quiet voice bidding the Grand Prince of Moscow to rise. She listened in silence while Dmitrii conveyed his greetings to the Khan.
She hardly recognized the bold prince in this lord who murmured his apologies, bowing, and handed off his gifts to the attendants. The greetings went on—“on all your sons, your wives, may God protect”—Vasya snapped back to attention only when Dmitrii’s voice shifted. “Village after village,” Dmitrii said in respectful but ringing tones, “robbed, left in flames. My people will have enough to do to survive the winter, and there is no more money. Not until next fall’s harvest. I mean no disrespect, but we are men of the world, and you understand—”
The Tatar replied in his own tongue, voice sharp. Vasya frowned. She had not raised her eyes yet beyond the interpreter at the foot of the platform. But something in the voice drew her glance upward.