VASYA HERSELF HEARD NO RUMORS, and no plotting, either. She stayed locked in her room, sitting beside the slit of a window. The sun sank below the walls as Vasya thought of ways to escape, to make it all right.
She tried not to think of the day she might have had, down in the street below, had her secret been kept. But thoughts of that kept creeping in, too; of her lost triumph, the burn of wine inside her, the laughter and the cheering, the prince’s pride, the admiration of all.
And Solovey—had he been walked cool and cared for after the race? Had he even suffered the grooms to touch him, after the first exhausted yielding? Perhaps the stallion had fought, perhaps they had even killed him. And if not? Where was he now? Haltered, bound, locked in the Grand Prince’s stable?
And Kasyan—Kasyan. The lord who had been kind to her and who had, smiling, humiliated her before all Moscow. The question came with renewed force: What does he gain from this? And then: Who was it who helped Chelubey pass himself off as the Khan’s ambassador? Who supplied the bandits? Was it Kasyan? But why—why?
She had no answer; she could only think herself in circles, and her head ached with suppressed tears. At last she curled herself onto the cot and drifted into a shallow sleep.
SHE JOLTED AWAKE, SHIVERING, just at nightfall. The shadows in her room stretched monstrously long.
Vasya thought of her sister Irina, far off at Lesnaya Zemlya. Before she could prevent it, other thoughts crowded hard upon: her brothers beside the hearth of the summer kitchen, the golden midsummer evening pouring in. Her father’s kindly horses, and the cakes Dunya made…
Next moment, Vasya was crying helplessly, like the child she certainly was not. Dead father, dead mother, brother imprisoned, home far away—
A hissing whisper, as of cloth dragged along the floor, jarred her from her weeping.
Vasya jerked upright, wet-faced, still choking on tears.
A piece of darkness moved, moved again, and stopped just in the faint beam of twilight.
Not darkness at all, but a gray, grinning thing. It had the form of a woman, but it was not a woman. Vasya’s heart hammered; she was on her feet and backing away. “Who are you?”
A hole on the gray thing’s face opened and closed, but Vasya heard nothing. “Why have you come to me?” she managed, gathering her courage.
Silence.
“Can you speak?”
A monstrous black stare.
Vasya simultaneously wished for light and was glad of the darkness, to hide that lipless countenance. “Have you something to tell me?” she asked.
A nod—was that a nod? Vasya thought a moment, and then she reached into her dress, where the cool, blue sharp-edged talisman hung. She hesitated, then dragged the edge along the inside of her forearm. The blood welled out between her fingers.
As it pattered on the floor, the ghost held out a bony hand, snatching at the jewel. Vasya jerked back. “No,” she said. “It is mine. No—but here.” She held her bloody arm out to the horror, hoping that she was not being foolish. “Here,” she said again, clumsily. “Blood helps sometimes, with things that are dead. Are you dead? Will my blood make you stronger?”
No answer. But the shadow crept forward, bent its jagged face to her arm, and lapped at the welling blood.
Then the mouth fastened hard and sucked greedily, and just when Vasya was on the point of prying it off, the ghost let go and staggered back.
Its—her, Vasya realized—looks were not improved. She had a little of the appearance of flesh now, but it was flesh desiccated and mummified by airless years—gray and brown and stringy. But the pit of a mouth had a tongue now, and the tongue made words.
“Thank you,” it said.
A polite ghost at least. “Why are you here?” Vasya returned. “This is not a place for the dead. You have been frightening Marya.”
The ghost shook her head, “It is not—a place for the living,” she managed. “But—I am—sorry. About the child.”
Vasya felt again the walls about her, between her skin and the twilight, and bit her lips. “What have you come to tell me?”
The ghost’s mouth worked. “Go. Run. Tonight, he means it for tonight.”
“I cannot,” said Vasya. “The door is barred. What happens tonight?”
The bony hands twisted together. “Run now,” it said, and pointed at herself. “This—he means this for you. Tonight. Tonight he will take a new wife; and he will take Moscow for himself. Run.”
“Who means that for me?” Vasya asked. “Kasyan? How will he take Moscow for himself?”
She thought then of Chelubey, of his palace full of trained riders. A terrible understanding dawned. “The Tatars?” she whispered.
The ghost’s hands twisted hard together. “Run!” she said. “Run!” Her mouth was open: a hellish maw.
Vasya could not help it; she recoiled from that horror, panting, swallowing a scream.
“Vasya,” said his voice from behind her. A voice that meant freedom and magic and dread, that had nothing to do with the stifling world of the tower.
The ghost was gone, and Vasya wrenched round.
Morozko’s hair was part of the night, his robe a sweep of lightless black. There was something old and dire in his eyes. “There is no more time,” he said. “You must get out.”
“So I hear,” she said, standing still. “Why have you come? I called—I asked—Mother of God, when I was naked before all Moscow! You could not be bothered then! Why help me now?”
“I could not come to you today at all, not before now,” he said. The frost-demon’s voice was soft and even, but his eyes slid, once, from her tear-tracked cheeks to her bleeding arm. “He had gathered all his strength, to shut me out. He planned this day well. I couldn’t go near you today, before your blood touched the sapphire. He can hide from me: I didn’t know he had come back. If I had, I would never have let—”
“Who?”
“The sorcerer,” said Morozko. “This man you call Kasyan. He has been long in strange places, beyond my sight.”
“Sorcerer? Kasyan Lutovich?”
“In other days, men called him Kaschei,” said Morozko. “And he can never die.”
Vasya stared. But that is a fairy tale. So is a frost-demon.
“Cannot die?” she managed.
“He made a magic,” said Morozko. “He has—hidden his life outside his body, so that I—that death—may never go near him. He can never die, and he is very strong. He kept me from seeing him; he kept me away today. Vasya, I would not have—”
She wanted to fold herself in his cloak and disappear. She wanted to crumple against him and cry. She held herself still. “Have what?” she whispered.
“Let you face this day alone,” he said.
She sought to read his eyes in the dark, and he drew back, so that the gesture died unfinished. For an instant, his face might have been human, and an answer was there, in his eyes, just beyond her understanding. Tell me. But he did not. He tilted his head, as though listening. “Come away, Vasya. Ride away. I will help you escape.”
She could go and get Solovey. Ride away. With him. Into the moon-silvered dark, with that promise lurking, as though despite him, in his eyes. And yet—“But my brother and sister. I cannot abandon them.”
“You aren’t—” he began.
A heavy step in the corridor sent Vasya whirling round. She turned to face the door just as the bolt shot back.
Olga looked wearier than she had that morning: pale, waddling with the weight of her unborn child. Varvara stood at her shoulder, glaring. “Kasyan Lutovich has come to see you,” Olga said curtly. “You will give him a hearing, sister.”
The two women bustled into Vasya’s chamber, and when the light scoured its corners, the frost-demon was gone.
VARVARA ARRANGED VASYA’S TOUSLED plait so that it lay smoothly and bound an embroidered headdress around her brows, so that icy silver rings hung down and framed her face. Then Vasya was herded out onto the frozen staircase. She descended between Olga and Varvara, blinking. They went down a level, where Varvara opened a new door; they crossed an antechamber and entered a sitting-room that smelled of sweet oil.