At the threshold, Olga said, bowing, “My sister, Gospodin,” and stood aside for Vasya to pass.
Kasyan was newly bathed and dressed for the festival, in white and pale gold. His hair curled vividly against his embroidered collar.
He said gravely, “I beg you will leave us, Olga Vladimirova. What I have to say to Vasilisa Petrovna is best said alone.”
It was impossible, of course, that Vasya should be left alone with any man not her betrothed, now that she was a girl again. But Olga nodded tightly and left them.
The door shut with a soft snick.
“Well met,” Kasyan said softly, a little smile playing about his mouth, “Vasilisa Petrovna.”
Deliberately she bowed, as a boy would have. “Kasyan Lutovich,” she said icily. Sorcerer. The word beat in her head, so strange and yet…“Was it you who sent men after me in the bathhouse in Chudovo?”
He half-smiled. “I am astonished you didn’t guess before. I killed four of them for losing you.”
His eyes skimmed her body. Vasya crossed her arms. She was clothed from head to foot, and she had never felt more naked. Her bath seemed to have washed away recourse and ambition both; she must watch now, and wait, and let others act. She was naked with powerlessness.
No. No. I am no different than yesterday.
But it was hard to believe. In his eyes was a monumental and amused confidence.
“Do not,” Vasya said, almost spitting, “come near me.”
He shrugged. “I may do as I like,” he replied. “You gave up all pretense to virtue when you appeared in the kremlin dressed as a boy. Not even your sister would prevent me now. I hold your ruin in the palm of my hand.”
She said nothing. He smiled. “But enough of that,” he added. “Why should we be enemies?” His tone turned placating. “I saved you from your lies, now you are free to be yourself, to adorn yourself as a girl ought—”
Her lip curled. He broke off with an elegant shrug.
“You know as well as I that it is a convent for me now,” Vasya said. She put her arms behind her and pressed her back against the door, the wood driving splinters into her palms. “If I am not put in the cage and burned as a witch. Why are you here?”
He ran a hand through his russet hair. “I regretted today,” he said.
“You enjoyed it,” Vasya retorted, wishing her voice were not thin with remembered humiliation.
He smiled and gestured to the stove. “Will you sit down, Vasya?”
She did not move.
He huffed out a laugh and sank onto a carved bench beside the fire. A wine-jar studded with amber sat beside two cups; he poured one for himself and drank the pale liquid down. “Well, I did enjoy it,” he admitted. “Playing with our hotheaded prince’s temper. Watching your self-righteous brother squirm.” He slanted a look at where she stood, frozen with disgust, by the door and added more seriously, “And you yourself. No one would ever take you for a beauty, Vasilisa Petrovna, but then no one would ever want to. You were lovely, fighting me so. And charming in your boy’s clothes. I could hardly wait as long as I did. I knew, you know. I always knew, whatever I might have told the Grand Prince. All those nights on the road. I knew.”
He made his glance tender; his tone invited her to soften, but there was still laughter in the back of his eyes, as though he mocked his own words.
Vasya remembered the icy kiss of the air on her skin, the boyars’ leering, and her flesh crept.
“Come,” he went on. “Are you telling me you didn’t enjoy it, wild-cat? The eyes of Moscow upon you?”
Her stomach turned over. “What do you want?”
He poured more wine and raised his gaze to hers. “To rescue you.”
“What?”
His glance returned, heavy-lidded, to the fire. “I think you understand me very well,” he said. “As you said yourself, it is the convent or a witch-trial for you. I met a priest not so long ago—oh, a very holy man, so handsome and pious—who will be quite willing to tell the prince all about your wicked ways. And if you are condemned,” he went on musingly, “what price your brother’s life? What price your sister’s freedom? Dmitrii Ivanovich is the laughingstock of Moscow. Princes who are laughed at do not hold their realms long, and he knows it.”
“How,” Vasya asked, between gritted teeth, “do you mean to save me?”
Kasyan paused before replying, savoring his wine. “Come here,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”
She stayed where she was. He sighed with kindly exasperation, took another swallow. “Very well,” he said. “You have but to tap on the door; the slave will come and take you back to your room. I will not enjoy watching the fire take you, Vasilisa Petrovna, not at all. And your poor sister—how she will weep, to say farewell to her children.”
Vasya stalked to the fire and sat on the bench opposite him. He smiled at her with unconcealed pleasure. “There you are!” he cried. “I knew you could be reasonable. Wine?”
“No.”
He poured her a cup and sipped at his own. “I can save you,” he said. “And your brother and sister in the bargain. If you marry me.”
An instant of silence.
“Are you saying you mean to marry this witch-girl, this slut who paraded about Moscow in boy’s clothes?” Vasya asked acidly. “I don’t believe you.”
“So untrusting, for a maiden,” he returned cheerfully. “It is unbecoming. You won my heart with your little masquerade, Vasya. I loved your spirit from the first. How the others did not suspect, I cannot think. I will marry you and take you to Bashnya Kostei. I tried to tell you as much this morning. All this could have been avoided, you know…but no matter. When we are wed, I will see that your brother is freed—to return to the Lavra, as is proper, to live out his days in peace.” His face soured. “Politicking is not the work of a monk, anyway.”
Vasya made no reply.
His eye found hers; he leaned forward and added, more softly, “Olga Vladimirova may live out her days in her tower with her children. Safe as walls can make her.”
“You think our marriage will calm the Grand Prince?” Vasya returned.
Kasyan laughed. “Leave Dmitrii Ivanovich to me,” he said, eyes gleaming beneath lowered lids.
“You paid the bandit-captain to pass himself as the ambassador,” Vasya said, watching his face. “Why? Did you pay him to burn your own villages, too?”
He grinned at her, but she thought she saw something harden in his eyes. “Find out for yourself. You are a clever child. Where is the pleasure otherwise?” He leaned nearer. “Were you to wed me, Vasilisa Petrovna, there would be lies and tricks aplenty, and passion—such passion.” Kasyan reached out and stroked a finger down the side of her face.
She drew away and said nothing.
He sat back. “Come, girl,” he said, brisk now. “I do not see you getting any better offers.”
She could hardly breathe. “Give me a day to think.”
“Absolutely not. You might not love your siblings enough; you might bolt, and leave them in the lurch. And leave me, too, for I am quite overcome with passion.” He said this composedly. “I am not such a fool as that, vedma.”
She stiffened.
“Ah,” he said, reading her face before the question formed. “Our wise girl with her magic horse; she has never learned who she is, has she? Well, you might learn that as well, if you were to marry me.” He sat back and looked at her expectantly.
She thought of the ghost’s warning, and Morozko’s.
But—what about Sasha, and Olya? What about Masha? Masha who sees things as I do, Masha who will be branded a witch herself if the women discover her secret.
“I will marry you,” she said. “If my brother and sister are kept safe.” Perhaps later she could devise her escape.
His face broke into a glittering smile. “Excellent, excellent, my sweet little liar,” he said caressingly. “You won’t regret it, I promise you.” He paused. “Well, you might regret it. But your life will never be boring. And that is what you fear, is it not? The gilded cage of the Russian maiden?”