The Winter of the Witch

19. Allies

SUMMER CAME WITH UNNATURAL SUDDENNESS, fell on Moscow like a conquering army. Fires broke out in the forest, so that the city was palled with smoke and no one could see the sun. Folk went mad from the heat; drowned themselves in the river seeking coolness, or simply dropped where they stood, scarlet-faced, bodies dewed with clammy sweat.

The rats came with the warmth, creeping out of the merchant-boats while men unloaded silver and cloth and forged iron for the sticky, sweltering markets of Moscow. They thrived in the smother, drawn to the reek of Moscow’s middens.

The first folk to fall sick lived in the posad: the airless, crowded huts by the river. They began to cough, to sweat, and then to shiver. Then the smooth swellings showed, at throat and groin, and then black spots.

Plague. The word rippled through the city. Moscow had seen plague before. Dmitrii’s uncle Semyon had died of it, with his wife and his sons in one terrible summer.

“Close up the houses of the sick,” said Dmitrii to the captain of his guard. “They are not to go out—no, not even to go to church. If a priest can be found to bless them, let the priest go in, but that is all. Tell the guards at the city-gate; anyone who seems ill is not allowed within the walls.” Folk still whispered in hushed tones of the death of Dmitrii’s uncle: dying swollen like a tick, black-spotted, his own attendants afraid to come near him.

The man nodded, but he was frowning. “What?” Dmitrii demanded. The night of the Tatar attack had decimated Dmitrii’s city guard. In the aftermath of the riot and Vasya’s burning, he’d built it up again, larger than before, but they were still inexperienced.

“This sickness is the curse of God, Gosudar,” said the captain. “Surely it is only right that men be allowed to go and pray? All the people’s prayers together may yet reach the ears of the Almighty.”

“It is a curse that flies from man to man,” said Dmitrii. “What are the walls of Moscow for if not to keep out evil?”

One of his boyars there in his anteroom said, “Forgive me, Gosudar, but—”

Dmitrii turned, scowling. “Can I not give orders without debate from half the city?” Ordinarily he humored his boyars. They were mostly older than he, and had ensured that he had a throne to inherit when he came of age. But the shocking heat sapped his strength and brought on a sick, weary anger. He’d had no word from either of his cousins. The Prince of Serpukhov had taken all the silver Muscovy could muster, and had gone south to plead their case before the temnik Mamai. Sasha was supposed to be bringing back Father Sergei. But Sasha had not returned, and reports came out of the south that Mamai was still gathering up his ulus, as though he’d never heard Vladimir’s message at all.

“The people are afraid,” said the boyar carefully. “Thrice have the dead come walking since the season turned. Now this? If you shut the gates of Moscow and deny church to the sick, I do not know what they will do. Already there is much talk that the city is cursed.”

Dmitrii understood war, and the managing of men, but curses were outside his experience. “I will take thought for the comfort of the city,” he said. “But we are not cursed.” In his own heart, though, Dmitrii wasn’t sure. He wanted Father Sergei’s advice, but the old monk was not there. So instead, grudgingly, the Grand Prince turned to his steward. “Send for Father Konstantin.”

“THE FAIR-HAIRED PRINCE IS no fool,” said the Bear. “But he is young. He has sent a messenger for you. When you go to him, you must convince him to let you give service in the cathedral. Call the people together and pray for rain or salvation or whatever it is men ask of their gods in this age. But call them together.”

Konstantin was alone in the scriptorium of the Archangel, wearing only the lightest of cassocks; sweat dewed his forehead, his upper lip. “I am painting,” he said. He turned a pot of color in the light. His colors lay before him like a string of jewels—some were actually made from precious stones. At Lesnaya Zemlya, he had made his colors from bark and berries and leaves. Now anxious boyars showered him with lapis for his blues and jasper for his reds. They paid the finest silversmiths in Moscow to make icon-covers for him, of hammered silver, studded with pearls.

The third time dead things came whispering through the streets, it had taken the whole night to drive them off: first one, then another, and finally a third. “It cannot seem to be too easy,” the Bear had told him afterward, when Konstantin had wakened screaming from a dream of dead faces. “Do you think the defeat of a single child-upyr would have been enough to win over all Moscow, peasant and boyar? Drink wine, man of God, and do not fear the darkness. Have I not done all I promised?”

“Every last thing,” Konstantin had said miserably, shivering in his cooling sweat. He was to be made bishop. He had been granted property commensurate with his dignity. The people of Moscow worshipped him with wild-eyed fervor. But that did not help him in the night, when he dreamed dead hands, reaching.

Now, in the scriptorium, Konstantin turned away from his wooden panel, found the devil standing just behind him. His breath left him silently. He could never get used to the demon’s presence. The beast knew his thoughts, waked him from nightmares, whispered advice in his ear. Konstantin would never be free of him.

Perhaps I don’t wish to be, Konstantin thought in his more clearheaded moments. Always, when he met the devil’s single eye, the creature stared steadily back.

The beast saw him.

Konstantin had waited to hear the voice of God for so long, but God was silent.

This devil never stopped talking.

Nothing would quiet Konstantin’s nightmares, though. He’d tried drinking mead, to thicken his sleep, but the honey-wine only made his head ache. Finally, in desperation, Konstantin asked the monks for brushes and wooden panels, for oil and water and pigment, and set himself to writing icons. When he painted, his soul seemed to exist only in his eye and hand; his mind went quiet.

“I can see you are painting,” said the Bear, with an edge. “In a monastery, alone. Why? I thought you wanted earthly glories, man of God.”

Konstantin swept his arm at the image on the panel. “I have my earthly glories. And this? Is it not glorious too?” His voice was thick with bitter irony: the icon painted by a man without faith.

The Bear peered over Konstantin’s shoulder. “That is a strange picture,” he said. His thick finger went out to trace the image.

The image was of Saint Peter. He was dark-haired and wild-eyed, hands and feet streaming blood, his eyes turned blindly to heaven, where angels waited. But the angels had eyes as flat and inimical as the swords in their hands. The host welcoming the apostle to heaven looked more like an army holding the gates. Peter had not the serene look of a saint. His eyes saw, his hands gestured, expressive. He was as alive as Konstantin’s gift, and the raw, wretched hunger the priest could not uproot from his soul, could make him.

“It is very beautiful,” said the Bear. His finger traced over the lines without quite touching; he looked almost perplexed. “How do you make it live—so? You have not magic.”

“I don’t know,” said Konstantin. “My hands move without me. What do you know of beauty, monster?”

“More than you,” said the Bear. “I have lived longer and seen more. I can make dead things live, but only in mockery of the living. This—is something else.”

Was that wonder, in that sardonic, single eye? Konstantin couldn’t be sure.

The Bear reached out and turned the icon’s wooden panel to the wall. “You still must go and give service in the cathedral. Have you forgotten our bargain?”

Konstantin threw his brush aside. “What if I don’t? Will you damn me? Steal my soul? Put me to torture?”

“No,” said the Bear, and touched his cheek, lightly. “I will disappear, be gone, fling myself back into the fiery pit and leave you all alone.”

Konstantin stood still. Alone? Alone with his thoughts? Sometimes this devil seemed like the only thing real in this hot, nightmarish world.

“Don’t leave me,” said Konstantin. It came out a grinding whisper.

The thick fingers stroked his face with surprising delicacy. Eyes wide and densely blue rose to meet a single gray eye, a face seamed with scars. The Bear breathed his answer into Konstantin’s ear. “I was alone for a hundred lives of men, bound in a clearing beneath an unchanging sky. You can make life with your hands, of a kind I’ve never seen. Why would I ever leave you?”

Konstantin did not know whether to be relieved or terrified.

“But,” murmured the Bear, “the cathedral.”

DMITRII DIDN’T AGREE. “Divine service for all Moscow?” he asked. “Father, be reasonable. Folk will faint from the heat, or perhaps be trampled. Feelings are running high enough already without calling everyone together to sweat and pray and kiss icons, pleasing as it may be to God.” This last was tacked on as an afterthought.

The Bear, watching invisibly, said with satisfaction, “I do love sensible men. They always try to make sense of the impossible and they can’t. Then they blunder. Come now, little father. Blind him with eloquence.”

Konstantin gave no sign he heard, beyond a tightening of his mouth. But aloud he said, reproof in his tone, “It is God’s will, Dmitrii Ivanovich. If there is any chance to lift this curse from Moscow we must take it. The dead are infecting Moscow with fear, and what if I am called too late? What if worse comes than upyry, and my prayers do not stop it? No, I think it better that the whole city pray together, and perhaps make an end of this curse.”

Dmitrii was frowning still, but he agreed.

TO KONSTANTIN, THE WORLD seemed less real when he donned his new robes of white and scarlet, his collar high and stiffened in the back. Sweat ran like rivers down his spine as he put a hand to the door of the sanctuary.

The Bear said, “I wish to go in.”

“Then go in,” said Konstantin, his mind elsewhere.

The devil made a sound of impatience and took Konstantin’s hand. “You must bring me with you.”

Konstantin’s hand curled in the demon’s. “Why can’t you go in yourself?”

“I am a devil,” said the Bear. “But I am also your ally, man of God.”

Konstantin drew the Bear into the sanctuary with him, and gave the icons a spiteful look. See what I do, when you will not speak to me? The Bear looked about him curiously: at the gilding, and jeweled icon-covers, at the scarlet and blue of the ceiling.

At the people.

For the cathedral was packed with people, a shoving, swaying throng, smelling of sour sweat. Crammed together before the icon-screen, they wept and they prayed, watched over by the saints and also by a silent devil with one eye.

For the Bear walked out with the clergy, when the doors of the iconostasis were thrown open. Surveying the crowd, he said, “This bodes well. Come now, man of God. Show me your quality.”

When he began the service, Konstantin did not know whom he chanted for: the watching throng or the listening demon. But he flung all the torment of his tattered soul into it, until the whole cathedral wept.

Afterward, Konstantin went back to his cell in the monastery, kept against the furnishing of his own house, and lay down, wordless, in his sweat-soaked linen. His eyes were shut, and the Bear did not speak, but he was there. Konstantin could feel the dazzling, sulfurous presence.

Finally the priest burst out, without opening his eyes, “Why are you silent? I did what you asked.”

The Bear said, almost growling, “You have been painting the things you will not say. Shame and sorrow and all the tedious rest. It is all there, in your Saint Peter’s face, and today you sang what you cannot bring yourself to utter. I could feel it. What if someone realizes? Are you trying to break your promise?”

Konstantin shook his head, his eyes still shut. “They will hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see,” he said. “Make what I feel their own, without understanding.”

“Well, then,” said the Bear, “men are great fools.” He let it go. “In any case, that scene in the cathedral should make enough.” Now he sounded pleased.

“Enough what?” said Konstantin. The sun had gone down by then; the green dusk brought some respite from the savage heat. He lay still, breathing, seeking in vain a breath of cool air.

“Enough dead,” said the Bear, unsparing. “They all kissed the same icon. I have use for the dead. Tomorrow you have to go to the Grand Prince. Secure your place with him. That monk of witch’s getting—Brother Aleksandr—he is going to come back. You must see to it that his place by the Grand Prince’s side is not waiting for him.”

Konstantin lifted his head. “The monk and the Grand Prince have been friends from boyhood.”

“Yes,” said the Bear. “And the monk saw fit to lie to Dmitrii, more than once. Whatever stiff-necked oaths he has sworn since, I assure you, it will not be enough to get back the prince’s trust. Or is it harder than setting a mob to kill a girl?”

“She deserved it,” Konstantin muttered, throwing an arm over his eyes. The blackness behind his eyelids gave him back a bruised, deep-green gaze, and he opened his eyes again.

“Forget her,” said the Bear. “Forget the witch. You are going to drive yourself mad with lust and pride and regret.”

That was too close to the bone; Konstantin sat up and said, “You cannot read my mind.”

“No,” the Bear retorted. “But I can read your face, which is much the same thing.”

Konstantin subsided into the rough blankets. Softly, he said, “I thought I’d be satisfied.”

“It is not your nature to be satisfied,” said the Bear.

“The Princess of Serpukhov wasn’t at the cathedral today,” said Konstantin. “Nor her household.”

“That would be because of the child,” said the Bear.

“Marya? What about her?”

“Warned,” said the Bear. “The chyerti warned her. Did you think you killed all the witches in Moscow when you burned the one? But never fear. There will be no more witches in Moscow before the first snow.”

“No?” Konstantin breathed. “How?”

“Because you brought all Moscow to the cathedral today,” said the Bear, with satisfaction. “I needed an army.”

“THEY MUSTN’T GO!” MARYA had cried to her mother. “No one!”

Daughter and mother each wore the thinnest of shifts, sweat dewing their faces, identical dark eyes glassy with weariness. In the terem that summer, all the women lived in twilight. There were no fires lit indoors, no lamps or candles. The heat would have been unbearable. They opened the windows at night, but fastened them all tightly by day, to keep in what coolness they could. So the women lived in gray darkness and it told on all of them. Marya was pallid under her sweat, thin and drooping.

Gently Olga said to her daughter, “If folk wish to go pray at the cathedral, I can hardly prevent them.”

“You have to,” said Marya urgently. “You have to. The man in the oven said. He said that people will come away sick.”

Olga considered her daughter, frowning. Marya hadn’t been herself since the heat gripped them. Ordinarily, Olga would have taken her family out of the city, to the rough-built town of Serpukhov proper, where they could at least hope for some quiet and cooler air. But this year there were reports of fires to the south, and if anyone so much as put a nose out of doors, they saw a hellish white haze and breathed the smoke. Now there was plague in the posad outside the walls, and that settled it. She would keep her family where it was. But—

“Please,” said Marya. “Everyone has to stay here. With our gates shut.”

Olga was still frowning. “I cannot keep our gates shut forever.”

“You won’t have to,” said Marya, and Olga noticed uneasily the directness of her daughter’s gaze. She was growing up too quickly. Something about the fire and its aftermath had changed her. She saw things her mother did not. “Just until Vasya gets back.”

“Masha—” Olga began gently.

“She is coming back,” said her daughter. She did not shout it defiantly, did not weep or plead with her mother to understand. She just said it. “I know it.”

“Vasya wouldn’t dare,” said Varvara, coming in with damp cloths, a jar of wine that had been packed in straw in the cool cellar. “Even assuming she lives still, she knows what a risk it would be to all of us.” She handed the cloth to Olga, who dabbed her temples.

“Has that ever stopped Vasya?” Olga asked, taking the cup that Varvara gave her. The two women exchanged worried glances. “I will keep the servants from the cathedral, Masha,” Olga said. “Though they will not thank me for it. And—if you—hear—that Vasya has come, will you tell me?”

“Of course,” said Marya at once. “We must have supper ready for her.”

Varvara said to Olga, “I do not think she will come back. She has gone too far.”

20. The Golden Bridle

VASYA’S HEAD WAS FULL OF winter midnights, and she was shaking with the want of light. She wasn’t sure they would ever come out at all. They rode without pause, over ridges and valleys glazed with ice, filled up with darkness as if they’d never seen day. Morozko’s presence at her back was no comfort here; he was a part of the long, lonely night, untroubled by the frost.

She tried to think of Sasha, to think of Moscow and daylight and her own life waiting for her on the other side of the darkness. But the touchstones of her life had all been thrown into disarray, and it grew harder and harder to focus her mind, as they rode through the icy night.

“Stay awake,” Morozko said in her ear. Her head was lolling on his shoulder; she jerked upright, half in a panic, so that the white mare slanted a reproving ear. “If I guide us, we will end somewhere on my own lands, in the deep of winter,” he continued. “If you still want to make it to Moscow, in summer, you must stay awake.” They were crossing a glade full of snowdrops, stars overhead and the faint sweetness of the flowers at her feet.

Hastily Vasya straightened her back, tried to refocus her mind. The darkness seemed to mock her. How could you separate the winter-king from winter? Impossible even to try. Her head swam.

“Vasya,” he said, more gently. “Come with me to my own lands. Winter will come soon enough to Moscow. Otherwise—”

“I am not asleep yet,” she said, suddenly fierce. “You set the Bear free; you must help me bind him.”

“With pleasure. In winter,” he said. “It is only a breath of time, Vasya; what are two seasons?”

“Little to you, perhaps, but a great deal for me and mine,” she said.

He did not argue again.

She was thinking of that forgetfulness, the strange slip of reality that made fire from nothing, or kept the eyes of all Moscow from seeing her. Impossible that the winter-king should walk abroad in summer. Impossible, impossible.

She clenched her fists. No, she thought. It isn’t.

“A little farther,” she said, and wordless, the white mare cantered on.

At last, when Vasya’s concentration was wavering like a flame in a high wind, when exhaustion ate at her, and his arm about her waist was the only thing keeping her upright, the cold grew a little less fierce. Then mud showed under the snow. Then they were in a world of rustling leaves. The white mare’s hooves rimed the leaves with frost where they fell, and still Vasya hung on.

Finally, she and Morozko and the two horses stepped between one night and the next, and she saw a campfire nestled in the bend of a river.

In the same instant, the full weight of summer’s heat fell on her body like a hand, and the last trace of winter fell away behind them.

Morozko sagged weightless against her back. She was alarmed to see his hand growing fainter and fainter, as frost dissolves at the touch of warm water.

Vasya half-turned and caught hold of his hands. “Look at me,” she snapped. “Look at me.”

He raised absolutely colorless eyes to hers, set in a face equally colorless, without depth, the way light flattens in a snowstorm. “You promised not to leave me,” Vasya said. “You are not alone, you said. Are you so easily forsworn, winter-king?” Her hands crushed his.

He straightened up. He was still there, though faint. “I am here,” he said, and the ice of his breathing stirred, impossibly, the leaves of a summertime wood. A note of wry humor entered his voice. “More or less.” But he was shaking.

You are back in your own midnight now, Pozhar informed them, indifferent to impossibilities. I am going. My debt is paid.

Vasya cautiously let go of Morozko’s hands. He did not immediately vanish, and so she slid down the white mare’s shoulder. “Thank you,” Vasya said to the golden mare. “More than I can say.”

Pozhar flicked an ear, spun, and trotted off without another word.

Vasya watched the mare go, a little forlorn, trying, yet again, not to think of Solovey. The campfire by the river glimmered bright in the darkness. “Traveling by midnight is all very well,” Vasya muttered. “But it involves far too much creeping up on folk in the dark. Who do you suppose that is?”

“I have no notion,” said Morozko shortly. “I can’t see.” He said it matter-of-factly, but he looked shaken. In winter, his senses stretched far.

They crept nearer, and halted outside the firelight. A gray mare stood without hobbles on the other side of the flames. She raised her head uneasily, listening to the night.

Vasya knew her. “Tuman,” she breathed, and then she saw three men camped beyond the mare, sleeping rough. Three fine horses and a pack-horse. One of the men was just a dark bundle wrapped in a cloak. But the others were sitting upright beside the fire, talking, despite the late hour. One was her brother, his face thinned with days of travel, raw with sunburn. There were threads of white in his hair. The other was the holiest man in Rus’, Sergei Radonezhsky.

Sasha’s head came up, seeing the horses restless. “Something in the wood,” he said.

Vasya didn’t know how a monk—even her brother—would react to her just then, drenched as she was in magic and darkness, hand-fast with a frost-demon. But she nerved herself and stepped forward. Sasha wrenched round, and Sergei rose to his feet, spry despite his years. The third man jerked upright, blinking. Vasya recognized him: Rodion Oslyabya, a brother of the Trinity Lavra.

Three monks, dirty from days on the road, camping in a clearing in the summer night. Painfully ordinary; they made the winter midnights at her back feel like a dream.

But it wasn’t. She had brought the two worlds together.

She didn’t know what would happen.

THE FIRST BROTHER ALEKSANDR saw of his sister was a slim figure with a bruised face. He blasphemed in his mind; he sheathed his sword, offered up prayers, and ran to her.

She was so thin. Every plane of her face was blade-sharp: a skull picked out with firelight. But she returned his embrace with strength, and when he looked at her he saw her lashes wet.

Perhaps he was weeping, too. “Marya said you were alive. I—Vasya—I am sorry. Forgive me. I wanted to go find you. I—Varvara said you had gone beyond our reckoning, that you—”

She cut into this flow of words. “There is nothing to forgive.”

“The fire.”

Her face hardened. “It is over, brother. Both fires.”

“Where have you been? What happened to your face?”

She touched the scar across her cheekbone. “This is from the night the mob came for me in Moscow.”

Sasha bit his lip. Father Sergei broke in, his voice sharp. “There is a white horse there in the wood. And a—shadow.”

Sasha spun, his hand again going to the hilt of his sword. In the darkness, just touched by the edges of the firelight, stood a mare, white as the moon on a winter night.

“Yours?” Sasha said to his sister, and then he looked again. Beside the mare, the shadow was watching them.

Again, he put a hand to his sword-hilt.

“No,” said his sister. “You don’t need it, Sasha.”

The shadow, Sasha realized, was a man. A man whose eyes were two points of light, colorless as water. Not a man. A monster.

He drew his sword. “Who are you?”

MOROZKO MADE NO ANSWER, but Vasya could feel the anger in him. He and the monks were natural enemies.

Catching her brother’s eye, she saw with an unpleasant feeling that Sasha’s fury wasn’t just the impersonal disdain of a monk for a devil. “Vasya, do you know this—creature?”

Vasya opened her mouth, but Morozko stepped into the light and spoke first. “I marked her from her childhood,” he said coolly. “Took her into my own house, bound her to me with ancient magic, and put her on the road to Moscow.”

Vasya glared wordlessly at Morozko. Her brother’s disdain was obviously not one-sided. Of all the things he might have said to Sasha first.

“Vasya,” Sasha said. “Whatever he has done to you—”

Vasya cut him off. “It doesn’t matter. I have ridden across Rus’ dressed as a boy; I have walked alone into darkness and come out alive. It is too late for your scruples. Now—”

“I am your brother,” said Sasha. “It concerns me; it concerns every man in our family that this—”

“You left us when I was a child!” she interrupted. “You have given yourself first to your religion and second to your Grand Prince. My life and my fate lie beyond your judgment.”

Rodion broke in, bristling. “We are men of God,” he said. “That is a devil. Surely nothing more needs to be said?”

“I think,” said Sergei, “that a little more must be said.” He did not speak loudly, but everyone turned to him.

“My daughter,” said Sergei calmly, “we will hear your tale from the beginning.”

THEY SAT DOWN AROUND the fire. Rodion and Sasha did not sheathe their swords. Morozko did not sit at all; he paced, restless, as though he did not know which he disliked more: the monks and their hostile firelight or the hot summer darkness.

Vasya told the entire story, or the parts of it she could. She was hoarse by the end. Morozko did not speak; she got the impression that it was taking all his concentration not to disappear. Her touch might have helped, or her blood, but her brother kept a brooding eye on the frost-demon, and she thought it better not to provoke him. She kept her arms around her knees.

When her voice wound raggedly to a halt, Sergei said, “You have not told us everything.”

“No,” said Vasya. “There are things that have no words. But I have spoken the truth.”

Sergei was silent. Sasha’s hand still toyed with the hilt of his sword. The fire was dying; Morozko seemed paradoxically more real in the faint red glow than he had in the full light of flames. Sasha and Rodion looked at him with open hostility. To Vasya it seemed suddenly that her hope was a foolish one; that it was impossible that these two powers would make common cause. Trying to put all her conviction into her voice, she said, “There is evil walking free in Moscow. We must face it together, or we will fall.”

The monks were silent.

Then, slowly, Sergei said, “If there is an evil creature in Moscow, then what is to be done, my daughter?”

Vasya felt a stir of hope. Rodion made a sound of protest, but Sergei raised a hand, silencing him.

“The Bear cannot be slain,” said Vasya. “But he can be bound.” She told them all she knew of the golden bridle.

“We found it,” said Sasha, breaking in unexpectedly. “In the ruin of the burned stable the night—the night of—”

“Yes,” said Vasya swiftly. “That night. Where is it now?”

“In Dmitrii’s treasure-room, if he hasn’t melted it for the gold,” said Sasha.

“If you and Sergei tell him together what it is for, will he give it to you?”

Sasha’s mouth was open on what obviously was a yes. Then he frowned. “I don’t know. I haven’t— Dmitrii doesn’t trust me as he once did. But he has great faith in Father Sergei.”

Vasya knew the admission hurt. And she also knew why Dmitrii didn’t trust her brother.

“I am sorry,” she said.

He shook his head once, but said nothing.

“You cannot trust the Grand Prince’s faith in anyone,” Morozko broke in for the first time. “Medved’s great gift is disorder, and his tools are fear and mistrust. He will know that both of you are coming, and will have planned for it. Until he is bound, you cannot trust anyone; you cannot even trust yourselves, for he makes men mad.”

The monks exchanged glances.

“Can the bridle be stolen?” Vasya asked.

All the monks looked pious at that and did not answer. She wanted to pull her hair in exasperation.

IT TOOK THEM A long time to lay their plans. By the time they had finished, Vasya was desperate to sleep. Not just for rest, but because to sleep here in her own midnight meant that there would be light when she awakened. All that time they talked, she was still in Midnight. They all were: caught fast in the darkness with her. She wondered if Sasha asked himself what had delayed the dawn.

When she’d had enough, Vasya said, “We can speak again in the morning,” got up and left the fire. She found a place thick with old pine-needles, and wrapped herself in her cloak.

Morozko bowed to the monks. A faint mockery in the gesture brought angry color to Sasha’s face.

“Until morning,” said the winter-king.

“Where are you going?” Sasha demanded.

Morozko said simply, “I am going down to the river. I have never seen dawn on moving water.”

And he vanished into the night.

SASHA WANTED TO FLING himself down in frustration and fear. He wanted to strike down that shadow-creature, he wanted to rid his mind of the thought of it whispering in the dark to his maiden sister. He stared at the place where the demon had vanished, while Rodion watched him with concern and Sergei with understanding.

“Sit down, my son,” said Sergei. “It is not a time for anger.”

“Are we then to make a deal with a demon? It is sin, God will be angry—”

Sergei said reprovingly, “It is not for men and women to presume what the Lord wishes. That way lies evil, when men put themselves too high, saying, I know what God wants, for it is also what I want. You may hate the one she calls the winter-king, for the way he looks at your sister. But he has not harmed her; she says he has saved her life. You could not do as much for her.”

That was severe, and Sasha flinched. “No,” he said, low. “I could not. But perhaps he has damned her.”

“I do not know,” said Sergei. “We cannot know. But our business is with men and women: the helpless, and the afraid. That is why we are going to Moscow.”

Sasha was silent a long time. Finally, wearily, he threw a log on the fire and said, “I do not like him.”

“I fear,” said Sergei, “that he does not care in the slightest.”

VASYA WOKE IN BRILLIANT DAYLIGHT. She leaped to her feet and lifted her face to the sun. Out of the country of Midnight, at last; and she hoped never to take that dark way again.

For a moment, she enjoyed the warmth. Then the heat began to gather, inexorable. Sweat slid between her breasts and down her spine. She was still wearing the wool shirt from the house at the edge of the lake, though now she wished for linen.

Her bare feet drank coolness from the dew-damp earth. Morozko was only a few paces off, grooming the white mare. She wondered if he’d kept near them that night, or if he’d gone wandering, touching the summer earth with strange frost. The monks still slept, in the easy way men sleep in daylight in summer.

Morozko’s fur and embroidered silk was gone, as though he could not maintain the trappings of power in the harsh light of day. He might have been any peasant, feet bare in the grass, except his steps starred the earth with frost, and the cuffs of his shirt dripped cold water. A little coolness hung about him, even in the humid morning. She breathed it in, comforted, and said, “Mother of God, the heat.”

Morozko looked grim. “That is the Bear’s work.”

“In winter, I have often wished for mornings like this,” Vasya said, to be fair. “To be warm all the way through.” She went over to stroke the white mare’s neck. “And in summer, I remember how suffocating such mornings are. Do you get hot?”

“No,” he said shortly. “But the heat tries to unmake me.”

Remorseful, she put a hand on his, where it moved on the mare’s withers. The connection between them flared to life, and his outline looked a little less vague. His hand curled around hers. She shivered, and he smiled. But his eyes were far away; he could not enjoy the reminder of his own weakness.

She dropped her hand. “Do you think the Bear knows you’re here?”

“No,” said Morozko. “I will try to keep it that way. Best we take two days on the road, and go into Moscow in bright morning.”

“Because of the dead things?” said Vasya. “The upyry? His servants?”

“They only walk at night,” he said. His colorless eye was savage. Vasya bit her lip.

An old war, Ded Grib had called it. Had she made herself a third power in it as the chyert suggested? Or merely taken the winter-king’s side? The wall of years between them suddenly seemed as insurmountable as it had been before the night in the bathhouse.

But she forced herself to say crisply, “I imagine that by the end of the day even my brother would sell his soul for cold water. Please do not bait him.”

“I was angry,” he said.

“We won’t be traveling with them for long,” she said.

“No,” he returned. “I will endure the summer as long as I can, but, Vasya, I cannot endure it forever.”

THEY ATE NOTHING; it was too hot. All of them were flushed and sweating even before they started off. They took the narrow track that wound alongside the Moskva, approaching the city from the east. Vasya’s stomach knotted with nerves. Now that they’d come to it, she did not want to go back to Moscow. She was deathly afraid. She trudged through the dust, trying to remember that she could do magic, that she had allies. But it was hard to believe, in the harsh light of day.

Morozko had let the white mare go, to graze beside the river and keep out of the sight of men. He was staying out of sight himself: little more than a cool breeze ruffling the leaves.

The sun rose higher and higher over the swooning world. Gray shadows lay like bars of iron along the trail. To their left ran the river. To their right was a vast wheat-field, red-gold as Pozhar’s coat, hissing as a hot wind flattened the stalks. The sun was like a mallet between the eyes. The path coated their feet with dust.

On and on they walked, still passing the wheat. It seemed endless. It seemed…Suddenly Vasya halted, shading her eyes with a hand, and said, “How large is this field?”

The men stopped when she did; now they looked at each other. No one could tell. The hot day seemed interminable. Morozko was nowhere to be seen. Vasya peered out over the wheat-field. A whirlwind of dust spun through the red-gold grass; the sky was dull with yellow haze, the sun overhead—still overhead…How long had it been overhead?

Now that they’d stopped, Vasya saw that the monks were all flushed and breathing fast. Faster than before? Too fast? It was so hot. “What is it?” asked Sasha, wiping the sweat from his face.

Vasya pointed to the whirlwind. “I think—”

Suddenly, with a muffled gasp, Sergei slumped over his horse’s mane and toppled sideways. Sasha caught him; Sergei’s placid horse didn’t move, only tilted a puzzled ear. Sergei’s skin was scarlet; he’d stopped sweating.

Behind the monks, Vasya glimpsed a woman with fair skin and hair bleached white, raising a pair of cutting shears in one bone-colored hand.

Not a woman. Without thinking, Vasya leaped, caught the chyert’s wrist, forced it backward.

“I have met Lady Midnight,” said Vasya to her, not letting go. “But not her sister Poludnitsa, whose touch, they say, strikes men with heat-sickness.”

Sasha was kneeling in the dust now, holding Sergei and looking stricken. Rodion had run for water. Vasya wasn’t sure he’d find any. The wheat-field at noon was the realm of Midday, and they had stumbled into it.

“Let me go!” hissed Poludnitsa.

Vasya did not slack her grip. “Let us go,” she said. “We have no quarrel with you.”

“No quarrel?” The chyert’s white hair snapped like straw in the sultry wind. “Their bells will be the end of us. That is quarrel enough, don’t you think?”

“The bell-makers wish only to live,” said Vasya. “As we all do.”

“If they can only live by killing,” snapped Lady Midday. “Better they all die.” Rodion came back without water; Sasha had risen to his feet, a hand on the searing hilt of his sword, but he couldn’t see who Vasya was talking to.

Vasya said to Midday, “Their deaths are yours; men and chyerti are bound together for good or ill. But it can be for good. We can share this world.” To show her good intentions, Vasya reached out and bloodied her thumb on the shears. Behind her, she heard the monks gasp, and realized that the touch of her blood had allowed them to see the demon.

Midday laughed, shrill. “Are you going to save us, little mortal child? When the Bear has promised us war, and victory?”

“The Bear is a liar,” said Vasya.

Just then Sergei’s thready voice whispered behind her, “Fear and flee, unclean and accursed spirit, visible through deceit, hidden by pretense. Whether you be of the morning, noonday, midnight, or night, I expel you.”

Midday cried out, this time in real pain; she dropped her shears, fell back, vanishing, vanishing…

“No!” Vasya cried to the monks. “It’s not what you think. It’s not what they think.” She lunged and seized Midday’s wrist, keeping her from disappearing utterly.

“I see you,” she said to her, low. “Live on.”

Midday stood an instant, wounded, afraid, wondering. Then she was swept up in a whirlwind and vanished.

Morozko stepped out of the noonday glare. “Didn’t your nurse warn you about wheat-fields in summer?” he asked.

“Father!” Sasha cried, just as Vasya turned back to the monks. Sergei was breathing too fast; his pulse vibrated in his throat. Morozko might have hesitated, but, muttering something, he knelt in the dust, laid long fingers against the frantic pulse in the monk’s neck. As he did, he breathed out, his other fist clenched hard.

“What are you doing?” Sasha demanded.

“Wait,” said Vasya.

The wind rose. Sluggishly at first, then faster, flattening the wheat. It was a cold wind: a wind of winter, pine-smelling, impossible in all the heat and the dust.

Morozko’s jaw was set; his outline grew fainter even as the wind grew stronger. In a moment he would disappear, his presence as unimaginable as a snowflake at high summer. Vasya caught him by the shoulders. “Not yet,” she said into his ear.

He shot her a brief look and hung on.

As the air cooled, Sergei’s breathing and rabbit-fast pulse began to slow. Sasha and Rodion looked better too. Vasya was drinking in the cold air with great gulps. But Morozko’s outline was wavering badly now, despite her grip.

Unexpectedly, Sasha asked, “What can I do?” Hope had won out over the censure on his face.

She glanced at him in surprise, and said, “See him. And remember.” Morozko’s lips thinned, but he said nothing.

Sergei drew a deep breath. The air about them was cool enough to dry the sweat beneath Vasya’s stifling shirt. The wind faded to a breeze. The sun had moved; the heat was still intense, but not deadly. Morozko dropped his hand, bowed forward, gray as spring snow. Vasya kept her hands on his shoulders. Cold water ran down her fingers, over his shoulders.

All were silent.

“I don’t think we’re going any farther for a while,” Vasya said, looking from the frost-demon to the sweat-stained monks. “No point in doing the Bear’s work for him, and perishing before we get there.”

No one said anything to that.

THEY FOUND A LITTLE HOLLOW of the river, cool with grass and moving water. The river rolled brown at their feet, running fast toward Moscow, where the Moskva and the Neglinnaya joined. In the distance, thick with haze, they could see the sullen city itself. A little way beyond them, the river was full of boats.

It was too hot to eat, but Vasya took a little bread from her brother and sprinkled crumbs in the water. She thought she caught a flash of bulging fish-eyes, a ripple that was not part of the current, but that was all.

Sasha, watching her, said abruptly, “Mother—Mother put bread in the water too, sometimes. For the river-king, she said.” Then he shut his lips tight. But to Vasya it sounded like understanding, it sounded like apology. She smiled tentatively at him.

“The demon meant to kill us,” said Sergei, his voice still hoarse.

“She was afraid,” said Vasya. “They are all afraid. They do not want to disappear. I think the Bear is making them more afraid, and so they lash out. It wasn’t her fault. Father, exorcisms will only drive more of them to the Bear’s side.”

“Perhaps,” said Sergei. “But I did not wish to die in a wheat-field.”

“You didn’t,” said Vasya. “Because the winter-king saved your life.”

No one said anything.

She left them in the shade, rose and went downstream, out of earshot. She sank down in the tall grasses, dabbled her feet in the water and said aloud, “Are you all right?”

Silence. Then his voice spoke in the summertime stillness. “I have been better.”

He stepped soundlessly through the grass and sank to the earth beside her. It was somehow harder to look at him now, as the eye slides, without comprehension, over any impossible thing. She narrowed her eyes and kept looking until the feeling passed. He sat with his knees drawn up, staring out at the glaring-bright water. Sourly he said, “Why should my brother fear my freedom? I am less than a ghost.”

“Does he know now?”

“Yes,” said Morozko. “How could he not? Calling the winter wind, so…I could not have made clearer sign of my presence short of shouting it to his face. If we still mean to go to Moscow, we will have to go today, despite the risk of sunset. I had hoped to avoid night and the upyry both, but if he is going to send his servants to try to kill you anyway, better we have the bridle first.”

Vasya shivered in the midday sun. Then she told him, “There is a reason chyerti like Lady Midday are on the Bear’s side.”

“Many perhaps. Not most,” Morozko returned. “Chyerti don’t want to disappear, but most of us know what folly it is, to go to war with men. Our fates are bound together.”

She said nothing.

“Vasya, how close did my brother come to persuading you to join him?”

“He didn’t come close,” she said. Morozko raised a brow. Lower, she added, “I thought about it. He asked me what loyalty I could have to Rus’. The mob of Moscow killed my horse.”

“You freed Pozhar, who set fire to Moscow,” Morozko said. He was looking out at the water again. “You caused the death of your sister’s infant, though she was ready to die to give the babe life. Perhaps you only paid for your foolishness.”

His tone was wounding, the words sword-sharp in their suddenness. Startled, she said, “I did not mean—”

“You came into the city like a bird in a cage of reeds, battering yourself against the bars and breaking them—do you wonder that it ended as it did?”

“Where should I have gone?” she snapped. “Home, to be burned as a witch? Should I have heeded you, worn your charm, married, had children, and sat sometimes by the window, fondly remembering my days with the winter-king? Should I have let—”

“You should think before you do things.” He bit off the words, as though her last question had stung.

“This from the frost-demon who set this whole realm at hazard to save my life?”

He said nothing. She swallowed more hot words. She did not understand what lay between them. She was neither wise nor beautiful. None of the tales spoke of both wanting and resentment, of grand gestures and terrible mistakes.

“The chyerti would be worshipped,” said Vasya, moderating her tone. “If the Bear had his way.”

“He would be worshipped if he had his way,” said Morozko. “I do not think he cares what happens to chyerti, so long as they serve his ends.” He paused. “Or what happens to men and women themselves, dead in his scheming.”

“If I wished to throw my lot in with the Bear, I would not have come to find you in the first place,” Vasya said. “But yes, sometimes I think it is a bitter thing, to go back and try to save that city.”

“If you spend all your days bearing the burden of unforgotten wrongs you will only wound yourself.”

She glared at him, and he looked back, narrow-eyed. Why was he angry? Why was she? Vasya knew about marriages, carefully arranged; she knew about swains courting yellow-haired peasant girls in the midsummer twilight. She had listened to fairy tales since before she could speak. None of those prepared her for this. She had to clench her hands into fists to keep from touching him.

He drew away, jerkily, just as she took a deep, shaken breath and turned her gaze again to the water. “I am going to go to sleep in the sunshine,” she said. “Until Father Sergei is ready to go on. Will you disappear if I do?”

“No,” he said, and he sounded as if he resented it. But she was hot and sleepy and could not bring herself to care. She curled up in the grass near him. The last thing she felt was his light, cold fingers in her hair, like an apology, as she fell suddenly and completely asleep.

SASHA FOUND THEM A little while later. The frost-demon sat upright, watchful. The slanting summer light seemed to shine through him. He raised his head as Sasha approached, and Sasha was startled at the look on his face at that moment, unguarded, there and gone. Vasya stirred.

“Let her sleep, winter-king,” said Sasha.

Morozko said nothing, but one hand moved to smooth Vasya’s tousled black hair.

Watching them, Sasha said, “Why did you save Father Sergei’s life?”

Morozko said, “I am not noble, if that is what you are thinking. The Bear must be bound anew, and we cannot do it alone.”

Sasha was silent, turning that over. Then he said abruptly, “You are not a creature of God.”

“I am not.” His free hand, lying loose, had an unnatural stillness.

“Yet you saved my sister’s life. Why?”

The devil’s gaze was direct. “First for my own scheming. But later because I could not stand to see her slain.”

“Why do you ride with her now? It cannot be easy, a frost-demon at high summer.”

“She asked it of me. Why all these questions, Aleksandr Peresvet?”

The epithet was given half in earnest, half in mockery. Sasha had to swallow a surge of rage. “Because after Moscow,” he said, trying to keep his voice even, “she went to a—dark country. I was told I could not follow her there.”

“You could not.”

“And you could?”

“Yes.”

Sasha took this in. “If she goes into the darkness again—will you swear not to abandon her?”

If the demon was surprised, he gave no sign. His face remote, he said, “I will not abandon her. But one day she will go where even I cannot follow. I am immortal.”

“Then—if she asks—if there is a man who can warm her, and pray for her, and give her children—then let her go. Do not keep her in the dark.”

“You ought to make up your mind,” said Morozko. “Swear not to abandon her or give her up to a living man? Which shall it be?”

His tone was cutting. Sasha’s hand strayed to his sword. But he did not grasp it. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never protected her before; I do not know why I should be able to now.”

The demon said nothing.

Sasha said, “A convent would have broken her.” Reluctantly he added, “Even a marriage, no matter how kindly the man, how fair the house.”

Still Morozko did not speak.

“But I am afraid for her soul,” said Sasha, voice rising despite himself. “I am afraid for her alone in dark places, and I am afraid for her with you at her side. It is sin. And you are a fairy tale, a nightmare; you have no soul at all.”

“Perhaps not,” agreed the winter-king, but still the slender fingers tangled with Vasya’s hair.

Sasha ground his teeth. He wanted to demand promises, pledges, confessions, if only to delay the realization that there were some things he couldn’t change. But he bit back the words. He knew they wouldn’t do any good. She had survived the frost and the flame, had found a harbor, however brief. Perhaps that was all anyone could ask, in the world’s savage turning.

He stepped back. “I will pray for you both,” he said, voice clipped. “We are going soon.”

21. Enemy at the Gate

IT WAS EARLY EVENING, BRIGHT and still, the gray shadows long and softening to violet, by the time they made their way down the parched bank of the Moskva and found a ferry to take them across.

The ferryman only had eyes for the monks. Vasya kept her head down. With her cropped hair, her rough clothes, her gawkiness, she passed for a horse-boy. At first it was easy to forget where she was, as she busied herself getting the horses to stand quiet in the rocking boat. But she found her heart beating faster and faster and faster as they approached the far side of the river.

In her mind’s eye, the Moskva was sheeted with ice, red with firelight. Men and women seethed around a hastily built pyre. Perhaps even now they were floating over the very spot where the last ashes of her would have sunk into the indifferent water.

She barely made it to the side of the boat, and then she was heaving into the river. The ferryman laughed. “Poor country boy, never been on a boat before?” Father Sergei, with kindly hands, held her head as she retched. “Look at the shore,” he said, “see how still it is? Here is some clean water, drink. That’s better.”

It was the icy touch on the back of her neck, cold, invisible fingers, that drew her back to herself. You are not alone, he said, in a voice no one but she could hear. Remember.

She sat up, grim-faced, and wiped her mouth. “I’m all right, Father,” she said to Sergei.

The boat ground against a dock. Vasya took hold of the pack-horse’s halter, led him ashore. The rope slid against her sweating hands. People were pushing to get into the city before the gates were shut for the night. It was not difficult to fall a little behind the three monks. Morozko’s cold presence paced invisibly beside her. Waiting.

Would anyone recognize her—the witch they thought they’d burned? There were people in front and behind; people all around. She was afraid. The air smelled of dust and rotten fish, and sickness. Sweat trickled between her breasts.

She kept her head down, trying to look insignificant, trying to control her racing heart. The stink of the city was calling up memories faster than she could push them back: of fire, of terror, of hands tearing at her clothes. She prayed no one would wonder why she wore a thick shirt and jacket in the heat. She had never in her life felt so hideously vulnerable.

The three monks were stopped at the gate. The gate-guards held sachets of dried herbs to mouth and nose as they prodded carts and asked questions of travelers. The river darted points of light into their eyes.

“Say your name and your business, strangers,” said the captain of the guard.

“I am no stranger. I am Brother Aleksandr,” said Sasha. “I have returned to Dmitrii Ivanovich, accompanying the holy father Sergei Radonezhsky.”

The captain scowled. “The Grand Prince ordered you brought to him when you arrived.”

Vasya bit her lip. Smoothly, Sasha said, “I will go to the Grand Prince, in due course. But the holy father must go first to the monastery, to rest and say prayers of thanks for his safe arrival.” Vasya’s hands were slippery on the lead-rope of the horse.

“The holy father may go where he chooses,” said the captain flatly. “But to the Grand Prince you will go, according to orders. I will have men escort you. The Grand Prince has taken advice, and he does not trust you.”

“Who has advised him?” Sasha demanded.

“The wonder-worker,” said the gate-guard, and a little emotion entered his flat voice. “Father Konstantin Nikonovich.”

The Bear knows we are coming now, Morozko had said to Sergei and Sasha, as they made their way along the Moskva toward the city in the sweltering afternoon. It is possible you will be delayed at the gate. If so—

Vasya could scarcely breathe around the panic in her throat. But she managed to mutter to the pack-horse at her side: “Rear!”

The creature broke into a frenzy of heavy-limbed bucking. Next moment, Sasha’s battle-trained Tuman reared up as well, lashing out with her fore-hooves. Rodion’s horse too began capering heavily, right at the gate, and then Sergei raised his voice, rich and full despite his age, to say, “Come, Brother, let us all pray—” just as Tuman kicked one of the guards. When the confusion was at its height, Vasya slipped through the gate, Morozko in her wake.

Forget. Just like that other night on this same river. Forget that they could see her. Of course, the guards might not have seen her even without magic, so effectively had the three monks drawn all eyes.

She waited in the shadow of the gate. Waited for Sasha to come through with Sergei, so that she could follow them, invisibly, to the Grand Prince’s palace, be let in with them, unseen, then go and steal the bridle.

“Am I an utter fool, brother?” asked a familiar voice. Somewhere in its light tones was the clashing of armies, the screaming of men. The Bear stood in the shadow of the gate and seemed to have grown since the last time she saw him, as though nourished by the miasma of fear and sickness swirling about Moscow. “The city is mine,” he said. “What do you expect to do, coming here like a ghost in the company of a pack of monks? Betray me to the new religion? See me exorcised? No, I am stronger. You won’t have a pleasant prison of forgetfulness this time; it will be chains and long darkness. After I kill her and make her my servant in front of you.”

Morozko didn’t speak. He had a knife of ice, though the blade dripped water when it moved. His eyes met hers once, wordless.

She ran.

“Witch!” shouted the Bear, in the voice that men could hear. “Witch, there is a witch there!” Heads began to turn; then his voice was cut off abruptly. Morozko had flung his knife at his brother’s throat; the Bear had slammed it aside and then the two were grappling like wolves, invisible in the dust.

Vasya fled, heart hammering in her throat, effacing herself in the shadow of buildings.

SHE TRIED NOT TO THINK of what was happening behind her; Sasha and Sergei set to distract Dmitrii, Morozko holding off the Bear.

The rest was up to her.

If it comes to it, I cannot keep him distracted forever, Morozko had said. Until sunset, not longer. And by sunset it won’t matter. He will have the dead, he will have the power of men’s fears, that rise in the dark. He must be bound by sunset, Vasya.

So she ran now, the sweat smarting in her eyes. The gazes of chyerti fell on her like a hail of stones, but she did not turn to see. People went heavily about their business, gasping and sweat-soaked, holding sachets of dried flowers to ward off sickness, paying little heed to a single gawky boy. A dead man lay huddled in a corner between two buildings, flies in his open eyes. Vasya swallowed nausea and ran on. With every step she had to fight down panic at being in Moscow again, and alone. Every sound, every smell, every turn of the streets brought back paralyzing memories; she felt like a girl in a nightmare, trying to run through clinging mud.

The gates of the palace of Serpukhov had been reinforced and reinforced again; spikes of wood lined the top, and there were guards on the gate. She paused, still fighting that stomach-clenching dread, wondering how she was going to—

A voice spoke from the wall-top. She had to look three times before she saw the speaker. It was Olga’s dvorovoi. He reached his two hands down to her. “Come,” he whispered. “Hurry, hurry.”

When she caught the outstretched hands of the dvorovoi, she found them strangely solid. Olga’s house-spirits had been little more than mist, before. But now the chyert’s hands pulled strongly. Vasya scrabbled for purchase, got a hand up to the top of the wall and pulled herself over.

She dropped to the ground on the other side and found a brassy, silent dooryard, with only a few servants moving slowly. She breathed, groped for the forgetfulness that kept them from seeing her. She could barely manage it. Just there, Solovey had…

“I must speak to Varvara,” Vasya said to the dvorovoi, between clenched teeth.

But the dvorovoi had her by the hand, and was hustling her in the direction of the bathhouse. “You must see our lady,” he said.

SHE WAS LYING CURLED like a puppy in the bathhouse. It was not too hot inside. The bannik must be doing what he could for her, Vasya thought. All the house chyerti must be doing what they could for her. Because she…

Marya sat up and Vasya was shocked when she saw the child’s face; her eyes set about with rings like bruising.

“Aunt!” Marya cried. “Aunt Vasya!” And she hurled herself sobbing into Vasya’s arms.

Vasya caught the child and held her. “Masha, love, tell me what has happened.”

Muffled explanations sounded from somewhere around Vasya’s breastbone. “You were gone. And Solovey was gone and the man in the oven said the Eater would send dead people into our houses if he could. So I talked to the chyerti and I gave them bread and I cut my hand and gave them blood like you said, and Mother kept us all home from church—”

“Yes,” Vasya said with pride, cutting into the flow of words. “You did so well, my brave girl.”

Marya straightened abruptly. “I am going to get Mother and Varvara.”

“That is a good idea,” said Vasya, mindful of the waning day. She didn’t like the idea of skulking in the bathhouse while Marya played messenger. But she dared not allow the servants to see her, and she was not enough in control of herself to rely on half-understood magic. Terror was still waiting to snatch her by the throat.

“The chyerti said you’d come back,” Marya said happily. “They said you’d come and we’d go to a place by the lake where it’s not hot and there are horses.”

“I hope so,” said Vasya fervently. “Now hurry, Masha.”

Marya ran off. When she had gone, Vasya took a few deep breaths, fighting to compose herself. She turned her head to the bannik. “I have wept for a nightingale,” she said. “But Marya—”

“Is your heir and your mirror,” returned the bannik. “She will have a horse and they will love each other as the left hand loves the right. She will ride far and fast when she is grown.” He paused. “If you and she survive.”

“It is a good future,” said Vasya, and then bit her lip, remembering.

“The Bear scorns the house-chyerti, as tools of men,” said the bannik. “We will help you as we can. His votary is afraid of us.”

“His votary?”

“The priest with golden hair,” said the bannik. “The Bear took the priest as his own, and gave him the second sight that frightens him so, now. They are bound together.”

“Oh,” said Vasya. Much was suddenly obvious to her. “I am going to kill that priest.” It wasn’t even a vow. It was a statement of fact. “Will it weaken the Bear?”

“Yes,” said the bannik. “But it might not be so easy. The Bear will protect him.”

Just then, Marya came running back into the dim bathhouse. “They’re coming,” she said, and frowned. “I think they will be glad to see you.”

Olga and Varvara appeared in her wake. Olga looked not so much glad as shaken. “It seems you are destined to astonish me with sudden meetings, Vasya,” she said. Her voice was crisp, but she took Vasya’s hands and held them tightly.

“Sasha said you knew I survived.”

“Marya knew,” said Olga. “And Varvara. They told us. I had doubts but—” She broke off, searching her sister’s face. “How did you escape?”

“It doesn’t matter,” broke in Varvara. “You put us all in danger once, girl. Now you are doing it again. Did anyone see you?”

“No,” said Vasya. “They didn’t see me jumping off my own pyre either, and they will not see me now.”

Olga paled. “Vasya,” she began, “I am sorry—”

“It doesn’t matter. The Bear means to dethrone Dmitrii Ivanovich,” said Vasya. “To send this whole land into chaos. We must stop him.” She swallowed hard, but managed to say steadily, “I must get into Dmitrii Ivanovich’s palace.”

22. The Princess and the Warrior

SASHA’S DIVERSION WORKED BETTER THAN he could have hoped. Tuman, riled by the shouting and trained for war, reared, lashed out, reared again. More guards came, and more, until the three monks were at the center of a noisy throng.

“He is back.”

“The witch’s brother.”

“Aleksandr Peresvet.”

“Who is that with him?”

There was no chance of anyone seeing Vasya, Sasha thought grimly. They were all looking at him. More and more people were gathering. The guards looked now as though they didn’t know whether to turn inward to him, or outward, so as not to put their backs to the angry crowd. A lettuce came hurtling, rotten, from somewhere out of the crowd, burst at the feet of Sergei’s horse. The horses jolted into motion, beginning to climb the hill of the kremlin. More vegetables flew; then a stone. Sergei still sat unruffled on his horse, raised a hand and blessed the crowd. Sasha moved his horse up by his master, protecting Sergei with his body and Tuman’s. “This is madness,” he muttered. “Rodion—both of you—go to the Archangel. This might get worse. Father—please. I will send word.”

“Very well,” said Sergei. “But be careful.” Sasha was glad when Rodion and his big horse plowed a way through the crowd, and were gone. The guards were hustling him up toward Dmitrii’s palace now; it was becoming a race to see if he would get there before the crowd grew too thick.

But they did get there, and Sasha was glad to hear the gate shut behind him, to dismount in the dust of the dooryard. The Grand Prince was outside, watching a man put a three-year-old colt through his paces. He did not look well, that was Sasha’s first thought. He looked heavy and haggard, soft in the jaw, and in his face was a strange dull anger.

The golden-haired priest was standing right behind Dmitrii and he looked lovelier than he ever had. His lips and hands were as delicate as a woman’s, his eyes impossibly blue. He was dressed as a bishop, his head raised listening to the clamor of the uneasy city. There was no triumph in his face, only a sureness of power that Sasha found infinitely worse.

Dmitrii caught sight of Sasha and stiffened. There was no welcome in his face, only a new, strange tension.

Sasha crossed the dooryard, keeping a wary eye on the priest. “Gosudar,” he said to Dmitrii, formal. He did not want to speak of Father Sergei, not with that cold-eyed man listening.

“Come back now, Sasha?” Dmitrii burst out. “Now, when the city is full of sickness and unrest, and all the people need is an excuse?” He stopped to listen to the rising noise outside; they were thronging the gates.

“Dmitrii Ivanovich—” Sasha began.

“No,” said Dmitrii. “I will not hear you. You will be put under lock, and pray it is enough to quiet the crowd. Father—if you would tell them?”

Konstantin said, with the perfect tone of courageous sorrow, “I will tell them.”

Sasha, hating the man, said, “Cousin, I must speak with you.”

Dmitrii’s eyes met his and Sasha could have sworn that there was something in them, a warning. Then Dmitrii’s expression iced over. “You will be put under key,” he said. “Until I consult with holy men and decide what to do with you.”

“EUDOKHIA IS PREGNANT AGAIN and afraid,” Olga said to Vasya. “She will be glad of any diversion. I can get you past the gate.”

“It is a risk,” Vasya replied. “I had thought Varvara and I could go. Two servants with a message. Who will notice? Or I alone, even. Or you could give me a man you trust, to boost me over the wall.” She told them briefly about the capricious invisibility she had discovered in herself, the night of the burning.

Olga crossed herself, and then, frowning, shook her head. “Whatever strange powers you have discovered, Dmitrii still has a large guard on the gate. And what will happen to the manservant if someone sees him? Moscow is half-wild. All are afraid of plague, and they are afraid of the dead, and of curses. Indeed, Moscow has been much afraid this summer. I am the Princess of Serpukhov; I can get through the gate most easily. Dressed as my servant, you will be little remarked if someone does see you.”

“But you—”

“Tell me it is not needful,” Olga retorted. “Tell me that to leave things as they are won’t put my children in danger, and my husband, and my city. Say that, and I will gladly stay home.”

Vasya could not, in conscience, say anything of the kind.

OLGA AND VARVARA WERE EFFICIENT. With scarcely a word spoken, they found Vasya the dress of a servant. Olga bid her horses be harnessed in haste. Marya begged to be allowed to go, but Olga said, “Dear heart, the streets are full of sickness.”

“But you’re going,” said Marya, rebellious.

“Yes,” said Olga. “But you cannot be spared, my brave love.”

“Take care of her,” said Vasya to Olga’s dvorovoi, and she hugged Marya tightly.

The sisters left the palace of Serpukhov as twilight was thickening to dusk. The closed carriage was stuffy; the sun hovered red. From outside came the murmurs of unrest, the smell of putrefaction from the overcrowded city. Vasya, dressed as a serving-girl, felt more naked than she ever had in her boy’s clothes. “We must get back behind your walls before sunset,” she said to Olga, laboring to keep her voice even. The fear had begun to rise in her again, when they went back out into Moscow. “Olya, if I am delayed, you will go home without me.”

“Of course I will,” said Olga. Not for her a grand and foolish sacrifice; Vasya knew she was already taking more of a risk than she wanted. They rode a few moments in silence. Then— “I do not know what to do for Marya,” Olga admitted abruptly. “I am doing my best to protect her, but she is too like you. She speaks to things I cannot see; she is growing more elusive every week.”

“You cannot protect her from her own nature,” said Vasya. “She does not belong here.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t,” Olga said. “But in Moscow I can at least protect her from those that mean her ill. What will happen if folk find out her secret?”

Vasya said slowly, “There is a house by a lake, in a wild country. That is where I went, after the fires in Moscow. It is where our grandmother came from, and our great-grandmother. It is in our blood. I am going to go back, when this is over. I am going to build a place that is safe for men and chyerti. If Marya came with me, she would grow up free. She could ride horses, and if she wishes to marry, she may. Or not. Olya, she will wither here. All her life she would mourn something she did not know she’d lost.”

The lines of worry deepened about Olga’s mouth and eyes. But she didn’t answer.

A new silence fell between them. Then Olga spoke again, startling her. “Who was he, Vasya?”

Vasya’s eyes flew up.

“Credit me with a little perception at least,” said Olga, answering her look. “I have seen enough girls wed.”

“He,” said Vasya, finding herself suddenly nervous again, in a different way. “He is—” She stumbled to a halt. “He is not a man,” she admitted. “He—is one of the unseen folk.”

She expected Olga to be shocked. But Olga only frowned. Her eyes searched her sister’s face. “Were you willing?”

Vasya did not know if Olga would be more horrified if Vasya had been willing or if she had not. But there was only truth. “I was,” she said. “He has saved my life. More than once.”

“Are you wed?”

Vasya said, “No. I do not—I do not know if we can be. What sacrament would bind him?”

Olga looked sad. “Then you are living beyond the sight of God. I fear for your soul.”

“I don’t,” said Vasya. “He”—she stumbled, finished—“he has been a joy to me.” And, drily, “Also a great source of frustration.”

Olga smiled a little. Vasya remembered that years before, her sister had been a girl who had dreamed of love and raven-princes. Olga had laid aside the dream, as women must. Perhaps she did not regret it. For the raven-prince was strange and secret; he would draw you out into a dangerous world.

“Would you like to meet him?” Vasya asked suddenly.

“I?” Olga asked, sounding shocked. Then her lips firmed. “Yes. Even a girl in love with a devil needs someone to negotiate for her.”

Vasya bit her lips, not sure whether to be glad or worried.

They were getting to Dmitrii’s gate now. The general noise of the city had heightened. A crowd clamored outside the gate. Her skin crawled.

Then a single, musical voice rose above the shouting. It silenced the mob. Controlled it.

A voice she knew. Vasya felt the greatest shock of fear she’d ever known. Her breath came short; her skin broke out in a clammy dew of sweat. Only Olga’s merciless hand on her arm recalled her.

“Don’t you dare faint,” said Olga. “You say you can make yourself unseen. Will he be able to see you? He is a holy man. And he wished you dead, once.”

Vasya tried to think around the fear beating like wings in her skull. Konstantin wasn’t a holy man, but—he could see chyerti now. The Bear had given him that power. Could he see her? “I don’t know,” she admitted.

They were rolling to a stop. Vasya thought she would choke if she could not get a breath of fresh air.

Konstantin’s voice spoke again, cool and measured, just outside. She had to clench her teeth and her fists to keep from making a sound. Her whole body shook.

Now there came the sounds of a crowd that was parting, grudgingly, to let them through. Olga sat still on her woolen cushion, seemingly unruffled. But her eye fell with some concern on Vasya, gray-faced and sweating.

Vasya managed to speak between her clenched teeth. “I’m all right, Olya. Just—remembering.”

“I know,” said Olga, and drew a deep breath. “All right,” she said firmly. “Follow my lead.” There was no time for more. The gate creaked, and then they were in the dooryard of the Grand Prince of Moscow.

THE EVENING SUN WAS SLANTING, and Olga was blinding in a jeweled headdress, her long hair plaited up with silk, hung with silver ornaments. She got out first. Vasya, holding on to her courage as hard as she could, stepped out in her wake. Olga at once seized her sister’s arm, ostensibly for support. But it was the Princess of Serpukhov in control; she was dragging Vasya toward the steps of the terem, holding her up when she faltered.

“Don’t look back,” Olga muttered. “He will come back through the gate in a moment. But the terem is safe. Wait a little, then I will send you out on an errand; keep out of sight and you’ll be all right.”

That sounded like sense. But a glance at the sun showed it slanting ever farther. They had an hour at most, and Vasya found her mind so crowded with fear and fearful memory that she could hardly think.

There was the new stable, built over the ruin of the old. Now they were on the terem-steps, which Vasya had last climbed in darkness to rescue Marya. Somewhere at her back was Konstantin Nikonovich, who had nearly killed her in the cruelest way possible. And now he had the king of chaos for his ally.

Where was Morozko now? Where were Sasha and Sergei? How—?

Olga hurried them on, regal. They climbed the steps, were admitted. Vasya, fighting for self-control, felt relief for once when the terem-door was shut behind them. But now they were in the workroom that Kaschei had filled with illusions, where he had almost killed Marya and her—

Vasya’s gulp of air was almost a sob, and Olga shot her a stern look—don’t you dare break now, sister—just as Eudokhia Dmitreeva, Grand Princess of Moscow, seized upon Olga with delight. Kept in their airless rooms, Eudokhia and her women were desperate for any diversion.

Vasya crept off to stand against the wall with the other servants. She could barely draw a full breath around the grip of fear on her lungs. In a moment, Olga would judge it safe and…

The door of the terem opened. Vasya froze.

Konstantin’s golden hair gleamed in the dimness. His face was serene as ever, but his gaze was puzzled, wary.

Vasya pressed herself into the shadows near the wall, just as Olga glanced up, caught sight of Konstantin, and at once swooned with perfect accuracy and startling skill. She fell directly onto a table of sweetmeats and wine, sending everything flying up in a great sticky wash.

If Sasha’s theatrics at the gate had been a little stilted, everyone was taken in by Olga’s diversion. Immediately the women flocked; even Konstantin, at the doorway, took a few steps into the room. There was just enough room for Vasya to get around him.

He can’t see you. Believe it, believe it…

She ran for the door.

But he could see her. She heard his indrawn breath, and turned her head.

Their eyes met.

A mingling of shock and horror and rage and fear crossed his face. Her legs shook, her stomach was full of acid. In an instant like a lightning-strike, they both stood frozen, staring at each other.

Then she turned and ran. It wasn’t anything so noble as running to find the bridle, to put an end to all this. No, she was fleeing for her life.

Behind her, she heard the terem-door slam open, heard his rich voice raised, shouting. But she’d already ducked into the nearest door, passed a room full of weavers like a wraith, gone back outside again, descending. All the quivering panic of the last hours had broken open; all she wanted to do was run.

She slipped through another doorway, found the room empty, and with a wrench of desperate effort, paused and forced herself to think.

The bridle. She must get the bridle. Before dusk. If she could only keep everyone safe until midnight, perhaps the Midnight-road could save them. Perhaps.

Or perhaps she’d die, screaming.

Voices sounded just outside the outer door. There was a second door, leading farther into Dmitrii’s palace; she fled through. The place was a warren. Low-ceilinged, dim rooms, many of them full of goods: skins and barrels of flour and silk-figured carpets. Other rooms housed workshops for weaving and carpentry, the souter, the bootmaker.

Vasya, still running, came to a room full of bales of wool and hid herself behind the biggest. Kneeling, she drew her little belt-knife and, with shaking fingers, cut her hand, and turned her palm so that the drops pattered onto the floor.

“Master,” she said to the air, in a voice that cracked, “will you help me? I mean this house no harm.”

Below her, in the dooryard, Vasya heard curses, the shouts of men, the screams of women. A servant came running through the room of bales. “They are saying there is someone in the palace.”

“A witch!”

“A ghost!”

Dmitrii’s faded domovoi stepped out from behind one of the bales of wool. He whispered, “You are in danger here. The priest will kill you for hatred, and the Bear to spite his brother.”

“I don’t care what happens to me,” said Vasya, her bravado belied by her shallow-breathed voice, “so long as my sister and brother live. Where is the treasure-room?”

“Follow me,” said the domovoi, and Vasya drew a deep breath and followed. She was grateful suddenly for every scrap of bread she’d ever given a household-spirit, for now all those homely tributes, bread and blood, quickened the domovoi’s feet, as he led her deep into the mad jumble of Dmitrii’s palace.

Down, and down again, to an earth-smelling passage and a great, iron-bound door. Vasya thought of caves and traps. She was still breathing faster than the exertion called for.

“Here,” said the domovoi. “Hurry.” Next moment, Vasya heard the sound of heavy feet, tramping. Shadows moved on the walls; she had only a moment.

Seized again by terror, she forgot she could be invisible; she forgot to ask the domovoi to open the door. Instead she lurched forward, driven by the sound of feet above, and put a hand on the treasure-room door. Reality twisted; the door gave. With a gasp, she tumbled inside and scrambled into a corner behind some bronze-chased shields.

Voices sounded in the corridor.

“I heard something.”

“You imagined it.”

A pause.

“The door is ajar.”

A creak as the door swung open. A heavy step. “There is no one here.”

“What fool left the door unlocked?”

“A thief?”

“Search the room.”

After all this? Were they to find her so, drag her up into Moscow, where Konstantin would be waiting?

No. No they would not.

A crack of thunder sounded suddenly outside, as though to give voice to her panic and her courage both. The palace shook. There came a sudden roar of rain.

The men’s torches went out. She heard them swearing.

Her hands trembled. The sounds of storm, the darkness all around, the great door opening at her touch, were like three pieces of a nightmare. Reality was shifting too fast to understand.

The men’s shock at the noise and unexpected darkness had won her a reprieve, but that was all. They would relight their torches. They would search, and find her. Could she make herself invisible this time? When they were searching for her in this small room?

She wasn’t sure. So instead Vasya clenched her fists and thought of Morozko. She thought of the sleep like death that the winter-king held in his hands. Sleep. The men would go to sleep. If she could only forget they were awake.

She did. And they did. They crumpled to the packed-dirt floor of the treasure-room. Their cries died away.

Morozko was there, between one blink and the next. She hadn’t put the men to sleep. He had. He was there, himself, real, in the treasure-room with her.

Now the winter-king was turning pale eyes on her. She stared. It was really him. Pulled to her, somehow, as she remembered his power. As though drawing him to her was easier than calling down sleep herself.

Summoned. She’d summoned the winter-king like a stray spirit.

They both realized it at the same time. The shock in his face mirrored the feeling in hers.

For an instant, they were silent.

Then he spoke. “A thunderstorm, Vasya?” he said, with effort.

Speaking between dry lips, she whispered, “It wasn’t me. It just happened.”

Morozko shook his head. “No it didn’t just happen. And now, with the rain, it is dark enough outside. He need no longer delay. Fool, I cannot keep him distracted from a cellar!” Morozko wasn’t wounded, but he looked—battered—in a way she could not define, and his eyes were wild. He looked as though he’d been fighting. He probably had been, until she pulled him away, unknowing.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, her voice small. “I was so frightened.” Reality was rippling around her like cloth in a high wind. She wasn’t sure if he was really there or if she’d just imagined him. “I am so frightened…”

Without thinking she cupped her palms and found them suddenly full of blue flames, and she could see his face properly. Fire in her hands…It didn’t burn her. She was on the edge of mad laughter, as blind terror mingled with newfound power. “Konstantin saw me,” she said. “I ran. I was so afraid; I couldn’t stop remembering. So I called a thunderstorm. And now you’re here. Two devils and two people—” She knew she wasn’t making sense. “Where is the bridle?” She cast around, gripping the fire in her two hands as though it were an ordinary lamp.

“Vasya,” said Morozko. “Enough magic. Let it go. Enough for one day. You will bend your mind until it breaks.”

“It is not my mind bending,” she said, lifting up the fire between them. “You are here, aren’t you? It is everything else. It is the whole world bending.” She was shaking; the flames jerked back and forth.

“There is no difference between the world without and the world within,” said the winter-king. “Close your hands. Let go.” He shoved the locked door farther open to give them a little light from the passageway. Then he turned back to her, put his hands around hers, folded her fingers around the flames. They vanished, swift as they had come. “Vasya, my brother’s very presence stirs up fear, and in its wake, he brings madness. You must—”

She hardly heard him. Shaking, she looked all around her for the golden bridle. Where was Olga? What had Konstantin done? What was he doing now? She broke away from Morozko, knelt beside a great iron-bound chest. When she pushed the lid, it gave. Of course it did. There were no locks in a nightmare. This was a dream; she could do what she liked. Was she truly in a cellar, a fugitive, back in Moscow, had she summoned a death-god?

“Enough,” said Morozko from behind her. “You will drive yourself mad with impossibilities.” His cool, insubstantial hands fell on her shoulders. “Vasya listen, listen, listen to me.”

Still she didn’t hear him; she was staring at the contents of the chest, hardly noticing the shaking of her hands.

This time, he lifted her up bodily, turned her, saw her face.

He whispered something harsh under his breath and said, “Tell me things that are true. Tell me.”

She stared at him blindly and said, beginning to laugh hysterically, “Nothing is real. Midnight is a place and there is a storm outside from a clear evening and you were not here and now you are and I am so frightened—”

Grimly, he said, “Your name is Vasilisa Petrovna. Your father was a country lord named Pyotr Vladimirovich. As a child you stole honey-cakes—no, look at me.” He lifted her face forcibly to his, kept on with his strange litany. Telling her true things. Not part of the nightmare.

Mercilessly he went on, “And then your horse was killed by the mob.”

She jerked in his grip, denying the truth of it. Perhaps, she thought suddenly, she could make it so that Solovey had never died, here in this nightmare where anything was possible. But he shook her, lifted her chin so that she had to meet his eyes again, spoke into her ear, the voice of winter in this airless cellar, reminding her of her joys and her mistakes, her loves and her flaws, until she found herself back in her own skin, shaken but able to think.

She realized how close she had come, in that dark treasure-room, with reality collapsing like a rotten tree, to going mad. Realized, too, what had happened to Kaschei, how he had become a monster.

“Mother of God,” she breathed. “Ded Grib—he said that magic makes men mad. But I didn’t really understand…”

Morozko’s eyes searched hers, and then some indefinable tension seemed to go out of him. “Why do you think so few people do magic?” he asked, getting hold of himself, stepping back. She could still feel the impress of his fingers, realized how hard he had been gripping her. As hard as she’d held him.

“Chyerti do,” she said.

“Chyerti do tricks,” he said. “Men and women are far stronger.” He paused. “Or they go mad.” He knelt beside the chest she had opened. “And it is easier to fall prey to fear and madness, when the Bear is abroad.”

She drew a deep breath, and knelt beside him before the open chest. In it lay the golden bridle.

Twice before she had seen it, once in daylight on Pozhar’s head and once again in a dark stable, where the gold paled to nothing beside the mare’s brilliance. But this time it lay on a fine cushion, glimmering with an unpleasant sheen.

Morozko took the thing in his hands, so that the pieces of it spilled like water across his fingers. “No chyert could have made this,” he said, turning it over. “I do not know how Kaschei did it.” He sounded torn between admiration and horror. “But it would, I think, bind anything it was put on, flesh or spirit.”

She reached down flinching hands. The gold was heavy, supple, the bit a horrible, spiked thing. Vasya shuddered in sympathy, thinking of the scars on Pozhar’s face. Hastily she undid the straps and buckles, reins and headstall, so that she was left with two golden ropes. The bit she flung to the floor. The other pieces lay in her hands like quiescent snakes. “Can you use these?” she asked, offering them to Morozko.

He put a hand to the gold, hesitated. “No,” he said. “It is a magic made by mortals, and for them.”

“All right,” said Vasya. She wound the golden ropes one about each wrist, making sure she could snap them loose quickly, at need. “Then let’s go find him.”

Outside there came another crack of thunder.

23. Faith and Fear

KONSTANTIN FINISHED QUIETING THE CROWD at the Grand Prince of Moscow’s gates. The Princess of Serpukhov’s carriage was being unharnessed; the woman herself had already disappeared, with her attendant, up the terem-steps.

One day, Konstantin thought grimly, he wasn’t going to soothe the people of Moscow anymore but rouse them to savagery once again. He remembered the power of that night: all those thousands receptive to his softest word.

He craved that power.

Soon the devil had promised. Soon. But now he must go back to the Grand Prince, and make sure that Dmitrii gave no hearing to Aleksandr Peresvet.

He turned to cross the dooryard, and saw a little, wispy creature blocking his way.

“Poor dupe,” said Olga’s dvorovoi.

Konstantin ignored him, lips set thin, and strode across the dooryard.

“He lied to you, you know. She’s not dead.”

Despite himself, Konstantin’s steps slowed; he turned his head. “She?”

“She,” said the dvorovoi. “Go into the terem now, and see for yourself. The Bear betrays all who follow him.”

“He wouldn’t betray me,” said Konstantin, eyeing the dvorovoi with disgust. “He needs me.”

“See for yourself,” whispered the dvorovoi again. “And remember—you are stronger than he.”

“I am only a man; he is a demon.”

“And subject to your blood,” whispered the dvorovoi. “When the time comes, remember that.” With a slow smile, he pointed up the terem-steps.

Konstantin hesitated. But then he turned toward the terem.

He hardly knew what he said to the attendant. But it must have worked, for he stepped through the door, and stood a moment, blinking in the dimness. The Princess of Serpukhov, without once glancing his way, swooned. Konstantin felt an instant’s disgust. Only a woman, come to visit her fellows.

Then a servant ran for the door, and he recognized her.

Vasilisa Petrovna.

She was alive.

For a long, electric moment he stared. A scar on her face, her black hair cropped short, but it was her.

Then she bolted and he shouted, hardly knowing what he said. He followed her, blindly, casting around to see where she’d gone—only to see the Bear in the dooryard.

Medved was dragging a man in his wake. Or—not a man. Another devil. The second devil had colorless, watchful eyes, and was strangely familiar. The edges of him seemed to bleed into the shadows of the failing day.

“She is here,” said Konstantin raggedly to the Bear. “Vasilisa Petrovna.”

For an instant it seemed the second devil smiled. The Bear spun and struck him across the face. “What are you planning, brother?” he said. “I see it in your eyes. There is something. Why have you let her come back here? What is she doing?”

The devil said nothing. The Bear turned back to Konstantin. “Summon men; go and get her, man of God.”

Konstantin didn’t move. “You knew,” he said. “You knew she was alive. You lied.”

“I knew,” said the devil, impatient. “But what difference does it make? She’s going to die now. We’ll both make sure of it.”

Konstantin had no words. Vasya had lived. She’d beaten him after all. Even his own monster had been on her side. Had kept her secret. Could it be that everyone was against him? Not only God, but the devil too? What had it all been for: the suffering and the dead, the glory and the ashes, the heat and the shame of that summer?

The Bear had filled the gaping hole of his faith with his sheer electrifying presence, and Konstantin had come, as though despite himself, to believe in something new. Not in faith, but in the reality of power. In his alliance with his monster.

Now the belief shattered at his feet.

“You lied to me,” he said again.

“I do lie,” said the Bear, but he was frowning now.

The second devil raised his head and looked between them. “I could have warned you, brother,” he said, his voice dry and exhausted. “Against lying.”

In that moment two things happened.

The second devil suddenly disappeared, as though he’d never been there at all. The Bear was left gaping at his empty hand.

And Konstantin, rather than go out and join the palace guard in searching for Vasya, plunged back into the terem without a sound, his soul aflame with desperate purpose.

THE WILD-EYED DOMOVOI MET Vasya and Morozko just outside the treasure-room. Vasya said, “What is happening?”

“It is dark now; the Bear is going to let them in!” cried the domovoi, every hair standing on end. “The dvorovoi can’t hold the gates, and I don’t think I can keep the house.”

Another crack of thunder sounded. “My brother is done with subtleties,” said Morozko.

“Come on,” said Vasya.

They burst out of the palace, onto a landing, and looked down at a landscape transformed. It was raining, hard and steadily, lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. The dooryard was swimming in mud already, but in the center was a knot of men, strangely still.

Guards, Vasya saw, squinting through the rain. Olga’s guards, and Dmitrii’s, standing bewildered.

The knot of them broke apart. Vasya glimpsed Konstantin Nikonovich, his golden head rain-wet in the middle of the dooryard.

He was holding her sister Olga by the arm.

He had a knife to the princess’s throat.

His beautiful voice was shouting Vasya’s name.

The guards, Vasya could see, were torn between fear for the princess and bewildered submission to the holy madman. They stood still; if any remonstrated with Konstantin it was lost in the noise of falling water. If a guard moved nearer, Konstantin backed up, holding the knife right against Olga’s throat.

“Come out!” he roared. “Witch! Come out or I’ll kill her.”

Vasya’s first, overwhelming instinct was to sprint down to her sister, but she forced herself to pause and think. Would revealing herself win Olga any respite? Perhaps, if Olga disavowed her. Yet Vasya hesitated. The Bear was standing behind the priest. But Medved wasn’t really watching Konstantin. His gaze was turned out into the rain-soaked darkness. “Calling the dead,” said Morozko, his eyes on his brother. “You must get your sister out of the dooryard.”

That settled it. “Come with me,” she said, gathered her courage and stepped bareheaded out into the rain. The guards might not have recognized her in the stormy dusk: a girl who was supposed to be dead. But Konstantin’s eyes locked on her the instant she stepped into the dooryard and he fell utterly silent, watching her come toward him.

First one guard’s head turned, then another. She heard their voices: “Is that—?”

“No, it can’t be.”

“It is. The holy father knew.”

“A ghost?”

“A woman.”

“A witch.”

Now their drawn weapons were turning toward her. But she ignored them. The Bear, the priest, her sister—those were the only things she could see.

Such a current of rage and bitter memory ran between her and Konstantin that even the guards must have felt it, for they made a path for her. But they closed ranks again at her back, swords in their hands.

Stark in Vasya’s mind was the last time she’d faced Konstantin Nikonovich. Her horse’s blood lay between them, and her own life.

Now it was Olga who was caught up in their hatred; Vasya thought of a cage of fire, and she was deathly afraid.

But her voice didn’t shake.

“I am here,” said Vasya. “Let my sister go.”

KONSTANTIN DIDN’T SPEAK IMMEDIATELY. The Bear did. Was it her imagination or did his face show an instant of unease? “Still in your right mind?” the Bear said to Vasya. “A pity. Well met again, brother,” he added to Morozko. “What magic pulled you from my grip before—?” He broke off, looking between Vasya and the winter-king.

“Ah,” he said, softly. “Stronger than I would have guessed: her power and your bond both. Well it is no matter. Hoping to be beaten again?”

Morozko made no answer at all. His eyes were on the gate as though he could see beyond the bronze-studded wood. “Hurry, Vasya,” he said.

“You can’t stop it,” said Medved.

Konstantin flinched at the sound of the Bear’s voice. His knife was fraying the cloth of the veil about Olga’s face. As though she were speaking to a frightened horse, Vasya said to Konstantin, “What do you want, Batyushka?”

Konstantin didn’t answer; she could see he didn’t really know. All his prayers had earned him only silence from God. Yielding up his soul to the Bear had won him neither that creature’s honesty nor his loyalty. In the stinging grip of his own self-hatred, he wanted to hurt her by any means, and had not thought beyond.

His hands shook. Only Olga’s headdress and veil were keeping her from being cut by accident. The Bear cast a benign eye over the scene, drinking up the raw emotion of it, but most of his attention was still on the world outside Dmitrii’s walls.

Olga was white to the lips but dignified still. Her eyes met Vasya’s without a tremor. With trust.

Vasya said to Konstantin, showing him her open palms, “I will yield myself up to you, Batyushka. But you must let my sister go up into the terem, let her go back to the women.”

“Trick me, witch?” Konstantin’s voice had lost none of its beauty, but the control was gone; it boomed and cracked. “You yielded to the fire too; but it was all a trick. Am I to be taken in again? You and your devils. Bind her hands,” he added to the guard. “Bind her hands and feet. I will keep her in a chapel where devils cannot get in uninvited, and she cannot trick me again.”

The guards stirred uneasily, but none of them made a decisive movement forward.

“Now!” screamed Konstantin, stamping his foot. “Lest her devils come for us all!” His glance went with horror from Morozko at Vasya’s shoulder, to the Bear at his own side, to the house-chyerti gathered in the yard, watching—

Not watching the drama in the dooryard. Watching the gate. Despite the rain, Vasya caught a whiff of rot. A little curl of triumph was playing about the Bear’s lips. There was no time. She must get Olya away…

A new voice fell into the tense silence. “Holy Father, what is this?”

Dmitrii Ivanovich strode into the dooryard. Attendants scurried, disregarded, at his back; his long yellow hair was dark with water, curling up under his cap. The guards parted to let the Grand Prince through. He halted in the center of the ring, looked directly at Vasya. In his face was wonder. But not, Vasya noted, surprise. She met Dmitrii’s eyes with sudden hope.

“See?” snapped Konstantin, not slacking his grip on Olga. He had regained some control of his voice; the word snapped out like a fist. “There is the witch that set fire to Moscow. She was, we thought, justly punished. But through black magic, here she stands.” This time the guards growled agreement. A dozen blades were pointed at Vasya’s breast.

“Hold them a few moments longer,” said the Bear to Konstantin. “And we will have victory.”

A spasm of rage crossed Konstantin’s face.

“Vasya, tell Dmitrii you must pull back,” said Morozko. “There is no time.”

“Dmitrii Ivanovich, we must get into the palace,” said Vasya. “Now.”

“A witch indeed,” said Dmitrii coldly to Vasya. “Back to the fire you will go, I will stake my reign on it. We do not suffer witches to live. Holy Father,” he said to Konstantin. “Please. Both these women will face the harshest justice. But it must be justice before all the people, not in the mud of the dooryard.”

Konstantin hesitated.

The Bear snarled suddenly. “Lies; he is lying. He knows. The monk told him.”

The gate shook. Screams sounded from the city. Thunder flashed in the streaming heavens. “Back!” snapped Morozko suddenly. This time the men heard him. Heads turned uneasily, wondering who had spoken. There was horror in his face. “Back now behind walls or you’ll all be dead by moonrise.”

There was a smell riding the wind that lifted every hair on her body. More screams came from the city. In a flash of lightning, the dvorovoi could be seen now with both hands against the shaking gate. “Batyushka, I beg you,” she said to Konstantin, and threw herself in supplication in the mud at his feet.

The priest’s eyes followed her down, just for a moment, but it was enough. Dmitrii leaped for Olga, dragged her away from the priest just as the gate flew open. Konstantin’s knife caught in Olga’s veil, tore it away from her chin on one side, but Olga was unwounded, and Vasya was on her feet once more and scrambling back.

The dead came into the dooryard of the Grand Prince of Moscow.

THE PLAGUE HAD NOT been as bad as it could have been, that summer. Not as bad as ten years before; it only sputtered among the poor of Moscow like tinder that refused to catch completely.

But the dead had died in fear and those were the ones the Bear could use. Now the result of the summer’s work came through the gate. Some wore their grave-clothes, some were naked, their bodies marked with the blackened swellings that had killed them. Worst of all, in their eyes was still that fear. They were still afraid, seeking in the darkness for anything familiar.

One of Dmitrii’s guards cried out, staring, “Holy Father, save us!”

Konstantin made not a sound; he was standing frozen, the knife still in his hand. Vasya wanted to kill him, as she’d never wanted to kill anyone in her life. She wanted to bury that knife in his heart.

But there was no time. Her family meant more than her own sorrow.

Faced with Konstantin’s silence, the guards were backing up, their nerve wavering. Dmitrii was still supporting Olga; unexpectedly he spoke to Vasya, his voice clear and calm. “Can those things be slain like men, Vasya?”

Vasya spoke Morozko’s answer, as he said it into her ear. “No. Fire will slow them, and injury, but that is all.”

Dmitrii shot the sky an irritated glance. It was still pouring rain. “Not fire. Injury then,” he said and raised his voice to call concise orders.

Dmitrii had not Konstantin’s control, the liquid beauty of tone, but his voice was loud and brisk, even cheerful, encouraging his men. Suddenly they were no longer a knot of frightened men, backing away from something horrible. Suddenly they were warriors, massed to face a foe.

Just in time. Their blades steadied just as the dead things ran for them, openmouthed. More and more dead things were coming through the gate. A dozen—more.

“Morozko!” Vasya snapped. “Can you—?”

“I can put them down if I touch them,” he said. “But I cannot command them all.”

“We have to get into the palace,” Vasya said. She was supporting Olga now; her sister, used to the smooth floors of her own terem, was clumsy in the sloppy dooryard. Dmitrii had gone forward with his men and Olga’s; they had formed a hollow square, bristling with weapons, about the women, all of them backing up together toward the door of the palace.

Konstantin stood still in the rain, as though frozen. The Bear stood beside him, eyes alight, shouting his army on, joyful.

The first upyry collided with Dmitrii’s guards. A man screamed. Konstantin flinched. Little more than a boy, the man was already on the ground, his throat torn away.

Morozko’s touch was gentle, but his face was savage as he sent that upyr back down into death, whipped round to do the same to two others.

Vasya knew that she and Olga weren’t going to reach the door. More and more upyry were flowing into the lightning-lit dooryard. The guards’ hollow square was surrounded, and only their frail bodies stood between Olga and…

They had to bind the Bear. They had to.

Vasya squeezed her sister’s hand. “I have to help them, Olya,” she said.

“I’ll be all right,” said Olga firmly. “God go with you.” Her hands clasped in prayer.

Vasya let go her sister’s hand and came up beside Dmitrii Ivanovich, in line with his men.

The men were holding the dead things off with spears, looks of sick terror on their faces, but Dmitrii had to step forward to behead one, and another ran up, taking advantage of the break in the line.

Vasya shut her fists and forgot that the dead thing was not burning.

The creature caught like a torch, then another, a third. They didn’t burn long; the rain put out the fire and the dead things were still coming, blackened and moaning.

But Dmitrii saw. As the nearest dead thing caught fire, his sword sheared through water and flame, glittering, and cut off the thing’s head.

He shot Vasya a grin of unfeigned delight. There was blood on his cheek. “I knew you had unclean powers,” he said.

“Be grateful, cousin,” Vasya retorted.

“Oh, I am,” said the Grand Prince of Moscow, and his smile put heart in her, despite the drenching rain, the dooryard packed with nightmarish things. He surveyed the dooryard. “But I hope you have better than little fires—cousin.”

She found herself smiling at the acknowledged kinship, even as Dmitrii buried his sword in another upyr, leaping back to the protection of his men’s spears at the last moment. She set three more alight, horribly, only for the rain to douse them again. The dead things were wary now of the men’s blades, and deathly afraid of Morozko’s hands. But the death-god was only a wraith in the rain, a black shape remote and terrible, and already six living men were down, not moving.

The Bear had grown gigantic, fatted with summer’s heat, with sickness and suffering, and to Vasya his voice seemed louder than the thunder, urging his army on. Medved did not look like a man anymore; he wore the shape of a bear, shoulders broad enough to blot out the stars.

Dmitrii put his sword through another one, but it stuck. He refused to relinquish it, and Vasya dragged him back to the safety of the square of guards just in time. The square had shrunk.

“You are both bleeding,” said Olga, only a slight tremor in her voice, and Vasya, glancing down, saw that she was; her arm was grazed, and Dmitrii’s cheek.

“Never fear, Olga Vladimirova,” said Dmitrii to her. He was smiling still, bright and calm, and Vasya understood anew why her brother gave this man such loyalty.

From the ring of guards, a man screamed, and Morozko leaped, too late to save him. The Bear laughed even as Morozko flung the dead thing down. Still more were coming into the dooryard.

“Where is Sasha now?” Vasya demanded of Dmitrii.

“Gone to the monastery for Sergei, of course,” said the Grand Prince. “I sent him as soon as the priest went mad. A good thing too. Yon’s the work of holy men, not warriors; we’re going to die if we don’t get help.” He said this quite matter-of-factly: a general weighing his force’s chances. But then his narrow-eyed gaze found Konstantin, who was standing motionless beside the Bear’s hulking shadow. There was death in it. The dead took no notice of the priest.

“I knew the priest was up to something, the way he harped on my cousin’s wickedness,” said Dmitrii. He took off another dead thing’s head, speaking in grunts. “I had Sasha thrown in prison just to draw Konstantin out. When I went down to see him, Sasha told me everything. In the nick of time too. I thought the priest a bit of a charlatan. But I never would have thought—”

To Dmitrii, it looked as though Konstantin were doing it all himself, controlling the dead. He couldn’t see the Bear. Vasya knew better. She could see Konstantin’s face tormented in the flashes of lightning; she could see the Bear’s too, ferocious, joyful, indomitable.

Vasya said, “I must get to Konstantin. He is standing beside the devil that is causing all this. But I cannot cross the dooryard alive.”

Dmitrii pursed his lips. But he did not speak. After a brief pause, he nodded once, turned and began giving his men crisp orders.

“YOU HAVE NO POWER over the dead,” whispered the voice of the dvorovoi in Konstantin’s ear. Konstantin barely flinched at the sound, so lost was he in horror. “But you have power over him.”

Slowly, Konstantin turned. “Do I?”

“Your blood,” said the dvorovoi, “will bind the devil. You are not powerless.”

VASYA’S NOSE WAS FULL of the smell of earth and rot and dried blood. The air was full of hissing rain and shuffling footsteps. The whole scene was illuminated luridly by a flash of lightning. She could hear Olga, still protected by the ring of men, praying softly and continuously.

There was a terrible blaze of blue-white light in Morozko’s face, his hair plastered to his skull with the rain; he did not look human. She could see the stars of the forest beyond life reflected in his eyes. She seized his arm, as he passed near the ring of men. He rounded on her. For a moment, the full weight of his strange power, his endless years, looked out at her from his gaze. Then a little humanity bled back into his face.

“We have to get to the Bear,” said Vasya.

He nodded; she wasn’t sure he could speak.

Dmitrii was still giving orders. To Vasya he said, “I am splitting the men in two. Half will stay with the princess. The other half will form a wedge, and cut across the dooryard. Do what you can to help us.”

Dmitrii finished giving orders, and the men immediately split. Olga was surrounded by a shrunken ring, pushing back toward the door of the palace.

The rest made a wedge and drove forward, shouting, toward the Bear and Konstantin, through the packed mass of dead.

Vasya ran with them, and a dozen upyry bloomed into flame on either side. Morozko’s swift hand caught the dead by wrist and throat, banishing them.

There were so many. Their progress slowed, but still they came nearer the Bear. Nearer. Now the men were faltering. In their faces was sick fright. Even Dmitrii looked suddenly afraid.

The Bear was doing it; he grinned. As the men wavered, the upyry drove forward with renewed strength. One of Dmitrii’s men fell, his throat torn away, and then another. A third shrieked with horror as sharp teeth sank into his wrist.

Vasya set her jaw. The fear buffeted her, too, but it wasn’t real. She knew that. It was the Bear’s trick. She loosed the fire from her soul again, and this time it flared from the Bear’s streaming coat.

Medved turned his head, snapping, and the fire instantly died. But she had used his moment of inattention. While Morozko kept the dead things off her, she threw herself across the last few steps, unwound the golden rope from her wrist and flung it over his head.

The Bear dodged, somehow. He dodged the links as they flew. Laughing, he lunged, jaws open, to snatch at Morozko. Though the frost-demon ducked, Vasya didn’t have time for another try, for the movement had pulled Morozko from the side and the dead things had closed round her. “Vasya!” Morozko shouted. A slimy hand caught at her hair; she didn’t bother to look before she set the creature afire. It fell back, howling. But there were so many. Dmitrii’s wedge had splintered; men were fighting individual battles all over the dooryard. The Bear was keeping Morozko from her, and the dead were closing in once more…

A new voice sounded from the direction of the gate. Not a chyert or a dead thing.

It was her brother standing there, sword in hand. Beside him stood his master, Sergei Radonezhsky. They both looked disheveled, as though they’d had a hard ride through dangerous streets. The rain ran down Sasha’s drawn sword.

Sergei lifted his hand and made the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father,” he said.

Astonishingly, the dead things froze. Even the Bear stilled at the sound of that voice. Somewhere in the dark, a bell began to ring.

A touch of fear showed even in the winter-king’s eyes.

The lightning flashed again, illuminating Konstantin’s face, which had gone slack with horrified wonder. Vasya thought, He believed there was nothing more in this world than devils and his own will.

Sergei’s praying was quiet, measured. But his voice cut through the hammering rain, and every word echoed clearly around the dooryard.

The dead still didn’t move.

“Be at peace,” finished Sergei. “Do not trouble the living world again.”

And, impossibly, all the dead crumpled to earth.

Morozko breathed out a single, shattered breath.

Vasya saw the Bear’s face contorted with rage. He had underestimated men’s faith, and just like that, his army was gone. But Medved himself was still unbound, still free. Now he would flee, into the night, into the storm.

“Morozko,” she said. “Quickly—”

But the lightning flashed again, showed them Konstantin, his golden hair rain-dark, standing before the hulking shadow of the Bear. A gust brought the priest’s carrying voice clearly to her ears. “You lied about that too, then,” said Konstantin, his voice small but clear. “You said there was no God. But the holy father prayed and—”

“There isn’t a God,” Vasya heard the Bear say. “There is only faith.”

“What is the difference?”

“I don’t know. Come, we must go.”

“Devil, you lied. You lied again.” A break in that flawless voice, a croak like an old man coughing. “God was there—there all the time.”

“Perhaps,” said the Bear. “And perhaps not. The truth is that no one knows, man or devil. Come with me now. They will kill you if you stay.”

Konstantin’s eyes were steady on the Bear’s. “No,” he said. “They won’t.” He raised a blade. “Go back to wherever you crept from,” he said. “I have one power. The devils told me this too, and once I was also a man of God.”

The Bear’s clawed hand shot out. But the priest was faster. Konstantin drew the knife swiftly across his own throat.

The Bear caught the knife, wrenched it away. Too late. Neither one made a sound. The lightning flashed again. Vasya saw the Bear’s face, saw him catch Konstantin as he fell, put hands—human hands now—to the blood pouring through the split skin of the priest’s throat.

Vasya stepped forward and whipped the rope round the Bear’s neck, drew it tight.

He didn’t dodge this time. He couldn’t, caught already by the priest’s sacrifice. Instead he just shuddered, head bowed beneath the rope’s power.

Vasya wrapped the other golden thing about his wrists. He didn’t move.

She should have felt triumph then.

It was over, and they had won.

But when the Bear lifted his eyes to hers, there was no longer any rage in his face. Instead his eyes looked beyond her, found his twin. “Please,” he said.

Please? Please have mercy? Set me free once more? Somehow, Vasya didn’t think so. She didn’t understand.

The Bear’s eyes went again to the priest dying in the mud; he barely seemed to notice the golden rope.

Triumph in Morozko’s voice, and a strange note, like unwilling understanding. “You know I won’t.”

The Bear’s mouth twisted. It wasn’t a smile. “I know you won’t,” he said. “I had to try.”

The gold and blue head was dark with rain, pale with death. Konstantin’s hand rose, streaming blood in the darkness. The Bear said, “Let me touch him, damn you,” to Vasya, and she stepped back bewildered, allowing the Bear to kneel and catch the priest’s wavering hand. He closed his own thick fingers tight around it, ignoring the bound wrists. “You are a fool, man of God,” he said. “You never understood.”

Konstantin said, in a blood-filled whisper, “I never understood what?”

“That I do keep faith, in my own fashion,” said the Bear. A twist of his lips. “I did love your hands.”

The artist’s hand, with its expressive fingers and cruel, tapering nails, was limp as a dead bird in the chyert’s grip. In Konstantin’s eyes, already milky, fixed on the Bear, was an expression of puzzlement. “You are a devil,” he said again, gasping for air as the blood left his body. “I don’t—aren’t you vanquished?”

“I am vanquished, man of God.”

Konstantin stared, but Vasya could not tell what he was looking at. Perhaps he was seeing the face above him: a creature he loved and reviled as he loved and reviled himself.

Perhaps he was only seeing a starlit wood, and a road that had no turning.

Perhaps there was peace for him, there at the end.

Perhaps there was only silence.

The Bear lowered Konstantin’s head to the mud, the hair golden no more, but dark with blood and water. Vasya realized she had her hand pressed to her mouth. The wicked were not supposed to mourn, or to regret, or to have seen their silent God at last, in the steadfastness of another’s faith.

Slowly, the Bear unclenched his hand from the priest’s, slowly he stood. The golden rope seemed to weigh him down, shining its sickly gleam. Still wrapped in golden cord, the Bear’s hands closed tightly about the winter-king’s. “Brother, lead the priest gently,” he said. “He is yours now, and not mine.” His eyes went back to the crumpled form in the mud.

“Neither of ours, in the end,” said Morozko. Vasya found her hands moving to cross herself, almost without being aware of it.

Konstantin’s open eyes were full of rainwater, spilling over, sliding down his temples like tears. “Your victory,” the Bear said to Vasya and bowed, sweeping a gesture over the field of the dead. His voice was colder than she’d ever heard Morozko’s. “I wish you joy of it.”

She said nothing.

“You have seen our end in that man’s prayers,” said the Bear. His chin jerked toward Sergei. “Brother, you and I will stay locked in our endless war, even as we fade into ash and frost, and the world is changed. There is no hope now for the chyerti.”

“We are going to share this world,” Vasya said. “There will be room for all of us: men and devils and bells too.”

The Bear only laughed softly at her. “Shall we go, my twin?”

Morozko, without a word, swept out a hand, caught the gold binding the other’s wrists. An icy wind leaped up and the two faded into the darkness.

THE WATER WAS SLUICING down Dmitrii’s hair, his bloody sword-arm. He crossed the dooryard with a heavy step, pushing his rain-drenched hair out of his eyes. “I am glad you are not dead,” he said to Vasya. “Cousin.”

She said wryly, “I, too.”

Dmitrii spoke to Vasya and her brother both. “Take the Princess of Serpukhov home,” he said. “And then—come back, both of you. Secretly, for God’s sake. This is not over. What comes next will be worse than a few dead men.”

Without another word, he left them, made his splashing way across the dvor, already calling orders.

“What is coming?” Vasya asked Sasha.

“The Tatars,” said Sasha. “Let’s get Olya home; I want some dry clothes.”