The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(61)

    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.”