The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(75)

“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.