The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy #2)(38)

“Rodion,” said Sasha at once, quickly and clearly. “This boy was my brother, before I gave myself to God. Vasilii Petrovich. You must have met him at Lesnaya Zemlya.”

“I did,” croaked Rodion. “Then—yes, I did indeed.” When Vasya was a girl. Rodion was looking at Sasha very hard.

Sasha shook his head, almost imperceptibly.

“I—I will get hay for the beast,” Rodion managed. “Brother Aleksandr—”

“Later,” said Sasha.

Rodion went off, but not without many backward glances.

“He did meet me at Lesnaya Zemlya,” said Vasya urgently, when Rodion had gone. She was breathing quickly. “He—”

“He will keep quiet until he talks to me,” replied her brother. Sasha had something of Dmitrii’s dazzling air of authority, though more contained.

Vasya looked her gratitude at him. I did not know I was lonely, she thought, until I was no longer alone.

“Come on, Vasya,” Sasha said. “Sleep you cannot have, but soup will mend things a little. Dmitrii Ivanovich is serious when he says he means to ride off immediately. You do not know what you have let yourself in for.”

“It would not be the first time,” returned Vasya, with feeling.

The monastery’s winter-kitchen was all hazed with oven-smoke, the heat almost shocking. Vasya crossed the threshold, took a sharp breath of the roiling air, and pulled up. It was too hot, too small, too full of people.

“May I eat outside?” she asked hastily. “I do not want to leave Solovey.”

There was also the fact that if she surrendered to the warmth, and ate hot food on a comfortable bench, there would be no getting herself onto her feet again.

“Yes, of course,” put in Dmitrii, unexpectedly, popping out of the kitchen doorway like a house-spirit. “Drink your soup standing, boy, and then we will go. You there! Bowls for my cousins; we must hurry.”



VASYA PULLED OFF HER HORSE’S SADDLEBAGS while they waited, glancing around her all the while with a wondering expression. Sasha had to admit to himself that his sister made a convincing boy, all angles, her movements fluid and bold, with none of a woman’s diffidence. A leather hood tied beneath her hat concealed her hair, and she did not give herself away, save perhaps (in Sasha’s nervous imagination) in her long-lashed eyes. Sasha wanted to tell her to keep them downcast, but that would only make her appear more like a girl.

She broke the ice from her horse’s whiskers, checked his feet, and opened her mouth to speak half a dozen times, before each time falling silent. Then a novice appeared with soup and hot loaves and pie, and the chance for talk had passed.

Vasya took the food in both hands and tore into it with nothing like maidenly decorum. Her horse finished his hay and made a winsome play for her bread, blowing warm air on her ear until she laughed and yielded. She fed it to him and finished her soup, while her gaze darted like a finch’s about the walls and clusters of buildings, the chapel with its bell-tower.

“I had never heard bells, before leaving home,” she said to Sasha, finally settling on a safe topic. Unsaid things swam in her eyes.

“You will have all the chances in the world, when we have killed our bandits,” remarked Dmitrii, overhearing. He leaned against the kitchen wall, ostensibly admiring the stallion but really, Sasha thought, taking Vasya’s measure. It made the monk nervous. Whatever Dmitrii thought, though, he hid it behind a ferocious smile and a skin of honey-wine. The wine dripped when he drank, the color of his beard.

Dmitrii Ivanovich was not a patient man. And yet the Grand Prince could be surprisingly steady now and again; he waited, without comment, for Vasya to finish eating. But as soon as she put her bowl aside, the Grand Prince’s grin grew downright savage. “Enough gawping, country boy,” he said. “It is time to ride. The hunter becomes the hunted; won’t you like that?”

Vasya nodded, a little pale, and handed her bowl to the waiting novice. “The saddlebags—?”

“To my own cell,” replied Sasha. “The novice will take them.”

Dmitrii strode off, shouting orders; already the men were mustering in the space before the monastery gate. Sasha walked beside his sister. Her breathing quickened when she saw the men arming. Grimly he said, quick and low, into her ear, “Tell me truly—you found these bandits? You can find them again?”

She nodded.

“Then you must come with us,” said Sasha. “God knows we have had no other luck. But you will stay close to me. You will not speak more than you can help. If you have any more idea of heroics, forget it. You are going to tell me the whole story as soon as we get back. You are also not to be killed.” He paused. “Or wounded. Or captured.” The absurdity struck him again, and he added, almost pleading, “In God’s name, Vasya, how came you here?”

“You sound like Father,” Vasya said ruefully. But she could not say more. Dmitrii was already on his horse. The stallion, overexcited, cavorted in the snow and squealed at Solovey. The prince shouted, “Come, cousin! Come, Vasilii Petrovich! Let us ride!”

Vasya laughed at that, a little wildly. “Let us ride,” she echoed. She turned a mad grin on Sasha, said, “We will have no more burnt villages,” and leaped to her horse’s back with perfect grace and a complete lack of modesty. Solovey still wore no bridle. He reared. The men around them raised a cheer. Vasya sat his back like a hero, fey-eyed and pale.