The Girl in the Tower (The Winternight Trilogy, #2)(91)

“I am here,” he told her. “I do not choose.”

“You can choose,” she returned, following him when he drew back. “Leave my sister alone. Let her live.”

Death’s shadow stretched nearly to where Olga sat, spent, on the bathhouse-bench, surrounded by sweating women. Vasya did not know what the others saw, or if they thought she was speaking to the darkness.

He loved Vasya’s mother, the people had said of her father. He loved that Marina Ivanovna. She died bringing Vasilisa forth, and Pyotr Vladimirovich put half his soul in the earth when they buried her.

Her sister wailed, a thin and bone-chilling cry. “Blood,” Vasya heard, from the crowd beside. “Blood—too much blood. Get the priest.”

“Please!” Vasya cried to Morozko. “Please!”

The noise of the bathhouse faded and the walls faded with it. Vasya found herself standing in an empty wood. Black trees cast gray shadows over the white snow, and Death stood before her.

He wore black. The frost-demon had eyes of palest blue, but this—his older, stranger self—had eyes like water: colorless, or nearly. He stood taller than she had ever seen him, and stiller.

A faint, gasping cry. Vasya let go his hands and turned. Olga crouched in the snow, translucent and bloody, naked, swallowing her anguished breathing.

Vasya stooped and gathered her sister up. Where were they? Was this what lay beyond life? A forest and a single figure, waiting…Somewhere beyond the trees she could smell the hot reek of the bathhouse. Olga’s skin was warm, but the smell and the heat were fading. The forest was so cold. Vasya held her sister tightly; tried to pour all the heat she had—her burning, furious life—into Olga. Her hands felt hot enough to scorch, but the jewel hung bitterly cold between her breasts.

“You cannot be here, Vasya,” the death-god said, and a hint of surprise threaded his uninflected voice.

“Cannot?” Vasya retorted. “You cannot have my sister.” She clung to Olga, looking for a way back. The bathhouse was still there—all around them—she could smell it. But she didn’t know which steps would take them there.

Olga hung slack in Vasya’s arms, her eyes glazed and milky. She turned her head and breathed a question at the death-god. “What of my baby? What of my son? Where is he?”

“It is a daughter, Olga Petrovna,” Morozko returned. He spoke without feeling and without judgment, low and clear and cold. “You cannot both live.”

His words struck Vasya like two fists and she clutched her sister. “No.”

With a terrible effort, Olga straightened up, her face drained of color and of beauty both. She put Vasya’s arms aside. “No?” she said to the frost-demon.

Morozko bowed. “The child cannot be born alive,” he said evenly. “The women may cut it from you, or you may live and let it smother and be born dead.”

“She,” said Olga, her voice no more than a thread. Vasya tried to speak and found she could not. “She. A daughter.”

“As you say, Olga Petrovna.”

“Well, then, let her live,” said Olga simply, and put out a hand.

Vasya could not bear it. “No!” she cried, and flung herself on Olga, struck the outstretched hand away, wrapped her sister in her arms. “Live, Olya,” she whispered. “Think of Marya and Daniil. Live, live.”

The death-god’s eyes narrowed.

“I will die for my child, Vasya,” Olga said. “I am not afraid.”

“No,” Vasya breathed. She thought she heard Morozko speak. But she did not care what he said. Such a current of love and rage and loss ran between her and her sister at that moment that all else was drowned and forgotten. Vasya put forth all her strength—and she dragged Olya by force back to the bathhouse.

Vasya came to, staggering, and found that she was leaning against the bathhouse wall. Splinters pricked her hands; her hair stuck to her face and neck. A thick, sweating crowd hovered around Olga, seeming to strangle her with their many arms. Among them stood one fully dressed, in a black cassock, intoning the last rites in a voice that carried easily over them all. A streak of golden hair gleamed in the dark.

Him? Vasya, in a quick rage, stalked across the writhing room, pushed past the crowd, and took her sister’s hands in hers. The priest’s deep voice stopped abruptly.

Vasya had no thought to spare for him. In her mind’s eye, Vasya saw another black-haired woman, another bathhouse, and another child who had killed her mother. “Olya, live,” she said. “Please, live.”

Olga stirred; her pulse leaped up under Vasya’s fingers. Her dazed eyes blinked open. “There is its head!” cried the midwife. “There—one more—”

Olga’s glance met Vasya’s, and then widened with agony; her belly rippled like water in a storm, and then the child came slithering out. Her lips were blue. She did not move.

An anxious, breathless hush replaced the first cries of relief, as the midwife cleared the scum from the girl-child’s lips and breathed into her mouth.

She lay limp.

Vasya looked from the small gray form to her sister’s face.

The priest thrust his way forward, knocking Vasya aside. He smoothed oil over the baby’s head, began the words of the baptism.

“Where is she?” stammered Olga, groping with feeble hands. “Where is my daughter? Let me see.”