The girls clung to their rescuer tighter than ever, until Vasya said, “Here, Katya, you must be first. Lead them away; you cannot stay outdoors.”
The eldest girl nodded, slowly. The little girls were weeping with pure exhaustion, but at length they allowed themselves to be led away, to food and baths and beds.
Dmitrii folded his arms. “Well, cousin?” he said to Sasha. “Who is this?”
Some of the dispossessed villagers had gone about their business, but a few still listened unabashedly. Half a dozen idle monks had also drifted closer. “Well?” Dmitrii said again.
What can I say? Sasha wondered. Dmitrii Ivanovich, let me present my mad sister Vasilisa, who has come where no woman should be, is dressed like a man in defiance of all decency, has flouted her father and very likely run off with a lover. Here is the brave little frog, the sister that I loved.
Before he could speak, it was she, once more, who spoke first.
“I am called Vasilii Petrovich,” Vasya said clearly. “I am Sasha’s younger brother—or was, before he gave himself to God. I have not seen him in many years.” She shot Sasha a hard look, as though daring him to contradict. Her voice was low for a woman. A long dagger hung sheathed at her hip, and she wore her boy’s clothes without embarrassment. How long had she been wearing them?
Sasha shut his lips. Vasya as a boy solved the immediate problem of instant, appalling scandal, and the real danger for his sister among Dmitrii’s men. But it is wrong—indecent. And Olga will be furious.
“Forgive my silence,” Sasha said to Dmitrii Ivanovich, matching his sister glare for glare. “I was surprised to see my brother here.”
Vasya’s shoulders relaxed. As a child, Sasha had always known her to be clever. Now this woman said calmly, “No more than I, brother.” She turned brilliant, curious eyes upon Dmitrii. “Gosudar,” she said, “you call my brother ‘cousin.’ Are you then Dmitrii Ivanovich, the Grand Prince of Moscow?”
Dmitrii looked pleased, if a little puzzled. “I am,” he said. “How came your youngest brother to be here, Sasha?”
“By great good fortune,” said Sasha in no very pleasant tones, glaring at his sister. “Have you nothing better to do?” he added to the monks and villagers who stood about, staring.
The crowd began to break up, with many backward glances.
Dmitrii took no notice; he clapped Vasya on the back hard enough to make her stagger. “I don’t believe it!” he cried to Sasha. “And outside you said—you were pursued? But the men on the wall have seen no sign.”
Vasya replied, after only a slight hesitation, “I have not seen the bandits since last night. But at dawn, I heard hoofbeats and sought out shelter. Gosudar, yesterday I came to a town, burned—”
“We too have seen burned towns,” said Dmitrii. “Though of the marauders, not a trace. You said—those girls?”
“Yes.” To her brother’s mounting horror, Vasya continued, “I found a burnt village yesterday morning, and tracked the bandits back to their camp, because they had captured those three girls that you saw. I stole the children back.”
Dmitrii’s gray eyes lit. “How did you find the camp? How did you get out alive?”
“I saw the raiders’ fire between the trees.” Vasya was avoiding her brother’s eye. Sasha, to his chagrin, thought he could trace a likeness between his cousin and his sister. Charisma they both had: a thoughtless ferocity, not without charm. “I pulled their horses’ picket and scared their beasts into flight,” she continued. “When the men went into the forest after them, I killed the sentry and took the girls back. But we barely got away.”
Sasha had ridden away from Lesnaya Zemlya ten years ago. Ten years since his little sister watched him go, big-eyed and furious, not crying, but valiant and desolate, standing at the gate of their father’s village. Ten years, Sasha thought grimly. It was ten minutes, no more, since he first saw her again, and already he wanted to shake her.
Dmitrii was pleased. “Well, then!” he cried. “Well met, my young cousin! Found them! Tricked them! So easily! By God, it is more than we could do. I will hear your tale properly. But not now. You said the bandits were following you? They must have turned back when they saw the monastery—we must track them to their camp. Do you remember the way you came?”
“A little,” said Vasya, uncertainly. “But the trail will look different by day.”
“Never mind,” said Dmitrii. “Hurry, hurry.” He was already turning away, calling his orders—let the men assemble, let the horses be saddled, oil the blades—
“My brother ought to rest,” Sasha put in through gritted teeth. “He has been riding all night.” Indeed, Vasya’s face was thin—painfully thin—with shadows beneath her eyes. Also, he was not about to be responsible for allowing his younger sister to go bandit-hunting.
Vasya spoke up again, with a gathered ferocity that startled her brother. “No,” she said. “I do not need to rest. Only—I would like some porridge, please, if there is any to be had. My horse needs hay—and barley. And water that is not too cold.”
The horse had been standing still, ears pricked, his nose on his rider’s shoulder. Sasha had not really marked him, appalled as he was by his sister’s sudden appearance. Now he looked—and stared. Their father bred good horses, but Pyotr would have had to sell nearly all he owned to buy a horse like this bay stallion. Some disaster has driven her from home, for Father would never—“Vasya,” Sasha began.
But Dmitrii had thrown an arm around his sister’s thin shoulders. “Such a horse you have, cousin!” he said. “I did not think they bred such good horses so far north. We will find you your porridge—and some soup besides—and grain for the beast. And then we ride.”
A third time, Vasya spoke before her astonished brother could. Her eyes had gone cold and distant, as though reliving bitter memory. She spoke through bared teeth. “Yes, Dmitrii Ivanovich,” she said. “I will hurry. We must find these bandits.”
VASYA’S NERVES STILL TINGLED with the aftermath of danger, of urgent flight, the ugly shock of killing, and the joyous shock of seeing her brother. Her nerves, she decided, had undergone altogether too much.
She thought a moment, with black humor, of melting into shrieks the way her stepmother used to. It would be easier to go mad. Then Vasya remembered how she had last seen her stepmother, crumpled up small on the bloody earth, and she swallowed back nausea. Then she remembered the moment her knife had slipped like rain into the bandit’s neck, and Vasya decided that she really was going to be sick.
Her head swam. It was a day since she had eaten. She stumbled, reached instinctively for Solovey, and found her brother there instead, gripping her arm with a sword-hardened hand. “Don’t you dare faint,” he said into her ear.
Solovey squealed; his hooves crunched in the snow, and a voice called, alarmed. Vasya pulled herself together. A monk had approached the stallion with a rope halter and a kindly expression, but Solovey wasn’t having it.
“You’d better let him follow us,” Vasya croaked to the monk. “He is used to me. He can have his hay at the kitchen door, can’t he?”
But the monk wasn’t looking at the horse anymore. He was gaping at Vasya, with a look of almost comical shock on his face. Vasya went very still.
“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.”