The women watched, silent. A baby had just died in their arms, and their hands twitched with helplessness.
“This is Vasilisa Petrovna,” said Konstantin, spitting out the words. “She killed her father. Now she has killed her sister’s child.”
Behind him, Olga shut her eyes. One hand cradled the dead infant’s head.
“She speaks to devils,” Konstantin continued, not taking his eyes from her face. “Olga Vladimirova was too kind to turn her own lying sister away. And now, this has come of it.”
Olga said nothing.
Vasya was silent. What defense was there? The infant lay still, curled like a leaf. In the corner, a twist of steam might almost have been a small, fat creature, and it was weeping, too.
The priest’s glance slid to the faint figure of the bannik—she could swear they did—and his pale face grew paler. “Witch,” he whispered again. “You will answer for your crimes.”
Vasya gathered herself. “I will answer,” she said to Konstantin. “But not here. This is wrong, what you do here, Batyushka. Olya—”
“Get out, Vasya,” said Olga. She did not look up.
Vasya, stumbling with weariness, blinded with tears, made no protest when Konstantin dragged her out of the inner room of the bathhouse. He slammed the door behind them, cutting off the smell of blood and the sounds of grief.
Vasya’s linen shift, soaked to transparency, hung from her shoulders. Only when she felt the chill from the open outer door did she dig in her heels. “Let me put on clothes at least,” she said to the priest. “Or do you want me to freeze to death?”
Konstantin let her go suddenly. Vasya knew he could see every line of her body, her nipples hard through her shift. “What did you do to me?” he hissed.
“Do to you?” Vasya returned, bewildered with sorrow, dizzy with the change from heat to cold. The sweat stood on her face; her bare feet scraped the wooden floor. “I did nothing.”
“Liar!” he snapped. “Liar. I was a good man, before. I saw no devils. And now—”
“See them now, do you?” Shocked and grieving as she was, Vasya could muster nothing more than bitter humor. Her hands stank with her sister’s blood, with the ripe, ugly reality of stillbirth. “Well, perhaps you did that to yourself, with all your talk of demons; did you think of that? Go and hide in a monastery; no one wants you.”
He was as pale as she. “I am a good man,” he said. “I am. Why did you curse me? Why do you haunt me?”
“I don’t,” said Vasya. “Why would I want to? I came to Moscow to see my sister. Look what came of it.”
Coldly, shamelessly, she stripped off her wet shift. If she was to go out into the night, she did not mean to court death.
“What are you doing?” he breathed.
Vasya reached for her sarafan and blouse and outer robe, discarded in the anteroom. “Putting on dry clothes,” she said. “What did you think? That I am going to dance for you, like a peasant girl in spring, while a child lies dead just there?”
He watched her dress, hands opening and closing.
She was beyond caring. She tied her cloak and straightened her spine. “Where do you wish to take me?” she inquired, with bitter humor. “I don’t think you even know.”
“You are going to answer for your crimes,” Konstantin managed, in a voice caught between anger and bewildered wanting.
“Where?” she inquired.
“Do you mock me?” He gathered some measure of his old self-possession, and his hand closed on her upper arm. “To the convent. You will be punished. I promised I would hunt witches.” He stepped nearer. “Then I will see devils no longer; then all will be as it was.”
Vasya, rather than falling back, stepped closer to him, and that was obviously the one thing he did not expect. The priest froze.
Closer still. Vasya was afraid of many things, but she was not afraid of Konstantin Nikonovich.
“Batyushka,” she said, “I would help you if I could.”
His lips shut hard.
She touched his sweating face. He did not move. Her hair tumbled damply over his hand, where it lay locked around her arm.
Vasya made herself stand still despite his pinching grip. “How can I help you?” she whispered.
“Kasyan Lutovich promised me vengeance,” Konstantin whispered, staring, “if I would—but never mind. I do not need him. You are here; it is enough. Come to me now. Make me whole again.”
Vasya met his eyes. “That I cannot do.”
And her knee came up with perfect accuracy.
Konstantin did not scream, nor fall wheezing to the floor; his robes were too thick. But he doubled over with a grunt, and that was all Vasya needed.
She was out in the night—crossing the walkway, then running out through the dooryard.
23. The Jewel of the North
A corpse-gray moon just showed above Olga’s tower. The prince of Serpukhov’s dooryard echoed with the shriek of the still reveling city outside, but Vasya knew there would be guards about. In a moment Konstantin would raise the alarm. She must warn the Grand Prince.
Vasya was already running for Solovey’s paddock before she remembered that he would not be there.
But then there came a thump and a snowy crunch of hooves.
Vasya turned with relief to fling her arms around the stallion’s neck.
It was not Solovey. The horse was white, and she had a rider.
Morozko slid down the mare’s shoulder. Girl and frost-demon faced each other in the sickly moonlight. “Vasya,” he said.
The stench of the bathhouse clung to Vasya’s skin, and the smell of blood. “Is that why you wanted me to run away tonight?” she asked him, bitterly. “So I wouldn’t see my sister die?”
He did not speak, but a fire, blue as a summer sky, leaped up between them. No wood fueled it; yet its heat drove back the night, and cradled her shivering skin. She refused to be grateful. “Answer me!” She gritted her teeth and stamped on the flames. They died as quickly as they had risen.
“I knew the mother or the child was to die,” Morozko said, stepping back. “I would have spared you, yes. But now—”
“Olga threw me out.”
“Rightly,” he finished, coldly. “It was not your choice to make.”
Vasya felt the words like a blow. There was a ball in her gut, a knot in her throat. Her face was sticky with dried tears.
“I came to save you, Vasya,” Morozko said then. “Because—”
The knot of grief broke and lashed out. “I don’t care why! I don’t know if you will tell me the truth; why should I listen? You have guided me as though I were a dog on the hunt, bidden me go here and there and yet told me nothing. So you knew Olga was to die tonight? Or—that my father was to die, there in the Bear’s clearing? Could you have warned me then? Or—” She wrenched out the sapphire from beneath her shirt and held it up. “What is this? Kasyan said it made me your slave. Was he lying, Morozko?”
He was silent.
She came quite close and added, low, “If you ever cared, even a little, for the poor fools you kiss in the dark, you will tell me all the truth. I can stomach no more lies tonight.”
They looked at each other, stone-faced in the silvered darkness. “Vasya,” he whispered from the shadows. “It is not the time. Come away, child.”
“No,” she breathed. “It is the time. Am I such a child, that you must lie to me?”
When he still said nothing, she added, the faintest of breaks in her voice, “Please.”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. “The night before he died,” Morozko said flatly, “Pyotr Vladimirovich lay awake beside the ashes of a burnt village. I came to him at moonset. I told him of your fading chyerti, of the priest sowing fear, of the Bear worming his way free. I told Pyotr that his life could save his people’s. He was willing—more than willing. I guided your father after me, through the woods, on the day the Bear was bound, so that he came timely to the clearing—and he died. But I did not kill him. I gave him the choice. That is what he chose. I cannot take a life out of season, Vasya.”