The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  Mstislav Mayevich met them at the bottom of the steps. “We’ve been questioning our new arrivals, Vladislava Vasilisovna,” he told them. Something that may have been a smile or may have been a snarl flitted across his face. “Quite intensely. And we’ve found out many interesting things.” Now it was definitely a snarl on his face. “Such as that this was not the first time they’ve held this kind of sport. They go hunting outside of Lesnograd for victims, bring them in, and use them till they die, just like their animals.”

  “Foreigners?” asked Vladya.

  “So they say, Vladislava Vasilisovna.”

  “Well, thank the gods for that, at least.”

  Dasha wanted very much to say there was nothing to be thankful for at all in that information, but instead she asked, “So they must know where to find them, then? The foreigners?”

  “Like as not, Tsarinovna,” Mstislav Mayevich told her with a bow. “We haven’t gotten that far yet.” He grinned a grim grin. “But we will. They’ve been easy to break—cowards, just like you’d expect.”

  Dasha thought she might retch again at the visions those words conjured up, but she swallowed hard and followed Vladya and Mstislav Mayevich down deeper into the dungeon, past other cells (she tried not to look into them and see if there was anyone in them. She didn’t want to know. Not even if that meant she was as big a coward as Ratibor and Yaromir. She just couldn’t bear it) to the very end of the dank, narrow corridor, where there was a larger cell. A torture chamber, she realized as they stepped inside. It was a torture chamber.

  Ratibor and Yaromir were both chained spread-eagled to the wall. From the way they were hanging from their fetters, she thought they were unconscious, but Ratibor lifted up his head as they entered the chamber. Dasha wasn’t sure whether the look of fear and hatred he gave them was because he recognized them, or because that was all he could feel right now. She looked quickly away, only to have her gaze land on other things, things used for…no, no, no, the visions were threatening to overwhelm her, showing her what could happen in this chamber, what had happened, she couldn’t bear it, she couldn’t bear it, she was not going to throw up, she was not going to throw up, she would not throw up, she would not have a fit, she would not have a fit…

  “Unchain them,” commanded Vladya.

  Dasha looked over at her with surprised hope. Did Vladya feel the same way about this that she did? As a child Vladya had been horrified by torture and execution, Dasha knew, but Vladya the woman was not the same person as Vladya the child.

  With a short bow, Mstislav Mayevich unchained first Yaromir, who collapsed onto the floor as if all his bones were broken. Mstislav Mayevich did nothing to soften his fall, and let him lie there in a dead faint as he unchained Ratibor. Ratibor, who looked very slightly less abused than Yaromir, probably, Dasha thought, because he was very slightly less culpable in what had happened, and was therefore very slightly less hated by Mstislav Mayevich, fell onto his knees, and then managed to clutch at the chains that had just been holding him bound in order to keep from falling all the way prostrate on the floor.

  Vladya walked over to him. Mstislav Mayevich made a convulsive move as if to stop her, but then, apparently deciding that Ratibor offered her no danger, stopped himself and stood back.

  “How many?” Vladya asked.

  Ratibor looked up at her in incomprehension.

  Vladya drew her foot back and kicked him in the ribs, so hard that his whole body jumped. He screamed but made no other move to protest or protect himself.

  “How many?!” she repeated. “How many others have you done this to!?”

  “Vladya…” said Dasha, but her voice was so small that no one seemed to hear it, especially Vladya.

  “I dismissed our headswoman when I returned from Krasnograd,” said Vladya. “I said we had no more need of her. So I suppose I must do the deed myself. Like Miroslava Praskovyevna, who is as much my foremother as she is hers.” She nodded at Dasha. “I will wield the blade that ends your worthless existence myself.”

  “Vladya…” Dasha repeated, her voice even smaller and more tremulous than before. The tingling was spreading threateningly across her scalp, and visions were flashing on the edge of her sight, telling her that no, this was a mistake, a terrible mistake, even though they weren’t quite ready to tell her why.

  “I would be happy to do it for you, Vladislava Vasilisovna,” said Mstislav Mayevich, looking down on Ratibor with a similar look of revulsion on his face.

  “Don’t be too hasty.” Those words of wisdom came from, most unexpectedly, Aunty Olga. “Once you kill them you can’t unkill them. Find out what they know first.”

  “We know they’re guilty,” said Vladya, and gave Ratibor another kick.

  “But we don’t know everything that they know,” said Dasha. Her voice was still weak and tremulous, but this time the others heard her. “We don’t know how they found their victims, or how they brought in those whom they served, or…how they found their victims, that’s the most important thing. We need to know everything they do about these foreigners flooding our lands. They may know more about them than we do, they may have much to tell us. We should take them to Pristanograd to be questioned by my mother, just like Birgit.”

  “At this rate, we’re going to have half of Lesnograd in our train,” said Vladya.

  “Three people is not half of Lesnograd. And…if all we do is kill them, it will have all been pointless.”

  “You can’t say that you feel sorry for him!”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I feel sorry for him or not. What matters is what can be done now to make things better.” Dasha took a step towards Ratibor. Vladya, Aunty Olga, and Mstislav Mayevich all put their hands on her arms as if to stop her.

  “Let me go,” she told them. “I am in no danger from him.”

  “You can’t be sure of that!” said Vladya and Aunty Olga together.

  “Sure enough.” Dasha shook off their hands and stepped up to Ratibor, who looked back up at her in fear, hatred, and confusion.

  She looked at his miserable face, twisted in suffering and the beatings he had received. She could see the fresh-blooming bruise on his cheek that she had dealt him herself. For a moment she wanted nothing more in the world than to pour out all her anger, her rage, her horror, at the cruelty and injustice of the world and at his participation in it. She wanted to destroy him so that she could destroy everything she hated, everything she wanted to cleanse from the world. At the very least, she wanted to slap his face, kick him in the groin, scream at him. Do something that would break him, show him that she was better than him, stronger than him, that she was the one in control, the one whom he would obey from here on out. And he would, she could see: it would take almost no effort at all on her part to make him grovel in front of her, fawn all over her, promise to follow her and obey her in all things, and mean it. A vision of him filled her sight: it was of him kneeling at her feet swearing fealty and obedience, seeing the error of his ways and renouncing everything he had ever done and been, shuddering with the horror and the guilt that came crashing down on him as he realized what he had done, and then following her around, trembling with eagerness to prove himself, to redeem himself, to help her, to serve her in all things…all she would have to do was slap his face, the merest, lightest slap, and tell him what she thought of him, and he would be a broken man, his cruelty cleansed from him as his will was broken down, no longer a threat, no longer a force for evil…She reached out her hand to him.

  He stared at it stupidly.

  “Take my hand,” she said.

  He stared at her some more, this time with fear and mistrust.

  “Take my hand,” she repeated.

  “Why?” he asked, through broken teeth.

  She reached down, grabbed him by his bloody shirt, and hauled him to his feet. He swayed and then caught himself against the wall.

  “Why?” he repeated.

  “Because I’m going to help you,” she sai
d. “I’m going to give you another chance.”

  “I don’t deserve another chance,” he said. He gave her a sideways look through the bruising and the blood. “Not in your eyes, anyway.”

  “I don’t care. I’m giving it to you anyway.”

  “Why?” he asked for a third time.

  “Because,” she said, “it’s not enough to break people down. That’s only half the battle. You have to build them back up too. Otherwise it’s worthless. I can’t just stop you. I have to start you up again, only going in the right direction.”

  He gave what in a less ruined mouth would have been a smile. “An’ you think you can do that?”

  “I think you can do it.” She leaned in close to him, ignoring the smell of fresh and spoiled blood that rose from him. For an instant Dasha’s visions carried her away from him, making her wonder if this was the same smell that would be found in the abattoir being built in Outer Krasnograd. No doubt it was! No doubt this chamber was the same in so many ways as that sign of growth and prosperity that was going up outside the walls of her native city. She shook her head to clear it of those unwelcome images, even more sickening than what was before her actual eyes. Ratibor cringed back from her at that, thinking she was shaking her head at him.

  “I have faith in you,” she told him, forcing herself back to her present time and place. “I’m going to save you from yourself, and you’re going to deserve it, and justify my faith in you.”

  “And you think you can do it?”

  “Someone has to. And it might as well be me. Otherwise all this”—she gestured at the cell and at his broken body—“was pointless.”

  “You won. You beat me.”

  “Beating someone isn’t the same as winning. You can’t just knock people down and call that winning, even when they need to be knocked down. Winning is when you pull them back to their feet and set them beside you, and they stand there, where they should be.”

  He looked at her face, and then at the floor. “Even if they don’t want to?” he asked.

  “Oh stop whining!” she said, annoyance creeping into her previous certainty. “Stop whining like a little child! I’m still practically a little girl, as you said yourself, and I know better than that! Pull yourself together and follow me. Stop worrying so much about your free will, because it hasn’t done you any good and you never had much anyway, and start worrying about how you can free yourself from,” she gestured at the cell again, “all this.”

  “You heard them.” He flicked his eyes at the others, who were fidgeting uncomfortably behind Dasha, wanting to stop her, to pull her to safety, but not quite sure if they should, or could. “They want to kill me.” He looked back at Dasha. “You want to kill me. This is all your fault!”

  Dasha shrugged. “Some of the blame is yours, surely,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter now. What matters is what you’re going to do about it.”

  “And…what? You’ll drag me to Pristanograd, caged up like a beast—”

  “No more than you deserve,” put in Dasha.

  “Is that your plan, then? Do to me what I’ve done to others?”

  “No,” said Dasha. “But if it happens to happen, I will not resist it too strenuously, and neither should you.”

  He grimaced, as if he wanted to argue but couldn’t find the words, and said, “So you drag me to Pristanograd, caged up like a wild beast on display, an’ you parade me before all the noblewomen there, an’ the Tsarina, who will question me—how cruel do you think that questioning’s gonna be? You’re a fool if you think it will be any better than this!—an’ then what? Do you really think the Tsarina will let me go, free an’ clear, to live my life as I please after all this?”

  “Do you?” asked Dasha.

  “Of course not! I think it’s just a way to make my—our—torture an’ death longer. What’re you going to do, draw an’ quarter me in the main square of Pristanograd, as an example for all? Or are you going to drag me all the way to Krasnograd to do it, so as to have a bigger crowd? People love that sort of thing, you know: there’s nothing they love more. It’ll be the best sport they’ve ever seen.” He tried to smile a wry smile through his broken face. “I’ll be the best sport I’ve ever put together.”

  “And if that is what happens, you would deserve it,” Dasha said. “You would deserve it a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times over. But I don’t want to give you what you deserve. I want to give you what you need.”

  “And what do I need, Tsarinovna?”

  “Forgiveness,” said Dasha. “Once we are done with you, you can retire to a sanctuary. The Brotherhood of the Forest, I think. Where you can make amends to those whom you wronged.”

  “The sanctuary of the Brotherhood of the Forest up here in Severnolesnoye is very close to the spirits of the forest,” Oleg, who had remained silent until now, suddenly put in. “Especially bears. No doubt our Mishka, whom the Tsarinovna freed from you, and who’s been taken by the gods as their servant, will find them and take to visiting them often, if he hasn’t already.”

  Ratibor cringed.

  “Or there’s the castrates,” Oleg continued cheerfully. “They might be the safer option for both of you, to be honest. They may have their quirks, but you’re less likely to fall afoul of bears and wolves—no doubt you’ve made some enemies there—with them than with their brothers of the forest.”

  Ratibor cringed even more.

  Dasha wanted to kick Oleg, but she restrained herself. “This is meant to be forgiveness, not punishment,” she said. “Genuine forgiveness. Otherwise there can be no atonement.”

  “Oh, they’ll find atonement, one way or another,” said Oleg. Dasha wanted to kick him again for making that sound like a threat, but then, for someone such as Ratibor, atonement, forgiveness, all those things—that was a threat, wasn’t it? There was no way forward for him that did not involve pain and suffering.

  “The more you tell us, the better it will go for you,” she said.

  On the floor below them, Yaromir began to stir, twitching and groaning, not yet aware of what he was doing. For an instant, Dasha wondered if that was how she appeared to others when she had a fit. Surely not! It was too awful to contemplate. Surely she didn’t look that strange and helpless when she fell into a fit. Surely not.

  “Can they not be taken somewhere better, made more comfortable?” she asked. “As a sign of good faith on our parts, to show that we mean them well, providing they cooperate. They might find it easier to talk if they are in less pain.”

  There was some resistance to this idea from the others, but Vladya, surprisingly, was the first to see the sense in Dasha’s words, saying that she was sick of being down in this stink and filth.

  “Have Apraksiya Bozhenovna summoned to tend to them,” she ordered Mstislav Mayevich. “And then have them brought up to give their statements to us. In the meantime, I would take council with you, Tsarinovna, and with Olga Vasilisovna and Oleg Svetoslavovich. And my mother,” she added as an afterthought. “Come. We will meet in the small chamber.” She turned on her heel and swept out of the cell without waiting for the rest of them to follow.

  ***

  “You did well there,” Oleg whispered to Dasha as they made their way up the stairs and through the corridors to the small chamber.

  “You think so?” asked Dasha, surprised. “I thought…”

  “That I would disapprove? Well, I do. It’s not what I would do. But it’s something your mother might do. You took the game, and you changed the rules so that you would win.”

  “I don’t think anyone can win a game like this,” Dasha objected.

  “Some would say that no one can win a war, either, which is what those games you’re supposed to be playing are supposed to teach you, aren’t they?”

  “Well…yes.”

  “But this you can win. You can’t undo what they’ve done, or what’s been done to them, but you can take it and make it into something better. Which is what a Tsarina would do, or should do
. When I looked at you down there, I didn’t see a softhanded little girl. I saw a ruler. I saw a Tsarina.”

  “I was so scared,” Dasha confessed.

  “Of course you were! No one said being a Tsarina wouldn’t be scary. But you did it anyway.”

  “I thought no one would listen to me. Not even you. I thought it would just make things worse. And it still could.” She shuddered. “The visions tell me so. I can see them now. Doing nothing would have been bad, but what I did could make things even worse.”

  “But you did it anyway. And we did listen to you.” He grinned. “Even me. And you didn’t even cry.”

  She tried to punch him in the arm, the way he or Aunty Olga would do to her, but she stumbled and almost missed and then hit him too hard, or so she assumed, since her knuckles hurt. He didn’t even flinch though. “I don’t cry that much!” she protested. Unfortunately, the effect was somewhat spoiled by the sniffle that came out at the end.

  “Sure you don’t,” he said, still grinning. “Anyone’d think you were a water-maiden, the amount of water that comes pouring out of your eyes every day.” But that brought up thoughts of Vika and what she had done to Dasha, or more importantly, what Dasha had done to her, and they both walked the rest of the way to the small chamber in silent contemplation.

  Vladya, who must have jogged the entire way in order to outstrip them, was pacing the chamber impatiently as the rest of them came in.

  “You were right,” she said as soon as she caught sight of Dasha.

  “I was?” asked Dasha. “About what?”

  “We should go to Pristanograd, to meet with your mother. I should go to Pristanograd.” She stuck her head out of the chamber door. “Where is my mother?” she called. “I summoned her ages ago!”

  There was a muffled apology in reply. “I’m sure she’s coming,” Aunty Olga told her. “She’s not as quick as she used to be, and Vasya never was very light on her feet.”

  “No, she isn’t,” agreed Vladya, the smoothness of her oval face spoiled by sourness. Dasha wondered what it would be like to be ashamed of your own mother, and know that she would always let you down, no matter what. And the worst thing was that Vasilisa Vasilisovna didn’t mean to fail her daughter. She meant to do only what was best for her. But by striving to do what was best, she always made things worse.