by E. P. Clark
“When should we expect you back, Tsarinovna?” asked Dima, once they had been told that the Empress was waiting for Slava in the palace.
“I don’t know,” said Slava. “Who knows how long this will take.”
“Well, how long should we wait before coming in to rescue you, then, Tsarinovna?” asked Dima.
“If I am not out by dusk, I suppose you should come looking for me,” said Slava.
“My fox-sister will keep me informed of all that takes place around her,” said Gray Wolf.
“And my hare-brother will do the same for me,” said the elk. “So we will know what happens to them, and also to Krasnoslava Tsarinovna, as long as she is with them.”
Slava couldn’t pretend that she didn’t feel heartily relieved at that information. Bravely as she had set off on this mission, she had rather less faith than she would have liked in Vladya’s good will and her own chances of getting herself, Olga, and Vladislava out of there alive. But as soon as she thought that, she knew that she would get them out alive, no matter what it took.
Boleslav Vlasiyevich and what seemed a very large number of soldiers, but was probably no more than a dozen, surrounded Slava and her two guardians, and they started towards the doors. Slava started to think about how this was the most important walk she had ever made in her life, that her own life and the lives of all her companions and those under her protection depended on what she was about to do…The snow hare squirmed in her arms, and she reminded herself not to think those thoughts. She pressed her cheeks against the snow hare’s soft, soft fur, and thought only about that. Even Boleslav Vlasiyevich’s puzzled and unhappy gaze failed to draw her out of her concentration, although some part of her supposed that she was making a very strange picture for someone who had fled under a cloud of treason and then returned threatening to tear the city apart brick from brick and stone from stone…probably such people should not snuggle their cheeks against snow hares. Slava did not pull herself away, however.
More guards greeted them, or rather, lined the corridors looking stern and nervous, once they were inside the palace itself.
People live here? the snow fox asked incredulously. It’s so stuffy!
Aren’t your holes? Slava asked in reply.
Too true, agreed the snow fox, and grinned at the soldiers. The snow hare burrowed his head under Slava’s arm, and refused to look out. All of a sudden, Slava’s courage returned tenfold.
Slava had expected to be led to the Hall of Council, or perhaps the Hall of Justice, or possibly to her sister’s private chambers, but instead she found herself being led to Imperial guest chambers. They encountered no one on their way, and she assumed that everyone had been cleared out and been given strict orders to stay away.
They were brought to an ostentatiously furnished but unpleasantly unwelcoming guest chamber. There was a lengthy arrangement of the guards, during which the snow fox became bored and began wandering around the room, frightening all the men.
“Sit, Tsarinovna, sit down and the Tsarina will be here shortly,” Boleslav Vlasiyevich told her, once all his men had been arranged to his liking. “She is resting in her chambers in anticipation of your arrival.”
They only want you to sit so that you’ll have to stand when your sister comes in, the snow fox told her. They want you to feel smaller than her.
Yes, I know, Slava answered back. “Thank you, but I prefer to stand by this fire,” she said out loud.
This caused some consternation amongst the guards which confirmed the snow fox’s supposition, but once it became clear that Slava had no intention of sitting, Boleslav Vlasiyevich told his men rather sharply that the Tsarinovna knew her own mind, and if she wished to stand by the fire, she would stand by the fire, and he took up a position near her. Slava couldn’t tell if he were guarding the others from her, or her from the others, and she thought that perhaps he didn’t know himself. One of the guards was sent to inform the Empress that Slava had arrived, and, after some more running back and forth and worried whispered consultations, Slava heard the unmistakable sounds of her sister’s footsteps, and then her sister came in through a side door.
Slava’s first thought was that her sister’s entrance through the side door meant that she had not been resting in her chambers at all, but waiting in the maid’s quarters next door, which meant that this whole thing had been staged in order to make Slava wait as long as possible. Slava suppressed both the smile and the sigh that this thought caused, and turned to greet her sister.
“What do you want!” her sister shrieked as soon as she had swept into the room. Her high, harried voice formed a shocking contrast with the arrogant glide of her walk, and Slava saw that, despite her high head, she was so close to hysteria she was almost trembling.
“To negotiate,” Slava told her, seeing that there was no point in wasting time on pleasantries. “Give me Olga and Vladislava, and I will leave in peace and never return. I will renounce my title and retire to a sanctuary. You will never need concern yourself over me again.” As she said it, Slava felt an uneasy sense of wrong, and the thought arose in her mind, ten times stronger than any disquiet she had previously felt on entertaining such plans, that she would not be allowed to carry out her intention, or if she were successful, it would be a mistake. She knew, as she had known back at Deep Pond, that retiring to a sanctuary, alas, was not the path she was meant to take, no matter how sensible and attractive it seemed on the surface. But perhaps she was wrong, she told herself, and in any case, she had little else she could offer her sister in exchange for Olga and Vladislava.
“Why are you carrying that stupid rabbit around?” her sister demanded. “This is hardly the time for pets!”
“He is here as a witness,” Slava told her. “For my allies. Vladya! This need not be difficult! I have no desire for a quarrel! Please, release Olga and Vladislava, and we will be on our way!”
“And what is that stupid fox doing?” her sister continued, as if Slava had never spoken.
“Also a witness,” Slava said. “Vladya! Please! What quarrel do you have with Olga and Vladislava? They have never done anything to you, and Vladislava is only a little child! Set them free, and it shall be as if none of this had ever happened!”
“You’re so sure I took them prisoner! You’re so sure I would do that!”
“Everyone said…Vladya! Is it a lie? Have they maligned you? Oh, Vladya! Please tell me it is a lie!”
“Of course I took them prisoner! I had them caught at the gate and brought here! Of course I did! They were plotting against me! Of course I had to!”
“Oh Vladya! They mean you no harm! None of us mean you any harm!”
“No no no,” said Slava’s sister, staring off at the wall and wringing her hands. “No no no, what are you doing here? No no no! You shouldn’t be here! You’re plotting against me! Plotting against me! Ever since…you’ve always been plotting against me! This is just another plot!”
“Vladya!” cried Slava. “This is not a plot! Vladya! Do you remember your dream?”
“My dream?” repeated Vladya, puzzled.
“Of the water,” Slava clarified.
“Oh…” said Vladya, and something like a real person looked through her eyes for a moment.
“Do you remember, Vladya? You were afraid of being washed away! Well, you are being washed away! Vladya! It is the curse! All of these thoughts, all of these fears of plots and treason—it’s all nothing but the curse! Vladya! These are not your thoughts! They are the curse, Vladya, nothing but the curse! Don’t let it wash you away! Hold onto me, Vladya, hold onto me and don’t let them take you!”
“Why do you always have to be so emotional!” shrieked Vladya. “Look at you! You’re crying! It’s disgusting!”
“Of course I’m crying,” said Slava, hugging the snow hare to her even more tightly. The snow fox came and wrapped her bushy tail around Slava’s ankles. “Vladya! Please, please, please see sense! Free Olga and Vladislava, and let us all walk ou
t of here! Don’t do this terrible thing you are thinking of doing!”
But as soon as Slava said that, she saw it was a mistake, for Vladya’s face twisted into an even more hateful expression than it had worn before, and she screamed, “Why are you always the good one! Why do you have to be the good one! Why do you have to be the good one!”
“Oh Vladya!” cried Slava. “I don’t have to! Let us all go, and you will be the good one! All you have to do is let us go, and you will have done a wonderful deed, a kind and merciful act…”
“No!” Vladya interrupted her. “No! I don’t have to do anything you tell me to!”
This stopped Slava short, and for a moment there was silence as she tried to regroup and think of what to say next.
“Oh Vladya,” she said eventually. “Of course we are both free to do as we choose here, but let us not quarrel, let us resolve our differences and be sisters again! You are the only sister I have, Vladya; let us not quarrel. Think of the suffering it causes our mother…”
“Hah!” said Vladya. “She only cares for you!”
“No, Vladya, no, she cares for you, she said so herself just now…”
“You went to see her!” cried Vladya.
“Yes of course, Vladya, I went straight to her from Krasnograd, and she begged me to stay with her in the sanctuary and leave you in peace, and I would have, Vladya, I would have, but then the news of Olga and Vladislava came…”
“You went to her!” Vladya shrieked. “And you asked her for help, I suppose? Help against me?”
“Of course I asked her for help, Vladya; that is why I went there. And the help she offered me was shelter in her sanctuary. She would not turn against you for anything, Vladya, not even for me.”
“She wouldn’t help you?” said Vladya, and for a moment her face glowed with gladness.
“She offered me shelter in her sanctuary,” Slava repeated. “But she would not move against you for any reason. Oh Vladya! We all know you are the one who was meant to rule! No one argues with that. Just let Olga and Vladislava go, Vladya, let them go! Let them go, and go back to your rule. Your country needs your judgment, Vladya. You have more important matters to attend to than a small child and the younger daughter of a Northern barbarian.” Once again, unease twinged in Slava’s stomach when she offered to leave Vladya to her rule, but she told herself she must ignore it, no matter what. There was more at stake here than her own fancies, she told herself, and if saving Olga and Vladislava meant sacrificing the voices in her head, then so be it. There were worse sacrifices to make. The voices screamed out in protest, but Slava ignored them.
“You may be right…” Vladya was saying slowly. Sensing that she was about to decide something, and that any interruption would be dangerous, Slava waited, hardly daring to breathe, and willed with every ounce of strength she possessed that Vladya would decide to let them all go, so that she could return to the sanctuary and never come back to Krasnograd again. Something inside her screamed twice as loudly than before in protest at that thought, but she clamped down on it as hard as she could, and went back to willing Vladya to accept her offer.
“You’re trying to control me!” Vladya cried suddenly.
“What!” Slava said, before she could stop herself. “How could I possibly do that?” She managed to close her mouth before adding don’t be ridiculous, but she must not have closed her face fast enough, for Vladya’s own face twisted back into its earlier expression of hate.
“You are!” she insisted. “You’re using your gifts on me, just like you always do!”
“My gifts give me no ability to control others,” Slava said.
“You’re lying! You’re lying, just like you always have! You’ve always lied about your gifts in order to, to use them behind other people’s backs! You’re a liar and you always have been!”
Both the snow hare and the snow fox turned angry, hate-filled gazes at Vladya. Even the snow hare had forgotten his fear in the face of her shrieking rage, and was filled with an answering anger. Slava wanted to tell them to stop looking at her that way, it would only make things worse, but before she could summon up the concentration to do so, Vladya broke the silence by bursting out, “Come with me!”
“Where?” asked Slava.
“To see your friends! Come! Come see your friends!”
For an instant Slava was filled with the hope that Vladya intended to free Olga and Vladislava immediately, but one glance at her twisted face, her hunched shoulders, and her shaking hands, told Slava that her hope was in vain. Following her to wherever she was holding them was probably, the pit of Slava’s stomach told her, a bad idea, but refusing was probably an even worse one. The snow hare and the snow fox gave her questioning glances. She nodded at them, and after a moment, they both blinked their eyes in agreement.
“So you take advice from animals now?” Vladya asked. She tried to say it sarcastically, to assert her superiority over Slava, but it came out as more of a hysterical shriek.
“Sometimes,” said Slava. “Sometimes they have good advice.”
“You think you’re so smart!” said Vladya. “Come! I’ll show you how smart you are!”
She set off at an angry and erratic walk. There was a fair amount of confusion behind her, as Boleslav Vlasiyevich and his men tried to organize themselves quickly around Vladya and Slava, but Vladya didn’t seem to notice it at all, so intent was she on showing Slava how smart she, Vladya, was.
Slava had, foolishly and naively, imagined that Olga and Vladislava were being kept in some guest apartment, perhaps the one down the corridor from where Vladya had received her. They would have been under guard, of course, but they would have been kept in a manner befitting their status as noblewomen from one of the greatest families in Zem’. But Vladya led her right past all the guest apartments and down some stairs and along a corridor and down some more stairs and along another corridor and down some more stairs, and Slava realized they were going to the kremlin’s dungeon.
Chapter Twenty
“You put them in the dungeon?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.
“Where else should traitors be kept?” Vladya demanded angrily. “You’re so smart: you should be able to see that, surely!”
As there was nothing sensible that could to said in response to that, Slava said nothing. They walked down another corridor in silence, or in as much silence as could be made in such a large party as theirs. In fact, the sound of the guards’ boots was loud enough to drown out most speech, anyway. Slava wondered what they thought of this: just a few days ago they had been guards to the most powerful person in the Known World, and now they were guards to a person with all the inner stability of a child who had just learned to walk, but with rather less charm. Slava also wondered what they thought of her. It occurred to her that she might need their support if she was unable to make Vladya see reason—which now seemed an almost hopeless task—and she wondered if she had any chance of gaining it. It seemed so terribly unlikely…Everyone always supported Vladya…something flitted past the corner of her eye.
“What are you looking at!” demanded Vladya.
“I thought I saw something…Someone went down the other corridor,” said Slava.
“Some maid,” said Vladya. “You always see things that aren’t there!”
“I also see things that are there,” said Slava. She immediately regretted her words, but Vladya had no time to do anything more than angrily toss her head, and then they were at the door to the underground corridors that led to the dungeons.
When they came to the dungeon doors, Vladya ordered that half the guards remain behind to do their duty and stand guard. There was an unpleasant scene when she tried to demand that the snow hare and the snow fox stay behind as well, but Slava, urged on by their voiceless voices, adamantly refused to agree to that, and Vladya was too eager to bring her into the dungeon and show her Olga and Vladislava to quarrel over it for long, so after a few nasty remarks and ill-tempered glares,
she appeared to forget about the matter in the excitement of watching Boleslav Vlasiyevich open the doors for her.
Having won the argument over her companions, Slava tried to stand in the background and remain as unseen as possible as Boleslav Vlasiyevich fiddled with the keys with unusual clumsiness, as if staying unnoticed would save her from whatever trap she was about to fall into. Something was telling her that something terrible was about to happen, and that she would not walk out of those dungeons a free woman. She tried to convince herself that it was no more than what anyone would feel, standing at those doors, but she feared that that was not true. Going into there was an irrevocable step, and something that was even worse than what she was envisioning was waiting for her at the other end of it. For a moment Slava considered begging off this whole enterprise, or even just turning and trying to run away, but her stomach twisted at those thoughts, and she knew that she had to go through with it, no matter what the consequences that awaited her were. Boleslav Vlasiyevich and one of the other guards pulled open the doors at last. They all stepped through, with Slava in the middle of the group, making any thought of escape impossible. She glanced back, and it seemed to her that a small shadow flitted in with them, behind the last guard’s boots.
