The Girl in the Tower

by Katherine Arden

“Olga,” said Vasya, bowing her shining head. “You would be right to. I am sorry. I am—so sorry.”

  Brave and miserable—suddenly her sister was eight again, and Olga was watching her with exasperated pity while their father thrashed her, resignedly, for yet another foolishness.

  “I am sorry, too,” Olga said then, and she was.

  “Do what you must,” Vasya said. Her voice was hoarse as a raven’s. “I am guilty before you.”

  OUTSIDE THE HOUSE OF the prince of Serpukhov, that day passed in a glorious exchange of rumors. The heave and riot of festival—what better breeding-ground for gossip? Nothing so delicious as this had happened for many a year.

  That young lord, Vasilii Petrovich. He is no lord at all, but a girl!

  No.

  Indeed it is true. A maiden.

  Naked for all to see.

  A witch, in any case.

  She ensnared even holy Aleksandr Peresvet with her wiles. She had mad orgies in secret in the palace of Dmitrii Ivanovich. She had them all as she liked: prince and monk, turn and turn about. We live in a time of sinners.

  He put a stop to all that, did Prince Kasyan. He revealed her wickedness. Kasyan is a great lord. He has not sinned.

  Gaily the rumors swirled all through that long day. They reached even a golden-haired priest, hiding in a monk’s cell from the monsters of his own memory. He jerked his head up from his prayers, face gone very pale.

  “It cannot be,” he said to his visitor. “She is dead.”

  Kasyan Lutovich was considering the yellow embroidery on the sash about his waist, lips pursed in discontent, and he did not look up when he replied. “Indeed?” he said. “Then it was a ghost; a fair, young ghost indeed, that I showed the people.”

  “You ought not to have,” said the priest.

  Kasyan grinned at that and glanced up. “Why? Because you could not be there to see it?”

  Konstantin recoiled. Kasyan laughed outright. “Don’t think I don’t know where your mania for witches comes from,” he said. He leaned against the door, casual, magnificent. “Spent too much time with the witch-woman’s granddaughter, did you; watched her grow up, year by year, had one sight too many of those green eyes, and the wildness that will never belong to you—or to your God, either.”

  “I am a servant of God; I do not—”

  “Oh, be quiet,” said Kasyan, heaving himself upright. He crossed over to the priest, step by soft step, until Konstantin recoiled, almost stumbling into the candlelit icons. “I see you,” the prince murmured. “I know which god you serve. He has one eye, doesn’t he?”

  Konstantin licked his lips, eyes fastened on Kasyan’s face, and said not a word.

  “That is better,” said Kasyan. “Now heed me. Do you want your vengeance, after all? How much do you love the witch?”

  “I—”

  “Hate her?” Kasyan laughed. “In your case, it is the same thing. You will have all the vengeance you like—if you do as I tell you.”

  Konstantin’s eyes were watering. He looked once, long, at his icons. Then he whispered, without looking at Kasyan, “What must I do?”

  “Obey me,” said Kasyan. “And remember who your master is.”

  Kasyan bent forward to whisper into Konstantin’s ear.

  The priest jerked back once. “A child? But—”

  Kasyan went on talking in a soft, measured voice, and at last Konstantin, slowly, nodded.

  VASYA HERSELF HEARD NO RUMORS, and no plotting, either. She stayed locked in her room, sitting beside the slit of a window. The sun sank below the walls as Vasya thought of ways to escape, to make it all right.

  She tried not to think of the day she might have had, down in the street below, had her secret been kept. But thoughts of that kept creeping in, too; of her lost triumph, the burn of wine inside her, the laughter and the cheering, the prince’s pride, the admiration of all.

  And Solovey—had he been walked cool and cared for after the race? Had he even suffered the grooms to touch him, after the first exhausted yielding? Perhaps the stallion had fought, perhaps they had even killed him. And if not? Where was he now? Haltered, bound, locked in the Grand Prince’s stable?

  And Kasyan—Kasyan. The lord who had been kind to her and who had, smiling, humiliated her before all Moscow. The question came with renewed force: What does he gain from this? And then: Who was it who helped Chelubey pass himself off as the Khan’s ambassador? Who supplied the bandits? Was it Kasyan? But why—why?

  She had no answer; she could only think herself in circles, and her head ached with suppressed tears. At last she curled herself onto the cot and drifted into a shallow sleep.

  SHE JOLTED AWAKE, SHIVERING, just at nightfall. The shadows in her room stretched monstrously long.

  Vasya thought of her sister Irina, far off at Lesnaya Zemlya. Before she could prevent it, other thoughts crowded hard upon: her brothers beside the hearth of the summer kitchen, the golden midsummer evening pouring in. Her father’s kindly horses, and the cakes Dunya made…

  Next moment, Vasya was crying helplessly, like the child she certainly was not. Dead father, dead mother, brother imprisoned, home far away—

  A hissing whisper, as of cloth dragged along the floor, jarred her from her weeping.

  Vasya jerked upright, wet-faced, still choking on tears.

  A piece of darkness moved, moved again, and stopped just in the faint beam of twilight.

  Not darkness at all, but a gray, grinning thing. It had the form of a woman, but it was not a woman. Vasya’s heart hammered; she was on her feet and backing away. “Who are you?”

  A hole on the gray thing’s face opened and closed, but Vasya heard nothing. “Why have you come to me?” she managed, gathering her courage.

  Silence.

  “Can you speak?”

  A monstrous black stare.

  Vasya simultaneously wished for light and was glad of the darkness, to hide that lipless countenance. “Have you something to tell me?” she asked.

  A nod—was that a nod? Vasya thought a moment, and then she reached into her dress, where the cool, blue sharp-edged talisman hung. She hesitated, then dragged the edge along the inside of her forearm. The blood welled out between her fingers.

  As it pattered on the floor, the ghost held out a bony hand, snatching at the jewel. Vasya jerked back. “No,” she said. “It is mine. No—but here.” She held her bloody arm out to the horror, hoping that she was not being foolish. “Here,” she said again, clumsily. “Blood helps sometimes, with things that are dead. Are you dead? Will my blood make you stronger?”

  No answer. But the shadow crept forward, bent its jagged face to her arm, and lapped at the welling blood.

  Then the mouth fastened hard and sucked greedily, and just when Vasya was on the point of prying it off, the ghost let go and staggered back.

  Its—her, Vasya realized—looks were not improved. She had a little of the appearance of flesh now, but it was flesh desiccated and mummified by airless years—gray and brown and stringy. But the pit of a mouth had a tongue now, and the tongue made words.

  “Thank you,” it said.

  A polite ghost at least. “Why are you here?” Vasya returned. “This is not a place for the dead. You have been frightening Marya.”

  The ghost shook her head, “It is not—a place for the living,” she managed. “But—I am—sorry. About the child.”

  Vasya felt again the walls about her, between her skin and the twilight, and bit her lips. “What have you come to tell me?”

  The ghost’s mouth worked. “Go. Run. Tonight, he means it for tonight.”

  “I cannot,” said Vasya. “The door is barred. What happens tonight?”

  The bony hands twisted together. “Run now,” it said, and pointed at herself. “This—he means this for you. Tonight. Tonight he will take a new wife; and he will take Moscow for himself. Run.”

  “Who means that for me?” Vasya asked. “Kasyan? How will he take Moscow for himself?”

/>   She thought then of Chelubey, of his palace full of trained riders. A terrible understanding dawned. “The Tatars?” she whispered.

  The ghost’s hands twisted hard together. “Run!” she said. “Run!” Her mouth was open: a hellish maw.

  Vasya could not help it; she recoiled from that horror, panting, swallowing a scream.

  “Vasya,” said his voice from behind her. A voice that meant freedom and magic and dread, that had nothing to do with the stifling world of the tower.

  The ghost was gone, and Vasya wrenched round.

  Morozko’s hair was part of the night, his robe a sweep of lightless black. There was something old and dire in his eyes. “There is no more time,” he said. “You must get out.”

  “So I hear,” she said, standing still. “Why have you come? I called—I asked—Mother of God, when I was naked before all Moscow! You could not be bothered then! Why help me now?”

  “I could not come to you today at all, not before now,” he said. The frost-demon’s voice was soft and even, but his eyes slid, once, from her tear-tracked cheeks to her bleeding arm. “He had gathered all his strength, to shut me out. He planned this day well. I couldn’t go near you today, before your blood touched the sapphire. He can hide from me: I didn’t know he had come back. If I had, I would never have let—”

  “Who?”

  “The sorcerer,” said Morozko. “This man you call Kasyan. He has been long in strange places, beyond my sight.”

  “Sorcerer? Kasyan Lutovich?”

  “In other days, men called him Kaschei,” said Morozko. “And he can never die.”

  Vasya stared. But that is a fairy tale. So is a frost-demon.

  “Cannot die?” she managed.

  “He made a magic,” said Morozko. “He has—hidden his life outside his body, so that I—that death—may never go near him. He can never die, and he is very strong. He kept me from seeing him; he kept me away today. Vasya, I would not have—”

  She wanted to fold herself in his cloak and disappear. She wanted to crumple against him and cry. She held herself still. “Have what?” she whispered.

  “Let you face this day alone,” he said.

  She sought to read his eyes in the dark, and he drew back, so that the gesture died unfinished. For an instant, his face might have been human, and an answer was there, in his eyes, just beyond her understanding. Tell me. But he did not. He tilted his head, as though listening. “Come away, Vasya. Ride away. I will help you escape.”

  She could go and get Solovey. Ride away. With him. Into the moon-silvered dark, with that promise lurking, as though despite him, in his eyes. And yet—“But my brother and sister. I cannot abandon them.”

  “You aren’t—” he began.

  A heavy step in the corridor sent Vasya whirling round. She turned to face the door just as the bolt shot back.

  Olga looked wearier than she had that morning: pale, waddling with the weight of her unborn child. Varvara stood at her shoulder, glaring. “Kasyan Lutovich has come to see you,” Olga said curtly. “You will give him a hearing, sister.”

  The two women bustled into Vasya’s chamber, and when the light scoured its corners, the frost-demon was gone.

  VARVARA ARRANGED VASYA’S TOUSLED plait so that it lay smoothly and bound an embroidered headdress around her brows, so that icy silver rings hung down and framed her face. Then Vasya was herded out onto the frozen staircase. She descended between Olga and Varvara, blinking. They went down a level, where Varvara opened a new door; they crossed an antechamber and entered a sitting-room that smelled of sweet oil.

  At the threshold, Olga said, bowing, “My sister, Gospodin,” and stood aside for Vasya to pass.

  Kasyan was newly bathed and dressed for the festival, in white and pale gold. His hair curled vividly against his embroidered collar.

  He said gravely, “I beg you will leave us, Olga Vladimirova. What I have to say to Vasilisa Petrovna is best said alone.”

  It was impossible, of course, that Vasya should be left alone with any man not her betrothed, now that she was a girl again. But Olga nodded tightly and left them.

  The door shut with a soft snick.

  “Well met,” Kasyan said softly, a little smile playing about his mouth, “Vasilisa Petrovna.”

  Deliberately she bowed, as a boy would have. “Kasyan Lutovich,” she said icily. Sorcerer. The word beat in her head, so strange and yet…“Was it you who sent men after me in the bathhouse in Chudovo?”

  He half-smiled. “I am astonished you didn’t guess before. I killed four of them for losing you.”

  His eyes skimmed her body. Vasya crossed her arms. She was clothed from head to foot, and she had never felt more naked. Her bath seemed to have washed away recourse and ambition both; she must watch now, and wait, and let others act. She was naked with powerlessness.

  No. No. I am no different than yesterday.

  But it was hard to believe. In his eyes was a monumental and amused confidence.

  “Do not,” Vasya said, almost spitting, “come near me.”

  He shrugged. “I may do as I like,” he replied. “You gave up all pretense to virtue when you appeared in the kremlin dressed as a boy. Not even your sister would prevent me now. I hold your ruin in the palm of my hand.”

  She said nothing. He smiled. “But enough of that,” he added. “Why should we be enemies?” His tone turned placating. “I saved you from your lies, now you are free to be yourself, to adorn yourself as a girl ought—”

  Her lip curled. He broke off with an elegant shrug.

  “You know as well as I that it is a convent for me now,” Vasya said. She put her arms behind her and pressed her back against the door, the wood driving splinters into her palms. “If I am not put in the cage and burned as a witch. Why are you here?”

  He ran a hand through his russet hair. “I regretted today,” he said.

  “You enjoyed it,” Vasya retorted, wishing her voice were not thin with remembered humiliation.

  He smiled and gestured to the stove. “Will you sit down, Vasya?”

  She did not move.

  He huffed out a laugh and sank onto a carved bench beside the fire. A wine-jar studded with amber sat beside two cups; he poured one for himself and drank the pale liquid down. “Well, I did enjoy it,” he admitted. “Playing with our hotheaded prince’s temper. Watching your self-righteous brother squirm.” He slanted a look at where she stood, frozen with disgust, by the door and added more seriously, “And you yourself. No one would ever take you for a beauty, Vasilisa Petrovna, but then no one would ever want to. You were lovely, fighting me so. And charming in your boy’s clothes. I could hardly wait as long as I did. I knew, you know. I always knew, whatever I might have told the Grand Prince. All those nights on the road. I knew.”

  He made his glance tender; his tone invited her to soften, but there was still laughter in the back of his eyes, as though he mocked his own words.

  Vasya remembered the icy kiss of the air on her skin, the boyars’ leering, and her flesh crept.

  “Come,” he went on. “Are you telling me you didn’t enjoy it, wild-cat? The eyes of Moscow upon you?”

  Her stomach turned over. “What do you want?”

  He poured more wine and raised his gaze to hers. “To rescue you.”

  “What?”

  His glance returned, heavy-lidded, to the fire. “I think you understand me very well,” he said. “As you said yourself, it is the convent or a witch-trial for you. I met a priest not so long ago—oh, a very holy man, so handsome and pious—who will be quite willing to tell the prince all about your wicked ways. And if you are condemned,” he went on musingly, “what price your brother’s life? What price your sister’s freedom? Dmitrii Ivanovich is the laughingstock of Moscow. Princes who are laughed at do not hold their realms long, and he knows it.”

  “How,” Vasya asked, between gritted teeth, “do you mean to save me?”

  Kasyan paused before replying, savoring his wine.
“Come here,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

  She stayed where she was. He sighed with kindly exasperation, took another swallow. “Very well,” he said. “You have but to tap on the door; the slave will come and take you back to your room. I will not enjoy watching the fire take you, Vasilisa Petrovna, not at all. And your poor sister—how she will weep, to say farewell to her children.”

  Vasya stalked to the fire and sat on the bench opposite him. He smiled at her with unconcealed pleasure. “There you are!” he cried. “I knew you could be reasonable. Wine?”

  “No.”

  He poured her a cup and sipped at his own. “I can save you,” he said. “And your brother and sister in the bargain. If you marry me.”

  An instant of silence.

  “Are you saying you mean to marry this witch-girl, this slut who paraded about Moscow in boy’s clothes?” Vasya asked acidly. “I don’t believe you.”

  “So untrusting, for a maiden,” he returned cheerfully. “It is unbecoming. You won my heart with your little masquerade, Vasya. I loved your spirit from the first. How the others did not suspect, I cannot think. I will marry you and take you to Bashnya Kostei. I tried to tell you as much this morning. All this could have been avoided, you know…but no matter. When we are wed, I will see that your brother is freed—to return to the Lavra, as is proper, to live out his days in peace.” His face soured. “Politicking is not the work of a monk, anyway.”

  Vasya made no reply.

  His eye found hers; he leaned forward and added, more softly, “Olga Vladimirova may live out her days in her tower with her children. Safe as walls can make her.”

  “You think our marriage will calm the Grand Prince?” Vasya returned.

  Kasyan laughed. “Leave Dmitrii Ivanovich to me,” he said, eyes gleaming beneath lowered lids.

  “You paid the bandit-captain to pass himself as the ambassador,” Vasya said, watching his face. “Why? Did you pay him to burn your own villages, too?”

  He grinned at her, but she thought she saw something harden in his eyes. “Find out for yourself. You are a clever child. Where is the pleasure otherwise?” He leaned nearer. “Were you to wed me, Vasilisa Petrovna, there would be lies and tricks aplenty, and passion—such passion.” Kasyan reached out and stroked a finger down the side of her face.