The Girl in the Tower

by Katherine Arden

  She drew away and said nothing.

  He sat back. “Come, girl,” he said, brisk now. “I do not see you getting any better offers.”

  She could hardly breathe. “Give me a day to think.”

  “Absolutely not. You might not love your siblings enough; you might bolt, and leave them in the lurch. And leave me, too, for I am quite overcome with passion.” He said this composedly. “I am not such a fool as that, vedma.”

  She stiffened.

  “Ah,” he said, reading her face before the question formed. “Our wise girl with her magic horse; she has never learned who she is, has she? Well, you might learn that as well, if you were to marry me.” He sat back and looked at her expectantly.

  She thought of the ghost’s warning, and Morozko’s.

  But—what about Sasha, and Olya? What about Masha? Masha who sees things as I do, Masha who will be branded a witch herself if the women discover her secret.

  “I will marry you,” she said. “If my brother and sister are kept safe.” Perhaps later she could devise her escape.

  His face broke into a glittering smile. “Excellent, excellent, my sweet little liar,” he said caressingly. “You won’t regret it, I promise you.” He paused. “Well, you might regret it. But your life will never be boring. And that is what you fear, is it not? The gilded cage of the Russian maiden?”

  “I have agreed,” Vasya said only. “My thoughts are my own.” She was on her feet. “I am going now.”

  He did not stir from his chair. “Not so fast. You belong to me now, and I do not give you leave to go.”

  She stood still. “You have not bought me yet. I named a price and you have not met it.”

  “That is true,” he said, leaning back in his chair and putting together his fingertips. “And yet, if you are disobedient, I can still toss you back.”

  She stayed where she was.

  “Come here,” he said, very softly.

  Her feet carried her to a spot beside his bench, though she was scarcely aware of it, so angry was she. Yesterday a lord’s son, and nobody’s dog, today she was meat for this schemer. She fought to keep her thoughts from her face.

  He must have seen her inward struggle, for he said, “Good, that is good. I like a little fight. Now kneel.” She stilled and he said, “Here—between my feet.”

  She did so, brusquely, stiff-limbed as a doll. The bewildering, scathing sweetness of a frost-demon in the moonlight had in no wise prepared her for the dusty, animal smell of this man’s perfumed skin, his half-choked laughter. He cupped her jaw, traced the bones of her face with his fingers. “Just alike,” he murmured, voice gone rough. “Just like the other. You’ll do.”

  “Who?” asked Vasya.

  Kasyan didn’t answer. He pulled something from a pouch. It gleamed between his heavy fingers. She looked and saw it was a necklace, made of thick gold, hung with a red stone.

  “A bride-gift,” he murmured, almost laughing, breathing into her mouth. “Kiss me.”

  “No.”

  He lifted a languid brow and pinched her earlobe so that her eyes watered. “I will not tolerate a third disobedience, Vasochka.” The childish nickname lay ugly on his tongue. “There are biddable maidens in Moscow who would be happy to be my bride.” He leaned forward again and murmured, “Perhaps if I ask, the Grand Prince will have you all three burned together—so cozy, the children of Pyotr Vladimirovich—while your niece and nephew look on.”

  Her stomach roiled, but she leaned forward. He was smiling. With her kneeling, their faces were on a level.

  She put her mouth to his.

  His hand shot up, seizing her behind her head, at the base of her plait. She jerked back instinctively, breath coming short in disgust, but he only tightened his grip and, leisurely, put his tongue in her mouth. She controlled herself, barely; she did not bite it off. The necklace sparkled in his other hand. He was going to drop it over her head. Vasya jerked away a second time, full of a new fear that she didn’t understand. The golden thing swung heavily from his fist. He wrenched her head back—

  But then Kasyan swore, and the jewel in his hand clattered to the floor. Breathing fast, he dragged out Vasya’s sapphire talisman. The stone was glowing faintly; it threw blue light between them.

  Kasyan hissed, dropped her charm, and cuffed her across the face. Her vision filled with red sparks and she tumbled back onto the floor. “Bitch!” he snarled, on his feet. “Idiot! You of all people—”

  Vasya scrambled upright, shaking her head. Kasyan’s would-be gift lay like a snake on the ground. Kasyan gathered it up tenderly, frowning, and stood. “I suppose you let him do it,” he said. His eyes were bright with malice now, though somewhere, lurking deep down, she thought she saw fear. “I suppose he persuaded you to wear it, with his blue eyes. I’m surprised, girl, truly, that you would allow that monster to enslave you.”

  “I am no one’s slave,” Vasya snapped. “That jewel was a gift from my father.”

  Kasyan laughed. “Who told you that?” he asked. “Him?” The laughter disappeared from his face. “Ask him, fool. Ask him why a death-god befriends a country girl. See what he answers.”

  Vasya was afraid in ways she could not understand. “The death-god told me you have another name,” she said. “What is your true name, Kasyan Lutovich?”

  Kasyan smiled a little, but he made no answer. His eyes were quick and dark with thought. Abruptly he strode forward, caught her by the shoulder, crowded her against the wall, and kissed her again. His open mouth ate at her leisurely and one hand closed painfully on her breast.

  She endured it, standing rigid. He did not try to put the necklace on her again.

  Just as suddenly he stepped aside and flung her away from him, back into the room.

  She kept her feet but without grace, breathing fast, her stomach heaving.

  He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Enough,” he said. “You’ll do. Tell your sister you have accepted the match, and that you are to be confined until the wedding.” He paused, and his voice hardened. “Which will be tomorrow. By then, you will have taken that charm—that abomination—off and destroyed it. Any disobedience, and I will see your family punished, Vasya. Brother and sister and little children alike. Now go.”

  She stumbled for the door, routed, sick, the taste of him sour in her mouth. His soft, satisfied laughter chased her into the hall when she fled the room.

  Vasya cannoned into Varvara the instant she was away, then bent over in the hall, retching.

  Varvara’s lip curled. “A handsome lord means to save you from ruin,” she said, the sarcasm sharp. “Where is your gratitude, Vasilisa Petrovna? Or did he have your virtue there beside the oven?”

  “No,” Vasya retorted, straightening with a supreme effort. “He—he wants me to be afraid of him. I think he succeeded.” She scrubbed a hand across her mouth and was almost sick again. The hall was full of a beating, eager darkness, only a little repelled by the lamp in Varvara’s hand—although that was perhaps the darkness in her own head. Vasya wanted to press her knees together, and she wanted to weep.

  Varvara’s lip curled the more, but she only said, “Come, poor thing, your sister wants you.”

  OLGA WAS ALONE IN the workroom. She held her distaff in her hands, turning it over and over, but she was not working. Her back pained her; she felt old and worn. She looked up at once when Varvara led Vasya in.

  “Well?” she said, without preamble.

  “He asked me to marry him,” said Vasya. She did not come properly into the room, but stood off, in the shadows near the door, her head tilted proudly. “I agreed. He says that if I marry him, he will intervene with the Grand Prince. Have Sasha spared, and you absolved of blame.”

  Olga considered her sister. There were dozens of prettier girls in Moscow, better born. Kasyan could not want her for her virtue. Yet he wanted Vasya enough to marry her. Why?

  He desires her, Olga thought. Why else would he behave so? And I left her alone wit
h him…

  Well, and so? She’s been roaming the streets in his company, dressed as a boy.

  “Come in, then, Vasya,” Olga said, irritable with vague guilt. “Don’t hang about the door. Tell me, what did he say to you?” She laid her distaff aside. “Varvara, build up the fire.”

  The slave went about it, soft-footed, while Vasya came forward. The fierce color in her face from that morning was quite gone; her eyes were big and dark. Olga’s limbs ached; she wished she felt less old, less angry, and less sorry for her sister. “It is better than you deserve,” she said. “An honorable marriage. You were a breath away from the convent, or worse, Vasya.”

  Vasya nodded once, her lids veiled with a sweep of black lashes. “I know, Olya.”

  Just then, a roar, as though in agreement, came from outside the prince of Serpukhov’s gates. They had just flung the effigy of Lady Maslenitsa onto the fire; her hair streamed away in torrents of fire and her eyes shone, as though alive, as she burned.

  Olga fought her irritation down, trying to keep both the anger and the pity from her face. A sharp pain stabbed through her back. “Come, then,” she said, as kindly as she could. “Eat with me. We will call for cakes and honey-wine, and we will celebrate your marriage.”

  The cakes came, and the sisters ate together. Neither could swallow much. The silence stretched out.

  “When I first came here,” said Olga, abruptly, to Vasya, “I was a little younger than you, and I was very frightened.”

  Vasya had been looking down at the untasted thing in her hand, but now she glanced up quickly. “I knew no one,” Olga went on. “I understood nothing. My mother-in-law—she had wanted a proper princess for her son, and she hated me.”

  Vasya made a sound of painful sympathy, and Olga lifted a hand to silence her. “Vladimir could not protect me, for it is not the business of men, what goes on in the terem. But the oldest woman in the terem—the oldest woman I have ever known—she was kind to me. She held me when I wept; she brought me porridge when I missed the taste of home. Once I asked her why she bothered. ‘I knew your grandmother,’ she replied.”

  Vasya was silent. Their grandmother—said the story—had come riding into Moscow one day all alone. No one knew where she came from. Word of the mysterious maiden reached the ears of the Grand Prince, who summoned her for sport and fell in love. He married her, and the girl bore their mother, Marina, and died in the tower.

  “ ‘You are fortunate,’ this old woman said to me,” Olga continued, “ ‘that you are not like her.’ She—she was a creature of smoke and stars. She was no more made for the terem than a snowstorm is, and yet…she came riding into Moscow willingly—indeed, as though all hell pursued her—riding a gray horse. She wed Ivan without demur, though she wept before her wedding night. She tried to be a good wife, and perhaps would have been, but for her wildness. She would walk in the yard, looking at the sky; she would talk with longing of her gray horse, which vanished on the night of her marriage. ‘Why do you stay?’ I asked her, but she never answered. She was dead in her heart long before she died in truth, and I was glad when her daughter, Marina, married away from the city—”

  Olga broke off. “That is to say,” she went on, “that I am not like our grandmother, and I am a princess now, the head of my house, and it is a good life, sweet mixed with bitter. But you—when I saw you first, I thought of that tale of our grandmother, riding into Moscow on her gray horse.”

  “What was our grandmother’s name?” asked Vasya low. She had asked her nurse, once. But Dunya would never tell her.

  “Tamara,” said Olga. “Her name was Tamara.” She shook her head. “It is all right, Vasya. You will not share her fate. Kasyan has vast lands, and many horses. There is freedom in the countryside that Moscow does not offer. You will go there, and be happy.”

  “With a man who stripped me naked before Moscow?” Vasya asked sharply. The half-eaten cakes were being taken away. Olga made no answer. Vasya said, “Olya, if I must marry him to make this right, then I will marry him. But—” She hesitated, and then finished in a rush, “I believe that it was Kasyan who paid the bandits, who turned them loose on the villages. And—the bandit-captain is in Moscow now, posing as the Tatar ambassador. He is in league with Kasyan, and I think they intend to depose the Grand Prince. I think it is to happen tonight. I must—”

  “Vasya—”

  “The Grand Prince must be warned,” Vasya finished.

  “Impossible,” Olga said. “None of my household can go near the Grand Prince tonight. We are all colored by your disgrace. It is all nonsense anyway—why would a lord pay men to burn his own villages? In any case, could Kasyan Lutovich expect to hold the patent for Moscow?”

  “I don’t know,” said Vasya. “But Dmitrii Ivanovich has no son—only a pregnant wife. Who would rule, if he died tonight?”

  “It is not your place or your business,” Olga said sharply. “He is not going to die.”

  Vasya did not seem to have heard. She was pacing the room; she looked more like Vasilii Petrovich than her own self. “Why not?” she murmured. “Dmitrii is angry with Sasha—for Kasyan took up the lie—the weapon I put into his hand. Your husband, Prince Vladimir, is not here. So the two men the Grand Prince most trusts are set at remove. Kasyan has his own people in the city, and Chelubey has more.” Vasya stilled her pacing with a visible effort, stood light and restless in the center of the room. “Depose the Grand Prince,” she whispered. “Why does he need to marry me?” Her eyes went to her sister.

  But Olga had stopped listening. Blood was beating like wings in her ears, and a great sinking pain began to eat her from the inside. “Vasya,” she whispered, a hand on her belly.

  Vasya saw Olga’s face, and her own face changed. “The baby?” she asked. “Now?”

  Olga managed a nod. “Send for Varvara,” she whispered. She swayed, and her sister caught her.

  22.

  Mother

  The bathhouse, where Olga was brought to labor, was hot and dark, humid as a summer night, and it smelled of fresh wood, and smoke, and sap and hot water and rot. If Olga’s women noted Vasya’s presence they did not question it. They had no breath for questioning, and no time. Vasya had strong and capable hands; she had seen childbirth before, and in the ferocious, steaming half-light, the women asked no more.

  Vasya stripped down to her shift like the others, anger and uncertainty forgotten in the messy urgency of childbirth. Her sister was already naked; she squatted on a birthing-stool, black hair streaming. Vasya knelt, took her sister’s hands, and did not flinch when Olga crushed her fingers.

  “You look like our mother, you know,” Olga whispered. “Vasochka. Did I ever tell you?” Her face changed as the pain came again.

  Vasya held her hands. “No,” she said. “You never told me.”

  Olga’s lips were pale. Shadows made her eyes bigger, and shrank the difference between them. Olga was naked, Vasya nearly so. It was as if they were small girls again, before the world came between them.

  The pain came and went and Olga breathed and sweated and bit down on her screams. Vasya talked to her sister steadily, forgetting their troubles in the world outside. There was only the sweat and the labor, the pain endured and endured again. The bathhouse grew hotter; steam wreathed their sweating bodies; the women labored in the near-darkness, and still the child was not born.

  “Vasya,” said Olga, leaning against her sister and panting. “Vasya, if I die—”

  “You won’t,” snapped Vasya.

  Olga smiled. Her eyes wandered. “I will try not,” she said. “But—you must give my love to Masha. Tell her I am sorry. She will be angry; she will not understand.” Olga broke off, as the agony came again; she still did not scream, but a sound climbed in the back of her throat, and Vasya thought her hands would break in her sister’s grip.

  The room smelled of sweat and birth-water now, and black blood showed between Olga’s thighs. The women were only vague, sweating shapes in the va
por. The smell of blood stuck, chokingly, in Vasya’s throat.

  “It hurts,” Olga whispered. She sat panting, limp and heavy.

  “Be brave,” said the midwife. “All will turn out well.” Her voice was kind, but Vasya saw the dark look she exchanged with the woman beside her.

  Vasya’s sapphire flared suddenly with cold, even in the heat of the bathhouse. Olga looked over her sister’s shoulder and her eyes widened. Vasya turned to follow her sister’s gaze. A shadow in the corner looked back at them.

  Vasya let go of Olga’s hands. “No,” she said.

  “I would have spared you this,” the shadow returned. She knew that voice, knew the pale, indifferent stare. She had seen it when her father died, when…

  “No,” said Vasya again. “No—no, go away.”

  He said nothing.

  “Please,” whispered Vasya. “Please. Go away.”

  They used to beg, when I walked among men, Morozko had told her once. If they saw me, they would beg. Evil came of that; better I step softly, better only the dead and the dying can see me.

  Well, she was cursed with sight; he could not hide from her. Now it was her turn to beg. Behind her, the women muttered, but his eyes were the only things she could see.

  She crossed the room without thinking and put a hand in the center of his chest. “Please go.” For an instant, she might have been touching a shadow, but then his flesh was real, though cold. He drew away as though her hand hurt him.

  “Vasya,” he said. Was that feeling, in his indifferent face? She reached for him again, pleading. When her hands found his, he stilled, looking troubled and less like a nightmare.

  “I am here,” he told her. “I do not choose.”

  “You can choose,” she returned, following him when he drew back. “Leave my sister alone. Let her live.”

  Death’s shadow stretched nearly to where Olga sat, spent, on the bathhouse-bench, surrounded by sweating women. Vasya did not know what the others saw, or if they thought she was speaking to the darkness.