The Dreaming Land I: The Challenge (The Zemnian Series Book 5)

by E. P. Clark

  “Certainly. I will be quiet and unobtrusive tomorrow, and it will all go as smoothly as if we were on oil.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” said Sera with a sigh and a raised brow. “Like on oil, without a doubt. Well, perhaps you should go speak with Aksinya Olgovna now, if you don’t mind, to prepare her for this. Oh, and Valya—I just remembered.”

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “I know it’s early yet—but if time is as pressing as you claim it is in the matter of Ivan Marinovich’s marriage, do you think…what do you think the chances are of you securing him before you set off?”

  “You mean, before I set off the day after Midsummer? In four days’ time?”

  “Yes. I know it’s quick, but if his mother is determined to move as quickly as you say she is, we must move even quicker, and you could be gone for months on this expedition. So what do you think the chances are of getting him to accept your proposal before you leave?”

  “I suppose if we brought some pressure to bear…” I said, wrinkling my nose at the thought.

  “I know you don’t like the idea, Valya, but we must do what we must do.”

  “But it might not come to that,” I continued. “You see, I promised him that if I were to go off on an expedition such as this one, I would invite him to come with me.”

  “You—what? Really?”

  “Really,” I confirmed. “He seemed very keen to go, too.”

  “Well, that would be most convenient…although perhaps a little irregular…and how we will get his mother to agree, I don’t know…”

  “Say we need a representative from the black earth district,” I suggested. “Maybe from her family.”

  “A good idea. But why would we need him instead of any other representative of her family, or of the black earth district?”

  “Let me think on it. I’m the one choosing the members of the party, am I not? So let me think of a good reason for him to be on it, and I’ll try to come up with suggestions for the other members while I’m at it.”

  “Very well. The session will begin at the second hour after noon tomorrow. Oh, and Valya?”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Maybe you should wear a gown for once? At least a nice sarafan. So that you look like someone who should be on the Princess Council, not standing outside the door guarding it?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “But no promises.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I spent the rest of the afternoon explaining the good/bad news—that the Empress had decided to do something about the situation in the mountains, but that she would have to make an appearance before the Princess Council—to Aksinya Olgovna, and coaching her on what she should say and do. I was the last person who should be giving advice on how to smooth-talk my sister princesses, but at least what I was saying to Aksinya Olgovna sounded good, and probably wouldn’t hurt.

  Once I had prepared her as best I could for that, and gotten her reluctant promise to remain in Krasnograd for four more days, so that she could be part of my party when I set off, I was kept busy for the rest of the evening by dining with Mirochka and the tsarinoviches, who were very lively company and prevented me from dwelling on any of the unpleasant things awaiting me the next day—the Princess Council first and foremost, but of even more concern to me personally, the arrival of Princess Velikokrasnova.

  As much as I tried to convince myself that the imminent presence of Princess Velikokrasnova and him in Krasnograd did not upset me, that it was all of the past and the pain it had caused was long behind me, that I had more important things to think about, that I had a new bright future awaiting me, that I was simply too good to be fretting over something that had happened almost nine years ago, and so on and so forth, none of the comforting things I told myself were actually true, and even the high spirits of Mirochka and the boys could not entirely distract me from my gloomy thoughts. It was embarrassing, but it was so. When the nurse-maids came and said it was time for the tsarinoviches to go to bed, I gathered Mirochka up with a mixture of apprehension and relief—apprehension of the sleepless night I expected ahead of me, but relief that I would no longer have to put on a cheerful face for the tsarinoviches, who were too observant for their own good.

  “Don’t worry, mama: I’m sure you’ll sleep well tonight,” Mirochka told me as we walked down the stairs to our chambers.

  “How did you…what makes you think that?” I demanded, more brusquely than I should have. “I mean—what makes you think that I’m worrying about that?”

  Mirochka shrugged. “I can just tell, that’s all. But don’t worry: it won’t be a problem.”

  “Is that so?” I summoned up a smile. “What are you going to do about it, then—bore me to sleep with a very, very long, booooring story?”

  “No, of course not, mama: you’re the one who’s supposed to tell me stories,” she said, with the long-suffering air of a girl cursed with the world’s most foolish mother. “But once you put me to sleep, I’ll make sure that you sleep too.”

  “Agreed,” I said, as we entered our chambers. “So what story should I tell you to put you to sleep?”

  Mirochka contemplated this important question while we undressed for bed, and then announced, once we were lying down, that I should make up a story instead.

  “What about?” I asked.

  “It’s your story, mama.”

  “Shall I make it about rats, then?” I wriggled my nose like a rat.

  “No, mama!”

  “Weasels?” I darted my head this way and that like a hunting weasel.

  “Mama!”

  “Rats and weasels?” I wriggled my nose and darted my head simultaneously, which resulted in me making a face that caused Mirochka to giggle uncontrollably for some time.

  Once she had sobered up, she demanded a story about a pony going on a journey, so I obliged as best I could, until she fell asleep with her head resting on my shoulder. I stroked her hair, too softly to wake her up. How was I going to leave her? I knew that Sera was right and that I should go on this mission and that it was no place for a child and that Mirochka should stay behind in Krasnograd and learn how to behave not just like a child of the steppe but like a Zerkalitsa, and that she would be as safe and as well cared for as she could possibly be here in my absence, certainly much safer and better cared for than she would be if I took her with me, but it would mean being without her for four or more months. Sometimes the demands of watching over her weighed heavily on me, but I had never resented all that she took of me as I knew so many mothers did, and those four (or more!) months without her would mean four (or more!) months in which she would never once fall asleep with her head on my shoulder, as she was doing less and less these days. For the moment she was still a child, but soon she would be a young woman, and I was seized with the sudden fear of missing even an instant of her precious, fleeting childhood.

  “Don’t worry, mama,” she murmured sleepily. “I’m right here. Go to sleep.”

  “I thought you were sleeping,” I whispered.

  “I was. Go to sleep, mama: you’re waking me up with your thoughts.”

  I arranged us both as best I could without waking her even more, and, in what I was sure was a futile effort, closed my eyes.

  ***

  Someone was stroking my hair and crooning a lullaby in the semi-darkness. It was semi-dark, I realized after a moment, because my eyes were closed against the bright light of morning. I opened them. Mirochka was stroking my hair and singing the lullaby I had sung to her when she was small.

  “See, I told you, mama. You didn’t need to worry. You got lots of sleep.”

  “So I see,” I said groggily. “How late is it?”

  “It’s not yet breakfast time, but it will be soon. I thought you would want to wake up now. Did you have nice dreams?”

  “Very,” I answered automatically.

  “Did you like the birds? I like dreaming about birds, so I sent some to you as well.”

  Fain
tly, as you do after a heavy sleep, I recalled fragments of a dream about friendly birds.

  “The birds were lovely,” I said. “How did you do that?”

  “I decided to, of course.”

  “That was it? All you had to do was decide to send me a dream about birds?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t sure at first I could do it, but then I did. And I made you sleep. Did you like it?”

  “It was lovely,” I said, sitting up slowly. “But now I need to wake up.”

  “Oh, of course!” She looked sharply into my eyes, and suddenly I felt much more awake.

  “How did you do that?” I asked, trying to sound level and noncommittal, and not at all shocked.

  “I told you, mama: I just decided to!”

  “Can you teach me how to do it?” I asked. She looked puzzled at that thought. “Like I showed you how to use a sword. Can you show me how to do what you did, with the birds and the waking up?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “All you have to do is decide to do it, and make a picture in your mind of what you want to do, or maybe an idea, and then send the picture or the idea into the other person’s mind,” she explained. “It’s very easy. Can’t you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never tried.”

  “Why not?” she asked, sounding surprised.

  “It’s not something many people can do. Most of us never even think of trying.”

  “Really?” She sounded even more surprised than before, and had to spend while staring at me in order to collect her thoughts.

  “Did someone show you how to do it?” I continued.

  She shook her head.

  “How did you figure it out, then? When did you figure it out?”

  She gave me an apprehensive look. “Am I in trouble, mama?” she asked fearfully. “Did I do a bad thing? I didn’t mean to!”

  “No-no, everything’s fine,” I assured you. “You’re not in trouble, and you didn’t do a bad thing. You did a very good thing. I was just curious how you figured it out all on your own.”

  She frowned. “I remember having lots of dreams about strange things when I was little. When you and I used to sleep together, mama. But when I got my own room, they stopped and I started dreaming about other things instead, things that I recognized. The dreams I used to dream weren’t my dreams. I think they were yours, mama.”

  “Oh?” I said, trying to repress a shudder of horror and embarrassment at the thought of my dreams being shared with a girl of three or four. Even I found my dreams shocking at times, and I was the one dreaming them. “Why do you think that, my dove?”

  “I didn’t used to, not until we came here. But when we came here, I remembered those old dreams because I recognized things from them. I recognized the Tsarina, and the kremlin, and parts of Krasnograd. Only it’s much less sad and frightening than I remember it from the dreams. In the dreams it’s always too dark or too bright, and I’m always shouting at people who won’t listen, or hiding from people who are hunting me, or chasing people I can never catch. There were lots of dreams about a thin man with long brown hair and sad eyes. Who is he, mama?”

  I got out of the bed and went over to the mirror by the wardrobe. “Come here,” I said.

  “Why, mama?”

  “I want to show you something in the mirror. Come here.”

  She got out of bed and came to me. I lifted her up so that she could look at her face in the mirror. “Did his nose have a tiny bump on it near the top?” I asked. “Like this?” I traced my finger down her own long thin nose, with a tiny hump on it just below her eyes. She nodded, wide-eyed.

  “Did his chin have a hollow in it?” I asked. “Like this?” I stroked her own chin, which, unlike mine and everyone else in my family’s, had a slight cleft.

  She nodded again, even more wide-eyed than before.

  “It was your father,” I told her. “You were seeing your father in your dreams. My dreams, I guess.”

  “Oh, mama!” She turned away from the mirror to wrap her arms around me and bury her head in my neck. “Those dreams were so sad! Sometimes I would wake up crying, do you remember?”

  “I remember that you used to wake up crying from sad dreams. I didn’t know they were mine. I’m sorry, my dove. If I’d have known, I would have done something about it. I didn’t mean to give you my bad dreams.”

  “Do you still dream such sad dreams about him, mama?” she asked, still clinging to my neck.

  “Not so much any more,” I told her. “I have other dreams now.”

  “But are you still sad about him? You told me you were very sad about him!”

  “I was. But sadness goes away in time, at least somewhat. And I have other things to think about, other things to be glad about. Like you!”

  “Is it…” She let go of my neck and looked into my eyes. “Does it hurt you to see parts of him in me?”

  “You have his eyes,” I said softly. “I never noticed before. I always thought your eyes were just like mine. And they are, on the outside. You have my slanted steppe eyes. But from this close I can see that on the inside they’re just like his. The same color, and the same expression. The same sadness.”

  “Oh, mama!”

  “It doesn’t hurt me at all,” I lied. “Because they’re yours, now. So they make me glad!”

  “Will I…will I ever get to meet him, mama?”

  “Do you want to?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m…I’m afraid. But I’m curious, too.”

  “Well, you might get to meet him very soon,” I told her. “He might be arriving in Krasnograd this morning.

  “Oh, mama! What will we do!”

  “Nothing,” I said. “We’ll do nothing, and worry about nothing. But…”

  “Yes, mama?”

  “If you do meet him, you might…wait a bit to tell him who you are, or speak to him, or have anything to do with him. Let me decide when to introduce you.”

  “Why, mama?”

  “Because he has another family, and it might…cause him and them trouble for you to appear suddenly and lay claim to him.”

  “I thought you said he doesn’t have any other children!”

  “He doesn’t. But he has a wife, and a stepson, and other people. Just…let me decide how best to introduce you, all right? If you want to meet him, I will make it happen, and even if you don’t, perhaps we should make it happen, if you’re both going to be in Krasnograd anyway, but we don’t want to just throw you on him unawares. It wouldn’t be…kind.”

  “But he hurt you, mama!”

  “Well, I hurt him as well,” I said. “Maybe more than he hurt me. After all, I got you out of this, while all he got was…he didn’t get anything nearly so pleasant out of it.”

  “Oh.” She frowned.

  “So let’s not make it any worse for him than it already is,” I said firmly. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” she answered, although her face was still full of confusion and doubt. I would just have to do my best to make sure that he didn’t encounter her unexpectedly, since the gods only knew what she would do or say if she came across him unawares. Being that she was my daughter as well as his, probably something that would have the whole kremlin and the rest of Krasnograd buzzing with rumors and recriminations.

  “Here, hop down,” I told her. “We need to get dressed. I think I hear them bringing us breakfast.”

  We ate breakfast, speaking no more of either her abilities or her father, and then, in what was now our morning routine, I dropped her off with the tsarinoviches and went down to the training yard by the barracks. I wasn’t sure, what with one thing and another, whether Ivan would show up, but I thought I’d put in an appearance just in case.

  I was just warming up when he arrived at my side. “Good morning, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said guardedly.

  “Good morning,” I said, as cheerfully and meaninglessly as possible, in order not to spook him any more than he was already spooked. “Are you read
y to train?”

  “In a moment, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said, not quite looking at me as he pulled out his training sword and began to limber up. I tried to return the favor by only looking at him out of the corner of my eye.

  “You know, you’ll only have to change your shirt again before your mother comes anyway,” I said, unable to hold myself and my curiosity back any longer, as we turned to face each other.

  “How did you know..?” he asked, looking rather more astonished than the remark warranted.

  “This isn’t your training shirt. This one is much…” I was going to say more modest, but stopped myself in time. “Nicer,” I finished, instead. “Do you expect to go greet her straight from the training yard?”

  “No,” he said shortly. “I’m afraid I’ll encounter her on the street on my way back. Of course if I have time, I’ll change shirts again, but I might not have that time.”

  “I see. Do we need to cut our session short, then?”

  “No,” he said again, even more curtly than before. “I want to do this, Valeriya Dariyevna. Now can we please fight?”

  “With pleasure,” I said, and brought up my sword.

  When we had sparred before I had either been testing him or training him, but I could sense by the set of his mouth that neither of those things were what he needed today, so instead of circling around him cautiously, I immediately launched myself at him with an impulsive attack. He barely brought up his sword in time to repel me, but once he had, he began parrying furiously and, after a time, began pressing his own attack, hammering at me with wild strength until I let my sword fall to the ground.

  “Enough,” I said.

  “You let me win,” he accused me.

  I shrugged. “You did a good job,” I told him. “And I didn’t think getting your ass kicked yet again in front of all these loitering guards was what you needed.”

  He glanced over at the guards in surprise. Clearly he had been so focused on me that he hadn’t even noticed their presence. “I don’t need your charity!” he cried.

  “It wasn’t charity,” I told him patiently. “Like I said, you did a good job. The only way I could have beaten you would have been to hurt you, and I didn’t want to do that. And I wanted to see what you would do when you had the upper hand.”