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

by E. P. Clark

  “Before the summer is out! Whatever for! I could still be in the mountains then!”

  “And when you come back, be sure that it’s obvious to everyone that Zem’ has another heir on the way. If it comes with an alliance, so much the better, but the child is the main thing.”

  I looked at her closely. Despite the hectic flush of her cheeks, her lips were almost blue. “Have the midwives…” I began.

  “Oh, you know midwives, Valya. If you listen to them while you’re carrying, you’ll think that childbearing is a pleasure and every woman rises from childbed stronger than when she lies down. But they shake their heads and purse their lips whenever they look at me. So please, please, Valya, please—be with child when you come back. If he,” she nodded to where Ivan was chasing the tsarinoviches around in circles, while Mirochka laughed herself breathless against the stable wall and Vyacheslav Irinovich looked on indulgently, “if he doesn’t please you, then find another, some guard or plowman or stable lad who looks fertile. But,” she smiled at me from the side of her mouth, “I think he pleases you well enough, doesn’t he?”

  “And if his mother disavows him?” I asked. “What will happen to our alliance with the black earth district then? What if I get a child off of him, and then you decide it would be better for me to marry some other black earth princess’s son?”

  “You already got a child off of Princess Vostochnokrasnova’s son without marrying him. Getting another one off of Princess Velikokrasnova’s son will hardly make things worse—and it may make things better. After all, there are many women who would be happy to see their granddaughter on the Wooden Throne, even if their son never sits beside her.”

  “No, I meant: what about Ivan? What will happen to him then? Will we just discard him as spoilt goods?”

  “No, of course not, Valya.” She tried to smile again, but suddenly she looked too tired to lift even the corners of her mouth, let alone shoulder my concerns. “Even if…even if you end up taking some other man as your husband, I promise that Ivan Marinovich will be well cared for. He’s the tsarinovich’s companion now. By the way, that was a stroke of brilliance on your part, so thank you. Had you been planning it long?”

  “No,” I said. “It just came to me all of a sudden while we were walking through the park.”

  “I see.” She took my arm. “Take me back to my chambers, Valya. I need to lie down.”

  I started walking her across the stable yard. She hung heavy on my arm. “Will you make it?” I asked, trying not to let her see how much her sudden weakness alarmed me.

  “Just…don’t let me fall.”

  “Of course not. But should we call for a litter or something?”

  “No. I don’t want to wait. Let’s just keep going.” She clutched harder at my arm.

  “Of course.” I caught Vyacheslav Irinovich’s eye, and he came hurrying over.

  “Sera and I are going back to her chambers,” I told him, as we continued to walk slowly across the yard. “Can you see that the children are escorted back to their own chambers, and that a place is provided for Ivan Marinovich?”

  “Of course, Valeriya Dariyevna. My dear, should I take your other arm?”

  Sera shook her head. “Just…see to the children, will you, and then come find me. Valya will bring me back safely, I’m sure.” We continued to walk slowly towards the kremlin door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ivan break off his game with the children and go over to ask Vyacheslav Irinovich something, and then the two of them began herding the children towards the door after us, with loud protests from Mirochka and the two younger boys. I gave Mirochka a stern look, which quelled her complaints, at least until I was through the door and out of her sight.

  “I hate this,” said Sera, once we were inside. “What were the gods thinking, eh? Surely they could have made things so that producing offspring was a little less awful, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think the gods had much of a plan for us, or thought things through very carefully. If they had, things would be very different.”

  “No doubt you’re right,” she said tiredly, and then fell silent. We dragged our way up to her chambers, where I found her maids waiting for her with refreshments and clean nightclothes. They were taken aback by her weakness, but quickly rallied and began undressing her and preparing her for bed.

  “I’ll be back shortly,” I told her, once I was sure that the maids would be watching over her in my absence.

  “You don’t have to come back, Valya.” She gave me a faint smile. “Go have supper, go to bed, or go do whatever it is you would be doing if you weren’t watching over me. I have my maids, and Slava will be here soon. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll be back shortly,” I repeated, and left before she could argue with me any more.

  The kremlin had several healers who lived in the servants’ quarters. However, being healers, they were often off healing people, so when I showed up in the rooms where they in theory resided, no one was there. I snagged a passing serving girl, who told me that Nadezhda Dariyevna, the one who had spoken with me before, was off visiting her family, Olga Nastasyevna and Vasilisa Arinovna were in the barracks treating the results of a friendly brawl that had gotten out of hand (both of us rolled our eyes at that, and I resolved to have some harsh words with the guards if Sera were to suffer because her healers were off taking care of the self-inflicted injuries of a bunch of thoughtless snot-nosed little boys), and Snezhana Tatyanovna was in the kitchens taking care of a serving girl who had spilled hot soup on herself.

  The kitchens were closest, so I headed down there to find Snezhana Tatyanovna and have her examine Sera. Her current weakness concerned me, and her sudden insistence that I get with child before the summer was out concerned me even more. Had she had some kind of presentiment? Her gift was faint, so faint it hardly deserved the name, but it still spoke to her sometimes, and now would be the time for it to speak.

  The kitchen, while never entirely still, not even at midnight (as I had discovered during my summer of sneaking around), was currently in a lull period when I entered, and aside from a few people making stock, setting bread to rise, or watching Snezhana Tatyanovna apply salve to the injured girl’s burns, empty. Alyona Vasilisovna was supervising all the activities with her usual sharp-eyed gaze, which turned to me as soon as I came through the door.

  “Hungry after your run, Valeriya Dariyevna?” she asked. She nodded at an idle serving girl, who leaped up from her seat at the big table in the middle of the room and began gathering things on a platter.

  “I see word has gotten out already,” I said, taking the serving girl’s place at the table. Snezhana Tatyanovna gave me a single look, which seemed to guess why I had come down, and then turned back to the burned girl and began swiftly bandaging the areas to which she had just applied the salve. The girl whimpered. Alyona Vasilisovna glared at her, and Snezhana Tatyanovna said something soothing to her in a low voice.

  “Your arrival back at the kremlin, with Princess Velikokrasnova hot on your heels, caused quite a stir, Valeriya Dariyevna,” said Alyona Vasilisovna. “Although not as much as her departure without her son did. Three stablehands and two guards came running in to tell us all about it. They made our Raisochka spill the stock she’d been boiling all over herself, they did.”

  “Is it serious?” I asked.

  “It will heal,” said Snezhana Tatyanovna. “In a few weeks she’ll be right as rain.”

  “I’m sorry about the pain,” I told Raisochka. “Burns hurt something awful.”

  Raisochka looked at me round-eyed and bit back another whimper.

  “I take it you want me to tend to the Empress, Valeriya Dariyevna?” asked Snezhana Tatyanovna.

  “We all heard about how you had to walk her back into the palace all of a sudden, too,” interjected Alyona Vasilisovna. “Poor thing.” She shook her head. “It always takes her like this.”

  I looked around the kitchen. The others had retreated from the table back
to the stoves, leaving only me, Snezhana Tatyanovna, and Raisochka as witnesses to Alyona Vasilisovna’s statement, thank the gods. I leaned closer to Alyona Vasilisovna and asked, speaking low enough that only she could hear me, “Is it all over the kremlin already, then?”

  Alyona Vasilisovna shook her head. “No one’s breathed a word of it to us, Valeriya Dariyevna, but it’s not hard to guess what’s going on. I’ve seen her through all the times she brought a baby into the world—and all the times she didn’t, too, which have been a far sight more. Poor thing. Every time she suffered enough to make you want to turn your back on the gods forever. I don’t know why she’s doing it again.”

  “She wants an heir,” I said, still speaking low.

  “She has an heir,” said Alyona Vasilisovna, also speaking low, but emphasizing every word. “She has you, Valeriya Dariyevna, and your little daughter. After bringing three sons into the world, and losing so many others, you’d think she’d have learnt her lesson, begging your pardon, and stopped by now. Sometimes you’re just not meant to have daughters. If I were her, I’d be telling you, Valeriya Dariyevna, to find a man of good strong stock and start bringing some more heirs for Krasnograd into the world, not killing herself trying to do something it’s plain the gods haven’t meant for her to do.”

  “Well…” I said. “She is in fact also thinking along those lines. But she wants an heir, and the healers say—this must not pass beyond you, Alyona Vasilisovna—the healers say that ending it is just as risky as going through with it, so she’s going through with it. You know how she is.”

  “That I do, Valeriya Dariyevna,” said Alyona Vasilisovna. “That I do. She’s an Empress Zem’ can be proud of, and no mistake. But if I were you, Valeriya Dariyevna, I’d get with child just as soon as I could. Don’t worry about the courting and the matchmaking and all that ceremony. That can come later. Just get with child.”

  “Funnily enough, that’s what the Tsarina said too.”

  Snezhana Tatyanovna finished bandaging Raisochka, told her to go rest and to call her if the burns started weeping too much, and then came over to me.

  “Let me see your arm, Valeriya Dariyevna,” she said.

  “My arm? Oh, right.” I had forgotten about the cut on my arm, but as soon as she mentioned it, the pain returned. Not crippling, but annoying. I rather wished she hadn’t brought it up, but since she had, I allowed her to remove the strip of sleeve I’d bound it in—which she did with a stern frown—wash the wound with vodka, which awakened considerably more pain and also started the blood flowing again, and rebind it with clean bandages.

  “How in the name of all the gods did you do this, anyway, Valeriya Dariyevna,” she said in exasperation as she added another layer of bandaging to stop the blood. “Getting cut right on the vein. It was almost as if you were trying to draw as much blood as possible.”

  “I was.”

  “Why in the name of the gods…”

  “Blood oath,” said Alyona Vasilisovna, nodding sagely. “Am I right, Valeriya Dariyevna?”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “I thought it might win over Princess Velikokrasnova—no, actually, I didn’t think that. I just wanted to shock her a bit. And it made me feel better to swear it, even if it meant nothing to her.”

  “Well, don’t do it again, Valeriya Dariyevna,” said Snezhana Tatyanovna with an impatient shake of her head. “A cut like this, right on the vein…you’re lucky you’ve bled as little as you have. And if you were to get blood poisoning over a foolish trifle…that’s the last thing we need.”

  “I know.” When she put it like that, it did seem like a silly thing to do. But… “But I had to,” I told her.

  “You always do, Valeriya Dariyevna, you always do,” said Alyona Vasilisovna, while Snezhana Tatyanovna sighed and tied off the bandage. “Is it too tight?” she asked.

  “Not so far. If it gets too tight in the night, I’ll just take it off.”

  “If it gets too tight in the night, Valeriya Dariyevna, you will come get me and I will take it off and replace it with a fresh one.”

  “It’s just a small cut,” I objected. “It’s hardly the worst wound I’ve suffered. Surely it’s nothing worth getting you up in the middle of the night for.”

  “Blood poisoning is nothing to play around with, Valeriya Dariyevna,” she said, with that stern tone of voice that healers perfect before they take their first case. “Especially in the heir to the throne, and doubly especially when the Tsarina is in poor health. Or did I mistake the reason you came down to seek me out?”

  “You didn’t mistake it,” I told her. “And I’ll try to be careful, Snezhana Tatyanovna, but I’m afraid it’s my business to take care of the things that are too dangerous for the Tsarina herself to do.”

  “Well, when you put it like that, child…I suppose you’re right. Just don’t try to do risky things, will you?”

  “I’ll see what I can to. But don’t get your hopes up too high, Snezhana Tatyanovna.”

  “With you, child?” She patted my bandage. “Never. Well, I’m off to see to your sister.”

  I started to get up to join her, but both she and Alyona Vasilisovna waved me back down, Snezhana Tatyanovna telling me that I should stay sitting down and eat something in order to regain my strength, and also that she could examine the Tsarina better in privacy, and Alyona Vasilisovna telling me that my food was just about ready and it would be a shame for me to run off and leave her after we hadn’t hardly seen each other for three breaths after all these years. So I sat back down and let the girl who had gone to gather food for me serve me some cool beer, sliced cucumbers in oil, salt, and vinegar, and a couple of cold mushroom pies. As often happened after strenuous exertion, I hadn’t felt hungry until the food was before me, when I became suddenly ravenous. I wolfed down one of the pies without pausing to draw breath while Alyona Vasilisovna looked on approvingly.

  “This is delicious, as usual,” I told her, starting on the cucumbers.

  “The Tsarina always likes it too,” she said, nodding.

  I stopped eating for a moment and looked at the food. Cucumbers…mushroom pies…but no meat.

  “You gave me the food you’d serve the Tsarina,” I said slowly. “You never used to do that. You always just fed me whatever you were feeding the serving girls.”

  “Right you are, Valeriya Dariyevna,” said Alyona Vasilisovna, nodding again. “Right you are. I thought you’d best get used to it. I know you don’t feel about Darya Krasnoslavovna the way our Empress does, or keep her ways like she does, but I figured you’d better get used to it before the time came.”

  “Oh,” I said. I took a bite out of the second pie, but my stomach turned at the taste that, just a moment ago, had been so delicious, and I set it down. “I…I suppose I should be keeping to Darya Krasnoslavovna’s oath, just as Sera does. I’m just weaker than she is. It’s so much easier, even for me, to do whatever the person sitting next to me is doing. And my mother…she gave up on that just as she tried to give up on everything else that reminded her of Krasnograd. But I should be keeping to the oath, I know I should.”

  “No time like the present to start, Valeriya Dariyevna,” said Alyona Vasilisovna. “The Tsarina is the only one from the family to keep it now, isn’t she?”

  I nodded, feeling ashamed even though there was no judgment in Alyona Vasilisovna’s words. “The gods…” I said. “And all the leshiye, and the animals that are supposed to protect us…”

  “Haven’t appeared to your family since your great-grandmother’s time, have they?”

  “Not that I know of,” I admitted. “Maybe if we had been more vigilant about keeping the oath…”

  “Maybe so, Valeriya Dariyevna, maybe so,” said Alyona Vasilisovna. “Like I said, no time like the present to get started. It wouldn’t hurt to have the gods and whatever else is out there watching over you right now. And soon enough it may be only up to you anyway.”

  “I guess,” I said. I swallowed hard. “But…A
lyona Vasilisovna, do you really think…do you really think it will be so soon?”

  Alyona Vasilisovna gave me a sharp look, but she also reached over and patted my hand. I must have sounded even more plaintive to her than I had to myself. “It’s a hard thing, child, I know,” she said. “My mother died bringing my sister into the world, and my sister died bringing my niece into the world, and my niece died because, well, not all little girls are fated to grow into women. It’s a hard thing. Did I ever tell you who my family is?”

  “No,” I said stupidly. I tried to conjure up even the slightest scrap of knowledge about Alyona Vasilisovna’s family, but came up with a complete blank. She’d been the head cook at the kremlin ever since I could remember, ever since I’d run into the kitchens as a little girl on my first visit to Krasnograd, and she of all the servants had taken a liking to me. She’d said I reminded her of her family, but that was all I could ever remember her saying on the subject. “Do you have family from the steppe?” I asked. I knew she had cousins in the mountains, so it was possible.

  “No, child,” she said with a smile. “They are from Krasnograd, born and bred. Do you know who Konstantin Tsarinovich was?”

  I cast my mind back to my long-ago lessons on my family’s history. Why would Alyona Vasilisovna be bringing that up now… “He ran off!” I cried. “It was, oh, at least five or six generations back. He was the youngest of the tsarinoviches, and he ran off with a woman of common birth, a serving woman…” I trailed off. Alyona Vasilisovna’s sharp-eyed gaze met my own. “That’s your family,” I stated. “The descendants of Konstantin Tsarinovich and…what was the woman’s name?”

  “Lyubov,” said Alyona Vasilisovna with a smile. “And just like the Tsarina Lyubov the Kind, she was said to be the sweetest girl you could imagine. A very gentle soul, they said. There wasn’t a lot of that in the kremlin Konstantin Tsarinovich grew up in, so they say. Krasnograd was a very different place between the reigns of Lyubov the Kind and Krasnoslava Tsarina, or so they say. Not the civilized place it is now. So Lyubov and Konstantin ran off together and hid in a sanctuary and worked as healers, so as to keep out of sight of his mother. It sounds like she never much cared what happened to him, as long as he wasn’t there to shame her. And later their descendants lived in a village just outside of the city, and one day Darya Krasnoslavovna found out who they were, and she wanted to bring them back to Krasnograd with all ceremony. That was my grandmother that she found.