by E. P. Clark
“Sort of.”
“So what did you say?”
“I agreed, of course,” I said. “There wasn’t much else I could do. And I think it may be the right thing to do.”
“When? When do they want her?”
“Not right away. It was more of a general agreement than a specific plan. Next year at the soonest, and maybe later.”
“Oh Valya!” Sera came over and hugged me to her tightly. I couldn’t help but think that her embrace lacked strength, and that her skin gave off an unhealthy odor. “This is such wonderful, wonderful news!” She held me out at arms’ length in order to look at my face and let me see her broad smile. “The leshiye have decided to renew their old ties with us! Oh Valya, it must be because you renewed the oath, it must be!”
“So they said,” I agreed.
“Oh Valya! This is such a marvelous sign!” She hugged me again. “This means that good things are coming our way, I just know it!”
“I hope you are right,” I said, hugging her back and hoping that it would never occur to her that the leshiye’s interest in me and Mirochka was a bad sign for her and her line. If I could have concealed it from her…but that would not be practical, not in the long run, and she had the right to know anyway. “It is wonderful,” I told her. “I’m so glad you’re happy. I thought you’d be delighted.”
“It’s the best news I’ve gotten all year!”
“I’m very glad,” I repeated, and made my excuses and hurried out before she could think any more on that statement or what all of this meant for her and her children.
***
After my discussion with Sera my head was floating and spinning worse than ever, so I took a light meal, hoping that it would help bring me back to ground. It did less than I’d hoped but more than I’d feared, and so, assured that I was not about to faint, I went in search of Aksinya Olgovna, whom I found in the stables in the company of Kseniya Avdotyevna, and spent the rest of the afternoon going over our plans for the journey and the route we would take on it. It should have been a simple thing, but like any journey preparations, it took up all the time we were willing to give it, and then some.
We were joined after a while by Alzhbetka’s guard, a short, taciturn woman who gave her name as Yitka and then stood in silence as we debated the relative merits of a Southern versus a Northern crossing of the steppe. I wanted to cross to the South, so as to pass through my own family’s holdings, where we could easily resupply, change horses, and hear the latest news of the steppe, but (as I readily conceded) that would involve taking us out of our way, if our goal was Princess Velikogornaya’s kremlin, which is where Aksinya Olgovna thought we should go first, in order to hear the latest news in the mountains. The most direct route to Groznogorny was across the Northern steppe, at the very edge of the Stepnoye province, but there was nothing there, since most travelers and merchants turned either South to stop at the holdings of the Stepniye, or North to visit the various Lesniye families.
If we traveled light and swift and met with no misfortunes, Aksinya Olgovna said, we could be in Groznogorny in two weeks. However, if we wanted to go directly to the mines where those who had sold their children into slavery were most likely serving out their sentences, if they were still alive, then the most direct route would be to the South, right past my family’s home and straight to the prison mines at the Southern end of the Eastern mountains. Both routes had much to recommend them, and in the end the only decision we could come to was to defer our final decision until we came to the crossroads, five days out from Krasnograd, and had to turn either North or South.
“Because after all,” I said, “who knows what news we may meet on the road. The final decision will never be made until we are actually at the crossroads anyway.”
Aksinya Olgovna and Kseniya Avdotyevna agreed to the wisdom of that, and even Yitka nodded. As we went to leave, she pulled me aside and said, in the longest speech she had given since the beginning of our acquaintance, that she would like to speak with me.
“Of course,” I said. “Let’s go back to my chambers, if that suits you.” She responded with a slight twitch of her head, which I took to mean that it did suit her, and we walked through the preparations for the evening’s festivities, which were now at the height of bustle and trouble, back to my rooms. Mirochka was still absent. I hoped she wasn’t driving the others mad with her high spirits, although probably the tsarinoviches were pretty wild by this time too.
“Are you finding Krasnograd to your liking?” I asked Yitka, once we were alone and could hear each other speak.
She shrugged.
“Well, what else can you say about it. It’s a big noisy city. I assume things are quieter where you’re from.”
Yitka nodded slightly. I tried to offer her some refreshment, but she turned down the water and bread that I had on hand with another silent shake of her head.
“Please, tell me what is on your mind,” I invited her. “What is it you wished to speak to me about?”
“Alzhbetka…” said Yitka slowly. She had the accent characteristic of the far Southwest, and I wondered if perhaps some of her taciturnity was due to a difficulty in speaking in a way the rest of us could understand. People in that part of Zem’ spoke their own dialect, some so strongly that those of us from the East and North could barely make out their meaning. She also was no noblewoman, and she might be feeling uncertain of her standing amongst all the princesses she had suddenly found herself surrounded by.
“Is something the matter with her?” I asked, trying to speak as patiently as possible.
“No…well, Valeriya Dariyevna, the thing is this.” Having made up her mind to speak, Yitka began to let her words come pouring out. Most of them I could make out. “The thing is,” she said, “she’s…she’s my mistress’s daughter, you know, but she’s the youngest and she’s young, younger maybe in her mind even than in years.”
I nodded encouragingly. Anyone who had ever met Alzhbetka could certainly testify to that.
“She doesn’t know much about the world, but she doesn’t know that. She thinks she knows everything she needs to know.”
“She would hardly be the first young woman to be overly confident in her own knowledge.”
“Yes, Valeriya Dariyevna, so…I would…I am asking…it would be a great favor if you could be patient with her.”
“I’ll be as patient as I know how,” I promised.
Yitka did not look very comforted, but nodded in thanks and went on, “And…there’re two handsome young men accompanying us.”
“True,” I agreed.
“She is…she is already betrothed, Valeriya Dariyevna.”
“My congratulations,” I said. “When will the wedding take place?”
“It is…uncertain as yet, Valeriya Dariyevna. In fact…it is more an agreement between the two mothers than an open betrothal. Alzhbetka is…as the youngest, she has been shielded from many of the responsibilities of rule, and so…we trust her, of course, but she is not privy to…to all her mother’s plans and actions.”
“You’d think she would be privy to plans for her own marriage, though. And I don’t believe we permit mothers to arrange marriages without the consent of the interested parties.”
“Yes, but, Valeriya Dariyevna, a mother’s influence is so strong…you see, we expect Alzhbetka to consent to it, once all the advantages of the match are made clear.”
“You do, do you? Well, that is all very nice, but I don’t see how it affects me.”
“I would ask…it would also be a great favor, Valeriya Dariyevna, if you kept her from dallying with either of the young men accompanying us. She might come to think that she’s in love with one of them. In truth,” Yitka’s lip curled up in distaste, “bringing men along on a party such as this normally leads to trouble. If it was up to me, I’d leave them behind.”
“Well, it’s not up to you,” I told her. I had liked her a lot better when she hadn’t said anything. “And everyone’s
of age here, and everyone’s joining us of their own free will, including, as far as I can tell, Alzhbetka. I’ll watch over and try to avoid humiliating her to the best of my ability, just as I will with all the members of my party, but self-willed, inexperienced people do have a tendency to embarrass themselves and get into scrapes. And as far as the young men are concerned, I will do my best to prevent anything really bad from happening to anyone, but Amiran is from a family in which sons have almost as much freedom as daughters, and so even if I could stop them from forming a relationship, which is unlikely, I wouldn’t. Ivan…” The idea of Ivan taking up with Alzhbetka was extremely distasteful, but I couldn’t let that show. “Ivan has lived less in the world than the others, and requires the most care, but if…” I swallowed, and hoped my thoughts weren’t too obvious, “if they should form an attachment, I wouldn’t stand in the way. Alzhbetka can dispose of her hand as she sees fit, and if she sees fit to offer it to the son of one of her mother’s vassals, all well and good, but if she decides to favor someone else, I will not stand in her way.”
“Her mother doesn’t need marriage to make sure of her vassals,” said Yitka. “It’s the son of a merchant that she wants for Alzhbetka. We might even run across them on our journey.”
“Is that so,” I said. “Well, in either case, I will do my best to ensure that your charge comes to no harm, but she is a woman grown and I will treat her as such. And why by all the gods is Princess Pristanogradskaya marrying off her daughter to the son of a merchant?”
“The ties between the two families are longstanding.”
“So why the need for marriage? The only reason I could see for marrying into a family not of noble blood would be to cement new ties. Are the Pristanogradskiye that desperate for money?”
“Certainly not,” said Yitka stiffly.
“Does the family trade with the East or the West?”
Yitka looked like she didn’t want to answer, either out of fear of giving away too much, or out of sheer contrariness, but after giving me a displeased look, she said reluctantly, “Both. They have been bringing goods from the East for generations, and recently they’ve started trading with the West as well.”
“How nice for them. Have you had much to do with this industrious family?”
“A little, Valeriya Dariyevna.”
“And are they—I assume they’re Zemnian?”
Yitka hesitated again. “In part, Valeriya Dariyevna,” she said reluctantly.
“How much of a part?” I demanded.
“The grandmother of Alzhbetka’s intended is from Naberezhnoye, Valeriya Dariyevna.”
“So, not of noble birth at all, then?”
“No, Valeriya Dariyevna,” Yitka admitted.
“And the rest of the family?”
“I beg your pardon, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Where is the rest of the family from?” I clarified.
“Ah…the head of the family married a man from the East.”
“From the Hordes,” I stated.
“Ah…yes, Valeriya Dariyevna. And their daughter married a man from Seumi.”
“Well, their son must at least be very singular-looking,” I said. “Perhaps it will make up for his complete and total lack of noble blood. Not that there’s anything wrong with freshening the line, but I didn’t think the coastal princesses were so broad in their tastes.”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, Valeriya Dariyevna.
“Do you at least think they are worthy of your mistress’s daughter?”
“It is not for me to say, Valeriya Dariyevna.”
“Well, have you seen this young man?”
Yitka shook her head.
“And you haven’t tried? You don’t think it’s strange that you haven’t seen him? You aren’t curious to meet the future intended of your charge?”
Yitka shook her head again, although I thought something flickered in her eyes at my words.
“Well, if you ask me, it’s strange. I won’t stand in the way of the match for the moment, but if Alzhbetka should decide that she prefers another, especially since the betrothal has not even been acknowledged by her, I won’t stand in the way of that either. She will have to make her own choices as she makes her way in the world, just like the rest of us.”
This reply obviously did not satisfy Yitka, but after a few more attempts at wheedling me, she gave up and left, her face even more closed-up than before. I mulled over her revelations. Another young Zemnian of noble blood being married off to merchants! I had never had anything against merchants prior to this—in fact, I had always enjoyed their company, whenever they came through the steppe, and often rather more than I enjoyed the company of my sister princesses—but all this intermarrying was very strange, and while I thought I probably valued blood less than many other noblewomen in Zem’, I found it alarming that so many very self-important princesses were willing to marry their sons, and even more alarmingly, their daughters, into families with no claim to nobility at all. It was one thing to take a man of peasant birth as a lover and get a child off him, but entirely another to form an alliance through marriage with such families, and it was unheard of for a mother from one of the great families to arrange a marriage between her daughter, even the youngest daughter, and the son of a merchant, and one with only a trace of Zemnian blood at that. All my suspicions that had arisen when Sera had told me of her fears came back with redoubled force. Well, by tomorrow I would be on the road and, if my luck held, running across merchants right and left, so I would just have to keep my eyes and ears open and see what I could find out. And maybe see what else I could extract from Yitka after plying her with strong drink. It was a low tactic, but an effective one, and had served me well on many previous occasions.
By the time Yitka had left, the evening was upon us, although being Midsummer it was a bright sunny evening that differed only by the length of its shadows from midday. Mirochka came bursting into our chambers, demanding to know if I was ready to go join the festivities.
“Almost, my dove,” I told her. “Let me just put on my festive clothes, and you can change into yours.”
Although not happy about anything that detained her from the festivities in the Hall of Celebration, Mirochka was excited enough about wearing her fine clothes that she put them on with reasonably good grace and even allowed me to adjust them for her so that they looked less rumpled. Then she fidgeted around and tried to hurry me as I put on my own good clothes, which were the same ones I had worn to the previous feast. It was probably a bad idea to wear something so provocative to the other princesses, but I didn’t have anything else I considered acceptable and so I put them on, even though my heart most certainly was not in playing the kinds of games for which I had worn them the first time.
I had been distracted from my original sorrows by all the events of the afternoon, but now that the only thing left to do for the journey was get up the next morning and set off, not even my annoyance with Yitka and my curiosity about what Princess Pristanogradskaya was up to could completely take my mind off the question of whether Nika had ever been—well, I could never claim that he had ever been faithful to me at all, since throughout our relationship he had been engaged to another woman—but whether I had ever come first for him, or if he had merely been going along with my proposals from a lack of anything better to do. Would he be there for the celebrations? Surely the family would have to make at least a token appearance.
I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to see him or not. I knew that I was better off not seeing him, and I also told myself very stoutly that all this was of the past and had no bearing on anything I thought or did or felt now, and that if I did see him, I would just use my vaunted powers of observation to see if I could detect any current sign of infidelity or attachment to another woman, merely to set my mind at rest. Embarrassingly, part (a large part, if I were honest) of the pain I was currently experiencing was from the thought that I might have been wrong. I had never thought that I valued
my own abilities as an observer as much as others did, but now the humiliation I was feeling at the thought that I might have been mistaken was severe. Not as severe as the unhappiness caused by the knowledge that Nika might never have cared about me at all, but taken together the two were causing me a very irritating level of distress, that none of my attempts to reason away could reduce. Well, worse things had happened to me before and would probably happen to me again, I told myself, and taking Mirochka by the arm in order to prevent her from running down to the Hall of Celebration in a headlong dash, I marched us both to the festivities.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Hall of Celebration had been decorated with wreathes of flowers and grains, and the tables were being loaded with a truly staggering amount of food. I would have found the excess repulsive—in fact, I did find it repulsive—but I was somewhat reconciled to it because I knew that Sera had sent out equal amounts of food to the poorest districts of Outer Krasnograd, where people lived in huts barely deserving of the name of house, if they didn’t live directly on the street. On the steppe we did not suffer that kind of indigence, but, as Sera had pointed out to me when I had complained about it, on the steppe we didn’t have very many people, either, and the ones we did have were all poor by comparison with the black earth district. Our horse herders and warriors had no more than the shirts on their backs and their horses, while even the poorest people in Outer Krasnograd had more than that. I had thought that an extremely weak argument—firstly because our horses were worth a great deal, and secondly because surely more inhabitants and more luxuries meant more people and more money to help each other out—but Sera had said that was not the case, and I had thought it not worth arguing about further.
But—guilty thought!—if Mirochka or I were to become Tsarina, it would have to be our next order of business after rooting out the vile trade in our own people. I doubted that I was more tenderhearted than Sera—quite the reverse, probably—but my steppe pride could not stand the thought of my own people living in filthy back alleys and begging for their food, and my habit of command could not stand the thought of all the crime and shiftlessness that poverty brought about. My family always opened our own home to anyone who needed it every winter, and so every winter we were entertained by the presence of horse herders, traveling guards and petty merchants, and those who had simply had the misfortune to lose their homes to fire or tornados. Every able-bodied person spent the winter fixing horse harness and human armor, sewing clothes, working in the stables and kitchens, or tending the herds, and for those who weren’t able-bodied, there was always a warm corner and a bit of bread, in exchange for a spindle, a needle, or a well-told story. No Princess Stepnaya would ever be able to hold her head up if that were not the case. If there wasn’t enough room in our own house, we set up yurts by the stables.
