by E. P. Clark
Kseniya agreed that that was probably the best thing to do, and left. Ivan stood before me awkwardly for a moment, before bursting out, “Srednerechye! Are you certain, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” It was the first time I had been alone with him for days, and I wondered if I should try to press my feeble advantage somehow, say something to assure him that I was interested in pursuing more than slave traders.
“But that’s…that’s in Velikokrasnovskoye…it’s only a day’s ride from home.” Apparently he was still only thinking of our primary mission, even if I was not. A pity.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“And do you think…my mother?”
I shrugged, and then wished I hadn’t. It was such a cold, uncaring gesture. I should have smiled kindly and reached out and touched his face or something, but instead I found myself saying, “It seems likely, but…this has also been happening on the steppe, and I am not complicit in it. Has your mother never spoken of it, then?”
He shook his head.
Say something say something say something useful… “So you don’t think she’s done anything to combat it?” What kind of a fool am I? Courting a man by accusing his mother to his face…
“If she has, she never spoke of it in front of me,” he said miserably.
“I will jump to no conclusions,” I told him, while mentally kicking myself over and over again for squandering my opportunity to comfort him and instead making him feel even worse than he already was about this. “I will make no accusations without firm proof. But someone in Velikokrasnovskoye must be involved. Can you think of anyone else?” By all the gods, no WONDER Nika ran off into the arms of another woman…if I fail Sera and spend the rest of my life alone, it will be no more than I deserve…and to think I thought I could do this…I even had the arrogance, the temerity to insist to Sera that we do things my way, not hers…what an abysmal fool I am…
He shook his head again, looking so miserable that I stopped being angry at myself and started being angry at all the people back in Velikokrasnovskoye, whoever they were, who were responsible for this. “I can’t believe…sometimes I thought that everyone there was…not as good as they could be, but selling children…”
“I am sorry,” I repeated. Rage, my faithful companion, was rising in me and speaking through me, so that I found myself jumping to my feet and saying, “But I promise that I will do everything I can to make sure that no innocents are accused.”
“Thank you, Valeriya Dariyevna. And…” He swallowed and fell silent.
“And?” I asked, the rage making me speak more forcefully than I should have, but it didn’t seem to frighten him, for he asked, looking at me with me worried but trusting eyes, “And…what if she is guilty, Valeriya Dariyevna? What will happen then? To her, and…all the others.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “We have not punished criminals by torture or death since the time of Krasnoslava Tsarina, but this…this is a very great crime, and once people are convinced of its perpetrators’ guilt, they are likely to cry out for blood very loudly, in part to silence the voice of their own guilt for pretending for so long that it wasn’t happening. But,” I added, seeing the stricken look on his face, “I will beg for clemency, to the best of my ability.”
“You will?” he said, looking astonished.
“I will.”
“But…why? You…you killed those people before!”
“I know. And in the same situation…I would probably do the same thing again. But nonetheless, I will beg for clemency, if it is in my power.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just think that I will. I will ask for…exile, or something like that.”
“Well…thank you, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said, and left, looking almost as puzzled by my declaration as I was. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I had just, and entirely through good luck and not any sort of cunning, made up for whatever ground I had lost over our journey and won him over even more thoroughly than he had already been won over. My chest grew warm at the thought, with a warmth that for once had nothing to do with rage. For a moment I even found myself wanting to run out of the room after him, but I stopped myself. If I was right, we had the rest of our lives for that.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The next day we had more luck. We reached Maloroshchevo early in the afternoon, and found all the village was out in the fields haying. They had just stopped for a break as we came riding up, and I went over and greeted the village headwoman and asked her if there was a Ruslan Marislavovich present.
“Why do you ask, noblewoman?” she asked suspiciously.
“I bring greetings from a friend,” I said peaceably. “I was hoping to find him here to pass them on.”
“Well, he’s not. He’s off, and we’d best get back to the hay before it spoils in the wet.”
I looked up at the cloudless blue sky, and down at the dusty road, and then back at the villagers gathered around me. “Are any of you kin to Ruslan Marislavovich?” I asked.
The headwoman made a hushing motion with her hand, but two men stepped forward anyway. She pursed her lips, and they looked at her nervously, but I smiled as encouragingly as possible and, dismounting, walked them away from the others.
“Has anything happened to Slanik?” asked the younger of the two men anxiously.
“Are you his brother?”
He nodded.
“And you must be his father,” I said to the other man.
“That’s right, noblewoman. So…has anything happened to Slanik?” His face showed less apprehension and more resignation than his son’s.
“To be honest…I don’t know. I don’t actually know him. I’m just looking for him, and I was told he might be here, or be from here. Does he work for the trader Aleftina Vasilisovna?”
“That’s right, noblewoman,” said the father, looking more and more resigned to something dreadful. I examined him closely, which he bore with the same expression of resignation. He was a stocky man of middle years, with graying hair, a respectable beard, and the eyes of someone who has known trouble in his life, and expects more to keep coming. I couldn’t imagine him selling Zemnian children into slavery.
“Is your wife gone?” I asked sympathetically.
“These two years, noblewoman. The cough took her, and as soon as she was gone, the road took Slanik.”
“I am sorry. Have you heard from him since he left?”
“Sometimes he comes through, noblewoman.”
“Once or twice a year,” added the brother helpfully. He looked to be no older than Ivan, and had the same guileless expression to his eyes, although his were blue, not brown, and his hair was the color of straw, not wheat. And if he were selling Zemnian children into slavery, I would eat my boots.
“Do you know what he does for Aleftina Vasilisovna?” I asked, trying to smile kindly.
“Guards for her, I suppose, noblewoman,” answered the father. “What’s this about?”
“I’m trying to find Aleftina Vasilisovna. And I heard that Ruslan Marislavovich might know something about her, and that he might be here.”
“If you find the one, you’ll probably find the other, noblewoman,” said the father. “What…what’s your interest in Aleftina Vasilisovna, if you don’t me asking? What’s your interest in Slanik? Are you…are you from Krasnograd?”
“I am.” His face sank. “But I mean Ruslan Marislavovich no harm, I swear to you.” That was uncomfortably close to a lie, but I pressed on boldly, telling myself that if I ever did find Ruslan Marislavovich, and he turned out to be guilty, as I strongly suspected would be the case, I would plead for clemency for him too. The list of people for whom I was planning to plead for clemency was growing ridiculously long. Anyone would think I was a priestess on a mission of charity, not a representative of the Tsarina in the pursuit of lawbreakers and evildoers.
“What’s…what’s Aleftina Vasilisovna done, noblewoman?” as
ked the father in a hollow voice, while his son glanced at me fearfully and then stared down at the ground.
I looked deeply into Ruslan Marislavovich’s father’s tired eyes. The truth, I thought. I will risk the truth: it might work better than anything else. “We think she’s taking children,” I said quietly. “Taking children to sell East. Have you heard anything of this?”
The father shook his head wordlessly. His son made a choked, sobbing noise.
“What do you know?” I demanded, looking straight at him.
“I…I…”
“Arkasha!” said his father. “You might as well tell her. It will come out in the end, no doubt, anyway.”
“Do you know anything?” I asked him.
“No, noblewoman, nothing at all, but brothers will talk. Slanik may have told him something he wouldn’t have told me.”
“What did he tell you, Arkasha?” I asked gently. “No harm will come to you or your father from what you tell me, and you may be able to help your brother as well. Anything he has done, was done at the orders of his mistress, I have no doubt. And the Empress has no interest in punishing minor misdeeds. She wants to put a stop to this trade, not harm honest Zemnians.”
“The Empress! The Empress has taken an interest in this!”
“Yes,” I told them. “But I told you: neither she nor I have any interest in bringing harm to honest Zemnians, or even petty wrongdoers. We want to put a stop to this trade in our children, and anything you know that can help us do that will be well rewarded.”
Both men looked back and forth at each other in silence, and for a moment I thought I wasn’t going to get anything out of them, but then the son blurted out, “Aleftina Vasilisovna never came through here, noblewoman, but Slanik always said she had a stopping place in the woods.”
“Where in the woods?” I asked, trying to sound interested but not too interested.
“I don’t…I don’t know exactly, noblewoman, but I think it’s in the woods to the East. If you keep riding down the road to the East you’ll come to a band of woods about a day from here. I’ve only been there once, when Slanik and I went there to trade with Lesgranichnoe and then went into the woods to hunt for mushrooms. I never actually saw the place, but Slanik told me about it when we were there. He said that’s how he knew about the mushrooms, and they were very fine, I’d never seen such big ones, noblewoman, but they won’t be in season yet.”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Do you have any idea where it is in the woods? Did Slanik tell you how to find it?”
“Only that it’s not easy to find, noblewoman, not near any other settlements, but he said it was a snug stopping place. We got caught in the rain, you see, and he said he wished we could go there, but it was too far away and Aleftina Vasilisovna would have his hide if he brought anyone there without her permission.”
“Is that so,” I said. “Where were you in the woods when Slanik told you it was too far away?”
“Right near the edge, noblewoman, the edge near Lesgranichnoe. I think it must be deeper in, somewhere in the middle.”
“How wide is the band of woods?”
“Slanik said it would take the better part of two days to ride through, noblewoman. Lesgranichnoe is on the edge on this side, and he said there’s another village on the other side, and a traveler’s cabin in the middle, but nothing else.”
“Did he happen to tell you how he could find it?”
But both the father and the son shook their heads, and despite my best efforts I could get nothing more out of them, and the headwoman was hovering closer and closer and making louder and louder remarks about how it was time to start mowing the hay again and not stand around talking, even if fine noblewomen from the city didn’t know it, so I thanked both men and, ignoring their protests, forced a handful of coins into their hands before mounting up and setting off down the road again.
***
We rode on and spent the night at the waystation in Lesgranichnoe, where I asked everyone there I could corner about Ruslan Marislavovich, Aleftina Vasilisovna, and the possibility of there being a shelter in the woods for travelers other than the wayside cabin that everyone knew about. Everyone agreed that Aleftina Vasilisovna occasionally came through, but Lesgranichnoe was simply not big enough to tempt her to stop often or do much trading.
Everyone also professed ignorance of another stopping place in the woods, one big enough for an entire caravan to shelter in, but there, I thought, they were lying. Which was annoying, but plying them with drink and smiling and laughing with them and asking them about their exploits in the woods got me nowhere, so eventually I gave up and went to bed, telling myself that I was an accomplished tracker myself and I could find this secret shelter as well as anyone else. Which was no doubt true, but we were not making the speed I had hoped to make, and that I had promised Sera we would make, and searching for this shelter would slow us down even more. But it seemed like too good a lead to pass up, and if I could smash the slave trade right here in the black earth district, well…that would be all to the good. We could send a separate expedition East later, if necessary, to look into the matter on the steppe and the mountains, and even cross the mountains and try to find as many of our people as we could and bring them back.
I knew that that was a largely vain hope, and that most of them, no matter how much I might decry the fact, were lost forever and searching for them would be a wasted effort, but I couldn’t help but think that we owed it to them and their families to at least try. Maybe I could commandeer part of the steppe army for that…they wouldn’t be much use in the mountains, but they said that the other side of the mountains was just another steppe, even vaster than ours, and who better to search it than our steppe warriors? And they commanded respect there as well, or so it was said…maybe I should lead them myself…part of me, a large part of me, itched to do so, to rescue those children and wipe away at least a little of the stain that all this had made on Zem’’s honor…but that would mean leaving not only Sera, but Mirochka as well…it would mean missing a whole year, most likely, of Mirochka’s girlhood…but if someone didn’t go after those children, then their parents would miss much more than a mere year of their childhoods…but did it really have to be me who did it…of course no one would do it better than I, no one would be as capable…but surely there were others who were capable enough, and Mirochka needed me…even if she ended up staying in Krasnograd as the heir, she would need me…probably even more in that case than in any other…
Hello, mama!
“Mirochka!” I realized I had cried out her name in surprise, and put my hand over my mouth to prevent any further exclamations. You found me!
I know, mama! I’ve been trying and trying to reach you, and suddenly I could!
I see.
Yes, I’ve been trying to reach you during the day and at night, but I can’t…were you asleep, mama?”
No, just drowsing. And thinking of you. Maybe I have to be half-asleep and thinking of you for you to find me.
Probably! I’ll have to try with my brothers, see what happens with them!
Are they helping you, then?
Oh yes! It’s been so interesting.
Does the Tsarina know about what you’re doing? I asked sternly.
Of course, mama, and she’s so happy about it!
Good. How is she doing?
Fine, mama, fine. She seems tired, but she says it’s nothing to worry about.
Very well, I said, trying to hide my own worry at this information. And…have your lessons been going well? Have you been going out riding?
Oh yes, mama, we’ve been having so much fun! We—my brothers and I, and Kiryusha, and some others—we all train together in the mornings—swordfighting, you know; Vitaly Mariyevich is training us, he said you wouldn’t mind, and then we practice steppe fighting as well—and then we have lessons during the day, and in the evenings, when it’s cooled down again, we go riding in the park! I wish you were here, though, to help us
with the training and the riding.
Well, I’ll be back soon, I said lightly.
Where are you now, mama?
Lesgranichnoe. You could tell the Tsarina. She might be interested. And you could tell her that we’ve found out some interesting things.
Like what, mama?
For a moment I hesitated, and then I reasoned that Mirochka would make a perfectly good messenger, and she could be trusted with the information, and there was no need to protect her from it, especially as there was nothing particularly upsetting on the surface in what I wanted to pass on to Sera.
Tell her that we’re searching for the caravan of Aleftina Vasilisovna.
Is she a trader, mama?
She is.
Does she…even without an actual voice, it sounded as if Mirochka gulped, Does she steal children to sell them, mama?
It looks like she might. Can you tell the Tsarina about it tomorrow when you see her?
Of course, mama, said Mirochka, sounding uncharacteristically solemn. Are you going to go in search of her?
Yes, tomorrow. But I don’t know where she is, so that’s why I need you to tell the Tsarina about it, so she can start a search in Krasnograd as well.
Be careful, mama!
Of course, my dove.
And it’s late! You need your sleep!
***
My eyes flew open the next morning at exactly the moment when I would have wanted to wake up. I wondered if Mirochka was waking me up herself, or if this was all part of the magical sleep she was able to command. I got up, feeling both rested and alert, and, even though it was early yet, roused everyone else. They were not so rested and alert as I was, but they got up without too much complaining, and as soon as the horses had been fed, groomed, and saddled, we took the first batch of pies to come out of the waystation’s ovens, and set off, juggling the hot pies in our hands as we ate in the saddle.
Once we were out of sight of the inn, I explained to everyone that I wanted to set off so early in order to give us as much time as possible to search for the hidden stopping place. I had to assume that it itself was not very close to the road, but there might be a path leading to it from the road. Aleftina Vasilisovna would not want to risk stopping at waystations with her forbidden cargo, but she would probably have to risk the road wherever she could, and especially in the woods. It was simply not possible to move an entire caravan of carts through the deep woods. Of course, they could all be taking the Northern road Kseniya had told me about, but that was many versts from here, and going back and forth between it and the villages would be much too slow…they never would have been able to cover the distances implied by Anastasiya Olesyevna’s ledgers if they had been riding back and forth over half the depth of the black earth district every time they wanted to stop at one of these Southern villages. Or they could be traveling on foot, but again I guessed that they had to be traveling faster than that, and in any case they would have to get in and out of towns somehow, and covered carts would attract less attention than a whole group of children, some of them foreign, all on foot, and the children would most likely need to be drugged or restrained somehow…I remembered the ones I had found before, and ground my teeth…there was someone standing by the side of the road.
