The Winter of the Witch

5. Temptation

THE CAGE COLLAPSED IN A shower of sparks, just as Sasha and Dmitrii battered through the ring of people and began to break the fire apart with their smoldering spear-hafts. The chaos rose to a fever pitch.

In the confusion, Konstantin Nikonovich slipped away, hood drawn up over the deep gold of his hair. The air was hazed with smoke; the maddened crowd jostled him, not knowing who he was. By the time the men had scattered the logs of the fire, Konstantin had passed through the posad unremarked, was making his soft-footed way back to the monastery.

She didn’t even deny her guilt, he thought, hurrying through the half-frozen slush. She had set fire to Moscow. It was the people’s righteous wrath that had swept her up. What blame could attach to him, a holy man?

She was dead. He’d taken the full measure of his vengeance.

She had been seventeen years old.

He barely made it to his cell and shut the door before he broke into a fit of sobbing laughter. He laughed at all those nodding, adoring, snarling faces out in Moscow, taking every word of his as gospel, laughed at the memory of her face, the fear in her eyes. He even laughed at the icons on the wall, their rigidity and their silence. Then he found his laughter turning to tears. Sounds of anguish tore from his throat, quite against his will, until he had to thrust a fist into his mouth to muffle the noise. She was dead. It had been easy, in the end. Perhaps the demon, the witch, the goddess had only existed in his mind.

He tried to master himself. The people had been as clay in his hands, softened as they were in the heat of Moscow’s fire. It would not always be so easy. If Dmitrii Ivanovich discovered that Konstantin had raised the mob, he would see him as a threat to his authority at least, if not the murderer of his cousin. Konstantin did not know if his new-made influence would be enough to counter the Grand Prince’s wrath.

He was so busy weeping, pacing, thinking and trying not to think, that he failed to notice the shadow on the wall, until it spoke.

“Crying like a maiden?” murmured a voice. “On tonight, of all nights? What are you doing, Konstantin Nikonovich?”

Konstantin leaped back with a sound not far from a scream. “It is you,” he said, breathing like a child afraid of the dark. And then, “No.” And finally, “Where are you?”

“Here,” said the voice.

Konstantin twisted round, but saw only his own shadow, cast by the lamp.

“No, here.” This time the voice seemed to come from his icon of the Mother of God. The woman beneath the gold icon-cover leered at him. She was not the Virgin at all, but Vasya with her red-black hair shaken loose, her face one-eyed and scarred with fire. Konstantin bit back another scream.

Then the voice said a third time, from his own cot, laughing, “No, here, poor fool.”

Konstantin looked and saw…a man.

Man? The creature on his bed looked like a man; such a man as had never before been seen in a monastery. He lounged smiling upon the bed, hair tumbled, feet incongruously bare. But his shadow—his shadow had claws.

“Who are you?” asked Konstantin, breathing fast.

“Did you never see my face before?” asked the creature. “Ah, no, at Midwinter you saw the beast and the shadow, but not the man.” He got slowly to his feet. He and Konstantin were nearly of a height. “Never mind. You know my voice.” He cast down his eyes like a girl. “Do I please you, man of God?” The unscarred side of his mouth twisted in a half-smile.

Konstantin was pressed hard against the door, his fist against his mouth. “I remember. You are the devil.”

The man—the chyert—looked up at that, single eye alight. “I? Men call me the Bear, Medved, when they call me anything at all. Have you never thought that heaven and hell are both nearer you than you like to believe?”

“Heaven? Nearer?” said Konstantin. He could feel every ridge of the wooden wall pressed against his back. “God abandoned me. He gave me over to devils. There is no heaven. There is only this world of clay.”

“Exactly,” said the demon. He spread his arms wide. “To mold to your liking. What do you desire of this world, little father?”

Konstantin was shaking in every limb. “Why are you asking?”

“Because I need you. I am in need of a man.”

“For what?”

Medved shrugged. “Men do the work of devils, do they not? It has always been so.”

“I am not your servant.” His voice shook.

“Nay—who wants a servant?” said the Bear. He stepped closer and closer still, voice dropping. “Enemy, lover, passionate slave you may choose, but servant—no.” His red tongue just touched his upper lip. “See, I am generous in my bargains.”

Konstantin swallowed, his mouth dry. His breath came short, with eagerness and despair; it felt as though the walls of his cell were closing in. “What would I get in return for my—allegiance?”

“What do you want?” returned the chyert, so near that he could murmur the question into Konstantin’s ear.

In the priest’s soul was a desperate mourning. I prayed—all the years of my life, I prayed. But you were silent, Lord. If I am making bargains with devils it is only because you abandoned me. This devil looked as though he were following his thought with an easy and a secret delight.

“I want to forget myself in men’s devotion.” It was the first time he had ever spoken the thought aloud.

“Done.”

“I want the comforts that princes have,” Konstantin went on. He was going to drown in that single eye. “Good meats and soft beds.” He breathed out the last word. “Women.”

The Bear laughed. “That too.”

“I want earthly authority,” Konstantin said.

“As much as your two hands, your heart, and your voice can compass,” the Bear said. “The world at your feet.”

“But what do you want?” breathed Konstantin Nikonovich.

The devil’s hand curled into a clawed fist. “All I wanted was to be free. My bastard brother penned me up in a clearing on the edge of winter for life after life of men. But at long last he wanted something more than he wanted me confined and I am freed at last. I have seen the stars and smelled the smoke, and tasted men’s fear.”

Softer, the devil added, “I have found the chyerti faded to shadows. Now men order their lives to the sound of damned bells. So I am going to throw the bells down, throw down the Grand Prince while I am about it; set fire to this whole little world of Rus’ and see what grows out of the ashes.”

Konstantin stared, fascinated and afraid.

“You will like that, won’t you?” asked the Bear. “That will teach your God to ignore you.” He paused and then added more prosaically, “In the short term, I want you to go tonight where I bid you and do what I tell you.”

“Tonight? The city is unsettled; midnight has come and gone and I—”

“Are you afraid that you might be seen out past midnight, consorting with the wicked? Well, leave that to me.”

“Why?” said Konstantin.

“Why not?” returned the other.

Konstantin made no answer.

The devil breathed against his ear, “Would you rather stay and think of her dying? Sit here in the dark, and lust after her, dead?”

Konstantin tasted blood where his teeth had come together on the inside of his cheek. “She was a witch. She deserved it.”

“That does not mean you didn’t enjoy it,” murmured the devil. “Why do you think I came to you first?”

“She was ugly,” said Konstantin.

“She was as wild as the sea,” he rejoined. “And full, like the sea, of mysteries.”

“Dead,” said Konstantin flatly, as though speaking could cut off memory.

The devil smiled a secret smile. “Dead.”

Konstantin felt the air thick in his lungs, as though he were trying to breathe smoke.

“We cannot dally,” said the Bear. “The first blow—the first blow must be struck tonight.”

Konstantin said, “You tricked me before.”

“And I might again,” returned the other. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” said Konstantin. “I believe in nothing and I fear nothing.”

The Bear laughed. “As it should be. Because that is the only way you can play for everything, when you do not fear to lose.”

6. No Bones, No Flesh

DMITRII AND HIS MEN TORE apart the fire on the river. Sasha worked alongside the others in the most hopeless and terrible desperation. In the end, a field of smoldering logs lay glowing across a stretch of pitted and steaming ice. The cage looked just like the rest of the charred wood; they could barely tell which pieces had formed it. The crowd had fled; it was the coldest and blackest part of the night. They stood in a field of dying fire, caught between the cold earth and the spring stars.

The terrible strength that had animated Sasha’s limbs suddenly vanished. He leaned against his mare’s smoke-smelling shoulder. Nothing. There was nothing left of her. He could not stop shivering.

Dmitrii pushed the loose hair from his brow, made the sign of the cross. Low he said, “God rest her spirit.” He laid a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “It is for no man to undertake justice in my city without my leave. You will have vengeance.”

Sasha said nothing. But the Grand Prince was surprised at the look on his cousin’s face. Grief, of course, anger. But also—puzzlement?

“Brother?” said Dmitrii.

“Look,” Sasha whispered. He kicked one log apart, and then another, pointed to the remains of the cage.

“What?” said Dmitrii warily.

“No bones,” said Sasha, and swallowed. “No flesh.”

“Burned away,” said Dmitrii. “The fire was hot.”

Sasha shook his head once. “It didn’t burn long enough.”

“Come,” said Dmitrii, looking worried now. “Cousin, I know you wish her alive, but she did go in. She could not have come out again.”

“No,” said Sasha, drawing a deep breath. “No, that would be impossible.” But still he glanced again at the red and black hellscape of the river, and then abruptly went to his horse. “I am going to my sister.”

Startled silence. Then Dmitrii understood. “Very well,” he said. “Tell the Princess of Serpukhov that I—that I am sorry for her grief, and yours. She—was a brave girl. God be with you.”

Words, only words. Sasha knew that Dmitrii could not wholly regret Vasya’s death; she had been a problem he didn’t know how to solve. Yet—the fire had contained no bones. And Vasya—you could not always predict Vasya. Sasha wheeled his mare and kicked her to full gallop up the hill of the posad and through the gates of Moscow.

Dmitrii turned, scowling, to snap orders and marshal his guards. He was very weary, and now there had been two fires in Moscow, the second, in its own way, as destructive as the first.

SASHA FOUND OLGA’S GATES SMASHED, the dooryard trampled. But Dmitrii had sent all of his own men-at-arms that could be spared. They had established some kind of order, kept the outbuildings from looting. The dooryard was quiet.

Sasha passed Dmitrii’s men with a soft word. A few of the grooms had straggled back after the crowd went down to the river. Sasha roused one in the stable and thrust him the reins of his mare, barely pausing.

The snow of the dooryard was daubed and spattered with blood, and there were the marks of boots and blades on the door to the terem. A fearful serving-woman opened at last to his knocking; he had to persuade her to let him in.

Olga was sitting by the hot brick of the stove in her bedchamber, still awake and still dressed. Her face was drawn and gray in the candlelight; exhausted shadows smeared her milky beauty. Marya was weeping hysterically into her mother’s lap, black hair flung about like water. The two were alone. Sasha paused in the doorway. Olga took in his filthy, blistered, soot-streaked appearance and blanched.

“If you have news, it can wait,” she said, with a look at the child.

Sasha hardly knew what to say; his faint, terrible hope seemed foolish in the face of the blood-spattered dvor, in the face of Marya’s wild grief. “Is Masha all right?” he said, crossing the room and kneeling beside his sister.

“No,” said Olga.

Marya lifted her head, wet-eyed, with marks like bruising about the lids. “They killed him!” she sobbed. “They killed him and he would never hurt anyone but the wicked, and he loved porridge and they shouldn’t have killed him!” Her eyes were savage. “I am going to wait for Vasya to get back, and we are going to go and kill all the people that hurt him.” She glared about the room and then her eyes welled once more. The rage drained out of her, fast as it had come. She fell to her knees, hunched up small, weeping into her mother’s lap.

Olga stroked her daughter’s hair. Up close, Sasha could see Olga’s hand tremble.

“There was a mob,” said Sasha, low-voiced. “Vasya—”

Olga put her finger to her lips, with a glance at her sobbing child. But she shut her black eyes the briefest instant. “God be with her,” she said.

Marya lifted her head once more. “Uncle Sasha, did Vasya come back with you? She needs us; she will be sad.”

“Masha,” said Olga gently. “We must pray for Vasya. I fear she has not come back.”

“But she—”

“Masha,” said Olga. “Hush. We do not know all that happened; we must wait to find out. Mornings are wiser than evenings. Come, will you sleep?”

Marya would not. She was on her feet. “She has to come back!” she cried. “Where would she go if she didn’t come back?”

“Perhaps she has gone to God,” said Olga, steadily. She did not lie to her children. “If so, let her soul find rest.”

The child stared between her mother and her uncle, lips parted with horror. And then she turned her head, as though someone else in the room were speaking. Sasha followed her gaze to the corner by the stove. There was no one there. A chill ran down his spine.

“No, she hasn’t!” cried Marya, scrambling free of her mother’s arms. She scrubbed at her wet eyes. “She’s not with God. You’re wrong! She’s—where?” Marya demanded of the empty place near the floor. “Midnight is not a place.”

Sasha and Olga looked at each other. “Masha—” Olga began.

There was an abrupt movement in the doorway. They all jumped; Sasha spun, one dirty hand on the hilt of his sword.

“It is I,” said Varvara. Her fair plait straggled; there was soot and blood on her clothes.

Olga stared. “Where have you been?”

Without ceremony, Varvara said, “Vasya is alive. Or was when I left her. They were going to burn her. But she broke the bars of the cage and leaped down unseen. I got her out of the city.”

Sasha had hoped. But he hadn’t really thought how…“Unseen?” Then he thought of more important things. “Where? Was she wounded? Where is she? I must—”

“Yes, she is wounded; she was beaten by a mob,” said Varvara acidly. “She was also near mad with magic; it came on her suddenly, in desperation. But she is alive and her wounds aren’t mortal. She escaped.”

“Where is she now?” asked Olga sharply.

“She took the road through Midnight,” said Varvara. There was the strangest combination of wonder and resentment in her face. “Perhaps she will even reach the lake. I did all I could.”

“I must go to her,” said Sasha. “Where is this road through Midnight?”

“Nowhere,” said Varvara. “And everywhere. But only at midnight. It is no longer midnight now. In any case, you have not the sight: the power to take the Midnight-road alone. She has gone beyond your reach.”

Olga looked, frowning between Marya and Varvara.

Incredulously, Sasha said, “You expect me to take your word for it? To abandon my sister?”

“There is no question of abandonment; her fate is out of your hands.” Varvara sank onto a stool as though she weren’t a servant at all. Something had changed, subtly, in her bearing. Her eyes were intent and troubled. “The Eater is loose,” she said. “The creature that men call Medved. The Bear.”

Even after Vasya had told them the truth, in the hours after Moscow had caught fire and been saved by snow, Sasha had hardly believed his sister’s tale of devils. He was about to demand again that Varvara tell him properly where Vasya was, when Olga broke in: “What does that mean, that the Bear is loose? Who is the Bear? Loose to do what?”

“I do not know,” said Varvara. “The Bear is among the greatest of chyerti, a master of the unclean forces of the earth.” She spoke slowly, as though remembering a lesson long forgotten. “His chief skill is knowing the minds of men and women, and bending them to his will. Above all he loves destruction and chaos, and will seek to sow it as he can.” She shook her head, and suddenly she was the body-servant Varvara again, clever and practical. “It must wait until morning; we are all mortally weary. Come, the wild girl is alive and beyond reach of friend or foe. Will you all sleep?”

There was a silence. Then, grimly, Sasha said, “No—if I can’t go to her, then at least I am going to pray. For my sister, for this mad city.”

“The city isn’t mad,” Marya protested. She had been following their conversation, her black eyes ferocious, and then had turned her head to listen to that unseen voice near the floor. “It was a man with golden hair—he made them do it. He spoke to them, he made them angry.” She had begun to shake. “He was the one who came last night, who made me come with him. People listen when he talks. His voice is very beautiful. And he hates Aunt Vasya.”

Olga gathered her daughter into her arms. Marya had begun weeping again, slow exhausted sobs. “Hush, sweet,” she said to her daughter. Sasha felt his face settling into bleakness. “The priest with golden hair,” he said. “Konstantin Nikonovich.”

“Our father sheltered him. You brought him to Moscow. I succored him here,” said Olga. Her habitual composure could not hide the look in her eyes.

“I am going to pray now,” said Sasha. “If a devil has come to this city, all I can do against it is pray. But tomorrow I will go to Dmitrii Ivanovich. I will see this priest tried and justice done.”

“You must kill him with your sword, Uncle Sasha,” said Marya. “For I think he is very wicked.”

Sasha kissed them both and departed in silence.

“Thank you for saving our sister’s life,” Olga said to Varvara, when Sasha had gone.

Varvara said nothing, but the two women clasped hands. They had known each other a long time.

“Now tell me more of this demon that has come to Moscow,” Olga added. “If it concerns the safety of my family, it cannot wait until morning.”

7. Monster

IN ANOTHER PART OF MOSCOW, in the black and frigid hour before dawn, a peasant man and his wife lay awake atop his brother’s oven. They had lost their izba, their possessions, and their firstborn in the fires of the night before, and neither of them had slept since.

A light, insistent tapping came from the window.

Tap. Tap.

Below them, on the floor, the brother’s family stirred. The knocking went on, steady, monotonous, first at the window, then at the door. “Who could that be?” muttered the husband.

“Someone in need perhaps,” said his wife, voice hoarse from the tears she had shed that day. “Answer it.”

Her husband reluctantly slid down from the oven. He stumbled to the door, over the complaining bodies of his brother’s family. He opened the inner door, unbarred the outer door.

His wife heard him give a single, sobbing gasp, and then nothing. She hurried up behind him.

A small figure stood in the doorway. Its skin was blackened and flaking away; you could see hints of white bone through rents in his clothing. “Mother?” it whispered.

The dead child’s mother screamed, a scream to wake the dead—but the dead were already awake—a scream to awaken their neighbors, sleeping uneasily with the memory of fire. People opened their shutters, opened their doors.

This child did not go into the house. Instead he turned away and began walking up the street. He walked drunkenly, lurching from side to side. His eyes, in the moonlight, were bewildered and afraid and intent all at once. “Mother?” he said again.

Above, on either side, the awakened neighbors stared and pointed. “Mother of God.”

“Who is that?”

“What is that?”

“A child?”

“Which child?”

“Nay—God defend us—that is little Andryusha—but he is dead…”

The voice of the child’s mother rose up. “No!” she cried. “No, I am sorry; I am here. Little one, don’t leave me.”

She ran after the dead boy, tripping on the half-frozen earth. Her husband ran stumbling out after her. There was a priest among the awed crowd on the street; the husband seized him and dragged him along. “Batyushka, do something!” he cried. “Make it go! Pray—”

“Upyr!”

The word—the dread word of legend and nightmare and fairy tale—was taken up from house to house, as understanding dawned. The word hissed its way down the street, up and back down, growing and growing until it became a moan, a scream.

“The dead boy. He is walking. The dead are walking. We are cursed. Cursed!”

Every instant the turmoil grew. Clay lamps were lit; torches made gold points of light under the sickly moon. Cries flew. People fainted, or wept, or called down God’s aid. Some opened their doors and ran out to see what the trouble was. Others barred their doors tight and set their families to praying.

Still the dead child walked on unsteady legs, up the hill of the kremlin.

“Son!” panted his mother, running at the thing’s side. She still did not dare touch him; the way he moved, ill-jointed, was not the way the living moved. But in his eyes—she was sure of it—lay something of her son. “My child, what horror is this? Has God sent you back to us? Have you come to give a warning?”

The dead child turned and said “Mother?” again, in a soft, high voice.

“I am here,” whispered the woman, putting out a hand. The skin of his face peeled away at her touch. Her husband shoved the priest forward. “Do something, for God’s sake.”

The priest, his lips quivering, stumbled forward, and raised a trembling hand. “Apparition I charge thee…”

The child looked up, his eyes dull. The crowd drew back, crossing themselves, watching…The child’s eyes wandered around the assembled faces.

“Mother?” the child whispered one last time. And lunged.

Not fast; injury and death had weakened the thing, made it clumsy on its half-grown limbs. But the woman put up no resistance. The vampire buried its face in her wrinkled throat.

She gave a gurgling cry of pain and of love, and clutched the thing to her, gasping in agony and crooning to the thing in the same breath. “I’m here,” she whispered again.

And then the little dead creature was painting itself with her blood, jerking its head back and forth in a mockery of infancy.

People were running, screaming.

Then a voice rang out from the street above, and Father Konstantin came down, walking fast, fierce, dignified, his gold hair silver in the moonlight.

“People of God,” he said. “I am here; fear no darkness.” His voice was like church-bells at dawn. His long robe snapped and flared behind him. He thrust his way past the husband, who had fallen to his knees, one hand helplessly outstretched.

Crisp as a man drawing a sword, he made the sign of the cross.

The child upyr hissed. Its face was black with blood.

There was a one-eyed shadow behind Konstantin, watching the tawdry, bloody encounter with delight, but no one saw it. Not even Konstantin, who was not looking. Perhaps he had forgotten in that moment that it was not his voice alone that bid the dead rest.

“Back, devil,” Konstantin said. “Get back to where you came. Do not trouble the living again.”

The little vampire hissed. The wavering crowd had paused in its flight; the nearest watched with frozen fascination. For a long moment, the upyr and the priest seemed to lock eyes in a terrible battle of wills. The only sound was the gurgling breath of the dying woman.

An observant person might have noticed that the dead thing was not looking at the priest, but beyond him. Behind Konstantin, the one-eyed shadow jerked its thumb in a peremptory gesture, the way a man dismisses a dog.

The vampire snarled again, but softly, as the power that had given it life and breath and movement faded. It crumpled onto its mother’s breast. No one could tell if the final sound from the pair was her last breath or his.

The husband stared at the corpses of his family: empty, shocked and still. But the crowd was not looking at him. “Go back,” hissed the Bear into Konstantin’s ear. “They think you a saint; it is not the time to stand about. So much as sneeze and you ruin the effect.”

Konstantin Nikonovich, surrounded by faces slack with awe, knew that perfectly well. He made the sign of the cross over them all again: a benediction. Then he swept back up the narrow street, striding through the darkness, hoping he wouldn’t trip on a frozen rut in the road. People drew back before him, weeping.

Konstantin’s blood was singing with the memory of power. Years of praying, of earnest searching, had left him an outcast of God, but this demon could make him great among men. He knew it. If part of him whispered, he will have your soul, Konstantin did not heed. What good had his soul ever done him? But he muttered, as though despite himself, “That woman died for your show.”

The devil shrugged. The scarred side of his face was lost in darkness; he looked ordinary, except for his soundless bare feet. Now and again he glanced up at the stars. “Not exactly dead; the dead do not lie quiet when I’m about.” Konstantin shuddered. “She will walk the streets at night, calling for her son. But that is all to the good. More fuel for their fear.” He looked at the priest sidelong. “Regrets? Too late for scruples, man of God.”

Konstantin said nothing.

The devil murmured, “There is nothing but power in this world. People are divided into those who have it and those who have it not. Which will you be, Konstantin Nikonovich?”

“At least I am a man,” Konstantin snapped, shrill. “You are only a monster.”

Medved’s teeth were white as a beast’s; they gleamed briefly when he smiled. “There are no monsters.”

Konstantin snorted.

“There are not,” said the Bear. “There are no monsters in the world, and no saints. Only infinite shades woven into the same tapestry, light and dark. One man’s monster is another man’s beloved. The wise know that.”

They were nearly at the monastery-gate. “Are you my monster then, devil?” Konstantin asked.

The shadow at the corner of Medved’s mouth deepened. “I am,” he said. “And your beloved too. You are not one to distinguish.” The devil caught Konstantin’s golden head between his hands, drew him down and kissed him, full on the mouth.

Then he disappeared into the darkness, laughing.

8. Between the City and Evil

BROTHER ALEKSANDR LEFT HIS SISTER’S palace in the gray-blue hour before the sun rises. All around him, Moscow was stirring, sullenly. The city’s rage and wildness had shifted to a deeper unease. Dmitrii had every man he could spare in the streets—soldiers at the kremlin-gate, at the gate of his own palace, guarding the boyars’ houses—but their presence only seemed to feed the sense of dread.

A few people recognized Sasha, despite the hour, despite his hood. Once they would have asked him for his blessing; now they gave him black looks, and drew their children aside.

The witch’s brother.

Sasha strode on, lips set thin. Perhaps a better monk would have fixed his gaze on heavenly things, forgiven and forgotten, not mourned his sister’s torment, or his own lost reputation. But—if he had been a better monk he would have stayed in the Lavra.

The sun had made a copper rim on the horizon and water was running beneath the softening snow when Sasha passed the Grand Prince’s gate, and found Dmitrii in low-voiced conversation with three of his boyars. “God be with you,” said Sasha to them all. The boyars made the sign of the cross, identical troubled expressions half-hidden in their beards. Sasha could hardly blame them.

“The great families do not like it,” said Dmitrii when the boyars had bowed and left, and his attendants gone out of earshot. “Any of it. That a traitor came so close to killing me, that I lost control of the city last night. And—” Dmitrii paused. His hand toyed with his sword-hilt. “There are rumors that a demon was seen in Moscow.”

Sasha thought of Varvara’s warning. Perhaps Dmitrii expected him to scoff, but instead he asked, warily, “What nature of—demon?”

Dmitrii shot him a glance. “I know not. But that is why those three came to me so early and so uneasy; they heard the rumors too and fear that the city must be under some curse. They say that people talk of nothing now but devils, and of spoiling. They say that the only reason the city did not fall to evil last night was because a priest named Father Konstantin banished the demon. They are saying he is a saint, that he is the only one standing between this city and evil.”

“Lies,” said Sasha. “It was that same Father Konstantin yesterday who drove the city to riot and put my sister in the fire.”

Dmitrii’s eyes narrowed.

“His mob smashed the gates of my sister’s palace,” Sasha went on. “And he—” Sasha broke off. He stole my niece from her bed and gave her to the traitor, was what he wanted to say, but…No, Olga had said. Don’t you dare say aloud that my daughter left the terem that night. Get justice for Vasya if you can, but what do you think folk will say of Marya?

“Have you proof of this?” asked Dmitrii.

Once Sasha would have replied, Is my word not enough? Dmitrii would have answered, Yes it is, brother, and that would have been the end of argument. But a lie had come between them and so instead Sasha said, “There are witnesses that will place Father Konstantin among the mob at the palace of Serpukhov, and at the burning.”

Dmitrii didn’t answer directly. He said, “After I heard the rumors this morning, I sent men to the Monastery of the Archangel, with orders to escort the priest here. But he wasn’t at the monastery. He was in the Cathedral of the Assumption, with half the city attending him, praying and weeping. He chants like an angel, they say, and Moscow is full of tales of his beauty and his piety and how he freed the city from devils. All these rumors alone would make him dangerous, even if he is not the villain you make him out to be.”

“Since he is dangerous, why have you not arrested him?”

“Weren’t you listening?” demanded Dmitrii. “I can’t have a holy man dragged out of a cathedral before half of Moscow. No, he will come today by quiet invitation, and I will decide what to do.”

“He set the mob to break Serpukhov’s gates,” said Sasha. “There is only one thing to do with him.”

“Justice will be done, cousin,” returned Dmitrii. In his eyes was a warning. “However, it is for me to administer it, not you.”

Sasha said nothing. The dooryard was full of the sound of hammers, of men calling, of horses. Beyond was the murmur of the waking city. “I have ordered divine service sung,” Dmitrii added. Now he sounded tired. “I have set all the bishops to praying. I do not know what else we can do. Curse it, I am not a holy man, to answer questions of curses and devils. The people are unsettled enough without wicked rumors. There is the city to rebuild and Tatar bandits to find.”

ALL MOSCOW, IT SEEMED to Konstantin, followed him from the cathedral to the Grand Prince’s palace. Their voices pulled at him; their stink surrounded him. “I will return,” he told the people, before passing the gates. They waited outside, icons in their hands, praying aloud, better than a hundred guards.

Nonetheless, Konstantin’s sweat was cold as he crossed the dooryard. Dmitrii had guards of his own, heavily armed and watchful. The devil had not left Konstantin’s side since that morning; now he walked beside him, insouciant, invisible to all but the priest and looking about him with interest. The Bear was, Konstantin realized with a sinking feeling, enjoying himself.

All about the dooryard stood the wisps of small demons, hearth-creatures. Konstantin’s skin crawled, seeing them. “What do they want?”

The Bear smirked at the assembled devils. “They are afraid. The bells are blotting them out, year by year, but the destruction of their hearths will kill them quickly. They know what I am going to do.” The Bear bowed to them, ironic. “They are doomed,” he added cheerfully, as though to make sure they could hear, and strode on.

“Good riddance,” Konstantin muttered, and followed. The stares of the hearth-chyerti seemed to bore into his back.

There were two men waiting for him in the audience-chamber: Brother Aleksandr and Dmitrii Ivanovich, with Dmitrii’s attendants standing woodenly behind him. The place still smelled of smoke. One wall was scarred with sword-cuts, the paint hacked away.

Dmitrii sat in his carved chair. Brother Aleksandr stood, watchful, beside him.

“That one will kill you if he can,” remarked the Bear, with a jerk of his chin at Sasha. Sasha’s eyes narrowed; was it Konstantin’s imagination or did the monk’s gaze flicker from him to the devil beside him? He knew an instant of panic.

“Be easy,” added the Bear, eyes still on Sasha. “He has the same blood as the witch-girl. He senses what he cannot see, but that is all.” He paused. “Try not to get yourself killed, man of God.”

“Konstantin Nikonovich,” said Dmitrii coldly. Konstantin swallowed. “A girl, my kinswoman, was killed by fire yesterday, without trial. They are saying you set the mob of Moscow to do this. What have you to say?”

“I did not,” said Konstantin, making his voice calm. “I tried to restrain the people from worse violence, from breaking into the terem of Serpukhov and killing the women there. That much I did, but I could not save the girl.” He did not have to feign the sorrow in his voice, just let it float up from the tangle of other emotions. “I prayed for her soul. I could not stay the people’s wrath. By her own confession she set the fire that slew so many.”

He struck the perfect note of regretful admission. The Bear snorted beside him. Konstantin narrowly missed whipping round to glare.

Sasha, beside his cousin on the dais, stood perfectly still.

The Bear said suddenly, “The monk knows how the fire began. Press him; he will not lie to the Grand Prince.”

“That is a lie,” Dmitrii was saying to Konstantin. “The Tatars set the fire.”

“Ask Brother Aleksandr,” returned Konstantin, letting his voice fill the room. “Ask the holy monk there, if the girl set the fire or no. In the name of God, I charge him to speak truly.”

Dmitrii rounded on Sasha. The monk’s eyes were starry with rage, but Konstantin saw with astonishment that it was true. He wouldn’t lie. “An accident,” Sasha bit off. He and Dmitrii looked at each other as if they were the only two people in the room. “Dmitrii Ivanovich—”

Dmitrii’s face shuttered; he turned without a word back to Konstantin. The priest felt swift pleasure; he saw the Bear grin. They exchanged a look of perfect understanding, and Konstantin thought, Perhaps I was always cursed, that I can know this monster’s mind.

“She saved the city too,” murmured the Bear. “Although her brother can’t say so without accusing his own sister of witchcraft. Mad girl; she was nearly as bad as a chaos-spirit.” He sounded almost approving.

Konstantin pressed his lips together.

Dmitrii said, recovering smoothly, “I hear also that you fought a demon last night and banished it.”

“Demon or poor lost soul, I do not know,” said Konstantin. “But it had come in anger to torment the living. I prayed”—he had better control of his voice now—“and God saw fit to intercede. That is all.”

“Is it?” said Brother Aleksandr in a low measured voice. “And what if we do not believe you?”

“I could bring a dozen witnesses from the city to prove it,” returned Konstantin, with more confidence. The monk’s hands were tied now.

Dmitrii leaned forward. “So it is true?” he said. “There was a demon in Moscow?”

Konstantin crossed himself. Head bowed, he said, “It is true. A dead thing. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Why do you think there was a dead thing in Moscow, Batyushka?”

Konstantin noted the use of the honorific. He breathed again. “It was God’s punishment for the harboring of witches. But the witch is dead now, and perhaps God will relent.”

“Not likely,” said the Bear, but only Konstantin could hear him.

CURSE THE SILVER-TONGUED PRIEST, Sasha thought. And curse Vasya too, wherever she is. For he could defend her good intentions and her good heart, but he could not in conscience say that his sister was blameless. He couldn’t in truth say she was not a witch. He could not speak aloud of Marya’s kidnapping.

So now he must stand before this murderer, listening to his half-truths, and he had no good answers and unbelievably Dmitrii was listening to the priest. Sasha was white with rage.

“Will the dead thing come again?” Dmitrii asked.

“Who knows but God?” Konstantin replied. His glance shifted a fraction to the left, though there was nothing there. The hairs on the back of Sasha’s neck prickled.

“In that case—” Dmitrii began, but he got no further. A clamor on the stairs got their attention, and then the doors to the audience-chamber opened.

They all turned. Dmitrii’s steward came stumbling into the room, followed by a man in fine clothes, travel-stained.

Dmitrii stood. All the attendants bowed. The newcomer was taller than the Grand Prince, with the same gray eyes. Everyone recognized him on sight. He was the greatest man in Muscovy, after the Grand Prince, the only one who was prince in his own right, of his own lands, without vassalage. Vladimir Andreevich, Prince of Serpukhov.

“Well met, cousin,” said Dmitrii, with delight; they had been boys together.

“Scorch marks on the city,” returned Vladimir. “I am glad she is still standing.” But his eyes were grave; he was worn thin with winter travel. “What happened?”

“There was a fire, as you saw,” said Dmitrii. “And a riot. I will tell you everything. But why have you come in this haste?”

“The temnik Mamai has provisioned his army.”

A silence fell in the room; Vladimir hadn’t tried to soften the blow. “I had word in Serpukhov,” he continued. “Mamai has a rival farther south who is growing more powerful by the day. To stave off the threat he must have Muscovy’s allegiance and our silver. He is coming north himself to get it. There is no doubt. He will be in Moscow by autumn, if you don’t pay him, Dmitrii Ivanovich. You will have to muster your silver or muster an army, and there is no more time to delay.”

On Dmitrii’s face was a strange mix of anger and eagerness. “Tell me everything you know,” he said. “Come, let us drink and—” Sasha saw, with fury, that his cousin was relieved, for the moment, to set aside all questions of devils and the dead, and of culpability in the riot and the burning. Matters of war and politics were more pressing and less fraught.

Through a cold sinking tangle of anger and dismay, Sasha could have sworn that there was someone in the room laughing.

“SEND THE PRIEST AWAY UNPUNISHED?” Sasha demanded later. He could barely speak. There had been scarce a moment to catch his cousin alone, after Vladimir Andreevich came. Sasha finally caught Dmitrii in the dooryard, just as he was about to mount his horse to go look over the burned parts of Moscow. “Do you think Vladimir Andreevich will accept that? Vasya was his sister-in-law.”

“I have had the chief men of the riot arrested,” said Dmitrii. He took the reins from a groom, a hand on his horse’s withers. “They will be put to death for damaging the Prince of Serpukhov’s property, for laying hands on his kin. But I am not going to touch that priest—no, listen to me. Charlatan the priest may be, but a very good one. Didn’t you see the crowd outside?”

“I saw,” said Sasha, unwillingly.

“They will riot if I kill him,” Dmitrii went on, “and I can afford no more riots. He can control the mob, and I can control him; that is the kind of man who wants gold and glory, despite all his pretension of piety. The news from the south changes everything; you know it does. I can either squeeze all my boyars, all my princes, and the wretched city fathers of Novgorod for silver, or I can undertake the far more difficult route of calling all the princes of Rus’—the ones that will come—and equipping an army. I will try the former, for my people’s sake, but I cannot afford to be at odds with my city over it. That man may be useful. I have decided, Sasha. Besides, his story is plausible. Perhaps he is telling the truth.”

“Do you think I am lying then? What about my sister?”

“She caused the fire,” said Dmitrii. His voice grew suddenly cold. “Maybe her death by fire was justice. You certainly didn’t tell me of it. It seems we are back where we started. Telling lies, and omitting truths.”

“It was an accident.”

“And yet,” said Dmitrii.

They looked at each other. Sasha knew that the fragile, regained trust had eroded once more. There was a silence.

Then— “There is something I want you to do,” said the Grand Prince. He let go the reins of his horse and drew Sasha aside. “Are we still kin, Brother?”

“I COULD NOT PERSUADE DMITRII,” said Sasha wearily to Olga. “The priest goes free. Dmitrii is going to raise silver, to placate the Tatars.”

His sister was darning stockings, plain needles and swift hands incongruous in the magnificence of her embroidered lap. Only the jerky movements of her fingers revealed her feelings. “No justice then, for my sister, for my daughter, for my smashed gates?” she asked.

Sasha shook his head slowly. “Not now. Not yet. But your husband has returned. You are safe now, at least.”

“Yes,” Olga replied, in a voice dry as summer dust. “Vladimir has returned. He will come to me—today or tomorrow—after he has delivered all his news and made his plans and bathed and eaten and caroused with the Grand Prince. Then I may tell him that his hoped-for second son was a daughter, and she is dead. In the meantime, there is a demon loose and— Do you think there will be war?”

Sasha hesitated, but Olga’s set face dared him to pity her, and in the end, he accepted the change of subject. “Not if Dmitrii pays. Mamai cannot really want a war; he has a rival south of Sarai. He only wants money.”

“A great deal of money, I imagine,” Olga said, “if he is going to the trouble of mustering an army to extort it. There were bandits in Muscovy all winter, and Moscow in flames not long ago. Will Dmitrii be able to get his money?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha admitted, then paused. “Olya, he has sent me away.”

That broke through her composure. “Sent you—where?”

“To the Lavra. To Father Sergei. The troubles of men and armies, Dmitrii understands. But with all the talk of wickedness, spoiling, and demons, he wants Father Sergei’s advice, and sent me to get him.” Sasha rose to pace, restless. “The city is against me now, because of Vasya.” The admission cost him. “He says it would be unwise for me to stay. For your sake and my own.”

Olga’s narrowed eyes followed him as he swept back and forth. “Sasha, you cannot leave. Not when there is such wickedness loose. Marya has the same gifts as Vasya, and this priest who tried to kill our sister knows it.”

Sasha paused in his pacing. “You will have men. I have spoken to Dmitrii and Vladimir about it. Vladimir is calling up men from Serpukhov. Marya will be safe in the terem.”

“As safe as Vasya was?”

“She left.”

Olga sat very still, said nothing.

Sasha went to kneel at her side. “Olya, I must. Father Sergei is the holiest man in Rus’. If there is a demon loose, then Sergei will know what to do. I do not.”

Still his sister said nothing.

Lower, Sasha said, “Dmitrii has asked it of me. As the price of his trust.”

His sister’s hands closed on her needles, crumpling the stockings. “We are your family, vows or no, and we need you here.”

Sasha bit his lip. “All of Rus’ is at stake, Olya.”

“So you care more for children unknown than for mine?” The strains of the past days were catching both of them.

“That is why I became a monk,” he retorted. “That I might care for all the world together and not be tied to a little corner of it. What has it all been for, if I cannot protect all of Rus’ instead of just a patchwork of fiefdoms, a few people among the many?”

“You are as bad as Vasya was,” Olga said. “Thinking that you can just shake off your family like a horse slipping its traces. Look where it got her. You are not responsible for Rus’. But you can help keep your niece and nephew safe. Do not go.”

“It is your husband’s task—” began Sasha.

“He will be here a day or a week, then gone again, on the prince’s work. Just as always,” said Olga furiously, with a catch in her voice. “I cannot tell him about Marya; what do you think he would do with a daughter so afflicted? Arrange at once, with generosity and foresight, to have her sent to a nunnery. Brother, please.”

Olga ran her household with a steady grip, but the last days had shown her limits; when the world moved outside her walls, there was very little she could do. Now she was reduced to pleading: a princess without power enough to keep her family safe.

“Olya,” Sasha said. “Your husband will see that there are men at your gate; you will be safe. I cannot—I cannot refuse the Grand Prince. I’ll come back as soon as I can, with Father Sergei. He will know what to do. About the demon—and Konstantin Nikonovich.”

While he spoke, she controlled her rage; she was the immaculate Princess of Serpukhov once more. “Go then,” she said with disgust. “I do not need you.”

He went to the door, hesitated at the threshold. “God be with you,” he said.

She made no reply, though as he went out into the dripping gray of early spring, he heard her breath catch once, as if she fought to control her weeping.

IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN in Moscow, and nothing moved but beggars, trying to keep warm in the spring damp, and the faint house-spirits, walking, stirring, whispering. For there was change in the air, in the water beneath the ice, in the damp wind. Chyerti murmured rumors to one another, much as folk did in the city all around.

The Bear walked softly through the streets, a cold rain on his face, and the lesser chyerti shrank away. He did not heed them. He reveled in the sounds and the scents, the moving air, the fruit of his cleverness taking shape. The news of the Tatar army had been a lucky stroke, and he meant to use it to full advantage.

He must succeed. He must. Better to unmake the world—better to be unmade himself—than go back to the grim clearing at the edge of winter, dreaming the years away. But it would not come to that. His brother was far away, and so deeply imprisoned that he would never come out again.

The Bear smiled at the indifferent stars. Come spring, come summer, and let me make an end to this place, let me silence the bells. Each time they rang the monastic hours of worship, he flinched a little. But men were men, whatever gods they followed—hadn’t he tempted a servant of the newer God into his service?

Hoofbeats sounded in the darkness ahead, and a woman on a black horse rode out of the shadows.

The Bear greeted her with a lifted head, looking unsurprised. “News, Polunochnitsa?” he said, a hint of arid humor in his voice.

“She did not die in my realm,” said the midnight-demon, her voice quite expressionless.

The Bear’s eye sharpened. “Did you help her?”

“No.”

“Yet you watched her. Why?”

The midnight-demon shrugged. “We are all watching. All the chyerti. She has refused both of you, Morozko and Medved, and so made herself a power in her own right in your great war. The chyerti are choosing sides once more.”

The Bear laughed, but the gray eye was intent. “Choose her over me? She is a child.”

“She defeated you before.”

“With my brother’s help and her father’s sacrifice.”

“She has passed three fires, and she is not a child anymore.”

“Why tell me?”

Midnight shrugged again. “Because I have not chosen a side either, Medved.”

The Bear, smiling, said, “You will regret your indecision, before the end.”

Midnight’s black horse shied, and gave the Bear a wild-eyed look. Midnight smoothed a hand through his mane. “Perhaps” was all she said. “But you see, now I have helped you too. You will have the whole spring to do as you please. If you cannot secure your position, then perhaps the chyerti will be right to look instead to the powers of a half-grown girl.”

“Where will I find her?”

“Summer, of course. Beside the water.” Midnight looked down on him, from her horse’s back. “We will be watching.”

“I have time then,” said the Bear, and looked again up at the wild stars.