Konstantin let her go suddenly. Vasya knew he could see every line of her body, her nipples hard through her shift. “What did you do to me?” he hissed.
“Do to you?” Vasya returned, bewildered with sorrow, dizzy with the change from heat to cold. The sweat stood on her face; her bare feet scraped the wooden floor. “I did nothing.”
“Liar!” he snapped. “Liar. I was a good man, before. I saw no devils. And now—”
“See them now, do you?” Shocked and grieving as she was, Vasya could muster nothing more than bitter humor. Her hands stank with her sister’s blood, with the ripe, ugly reality of stillbirth. “Well, perhaps you did that to yourself, with all your talk of demons; did you think of that? Go and hide in a monastery; no one wants you.”
He was as pale as she. “I am a good man,” he said. “I am. Why did you curse me? Why do you haunt me?”
“I don’t,” said Vasya. “Why would I want to? I came to Moscow to see my sister. Look what came of it.”
Coldly, shamelessly, she stripped off her wet shift. If she was to go out into the night, she did not mean to court death.
“What are you doing?” he breathed.
Vasya reached for her sarafan and blouse and outer robe, discarded in the anteroom. “Putting on dry clothes,” she said. “What did you think? That I am going to dance for you, like a peasant girl in spring, while a child lies dead just there?”
He watched her dress, hands opening and closing.
She was beyond caring. She tied her cloak and straightened her spine. “Where do you wish to take me?” she inquired, with bitter humor. “I don’t think you even know.”
“You are going to answer for your crimes,” Konstantin managed, in a voice caught between anger and bewildered wanting.
“Where?” she inquired.
“Do you mock me?” He gathered some measure of his old self-possession, and his hand closed on her upper arm. “To the convent. You will be punished. I promised I would hunt witches.” He stepped nearer. “Then I will see devils no longer; then all will be as it was.”
Vasya, rather than falling back, stepped closer to him, and that was obviously the one thing he did not expect. The priest froze.
Closer still. Vasya was afraid of many things, but she was not afraid of Konstantin Nikonovich.
“Batyushka,” she said, “I would help you if I could.”
His lips shut hard.
She touched his sweating face. He did not move. Her hair tumbled damply over his hand, where it lay locked around her arm.
Vasya made herself stand still despite his pinching grip. “How can I help you?” she whispered.
“Kasyan Lutovich promised me vengeance,” Konstantin whispered, staring, “if I would—but never mind. I do not need him. You are here; it is enough. Come to me now. Make me whole again.”
Vasya met his eyes. “That I cannot do.”
And her knee came up with perfect accuracy.
Konstantin did not scream, nor fall wheezing to the floor; his robes were too thick. But he doubled over with a grunt, and that was all Vasya needed.
She was out in the night—crossing the walkway, then running out through the dooryard.
23.
The Jewel of the North
A corpse-gray moon just showed above Olga’s tower. The prince of Serpukhov’s dooryard echoed with the shriek of the still reveling city outside, but Vasya knew there would be guards about. In a moment Konstantin would raise the alarm. She must warn the Grand Prince.
Vasya was already running for Solovey’s paddock before she remembered that he would not be there.
But then there came a thump and a snowy crunch of hooves.
Vasya turned with relief to fling her arms around the stallion’s neck.
It was not Solovey. The horse was white, and she had a rider.
Morozko slid down the mare’s shoulder. Girl and frost-demon faced each other in the sickly moonlight. “Vasya,” he said.
The stench of the bathhouse clung to Vasya’s skin, and the smell of blood. “Is that why you wanted me to run away tonight?” she asked him, bitterly. “So I wouldn’t see my sister die?”
He did not speak, but a fire, blue as a summer sky, leaped up between them. No wood fueled it; yet its heat drove back the night, and cradled her shivering skin. She refused to be grateful. “Answer me!” She gritted her teeth and stamped on the flames. They died as quickly as they had risen.
“I knew the mother or the child was to die,” Morozko said, stepping back. “I would have spared you, yes. But now—”