“I would like that,” said Vasya, though she knew she would be far away in the spring. “If the Grand Prince gives me leave.” For a moment she wished it were true. Horses like blades of grass…
Kasyan’s eye ran over her as though he could dive into her soul and steal her secrets. “Come home with me,” he said low, a new emotion in his voice. “I will give you all you desire. I must only tell you—”
What did he mean? He never finished. At that moment, several horses came rattling through the gate, and a small cavalcade galloped, shouting, across the dooryard, pursued by the angry steward.
Vasya wondered what Kasyan had meant. Tell her what?
Then the young boyars of Dmitrii’s following were all around; the ones who had called their insults in the hall, and jostled her in challenge. They managed their plunging horses between their fur-clad knees, and their bits and stirrups made a warlike music. “Boy!” they called, and “Wolf-cub! Vasya!” They shouted their ribald jokes. One reached down and elbowed Kasyan, asking how it would feel to be beaten by that stripling boy, whose coat hung off him like laundry and whose horse wore no bridle.
Kasyan laughed. Vasya wondered if she had imagined the raw feeling in his voice.
At length the young boyars were persuaded to depart. Outside that snow-filled paddock, outside Vladimir’s wooden gates, the city shook itself awake. A shriek rang out from the tower above, quelled by a slap and a sharp rejoinder. The air smelled of wood-smoke and hundreds of cakes baking.
Kasyan lingered still, a line between his red brows. “Vasya,” he began again. “Last night—”
“Have you no horse to see to yourself?” Vasya asked sharply. “We are rivals now; are we to share confidences?”
Kasyan, mouth twisted, looked her in the face a moment. “Will you—” he began.
But again he was interrupted by a visitor, this one dressed plainly as a sparrow. His hood was up against the chill, his face stern. Vasya swallowed, turned, and bowed. “Brother,” she said.
“Forgive me, Kasyan Lutovich,” said Sasha. “I wish to speak to Vasya alone.”
Sasha looked as though he had been awake a great while, or had never gone to bed.
“God be with you,” Vasya said to Kasyan in polite farewell.
Kasyan looked for a moment taken aback. Then he said, in a cold, strange voice, “You would have done better to heed me,” and stalked away.
A small silence fell when he had gone. That man smells strange, said Solovey.
“Kasyan?” Vasya asked. “How?”
Solovey shook his mane. Dust, he said. And lightning.
“What did Kasyan mean?” Sasha asked her.
“I have no idea,” Vasya replied honestly. She peered into her brother’s face. “What have you been doing?”
“I?” he said. He leaned wearily on the fence. “I am looking for rumors about this man Chelubey, the ambassador of Mamai. Great lords do not just emerge from the woods. In all this city someone should have heard tell of him, even fourth-hand. But for all his magnificence, I can get no news at all.”
“And so?” Vasya rejoined. Green eyes met gray.
“Chelubey has the letter, the horses, the men,” said Sasha slowly. “But he has not the reputation.”
“So you suspect the ambassador is a bandit now, do you?” Vasya asked childishly. “Do you believe me at last?”
Her brother sighed. “If I can come to no better explanation, then yes, I will believe you. Although I have never heard of such a thing.” He paused and added, almost to himself, “If a bandit—or whoever he is—has duped us all so thoroughly, then he must have had help. Where did he get money and scribes and papers and horses and finery to pass himself off as a Tatar lord? Or would the Khan send us such a man? Surely not.”
“Who would possibly help him?” Vasya asked.
Sasha shook his head slowly. “When the race is done, and Dmitrii Ivanovich can be persuaded to heed, you will tell him everything.”
“Everything?” she asked. “Kasyan said we needed proof.”
“Kasyan,” retorted her brother, “is too clever for his own good.”
Their eyes met a second time.
“Kasyan?” she said, answering her brother’s look. “Impossible. Those bandits burned his own villages. He came to Dmitrii Ivanovich to ask for help.”
“Yes,” said Sasha slowly. His face was still troubled. “That is true.”
“I will tell Dmitrii all I know,” said Vasya in a rush. “But—afterward—I am going to leave Moscow. I will need your help for that. You must look after the filly—my Zima—and be kind to her.”