So she clung and her bones loosened and her whole body lit with cool fire. Even your brothers would call you damned now, she thought, but she utterly did not care. A light wind sent the last of the clouds scudding across the sky, and the stars shone clear on them both.

When he drew away at last, she was wide-eyed, flushed, burning. His eyes were a brilliant, perfect, flame-heart blue, and he could have been human.

He let her go abruptly.

“No,” he said.

“I do not understand.” Her hand was at her mouth, her body trembling, wary as the girl he had once thrown across his saddlebow.

“No,” he said. He dragged a hand through his dark curls. “I did not mean—”

Dawning hurt. She crossed her arms. “Did you not? Why did you come, really?”

He ground his teeth. He had turned away from her, his hands clenched hard. “Because I wanted to tell you—”

He broke off, looked into her face. “There is a shadow over Moscow,” he said. “Yet whenever I try to look deeper, I am turned aside. I do not know what is causing it. Were you not—”

“Were I not what?” Vasya asked, hating her voice as it creaked painfully from her throat.

A pause. The blue flame deepened in his eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” said Morozko. “But, Vasya—”

It seemed for a moment that he really meant to speak, that some secret would come pouring out. But he sighed and closed his lips. “Vasya, be wary,” he said in the end. “Whatever you choose, be wary.”

Vasya did not really hear him. She stood there cold and tense and burning all at once. No? Why no?

If she’d been older, she would have seen the conflict in his eyes. “I will,” she said. “Thank you for your warning.” She turned, with deliberate steps, and swung onto Solovey’s back.

She had already galloped away, and so she did not see that he stood for a long time, watching her go.

Later, much later, in the chill and bitter hour before dawn, a red light like a flash of fire streaked across the sky over Moscow. The few who saw it called it a portent. But most did not see it. They were asleep, dreaming of summer suns.

Kasyan Lutovich saw it. He smiled, and he left his room in Dmitrii’s palace to go down into the dooryard and make his final arrangements.

Morozko would have known the flash for what it was. But he did not see, for he was galloping alone, in the wild places of the world, face set and shut against the lonely night.

20.

Fire and Darkness

A fine yellowish sunlight pooled into Vasya’s little room the next day. She awakened at its coy touch and rolled to her feet. Her head throbbed, and she wished heartily that she had shouted less, run less, drunk less, and wept less the night before.

Tonight beat like a drum in her skull. She would tell Dmitrii what she knew, or suspected, of Chelubey. She would whisper her farewells to Olga and Marya, but softly, that they could not hear and call her back. Then she would go. South—south to where the air was warm and no frost-demons could trouble her nights. South. The world was wide, and her family had suffered enough.

But first—this horse-race.

Vasya dressed quickly; cloak and boots went on over her old shirt and jacket and fleece-lined leggings. Then she ran out into the sun. A little warmth breathed down from the sky when she turned her face to the light. Soon the snowdrops would bloom in the hidden places and winter would begin to end.

A flurrying snow, just at dawn, had covered the dooryard. Vasya went at once to Solovey’s paddock, boots crunching.

The stallion’s eye was bright and he breathed like a war-horse before the charge. The filly Zima stood calmly now beside him.

“Try not to win by too much,” Vasya told Solovey, seeing the wildness in him.“I don’t want to be accused of bewitching my horse.”

Solovey only shook his mane and pawed the snow.

Vasya, sighing, said, “And we are leaving tonight, when the revel is at its peak. So you must not exhaust yourself racing—we must be far away before dawn.”

That steadied the horse a bit. She brushed his coat, muttering plans for getting them both, along with her saddlebags, out of the city when darkness fell.

A red edge of sun was just showing over the city walls as Kasyan came into Olga’s dooryard, dressed in silver and gray and fawn, with embroidery on the tilted toes of his boots. He halted at the paddock-fence. Vasya glanced up to find him watching her.

She bore his stare easily. She could bear any gaze after Morozko’s the night before.

“Well met, Vasilii Petrovich,” Kasyan said. A little sweat curled the hair at his temples. Vasya wondered if he was nervous. What man wouldn’t be, who had agreed to pit some ordinary horse against Solovey? The thought almost made her smile.

“A fair morning, lord,” Vasya returned, bowing.

Kasyan spared a glance at Solovey. “A groom could make the horse ready, you know. You needn’t dirty yourself.”

“Solovey would not take a groom’s hand,” Vasya said shortly.

He shook his head. “I meant no offense, Vasya. Surely we know each other better than that.”

Did they? She nodded.

“Fortunate boy,” Kasyan said, with another glance at Solovey. “To be so beloved of a horse. Why is that, do you think?”

“Porridge,” Vasya said. “Solovey cannot resist it. What have you come to say to me, Kasyan Lutovich?”

At that, Kasyan leaned forward. Vasya had an arm hooked over Solovey’s back. The horse’s nostrils flared; he stirred uneasily. Kasyan’s eyes caught hers and held them. “I like you, Vasilii Petrovich,” he said. “I have liked you from the moment I saw you, before I knew who you were. You must come south to Bashnya Kostei in the spring. My horses number as the blades of grass, and you may ride them all.”

“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.