The Winter of the Witch Page 17

  Perhaps he felt the uncertainty beneath the desire, for he broke off, looking at her. The only sound was their breathing, his as harsh as hers.

  “Afraid now?” he whispered. He had pulled her with him onto the wooden bench; she was sitting crosswise in his lap, one of his arms about her waist. His free hand drew lines of cool fire on her skin, from ear to shoulder, followed her collarbone, dipped between her breasts. She could not control her breathing.

  “I’m supposed to be frightened,” Vasya snapped, sharper than was warranted because she was, in fact, frightened, and angry too because she could barely think, let alone speak, while his hand came up again, and this time slid down her spine, curved lightly around her ribs, found her breast and lingered there. “I am a maiden. And you—” She trailed off.

  The light hand stilled. “Afraid I will hurt you?”

  “Do you mean to?” she asked. They both heard the tremor in her voice. Naked in his arms, she was more vulnerable than she’d ever been.

  But he was afraid too. She felt it in the restrained tension of his touch, could see it now in his black-shadowed eyes.

  Again, they looked at each other.

  Then he half-smiled, and Vasya realized suddenly what the other feeling was, beneath the fear and desire rising between them.

  It was mad joy.

  His hand shaped the curve of her waist. He drew her mouth down to his again. His answer was more breath than word, breathed into her ear.

  “No, I will not hurt you,” he said.

  * * *

  “VASYA,” HE SAID INTO the darkness.

  They had made it into the outer room, in the end. When he’d drawn her down to the floor, it was onto a mound of heaped blankets that smelled like the winter forest. They were beyond speech by then, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t need words to call him back to her. Only the slide of her fingers, the heat of her bruised skin. His hands remembered her, when his mind did not. It was in his touch, easing over her half-healed wounds; it was in his grip, and the look in his eyes, before the candles burned low.

  Afterward, lying half-drowsing in the dark, she could still feel the pulse of his body in hers, and taste the pine on her lips.

  Then she jerked upright. “Is it still—?”

  “Midnight,” he said. He sounded weary. “Yes, it is midnight. I will not let you lose it.”

  His voice had changed. He’d said her name.

  She rose on one elbow, felt herself blushing. “You remembered.”

  He said nothing.

  “You set the Bear loose to save my life. Why?”

  Still he said nothing.

  “I came to find you,” she said. “I learned to do magic. I got the help of the firebird, you didn’t kill me—stop looking at me like that.”

  “I did not mean—” he began, and just like that she was angry, to mask a gathering hurt.

  He sat up, drew away from her, the line of his spine stiff in the near-dark.

  “I wanted it,” she said to his back, trying not to think of every notion of decency she had ever been taught. Chastity, patience, lie with men only for the bearing of children, and above all do not enjoy it. “I thought—I thought you did too. And you—” She couldn’t say it; instead she said, “You remembered. A small enough price, for that.” It didn’t feel small.

  He turned so she could see his face; he didn’t look as though he believed her. Vasya wished now she were not sitting naked, a handsbreadth away from him.

  He said, “I thank you.”

  Thank you? The words struck coldly, after the last hours’ heat. Maybe you wish you did not remember, she thought. Part of you was happy here, feared and beloved, in this prison. She didn’t say it.

  “The Bear is free in Rus’,” said Vasya instead. “He has set the dead to walking. We must help my cousin, help my brother. I came to get your help.”

  Still Morozko said nothing. He had not drawn further away from her, but his glance had turned inward, remote, unreadable.

  She added with sudden anger, “You owe us your help; you are the reason that the Bear is free in the first place. You didn’t need to bargain with him. I walked out of the pyre myself.”

  A little light came into his face. “I wondered if you would. But it was still worth it. When you drew me back to Moscow, I knew then.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That you could be a bridge between men and chyerti. Keep us from fading, keep men from forgetting. That we weren’t doomed after all, if you lived, if you came into your power. And I had no other way to save you. I—deemed it worth the risk, whatever came after.”

  “You might have trusted me to save myself.”

  “You meant to die. I saw it in you.”

  She flinched. “Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose I did mean to die. Solovey had fallen; he died under my hands, and—” She broke off. “But my horse would have called me foolish to give up. So, I changed my mind.”

  The wild simplicity of the night was fading into endless complications. She had never imagined that he’d set his realm and his freedom at hazard purely for love of her. Part of her had wondered anyway, but of course he was king of a hidden kingdom, and he could not make his decision so. It was the power in her blood he’d wanted.

  She was tired and cold and she ached.

  She felt more alone than before.

  Then she was angry at her own self-pity. For cold there was a remedy, and damn this new awkwardness between them. She slid again beneath the heavy, heaped-up blankets, turned her back to him. He did not move. She balled her body up on itself, trying to get warm alone.

  A hand, light as a snowflake, brushed her shoulder. Tears had gathered in her eyes; she tried to blink them away. It was too much: his presence, cold and quiet, the reasonable and practical explanations, to contrast with the overwhelming memory of passion.

  “No,” he said. “Do not grieve tonight, Vasya.”

  “You would never have done it,” she said, not looking at him. “This—” A vague gesture took in the bathhouse, them. “If you had been able to remember who I was. You would never have saved my life if I hadn’t been—if I hadn’t been—”

  His hand left her shoulder. “I tried to let you go,” he said. “Again and again I tried. Because every time I touched you—even looked at you—it drew me nearer to mortality. I was afraid. And yet, I could not.” He broke off, continued. “Perhaps if you hadn’t been what you are, I would have found it in myself to let you die. But—I heard you scream. Through all the mists of my weakness, after the fire in Moscow, I heard you. I told myself I was being practical, I told myself you were our last hope. I told myself that. But I thought of you in the fire.”

  Vasya turned to face him. He shut his lips tight, as though he’d said more than he wished.

  “And now?” she asked.

  “We are here,” he said simply.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know how else to bring you back.”

  “There was no other way. Why do you think my brother had such faith in his prison? He knew of no tie strong enough to draw me back to myself. Nor did I.”

  Morozko didn’t sound happy about it. It occurred to Vasya that he might feel just as she did: raw. She put out a hand. He did not look at her, but his fingers closed about hers.

  “I am still afraid,” he said. It was a truth, baldly offered. “I am glad you are alive. I am glad to see you again, against all hope. But I do not know what to do.”

  “I am afraid too,” she said.

  His fingertips found her wrist, where the blood surged against her skin. “Are you cold?”

  She was. But…

  “I think,” he said wryly, “all things considered, we should be able to share the same blankets a few hours more.”

  “We must go,” said Vasya. “There is too much to do;
there is not time.”

  “An hour or three won’t make a great difference, in this country of Midnight,” said Morozko. “You are all worn to shadows, Vasya.”

  “It will make a difference,” she said. “I can’t fall asleep, here.”

  “You can now,” he said. “I will keep you in Midnight.”

  To sleep—to really sleep…Mother of God, she was weary. She was already beneath the blankets; after a moment, he slid beneath them too. Her breath came short; she clenched her fists on an impulse to touch him.

  They watched each other, warily. He moved first. His hand stole up to her face, traced the sharp line of her jaw, brushed the thick line of the scab from the stone. She shut her eyes.

  “I can heal this for you,” he said.

  She nodded once, vain enough to be glad that at least there would be only a white scar instead of a scarlet one. He cupped his hand, trickled water onto her cheek, while she set her teeth against the flare of agony.

  “Tell me,” he said, after.

  “It is a long story.”

  “I assure you,” he said. “I will not grow old in the telling of it.”

  She told him. She started with the moment he’d left her in the snowstorm in Moscow and finished with Pozhar, Vladimir, her journey into Midnight. She was wrung out at the end, but calmer too. As though she’d laid the skeins of her life out neatly, and there was less of a tangle in her soul.

  When she fell silent, he sighed. “I am sorry,” he said. “For Solovey. I could only watch.”

  “And send me your mad brother,” she pointed out. “And a token. I could have done without your brother, but the carving—comforted me.”

  “Did you keep it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It brings him back when I—” She trailed off; it was too fresh, still.

  He tucked a short curl behind her ear, but said nothing.

  “Why are you afraid?” she asked him.

  His hand dropped. She did not think he would answer. When he did, it was so low she barely caught the words. “Love is for those who know the griefs of time, for it goes hand in hand with loss. An eternity, so burdened, would be a torment. And yet—” He broke off, drew breath. “Yet what else to call it, this terror and this joy?”

  It was harder this time, to move close to him. Before, it was—uncomplicated, reckless, joyful. But now emotion freighted the air between them.

  His skin had warmed with hers, beneath the blankets; he might have been a man except for his eyes, ancient and troubled. It was her turn to push his hair back where it fell over his brow; it curled coarse and cold beneath her fingers. She touched the warm place behind his jaw, and the hollow of his throat, laid her spread fingers on his chest.

  He covered her hand with his, traced her fingers, her arm, then her shoulder, slid his hand from spine to waist, as though he meant to learn her body by touch.

  She made a sound in her throat. The coolness of his breathing touched her lips. She did not know if he had moved, or if she had, to bring them close together. And still his hand moved, gently, coaxing suppleness from her. She couldn’t breathe. Now that they were no longer talking, she could feel the tension gathering in him—shoulder to hand—where his fingers dug into her skin.

  One thing to take the wild stranger to herself. Another to look into the face of an adversary-ally-friend and…

  She wound her fingers in his hair. “Come here,” she said. “No—closer.”

  He smiled then: the slow, unknowable smile of the winter-king. But there was a hint of laughter in it she’d never seen. “Be patient,” he murmured into her mouth.

  But she could not, not an instant more; rather than answer, she caught him by the shoulders and rolled him over. She felt the strength in her body then, saw the shift and play of muscle in the faint candlelight: hers and his. She bent forward to breathe into his ear: “Never give me orders.”

  “Command me, then,” he whispered back. The words went through her like wine.

  Her body knew what to do then, even if her mind did not quite, and she took him into herself, snow and cold and power and years and that elusive fragility. He said her name once, and she barely heard, lost as she was. But after, when she lay pliant, curved into his body, she whispered, “You are not alone, anymore.”

  “I know,” he whispered. “Neither are you.”

  And then, finally, she slept.

  18.

  On the Backs of Magic Horses

  HE ROSE FROM THE TANGLED heap of snow-colored furs some unmarked hours later. She did not hear him go, but felt his absence. It was still midnight. She opened her eyes, shivering, and sat up. For an instant, she did not know where she was. Then she remembered and lurched to her feet, afraid. He was gone, he had vanished into the night, she had dreamed it all…

  She seized hold of herself; would he really vanish without a word?

  She didn’t know. The madness had gone from her; she was only cold now, teeth set against a rush of shame. The voices of her upbringing sounded loud in her ears, all of them accusing.

  Teeth sunk into her lower lip, she went to retrieve her clothes. Damn this shame, and damn the darkness. She turned her head, and light flared all at once from the candle in the wall-niche. Lighting it shook her not at all, as though her mind had accepted at last a world where she could make things burn.

  Groping, she found her shift, drew it over her head. She was standing in the doorway between rooms, undecided and chilly, when the outer door opened.

  The candlelight highlighted the bones of him, and filled his face with shadows. He had the bundle of her boy’s clothes in his hands. She caught the sound of voices and crunching footsteps outside the bathhouse.

  Fear filled her, unbidden. “What is happening outside?”

  He looked rueful. “I think that between us we have sealed the murky reputation of bathhouses.”

  Vasya said nothing. In her mind, she was hearing again the sound of the mob in Moscow.

  She saw him understand. “You were alone then, Vasya,” he said. “Now you are not.” She had both hands on the inner doorframe, as if men were coming in to drag her out. “Even then, you still walked out of the fire.”

  “It cost me,” she said, but the gnarled hand of fear loosened its grip on her throat.

  “The village isn’t angry,” Morozko said. “They are delighted. There is power in this night.” She felt a blush creeping along her cheekbones. “Do you wish to stay? It is hard for me to linger, now.”

  She paused. It must be like coming to a place that had been home, but wasn’t anymore. Like trying to fit back into a skin already shed.

  “Do your lands border my great-grandmother’s?” Vasya asked him suddenly.

  “They do,” said Morozko. “How do you think my table once had strawberries for you, and pears and snowdrops?”

  “So you knew the story?” she pressed. “Of the witch and her twin girls? You knew Tamara was my grandmother?”

  “I did,” he said. He looked wary now. “And before you ask, no, I never meant to tell you. Not until the night of the snowstorm in Moscow, and by then it was too late. The witch herself was either dead or lost in Midnight. No one knew what had become of the twins, and I could remember nothing of the sorcerer, who had made magic to set himself apart from death. All these things I learned later.”

  “And you thought me only a child, a tool to your purposes.”

  “Yes,” he said. Whatever he thought or felt or hoped was buried deep, and locked tight. I am not a child anymore, she might have said, but the truth of that was written in his eyes on her. “Never lie to me again,” she said instead.

  “I will not.”

  “Will the Bear know you are free?”

  “No,” he said. “Unless Midnight tells him.”

  “I don’t think she will meddle so,” said Vasy
a. “She watches.”

  In his silence this time she could hear a thought unspoken.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “You needn’t go back to Moscow,” he said. “You’ve seen enough horror, and caused enough pain. The Bear will do his best to see you slain now: the worst death he can devise, especially if he finds out I remembered. He knows I would grieve.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It is our fault he is free. He must be bound again.”

  “With what?” Morozko demanded. The candle leaped up with a violet flame. His eyes were the color of the fire; his outlines seemed to fade, until he was wind and night made flesh. Then he shook off the mantle of power and said, “I am winter; do you think I will have any power in summertime Moscow?”

  “You needn’t make it cold in here to score a point,” said Vasya, resentfully. “We have to do something.” She took her own clothes from his hands. “Thank you for these,” she added, and went to the inner room to dress. At the threshold, she called back, “Can you even go out into the summertime world, winter-king?”

  His voice behind her was reluctant. “I don’t know. Perhaps. For a little time. If we are together. The necklace is destroyed but—”

  “But we don’t need it anymore,” she finished, realizing. The tie between them now—layers of passion and anger, fear and fragile hope—was stronger than any magical jewel.

  Dressed, she returned to the doorway. Morozko was standing where she’d left him. “We could perhaps get to Moscow, but to what end?” he said. “If the Bear finds out we are coming, he will delight in setting a trap, so that I must watch, helpless, while you are slain. Or perhaps one where you must watch while your family suffers.”

  “We will just have to be clever,” said Vasya. “We got Muscovy into this; we are going to get her out.”

  “We ought to return to my own lands, come to him in winter when I am stronger. Then we’d have a chance of victory.”

  “He surely knows that,” Vasya returned. “Which means that whatever he is planning, he must do it this summer.”