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“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.
