She tripped and fell before she could turn, found herself kneeling in the snow without the strength to rise. The sky was a river of stars, but she didn’t look up. The death-god was the only thing she could see. He was little more than a confluence of light and dark, wispy as cloud across the moon. But she knew his eyes. He was waiting for her, in the gray forest. She was not alone.
Between gasps she managed, “Where is Solovey?”
“Gone,” he said. There was no comfort in the death-god, not here; there was only the knowledge of her loss, echoed in his pale eyes.
She did not know such a sound of agony could come from her throat. Mastering it, she whispered, “Please. Take me with you. They are going to kill me tonight and I do not—”
“No,” he said. The faintest of pine-tinged breezes seemed to touch her bruised face. He wore his indifference like armor, but it was wavering. “Vasya, I—”
“Please,” she said. “They killed my horse. There is only the fire now.”
He reached out to her, just as she reached back, through whatever memory or illusion or walls divided them, but it was like touching a wisp of mist.
“Listen to me,” he said, mastering himself. “Listen.”
She lifted her head with effort. Why, listen? Why couldn’t she just go? But the bonds of her body called her; she could not win free. The faces of the icons seemed to be trying to break in upon her sight and come between them. “I wasn’t strong enough,” he said. “I have done what I could; I hope—it may be enough. You won’t see me again. But you will live. You must live.”
“What?” she whispered. “How? Why? I am about to—”
But icons were thrusting themselves before her eyes, more real than the faint death-god. “Live,” he said to her again. And then he was gone a second time. She was awake, alone, lying on the cold, dusty floor of a church, still, horribly, alive.
Alone, save for Konstantin Nikonovich. He was saying, over her head, “Get up. You have missed your chance to pray.”
HER HANDS WERE ROUGHLY bound behind her back; a few men came up at Konstantin’s beck and made a square around her. They weren’t anything like soldiers; they were peasants or tradesmen, ruddy and determined. One held an ax, another a scythe.
Konstantin’s face was white and set; their eyes met once, in a look of pure violence, before he looked away, serene, his lips set in the austere lines of a man doing his duty to his faith.
The crowd was thick about the chapel, lining the road that wound down to the river. They had torches in their hands. They smelled like cooking and char and old wounds and sweat. The nighttime wind scoured her skin. They took away her shoes—for penitence, they said.
Her feet scraped and throbbed on the snow. Triumph in their faces; naked worship of the priest, naked hatred of her. They spat on her.
Witch, she heard again and again. She set fire to the city. Witch.
Vasya had never been so frightened. Where was her brother?
Perhaps he could not get through the mob; perhaps he feared the people’s madness. Perhaps Dmitrii thought her life a small price to quiet his raging city.
She was prodded forward, stumbling. Konstantin walked beside her, head piously bent. The red light of the torches leaped before her eyes and blinded them.
“Batyushka,” she said.
Konstantin broke off. “Beg me now?” he breathed, below the roar of the crowd.
She did not speak; she had all she could do to fight the panic that was threatening to madden her. Then she said, “Not like this. Not—in fire.”
He shook his head, and gave her a half-smile; quick, almost confiding. “Why? Did you not condemn Moscow to burn?”
She said nothing.
“The devils whispered,” said the priest. “At least I can get some good of your curse; the devils spoke true. They whispered of a maiden with a witch’s gifts, and a monster all of fire. I didn’t even have to lie, when I told the people of your crime. You should have thought of that before you cursed me with the ears to hear them.”
With visible effort, he turned away from her and resumed his praying. His face was the color of linen, but his steps were steady. He seemed transfixed by the crowd’s rage, consumed by what he himself had summoned.
Vasya’s vision took on a black-and-white clarity, grim and shocking. The air was cold on her face; her feet burned as they began to freeze in the snow. Moscow’s smoke-tinged air ran quicksilver through her veins, drawn in with each panicked breath.
Before her, on the ice of the Moskva, massed a sea of upturned faces, snarling or weeping, or merely watching. Down on the river
stood a stack of logs, illuminated on all sides with torches. A pyre, hastily constructed. And atop it, stark against the sky, the cage of the condemned, lashed down with many ropes. The crowd made a low, continuous sound now, like the growl of an animal rising.
“Forget the cage,” Vasya said to Konstantin. “These people will tear me to pieces before I get there.”
The look he gave her was almost pitying, and she suddenly understood why he walked beside her, why also he prayed with that calculated grace. This was Lesnaya Zemlya writ large; he had gathered them up in their grief and terror, gathered them into his hand with his golden voice and his golden hair, so that they became a weapon in his grip, a tool of vengeance, and a sop to his pride. They would not attack while he was with her, and he wanted to see her burn. He had been cheated of it, after all, the night before. Always, always she had underestimated the priest.
“Monster,” she said, and he almost smiled.
Then they were down on the ice itself. A shriek went up like a dozen dying rabbits. The people were pressing close about her now, spitting and striking. Her guards could barely keep them back. A stone came whistling through and cut her cheek, gashed it deep. She put a hand to her face and blood spilled through her fingers.
Dazed now, she twisted her head one more time to look at Moscow. No sign of her brother. But she saw the devils, despite the dark. They were silhouetted atop roofs and walls: domoviye and dvoroviye and banniki, the faint house-spirits of Moscow. They were there, but what could they do but watch? Chyerti are formed of the currents of human life; they ride them, but they do not interfere.
Except two. But one was her enemy, the other was far away, made nearly powerless by spring and by her own hand. The most she could hope for from him was a death without agony. She held that hope in a desperate grip as they prodded and shouted and chivied her toward the pyre. Across the ice, through a narrow corridor in the throng.
Tears poured down her face now, from her own helplessness, and an involuntary reaction against their hatred.
Perhaps there was some justice in it. Again and again, she saw folk limping, burned, with bandages on their arms or faces. But I did not mean to free the firebird, she thought. I did not know what would happen. I did not know.
The ice was still hard, as thick as a man was tall, shining in spots where wind or sledges had swept away the snow. It would be a long time still until the river released its bonds. Will I live to see it? Vasya wondered. Will I feel sun on my skin again? I think not, I think—
