Vasya, without thinking, leaned over and scratched Pozhar’s neck with delight. “Thank you,” she said. The mare tolerated it a moment before she sidled away.

19.

Al ies

SUMMER CAME WITH UNNATURAL SUDDENNESS, fell on Moscow like a conquering army. Fires broke out in the forest, so that the city was palled with smoke and no one could see the sun. Folk went mad from the heat; drowned themselves in the river seeking coolness, or simply dropped where they stood, scarlet-faced, bodies dewed with clammy sweat.

The rats came with the warmth, creeping out of the merchant-boats while men unloaded silver and cloth and forged iron for the sticky, sweltering markets of Moscow. They thrived in the smother, drawn to the reek of Moscow’s middens.

The first folk to fall sick lived in the posad: the airless, crowded huts by the river. They began to cough, to sweat, and then to shiver.

Then the smooth swellings showed, at throat and groin, and then black spots.

Plague. The word rippled through the city. Moscow had seen plague before. Dmitrii’s uncle Semyon had died of it, with his wife and his sons in one terrible summer.

“Close up the houses of the sick,” said Dmitrii to the captain of his guard. “They are not to go out—no, not even to go to church. If a priest can be found to bless them, let the priest go in, but that is all.

Tell the guards at the city-gate; anyone who seems ill is not allowed

within the walls.” Folk still whispered in hushed tones of the death of Dmitrii’s uncle: dying swollen like a tick, black-spotted, his own attendants afraid to come near him.

The man nodded, but he was frowning. “What?” Dmitrii demanded. The night of the Tatar attack had decimated Dmitrii’s city guard. In the aftermath of the riot and Vasya’s burning, he’d built it up again, larger than before, but they were still inexperienced.

“This sickness is the curse of God, Gosudar,” said the captain.

“Surely it is only right that men be allowed to go and pray? All the people’s prayers together may yet reach the ears of the Almighty.”

“It is a curse that flies from man to man,” said Dmitrii. “What are the walls of Moscow for if not to keep out evil?”

One of his boyars there in his anteroom said, “Forgive me, Gosudar, but—”

Dmitrii turned, scowling. “Can I not give orders without debate from half the city?” Ordinarily he humored his boyars. They were mostly older than he, and had ensured that he had a throne to inherit when he came of age. But the shocking heat sapped his strength and brought on a sick, weary anger. He’d had no word from either of his cousins. The Prince of Serpukhov had taken all the silver Muscovy could muster, and had gone south to plead their case before the temnik Mamai. Sasha was supposed to be bringing back Father Sergei. But Sasha had not returned, and reports came out of the south that Mamai was still gathering up his ulus, as though he’d never heard Vladimir’s message at all.

“The people are afraid,” said the boyar carefully. “Thrice have the dead come walking since the season turned. Now this? If you shut the gates of Moscow and deny church to the sick, I do not know what they will do. Already there is much talk that the city is cursed.”

Dmitrii understood war, and the managing of men, but curses were outside his experience. “I will take thought for the comfort of the city,” he said. “But we are not cursed.” In his own heart, though, Dmitrii wasn’t sure. He wanted Father Sergei’s advice, but the old

monk was not there. So instead, grudgingly, the Grand Prince turned to his steward. “Send for Father Konstantin.”

“THE FAIR-HAIRED PRINCE IS no fool,” said the Bear. “But he is young. He has sent a messenger for you. When you go to him, you must convince him to let you give service in the cathedral. Call the people together and pray for rain or salvation or whatever it is men ask of their gods in this age. But call them together.”

Konstantin was alone in the scriptorium of the Archangel, wearing only the lightest of cassocks; sweat dewed his forehead, his upper lip.

“I am painting,” he said. He turned a pot of color in the light. His colors lay before him like a string of jewels—some were actually made from precious stones. At Lesnaya Zemlya, he had made his colors from bark and berries and leaves. Now anxious boyars showered him with lapis for his blues and jasper for his reds. They paid the finest silversmiths in Moscow to make icon-covers for him, of hammered silver, studded with pearls.

The third time dead things came whispering through the streets, it had taken the whole night to drive them off: first one, then another, and finally a third. “It cannot seem to be too easy , ” the Bear had told him afterward, when Konstantin had wakened screaming from a dream of dead faces. “Do you think the defeat of a single child-upyr would have been enough to win over all Moscow, peasant and boyar?

Drink wine, man of God, and do not fear the darkness. Have I not done all I promised?”

“Every last thing,” Konstantin had said miserably, shivering in his cooling sweat. He was to be made bishop. He had been granted property commensurate with his dignity. The people of Moscow worshipped him with wild-eyed fervor. But that did not help him in the night, when he dreamed dead hands, reaching.

Now, in the scriptorium, Konstantin turned away from his wooden panel, found the devil standing just behind him. His breath left him silently. He could never get used to the demon’s presence. The beast knew his thoughts, waked him from nightmares, whispered advice in his ear. Konstantin would never be free of him.

Perhaps I don’t wish to be, Konstantin thought in his more clearheaded moments. Always, when he met the devil’s single eye, the creature stared steadily back.

The beast saw him.

Konstantin had waited to hear the voice of God for so long, but God was silent.

This devil never stopped talking.

Nothing would quiet Konstantin’s nightmares, though. He’d tried drinking mead, to thicken his sleep, but the honey-wine only made his head ache. Finally, in desperation, Konstantin asked the monks for brushes and wooden panels, for oil and water and pigment, and set himself to writing icons. When he painted, his soul seemed to exist only in his eye and hand; his mind went quiet.

“I can see you are painting,” said the Bear, with an edge. “In a monastery, alone. Why? I thought you wanted earthly glories, man of God.”

Konstantin swept his arm at the image on the panel. “I have my earthly glories. And this? Is it not glorious too?” His voice was thick with bitter irony: the icon painted by a man without faith.

The Bear peered over Konstantin’s shoulder. “That is a strange picture,” he said. His thick finger went out to trace the image.

The image was of Saint Peter. He was dark-haired and wild-eyed, hands and feet streaming blood, his eyes turned blindly to heaven, where angels waited. But the angels had eyes as flat and inimical as the swords in their hands. The host welcoming the apostle to heaven looked more like an army holding the gates. Peter had not the serene look of a saint. His eyes saw, his hands gestured, expressive. He was as alive as Konstantin’s gift, and the raw, wretched hunger the priest could not uproot from his soul, could make him.

“It is very beautiful,” said the Bear. His finger traced over the lines without quite touching; he looked almost perplexed. “How do you make it live—so? You have not magic.”

“I don’t know,” said Konstantin. “My hands move without me.

What do you know of beauty, monster?”

“More than you,” said the Bear. “I have lived longer and seen more. I can make dead things live, but only in mockery of the living.

This—is something else.”

Was that wonder, in that sardonic, single eye? Konstantin couldn’t be sure.

The Bear reached out and turned the icon’s wooden panel to the wall. “You still must go and give service in the cathedral. Have you forgotten our bargain?”

Konstantin threw his brush aside. “What if I don’t? Will you damn me? Steal my soul? Put me to torture?”

“No,” said the Bear, and touched his cheek, lightly. “I will disappear, be gone, fling myself back into the fiery pit and leave you all alone.”

Konstantin stood still. Alone? Alone with his thoughts? Sometimes this devil seemed like the only thing real in this hot, nightmarish world.

“Don’t leave me,” said Konstantin. It came out a grinding whisper.