said Sasha.

“If you and Sergei tell him together what it is for, will he give it to you?”

Sasha’s mouth was open on what obviously was a yes. Then he frowned. “I don’t know. I haven’t— Dmitrii doesn’t trust me as he once did. But he has great faith in Father Sergei.”

Vasya knew the admission hurt. And she also knew why Dmitrii didn’t trust her brother.

“I am sorry,” she said.

He shook his head once, but said nothing.

“You cannot trust the Grand Prince’s faith in anyone,” Morozko broke in for the first time. “Medved’s great gift is disorder, and his tools are fear and mistrust. He will know that both of you are coming, and will have planned for it. Until he is bound, you cannot trust anyone; you cannot even trust yourselves, for he makes men mad.”

The monks exchanged glances.

“Can the bridle be stolen?” Vasya asked.

All the monks looked pious at that and did not answer. She wanted to pull her hair in exasperation.

IT TOOK THEM A long time to lay their plans. By the time they had finished, Vasya was desperate to sleep. Not just for rest, but because to sleep here in her own midnight meant that there would be light when she awakened. All that time they talked, she was still in Midnight. They all were: caught fast in the darkness with her. She wondered if Sasha asked himself what had delayed the dawn.

When she’d had enough, Vasya said, “We can speak again in the morning,” got up and left the fire. She found a place thick with old pine-needles, and wrapped herself in her cloak.

Morozko bowed to the monks. A faint mockery in the gesture brought angry color to Sasha’s face.

“Until morning,” said the winter-king.

“Where are you going?” Sasha demanded.

Morozko said simply, “I am going down to the river. I have never seen dawn on moving water.”

And he vanished into the night.

SASHA WANTED TO FLING himself down in frustration and fear. He wanted to strike down that shadow-creature, he wanted to rid his mind of the thought of it whispering in the dark to his maiden sister.

He stared at the place where the demon had vanished, while Rodion watched him with concern and Sergei with understanding.

“Sit down, my son,” said Sergei. “It is not a time for anger.”

“Are we then to make a deal with a demon? It is sin, God will be angry—”

Sergei said reprovingly, “It is not for men and women to presume what the Lord wishes. That way lies evil, when men put themselves too high, saying, I know what God wants, for it is also what I want.

You may hate the one she calls the winter-king, for the way he looks

at your sister. But he has not harmed her; she says he has saved her life. You could not do as much for her.”

That was severe, and Sasha flinched. “No,” he said, low. “I could not. But perhaps he has damned her.”

“I do not know,” said Sergei. “We cannot know. But our business is with men and women: the helpless, and the afraid. That is why we are going to Moscow.”

Sasha was silent a long time. Finally, wearily, he threw a log on the fire and said, “I do not like him.”

“I fear,” said Sergei, “that he does not care in the slightest.”

VASYA WOKE IN BRILLIANT DAYLIGHT. She leaped to her feet and lifted her face to the sun. Out of the country of Midnight, at last; and she hoped never to take that dark way again.

For a moment, she enjoyed the warmth. Then the heat began to gather, inexorable. Sweat slid between her breasts and down her spine. She was still wearing the wool shirt from the house at the edge of the lake, though now she wished for linen.

Her bare feet drank coolness from the dew-damp earth. Morozko was only a few paces off, grooming the white mare. She wondered if he’d kept near them that night, or if he’d gone wandering, touching the summer earth with strange frost. The monks still slept, in the easy way men sleep in daylight in summer.

Morozko’s fur and embroidered silk was gone, as though he could not maintain the trappings of power in the harsh light of day. He might have been any peasant, feet bare in the grass, except his steps starred the earth with frost, and the cuffs of his shirt dripped cold water. A little coolness hung about him, even in the humid morning.

She breathed it in, comforted, and said, “Mother of God, the heat.”

Morozko looked grim. “That is the Bear’s work.”

“In winter, I have often wished for mornings like this,” Vasya said, to be fair. “To be warm all the way through.” She went over to stroke the white mare’s neck. “And in summer, I remember how suffocating such mornings are. Do you get hot?”

“No,” he said shortly. “But the heat tries to unmake me.”

Remorseful, she put a hand on his, where it moved on the mare’s withers. The connection between them flared to life, and his outline looked a little less vague. His hand curled around hers. She shivered, and he smiled. But his eyes were far away; he could not enjoy the reminder of his own weakness.

She dropped her hand. “Do you think the Bear knows you’re here?”

“No,” said Morozko. “I will try to keep it that way. Best we take two days on the road, and go into Moscow in bright morning.”

“Because of the dead things?” said Vasya. “The upyry? His servants?”

“They only walk at night,” he said. His colorless eye was savage.

Vasya bit her lip.

An old war, Ded Grib had called it. Had she made herself a third power in it as the chyert suggested? Or merely taken the winter-king’s side? The wall of years between them suddenly seemed as insurmountable as it had been before the night in the bathhouse.

But she forced herself to say crisply, “I imagine that by the end of the day even my brother would sell his soul for cold water. Please do not bait him.”

“I was angry,” he said.

“We won’t be traveling with them for long,” she said.

“No,” he returned. “I will endure the summer as long as I can, but, Vasya, I cannot endure it forever.”