Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 18

  “You look as if you’re melting,” said Mar’ya Morevna as she tugged off her gloves and dropped them onto the table. She started off along the stacked shelves, muttering under her breath as she pulled books to and fro to make them easier to find. Though she hadn’t yet removed her furs, she had at least opened the ankle-length outer coat. It flapped dramatically around those long legs, threatening to trip her up at every stride, but at least it kept her cool.

  Ivan muttered a few choice phrases himself, wiped a drip of sweat from the end of his nose, and hurriedly stripped his own furs into a heap on the floor like a sleeping animal. Then he found out the library hadn’t been heated prior to their arrival. Clad only in a sweat-dampened shirt and the light riding-breeches worn beneath his travel-clothes, he steamed like a hard-ridden horse for a few seconds before his teeth clattered together with a noise like a stick drawn fast across a paling fence and he began to shiver.

  Mar’ya Morevna looked up at him from the stack of scrolls and parchments that were starting to hide the library table from view. “They’ll be along with braziers in a moment, Vanya,” she said. “Keep yourself warm in the meanwhile. You know the spell.”

  “I thought you might want me to stay awake for a little longer,” said Ivan. He bent down to lift his outermost coat from the untidy pile on the floor, and pulled it around his shoulders. “If I use what energy I have left on working magic, I’ll be warm but also fast asleep.”

  “Sleep, then.” Taking her fur hat off as if just then remembering its presence, Mar’ya Morevna shook her hair free of its loose braid and combed at it a little with her fingers. “You need it more than I do.”

  That was true enough. She didn’t look in the least bit tired, which Ivan thought was rather unfair. Just bright-eyed, brisk and very, very beautiful. “What about you?”

  “Strong tea when Nikolai gets a samovar in here, and a weak enchantment later if I need one. But I wasn’t up all last night playing catch-as-catch-can with a Firebird.”

  “No, you were up all last night making sure you weren’t married to a scorched roast by morning.”

  “Of course. What would the servants say?” Leaving her books for a moment, Mar’ya Morevna kissed him lightly on the lips, then laughed and fended off his hands. “I thought you were tired!”

  “For some things yes, for others, never.” Ivan gave her what might have been intended as a lecherous grin, but spoiled the effect with an enormous yawn that sneaked up on him from nowhere.

  “You really, truly are a most marvellous lover, my dear one,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “But even you have to be awake first.” Ivan shivered again despite the coat across his shoulders and she frowned, then pressed her right hand flat against his chest. He could feel the warmth of it through the fine lawn shirt, just as she could almost certainly feel the clammy chill of his skin. “And you need to be comfortable as well, idiot. All right, if you won’t do it, I will.”

  It felt like another shiver, but this time waves of comfortable heat spread out in ripples from her hand; not enough to make him start sweating again, nor enough to dry out the fabric of his shirt, but more than enough that his teeth stopped chattering almost at once. Mar’ya Morevna eyed him critically, flexing her fingers to bring back the feeling that the spell had stunned from bone and sinew.

  “A bite to eat for you, when High Steward Fedor gets that part organized,” she said at last, pronouncing the words as if they were a sentence at law, “then strong steam with oil-of-rosemary on the stones, and finally a roll in deep snow or two, no, three buckets of cold water over your head. Then at least four hours of sleep. The steam to keep you from catching a cold, and the sleep so you’ll be of some use when I finally need you.”

  “Do I look that bad?”

  “Dear heart, if I said that the only thing holding you up was your being too stubborn to lie down…?”

  Ivan flung one arm across his brow in the theatrical swoon of a second-rate actor. “O lay me down that I might die!” he declaimed, and fell backwards into the overstuffed chair again.

  “That,” said Mar’ya Morevna pointedly, “is what we’re trying to avoid.” She was grinning all the same, even if it was a much smaller grin than usual. “Just no more pulling out of feathers, please.”

  She picked up one of the cased scrolls and slapped it thoughtfully against her open hand. “I’ll know better when I read this through, but I already suspect what must have happened. Whoever sent the Firebird to Khorlov used one of the simpler Gating spells that makes two Gates, one to enter, the other to leave. Neither Gate lets whatever passes through return by the same route, and from what you tell me the Firebird was already fading when you grabbed it by the tail. It was partway through the Gate and couldn’t come back.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Otherwise, my wardspells couldn’t have saved you, and that suit of cold iron would only have served to hold your cinders together.”

  “But cold iron protects against magic!” Ivan protested. “You said so yourself!”

  “Within reason,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “Remember what happened to the gauntlet. The fault for that, Vanya, was yours. You came to no harm until you laid hands on the Firebird, but after that the iron of the armour obeyed natural law and conducted the heat. The rest you know.”

  “God preserve me!” said Ivan softly, and with the words came the thought that God had done just that. A shudder ran down his spine on icy little mouse feet. This time the charm of warmth was no protection. “I hadn’t realized I was so lucky.”

  Mar’ya Morevna looked at him long and hard, with no expression on her high-cheekboned face. “Luck, my loved one, had nothing to do with it, and certainly doesn’t begin to describe it.” There was a glitter in her eyes now; they were a blending of light blue and dark, flecked with grey, wonderful to gaze into in the hot, breathless moments when loving was over and resting hadn’t begun. It was a glitter born of terror, but terror so strong that it could only be expressed by a shout that was very close to rage. “For the love of God and all the Saints and the Holy Baby Jesus – and for the love of me, if that matters at all! Just for me, will you please be more bloody careful!”

  Perhaps because of the sound of raised voices, though raised in concern rather than anger, the knocking on the library door was timid and faint enough to go unnoticed at first.

  Prince Ivan stared at his wife with high colour in his face, angry at being shouted at, more angry still because it was entirely justified and he was in the wrong because he had broken his promise and been stupid. Mar’ya Morevna returned that stare, angry at herself for having shouted even if shouting was needed, and because though she was in the right it was hardly fair to yell at her own beloved husband just because he had been brave. If he’d played the coward it would have been far worse.

  Both of them were breathing hard, ready to say things that would have gone beyond worrying into wounding, and someone might have had their face slapped before all was over. A much louder knock at the door was a timely distraction for them both.

  “Food,” said Mar’ya Morevna.

  “Drink.” said Prince Ivan. Then he softened all the unspoken meanings of that single word with a single smile. “But not tea. That would keep me awake.”

  “A drink is perhaps just what you need,” said Mar’ya Morevna in a tone capable of several interpretations. “And certainly some sleep.” She glanced at the door. “We can continue this later.”

  “If you think we need to.”

  “I do. There’s been too much doing and not enough thinking.” Mar’ya Morevna slapped her own face lightly a few times to even out the raging spots of colour that burnt on her magnificent cheekbones, and turned toward the door again. “Come in!”

  Half a dozen servants filed in, deposited the food and drink they carried on whatever clear spaces they could find on the library table, then disappeared as quickly and quietly as they had arrived. Only Nikolai the chief servant and Fedor Konstantinovich the High Stewa
rd lingered beyond the bounds of courtesy, and if Ivan had expected a glare from both or either, he wasn’t disappointed. It came as more of a surprise to see the same directed at Mar’ya Morevna. In their unique position of servant, friend, advisor and surrogate father – even though she was old enough to survive without a surrogate anything – their expressions said a great deal more than words. It lasted for perhaps twenty seconds before they clanked down the silver and crystalware they carried and stalked out of the library, leaving the room a good deal colder than it had been before they entered.

  Two cats had come scampering in with them, tails held high with the unmistakable hook of good cheer at the end. They were mute friends about the kremlin, falling between the hunting-dogs in the kennel who were noisy and slobbery but had nothing to say, and the horses in the stable who frequently had too damned much to say and no inclination to shut up until they said it. Lylith the black cat, so named because she was a little devil, spoke busily in purrs and trills; Kasha, whose colouration was so close to a plate of buckwheat that she lacked only a lump of melting butter on her back, was less vocal but conveyed her wants and needs with head-bumps and tiny little mews. From the enthusiastic activity at knee-level, what they both wanted was everything that had just been brought in.

  The presence of these two cats, and especially the name of the black one, had caused a fit of near-apoplexy in the most recently acquired member of the kitchen staff, and both cats had spent an afternoon huddled near the stove in dripping fury after being doused with holy water. The incident had been reported to both Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna and dismissed as unimportant, although she had let it be known that she would thank one and all to remember what she did, and that a sorcerer’s little joke in the naming of a poor dumb beast didn’t necessarily suggest affiliations beyond the humorous, and that the cats should each be given cream to make it clear that there were no hard feelings – and that if Gottfried Kuchmann didn’t like it he could take himself and his pastries back to Switzerland or wherever he had come from...

  The meal was typical of something prepared in a forenoon hurry by the well-stocked kitchen of a lord and lady who both enjoyed their food. There was smoked fish, herring and salmon and sturgeon, together with pickled things, beetroots and marinated onions sliced wafer-thin, slimy-wet salted mushrooms that felt like raw oysters in the mouth, and brine-preserved cream cheese with cucumbers and basil.

  Because of all the saltiness there was a lot to drink, and perhaps because of other reasons entirely, much of it was alcoholic. There was a porcelain pot of zavarka tea concentrate and a samovar of boiling water with a jug of honey sbiten simmering on its lid, but the rest was beer and wine and crystal flasks of fragrant herbal vodkas packed in snow.

  Tsarevich Ivan tripped over enthusiastic cats, examined plates and lifted lids for another twenty seconds before he dared meet Mar’ya Morevna’s eyes. There was still a coolness about them, but the glacial chill had gone and there was even the beginnings of a smile around the corners of her mouth.

  “All right,” she said, “confess. When was the last time you had your wrist slapped like that?”

  “Longer than I care to remember. And even then it wasn’t done as well.”

  “And later?”

  “Later can take care of itself.” Ivan poured tea for Mar’ya Morevna, and wine for them both, and silently toasted her health. They ate in silence for a while, and then he ran up a flag of truce, if not quite surrender. “I’ll have other things to talk about than… Than what was said before.”

  Mar’ya Morevna sipped her tea then spooned heavy, sweet and fragrant raspberry preserve into it. “So will I. We’ve said quite enough. Fortunately, not too much.” She put down the eggshell-fine porcelain tea bowl, the tea within visible as a shadow through its sides. “Now you should rest a while.”

  The enchantment, quietly constructed in her head and delivered without dramatic hand-gestures, had enough delicacy that Ivan had time to finish his mouthful then empty and set down his wine-goblet, before slumping limply into the embrace of the padded chair. It also had enough force and focus that by the time Mar’ya Morevna came round the table to arrange his loose-limbed body and tuck the heavy riding-coat around it as a makeshift quilt, Ivan’s breathing had slowed to the rhythmic pattern of deep sleep.

  “That’s better,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. “Now I can do some work. And afterwards…” She kissed him again, on the mouth this time and with enough interesting pressures that though he didn’t stir, his lips twitched sideways after she was finished, and formed a slow smile. If he had been a cat he would have purred and stretched so that his toes wiggled.

  “Afterwards, we can talk about it somewhere much more comfortable than here. But you two,” – she looked down sternly at the cats begging shamelessly for the fish that Ivan wasn’t going to be eating now – “can just shut up.”

  *

  Castle Thorn of the Teutonic Order

  “If even half of this is true, Grand Master,” said Albrecht von Düsberg, waving the sheet of parchment wildly in the air, “then the Order has no need of the witch Baba Yaga. Dieter Balke’s an act of war all by himself!”

  Hermann von Salza allowed himself a little more red wine, and a thin smile. “Albrecht, the Constable of Livonia has a maxim that he coined in Palestine: ‘there can never be too much confusion or too much hatred among your enemies.’” He raised the wine cup in a silent toast, and sipped at it with satisfaction. “I happen to agree with him.”

  “But the witch!”

  “Is a necessary part of this whole plan.”

  “And four Rus spies with their heads cut off…?”

  “Are another necessary part. Before God, von Düsberg, you’re a delicate one.” The Grand Master of the Teutonic Order gazed thoughtfully at his Treasurer and concluded – not for the first time – that had Albrecht von Düsberg not been so skilled with numbers and calculation, it would also have been necessary that he meet with an accident, most unfortunate, requiescat in pace. On the other side of the equation, as von Düsberg might have put it himself in that Greek logic he was so fond of bandying about, the Treasurer’s apparent spasms of conscience were nothing more than trying to see a rounded picture of the whole problem. Von Salza had no objection to fair-minded argument, so long as the rounded picture came out well-balanced in favour of the Order.

  He smiled thinly to himself, wondering when the other quarrelsome parties in Burg Thorn would accept the notion of a fair argument. Father Giacchetti hardly counted for anything at all; the old man, grown visibly older since he reached the Prussian fortress, should never have left the warmth of Rome. Father Arnald and his secretary, being Dominican friars of the Holy Inquisition, presumably felt nothing so worldly as discomfort or such an instrument of Satan as fairness.

  For his own interest, the Grand Master had acquired, if only briefly, the Father-Inquisitor’s own copy of the Libro Nero. This, the Black Book sanctioned by the Pope himself, was their guide and instruction for the treatment of heretics, witches and – reading between the lines as a power-politician tempered in the hard school of the Holy Land – anybody else the inquisitor might not like. If Dieter Balke had various stern little mottoes he liked to quote when they seemed appropriate, the Inquisition had refined their motto down to one more grim than any Balke might utter.

  The prisoner is assumed guilty until proven so.

  And then he’s burned. Hermann von Salza let that thought roll about inside his head again, and it still felt like iron dice shaken in a human skull. Probably the easiest way to avoid all future problems, once the Rus lands had been secured, was to let Baba Yaga and the inquisitors fight it out amongst themselves, and devil take the hindmost. In this instance the devil would be deputized by Dieter Balke and that spiked Turkish mace he liked so much, but one couldn’t maintain strict accuracy in everything.

  “If this is all so necessary,” said von Düsberg, his plump features not quite managing to hide an expression that m
ingled craftiness and realization in equal measure, “then why’s it all so secret?”

  Von Salza groaned inwardly. It was comments like that which had to be balanced so carefully against Albrecht von Düsberg’s usefulness to the Order, and more to the point, kept from the ears of brethren like Dieter Balke, who wouldn’t have bothered balancing anything when a long hard swing with a long sharp sword was so much simpler.

  “It is secret, my dear Brother Albrecht,” said von Salza wearily, “so that the Rus Princes hear nothing to make them suspicious of anything except each other.”

  “Suspicious?” said a voice from the doorway. “Who is suspicious?” A muscle in the Grand Master’s face twitched slightly. He knew the voice and knew the speaker, and he had grown very tired of the sound of the one and the presence of the other.

  “Come in, Father Arnald,” he said. “No need to knock or ask permission; just make yourself at home.”

  The Father-Inquisitor stalked in, lean, ascetic, and plainly unmoved by von Salza’s sarcasm. The coarse black-and-white cloth of his Dominican habit made a stark contrast to the rich tapestries and the banners both Christian and Saracen that hung from the walls of the castle to soften its harsh bare stone and brick. He looked from side to side, examining them and all the other small aspects of luxury that offset the dreariness of a grim grey fortress on the far northern edge of Christendom, then snorted in studied disdain.

  “All alone today?” Hermann von Salza’s enquiry was too honey-sweet for sincerity, but not so sarcastic that the inquisitor could take issue with it.

  “Father Giacchetti is resting,” Arnald said in his most colourless voice, “and Brother Johann has work to do.”

  “A report for Rome, of course.”

  “Of course.” Father Arnald sat down, pointedly selecting a plain and rather uncomfortable bench rather than the cushioned chairs where the two knights were sitting. He tucked his hands into the capacious sleeves of his habit and gazed at von Salza with what on a more charitable face might have been an expression of mild amusement. “Did you think that he was writing poetry?”