Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 4

  Mar’ya Morevna leaned her head against his shoulder and laughed softly. “No, Vanyushka mine. You’re too much of a gentleman for that.”

  “Then why bother playing at all?”

  “Because fair or cheating, Ivan, when you finally lose, you do it so very gracefully…”

  This time it was Ivan’s turn to laugh, as his momentary flicker of wariness was filed away until needed again. “That’s not much a compliment, but I suppose it’s the best my playing’s ever likely to get. All right, my loved. Chess first, wine afterwards. That way I’ll at least have something besides defeat to look forward to…”

  *

  There were six pipes of wine in the kremlin’s cellars, still on the massive wooden sledges which had borne them all the way from France, and each one was broached in turn so that its contents could be tasted. That was one of the more pleasurable duties of a ruling lord, one not left to steward or castellan. Sooner or later the wine would be served to guests, and waiting until it was presented at table was the wrong time to learn it was bad. Only when pronounced good was it decanted from the huge pipes into smaller barrels and stored in the cool dark until needed. Otherwise there were acrimonious letters that demonstrated – if demonstration was required – that the beautiful Tsarevna Mar’ya Morevna had both the skills and the raw-edged vocabulary of a soldier.

  Such letters were seldom needed, but when they were required, there was good reason. Money had been wasted. The distances involved were such that spoiled wine couldn’t be returned; it went instead to the kitchens, or to those whose palates were less discriminating where free drink was concerned. Prince Ivan had long been aware that when a city’s fountains flowed with wine at a holiday, they didn’t flow with anything like the finest vintages.

  Certainly the fountains of Mar’ya Morevna’s kremlin wouldn’t flow with this wine, at least not unless there was a real cause for celebration. It was far too good to waste on peasants.

  “Not the best ever,” she decided, swirling the contents of her small crystal goblet as she gazed critically at its colour. “But not bad. Not bad at all.”

  “Be reasonable,” said Ivan, unable to detect anything worthy of even that small criticism. “It’s really good.”

  Mar’ya Morevna smiled at her husband. “Beloved, if you used a smaller cup and emptied it less quickly,” she glanced instead at the chessboard. “Then you might appreciate the subtleties a little more. And,” she moved a piece, “not be in check again.”

  “Again?”

  “Or ‘still’, if you prefer.”

  It was their second game since coming in from the gardens. The first had been hasty and careless, both players being more concerned with getting warm than with the strategies of the board; and by the time the second game was well under way, so was the tasting of the wine. Despite the best efforts of his father Tsar Aleksandr, who had tried to imbue his son with awareness that thinking several moves ahead of the opposition applied in life as well as chess, Ivan’s game tended to be slapdash at the best of times. There were occasional flashes of brilliance, based more often on improvisation than on skill, but for the most part he played chess in a style that most people tried to avoid, but with one overwhelming virtue that cancelled out most of the other faults. He never forgot that it was just a game.

  “All right then, call it ‘still”.” He studied the board with the sort of slow care that comes only with great ability or four large glasses of strong wine on an empty stomach, but saw nothing that could be changed by moving his king in any of the permitted directions. “Check, not mate?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I see.” Ivan didn’t see anything of the sort, which suggested the solution was one of those blatantly obvious, painfully simple moves that tended to sit right under his nose and dare him to notice their existence. He wrinkled his nose and looked instead at his wine cup, which was empty again. “Four glasses. That means two pipes of untasted wine. Should we…?”

  “Yes, we should.” Mar’ya Morevna shot him a cool look from beneath her pale brows. “But not until you’ve drunk some water then eaten some food, which you haven’t since you got up this morning.”

  “Food sounds good.” Better, certainly, than staring at a chessboard that was openly defying him. “What do you suggest?”

  For answer, the Tsarevna picked up a small silver bell and rang it. There were two servants sitting at the other end of the room, close enough for convenience but far enough for privacy, and one of them was already getting to his feet even as his mistress reached for the bell.

  “Nikolai,” she said, “go to the kitchens and drag Yuriy off the stove. Find out what can be made quickly, then come back and tell me.”

  “At your command, Highness!”

  “And bring us something to eat right away while you’re at it,” said Ivan with a sudden flurry of appetite that rather startled him. “Just bread will do for now. But with garlic cheese. Lots of garlic.”

  “Enough for two, Nikolai. A woman has to defend herself somehow.”

  The old servant Nikolai smiled at that as he hurried out; he had served Mar’ya Morevna and her father before her, and knew as much about her fondness for sharp and pungent flavours as Yuriy the cook. There had been jokes, crude but kindly meant, concerning the speed with which she married Tsarevich Ivan, and those same jokes had turned to slight concern that there was still no child born to the young couple. That, however, was a dynastic affair and no concern of servants, even though their prayers often mentioned the matter privately to God, who wasn’t otherwise troubled overmuch by entreaties from that particular kremlin, or indeed the kremlins of Ivan’s three brothers-in-law.

  Any sorcerer well-versed in the mysteries of the Art Magic was fully aware of the greater Power from which their own lesser powers descended. God, Allah, Jehovah: the names changed, but what they attempted to describe remained much the same despite the different ways in which teachings were interpreted. At the bottom of it all was freedom of choice, that most dangerous of liberties. What religion defined as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ was the ability of any man, woman and child to choose whether to help or to hurt.

  It was the Gift of Fire all over again: warmth and comfort, or burning and destruction. Even though a part of the great Power, or as some believed, a good and holy man granted a clearer than usual view of its truth, had been offered up as sacrificial intercession for the stupidities of humankind, that choice remained. The uncertain bombarded their chosen deity with prayers or criticisms. Sorcerers like Mar’ya Morevna tried only to do what they thought was right.

  Her chaplain, the Kanonarch Protodeacon Sergey Strigunov, had long since given up trying to reconcile Church teaching with his liege lady’s magic. That she did good with it was enough; lords and princes with much less power were too often much worse rulers. He avoided the books in her private library, turned a deaf ear to her heretical declaration she needed no priest to intercede for her, and paid no attention whatsoever to more outrageous statements that he felt certain were uttered just to tease him. But when the beautiful Tsarevna discussed serious theology, Protodeacon Sergey wasn’t deaf at all.

  Tsarevich Ivan liked the chaplain. He was a wise, worldly priest, fond of food and drink, and of music besides that of his choir. Sergey Strigunov was bearded, like all Orthodox clergy, but despite his youth – the chaplain wasn’t yet forty – both beard and hair had already turned iron-grey. Ivan idly suspected him of using that badge of premature aging as the smokescreen to conceal some distinctly unorthodox ideas. He would probably have approved, with reservations, of Mar’ya Morevna’s insistence that Ivan learn more magic than the little he knew already. Because of the sorcerers who were his wife and his in-laws, the Tsarevich had already stepped beyond the boundaries of a safe and ordinary world.

  But the chaplain’s reservations would have been increased tenfold by any book whose title was On the Summoning of Demons…

  Ivan considered the chessboard again, still thinking about reli
gion and priests, and reached out one hand tentatively towards a bishop. He paused, fingers not quite touching the piece, and glanced at Mar’ya Morevna to see if there was any hint about the rightness of the move. It was a wasted effort. Apart from mild interest that betrayed nothing useful, her face was so expressionless that the chair she sat in might have given more away. Ivan sighed. It was as well they weren’t playing for money.

  Then he changed his mind abruptly, closed his fingers on the cool, carved walrus-ivory of his sole remaining knight and moved the little bogatyr horseman back down and across the board, protecting his king from the threat of Mar’ya Morevna’s rook by the simple and direct expedient of taking her piece.

  “So!” he said, sounding just a little smug. “Out of check and back on the offensive.”

  “Oh, Vanya, you’re never offensive.” His wife leaned back and grinned at him, clapping her hands in mock applause. “And it only took you ten minutes to see that move.” She flexed her fingers and studied the board, working out multiple shifts of advantage in a way that Ivan had long envied. He had a feeling he was about to lose that last knight, and shortly afterwards the game, for the second time that evening. Unless, unless…

  Unless Nikolai arrived with the food, and gave him another respite.

  Even though it was only a game, as Ivan had been reminding himself ever more forcefully during the past quarter hour, he found that he was surprisingly relieved by the arrival of a platter of black bread. It wasn’t just that the scent of garlicky tvorog cream cheese was reminding him with considerable, mouth-watering force just how empty his stomach was. More likely it was the predatory way that Mar’ya Morevna leaned over the board during what looked like yet another endgame. Chess was too much like the movement of troops for a warrior lady of such skill to treat it as just a game.

  “Saved.” He sat back from the board. “At least for now.”

  “Perhaps…” Mar’ya Morevna picked up an already-captured piece and twiddled it between her long, slender fingers. The ivory clicked softly as it came into contact with her rings. “And perhaps not. That’s for later. Nikolai?”

  “Highness?”

  “What does Yuriy plan to feed us on this evening?”

  “You asked for dishes that could be prepared ‘quickly’, Highness. Not knowing how quickly ‘quickly’ might be, Chief Cook Yuriy had me make this list.” Nikolai pulled a piece of folded parchment from his belt and handed it over, affecting not to notice that Prince Ivan was twisting his head to one side in a most unprincely way so as to read the writing upside-down.

  At least, so that he could see it. Chief Cook Yuriy might have been an acknowledged master in his own kitchen, but his handwriting was execrable, that of a man accustomed to a ladle rather than a pen and more like spatters of gravy flicked from a spoon. Appropriate enough; it was unusual that he could read and write at all, when most cooks were taught by rote rather than by reading recipes. All that Ivan could distinguish from the general scratching was a small annotation beside each dish, estimating how long preparation would take.

  “Why is time so important?” Ivan asked, straightening up. “Are you expecting company?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Mar’ya Morevna shot a quick look at Nikolai, and the old servant bowed before retiring out of earshot. “My spies came back earlier today, and I want a word with them before the evening ends.”

  “Good news? Bad?”

  “Neither one nor the other, or I’d have heard at once. At least I should have heard…” She looked thoughtful for a moment, then dismissed the notion. “They know better than to keep secrets back for the sake of drama or in hope of praise. I don’t care for the one, and I don’t dole out the other without cause.”

  Ivan knew that much already. Mar’ya Morevna’s network of spies and informants – never informers, that word was unseemly and left a bad taste in the mouth – was quite possibly the best in all the Russias, an unrealized part of her dowry that Ivan’s father had been only too glad to learn about, receive and use. Every Tsar and Prince who cherished some small hope of finding out what his enemies and rivals were doing employed extra eyes and ears in the most threatening realms and city-states, who reported back what they had seen and heard.

  To Ivan’s knowledge only his own dear wife had spies everywhere, including amongst her allies – enemies could be relied on to stay enemies, friends might stop being friendly – and every several months some would return to her kremlin and advise her of developments, no matter how petty. He had been invited, as only Mar’ya Morevna invited, to sit in on the last session just after the summer solstice. He had gone expecting to be bored, but remained to be fascinated and, since of the reports went into most intimate detail, mildly scandalized and much amused.

  Rumour of a politically well-married Prince’s adultery with his Guard-Captain’s wife was interesting, but no more than gossip. Certain knowledge of it and evidence to back up such knowledge was something else again, a weapon as useful as a knife in the back. Such information was gathered secretly and could be slipped out in the same way. If the Captain, or the Prince’s own wife and family, should then do something permanent to express their outrage, that was their concern. It would have nothing to do with the fairest Princess in all the Russias.

  “Information like that,” Mar’ya Morevna had said, “only has value if used as a weapon. Not as a threat. Putting pressure on an enemy may bend him to your will the first time; but afterwards, unless he’s a total fool, you and your spies will have lost the advantage for good and all. He’ll be wary of anyone connected with you, loyal to you, who does business with you, who even knows your name, and he’ll probably doubt those who deny they’ve ever heard of you.

  “After that business with Koshchey the Undying, he’d be right. So use diplomacy and compromise instead of blackmail. Never apply leverage to anything that either common knowledge or common spies could tell you. That way, uncommon spies – and mine are most uncommon – remain free to come and go as they please, giving access to the sort of secrets that could lift your enemy’s head right off his shoulders. And if you finally need to do it…then take his head, and be damned to him. But never be found out.”

  It had been a shorter lecture than many Ivan had heard, particularly from Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin, his father’s High Steward and noted bore. But it had stuck in his mind in a way many longer-winded perorations had not. Perhaps because Ivan himself, despite what Mar’ya Morevna gently criticized as a lack of healthy cynicism, had a fondness for the devious and the tricky that was probably a part of his ancestry. The old North people, whose chiefmost god Othinn had never been much of an example of straight dealing, had been honest traders – more or less – when they first settled on the banks of the Dnepr river. At the same time and if it suited them better, they were also the ferocious Vikings against whom prayers had been said from Germany to Spain.

  Not that Ivan had ever considered robbing anyone to line his own pockets, several centuries of civilization and the rank of Tsar’s son had seen to that. But after his experiences with Koshchey the Undying and the witch Baba Yaga, he now looked for the crooked as well as the direct routes round a problem. One tended to live longer that way.

  “Whatever choice morsels of secrecy they have for us,” he said, “I’m glad you intend to eat first. They’re painstaking, your spies, and I haven’t forgotten how long they talked last time.”

  Mar’ya Morevna laughed. “Neither have I. Five hours, more or less. Poor Vanya! Too long to wait for a meal, don’t you think?”

  “What about eating together?” asked Ivan, deliberately teasing her.

  Mar’ya Morevna gave him a raising of the eyebrows that was just as studied and deliberate. “You must be joking.” She didn’t rise to the bait. “Even if their news is neither good or bad, it needs full attention.”

  “And so does Yuriy’s food?”

  “Just another of life’s little pleasures. Good cooks and good spies can be bought. Good
lovers,” she smiled gently and patted Ivan’s hand, then squeezed his thumb suggestively, “have to be found, dear heart, just the way I found you. Now,” Mar’ya Morevna flipped the little sheet of parchment around and pushed it at him across the chessboard, “choose what you want for dinner.”

  Viewed right side up, Yuriy’s writing was marginally better than when upside-down, but not by much: Ivan had to narrow his eyes almost to a squint before they were able to shape letters from the general scrawl. And yes indeed, there was a sizeable blob of some sort of sauce or gravy decorating the bottom of the note, looking for all the world like sealing-wax on an important letter. It was extremely fresh gravy too; the aroma of herbs and garlic mingled with good meat stock rose from the surface of the parchment in much the way love-letters were scented with perfume.

  “This,” he waved it in the air, “smells good enough to eat all by itself.”

  “Maybe, though I’d prefer something with a bit more body to it. Pick something so that Yuriy can get to work, and we can get to work directly afterwards.” Mar’ya Morevna gave Ivan a look that combined sympathy with mockery in equal measure. “I know how much you enjoy that…”

  Despite a quantity of good red wine on board, Tsarevich Ivan had the grace to blush. Most duties of a ruling Prince bored him until he wanted to scream, but hearing the reports of Mar’ya Morevna’s efficient spies was both salacious and highly entertaining. That was the difficulty about teasing her. She would allow each little jab to go by as if she hadn’t even noticed it, then return the courtesy tenfold with a single well-chosen phrase. He and Mar’ya were as happily married as any couple he could think of, including his parents and his three sisters – but every now and then there would be an unmistakable reminder that he was a newcomer to this kremlin, to its hierarchies and traditions. It happened rarely, and never without justification, but when it did happen it never went unnoticed.

  He inclined his head, acknowledging the hit, but his only reply was a throat-clearing noise copied from his father Tsar Aleksandr. Some might have thought it a sound of embarrassment; others, who knew better, had likened it to the click of a crossbow made ready to shoot. He looked at the chessboard, then at the piece of parchment.