The Dreaming Land I: The Challenge Page 10

  “Valeriya Dariyevna,” said a serving woman who had appeared suddenly at my elbow. “I humbly beg your pardon, Valeriya Dariyevna, but your daughter is asking for you, and I promised I would come find you.”

  “Is she well?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Perfectly well, Valeriya Dariyevna, but she wishes to speak with you most urgently.”

  “I will be there directly,” I said, rising and thanking the gods and Mirochka’s impeccably timed bout of neediness for saving me in the best possible fashion from my current awkward predicament. I bowed generally towards the table and followed the serving woman out the hall, wondering what Mirochka could be so upset about.

  I did not have to wait long to find out, for the children’s table was in a small side chamber, and as soon as we entered Mirochka came flying over and threw herself at me in such a headlong manner that I only just managed to catch her and keep us both from tumbling down.

  “Mama!” she cried. “You promised you’d come! Where have you been?!”

  “The feast has only just started, my dove.”

  “No it hasn’t! It’s been dragging on and on, and I was afraid I’d have to go to bed before you came, so I sent for you.”

  “And you did rightly,” I told her. “The grown-ups’ table was boring anyway. Will you not introduce me to all your friends?”

  This led to a round of introductions to the other children, many of whom were the offspring of unpleasant people, but at least at first glance appeared much more pleasant than their parents.

  “Will you stay with us, mama?” Mirochka begged. “Please stay with us and finish the feast!”

  “At least for a little while,” I promised her.

  “Oh good! Look: they’re just bringing around the sweets.”

  It turned out that the children’s feast had proceeded much more rapidly than the one taking place for their elders, and indeed, servants were already clearing away the savory dishes and bringing in sweets, so that the youngest children could be taken away to bed before they got too fractious. I solemnly arranged myself at the child-sized table as best I could between Mirochka and Valery, and ate a small portion of pie and jam dumplings off of a child-sized saucer.

  Despite the cramped quarters and the fact that Valery spilled a good portion of his dumplings onto my lap, I decided I would far rather be here than in the hall with those my own age, and wondered if I could, after tonight’s display, beg leave of Sera to attend all further feasts here at the children’s table. I wondered what she would say to me about all of this. Nothing good, I was sure. Well, nothing I could do about that now. I scraped my saucer clean and reminded myself that licking it would set a bad example for the children. While they had had a full meal, I had barely even started on mine, and so all I had had since breakfast were these sweets, the bread I had snatched bites of while dressing for the feast, and all the beer I had consumed in the tavern. I wondered if the kremlin kitchen was still well-disposed towards me. It had been the last time I had been here, but things change. It seemed the general mood regarding me had grown even uglier since my last visit to Krasnograd, and I could now see why Sera might think it worth a great deal of risk to provide Zem’ with an heir other than me.

  The children got up and, as the servants cleared away the dishes and moved the table to the wall in order to leave more space, started to play a raucous game of tag. Mirochka wanted me to join in, but I said it wouldn’t be fair, and moved over to the wall by the door, trying to convince myself that I should go back to the Hall of Feasts and see what I could do to repair the damage I had surely done in Ivan Marinovich’s estimation of me. I knew I should at least make the effort, but I couldn’t help but think that the matter was already hopeless, and had been before he had ever laid eyes on me.

  “Valeriya Dariyevna? I beg your pardon for disturbing you.”

  I turned, and there standing hesitatingly in the doorway was Ivan Marinovich.

  “It is no trouble at all,” I said. “Come, join us if you please.”

  “Are we playing tag, then, Valeriya Dariyevna?” He had been standing as if he had had half a mind to bolt off and flee for safety, but now he was starting to smile, and even came all the way into the chamber to stand beside me.

  “The children are playing tag, Ivan Marinovich. I am merely watching over them.”

  “Which one is your daughter, if I may ask, Valeriya Dariyevna?”

  “Over there.” I pointed out Mirochka as she leaped out of reach of the boy attempting to tag her, and, with an agility that would do any mother proud, dodged past him and around a group of slower children who blocked his path, preventing him from any chance of catching her.

  “I see.” He surveyed her with interest.

  “Does she look as you expect?” I asked after a while.

  “I beg your pardon, Valeriya Dariyevna?”

  “Curiosity consumes me, Ivan Marinovich, so you will pardon the indelicate nature of the question. Does she look as you expect?”

  “I…I don’t know, Valeriya Dariyevna.” He looked at her again. “To be honest, no.”

  “For me neither,” I said. “The gods alone know where she got her looks from.”

  “But she is a handsome child nonetheless, Valeriya Dariyevna. And…I understand why you…did what you said you did, back there in the hall. If she were mine, I would have done the same.”

  “You would?” I said, giving him a surprised sideways glance and making him blush. He did blush very easily. It was strangely charming. It occurred to me that if Sera got her way, he and I would be standing next to each other and watching Mirochka, and probably other children as well, children that were his as well as mine, for years to come. The thought was unsettling and yet oddly attractive at the same time. I wondered if he had any idea of our plans for him. Given the way he was fidgeting slightly, I thought he must have some vague inkling, but it had not yet formed into a conscious thought, or otherwise he would have already fled.

  “Do you think…pardon me for asking, Valeriya Dariyevna, but this is the first I have heard of this…blot on Zem’’s honor. I would not like to think such a thing of my own people, but you said those you…caught were our own. Do you think many who trade with the East are connected with this…vile trade?”

  He looked quite unhappy as he asked it. He must have been thinking of Denis Praskovyevich’s family, and the family of Aleksey Aleksandrovich’s future bride, and possibly the Eastern connection his friends had alluded to that afternoon. I also began to wonder how connected they were with all of this. Even I found it difficult to believe that the scheming of the black earth princesses would have caused them to sink so low as to sell our own children as slaves, but on the other hand, the traders I had caught had bragged of their high connections, and someone must be behind all of this, or at least turning a blind eye to it.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “Certainly not all of them, or even perhaps most of them. But judging by what I have discovered, many people are involved, and some of them must be of high rank.”

  “Especially if the Princess Council has ignored the problem after you brought it to their attention, Valeriya Dariyevna.”

  I gave him an approving look. “Now that is a thought worthy of a prince. But I am still clinging to the hope that our own princesses are innocent of this crime, and I do not yet know enough to point fingers at anyone. I spent last winter scouring the steppe for accomplices, but all I found were rumors and abandoned hiding places. The last one we found, in the spring, still had many children in it. It seems their abductors had simply run off and left them when they heard I was coming. And thank the gods, too, for there had been threats that they would kill any captives they had rather than allow us to free them. But we must have closed in on them too quickly, and they chose to save their own lives rather than have their revenge, for which I am eternally grateful. We rescued nearly fifty children that day, and returned them to their families, if they had any, or found a secure place for them in my family�
��s service, if they had nowhere else to go.

  “And thus far this summer there have been no reports of children taken on the steppe. But I sent messengers out to all the Eastern princesses, asking for reports on any children taken in their lands, or on any news of where we might be able to find those who had been taken in years past, and just before I left for Krasnograd, I received word that children have been disappearing for years from the villages in the border mountains, and that many more have been taken this summer already. It has always been common there, but as the slavers take only children of low birth, and only a few at a time, nothing has been done about it. I have sworn to myself that I will do all I can to stop this, and to return as many of those who were taken as I can, but there is only so much I can do. Without the Imperial mandate and a sizable force, I doubt much can be done, and if this trade is being supported by our own noblewomen, well…” I trailed off, wondering if I should perhaps not have revealed so much to Ivan Marinovich. This was hardly courting talk, and I could not shake the suspicion that he himself had planted that his own family and friends were involved in this.

  “Will not the Empress do something about it, Valeriya Dariyevna, now that you are here to beg it of her in person?” he asked eagerly. Maybe this was better than courting talk. Maybe this was real talk.

  “I had hopes, but now I fear she will not look upon me with favor for some time,” I said ruefully.

  “Why not, Valeriya Dariyevna?”

  “Well, I did create something of a scene back there in the Hall of Feasts, and antagonize some of her own relatives.”

  “Are they not your relatives as well, Valeriya Dariyevna?”

  “Yes, but I think the relevant fact here is that they are hers. It seems I am not well-liked here in Krasnograd.”

  “Aksinya Yevpraksiyevna had it coming, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said in disgust. “She started it!”

  “True, but we are princesses, not stableboys in a shoving match.”

  “Well, at least you frightened her a bit, Valeriya Dariyevna!” he said with a grin. “And…is it true you’ve been in battle? And even been wounded?”

  I nodded down at the scar on my right arm. “Too true, I’m afraid. Just between you and me, Ivan Marinovich, I don’t recommend it. Getting shot hurts like the Black God itself, even if it’s a flesh wound, and having the arrow removed is worse. At least I healed cleanly: our healer said she’d never seen a wound heal so well. But the cutting it out…I had them do it in the back stable, so as not to frighten Mirochka in case I screamed.”

  “And…did you, Valeriya Dariyevna?” he asked with wide eyes.

  “Not as much as I feared I would, although more than I would have liked. But,” I leaned over to his ear and lowered my voice, “that will also have to remain our little secret, Ivan Marinovich. If anyone should ever ask, the official story is that I smiled and chatted pleasantly the whole time, as if it were no more than a hangnail.”

  “Your secret is safe with me, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said, his lips twitching. “But…” He gazed off at the wall. “I should like to have the chance to prove myself in battle someday.” He gave me a sideways glance. “Do you think that silly, Valeriya Dariyevna?”

  “No,” I told him. “It’s quite understandable, although those who say battle is a horrible thing are also quite right. But who thinks it’s silly?”

  “My mother,” he admitted.

  “She’s your mother,” I told him. “It’s her duty to keep you away from dangerous things as much as possible, and it doesn’t get much more dangerous than battle. My own mother wouldn’t speak to me for a week after I came back, except to weep and lament by my sickbed. It got very tiresome, especially as the wound hardly merited an hour in bed, let alone a week. Luckily the healers said I had to drink lots of poppy-vodka—to keep back the pain, they told my mother, but really it was to keep me from distressing her by getting up—so I was only somewhat aware of what was happening anyway. But I’ll tell you what, Ivan Marinovich: if the Tsarina gives me permission to mount an expedition to try to smash the slavers and recover our people, you’ll be the first person I’ll ask to accompany me.”

  Now it was his turn to look at me in surprise. “Truly, Valeriya Dariyevna?”

  “Truly,” I told him. “But only on one condition.”

  “Name it, Valeriya Dariyevna!”

  “That you agree to spar with me. I’ve heard you’re not bad with a blade, and I have no training partner here.”

  “Gladly, Valeriya Dariyevna! Oh, but…” his face fell, “I fear…” he looked embarrassed by the words about to come out of his mouth, but plowed on, “I fear that my mother would not approve. She…well, she does not like me to associate with…with those whom she has not chosen as my companions.”

  “And do you always do only what your mother approves of?” I asked.

  He coughed. “Well, when you put it like that, Valeriya Dariyevna…but I fear…I fear she might not think it prudent…”

  “When I was your age and on my first visit to Krasnograd as a woman grown I did many things that my mother did not consider prudent,” I said. “And she was right, too. They weren’t prudent. But I did them anyway. And here I am today. Although perhaps that is not the best argument to make, considering everything. Well, I will not make any demands of you, Ivan Marinovich: you must do as you think best. But the offer will remain open, should you decide to avail yourself of it.”

  “Oh. Well…you see, Valeriya Dariyevna, I do not have any decent training partners here either. I am afraid of growing slack, spending the whole summer away from my weaponsmaster. So perhaps…perhaps it would be my duty to train with a worthy partner. I could…there would be no need to share too many details with everyone.” He gave me another sideways look. “That is, if you think it would not be too improper.”

  “I promise you, there will be nothing improper about it at all,” I said. After all, I told myself, if we ended up married, that would be true enough.

  “Then it is agreed, Valeriya Dariyevna. Oh, but I have one condition too.” He smiled a smile that suggested he might have some promise as a lover as well as a sparring partner.

  “If I can fulfill it, I shall, Ivan Marinovich.”

  “I will spar with you—but only if you tell me why you were in that tavern today, drinking with us and pretending to be someone else. You said it was a bet with the Tsarina—but that seems like an awfully silly thing to make a bet about, especially with a Tsarina. And she seemed so surprised when you brought me to her. She covered it up quickly, but if I were to make a bet, Valeriya Dariyevna, I would bet that she knew nothing about any such wager until the moment you told her of it.”

  A spark that I had thought long dead flared up in my chest at those words. Perhaps Sera really did know what she was doing, after all. Or perhaps it was just lucky chance, but Ivan Marinovich was more than just a convenient alliance and his mother’s only son. Perhaps he really was someone worth winning. All of a sudden I was determined to cut out Princess Srednekrasnova’s younger daughter and this Eastern connection, whoever she was, and have this boy—or rather, young man—for myself.

  “Why do you think I was there, Ivan Marinovich?” I asked him.

  “It seems to me as if you were spying, Valeriya Dariyevna. I can think of no other reason for you to be passing yourself off as someone else. But why you would be doing so by drinking beer in a cheap tavern, and especially by drinking beer with us, I don’t understand. We certainly have no secrets worth stealing. But my mother…I have heard her express a suspicion that you…spied on people, from time to time.”

  “The Tsarina likes me to keep an eye on things,” I told him lightly. “She likes me to go about the city when I’m here and find out what people are thinking. Some might call it spying, but I had no evil intent. And if you must know, Ivan Marinovich, I took one look at Aleksey Aleksandrovich and knew he would be likely to talk, so I attached myself to you. I hope you are not offended?”

  “Offe
nded?” He frowned a little. “No, I don’t think so, Valeriya Dariyevna. It’s just…odd. I don’t quite know what to think about you…about it.”

  “Well, come to the barracks tomorrow at midmorning, and spar with me, Ivan Marinovich. Perhaps you will have a better idea of me after that.”

  He bowed. “I await it with pleasure, Valeriya Dariyevna. And now, if you will excuse me, I should return before Princess Srednekrasnova sends out hounds after me.”

  “Give her my love,” I told him.

  “Truly, Valeriya Dariyevna?”

  “No,” I laughed. “Or at least, only if you want to curdle milk with the sourness of her expression. Say you were discussing bladework with some of the other princes, or something of that nature. Until tomorrow, Ivan Marinovich.”

  “Until tomorrow, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said with another bow, and left.

  Chapter Eight

  Shortly after Ivan Marinovich left, maids came to gather up the children and take them off to bed. I said I would take Mirochka myself, and, although she insisted that she was not tired at all and that it wasn’t even late yet, she agreed to return to our chambers with me readily enough once I took her by the hand and promised, at her insistence, to tell her what the other, less interesting, feast had been like. She said farewell to the half-dozen or so new bosom friends she seemed to have made, and promised very prettily to come play with a boy who, despite both their tender years, appeared to be quite smitten with her.

  I eyed her with increased respect as we left, and contemplated the thought that perhaps Sera had been right to insist on Mirochka coming to stay in Krasnograd for a time. Clearly she had a talent for making friends that had been hidden back on the steppe. Or rather, of course she had had friends back home, but it was only to be expected that the children of our servants would be friendly to her, and she would be friendly to them in turn. But here she was making friends right and left, and not just with the children of serving women. The young Kiryusha, who had pressed her so eagerly for a meeting tomorrow, was, I gathered from her innocent explanations, the son of Princess Severnolesnaya, and the dark-haired girl with whom Mirochka had made an alliance during their last game of tag was the many-times descendent of Susanna, Darya Krasnoslavovna’s confidante and right-hand woman, and heir to most powerful of the Southern mountain princesses.