The Dreaming Land I: The Challenge Page 11

  I wondered if Sera would greet this news with joy or reservations. The strengthening of ties between the current Zerkalitsa heir and the children of some of our family’s staunchest and most powerful allies was in theory only to the good, but given the awkward nature of the Zerkalitsa succession at the moment, and the feelings harbored by some of the princesses that I might be plotting treason, Mirochka’s entirely innocent and well-meant friendships could take on a completely different and sinister light in unfriendly eyes.

  I resolved to tell Sera of what had transpired both at the children’s table and between me and Princess Malolesnaya, but also to make no move to prevent Mirochka from meeting with her new little friends, not even if others, including Sera, wished it. Once we started suspecting the play of children of harboring treasonous motives, then we were truly lost, and besides, as much as I would like for all our sakes for Sera to bear a healthy heir, judging by past events there was very little chance of that. Always before, even after my last visit to Krasnograd, when I and all the healers had counseled Sera most earnestly to give up all hope of bearing an heir of her own body, I had always thought (stupidly) that something would happen to free me and Mirochka from that side of our family, but this time I could already feel the chains of succession settling around us, shackling us to the fate of our foremothers. Not that ruling was so very bad…but it was. Taking a seat on the Wooden Throne was not the same as governing a province. They said the wood held the memories of all the previous Tsarinas, and all the oaths they had ever sworn to the gods…and broken…someday, surely, there would be a reckoning…

  “What are you thinking about, mama?” asked Mirochka.

  “Look out the window,” I told her. We were currently going up the stairs to our quarters, and had reached the third floor. I lifted her up so that she could look out the window onto Krasnograd.

  “Why is the window so small and high, mama, and narrower at the front than the back?” she asked. “That’s not very useful for a window. It should be bigger and lower.”

  “In case of attack,” I told her. “Such windows are harder to fire arrows through, and any arrows that did get through would come in very high, so people could duck under the window and be safe.”

  “Arrows!” Her face grew fearful. “Are we likely to be shot here, mama?” She had taken a strong aversion to arrows ever since my own encounter with one. In fact she had, somewhat to my surprise and concern, taken a strong aversion to battle in general, and for a time had wanted to give up her practice of bladework entirely. I had started to worry that it was her father’s blood coming out in her, but my mother had assured me that such a reaction was perfectly normal in a child her age, and that like as not she would grow out of it. And she had in fact agreed to take up her lessons in swordplay again, and to make good progress in them, but she was still unnaturally (in my opinion) afraid of arrows.

  “No chance at all,” I reassured her. “There’s no place in Zem’ safer than the Krasnograd kremlin. But you remember what a kremlin is, don’t you? It’s a fortress. This was originally a fortress, but now it’s become a palace. But the old parts of it still have all the original defensive features.”

  “Oh, good.” She looked out the window. “Oh, mama! I can see all over Krasnograd! It’s so…enormous! I can’t even see the end of it! I feel like I’m flying! And…and when we climb up the stairs, we are flying, of a sort, aren’t we? Climbing higher and higher, going in circles like birds. How high are we, mama?”

  “Twenty yards up, perhaps,” I told her. “But the kremlin towers are even higher: thirty yards at least. Tomorrow perhaps we can go up one. Maybe from there we could see the end of the city, although I don’t know. Krasnograd is very large, and once you get outside the gates there is Outer Krasnograd, do you remember?”

  “Yes, mama, of course. I saw it only yesterday! But…thirty yards up! Is it…how did they build the towers so high, mama?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I know little of building, I’m afraid. Are you ready to come down?”

  “Just one more moment, mama! Just let me look for a little bit longer!” Back home we had no buildings higher than two stories, so looking out of even a third-floor window was a new and exotic experience for Mirochka, and I didn’t have the heart to tell there that she was not as little as she had once been, and holding her this high was making my already-shaky arms ache. I shifted her onto my shoulder instead, wobbling an embarrassing amount as I did so, and she gazed rapturously out onto the city.

  “Look at the sun on the roofs, mama!” she said, pointing to where the evening rays were glinting off the gilded roofs and towers of the houses of princesses and merchants who could afford to keep a place within sight of the kremlin. “When will it set, do you think? I’ve never seen the sun set in a city before!”

  “Not for a while yet,” I told her. “Not till after your bedtime.”

  “Oh, mama…”

  “But we can go to our chambers now and look out our window there, and then next week will be Midsummer and,” I promised, hoisting her down from my shoulder, “you can stay up all night, if you like.”

  “Oh mama! Really!” Never before had she been allowed to join the older children and adults in staying up all night to observe the unsetting sun of Midsummer.

  “Certainly,” I told her. “I’m sure the Empress will have festivities planned for everyone, including the children. But it is very hard to stay up all night, so you will need to rest up beforehand.”

  “Or maybe I should practice. You always say that repetition is the mother of learning, mama, and that no one gets good at anything without lots of practice.”

  “True enough,” I conceded. “But staying up all night is something best done only rarely, and you didn’t sleep very much last night, so this night you should be sure to get a good night’s sleep, and then we can talk about Midsummer next week. Come, my dove, let us go to our chambers.”

  “Very well, mama.” She took my hand and followed me willingly enough out of the stairs and into our corridor, with only a single backwards glance at the window. “Do you think the view from our chambers will be as fine, mama?”

  “We’ll just have to find out,” I told her. “And we can always return to the window in the stairs tomorrow.”

  “All right, then.” She took a few more steps in silent contemplation and then asked unexpectedly, although I should have known to expect such a question, “Mama, who was that man you were with?”

  “What man?” I asked her.

  “The one who came to see you at the children’s table. Who was he? Is he a friend of yours? How come I don’t know him?”

  “He was just someone I met at the feast,” I told her lightly. “He and I were making plans to practice our bladework together tomorrow.”

  “Really? Can I come and practice too, then?”

  “Did you not promise to go play with your new friends tomorrow?”

  “Yes, but I shouldn’t give up on my lessons, mama, you know that. When are you meeting with him to practice?”

  “In the morning,” I told her.

  “Well, I am only meeting with Kiryusha and Adriana in the afternoon, so I will have plenty of time to come practice with you.”

  “Very well,” I said, after a brief hesitation. Trying to court Ivan Marinovich, or spy on him, or whatever I should be doing with him, would undoubtedly go better without the presence of Mirochka, but, I decided, she would be in little danger with us, and if he really did become my husband, it would be best if he and Mirochka got used to each other as soon as possible. If I were to go through with this scheme, I would have to think seriously about what it would mean for Mirochka, and how she would take it. When Sera and I had first discussed it, it had seemed so distant and so unlikely that I had not even bothered to consider what it would mean for my family if I were in fact to bring home a husband, but now that that potential future husband had turned from an abstraction into a living, breathing person, I was forced to think
of how everyone would react to his arrival.

  If I did end up marrying Ivan Marinovich, my parents would be torn between delight at my marriage and horror at the identity and the connections of my husband, of that I was certain, but what Mirochka would do I couldn’t even begin to say. She had accepted the absence of her own father in her life uncomplainingly, and had only wanted to know, on the very rare occasions when he was discussed, why he didn’t live with us the way most of her friends’ fathers lived with their families. My (true) explanation that he had chosen not to live with us had seemed to satisfy her when it had come up last year, and she had not brought the subject up again in months. But what she would do if a stepfather were suddenly to enter her life, I didn’t know. And if we were to give her little sisters and brothers…I was getting ahead of myself. First I had to secure the match, and make sure it was a match worth securing, or at least one that would not be so bad that I wouldn’t find myself breaking my word to Sera and setting my husband aside, and then I could worry about dealing with Mirochka. But in the meantime, she could come and practice her bladework with me and Ivan Marinovich tomorrow, and at the very least I would have a better idea when we were done what kind of a man he was becoming, and how he felt about this scandalous piece of his family’s history suddenly coming face to face with him, blade in hand.

  “What is his name, mama?” Mirochka asked.

  “Ivan Marinovich,” I told her. “He is Princess Velikokrasnova’s son.”

  “Isn’t she a black earth princess, mama?” she asked, wrinkling up her nose.

  “Yes, but it would be best not to say anything about it tomorrow when you meet him. I have no doubt that he considers being from the black earth region a matter of pride.”

  “Oh.” Mirochka considered this startling fact as we entered our chambers and I began to prepare her for bed. “I’ll be very polite to him, mama, even if he is a black earth prince,” she announced as I helped her remove her borrowed gown. “After all, the Tsarina is a black earth princess, if you think about it.”

  “True, and therefore so is my mother, which means you are part black earth princess too,” I told her.

  “But only a small part,” she said.

  “Well, not so very small,” I replied. I had never told her who her father was, or that he was of the black earth district himself, and I decided, as I had so many times before, that now was not the time. “But it doesn’t really matter that much anyway, Mirochka,” I said instead. “After all, we’re all Zemnians, which is what is really important.”

  “I’m still glad I’m from the steppe, though, mama,” she said, yawning and struggling into her nightdress.

  “Of course you are, my dove. Anyone would be. But you are enjoying Krasnograd, are you not?”

  “Oh, so much, mama! But when will we be going home?”

  “When my business for the Tsarina is concluded,” I told her. “Perhaps by the end of the summer. You’re not ready to go home already, are you?”

  “No, I just want to make sure that we will go home,” she said, getting into the bed that we were sharing. She had been offered her own bed in her own chamber, but even at home half the time she preferred to sleep with me, and here there was no chance, I was sure, of moving her out of my bed any time soon. “Aren’t you going to get into bed, mama?”

  “Not yet,” I told her. “I’m going to go down to the kitchens for a bit, once you fall asleep. But don’t worry,” I added, seeing alarm rise up in her face. “There are maids in the next chamber, and guards at the door, and I’ll be back before you wake up.”

  “Oh, very well, then, mama. So we’ll be going home by the end of the summer?”

  “Perhaps. If all goes well.” I decided it would also be best to withhold for the moment the information that if all didn’t go well, which seemed more than likely, we wouldn’t be going home for some time, perhaps never. If…If I suddenly ended up sitting the Wooden Throne, with Mirochka as my heir, then we would be well and truly stuck here in Krasnograd, and wouldn’t be able to return to the steppe for years, perhaps never. But I certainly wasn’t going to share that with Mirochka just yet. She was aware that she was related to the Empress and in line for the Wooden Throne, but she had only the faintest conception of what that meant, and had no expectation of ruling Zem’ herself. I had deliberately raised her that way, fearing what would happen if I had raised her as a future Empress, only to have her reign snatched away from her by the arrival of a true heir for Sera. That kind of disappointment could sour a person for life, and besides, if she did end up ruling, she would be a better Empress for having been raised simply. So tonight I merely kissed her forehead and told her to go to sleep in order to be able to enjoy her time in Krasnograd more fully tomorrow, and assured her that we would be back home with our family before she knew it, and she would be able to spend many hours regaling them with her tales of life in the Imperial kremlin. She accepted that with delight, and before I had even had time to grow impatient, she had fallen asleep.

  As soon as I had ascertained that she was well and truly asleep, I slipped into the maids’ room next door, and, finding the girl who had brushed out her hair so skillfully earlier, charged her with keeping an ear open in case Mirochka awoke while I was gone and became frightened. The girl assured me that she would be delighted to watch over the little princess in my absence, and, confident that Mirochka would be in the best hands she could be other than my own, I set off for the kitchens, hoping to acquire both food and information.

  During my previous visits to the kremlin I had acquainted myself pretty thoroughly with the hidden passageways that ran throughout its walls, but after briefly considering using them tonight, I rejected that in favor of taking the regular corridors. I hadn’t yet found the entrance to them from my current chambers (although I thought it very likely that there was an entrance, probably through the wardrobe), and I also thought it might be best to make my reintroduction to the kitchen via the regular entrance, rather than suddenly popping out from the wall. Let the people serving there grow accustomed to me, and hopefully even fond of me, before I started surprising them like that. So I made my way through the public corridors, enduring only the occasional sideways glance from noblewomen leaving early from the festivities and servants going about their mistresses’ business.

  The kitchen was as hot and frantic as I remembered it, although as I came in the cooks and servers were just sitting down to their own late meal, now that the people in the Hall of Feasts had eaten their fill. The undercook nearest the door stood up as I came in with an unhappy expression on her face, but that quickly changed to smiles when she recognized me. Whenever I had been here before, I had always been generous with coin and other favors, and the kremlin serving folk were both romantic enough to find me a figure of fascination, and practical enough to want to be in the good graces of someone who could one day be their mistress.

  “Valeriya Dariyevna!” she cried with a bow. “How many winters has it been! What can we do for you?”

  “Too long, Alina. I come begging food. Is there any here to spare?”

  “Grisha!” She snapped her fingers at a potboy lurking nearby. “Bring Valeriya Dariyevna a plate of food. We’ve more than enough to spare,” she added to me, “and although it might not be as fine as what we just served all those fancy noblewomen and their husbands, I’ll guarantee you that the taste is twice as good. We know what we’re about, Valeriya Dariyevna!”

  “Of that I am certain,” I said, taking the place that had been made for me at the table. “Why else do you think I came down here, when there was a whole feast up there?”

  “Because you have some sense in you, Valeriya Dariyevna, and maybe because you knew you’d find a warmer welcome with us than with those noblewomen upstairs?” The way she said it made me certain that my encounters with Princess Malolesnaya and Aksinya Yevpraksiyevna had been observed by the servants and retold to everyone here in the kitchen. Well, it was no more than I had expected.

&n
bsp; “And I can see I was right,” I said. “Thank you, Grisha,” I told the boy who brought me a laden plate. He blushed and ran off without even pausing to bow. Alina started to chastise him for it, but I said to let him be, and we all turned our attentions to our plates. All of us except Alyona Vasilisovna, that is, the head cook. She surveyed me carefully and asked, in a voice that carried all through the kitchen, “Is it true, then, Valeriya Dariyevna? Slavers carrying our children off East?”

  The mood in the kitchen suddenly went very dark. “It is,” I confirmed. “I’ve seen them with my own eyes.”

  “And given some of them justice, or so we hear, Valeriya Dariyevna,” she said.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “And rightly so, Valeriya Dariyevna, if you’ll pardon me for saying it. Anyone who’d carry off children, Zemnian children, to sell to Easterners, well…I’d kill them myself, if I came across them.”

  There was a chorus of nods from the rest of the table.

  “But the princesses don’t agree, it seems, do they, Valeriya Dariyevna?” she pressed on.

  “It is a grave thing, to kill someone,” I said. “Even slavers. I can see why they would not be pleased. I am not pleased about it myself, to tell the truth.”

  “Even so, Valeriya Dariyevna, it was the right thing to do. And it seems none of the other princesses want to do anything about it at all, do they?”