The Dreaming Land I: The Challenge Read online

  The girl gulped and said yes, it was clear, and in short order Aksinya Olgovna had been led off to the baths and to the chamber being prepared for her, while I was left alone to mull over what she had told me.

  Of course, as she had said, the information she had brought was only of limited value, since the only people they had caught in Velikogornoye were the families of those who had been taken, not the actual traders themselves. But surely those people knew to whom they had sold their children, and that could lead us somewhere. I wondered whether Princess Velikogornaya had questioned them about that, and whether she had gained any sort of useful information. I wondered how difficult it would be to find those people, in the mines or the road crews or wherever they had been sent to do their hard labor, and how willing they would be to provide the information that I needed. I didn’t really see why they would refuse to give that information, but perhaps they had been threatened, and people could be funny about that kind of thing anyway. I wondered what I would do if I ended up finding someone, one of these people who had sold their children into slavery, who knew something I needed to know but refused to tell me. I grimaced at the very thought. Facing someone in battle didn’t bother me, if it was a fight that needed fighting, but ever since Krasnoslava the Kind had banned it many years ago, torture was something that only happened amongst the Hordes or the barbaric Westerners. The only thing I could think of that was worse than torturing someone would be, well, selling my own child into slavery. I had done a number of things that my foremother Krasnoslava, were she to hear of them, would, I had always assumed, disapprove of mightily, and normally that did not bother me too much. I knew that Sera lived in the shadow of our foremothers Krasnoslava and Darya Krasnoslavovna, always wondering if she were living up to the standard they had set…now there were two women who had given Zem’ a dream worth having, not that we were doing a very good job of realizing it, but still…I could understand why Sera would want to emulate them, but I rarely worried about it. Torturing prisoners, though…if I were to do that, the other princesses would be within their rights to shun and despise me as much as they wished, and how would I ever be able to face Mirochka again? Her finding out about it was too awful to contemplate…it must be the Krasnograd air, I told myself, snapping out of my moment of melancholy. At home these moods rarely came upon me, but every time I came to Krasnograd, I found myself forced into introspection, contemplating things that I would rather not contemplate.

  “I’ll just have to be smarter than them, that’s all,” I said out loud. And with that encouraging thought, I went to seek an audience with Sera.

  ***

  “I thought I told you to join me for supper,” she said when I was let into her chambers. “It’s only midafternoon. Is this the hour for supper on the steppe, or something?”

  “I see you’re feeling better.” She was sitting up in bed, looking peevish and bored, always a good sign.

  “Yes, but the healers still say I should remain in my chambers until tomorrow, the Black God take them and all morning sickness.”

  “Morning sickness is clearly the work of the Black God, of that there can be no question,” I said. “But the healers are right. You were too weak yesterday to be ready to do anything until tomorrow at the earliest. You know that, Sera, you know that.”

  “It’s just…” she fretted with her sleeve for a moment, “I don’t know…there’s just so much to get done, and I don’t know…”

  “You’ll get everything done that you need to get done,” I said before she could finish saying what she was thinking, which I knew was that she didn’t know how much time she had left, but she suspected it was not much. “And right now resting is most definitely the thing you need to get done the most. It was silly of me to seek you out. I’ll go, and come back this evening for a nice quiet supper, and then perhaps we can talk tomorrow, if you continue to improve.”

  “Oh no you don’t. I want you here with me. You make me feel better, you know, even if the healers doubt me. They think you’re a bad influence, for some reason, and you’ll over-excite me.”

  “How surprising,” I said, and when she laughed, I smiled and said, “And they’re right, I see.”

  “Oh, Valya! Laughing does me good. Please stay: it does me good to have you with me. You know, when you held my hands yesterday, it really did feel like your strength was pouring into me, or something. Even Slava and the healers don’t have such a good effect on me. I suppose it’s because you’re my sister. So please stay. And besides, you must have had a very good reason to come to me now, and I’ll never be able to rest for wondering about what it was if you don’t tell me now. So tell me now.”

  “Very well, but only if you agree ahead of time to remain calm, and to let me handle everything.”

  She made a face. “That bad, is it? Well, I’ll do my best, I guess. Spit it out, Valya.”

  “Aksinya Olgovna, Princess Velikogornaya’s second-sister, just arrived here in Krasnograd, seeking me out,” I told her.

  “Why would Princess Velikogornaya’s second-sister come all the way to Krasnograd to seek you out?”

  “Because earlier this year I sent word to all the mountain princesses about my concerns regarding the trading of Zemnian children, and asking them to send me word of any such incidents, so that I might better fight it. Aksinya Olgovna came all the way from Velikogornoye to tell me what they have found out there.”

  “And what have they found out?”

  “Unfortunately not as much as I might like, but still something. Aksinya Olgovna said that things were quiet for a while after I killed those two”—Sera’s face darkened at that, but I gave her a stern look to remind her to remain calm and quiet, and carried on—“but recently children have started disappearing again, and it seems that at least some of them are being sold off by their own families. Aksinya Olgovna rounded up all those she could, and Princess Velikogornaya has sentenced them to hard labor. That is all the information she has given me so far. She wanted to set back off for Velikogornoye immediately, but I convinced her to stay and inform the Princess Council of what she knows. I’ve arranged for her to stay here in the kremlin, and I want to call a meeting of the Princess Council as soon possible to discuss this. Tomorrow is probably too soon, but maybe we could do it by the day after tomorrow.”

  “I see you feel very comfortable giving orders in my kremlin,” she said, pouting a little.

  “Sera, I am your sister and your heir. You are currently indisposed. Someone has to give orders and make arrangements until you recover, and you know as well I do that that person has to be me. And this is important and must be dealt with soon. Pretty much immediately, in fact. I know it is unpleasant to face the fact that our own children are being sold into slavery, sometimes by their own parents, but face it we must. Telling yourself that those noises you hear isn’t thunder doesn’t mean you won’t get wet—or struck by lightning.” I realized I was speaking much too forcefully for someone in Sera’s delicate condition, and tried to soften my voice as I continued, but, I could tell by her face, with only limited success. “I know that calling a session of the Princess Council is not your favorite activity—or anyone’s, for that matter—and given your current state and the topic I intend to address, I’m sure no one will blame you or think it odd if you decide to stay in your chambers and hand the running of the session over to me. Not even I will, although I have to admit the thought does make me feel ill. But it must be done, Sera, you know that as well as I do, and if you cannot do it, then I will.”

  She sat there for a moment in silence. I could see the desire to make a childish and ill-humored retort, couched as playfulness, was warring with the equally strong desire to give the matter the serious attention it deserved, and an almost equally strong third desire to lie back down and pretend that none of this was happening, and that I needed to say something more in order to steer our conversation into the direction it needed to go in.

  “Sera,” I said slowly. “You must know
that nothing—nothing—is more important to me right now than to see you return to good health. And if you could safely deliver a healthy heir—well, I think I might have to join a sanctuary in order to spend the rest of my days thanking the gods for their kindness to you and to me both. But I see very little I can do here to ensure that outcome. What I can do, though, is try to wipe this blot, this stain, this pestilence off of Zem’, while trying to spare you as much of the trial and the trouble that it will cause as possible. Right now this seems to me like the simplest and most effective means to do so. If you have other thoughts, you know you have only to ask, and I will do everything I can for you.”

  “Oh, Valya!” she said, as she so often did when dealing with me. She smiled playfully, but now it was with genuine playfulness, not the peevish travesty of it she inflicted on me—and, I suspected, Vyacheslav Irinovich—when she was sulking or in a bad temper. “Two outbursts of passion in three days! I see it is most definitely high time we got you a husband.”

  “A husband is unlikely to cool my ardor!” I snapped back. She raised a brow. “You know what I mean! I am not the type of person to forget to attend to something important just because I happen to have a man around. Sera, this is serious!”

  “And so is marriage,” she said. “But never mind that now. I’m sorry, Valya, and I’ll try to stop making jokes at your expense—there, does that make you feel better? Although you really should develop a sense of humor, Valya, if I say so myself.”

  “I have an excellent sense of humor, thank you very much, just not when it comes to slavers stealing our children!!”

  “I know, Valya, and I’m sorry,” she said, finally arranging her face into something resembling an appropriate expression for the topic at hand. “You, and the mountain princesses, are having to live with something that to those of us here on the Krasna seems little more than an absurd rumor, and we should not make light of it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Valya. Now, if you don’t mind, I will think on it. I agree that we must take this up before the Princess Council, and sooner rather than later, but we must decide how best to present it to them. Let me think on it this afternoon, Valya, and perhaps by suppertime I will have thought up a good plan.”

  “You are a good Empress,” I told her, bending over to kiss her brow.

  “Really, Valya?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I told her. “You probably don’t hear that enough, but you are. You don’t just do your duty; you’re clever about it as well. I’m sure between the two of us we’ll have the Princess Council and the slavers and all our other problems sorted out in no time.”

  “As you say, Valya.” I stroked her hair and told her to be sure to get some rest as well as thinking, and that I would be back for supper, and she said she was looking forward to it. She brightened as I held her, but I tried not to notice the expression of tired sorrow tinged with fear that had already slipped back onto her face before I had left the room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I arranged for Mirochka to have supper with the tsarinoviches, and then, having freed myself from caring for her for the rest of the evening, I called upon Aksinya Olgovna. I found her sitting in nothing but a light shirt, pink-cheeked and attempting to fan herself with her hands.

  “The servants were kind enough to let me use the kremlin bathhouse,” she explained. “It was good to get the road dirt off of me, but now I’m about to faint from the heat. It’s so much hotter down here in the lowlands than back home.”

  “There may be a proper fan somewhere in the room,” I said. “If not, we can ask someone to bring you one. It will help.” I rummaged through the wardrobe in the corner of her room, which was mostly empty—Aksinya Olgovna was not overly burdened with things—and found a small birchbark fan in one corner.

  “Here,” I said. “Use this.”

  Aksinya Olgovna took the fan with gratitude and began using it vigorously to raise a breeze on her face. After a few moments some of the flush faded from her thin cheeks.

  “At least you’re not fat,” I told her. “Imagine how hot you’d be then.”

  She smiled. “Thank the gods for that, then, Valeriya Dariyevna. What did you want to speak with me about? I assume that you haven’t come here just to show me where to find my fan.”

  “I just spoke with the Empress about the situation in Velikogornoye, and I will again this evening,” I told her. “I’ve asked her to call a session of the Princess Council within the next few days to discuss the issue. It seems to me that we should send someone, probably a whole party of someones, to the mountains to look into this. And I was wondering, Aksinya Olgovna, if you happened to have asked any of the people you captured—the ones you said had sold their children themselves to the slavers—if they knew who the slavers were, and how to find them. They must have some knowledge of who these people are, or else they wouldn’t have been able to,” I made a face, “do business with them.”

  Aksinya Olgovna stopped fanning herself for a moment. “I did, Valeriya Dariyevna, my sister and I both did. We questioned them pretty closely, as you might imagine. But we got very little useful information out of them. They could describe the people they…to whom they sold their children,” she also made a face, “by sight, and they knew their names, or at least what they called themselves, and more or less when they could be expected to come through the village, but there was little there that would allow us to track them down until they come back through the village, if they’re so foolish as to do that with us looking for them.”

  “Did they say why they had done what they’d done?” I asked.

  Aksinya Olgovna sighed. “Desperation, of course, Valeriya Dariyevna. Some thought it was the best way to keep the slavers from stealing more children—give them a few so that they don’t take a lot and don’t raid the village by force—and some were in danger of starving to death. Famines are not uncommon in the mountains, and some of our villages were hit very hard this year with a late frost. So some thought it would be better to sell their children to people who might at least feed them, and to use the money to go buy grain and food from other villages. I can’t say I agree with what they did, but I can understand it.”

  “Did they not have any other option?” I demanded. “Surely, for the ones that were hit by famine, there were stores of grain elsewhere—does Velikogornoye not have reserves of grain for famine years?”

  “We do, Valeriya Dariyevna, of course we do, but this is the second famine year in a row, and our stores are low, and not all the common folk believe that they would be fairly treated, or even given enough to survive on.”

  “The Imperial stores…” I said.

  “Are also low, Valeriya Dariyevna, or so the Empress informed us this winter when we began to suspect we had another famine year on our hands, and asked about them. Not that she would begrudge us what she had, but there is scarcity even here in the black earth district, and it might not be enough for the whole country. But I doubt our villagers knew that. No, Valeriya Dariyevna, I imagine they just thought of this as the quickest, simplest, safest solution to their problems. Not everyone values their children more than money, or is willing to suffer hardship on their behalf, and perhaps to them slavery did not seem so bad as it would to you or me.”

  “That my own people would think that!” I said.

  Aksinya Olgovna shrugged. “Freedom is the luxury of princesses, Valeriya Dariyevna. Not everyone is so free as you. Many would be happy merely to have a mistress that could give them food when they were hungry.”

  “But to sell them to the Hordes!”

  “Who else would buy them, Valeriya Dariyevna? It’s not as if they could sell them to anyone here in Zem’, and we have blocked off the slave trade to the West. It’s only East that our people flow freely.”

  “Or not so freely,” I said sourly. “Well, I thank you for what you have told me, Aksinya Olgovna, and I’ll tell the Empress when I speak with her again this evening. Oh, and one more thing: would it be pos
sible to find the people who have been sentenced? If I wanted to question them again, for instance?”

  She shrugged. “Probably, Valeriya Dariyevna. We know where we sent them, so it would just be a matter of tracking them down from there—if they are still alive, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. A good half the people sent to hard labor did not survive the sentence, some dying of disease and overwork, and many more dying at the hands of other laborers. We no longer executed people in Zem’, but many still died every year from our merciful justice, and thus far we hadn’t managed to find a solution, since we still had to do something with murderers, rapists, and those who would sell their own children into slavery, and hard labor was what we had. At least that way they were doing something of use for their country, we told ourselves. I realized I was planning to go to a mine or a road crew. Well, what must be done, must be done. If I could sentence people to serve in them for the sake of justice and the good of Zem’, I could stand to look at them for the sake of freedom and the good of Zem’, and see what the justice I took such pride in when executing it looked like.

  “I won’t take up any more of your time,” I said. “I’ll let you know as things progress. Let’s hope that soon we can at least say that an Imperial delegation has been sent to look into this matter. You can ask the servants to bring you something when you want supper, or go to an inn in the city. Until tomorrow, Aksinya Olgovna.”

  “Until tomorrow,” she said, and went back to fanning herself as I went out the door.

  ***

  When I arrived at back at Sera’s chambers for supper, the food was already laid out, the maids had left, and Vyacheslav Irinovich was nowhere to be found.

  “I thought we should talk in private tonight, Valya,” Sera explained. “Sister to sister.”

  I wanted to say something flippant, but the look on her face made me change my mind and say instead, very seriously, “Of course, Sera.”