The Midnight Land: Part Two: The Gift (The Zemnian Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  Some hero, she thought to herself. If the gods could see me now…

  “Why do you look so sad and angry, Tsarinovna?” asked Vladislava. “Is it true what you said to Alina Marinovna, that the gods have taken an interest in your fate?”

  “Yes,” said Slava.

  “Why?” asked Vladislava. “What have you got that they could want?”

  “They say…They said that I was born to be a hero,” said Slava.

  “Really?” Vladislava gave her a considering look. “You don’t look much like a hero,” she said doubtfully. “A hero should look more like…more like Aunty Olya, or someone like that.”

  “I agree,” said Slava.

  “What can you do to be a hero, anyway?” asked Vladislava. “You’re not very big or strong—can you heal people?”

  Slava started to say “No,” but then found herself saying, “Has anyone every stood up for you, Vladislava Vasilisovna? Has anyone ever treated you like they cared about you?”

  “Mother says she cares about me, but she doesn’t,” said Vladislava. “Grandmother sometimes cared about me, but she always got bored. Sometimes Lisochka cries and talks about how we’re sisters and we have no one but each other and we must take care of each other, but most of the time she’s angry at me—she wishes my mother had run away instead of hers, or that I’d never been born so that she could rule Lesnograd, even though it’s plain she couldn’t do it and doesn’t want to anyway. The sorceresses tried to teach me things, but that was because they thought I was useful. Alina Marinovna is nice to me, but she has daughters and granddaughters of her own she cares about more than she does about me.” Vladislava said all of this with a brave voice, but her face grew further and further cast down as she recited the litany of people who didn’t care about her.

  “Well, I care about you,” said Slava.

  “That doesn’t make you a hero,” said Vladislava, her voice now tinged once again with the arrogant contempt of the very young and clever. “Anyone could care about me if she wanted to. Caring about other people is easy: all you have to do is do it. Besides, why would you care about me? What are you going to try to make me do? What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to be a better person,” said Slava. “I want you to be a good person rather than a bad person.”

  “I am a good person!”

  “Of course you are,” said Slava soothingly. “What I meant was that I’m going to try to help you be an even better person, and also a happier one, by getting other people to take better care of you and teach you the things you need to know.”

  “How are you going to do that?” asked Vladislava, doubt in Slava’s abilities radiating from every feature.

  “I’m going to start by speaking with Olga Vasilisovna and your mother,” said Slava. As soon as she said it, she knew she had a purpose and a plan. It was a strange feeling for Slava, and to her surprise, it made her feel braver than usual. No, not just braver than usual, but truly brave. She supposed she had been what other people called “brave” before, when she had saved the snow hares or thrown herself at the leshiye, but those had been instinctive acts of desperation, and she had had no awareness of her own bravery as she had engaged in them. Now, though, she knew what she was going to do, and she wasn’t afraid to do it. In fact, she was not only not afraid, she was filled with a courage and resolve she had never suspected in herself before. It was an intoxicating feeling. This must be, she thought, the way some mothers feel as they await the birth of their child. She looked back down at Vladislava. All her earlier revulsion and anger had melted away, and now all she felt for her was a fierce protective tenderness.

  “Perhaps your mother will send you to Krasnograd,” she said. “You could foster with me.” Despite her new-found courage, she was surprised to hear herself suggest it, but as soon as she did, she knew it was the right thing to do, and that she had found the way to approach Vasilisa Vasilisovna. She could already hear the persuasive words in her head: So taken with Vladislava Vasilisovna…Such a clever, promising young princess…Should make friends with the other young princesses…Imperial ward…

  “Why?” asked Vladislava, interrupting Slava’s visions. “Why would you take me to Krasnograd?” She was trying to be suspicious, but Slava could hear the upwelling of desire in her voice. Apparently she had found the way to approach Vladislava, too.

  “You are a clever girl, and will one day rule Lesnograd,” said Slava. “It is only right that you should spend time in Krasnograd. I have taken no wards as yet, which has been greatly remiss of me. It is high time that I start.” As soon as she said that, another great rush of excitement poured over Slava, as she realized that she had yet another purpose. Vladislava was not the only young princess who could benefit from her care. Her sister occasionally took on wards, but never took an interest in them. Slava should take them, and any other young princess who struck her fancy and was willing, under her wing. She could make a whole school! She could invite sorceresses, scholars, priestesses, healers…

  “Mother won’t let me,” said Vladislava, interrupting Slava’s dream. Slava didn’t mind, though, because she knew it was much too strong a dream to abandon her, and that something had just happened to her that would affect the whole course of her life. If she had ever had to guess when such a life-changing event would occur, she never would have said while sneaking down a back alley in Lesnograd with a truant and treasonous little princess, which was why, she told herself, you shouldn’t try to second-guess the future too much.

  “It won’t hurt to ask her,” said Slava.

  “I guess,” said Vladislava, not sounding very confident in either Slava or her mother.

  “Why don’t you take me to her as soon as we arrive at the kremlin,” said Slava.

  Vladislava gave her another doubtful look, but, once they had slipped unnoticed back into the kremlin—Olga really needed to know about that, Slava told herself—Vladislava led her to a private set of chambers not far from those of Princess Severnolesnaya, and when the serving girl let them in, Vasilisa Vasilisovna was standing there by the fire.

  “Where have you been!” she demanded as soon as they appeared. “You’ve been gone for ages! I’ve been worried sick about you!”

  “At Alina Marinovna’s,” said Vladislava, making sure to say it as infuriatingly as possible. She was successful, for the red spots on Vasilisa Vasilisovna’s cheeks grew even redder, and for a moment Slava thought she might scream again. She managed to keep it down to a hysterical tirade, but, Slava could tell, only with extreme difficulty.

  “I’ve told you…I specifically ordered you not to go there,” she hissed, shaking. “I don’t do that on a whim, you know! It’s for your own good! How can you do this to me! What is wrong with you?!!”

  “I like Alina Marinovna,” said Vladislava, gazing at her mother with deliberately cruel indifference, that, Slava could tell, was her only shield against her mother’s unintentional cruelty. “She’s much nicer than anyone here at the kremlin.”

  “And how could you…” Vasilisa Vasilisovna wheeled around to Slava, “how could you let her go? What’s wrong with you! How could you do this to me!!” Somewhere, Slava could see, something inside her was telling her she was being supremely stupid on many levels, but that only drove her on. For a moment, Slava felt her resolve start to waver, as she had to fight the urge to reach over and shake Vasilisa Vasilisovna till her teeth rattled and scream at her, “How can you be so stupid! What’s wrong with you!”

  “I wished to speak with Vladislava Vasilisovna,” said Slava. “I was greatly impressed with her the moment I saw her, and I wished to get to know her better. And I, too, as it turned out, had business with Alina Marinovna.” She thought about adding, And we were perfectly safe, but decided it would only make Vasilisa Vasilisovna even angrier. “I would like to take Vladislava Vasilisovna with me when I return to Krasnograd, as my ward,” she said instead.

  “How…What?” Vasilisa Vasilisovna stopped in mid-tirad
e, and stared at Slava.

  “I wish to take her on as my ward, as a ward of the Imperial family,” said Slava. “She is a very clever young girl, and could have a great future ahead of her. I wish to aid her in that. She could learn from the best teachers and make friends with other highborn young women. It would be a great opportunity for her.”

  “I can’t let her go to Krasnograd! Who would look after her!” said Vasilisa Vasilisovna, but Slava could already see the dream of seeing her daughter as an Imperial ward rise in her eyes, along with—although so hidden that Vasilisa Vasilisovna would never admit to its existence—the dream of getting Vladislava off her hands.

  “She would naturally have her own guard and her own maid, and I would take a personal interest in her welfare,” said Slava. “And, of course, you would be welcome to visit often. The Severnolesnaya family sends its members to Krasnograd far too rarely.”

  “You just want to use her! To take her away from me and use her as a hostage! Or turn her against me!”

  Vladislava opened her mouth to say something cutting, but Slava forestalled her by stepping closer to Vasilisa Vasilisovna and saying, with every ounce of sincerity she could muster, “On the contrary, Vasilisa Vasilisovna! And even if I tried to turn her against you, I doubt I would succeed. I have only known her a few hours, but already she strikes me as a young girl who keeps her own counsel and knows her own mind.”

  “You mean stubborn as a mule, and twice as difficult,” said Vasilisa Vasilisovna, giving Vladislava a look of resentful shame, through which a smile almost threatened to break through. Vladislava stared back with challenging indifference.

  “Vladislava has all the fine qualities a ruler requires,” Slava said hastily, before Vasilisa Vasilisovna could notice Vladislava’s expression and become hysterical again. “Where better for a ruler to learn to rule than in Krasnograd? Vladislava has it in her to be great, Vasilisa Vasilisovna, and I wish to help her down that path. We have need of more great women, Vasilisa Vasilisovna.”

  “Great? Do you really think so, Tsarinovna?” said Vasilisa Vasilisovna. Everything about her had softened at hearing those words, and she was now gazing up at Slava—even though she was the taller of them, it still seemed somehow as if she were gazing up at her—with a look of hungry devotion in her eyes.

  “I knew it from the moment I laid eyes on her,” Slava said.

  “And you think Krasnograd will help her? You really think she should go to Krasnograd?”

  “Krasnograd is the very place for a girl like Vladislava,” said Slava.

  “And you will take care of her? You promise, Tsarinovna, that you will watch over her personally?”

  “Of course,” said Slava. “I will watch over her as I would over my own daughter.”

  “Then…Then…Then of course she must go! Of course! Do you hear that, Slavochka? You’re going to Krasnograd!”

  Vladislava continued to stare back at her mother coldly. Slava knew that she desperately wanted to go to Krasnograd, and that she desperately resented her mother making the decision for her, and the two feelings were warring within her, and that at any moment one or the other would come bursting out.

  “I would be most honored if you would consent to my plan, Vladislava Vasilisovna,” said Slava. “Your presence would be greatly valued in Krasnograd.”

  “When would I go?” asked Vladislava cautiously.

  “With me, if you wish. Or you could come in the summer, if that pleases you better.”

  “I would like to come with you, then, Tsarinovna,” said Vladislava, after careful consideration. “Unless Grandmother needs me to remain.”

  “Of course,” said Slava.

  Somehow this erased all of Vasilisa Vasilisovna’s hysterics and everything else that had gone wrong that day, at least in Vasilisa Vasilisovna’s mind, and Slava soon found herself being led—finally!—to the room she had been given, where she was greeted with clean clothes and the information that the bathhouse was heated and waiting for her. She gratefully followed the serving girl to it, where she steamed in solitary peace until she was almost too light-headed to stand. She kept expecting Olga or Dunya to join her, but she saw no sign of them, either in the bathhouse or in the guest quarters.

  Once she had finished her steam and returned to her room, she found herself with nothing to do and no one to talk to, something she had grown unaccustomed to in the past months. She lay on her bed and thought about what she would do about Vladislava—what she would try to show and tell her, and how she would find out about the supposed curse and lift it. She told herself that the curse could be lifted, with no harm done to anyone. This pleasant thought turned her mind to the sorceresses, and she began to imagine what she would say to them and ask them, once they came to her. The faces of the yet-unknown sorceresses paraded across her mind, and priestesses, too, and many others…

  Chapter Two

  A gentle knocking on the door let her know that she had fallen asleep, and must wake up. She got up to answer it, surprised at how sore her body was and how clear her mind was, as if all the accumulated struggles of her journey had decided to take their toll all at once, exhausting her body and emptying her mind. She moved slowly across the room and opened the door, finding a nervous maid waiting on the other side of it.

  “I beg your pardon, Tsarin…” the girl gulped and trailed off, clearly unsure whether she was actually facing a Tsarinovna and if so, how to address her. “I mean…I hope I didn’t wake you…” she stuttered. “Only…Supper…”

  “Is it time for supper already?” asked Slava, smiling reassuringly at the frightened girl. “I’m so hungry!”

  “I’m sorry, Tsarinovna…If I’d’ve known…” The maid was so frightened she was having trouble articulating her words.

  “There was nothing to know,” Slava told her kindly. “The hospitality I have received here has been excellent. I had a pleasant rest, and now it seems that supper is ready, and just when I was beginning to wish for it. Is it time to go down?”

  “Y-y-yes, Tsarinovna,” gulped the girl. “If…If you are ready, that is.”

  “As soon as I put on my boots,” Slava told her. She slipped on her boots and followed the trembling maid out the door and down the corridor. She looked around, expecting to see some of her companions coming to join her, but there was no sign of them.

  “Do you know where the others are?” she asked the maid.

  “Others, Tsarinovna?” said the girl, staring at her in terror.

  “The others of Olga Vasilisovna’s party,” Slava told her.

  “I...I…I surely don’t know, Tsarinovna,” said the girl, but her face showed she was lying. Clearly something was going on with the others. Slava supposed that the issue of whom to invite to the Princess’s table was being hotly contested, with Dima’s name being bandied about frequently. She sighed to herself. She had to admit that the problem seemed insoluble, unless Dima took the high road and moved out of the kremlin. Which he would probably do, Slava thought, except that Olga was likely to resist that solution simply in order to annoy Andrey Vladislavovich. Who was a very annoying person, but that didn’t mean Olga should be deliberately cruel to him…

  “H-h-here we are, Tsarinovna,” stuttered the maid.

  They were in, not the Great Hall where they had been originally greeted, but a smaller room, which Slava thought was close by. It was filled by a table just large enough for the people there, and had a pleasant, cozy atmosphere. Or would have, if its occupants had not been glaring daggers at each other. A quick chair count told Slava that she was the last and final member of the party to arrive, and that Dunya, Dima, and the rest of Olga’s men would not be joining them. Olga, Andrey Vladislavovich (who were foolishly seated next to each other), Lisochka, Vladislava, Vasilisa Vasilisovna, and a very strange-looking man were all seated at the table, and radiating a chill that overpowered the warmth coming from the blazing fire in the fireplace.

  “If you please, Tsarinovna,” said the maid, strug
gling to pull out a chair with trembling hands. Slava took her seat as graciously as possible.

  “You can go now,” Olga said to the maid, and turned away from her dismissively.

  “I see you have no difficulty issuing orders in my kremlin,” said Andrey Vladislavovich, burning resentment rising from every word. “I see your lack of interest in governing Lesnograd does not extend to an unwillingness to tell my people what to do!” The icy superiority Slava could see he wished to project was abandoning him with every word, so that the sentence ended not in the firm tones of a ruler, but a strangled shriek.

  “I would go now if I were you,” Slava whispered to the maid, giving her a conspiratorial smile. The maid almost responded with a similar smile before remembering her terror and hurrying out gratefully.

  “Your kremin! Your kremlin!” Olga was saying. “Of all the people at this table, you have the least right to it! What is Lesnograd to you!”

  “More than it is to you, it seems,” Andrey Vladislavovich replied, forgetting about icy superiority and choosing instead a nasty sneer. A sharp pain started at the base of Slava’s neck and shot up to her head.

  “Papa is right!” cried Lisochka. “You never gave a bent grosh for Lesnograd, and you have no right to come riding in and telling us what to do…”

  “Stop whining!” Andrey Vladislavovich gave her a look of such intense loathing that for a moment Slava was afraid he was going to lunge across the table and attack Lisochka before the assembled company. “Why do you have to whine so much! You’re nothing but a spoiled little girl…you see what your daughter’s become, Olga, a useless hanger-on who does nothing but carp at her betters…”

  “Well, you raised me, papa—it’s your fault!” shrieked Lisochka. She said a number of other things as well, but her words were lost in the general noise as she, Olga, Vasilisa Vasilisovna, and Andrey Vladislavovich all started shouting at once. Vladislava stared at the scene before her with blank-faced contempt through which tears were threatening to irrupt, and the strange-looking man sitting next to her put his hands over his ears and began rocking back and forth and moaning. No one paid him any attention, and Slava saw that this was normal behavior for him. She guessed he must be Vladislava’s father. Slava looked around the room, hoping for some kind of escape. She was starting to fear that Olga and Lisochka might start hitting each other, or that Andrey Vladislavovich or Vasilisa Vasilisovna would have another attack of hysterics. The unnamed man was moaning louder and louder, unmistakably suffering unbearable distress. Vladislava seemed to be shrinking deeper and deeper into herself, as if hoping to sink into her chair and disappear altogether…