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The Dreaming Land I: The Challenge Page 7


  Chapter Five

  When I got back to the kremlin, my first step was to check up on Mirochka in case she had become frightened after being in a strange place without me all day, but all she said was, “You smell funny, mama,” before running off to play again with Dariusz and Valery, Sera’s two youngest.

  Reassured, if slightly miffed, that Mirochka was not pining for me in my absence, I sent word that I would like to speak with the Empress at her earliest convenience. The maid I spoke with seemed dubious about the propriety of even accepting such a message, but she returned almost immediately with a summons from the Tsarina to meet with her in her private chambers.

  This time it really was just Sera in her chambers when I arrived, with no sign of Vyacheslav Irinovich. I was sorry not to have his calm council, but not sorry that what I was about to say would reach one fewer pair of ears.

  “You reek of sweat and cheap beer, Valya,” said Sera as soon I came into the room.

  “It’s not cheap when you have to pay three times the price for every mug to keep the serving girl from tossing you out. And did you know that the inn by the Northern Haymarket has doubled its prices since I was last there? It’s robbery!”

  “Trade has not been flowing as smoothly as one would like of late,” Sera said. “And last year’s harvest was poor, as you must know.”

  “It was fine out on the steppe.”

  “What you gather out on the steppe can hardly be dignified with the name ‘harvest,’ my dear Valya. You have no cities to feed. Last summer was dry, and the frosts came early. No one is starving, but prices are high all over Zem’, and doubly so in Krasnograd. And trade, for that and other reasons, has been disrupted. If I had known it was going to cost so much, Valya, I would have given you money. Next time just ask before you set off, and you will receive as much as you need.”

  “I think I can afford to stand Zem’ a few rounds of beer,” I said. It came out more truculently than I would have liked. My head was aching, and all my limbs had suddenly been overcome with weakness, as happened when one was attacked by hunger and thirst. “If I have to lay out for something really expensive, you can be sure I’ll let you know,” I added, trying to smile and smooth over the situation. But I needn’t have bothered, because Sera only nodded and frowned without seeming to notice the state I was in.

  “Well, be that as it may, judging by the odor following you about, you obviously bought plenty, and have been spending time in low, or at least masculine, company. I wish I could say it was the first time, but we both know that’s not the case. I hope it’s because you were off loosening the tongues of careless serving girls and disgruntled stableboys?”

  “Actually, it was princes,” I said. “I was off loosening the tongues of disgruntled princes.”

  “Oh Valya! Not again!” She laughed a little, but I didn’t laugh along with her, so she quickly changed the subject to cover up her poor taste in jokes. “Surely that was risky?” she asked, treating me to yet another variant of her infinitely expressive arched brow.

  “Rather,” I said. “Especially since one of the said princes was Ivan Marinovich. Do you have any water?”

  “Ivan Marinovich! So you revealed yourself to them!?”

  “No,” I said, looking around in the vain hope of finding a ewer or a cup or a horse’s watering bucket or anything that might have some water in it. “Really, Sera, don’t you have any water here? I have a splitting headache.”

  “It seems to me you’ve drunk enough, Valya,” she said dryly.

  “Five mugs of beer on an empty stomach, with a long hot walk before and after. And Mirochka was up half the night. If you don’t want to see me faint or spew up all that beer or both, please, Sera, bring me some water.”

  “Oh, very well,” she said. She went off into the other room and came back shortly with—oh, lovely sight!—a ewer of fresh cold water, and a cup to go with it. She set it down on the little table next to me. I tried to pour myself some, but my hands were shaking and I slopped a good bit of the water onto the delicate lace tablecloth that no doubt had taken many hours of painstaking labor to make.

  “Valya! Pull yourself together! What’s wrong with you!”

  “It’s thirst,” I said, drinking down all the water I had managed to get into my cup. My stomach roiled at it, but almost immediately I began to feel better. I poured myself another cup.

  “Thirst! After five mugs of beer!”

  “Beer makes you thirsty,” I said. “It hit me all of a sudden as I was coming up the stairs. It does that. And I’m just coming off of a two-week journey in midsummer. Really, Sera, you’re lucky I can stand at all.”

  “Well, will you be ill for long?”

  “I don’t think so,” I told her. “I’ll just have to drink all this water, and then, well…and then if all goes well, I should recover soon. It’s just thirst, Sera, thirst and tiredness and too much beer and not enough food. I’m from the steppe. I know what it is to be weak from those things.”

  “Well…well, I hope you recover soon. Will you be able to come to the feast tonight? You must put in an appearance, you know, in order to…Ivan Marinovich! What did you tell him when you were,” she made a face, “out drinking cheap beer with him this afternoon. Really, Valya, that’s hardly how I would advise you to court him!”

  “Don’t insult my cheap beer drinking when that’s what you brought me here to do. We all have our gifts, Sera, and drinking cheap beer in disreputable taverns with young princes out looking for a bad time is one of mine. And I told him and the other two with him that I was Nadezhda Marislavovna, a steppe woman and an Imperial messenger.”

  “Valya! What will we do now?! How can you possibly hope to court him after that? What were you thinking?!”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said, pressing the deliciously cool, damp cup against my forehead. “It was a good idea at the time, as you will soon discover.” I drank some more water. It was helping, but what I really needed to be doing was to be sitting in a cool, dark corner somewhere and drinking down this entire ewer, and maybe a second one as well, and then spending the rest of the evening running to the privy until all the beer and the poisons that built up from thirst had been washed out of me, and then by morning I would feel well again. As I had told Sera, every steppe woman knows what it is to get sick from thirst. Arguing with her and trying to rescue her from her own squeamishness was not going to help me recover, but I could see she was in no mood to be told to wait until I was feeling better, especially since I was the one who had asked to see her right away anyway.

  “Whatever information you may have gathered from those young men could hardly be worth jeopardizing the match we are attempting to make with Ivan Marinovich!”

  “I don’t think we’ve jeopardized it,” I said. I drank some more water, so much more delicious and refreshing than that horrible beer I had been swilling all afternoon. “Now he’s met me without knowing who I am, which is a decided advantage, and I think he even rather likes me—or rather, Nadezhda Marislavovna. I shall simply explain it to him in a way that will make him like me even more. I just have to come up with a story that will appeal to his young man’s sense of adventure and fun.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll think of something when my head stops hurting.”

  “Valya! You can barely even pour water! How are you going to think of something in time for the feast, and how are you going to come and make a good impression there! This whole expedition today was very ill-advised!”

  “I’m going to sit down,” I said, suiting my actions to my words and sitting down in a soft chair by the little table where my lovely, lovely ewer of water was standing. “And then I’m going to tell you what I discovered, and then I’m going to go to the privy, and then I’m going to go make myself presentable for the feast, and somewhere along the way a brilliant explanation that I can use with Ivan Marinovich will come to me, and all will be well. This is why you brought me
here, Sera, so trust me to know my business.”

  “Oh Valya!” But this time she said it with rueful affection rather than annoyance. “I guess I shall just have to trust you, won’t I?”

  “Someone should,” I said, drinking more water. “Especially my own sister.”

  “There are others who trust you, Valya, as you know very well. But so tell me, what did you find out?”

  “That the Srednekrasnovy are unpleasant, for a start.”

  “That I could have told you already,” she said, biting her lips to keep from smiling. “So who else was there, other than your future intended? Aleksey Aleksandrovich?”

  “The very one.”

  “And how is our dear Aleksey Aleksandrovich? As charming as ever?”

  “Even better,” I said. “And with a weak head for drink. I doubt we’ll be seeing him at the feast tonight. And also newly betrothed, and bitter about it.”

  “Many young men are bitter about their betrothals.”

  “True. But the important thing about this one is that he is marrying into a family with little noble blood, but excellent connections with the Eastern trade caravans.”

  “I thought he was marrying into a Krasna family…”

  “He is. One with excellent connections to the East, which in his mother’s eyes more than make up for their otherwise low position amongst her noblewomen. And his companion Denis Praskovyevich, Princess Srednekrasnova’s ward, is also recently betrothed. He, unlike Aleksey Aleksandrovich, will be marrying above his station, and he will be the one bringing Eastern connections to the match. His family are silk merchants. And then there was talk of a secret match being made for Ivan Marinovich, one that also had an Eastern connection, but, alas, I could not find out anything more about it.”

  “I fail to see the significance of any of this.”

  “Sera! How often do black earth princes marry Easterners?”

  “They’re not marrying Easterners, Valya: they’re marrying other black earth nobles who happen to have Eastern connections. There is much trade in the black earth district, Valya, and it’s not surprising that some of the eligible young princes would be marrying into trading families, and that some of those families should have Eastern connections.”

  “There’s something funny about it,” I insisted. “I know it. You said yourself, Sera, that trade has been disrupted of late. Why has it been disrupted? What’s happened?”

  “Oh, nothing unusual. Some of the caravans haven’t made it over the mountains, or haven’t had as much luck trading as they expected, or sold all their goods before they arrived in Krasnograd. It’s inconvenient, Valya, but it’s not strange: probably one year in three is a bad year for trade.”

  “I still think there’s something funny about it,” I repeated. “You asked me to find out what the black earth princesses are up to, and so far I can say that they’re marrying their children off to traders with Eastern connections. I’ll keep looking, Sera, but there’s something odd going on here.”

  “Oh, very well,” she said. “I won’t be able to dissuade you anyway, will I?”

  “No,” I told her. “Especially since you asked me to do this yourself. I’m onto something, Sera, even if I don’t know what it is yet.”

  “Are you sure it’s not just the beer talking?”

  “I didn’t drink that much beer. Five mugs is hardly enough to cloud my wits. I’m not Aleksey Aleksandrovich.”

  “Very well. Oh, but Valya! What about Ivan Marinovich?”

  “What about him? Other than it sounds like we’ll have to move fast to snatch him away from Princess Srednekrasnova or this Easterner, whoever she is.”

  “That’s what I mean. Do you think he will be unable to attend the feast as well?”

  “I doubt it. He drank much less than the rest of us.”

  “Well, that’s something, at least. Please, Valya, I know you think you know what you’re doing, but please, please, remember that this match is more important than whatever bits of gossip you might pick up in taverns. In the future, try not to do anything that will jeopardize it, do you understand? Have you thought of how you will explain yourself to him?”

  “You see, this is the problem,” I said. “You think I’ve jeopardized the match, and that I need to explain myself to him. That’s no way to approach the matter. I have to start from the assumption that I’ve only enhanced my value in his eyes.”

  “Well, and have you thought of how to do that yet?”

  “No, and the longer you pester me about it, the less likely I am to do so.”

  “Valya! This is important!”

  “Yes it is. Which is why I’m going to go wash and change and wait for a brilliant idea to hit me.” I stood up, still feeling weak but less on the verge of fainting, and went over to her and stroked her cheek. “Sera. Trust me, will you? I know what I’m doing.”

  She smiled sadly. “Oh Valya! When have you ever known what you’re doing?”

  “I know what I’m doing when it comes to saving you.”

  “And what about saving yourself?”

  “Not so much,” I admitted. “But perhaps that’s why you’re the Tsarina and I’m the Tsarina’s second-sister. I know my methods…I know pretty much everything I do is not what you would do, Sera, and I know I seem reckless to you, and by your lights I am reckless, but that’s how I do things. I’m a survivor and a winner, Sera, and we both have to trust in that.”

  She smiled again, still sadly. “At least you still have your confidence, Valya.”

  “People keep trying to chip away at it, but so far I’ve managed to beat them back. I’m good like that. It will all be all right, Sera, trust me. I’ll find out whatever those conniving black earth princesses are up to, and secure a good match with one of their sons, and Zem’ will continue to be filled with peace and plenty, and we’ll watch your daughter grow up to sit the Wooden Throne with all the grace and wisdom it deserves, and, well…I can’t think of anything else at the moment, but that seems enough, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh Valya!” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “I’m sorry if I was short with you before, Valya, and that I’m being so silly now. It’s my condition, you know: it affects me like that. And I find our situation…very trying. I try not to worry, but I feel that I must see you married before…well, soon.”

  “So don’t worry,” I told her. “Stay calm and take care of yourself and Zem’. That seems like a tall enough order for any woman, doesn’t it? Leave the scheming and the spying and the seducing to me.”

  “Oh Valya!” She started to laugh through the tears that were now running down her face. “What would I do without you?”

  “The gods only know,” I said. “Now wash your face and go have a lie-down so you’ll be fresh for the feast. I’m going to go do the same thing, only with rather more washing. Oh, and what will the children do?”

  “For the feast? Ruslan will be with me, at least at first, but a children’s table has been ordered in a separate chamber for all the young princesses and princes. Children don’t tend to handle grand feasts very well, you know. Mirochka can join them, if you don’t object. There will be a whole battalion of maids and guards watching over them.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “This will all go much more smoothly if I don’t have her hanging onto my hems at every step.”

  “I’ll tell the maids to send her to you in a bit, and to send someone to help her dress. I assume she has no fine gowns.”

  “I would say she does, but you would probably say she doesn’t.”

  “Then I’ll have someone send some suitable gowns along as well. Then she can be escorted to the children’s table by a maid, and you can concentrate on the task at hand. She will be perfectly well cared for, I assure you, Valya.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “And thank you.”

  “Think nothing of it. It is no more than her due in any case. Now go!” She made shooing motions at me. “Go and prepare! And when we next meet, may you reek less of chea
p beer! I must confess, Valya, it’s almost more than my new-mother’s stomach can stand.”

  “I’m gone, then,” I said, and, still wobbling a bit but fairly confident I would make it back to my own chambers unaided, I left.

  Chapter Six

  Once back in my own chambers, I visited the privy, drank even more water, this time with a little bit of bread, visited the privy again—recovering from thirst was inconvenient in that regard—and washed up as best I could. I couldn’t tell whether I still reeked of sweat and cheap beer. It didn’t seem so to me, but I had spent all day surrounded by the smell. I told myself that it was probably just Sera’s sensitive new mother’s senses, and that at the feast, where the hall would be filled with the scent of food and dozens of people, no one would notice.

  Two maids came in at that point, both of them bearing bundles of fine clothes and one of them with Mirochka in tow. There was a great deal of ecstatic talk about the fun she had had that day, the lessons she had learned, the games she had played, the ride she had gone on with the little tsarinoviches, and the promised festivities of the evening.

  “There will be a special children’s table in our own chamber, mama!” she told me rapturously. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Indeed,” I agreed, as the maids looked on with a mixture of impatience and indulgence. “We should get dressed now, Mirochka.”

  “Will you be there, mama?”

  “At the children’s table? No, my dove, it’s only for children. But if you like, I can come by and look in on you.”

  “And then I can show you everything!” she crowed, wriggling slightly in her excitement at the prospect of being the native guide to the fabulous children’s table of the Krasnograd kremlin.

  “That will be lovely,” I told her. “But we should get dressed now. Look, my dove, the maids have kindly brought you gowns to try on.”

  The sumptuousness of the gowns laid out before her filled Mirochka with trepidation that she would spoil them, but after some coaxing on the part of both me and the maids, she was convinced that she could wear them without ruining them, and that no one would scold her even if she did accidentally spill something on them or trip on the hem and tear it—she listed a number of calamities that could happen—and soon enough she was dressed in a charming sarafan with blue and green flowers embroidered all over it, and a matching undershirt. I was pleased to see that she had chosen for herself the least ornate of the gowns on offer. Krasnograd had not spoiled her utterly, at least not yet. Perhaps by our third day here…perhaps I should have more trust in my daughter’s native wit.