Prince Ivan (12 page)

It was a wooden confection, a
kulich
feast-cake of softly weathered timber and gilded shingles, capped and capped and capped again with an extraordinary assembly of onion-shaped domes and cupolas covered in gold leaf that caught the low sun and reflected it back as a rich glow. Tsarevich Ivan sat astride his horse in the monastery gateway, staring like a peasant and not caring who might see him. Then he made the sign of the life-giving cross, slipped from Burka’s back, and went looking for the abbot.

Ivan was reluctant to leave the monastery. The brothers were if anything more eager for news than the most inquisitive peasant, due in part to the fact that they were supposed to distance themselves from the world beyond their walls. That distancing did not extend to ignoring the world when a part of it was in their guest annex.

They had nothing but good to say about Ivan’s brothers-in-law, and no criticisms of their sorcery. He found out why when the abbot gave him a guided tour of the remarkable church, whose interior was as richly carved and gilded as the outside was ornamented with domes. Everywhere, inside and out, he saw the signs of falcon, eagle and raven; in one place they were painted on the surrounding frames of ikons, in another they were carved into the wood of pillars, sheathed in gold leaf and crusted with jewels. This was their church, and that of their family for generations back, and though the abbot professed not to know anyone by the name of Strel’tsin, Ivan’s suspicions about the opportune visits of three successful suitors were confirmed.

He wondered what the High Steward had gained from it…

*

“…And these letters, Majesty.”

Tsar Aleksandr leafed through them. Simple sheets of paper, and elaborate rolls of parchment with pendent seals, but all with one thing in common – they had come from far away at a speed that mocked distance. He tapped one and looked at his High Steward. “How have you managed this, Dmitriy Vasil’yevich?”

Strel’tsin lowered his eyes and made a sound of modesty, but didn’t offer any explanation.

“Very well, forget that question. But answer me another one: why?”

This time the High Steward, First Minister and Court Wizard didn’t look away. Instead he gazed at his Tsar and said simply, “to know things, and to keep the realm safe. Knowledge is power, power is safety.”

Tsar Aleksandr nodded. “And my son? Will it keep him safe?”

Strel’tsin considered. “Perhaps, majesty. At least it will keep us informed…”

*

Ivan rode eastward, always eastward, for three days and three days and four, and at noon after ten days of riding he saw the kremlin and the palace he had long been expecting. It was all of deepest black, from the tiles of its roof to the stones of its walls, and its great gate, with nails of burnished iron, was painted the bright and glinting black of freshly shattered coal. Beside that gate stood a pine-tree, dark and tall, and in its highest branches perched the Raven, watching him.

Ivan reined Burka to a halt, but he neither laughed nor saluted, for in the shadows of that kremlin where not even the wind made a sound, none of those things seemed right or proper. Instead, he slipped from his high saddle, and bowed with all the courtesy he would give to any wise and noble Prince. Above him, the Raven spread black wings, and glided to the ground as silently as snow. It smote three times against the ground, and became a fine young man clad all in black, who regarded Ivan with dark, wise eyes before bowing in his turn.

“Long life to you, brother-in-law,” said Prince Mikhail Voronov. “God be between you and all harm.”

Ivan crossed himself piously, then laughed. “Excepting flies and mosquitoes, He has been.”

“Then I presume big brother Vasya has moderated the enthusiasm of his greeting since I last went visiting, and that little brother Fenya’s idea of fun no longer includes waiting until people taking steam drift off to sleep before he douses them with cold water.”

“All right, all right,” said Ivan, laughing again. “I survived them both. It’s always been said that the wise man knows his brothers.”

“Quite.” The Raven allowed himself a small smile, though he sounded drier than ever. “And the wiser man, his sisters. We had best go in at once to make your introductions, before Lenyushka grows tired of waiting and does something we’ll both regret. The moat,” he flipped a disparaging hand towards the still, dark water that reflected the sky from around the base of the kremlin ramparts, “was recently cleaned and restocked with fish by my vassals, but I have no desire to check their work in person.”

If Tsarevna Yekaterina had learned the use of soft words from her husband, and Tsarevna Yelizaveta had learnt boisterousness from hers, it was plain to Ivan from the first moment that they met, that Tsarevna Yelena had learnt a deal of cool dignity from Prince Mikhail the Raven. She was awaiting both of them in a great dark chamber that was larger than Tsar Aleksandr’s Hall of Audience in Khorlov, seated in a high-backed chair that wasn’t a throne yet became so from the manner of her sitting in it.

It was of carven ebony, figured with antique Chinese silver, and inlaid with patterns of white ivory cut from the curling tusks of ancient elephants that were, now and then, discovered in the frozen lands far to the east of the great steppes. Scholars believed that they had roamed the world in a time long gone, when Moist-Mother-Earth was warmer and tolerated stranger children. The elephants were gone now, so only their prized tusks remained as a memory of their passing, but Ivan knew well enough that strangeness and wonder remained on the face of the wide white world.

“Travelling becomes you,” said Yelena, not moving from where she sat in her tall chair as Ivan and Mikhail walked towards her. “I remember a beardless boy who wanted to become a man, and now the man stands before me.” She stood up with a rustle of the silver-shot black silk that she was wearing and paused a moment, looking at her brother. Then all her dignity went away as she flung her arms around Ivan’s neck to hug him tight. Only when she let go did a little touch of that coolness return, and even then it was fighting with the smile that came as she put one hand up to a cheek reddened by contact with the roughness of a nine-day beard. “And not
quite
beardless any more.”

She returned to her seat and appraised him with her head tilted thoughtfully to one side. “Yes indeed,” she said at last. “My little brother has grown up indeed. The others said as much, but I wanted to be sure. They were right. As am I. Travelling becomes you indeed.” Yelena patted again at the scrubbed patch on her face, and grinned in the way Ivan remembered best. “The beard doesn’t. Get rid of it. And Vanya…?”

“Lena?”

“Try our steam-house while you’re at it. You stink of hot horse—”

“And unbathed brother. Thank you, I’ve heard it before.” Ivan gave her his deepest and most elegant bow of salutation, although the effect was diluted by his biggest grin, the one that had annoyed all his sisters since they’d been children together since it made him look like one of Tsar Aleksandr’s less intelligent hunting-dogs.

“Ah yes,” said Yelena, resting her chin on one fist and smiling down at him, “the world may turn and snow may fall, but it’s good to know that some things stay the same.”

And thus put crushingly in his place, Prince Ivan went off for a bath.

*

Ivan might have thought that the kremlins of the other Princes had been sumptuous, but they were nothing beside the luxury and state in which Prince Mikhail Voronov and his wife Yelena kept themselves. There was no question that it was done merely to impress a brother-in-law so he would make a good report of how well the Tsar’s daughters were kept by their husbands. Mikhail the Raven lived in such splendour for no other reason than it was the way he wanted it.

His life was still more magnificent when set against the sombre majesty of the black and silver kremlin, enough that Ivan Aleksandrovich, a Tsar’s son and no stranger to rich surroundings, found it hard to believe his own blue eyes. Every once in a while he caught himself gaping at one or another rare object like a
kulak
just up from the country. When that happened he would smile weakly at himself, occasionally catching a glimpse of it in some finely polished surface or another, and pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary. It fooled no one, neither his sister nor the Raven nor the servants nor himself, but at least making the effort was respected.

Yelena and her husband paid him the courtesy at that first night’s dinner of discussing only inconsequential family matters. It was plain they both knew there was nowhere else for him to go after visiting with them, except to seek his bride, and it seemed they wanted to give him a little ease before continuing the instruction that the Falcon and the Eagle had begun. With that in mind and not needing to be told, it seemed to Ivan as though dinner on the second night came all too swiftly.

And with it came the lecture.

There was just one advantage about being given this particular lecture by this particular sister: Yelena, the youngest of the three, lacked Yekaterina’s and Yelizaveta’s practice in lecturing and badgering and generally ordering Ivan about. Her words lacked much of the bite her elder sisters would have put into them, and Ivan was grateful for it. Even so, what Lena lacked in cutting edge she more than made up with elegant phrasing and wise maxims so oblique that there were times Ivan wasn’t sure what she was talking about. It was like being back in the tutorial room with High Steward Strel’tsin, except worse – because he couldn’t work up a good dislike of Yelena as he could do with Dmitriy Vasil’yevich, and without that refuge he had no choice except to sit quietly and nod as if it all made sense.

There was a certain back-handed comfort about the carefully expressionless expression Prince Mikhail Voronov wore like a mask. It suggested the Raven Prince was occasionally just as overwhelmed by his dear wife’s powers of rhetoric, and he was grateful to sit back for once and let it all wash over someone else without the need to contribute intelligent remarks. He and Ivan blinked back to full awareness in the same instant, both prompted by the same words.

“So then, what do
you
think?”

It was a deadly question that might refer to almost anything Lena had said in the past quarter of an hour, and both Ivan and Mikhail were aware that neither of them could make anything like the right sort of response. They looked at one another and both could see the same thing: a moat newly refilled with deep, dark and extremely cold water.

It was Ivan who finally grasped the nettle in a way to cause least offence – unless Yelena was in a mood to
take
offence, and he knew from past experience that she could be very offended indeed. He raised his glass and stared through the wine within it at one of the candles burning down the centre of the dinner-table.

“I think it’s quite excellent,” he said. “A good colour, a fine flavour, and evidently as well-travelled as you say I am.”

There was an ominous little silence as Yelena looked at her brother, then her husband, and finally her brother again as the most likely source of any joke at her expense. Both Princes looked as innocent as Archpriests, but Tsarevna Yelena knew them far too well for that.

“You two,” she said, “bear watching.”

Ivan intensified his innocent expression until he felt he was going cross-eyed with the effort, and took great care not to say anything that might be misinterpreted. That meant he said nothing at all until Lena’s suspicion receded. It took a few minutes, and several sips of wine, but she smiled at last.

“All right, so I sound like our own dear tutor and High Steward. That’s enough to put anyone to sleep. At least you both did me the courtesy of staying awake even if you
weren’t
listening.”

Now that it was safe to do so, there was a quick round of throat-clearing and of shuffling amongst the wine-glasses before Ivan looked his sister in the eye again. “Liza told me all of what you’ve just said in half a dozen sentences, though of course I’m always glad to see people get good value from their words…”

It took a few minutes and more than a few words for Yelena to tell him what she thought of people in general and younger brothers in particular who thought they could make that sort of remark and get away with it. There were a few minutes more while Prince Mikhail the Raven soothed her ruffled feathers, although there was an amused tone in his voice that suggested he knew how much she was enjoying this little family fight. And finally there were several minutes after that while the remains of the present supply of wine was drunk up so the servants could clear the table and bring in fresh flagons.

Once that important business was taken care of, it was – inevitably – time for more important and more serious business. It began innocently enough, with Yelena and her husband the Raven gazing across the table with thoughtful eyes that looked as though they never, ever blinked.

Ivan had been subjected to such scrutiny before, most often by his father the Tsar. That didn’t necessarily mean he had to enjoy it, either then or now. Nonetheless he gave a good account of himself by sitting quite still and returning the examination through his own eyes, which could become cold and fathomless as blue mid-winter ice and, like his father, could outstare a cat.

Although Yelena eventually found more interesting things to look at on the table, it became eye-wateringly apparent that while Ivan could outstare the average palace feline eight times out of ten, Prince Mikhail Voronov was able to outstare a tiger cast in bronze. Ivan finally pulled his gaze away with an audible little grunt of effort like someone supporting a heavy weight for far too long, and only then did Mikhail the Raven sit back in his seat and pour more wine for his wife and for himself.