“Sit down, my son,” said Sergei. “It is not a time for anger.”

“Are we then to make a deal with a demon? It is sin, God will be angry—”

Sergei said reprovingly, “It is not for men and women to presume what the Lord wishes. That way lies evil, when men put themselves too high, saying, I know what God wants, for it is also what I want. You may hate the one she calls the winter-king, for the way he looks at your sister. But he has not harmed her; she says he has saved her life. You could not do as much for her.”

That was severe, and Sasha flinched. “No,” he said, low. “I could not. But perhaps he has damned her.”

“I do not know,” said Sergei. “We cannot know. But our business is with men and women: the helpless, and the afraid. That is why we are going to Moscow.”

Sasha was silent a long time. Finally, wearily, he threw a log on the fire and said, “I do not like him.”

“I fear,” said Sergei, “that he does not care in the slightest.”

VASYA WOKE IN BRILLIANT DAYLIGHT. She leaped to her feet and lifted her face to the sun. Out of the country of Midnight, at last; and she hoped never to take that dark way again.

For a moment, she enjoyed the warmth. Then the heat began to gather, inexorable. Sweat slid between her breasts and down her spine. She was still wearing the wool shirt from the house at the edge of the lake, though now she wished for linen.

Her bare feet drank coolness from the dew-damp earth. Morozko was only a few paces off, grooming the white mare. She wondered if he’d kept near them that night, or if he’d gone wandering, touching the summer earth with strange frost. The monks still slept, in the easy way men sleep in daylight in summer.

Morozko’s fur and embroidered silk was gone, as though he could not maintain the trappings of power in the harsh light of day. He might have been any peasant, feet bare in the grass, except his steps starred the earth with frost, and the cuffs of his shirt dripped cold water. A little coolness hung about him, even in the humid morning. She breathed it in, comforted, and said, “Mother of God, the heat.”

Morozko looked grim. “That is the Bear’s work.”

“In winter, I have often wished for mornings like this,” Vasya said, to be fair. “To be warm all the way through.” She went over to stroke the white mare’s neck. “And in summer, I remember how suffocating such mornings are. Do you get hot?”

“No,” he said shortly. “But the heat tries to unmake me.”

Remorseful, she put a hand on his, where it moved on the mare’s withers. The connection between them flared to life, and his outline looked a little less vague. His hand curled around hers. She shivered, and he smiled. But his eyes were far away; he could not enjoy the reminder of his own weakness.