“Go back to winter then,” she heard herself saying, her voice hoarse. “I am taking the road through Midnight to find my brother-in-law, if he is alive. I am going to help Dmitrii Ivanovich win his war.”

Morozko stood still. Slowly the anger and confusion and desire faded from his expression. “Vladimir Andreevich is alive,” he said only. “But I do not know where he is. Vasya—I cannot walk this road beside you.”

“I will find him,” said Vasya.

“You will find him,” Morozko said, with weary certainty. He bowed, remote, any feeling locked deep in his eyes. “Look for me at the first frost.”

He slipped out of the bathhouse like a wraith. She hurried to follow, angry still, but not wanting him to go like that, with a wound unhealed between them. She’d pitched him against his own nature, a foe that was too great.

He went out into the dooryard, and raised his face to the night. For an instant, the wind was the true deep wind of winter that freezes the breath in your nostrils.

Suddenly he turned back to her, and the feeling was there again in his face, as though he could not help it.

“Be well, and do not forget, Snegurochka,” he said.

“I will not. Morozko—”

He was only half there; the wind seemed to blow through him.

“As I could, I loved you too,” she whispered.

Their eyes met. Then he was gone, gone on the rising wind, blown through the wild air.

25.

The Road Through Darkness

SASHA AND VASYA LEFT JUST before midnight.

“I am sorry,” Sasha said to Olga before they left. “For what I said, at our last parting.”

Olga almost smiled, but the corners of her mouth turned down. “I was angry too. You’d think I’d be used to farewells, brother.”

“If it goes ill for us in the south,” said Sasha, “you mustn’t stay in Moscow. Take the children to Lesnaya Zemlya.”

“I know,” said the Princess of Serpukhov, and brother and sister exchanged grim glances. Olga had lived through three sieges; Sasha had been fighting Dmitrii’s battles since the two were scarcely out of boyhood.

Watching them, Vasya was reminded, uncomfortably, that though she had seen much, she had never seen war.

“Go with God, both of you,” said Olga.

Vasya and Sasha slipped out of Moscow. Below the gate, the posad slept. The swift, cold wind had driven out the reek of sickness. At least the dead would lie quiet.

Vasya led her brother into the woods, to the same place where Varvara had first sent her through Midnight—how long ago had it been? Two seasons had passed in Rus’ since that night, but Vasya had lost count of the days she’d lived herself.

Somewhere in Moscow, a bell rang. The city walls loomed white beyond the trees. Vasya took her brother’s hand. It was midnight. The darkness took on a wilder texture: a new menace and a deeper beauty. She stepped forward, pulling her brother with her. “Think of our cousin,” she said. One step, two, and then Sasha let out a soft, shocked breath.