Except two. But one was her enemy, the other was far away, made nearly powerless by spring and by her own hand. The most she could hope for from him was a death without agony. She held that hope in a desperate grip as they prodded and shouted and chivied her toward the pyre. Across the ice, through a narrow corridor in the throng. Tears poured down her face now, from her own helplessness, and an involuntary reaction against their hatred.

Perhaps there was some justice in it. Again and again, she saw folk limping, burned, with bandages on their arms or faces. But I did not mean to free the firebird, she thought. I did not know what would happen. I did not know.

The ice was still hard, as thick as a man was tall, shining in spots where wind or sledges had swept away the snow. It would be a long time still until the river released its bonds. Will I live to see it? Vasya wondered. Will I feel sun on my skin again? I think not, I think—

The crowd ebbed and surged around the pyre. Konstantin’s golden hair turned gray-silver in the torchlight, his face a maelstrom of triumph, anguish, lust. His voice and his presence were undiminished, but now his power was divorced from the restraining impulses of religion. Vasya wished suddenly that she could warn her brother, warn Dmitrii. Sasha, you know what he did to Marya. Do not trust him, do not—

Then she thought: Sasha, where are you?

But her brother was not there, and Konstantin Nikonovich was bending his eyes down to hers for the last time. He had won.

“What will you say to the God you despise,” Vasya whispered, breathing short and thin with fear, “when you go into the darkness? All men must die.”

Konstantin only smiled at her again, lifted his hand to make the sign of the cross, raised his deep voice to intone a prayer. The crowd fell silent to hear him. Then he bent forward to whisper in her ear. “There is no God.”

Then they were dragging her up, and she was struggling like a wild thing in a trap: pure instinct, but the man was stronger than she was, and her arms were bound, the blood ran down her fingertips where the ropes bit into her thrashing wrists. They forced her up, and Vasya thought, Mother of God it is happening.

Dying, she thought, ought to bring some sense of completion, of a journey ended. But this was just being caught out of life, as she was, with all her sweat and tears and terrors, her wishes and regrets.

The cage was small enough that she would have to crouch inside it. A blade at her back prodded her forward. The barred wooden door slammed, was tied securely shut.

Vasya’s sight fractured with fear. The world became a series of disjointed impressions: the black, fire-lit mass of the crowd; a last glimpse of sky; and memories, of her childhood in the forest, of her family, of Solovey.