“As safe as Vasya was?”

“She left.”

Olga sat very still, said nothing.

Sasha went to kneel at her side. “Olya, I must. Father Sergei is the holiest man in Rus’. If there is a demon loose, then Sergei will know what to do. I do not.”

Still his sister said nothing.

Lower, Sasha said, “Dmitrii has asked it of me. As the price of his trust.”

His sister’s hands closed on her needles, crumpling the stockings. “We are your family, vows or no, and we need you here.”

Sasha bit his lip. “All of Rus’ is at stake, Olya.”

“So you care more for children unknown than for mine?” The strains of the past days were catching both of them.

“That is why I became a monk,” he retorted. “That I might care for all the world together and not be tied to a little corner of it. What has it all been for, if I cannot protect all of Rus’ instead of just a patchwork of fiefdoms, a few people among the many?”

“You are as bad as Vasya was,” Olga said. “Thinking that you can just shake off your family like a horse slipping its traces. Look where it got her. You are not responsible for Rus’. But you can help keep your niece and nephew safe. Do not go.”

“It is your husband’s task—” began Sasha.

“He will be here a day or a week, then gone again, on the prince’s work. Just as always,” said Olga furiously, with a catch in her voice. “I cannot tell him about Marya; what do you think he would do with a daughter so afflicted? Arrange at once, with generosity and foresight, to have her sent to a nunnery. Brother, please.”

Olga ran her household with a steady grip, but the last days had shown her limits; when the world moved outside her walls, there was very little she could do. Now she was reduced to pleading: a princess without power enough to keep her family safe.

“Olya,” Sasha said. “Your husband will see that there are men at your gate; you will be safe. I cannot—I cannot refuse the Grand Prince. I’ll come back as soon as I can, with Father Sergei. He will know what to do. About the demon—and Konstantin Nikonovich.”

While he spoke, she controlled her rage; she was the immaculate Princess of Serpukhov once more. “Go then,” she said with disgust. “I do not need you.”

He went to the door, hesitated at the threshold. “God be with you,” he said.

She made no reply, though as he went out into the dripping gray of early spring, he heard her breath catch once, as if she fought to control her weeping.

IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN in Moscow, and nothing moved but beggars, trying to keep warm in the spring damp, and the faint house-spirits, walking, stirring, whispering. For there was change in the air, in the water beneath the ice, in the damp wind. Chyerti murmured rumors to one another, much as folk did in the city all around.