The Golden Horde (26 page)

“Were you not indeed…?” That Kolya should compound his errors by lying about them, and sound so righteous in the process, was enough to make the most patient parent angry. And right at the minute Ivan’s patience was stretched thin enough to snap.

“The child is speaking the truth,” said Amragan
tarkhan
, and folded his arms as though his pronouncement put an end to the matter. Ivan turned slowly from Nikolai to look at the Turk, not at all sure that he liked a Tatar envoy interfering in family matters as well as in all else. Yet the
tarkhan
had already proven himself more fair-minded than any such envoy needed to be, enough that he deserved a hearing.

“Explain.”

“I did not see him behind you,” said Amragan simply. “By its very nature such movement is slow, and not even the best hunter can sneak quickly. I would have seen your son. But I did not. I turned my head and the next minute, he was by your side. So.”

Ivan knew otherwise about how fast a really good hunter could move unheard, but he glanced at the Grey Wolf and said nothing. Regardless of Amragan
tarkhan
’s intercession on the boy’s behalf, he looked forward to hearing Nikolai explain how getting close enough to make his father almost jump out of his skin didn’t qualify as sneaking. Perhaps there might also be a few words about not eavesdropping on grown-up conversations, and most especially on not repeating those conversations in company. But all that could wait until later.

“All right,” said Ivan, determined to change the subject to another, any other, before his son reported more of what his over-sharp ears had picked up. “Then you weren’t sneaking. But where have you been all this time?” He looked about him, but saw no sign of his daughter. “You and Tasha both. Well?”

“Hiding.”

“I didn’t see you.” Then Ivan shook his head and held up his hand quickly to forestall what Nikolai might have said in reply to that, knowing full well that whether the boy meant it that way or not, the obvious reply would come out sounding impertinent. “Yes, I know, that’s what’s supposed to happen when people hide. But where?”

“That’s a secret,” said Nikolai firmly, a little too much so for his father’s taste. It didn’t matter that sharp back-talk from child to parent was something of a Khorlovskiy family tradition. Ivan had given his son one oblique warning by uttering the last potentially cheeky comment himself, and so disarming it, but if Kolya was too busy with other smart remarks to notice, then on his own head or backside be it.

Then Mar’ya Morevna reached out and took Ivan by the upper arm, looking to the casual eye no more than a light caress; but her hand briefly clamped onto his bicep with all the strength of a grip trained by wielding sword and mace and that heaviest of all weapons, the baton of command. Ivan looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

“Later, Vanya,” she said, and that was a command as well. “Not in front of the visitors.”

Ivan could see a strange look on her face; it was an expression he’d seen before, and not so very long before. This morning, in fact, on the city walls, when they were waiting for the Tatars to arrive outside the gates, and Volk Volkovich had been wearing it as well. They had both intended to tell him something, except that Amragan
tarkhan
and his men had interrupted before anything could be said. What the envoy commanded afterwards about loss of crown and title had driven the small domestic problem from Mar’ya Morevna’s head until now, but as Ivan got to his feet and began to make his excuses to the
tarkhan
, he felt very sure this ‘problem’ was neither domestic nor small.

“Enjoy the rest of the banquet,” he said. “With one thing and another, I find my appetite less than it was. And there are matters needing my attention, less as a Tsar than as a father.” He inclined his head slightly, not a bow nor even a salutation between equals, but the nod of one independent ruler to the servant of another. A highly-placed servant, of course, and worthy of respect, but a servant nonetheless. He was slightly amused, and slightly irritated, to see Amragan
tarkhan
return the same courteous gesture. For probably the same reason…

*

“Now, Kolya, tell your father what you just told me,” said Mar’ya Morevna, turning her reluctant son around by the shoulders and giving him a push in the small of the back. Ivan listened with as much interest as the day’s events permitted while Tsarevich Nikolai produced some muttered explanation about hiding whenever he wanted to where nobody could see. Though the child had a tendency to ramble off the subject before a nudge from his mother dragged him back again, there was enough to make Ivan feel more than a little bewildered by the time Nikolai was done.

“You hide
behind
things?” he asked, sorting furiously for sense while trying not to look as confused as he felt. “Like you did today, I suppose, out in the open meadow without a weed tall enough for a mouse to hide behind. Kolyushka, don’t play games. Your father isn’t in the mood for them. Where do you hide?”

“Behind things,” Nikolai persisted, waving his hand at the world in general as he tried not to repeat himself without enough vocabulary to say what he really meant. “In my secret hiding-place. The place behind…
things
. You know.”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“Ivan, you’re not being very helpful,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “The boy’s doing his best.”

“That best isn’t very good. Remind me to have a word with Strel’tsin and the other tutors. If my son and heir can’t express himself properly —”

“Nor could you, in this case at least. And I’m not so sure I can myself.”

Ivan’s eyebrows went up.
Magic
? He mouthed the word silently, and Mar’ya Morevna nodded. “All right, Nikolai, stop trying to tell me. Show me instead. Hide yourself for, oh, a count of five. Starting now.”

Kolya brightened up at once. “Yes, Papa,” he said, grinning. “Watch this.”

There was nothing to watch, because there was a sound like a small handclap and Prince Nikolai Ivanovich wasn’t there. Ivan jerked out of his chair so hard that it fell over with a resounding bang, and the only other sound was that of Mar’ya Morevna counting, “… Three. Four. Five …” And Nikolai was back, standing not quite in the same place but with exactly the same grin, and otherwise looking as though he’d never been away.

“
Gnah
?” said Tsar Ivan usefully and sat down hard on a chair that, like his son, wasn’t where it should have been. Once Kolya and Mar’ya Morevna disentangled him and soothed his ruffled pride – which if they but knew it, was the least of Ivan’s concerns – Ivan looked at the seven-year-old boy with the same apprehension he normally reserved for such books as
Enciervanul
Doamnisoar
, ‘On the Summoning of Demons.’ It was hardly the proper way for a father to regard his son, but just for that few seconds before he pulled himself together, Ivan found it entirely correct.

“As far as I can understand it, Vanya,” said Mar’ya Morevna, “we’ve got two children who don’t need spells to use the Gates.”

“How?” Ivan said, then made a quick ‘shush’ gesture with his hand. “Wait for that a moment. Nikolai, go find Tasha; bring her back here. And,” he said quickly, “do it the ordinary way.” That hastily-inserted condition made Kolya look as droopy as a water-spaniel kept from jumping in the river, but he nodded obediently and trailed out of the room. When the door closed behind him, Ivan turned back to Mar’ya Morevna with a grin very like that of his son. “Now again, how?”

“I don’t know the
how
of it, not exactly,” said Mar’ya Morevna, “and I’d rather not guess. Nikolai wasn’t very clear —”

“I noticed.”

“— But it seems to come as naturally as walking and talking to both of them. And the
why
is more obvious. I told you a long time ago, I thought the twins were conceived in the Summer Country.”

“That night in Vasilisa Kurbit’yevna’s hunting lodge. I remember.” His grin widened briefly. “What with worrying about Firebirds, and falling in with Teutonic knights, and falling out with Tsar Vyslav Andronovich, that was the only night for nearly two weeks when we did anything more than fall into bed like corpses into a grave.”

“It made my calculations easier, at least,” said Mar’ya Morevna. She gave Ivan a thoughtful look. “Both of us have had to work hard to gain ability in the Art, but we can do it.”

“One of us had to work a good deal harder than the other. It certainly wasn’t as easy as… as walking and talking.” He shook his head in disbelief. “They learnt that quicker than I expected, too.”

“I should have realized, and put the two facts together sooner than I did.”

“What good would it have done, expect maybe give us this present surprise two years ago? Don’t worry about it. Unless,” Ivan leaned forward, frowning slightly, “unless they might come to some harm from all of this. Passing through the Gates is dangerous.”

“How would we stop them? Make them promise? And how would we make sure the promise was being kept? I’m not casting doubts on their honesty, Vanya, but they’re only seven years old, and you know well enough by now what they’re like.”

“The attention span of a gnat.” Ivan chuckled. “Just like me at that age, if you believe my dear sisters.”

“It’s good to know that children take after their parents,” said Mar’ya Morevna, which told Ivan something about what she’d been like as a little girl. “Yes. They’d be oh so careful for about a week, then one of them would forget, and once the promise was broken even by accident, they wouldn’t keep it any more.”

“And it would go back to being a secret. What made you guess?”

“On the battlements this morning. When Natasha threw that punch and missed. She doesn’t usually miss, but this time Nikolai saw it coming and – well, moved out of the way.”

“I said he would be good with a sword, didn’t I? Was I wrong?”

“Not really. He will be, if he doesn’t grow up thinking that gives him an unfair advantage. But you saw what your eyes expected to see, which was a nimble sidestep. Volk Volkovich and I saw something we
didn’t
expect to see. There was no stepping involved.”

“Quite so …” Ivan looked up out of his own thoughts and found Mar’ya Morevna staring at him. “Yes?”

“Why don’t you go ahead and say it out loud?”

“Say what?”

“‘
It’s
a
pity
they
weren’t
older
,
but
we
can’t
involve
mere
children
.’ Or something like that.”

“Older …?” He stared at her without comprehension for a second, then realized what she meant. “No. Oh, no, no, never. I wasn’t thinking that at all.” Ivan hesitated, pondering about the rightness of what Mar’ya Morevna was so plainly not suggesting. “Not until now, anyway.”

“Then what
were
you thinking?”

“That the children could escape from Sarai even if we couldn’t. Am I so bad a father, or so ruthless a Tsar, that you thought otherwise?” Mar’ya Morevna looked a little ashamed of herself.

“Not as ruthless as I am. I thought of it first.”

“It? Is your ‘it’ the same as mine? And would it put them at any more risk to steal back the Great Crown – or something that looked like it – than for us to leave it with the Khan?”

“Ivan, no! They’re only children!”

“They’re your children, and mine. That’s enough to put them in danger whether they come with us or stay here. And if what you said about all the crowns of Russia together in one place is even half right, they might not live to become older children. Unless we do something. Anything.”

“To even think like that, you’ve become ruthless indeed.”

“You’re wary of the Gates. I’m downright scared of them. But the children… You heard Kolya. It’s no more than a secret place to hide in. He’s less afraid than I was when I found my secret hiding-place all those years ago. One of the old storage cellars behind the kitchens, that was. Its lock was broken and – well, never mind.” Ivan gave Mar’ya Morevna a sidelong glance that was half amused and half abashed. “Wherever he’s going, it doesn’t have damned big spiders living in it.”

“Were they really damned big ones?” asked Tsarevna Anastasya from the doorway, which had opened silently while he was speaking. “With horrible damned big long legs?”

Ivan groaned softly. Now it had been drawn to his attention in a way not even a busy and recently conquered Tsar could overlook, he noticed more and more that his son and daughter had no need of sorcery to appear in places and overhear things they weren’t supposed to. “You shouldn’t talk like that, little mouse. It’s not ladylike.”

“But Mama —” came the inevitable reply.

“Mama is grown up,” said Mar’ya Morevna severely. “And grown-ups can do things that children aren’t allowed to. Nikolai Ivanovich, you be quiet! Never mind what else! Just remember that
children
can do things that grown-ups aren’t allowed to any more. When did you last see me dropping a snowball on someone coming through the kremlin gate?”