Prince Ivan (2 page)

The light coiled about the falcon, wreathing it in tongues of flame until the eyes of those who watched saw a bird whose wings and plumage were all made of that blue fire. A second time it struck against the ground, and then a third, and at that third the fire and the falcon faded clean away and became a fine young man. He was dressed all in blue, embroidered with silver, and where another man would trim his coat with fur, his coat was trimmed with a falcon’s feathers.

He stood quietly, his bright, sharp gaze fixed on Yekaterina as though there was no one else in the palace, and he continued to stand and gaze so while the room filled with guards who had come at the double when they heard the commotion. For their part Ivan and Katya stared back at him, unwilling to trust the evidence of their own eyes – except that the young man was there, and the great rent in the ceiling was there, with the sky plain to see beyond it, and as a consequence they had little choice in the matter except to believe exactly what they saw.

Ivan stood in front of his sister to defend her if it became necessary, even though the only weapon he carried, drawn in the instant of the falcon’s transformation, was the small knife that lived across the back of his belt, drawn in the instant of the falcon’s transformation. Now it was poised at the length of his arm and the level of his shoulder like a long sword, but Ivan was grateful it was no such thing, for only the shortness of the blade concealed how much his hands were trembling.

“You!” he snapped at the nearest guardsman. “Go summon the Tsar – and
run
!”

Mere minutes passed before the room beyond the garden was filled with every worthy or notable personage who had been anywhere within the kremlin palace.

Tsar Aleksandr and Tsaritsa Ludmyla, summoned by a breathless soldier all but steaming inside his heavy harness, hurried down from the small tower where they took refuge from such cares of the world as watching yet another swarm of would-be suitors devour the contents of the treasury.

High Steward Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin, summoned either by the uproar or the storm or by some Court Wizard’s premonition, came in from the library at a run, which was almost as astonishing as the strange young man’s appearance through the roof.

Guard-Captain Akimov, though unsummoned by anything at all, arrived just as quickly as the rest and had still found time for a helmet and coat of mail to supplement the sword he wore in all his waking hours.

It left very little room for the suitors, at least those of them who set curiosity above the finest table in Khorlov, but as many as could fit had squeezed their way through the doors and now filled every scrap of space. All of them looked at the young man and then at the riven ceiling, with just one exception. High Steward Strel’tsin looked first at the roof and his soft oath, either of one sorcerer recognizing another’s handiwork or of a High Steward reckoning up the cost of repairs, was clear even above the babble of many voices.

It was Ivan who finally stepped forward. In token of peace he lowered and sheathed his knife, then bowed warily but with good grace and courtesy. The stranger bowed in turn, lower than Ivan had done to give him that much more respect. Then he smiled.

“Health to you, Prince Ivan,” he said. “Before, I came as a guest. Now I come as a suitor, and I would wed with your sister the Tsarevna Yekaterina.”

Ivan gathered himself together at a good speed, considering the shocks of the past few minutes. “As to that, sir, it is a matter between you and she, and then between you and my father the Tsar.” He looked more closely at the young man’s face and frowned a little. “And I confess your face is familiar, from some feast or other of the many this year. Although—” he glanced pointedly up at the hole in the kremlin roof, and the blue sky beyond, “—your previous visit to Khorlov was less dramatic than this one, or I would have remembered it.”

“As for that, I was here. Now I am here again.”

“And who are you, for that matter?” Ivan’s head shifted slightly sideways at the tone of Tsar Aleksandr’s voice, and he felt the little hairs lift on the nape of his neck. From the sound of it his father had recovered from his surprise, and was torn between anger that yet again he should be put to expense over his daughter’s would-be husbands, and curiosity about what had happened to his palace roof. “Your name, young sir,” he said, all icy dignity, “and your rank.”

The young man smiled again, more broadly than before. His eyes were very bright and sharp indeed, missing nothing. It was certain he had observed what had roused the Tsar to be so brusque with his first words, for all that Aleksandr Andreyevich hadn’t demanded whether he carried sufficient wealth to pay for repairs. Ivan had seen that much, from long acquaintance with his father’s moods and ways of carrying himself.

“Majesty,” said the stranger, and bowed the lowest that he had yet done, “I am Fenist Charodeyevich Sokolov, Prince of the High Mountains, and my bride-price is already in your coffers. If she will have me, I wish to marry your daughter.”

“Send a servant to the treasury,” said the Tsar. “You will forgive our rude haste, Fenist the Falcon, sorcerer’s son and Prince of the High Mountains, but we are eager to learn if your silver exists. Surely your title does not. Dmitriy Vasil’yevich, have you heard of any such rank or style?”

“Without consulting my books—” the High Steward began, then fell silent as Tsar Aleksandr raised his hand.

“You’ve spent long enough with those books to guess,” he said. “So guess.”

“Then I would say no, majesty. Otherwise it seems certain that this young gentleman,” he managed to make the words sound faintly insulting, “would indeed have been here as a guest. Yet Prince Ivan has already said he has no memory of seeing him in Khorlov before.”

“And what,” said the Tsar to Prince Fenist the Falcon, “would you say about that?”

“I would say, Majesty, wait for the servant you sent to the treasury. There’s more to the world than is read in a book.”

“So and indeed. Then we wait.” Silence hung heavy as the seconds crawled by, for no one dared speak when the Tsar had plainly not finished. But his wife, the Tsaritsa Ludmyla Ivanovna, touched her husband lightly on the arm and without saying a word, showed him that there was another matter to bear in mind.

It was the look in the eyes of his daughter as she gazed at Prince Fenist the Falcon. Tsar Aleksandr’s breath caught in his chest, and a smile moved beneath his moustache before he hid it behind his hand. He had seen such a look in a young woman’s eyes before: in the eyes of her mother, his wife the Tsaritsa Ludmyla, when he first met her and knew they had fallen in love.

That same look was in the Tsaritsa’s eyes now, as she took his hand between hers. It had never left them, not since that first time, but only changed and softened and gentled during the passing of years. The Tsar smiled again, and this time didn’t trouble to hide it, as he decided not to wait for any report on what was or was not in the treasury.

But before Tsar Aleksandr could say anything, at that moment the servant returned, breathless and panting. “Majesty,” he gasped, “and my lord Steward, I returned without waiting for the Exchequer clerks to assay or to count, so I could tell you that… That there’s a stack of bullion on the treasury floor they say wasn’t there this morning! They estimate it must weigh almost six
poodiy
!”

Tsar Aleksandr blinked. “Prince Fenist,” he said, and inclined his head graciously, “two hundred pounds of silver is most generous. More generous, I fear, than any dowry I might have offered with the Tsarevna, had you not preferred the old ways. I am—”

“No, Majesty,” said the servant, interrupting despite a warning glare from High Steward Strel’tsin, “I didn’t say silver. I said bullion! It’s
gold
!”

Overhead, in perfect punctuation, the hole in the ceiling slammed shut like the lid of a box, and for the first time in his life Tsarevich Ivan saw his father completely nonplussed. The Tsar opened his mouth like a fish, then closed it again without any sound coming out. Even Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin could find nothing to say appropriate to the circumstances, for though all of Khorlov was familiar with magic to one degree or another, such lavish squandering of power and wealth left each and every one of them staring in wonder as to the source of it.

Only Ivan had begun to suspect something of the sort, thanks in large part to the
skazki
tales he had been told were such a waste of time. Only he was in sufficient command of himself to bow very slightly then burst out in a peal of laughter. It wasn’t because of the much-needed gold in the treasury, but at the perfect timing of the joke. Fenist the Falcon laughed with him, until everyone present was wiping the tears of delight from their cheeks.

Only Katya wasn’t laughing aloud. Instead she was gazing at Fenist with a small smile on her lips, and all of her soul in her eyes.

*

The Metropolitan Archbishop Levon Popovich was summoned to perform the wedding ceremony, at once and without the publishing of banns, for as Tsarevich Ivan was heard to observe, the town and the people of Khorlov had been awaiting such an event for quite long enough. The comment displeased the Archbishop – as Ivan had hoped it might – and he said several things about the bridegroom’s dubious arrival and still more dubious repair of the damage he had caused, things that were not in the best Christian traditions of forgiveness and tolerance. They were things that provoked Tsar Aleksandr to say a few words of his own, with such force that Metropolitan Levon completed the marriage service then took to his bed.

Thus he missed the sight of Tsarevna Yekaterina driving away with her new husband, very fine and splendid in a smart carriage that was all blue and silver, drawn by grey horses. It was perhaps just as well, for the carriage arrived in the same mysterious manner as Prince Fenist and his gold, and before the happy couple were a mile from Khorlov’s gates they had vanished the same way…

*

The events leading up to that wedding had first begun almost half a year before, when midwinter snow still lay deep and crisp and even – that is, unsettlingly deep and broken-glass crisp and treacherously uneven – around the walls of Khorlov. It was a season of the year to be indoors, or at least under the eaves, for the wolves were howling hungrily in the distant birch-woods and Tsarevich Ivan Aleksandrovich Khorlovskiy, who was old enough to know better, was amusing himself by dropping snowballs from the ice-encrusted ramparts onto the helmet-spikes of the sentries far below.

His lessons that morning had been political culture, social history and the theory of government for three hours, with questions at the end.
One
Thousand
and
One
Things
Every
Tsar’s
Son
Should
Know
. Ivan had survived without actually yawning full in Dmitriy Vasil’yevich’s face, even though when acting as Royal Tutor rather than High Steward or First Minister or Court Wizard, Strel’tsin taught politics the same way as a drip of water wears away a stone. Constant repetition was the standard approach to every subject, from Low Magic to the Reading and Writing of the Court Hand, and in almost fifty years he had seen little reason to vary his theme. Sooner or later his pupils made sure to remember what they’d been told, in the hope that by getting it right they could make him move on to some other subject.

Ivan had also received what he had come to recognize as the standard homily. “It Is Incumbent On Every Tsar’s Son to Consider the Wellbeing of the Tsardom and The Political Value of Marrying and Providing The Tsardom With an Heir…”

Praise
those
who
make
ink
and
the
scribes
who
use
it
,
they
must
love
him
, Ivan had thought a score of times, but being wise, hadn’t voiced once. Strel’tsin always contrived to get full value from his Capital Letters; there was Greek Byzantine blood in there somewhere among the icewater. Most children were simply told the approximate details of how they’d come to be alive and breathing on the earth: he was given the full political machinations as to
Why
.

But still,
Providing
an
Heir
was considered to be the best demonstration of faith that any Son and Ruler-to-Be could give to his Father and People. Hearing the same lecture for the third time in a week had raised Ivan’s suspicions that his free-and-easy life about the kremlin was about to end.

The arrival of a servant summoning him to the Hall of Audience confirmed them.

*

Khorlov’s Hall of Audience had been built a hundred years before, and the principal intention of the Great Prince who had it built was that it should impress those who stepped inside. Or, in the words and delivery of First Minister Strel’tsin, “
It
should
Impress
.”

That meant size, and it meant grandeur, and in providing both his architects and artists had surpassed themselves. It was large enough to contain two thousand people without making them feel cramped, and patterned mosaic-work on the floor where they would stand was bright with colour and the deeds of heroes. Their gaze was then led aloft by vaulted pillars inlaid with marble and semiprecious stones, toward a ceiling whose arches were intricately painted with scenes of hunting and war.