Page 24 of Spinning Silver
Magreta and I sat together in my father’s study, waiting to be summoned.
I could hear the music from downstairs already, but he meant the evening’s entertainment to go on for a while before I made my entrance, not grand but subtle, coming in quietly to sit at my stepmother’s side.
Magreta was still sewing, talking brightly of all the linen goods that were yet necessary to my bride’s chest, except her voice trailed away into silence for a few moments whenever I moved my hand and her eyes caught on the silver ring.
When Galina had come to tell me to go wait in the study, even she had paused and looked at me, faintly puzzled.
I didn’t try to sew. I had a book from off my father’s shelf in my lap, a rare pleasure I couldn’t enjoy.
I stared down at the painting of the storyteller and the sultan, a thready shadow-creature taking shape out of the smoke of the brazier between her weaving hands, and I couldn’t even reach the end of a sentence.
Outside the window I could see the snow still coming.
It had begun to fall suddenly late this afternoon, very thick, as if to taunt me by making impossible an already-absurd escape.
A roaring of laughter came faintly up through the floor, and almost covered the rattle of the doorknob, but I heard, and as it turned, I folded the book shut in my lap with my ringed hand beneath it, hidden, swiftly.
It was too early for my father to have sent anyone up for me, and somehow it didn’t surprise me to see Mirnatius standing in the doorway, alone in the hallway, slipped away from the feasting.
Magreta went silent and rabbit-frozen next to me, her hands closed over her work.
My veil wasn’t even drawn over my face yet, and we were alone, so she should have chased him off.
But of course, he was the tsar, and if he were not the tsar, she knew what else he was, too.
“Well, well,” he said, stepping into the room. “My little protector of squirrels, grown less little. I do not think we can call you beautiful, alas,” he added, smiling.
“No, Sire,” I said. I couldn’t make myself drop my eyes.
He was beautiful, and even more seen close: a soft sensual mouth with his beard trimmed short like a frame around it, and his unearthly eyes like jewels.
But that wasn’t why I kept my eyes on his face.
I was simply too wary of him to look away, the rodent watching the pacing cat.
“No?” he said softly, and took another step.
I rose from my chair so he wouldn’t loom over me. Magreta, trembling, stood up next to me, and when he began to raise his hand towards me, she blurted, “Will Your Majesty have a glass of brandy?” meaning the bottle on the sideboard, with its cut-crystal glass, in a desperate defense.
“Yes,” he said at once. “Not that. The brandy they are serving downstairs. Go and fetch it.”
Magreta locked in place beside me, her eyes darting sideways. “She is not permitted to leave me alone,” I said.
“Not permitted? Nonsense. I give her permission. I will guard your honor personally. Go, ” he told her, the command brushing against me like a burning iron fresh from the fire, and Magreta fled the room before it.
I pressed my fingers tight on either side of my ring as he swung his eyes towards me, drawing its cold into me, gratefully.
He took another step and gripped my face in his hand, jerking it up.
“So what did you tell your father, my brave grey squirrel, to make him think he could force me to take you to wife?”
He thought my father meant blackmail, then. “Sire?” I said, still trying to cling to wooden formality, but his fingers tightened.
“Your father is spending gold like water on entertainments, and he has never been loose with his purse strings before.” He stroked his thumb over the line of my jaw, leaning in; I thought I could smell the sorcery in him, a sharp pungent mix of cinnamon and pepper and resin of pine, and deep below it burning woodsmoke.
It was as lovely and seductive as the rest of him, and I felt as though I could choke on it.
“Tell me,” he said softly, the words heating my face like breathing onto a cold pane of glass in winter to cover it with fog.
But my ring stayed cold, and the flush faded out of me. I didn’t have to answer him. But not answering—that would be its own answer. “Nothing. I wouldn’t have,” I said, giving him that much honesty, trying to pry him off me.
“Why not? You don’t want to be tsarina, with a golden crown?” he said mockingly.
“No,” I said, and stepped back from him.
Surprise loosened his fingers and slipped them off my face.
He stared at me, and then a terrifying eagerness rose up through his face, distorting the beauty for a moment like the ripple of the air above a bonfire.
I thought there was almost a red glow in his eyes as he took another step towards me—and then the door opened and my father came into the room, alarmed and also angry: his plans were being spoiled, and he could do nothing to stop it.
“Sire,” he said, and his lips thinned when he saw that my hand was concealed beneath my book. “I was just coming to bring Irina downstairs. You are kind to have looked for her.”
He came to me and held his hand out for the book, and reluctantly I gave it to him, the silver of my ring flashing cold between us as he took it.
I looked at Mirnatius, and waited grimly for a frown of puzzlement to come into his face, to see the magic catch him, but his eyes were already alight with hunger and pleasure, and his expression did not change at all.
He was watching me, only me, and he had not a glance to spare for the ring.
After a moment’s longer staring, he blinked once, that heat-shimmer glaze clearing from his eyes, and turned to my father.
“You must forgive me, Erdivilas,” he said after a moment.
“Your words kindled an irresistible desire in me to see Irina again, without the noise of the hall between us. You have not spoken falsely, at all. There is indeed something most unusual in her.”
My father paused, surprised; as if the rabbit had suddenly turned and leapt at the hound. But his determination carried him past this unexpected moment. “You honor my house by saying so.”
“Yes,” Mirnatius said. “Perhaps she might go down without us. I think we should discuss her marriage at once. She is destined for a very particular bridegroom, I think, and I must warn you that he is not inclined to patience.”