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Stasya was too stunned by the priestess’s declaration to say anything in response, but Pallavi answered for her. “I’m sorry, but you think Stasya did what?”
“Before she came, there was clearly no disease within the camp. Then she came, and our king and all his household died. Praise be the Light for showing us the way.” The priestess took the Ptitska from a hempen cord around her neck and lifted it to her lips.
“That’s absurd,” said Pallavi. “If she brought the plague, then how have I not managed to catch it? I’ve spent more time with her than the king or the queen ever did.”
The priestess sniffed and clutched her Ptitska tighter. “Everyone knows angels of Earstien cannot be touched by sickness.”
“Of course they can be,” said Pallavi. “Of course we get sick. You wouldn’t believe the cold I had last winter.”
The priestess and the Sahasran hillichmagnar bickered back and forth in this way for several minutes, getting gradually lost in the minutia of Raskolnik church doctrine and Pallavi’s various health problems.
As they argued, Stasya tried to consider the issue dispassionately. She had survived the plague, but what if the thing that caused the disease—whether insects or vapors or humors—was something that she could still carry and convey to another person, so that person became sick? She didn’t think it seemed likely, but she couldn’t absolutely rule it out. On the other hand, she knew very well from her time at the Nivian hospital that no one came down with the disease immediately on meeting someone who had it. It took some time, usually a day or two. The king had collapsed only a few hours after he had returned from the camp of the Arkadi clan. There simply hadn’t been enough time for her to have spread the plague to him, even if she had somehow been carrying it with her.
She interrupted Pallavi, who was now talking about an infected hangnail she had once had, and pointed out to the priestess this problem with the timing of the illness.
Some of the people in the crowd nodded thoughtfully, clearly impressed with Stasya’s logic, but then the priestess said, “The pestilence does not wait upon the comings and goings of men and women. It is a judgment of Earstien.”
“Well, that’s one theory,” said Pallavi, rolling her eyes. “Perhaps you could ride over to the Arkadi clan camp and see if people are dying of the plague there. Would that make you happy?”
“And what would that prove?” answered the priestess. “Earstien visits his judgments upon men in his own time.”
“What exactly do you think Earstien was judging the king for?” asked Pallavi.
There was a gasp from the crowd, and some of the people made a gesture like they were throwing something over their shoulders. It was, as Stasya well knew, the reaction of pious Raskolniks to impiety or blasphemy.
“Perhaps the king was judged for permitting sin to go unchecked and unchallenged in his own camp,” answered the priestess.
There was a rumble of general agreement from the watching crowd.
Stasya thought of the plague hospital back in Nivia. If the plague was a punishment for sin, then why had she lived, while children as young as two or three had died? She didn’t think she was a particularly sinful person, but surely those children must have been more innocent than she was. And what about Queen Oksana? What sins had she supposedly committed that she had deserved to die the way she had? If the plague were a judgment, then it was not the judgment of a loving deity. It was the sort of thing that might come from some of the nastier, more capricious Immani gods.
The priestess continued. “When there is sin in a clan, what does the Pravilnih Slova tell us to do?”
“Cast it out!” cried one man.
“Shun it,” said a woman.
“Destroy it,” said the girl who had fetched Stasya and Pallavi from their tent.
“Exactly,” said the priestess, with an approving nod at the girl. “And I think we all know where the sin can be found in our camp.”
It took a moment before Stasya realized that everyone in the crowd was now looking at her and Pallavi. “You mean me?” she gasped. “What in the name of the Blessed Daryna Matushka do you think I did?”
“The Pravilnih Slova tells us of the followers of the Dark One,” intoned the priestess. “It tells us of the one they called ‘Kovarni,’ the Cunning One, and all his disciples. It tells us how they misused magy.”
“When have you seen Stasya use black magy?” demanded Pallavi.
“How could we see that which is always done in secret?” the priestess shot back. “And there is more to the story.” She looked around at the crowd, a faint smile on her lips. “It was sung by the poets of the Western Mountains how the disciples of the Cunning One perverted their natures, and practiced lustful, wicked acts upon each other, men with men, and women—”
At this, Pallavi burst out laughing. “Are you seriously suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“I dare you to deny it,” said the priestess.
“I’ll deny it all day, if you like,” Pallavi retorted. “I’ll deny it in ten languages. I can set my denials to music, if that would do the trick. I would never do anything of the sort, and even if I were going to, Stasya isn’t really my type.”
Stasya, who had led a more sheltered life than she sometimes liked to admit, wasn’t quite sure what the priestess and Pallavi were talking about, but she gathered that she was being accused of some kind of sexual sin. She considered telling the crowd that she had never been touched by a man. But it wasn’t quite true, and the logical part of her mind told her that this wasn’t an argument that could be won by getting into a fight about technicalities.
Instead, she decided to take what she hoped was the high road. “Do you not believe that we are angels of Earstien?” she asked the crowd. “Can you really believe that we are capable of such sin?”
“The Dark One himself was an angel, too, before his fall,” said the priestess. “As was Kovarni, the Cunning One, and all the other disciples of evil. As were many of the women who followed them.”
The faces in the crowd were now twisted and angry. These people had all cheered a few days earlier when Fyodor had called Stasya “the flower of all our hearts.” Now they were barely recognizable in their fury.
“You can’t be serious,” said Stasya. “You all know me.”
A furious muttering tore through the crowd, which became a grumbling, and then shouts and calls of “Drive them out!” and “Go away!”
Stasya raised her hands to call for silence, but no one paid any attention to her. Something small and fast flew by her head. And then something clattered away on the ground to her right. Pallavi grabbed her arm and started pulling her away. “Let’s go. Now.” Then Stasya realized what was happening; the surviving clansmen and women were bending over, searching for stones on the ground. A rock the size of a walnut stung the back of Stasya’s hand, and when she looked at the crowd, she saw the girl who had summoned them, wearing an evil, self-satisfied grin. Pallavi pulled on her arm again, and this time she did not resist. Pallavi sent a fireball over the heads of the villagers, and although that did not drive them off permanently, it bought the two women enough time to saddle their horses and leave.
“What will become of Vasily?” asked Stasya, as they spurred their horses to a fast trot down the river path.
“We will see him sooner or later, I’m sure,” answered Pallavi. “Either this century or the next.”
But as soon as they were out of sight of the angry mob, she sent off a bird to let him know they had left, and to warn him to avoid the former royal camp.
They lost the tent in their hasty retreat, but they were able to get away with all their clothes, which was to say all of Pallavi’s clothes, as Stasya still had none except what she had borrowed. There was a bag full of tins and bottles, which Pallavi was very careful of, and which Stasya guessed contained medicines and salves. There were a few books, a bag of dried meat, and some wine. And the two horses, as well.
All morning and late into the afternoon, Stasya fumed over what had happened. She couldn’t believe that her own people had driven her off like that. Every mile or so, she thought of something else that she ought to have said to them—either a clever argument that would have convinced them that she and Pallavi were not evil, or a devastatingly nasty reply that at least would have given her some personal satisfaction.
Her mother had been fond of saying, “A scolding won’t hang on your collar.” In other words, unfair criticism and slander were easily brushed aside. Stasya had never found that to be particularly true, though.
“They should not have treated us that way,” she said. “You are a guest, and Loshadnarod is my home.”
“No, my dear girl,” said Pallavi. “We are hillichmagnars. We have no home. Not even Diernemynster, really.”
They rode together in silence until the moon had risen, and then they stopped to have a quick bite of dried meat and to water the horses. “Where do we go now?” asked Stasya. It was only after she said it that she realized she had instinctively treated Pallavi as the leader.
“I am going to Leornian,” said the Sahasran woman. “I am going to see what the duke wants with hillichmagnars.”
“But you and Vasily both said you didn’t want to go there,” Stasya pointed out. “Why don’t we go find Vasily?”
“And be chased out of another camp? No thank you. These people are going mad with superstition. I only thought Leornian was a bad choice when it looked like we had better ones. Now it looks like Leornian may be our best option. We might as well go hear the duke out. What can it hurt? At the very least, we will get some fresh food and a good night’s rest in a real bed.” Pallavi beamed. “So how about it? Will you come with me?”
Stasya looked around at the rolling fields of high grass, waving and flowing in the night breeze. She wasn’t even sure where Chief Yakov’s camp was. And even if she found it, Pallavi was right; the Loshadnarodskis were becoming dangerously paranoid. Vasily could look after himself, but Stasya hardly knew anything about how to fight. If she were caught somewhere alone, what could she do? No, better to stick with Pallavi. Even if the woman was annoying, she knew how to shoot fireballs, and that made her the sort of woman who was good to have on your side.
Off to the west, the stars began to disappear, bit by bit, and soon there were flashes of lightning. Yet another big summer storm was blowing in. It would probably be on top of them by midnight, and Stasya couldn’t stand the thought of spending yet another stormy night alone on the high plains.
“Very well,” said Stasya. “I will go with you at least as far as Leornian.”