Work Text:
When I smothered to ashes the fire monstrosity that had been hiding inside the tsar’s belly, I was acting purely on instinct: I simply had to do something before it could find another way to hurt us all. I witnessed the tsar gaze adoringly into his tsarina’s eyes, and I faded quietly into the background, the way us servants do.
I hadn't spared the incident another thought, eager to forget the bone-deep horror of that night, so I was caught by surprise when the following day I was summoned to the grand room.
The tsarina was standing by the window, resplendent in her silver crown and dress. She seemed to be enjoying the warm spring breeze, and I remembered that was something she used to do upstairs in her old rooms, when she’d been just our duke’s useless daughter.
“Milda,” the tsarina said, and I was sure she hadn’t known my name before.
My shoulders stiffened; it was only that forewarning that allowed me not to scream when she continued: “The tsar and I would like to thank you for the great service you did us yesterday. Your courage and dedication do Lithvas proud. As a reward for your service, I’d like to appoint you as my personal maid.”
I curtseyed deeply, doing my best to hide my face. “You honour me beyond merit, Your Majesty,” I said. “I’ll do everything in my power to repay your trust.”
You do not say no to a tsarina, not at least if you have a lick of sense. I’ve always taken pride in having a lot of it, so off to Koron with them I went, only a few days later.
It was a good story—the poor scullery-maid is rewarded for her bravery by the noble tsarina!— but of course, it wasn’t the real story. If the tsarina had wanted to reward me, she wouldn’t have taken me from my family and friends and brought me to live in a palace filled with vapid vipers.
The real story was about making sure I wouldn’t tell about the tsar being possessed by a demon.
Before leaving I had thought hard about that—whoever would believe the word of a simple scullery-maid?—but then I remembered that the tsar’s mother had been burned for sorcery, and that rumours had it our Duke already had an angry prince on his hands.
So I had gone quietly, old Magreta teaching me my new duties with as much kindness as she could afford, considering she must have been set to keep an eye on me.
Her part in this, I did not understand. It was common knowledge that Magreta loved the tsarina as her own, but why didn’t she want better for her than a witch’s son, and a formerly possessed one at that?
It couldn’t have been for his beauty, as extraordinary as it was. I’d half expected him to turn out to be ugly, now that the demon was out of him, but with his careless disregard for his own nudity I’d had plenty of opportunity to see for myself otherwise.
Yet it was obvious to anyone that paid attention that the tsarina wasn’t getting anything out of that beauty: the tsar slept in his own chambers, and didn’t visit her at night at all.
They did, however, take the utmost care that nobody else but Magreta and myself was around often enough to notice that, and that was my cue to keep my eyes very firmly open.
I had been content in the kitchen, back in Vysnia; the work had been hard, but fair, and the Duke was a severe man, uninterested in any of us serving girls—an excellent quality in a master. I’d had an understanding with one of the footmen there, a solidly-built young man named Dovydas: we took pleasure from one another, always making sure I wouldn’t get with child. It wasn’t serious, neither of us able to afford a marriage or a house of our own, but it worked for us, and was uncomplicated.
When I started watching closely, I could see that what was between the tsar and the tsarina was as far from uncomplicated as it could be.
It was the little things that gave them away all the time: one morning, about to climb the sledge, the tsarina stumbled, but the tsar was quick enough to grab her around the waist and steady her against himself. “Careful,” he said, with that beautiful voice of his. “If you fall, you’ll need to change, and you don’t want to miss the meeting with Mykolas to lower those taxes, do you?”
He could have been speaking gibberish; the tsarina had flushed, and was staring at his lips with wide eyes. Their faces were close enough it’d have taken nothing for him to kiss her, but he only took notice of her reaction, blinked a couple of times, then withdrew gently, his eyes darting elsewhere. I saw the tsarina’s shoulders fall slightly, but she said nothing, and she composed herself quickly enough.
Since the tsarina had seen fit to drag me into her problems, after one too many of these sad spectacles I decided to be blunt and ask her directly.
It took her a while to answer; I do not know if she was deciding whether it’d give me another weapon against them, or if she was just choosing her words. Eventually, she said: “You saw. He wasn’t always in control of his actions, before. He was made to do things, and had things done to him, that weren’t of his choosing. It’s left him…unappreciative of physical contact.”
My breath cut short. You heard these things all the time, among people of my station; it had never occurred to me it could happen to nobles, to a tsar. I said, slowly: “It could be very pleasurable for both of you, if done properly.”
I saw immediately that I had her full attention, and I realised that, of course, this was what she wanted from me—it was not the kind of talk she could have with old Magreta.
I debated instructing her; then I remembered her sneaking into her father’s library, and said: “There are books. Useful ones, nothing the Church would approve of. Would you…?”
Her relief was pointed. “I’d appreciate that very much, Milda.”
Knowing what the problem was still didn’t tell me how to help. The tsarina obviously felt like she couldn’t make the first step, and the tsar wasn’t going to. It made me frustrated enough that when a very handsome soldier in the tsar’s personal guards made an overture, I didn’t think twice about accepting. His name was Ilshat, and he had a Tatar strain like the tsar himself, but while the tsar was delicately built, there was only rugged masculinity in Ilshat’s wide shoulders and stance.
It was Ilshat’s clumsy attempts at courting me that gave me the idea: perhaps the tsar could be reassured of the tsarina’s interest. Perhaps the tsarina could be made to believe that the tsar did want her.
The tsarina had taken to order bolts of cloth that were clearly too fanciful for her own taste; she would inspect them, sigh about them, then send them back. I intercepted one such delivery, and had two guards bring it to the tsar’s rooms.
“My lady thought the colours would please you, Your Majesty,” I told him, since he’d raised an eyebrow at me when the guards and I barged in with the chest full of silks.
“Irina has no fashion sense,” the tsar snorted. He got up from where he was sitting in front of the easel—yet another portrait of the tsarina— and fondled each and every bolt. “These are supposed to be intricate? I could have drawn hundreds of patterns more beautiful than these! Get them out of my sight!”
I was so used to his tantrums by now that I didn’t let it stop me from grabbing one of his many sketchbooks; he wasn’t going to miss it, they were all identical.
I was triumphant when I later showed it to the tsarina: “They’re all sketches of you, every single one of them! He’s obsessed about you!”
She winced. “Please put it back when you can, Milda.”
I did my best to convince her, but no argument I found seemed to work.
My meddling did have a startling side effect: the following morning, the tsar burst into the tsarina’s rooms, his manservants carrying what seemed to be a very consistent portion of his seemingly endless wardrobe.
“Since you seem to have taken an interest in what I wear, my darling, I thought it only fair that you should have a say,” the tsar said, with an unpleasant little smile.
He then had himself undressed, and stood naked for what seemed hours while he tried outfit after outfit. His unearthly beauty made it impossible not to stare at him—it was the main reason I had a Tatar-strained man in my bed.
I had expected the tsarina to turn her back to him, and sneak peaks in the mirror; but I had forgotten she had taken to her new title well: she didn’t shy away from looking at him, and made comments about every shirt, every pair of breeches.
The tsar didn’t seem to know what to do with her regard. He had clearly meant to annoy her; maybe he’d even expected her to look at him with lust. He hadn’t been prepared to hear her say that the emerald green of the Venetian robe brought out the colour of his eyes.
“It’s like you want other people to desire me, dearest,” the tsar replied, and threat and worry and insecurity were warring plainly on his fine face.
“I do,” the tsarina said. “They should all look at you, and want you, and know that you’re mine.”
And she took his hand in hers and caressed his ring, the silver one that had been hers before she had given it to him that fateful night.
As I turned to the tsar’s manservants to share my glee, I saw that they seemed very uncomfortable.
I got the reason out of one of them that very evening, after I promised I’d have the tsarina grant him an extra rest day for a month.
It appeared that there was unrest at court because of the continued lack of an heir; I understood then that never ingratiating myself with the serpents around the tsar had been a mistake, because it was the first time I’d heard of it.
I cursed. Just when everything was going so well!
But when I spoke to the tsarina about it, she was not surprised and merely said: “I’ve always known this might happen. I guess I’d hoped things would change, now that Mirnatius is himself, but…I’m tsarina. I must think of the good of Lithvas. I don’t suppose you know of a good man with a Tatar-strain who might be persuaded to help out?” she smiled sadly at me.
I blinked. “Leave it to me, Your Majesty,” I said.
I took my sweet time arranging everything. I made sure to report every day any new detail of the plan to the tsar, ostensibly so that he would “know how to play along”.
I thought I’d already seen everything there was to see about the tsar’s temper, but I had underestimated the heights of pettishness he could reach. I definitely made many a maid curse every time they had to clean up the devastation in his rooms.
The planned night came, and when the time was right I dishevelled myself a bit, and knocked loudly on the tsar’s door.
“What!!” he bellowed, and I was relieved to see that as furious as he was, he wasn’t drunk.
“Your replacement hurt my lady,” I cut to the point, and enjoyed seeing all colour flee his face. “She asked for you.”
“I’ll kill him!!” he roared, but I held him back.
“Your tsarina did her duty, now it’s time for you to do yours and console her! Follow me, at once!”
When we reached the tsarina’s rooms, I pushed him inside and locked the door behind him.
Then I went back to my own room, where Ilshat had been waiting all along, and enjoyed his attentions.
I was a bit concerned the following morning, when I found no trace of the tsar in the tsarina’s bedroom; but the tsarina herself was there, still in bed, and she looked at me and said: “Have I really been that unfair to you, Milda?”
Since we were talking about it after all, I stood as tall as I could and said: “I did you a favour, and you repaid me by taking me away from my family.”
The tsarina winced, and said: “But you understand why it must never come out.”
“I can’t say I understand why you’d want anything to do with him knowing what you do, but it’s none of my business,” I said, slowly. “And I seem to have done you another favour, now,” I added, pointing at the bruise on her neck, “so I’m going to ask you to let me go.”
She flushed, her hand flying up to hide the bite, but she still held my gaze calmly and said: “There is a small parcel of land between here and Vysnia that could be bestowed on Ilshat and his wife, if they were willing.”
If they were faithful, I heard.
“I’m just bedding him, I’m hardly going to marry him!” I said, indignantly.
“Well, you’d also need to learn how to keep books first,” she said. “Men cannot be trusted with that.”
I considered it, imagined a life where my husband would defer to me in all matters, then said: “Deal.”
I did end up marrying Ilshat after all.