He was a wretch, but he was my wretch; I had claimed him as one of mine, like I had claimed Lithvas, its people and its bounty, down to the little grey squirrels that were now rustling around for nuts in the spring grass. I could see them from the ridiculous gilt-edged windows that refracted the sunlight in patterns all around the antechamber leading to his bedroom.
The bedroom Mirnatius had disappeared into a week ago, with a slurred instruction to his steward to bar all attendants and merely slip meals through the doorway and leave him be. I had allowed him the week, but no moreâalready there were rumours swirling in the court, and it did not do for a newly-wedded couple to spend this much time apart, even if it were for the husband's own health. I contrived to enter Mirnatius' apartments with salves and elixirs sent for from the palace physicians, and a piteous look of concern on my face.
"He has labored so through the winter," I said conversationally to Vasilia. "I am sure he will recover with the advent of spring."
"Yes," she said, gamely picking up on the thread I was laying down so my ladies-in-waiting would spread the appropriate gossip among the court. "We will all pray for His Imperial Majesty's swift recovery. But he is young, and this is but a trifle. I am sure the tsar will be back to hosting the court soon enough. We have all of us missed him."
My ladies-in-waiting chimed their agreements in a delicate arpeggio of overlapping female voices. I nodded my thanks at them. They curtsied, and swept away to the sitting rooms, while I made my way to Mirnatius' bedroom door (a ludicrously heavy and golden ordeal which I was sure he had used magic to ornament) and rapped neatly with the mermaid-shaped door knocker.
There was no reply.
To be polite, I rapped twice more, and then I opened the door. No one would dare countermand the tsar if he wished none enter his chambers, so of course the door had been left unlocked.
My husband was sprawled in a bundle of embroidered quilts which made me feel sweaty to just look at. I busied myself first with opening the curtains instead of shaking the covers off him; a task which would no doubt prove to be both laborious as well as fruitless.
I was grimly proven correct when I pulled the quilts off him, and Mirnatius yowled like a stoned cat and not a tsar.
"I am convalescing," he declared, mouth twisted sulkily. I had wondered if his good looks would slough off him now that Chernobog had left his body, but he was still as lovely as he had always been, even with the dishevelment of a week spent huddled in bed.
Looking at him, you could hardly believe he had disembowelled squirrels as a child.
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