marriage annulled and go back and marry somebody appropriate. And I can go home and marry Ruthie."
It was Katerina's turn to recoil as if slapped. "You repudiate me?"
"We aren't really married," said Ivan. "You never wanted me, and I'm engaged to someone else, so it'll all work out nicely for everyone."
Katerina looked to Sophia, but the older woman simply looked away. She was not going to be part of this.
So Katerina looked at Ivan. For a long time she looked, till he squirmed like a first-grader caught in a lie. "There is no divorce in Christ," she finally said.
"There's no marriage until I've bedded you," he answered, using a harsh proto-Slavonic term for it.
"Aren't we the polite one," said Sophia.
"Did I use too crude a word?" asked Ivan. "It's the one used by the men out in the practice field."
"It's not the word," said Sophia, "it's the heartlessness of what you said."
"Heartless?" said Ivan. "My supposed wife has never felt anything but contempt for me. How tender am I supposed to feel in return? My supposed father-in-law plotted to kill me. Exactly how seriously should I take their religion?"
"He didn't plot," said Katerina.
"You said yourself that Dimitri would never have attempted my murder if he didn't have your father's consent."
"If he didn't think he had my father's - "
"Don't hurt each other any more, children," said Sophia.
"How could I hurt her?" said Ivan. "She'd have to love me before I could do that. All I am to her or anybody in Taina is either a tool or an obstacle. I was the tool that woke her from her enchantment and got her home safely. Of course, I can't claim credit for that, either, since you tell me I was forced into it."
"Led up to it." Then Sophia switched to modern Ukrainian. "Don't you love her? This beauty, this bright and powerful woman?"
"She understands Ukrainian well enough," said Ivan, "so this won't let us have a private conversation in front of her."
True enough, Katerina was blushing at Sophia's praise - or perhaps at the bluntness of her question.
"What does it matter what language I speak, then?" said Sophia. "Everybody understands everything, and nobody understands anything."
"I think it's all very clear," said Ivan.
"So do I," said Katerina. She looked Ivan in the eye. "I release you now. We'll get the annulment. You were already betrothed to another woman, so you could not enter into the vow."
"He wasn't engaged to anyone," said Sophia. "He married you a thousand years before he ever met Ruthie."
"It's his own life that he'll be judged by, and, in his life, before he said he'd marry me, he said he'd marry her." Katerina looked at Ivan scornfully. "Not much of a king you'd make after all, to be so easily forsworn."
"It was agree to marry you or get killed by a bear," said Ivan.
"I'd rather die than break an oath."
"That always seems to be my choice," said Ivan, "but where would you be if I had chosen your way?"
"Still enchanted," she said, "waiting for a man of honor."
"Stop it!" shouted Sophia. "Enough, you two! These are terrible things that you'll be a long time wishing you could unsay."
She was right. Ivan already wished it. When he offered to annul the marriage, he realized now, he had been half-hoping that she'd refuse, that she'd insist that she wanted to be his wife. That she loved him, or might love him, or wanted to love him. Instead, he had provoked this outburst, in which she had exposed the full measure of her contempt for him. Because of his engagement to Ruthie, Katerina didn't even regard herself as sworn to him now. So his last hope with her was gone - if there had ever been a hope.
"What a shame you didn't let Dimitri kill me," said Ivan. "Having me alive is inconvenient to everyone. Me not least." He got up and left the table. No one said anything to call him back.
Katerina was so angry she could hardly eat, though the food was good and she didn't wish to offend Sophia.
Sophia, for her part, ate with gusto, while smiling in amusement at Katerina's lack of appetite. "He really makes you angry, doesn't he."
"I hate a man whose oath is worthless."
"Men and women these days break off engagements whenever they want. No one thinks of it as oath breaking."
"And you approve of this?"
"Approve or not, that's the world in which Ivan and his Ruthie agreed to marry. Either one of them