What did one say? What did one do? Or wish?
Pyetr said faintly, “I don’t know this girl. The daughter I know’s off in trouble somewhere, not being reasonable, and I honestly don’t think this is going to help, Sasha!”
“We don’t know that. We—”
“Magic strikes at the weakest point, doesn’t it? Things go wrong at the weakest point, and our weakest point’s my own damned— “
“ You said yourself the mouse is no hazard.”
“Yes, and you’ve been making wishes all these years to protect my daughter, haven’t you, and something certainly has, clear from Vojvoda! You wanted the leshys to bring my daughter to us, and they certainly did! Something’s satisfied all your wishes, if it had to start eighteen damned years ago to do it!“
Pyetr was uncannily good at magic for a man who had never believed in vodyaniye until one all but took his hand off. Sasha sank down on his heels by the water’s edge, trying now Pyetr said it, to think exactly how he had framed his wishes for the mouse or how he had thought of her all these years—whether he had left a way for disaster. He could not pull order out of his ideas about the mouse, could not determine how he thought of her, and that was frightening.
He said to Pyetr. “I was getting too damned cocky. We’re not giving up on the mouse. We’re not letting her go. The world’s protecting itself, that’s all.” He recollected last night, recollected how easy—how dreadfully easy magic could be—
“You’re not making sense, the world protecting itself—”
“The world does. Nature’s far harder to wish than you are. What you see makes you doubt what you know. For the god’s sake don’t make this girl hate you.”
“ Make her hate me? God, what’s she got to thank me for? The same my father left to me? Gossip behind my back and doors slammed in my face? Why don’t you wish her to be grateful, Sasha? It’s a damned sight easier than waiting it.”
That bitterness went deep; but he knew Pyetr’s heart, at moments too delicate to eavesdrop. “You don’t mean that any more than you really want me to send her away into the woods.”
Pyetr shook his head, looking at the water, the rock, the god only knew. Not at him. Not at anything present.
Sasha said, “I think you’d better talk to her.”
Pyetr whispered, furiously: “I think we’d better get moving. We’re not stopping for any damn cup of tea, Sasha. Magic’s switched the dice on us. I’m not sitting here. Not now.”
“Pyetr, magic’s brought her. Deal with her. Be fair with her. Always at the weakest point, you just said it. You can’t make her your enemy!”
“What am I going to say, for the god’s sake? All of Vojvoda thinks I killed Yurishev—and you and I both know who gained from it!”
Irina’s relatives. No question. With Irina very likely in on the deed. He said to Pyetr, “I think you’d better find out what she does think.”
“You.”
He blinked, looked Pyetr straight in the eyes.
Pyetr whispered, “Dammit, are you wishing me?”
“I’m honestly trying not to. It’s yourself pushing you. Or it’s someone else’s wish. One can never be absolutely certain, at such moments. —When in doubt, do right. Harm has far too many consequences.”
“Damn,” Pyetr said, shook the remaining water from the pan and left him with the horses.
The woods might be thicker here, or the sky had faded. But when Yvgenie looked up he could see the sun through the branches, white and dim as a sun hazed with unseen cloud. He saw the lacy shadows of branches ripple over Ilyana and Patches, he knew by the sharpness of the edges that there were no clouds, and yet it seemed all the colors in the forest Kid sky were fading.
A cold touch swept past his shoulder: Owl. He put out his hand without thinking: Owl settled briefly on his arm, a feint icy prickle of claws. Then Owl took off again, as a gray-brown shape crossed the hillside ahead of them.
“A wolf,” Yvgenie said.
“Where?” Ilyana asked, and it was gone. He could not swear now that it had been there, but his hands had grown so cold he could scarcely feel the reins. “Yvgenie?”
“My eyes are playing tricks,” he murmured; but he feared he had been dreaming again, and he feared what those dreams might mean. He thought, I’m slipping. And saw his own hands reaching after branches in the dark, remembered the water pressing his body against the brush, the roar of the blood in his ears, and knowing he was going under—
—even while he was riding in the sunlight. He was dying, finally, he knew he was, and soon he would grasp after anything to save him, even those things he loved.
She was so like the mouse. So like her. Pyetr sank down on his heels, tucked the empty pan away in the pack.
Easier to look at the ground instead. He gave Babi’s shoulder a scratch, looked up. There was the anger he expected. And hurt; and curiosity: all the mouse’s expressions; Irina’s nose and his mouth—that was the combination that made Nadya different.
He said, quietly, “No one told me either. I didn’t keep any ties to Vojvoda. How did you find out?”
She opened her mouth to answer, angrily, he was sure; then seemed not to have the breath for it. She made a furious gesture with a trembling hand and looked away from him, at the ground, at the sky, at the fire—at him, finally, with her jaw set and fire in her eyes. But no answer.
He said, “Is your mother still alive?”
“What do you care?”
Himself—of a drunken father, in a dark street outside The Doe: What do you care?
She said, “I grew up as Nadya Yurisheva. My mother’s family kept me safe. I never heard. I never did, not in all my life until the month I was going to be married, and I didn’t believe it even then, until I laid eyes on you. It turns out I’m the daughter of a gambler and a murderer who had to ask me who my mother was! How many sisters do I have across the Russias?”
He thought, he could not help it: With your mother’s dowry and Yurishev’s money at stake, damned right your family kept their mouths shut, girl. And equally likely somebody profited getting the story to the bridegroom’s family.
But it was not Irina’s delicate petulance in front of him. It was an outraged daughter with a chin desperately set, eyes brimming with tears she was struggling for pride’s sake not to shed.
He said, “I didn’t kill Yurishev. I swear to you.”
“No. Of course you didn’t. Your friend did.”
“Sasha was fifteen, mucking out stables and washing dishes in a tavern. He didn’t even know me till after the fact. Did you grow up with the Yurishevs?”
“No. They mostly died.” A tear escaped and slid down her cheek, but fury stayed in her eyes. “My father’s whole family mostly died—ill-wished—in Vojvoda, in Balovatz, in Kiev… The wizards wouldn’t let them alone.”
Old Yurishev dropping dead after running him through, with no mark on him—the whole town in hue and cry so quickly after wizards and Pyetr Kochevikov—
God, he had lived so long with the misdeeds of wizards he had forgotten ordinary greed, relatives, and poisons. Yurishev had come back home unexpectedly that night, Yurishev might even have had time to drink a cup of wine before the alarm upstairs—
“Wizardry, hell. All of them, you say.”
“ What are you saying?”
“Plain and ordinary murder, girl. How did they tell you it was?”
Color flushed her cheeks. “That you broke into the house—that you—as-saulted—my—m-”
God. He reached for her hand, but she snatched it out of reach. So he said, gently, lightly, “Girl, I do assure you— whatever you’ve heard of me, force was never my style.” He settled back on his heels and met her cold stare with cool honesty. “It was an affair of some weeks. Someone told Yurishev, Yurishev chased me out of the house, ran me through when I tripped, and died in the street without my laying a hand on him. Leaving town seemed a good idea, right then. As simple as that. I don’t blame your mother—?
?? An outright lie, the kindest he had in him. “She had to tell, to watch something, didn’t she?”
“Then why did all the other Yurishevs die?”
Not a silly girl, no. One close to an answer that could trouble her sleep at night. “Good question. Wizardry, perhaps—but not likely. Let me tell you: real wizardry’s not what they tell you in Vojvoda and Sasha’s not the kind of wizard you’ll find selling dried toads and herbs in shops. His kind won’t go to towns. They can’t. Towns scare them, and if you’ll believe me in the least, they don’t give a damn about the Yurishevs and the Medrovs and their relatives. Not to say his wishes can’t go that far—but not with any purpose against the Yurishevs. There’s no malice in him. None. Watering the garden—whether it’s going to take rain from other people—those are his worries. They keep him very busy.”
She was listening. The anger was a little to the background, now. Curiosity was at work, one could see it in the flicker of her tear-filmed eyes.
She asked, scornfully, “So was it all accident?”
“Sasha says there aren’t any accidents in magic. No accident in your being here, either. Your young man—I take it he’s the same you were about to marry—”
A quick, black scowl.
“Nice lad,” he said, “but in serious trouble. Let me tell you a name. Kavi Chernevog.”
“I never heard of him.”
“Not likely you would have. He’s not dealt with folk downriver in years. But things happened in Kiev because of him. Things are still happening because of him—no matter he’s dead. I don’t know why the leshys brought you here or what you were doing in the woods with this boy, but you haven’t heard the worst trouble: Chernevog’s gotten hold of him and run off with my daughter, who’s not being outstandingly sensible right now.”
“Gotten hold! Of Yvgenie?”
“Wizards can do that. Living or dead ones.” He saw the shiver, saw her wits start to scatter and grabbed her hand; and said, “Dead, in this case. Rusalka. Which means no good for your young lad, and no good for my daughter either. The way wizardry works, with three and four wizards involved, things may happen that none of the wizards precisely want, and ordinary folk like us can’t do a damn thing about it. Like Sasha over there—whatever he wants, we’d do. Absolutely.”
Her hands were clenched in his. She darted a fearful glance in Sasha’s direction, back again. He said, “That’s the way it works, girl. All he has to do is want something. No spells. Nothing. He has to be very careful what he does want. That’s why he doesn’t go into towns. No real wizard can. The world’s far too noisy for him.”
She was frightened. And still doubtful. She drew her hands away from him. “Can he stop this Chernevog?”
“He has before.”
She believed that part. He was sure of it. She looked him in the eyes and said, “They tell stories about you. They say you’re the wizard.”
He shook his head solemnly. “Not a shred of one. Not the least ability.”
“You’re different than they said.”
“Worse or better?”
A hesitation. And silence.
“Fair answer. —How is your mother?”
Her lips trembled. “She won’t forgive me. None of them will forgive me.”
“ For running off with Yvgenie? “
Silence. But the eyes said it was.
“So why did you?”
The tremor grew worse. The jaw clamped. Fast. Damn you all, that look said. It might have been Irina’s teaching. Or his temper. He had no idea, but he knew the hazard in it. He heard Sasha come walking over with the horses, he looked up as Sasha stopped and stood there, with the horses saddled.
Eavesdropping, he was certain of it.
Sasha blushed and looked at the ground and up again.
Which said he was right. But little enough he could blame Sasha. He got up, offered Nadya his hand, and thought she would refuse it.
She took it, at least, with grace he was not sure he would have had, with his father, who had, dammit, dropped out of his life and into it again only often enough to keep the pain constant.
He flung their packs over the saddlebow, climbed up and offered Nadya a hand and his foot to help her. She tried to settle sideways on Volkhi’s rump.
“You’ll fall,” he said. “Not in this woods, girl. Tuck the skirts up and hold on.”
They told stories in Vojvoda, how Pyetr Kochevikov and his sorcerer ally had shapechanged their way into birds after murdering her father in the street—Nadya had heard the dreadful stories long before she had ever heard the whispers about her parentage. Her mother had told her about all the murders, and her uncles had warned her how cruel and terrible the wizards hunting her were, and kept her close within walls.
For fear of spells, her mother had said, spells which might find her even in the safety of her own house, in her bed at night. Who knew what mistakes the other Yurishevs had made or what careless moment had killed them?
But one had only to look at Pyetr Kochevikov to know what her mother had really feared, the whisper that would mean she was not Yurishev’s heir, the whisper that would simply say: Kochevikov’s eyes, Kochevikov’s face, Kochevikov’s likeness. Her true father’s hair was even paler than her mother’s, of which she was so vain; he was incredibly handsome even years away from the event, and far, far younger than she would have ever expected, even so—all of which suggested an entirely different account of what had passed on her soon-to-be-widowed mother’s bedroom that night.
Her mother had to have known the truth from the day she was born. Her uncles must have seen it: anyone in Vojvoda must have seen it, if they had ever laid eyes on her real father—and now she knew why her uncles had never allowed her outside her garden, never allowed her to meet any children except her nearly grown cousins, never let her see the world except secretly, over the garden walls, never let her speak to anyone but the trusted servants who lived within the house—and except Yvgenie and Yvgenie’s father’s men, for a few bewildering hours when they had made the betrothal, and drunk a great deal, and for those few hours made the whole house echo to voices and to strangers’ laughter. She had spent her whole life afraid of spells in her drink and in her food, spells on her doorway and on the steps she walked. She had expected assassins and wizards every day of her life, and dammit, her uncles had surely known all along who she was and whose she was: that was what she could not stop thinking, clinging as she must to her father’s waist, jolted and tossed on the way to finding a husband she had never had: They knew. They knew all along and they lied.
Her new-found father frightened her: she was sure he used the sword he wore on bandits and trespassers in this woods—she earnestly hoped, on no one else. But when he had seized her hands in his, looked her straight in the eye and told her his side of things, everything he had said made clearer sense than she had ever seen or heard out of her uncles or her mother; and as for Sasha—Sasha looked nothing like the dreadful wizards of her imagining, either, except the books he carried. She had seen no skulls, no dreadful ravenous creatures, unless one counted the sullen-looking furball that suddenly turned up beside the horses, or, when they stopped to catch their breaths and got down, popped up in one blink on the black horse’s rump, tugging at the pack with hands like a man’s, looking askance at her with eyes round and gold as the moon.
Pyetr said, “Vodka, yes,” got the vodka jug and poured the creature a drink in mid-air.
One never expected to see a dvorovoi with one’s own eyes, since she had never seen one in her garden. Sasha lived sequestered in the woods? She had no idea of the world except her nurse’s tales about talking birds and lost tsarinas and horrid wizards with long white hair and long fingernails. She had never ridden a horse before, she had never spent a night under the stars, she had never waded a brook or clung desperately to a branch to save herself from drowning—and now had done all of that, fallen asleep on the bare ground night after night and waked up one morning face to face with her tru
e father—like the tsarevitch in her nurse’s story. And of wizards—one never expected one who taking a pot of salve from his pack, spent his rest like her father, rubbing down his horse’s legs and talking to the creature in fond and worried tones, more kindly than she generally heard people speak to other people. Sasha’s hair was brown, his very nice nose was sunburned and she found herself recalling how, waking this morning he had looked as startled as she was. Besides, he had said please. Would a wizard who laid spells on people’s doorways and winecups beg anyone’s pardon? Her uncles scarcely would. Only Yvgenie—Yvgenie who had met her a moment by the stairs—
Yvgenie who had shyly met her behind the stairs while their elders were talking and promised her Kiev and all the world—Yvgenie who had said—
Her father nudged her arm, offering her a kind of grain cake from their packs, all wrapped in sticky leaves. He had his own mouth full. He insisted with a second offering and she took the cake doubtfully and bit into it.
Honey. Grain and currants. It was the best sweet she had ever tasted in her life, with her hands all over dirt and the tart musty leaf sticking to the honey. Her father went on to hand one to Sasha, who after washing his hands in the spring was wiping them on his breeches. Sasha took it and made one mouthful of it while he was putting the salve back in the packs and preparing to get back on his horse, all of a rush as everything had gone. Her father took up the black horse’s reins, swung up in one sudden move and reached down u hand for her, while all she could think, trying to swallow down the sweet in a mouthful to free her hands, was how dreadfully it was going to hurt.
He looked her in the face, looked over her head at Sasha and said, “God, she’s sore as hell, Sasha, can you do something?”
Her face must have gone absolutely, devastatingly red, when something odd happened, and the soreness went away. Like that. She glanced at Sasha, who looked elsewhere, and looked her father in the face, her heart pounding.
“Magic,” he said, and whisked her up by an arm and left her nothing to do but to catch hold of him and the saddle and him again, trying desperately to get her skirts arranged while the horse was starting to move.