“This isn’t Vojvoda, Pyetr.”
Fool, he figured that meant. So he shut his mouth and shook his head, hoping—hoping his friend had some intention to move soon. Please.
“Pyetr—you’re all of the ordinary world I can understand. You’re not the only one I can hear. But you’re the only one run answer me. —And forgive me for eavesdropping just then. You’re not a fool, you’re absolutely not a fool.”
“Only twice a day.”
“Nor afraid of things. I envy that.”
“Not afraid of things. Damned right l’m scared. I’m scared of sitting here too long. I’m scared what else is wrong.”
“But not afraid of us. You never think I’d harm you.”
“No, I don’t think that. But the fact is, Sasha—I don’t care if you do.—And you know how I mean that. Stop worrying.”
Sasha’s lips trembled. “Dammit, Pyetr.”
“Don’t do that on me. God.” Wrong thing to have said. He knew nothing else to do. He grabbed Sasha the way he would ‘Veshka and held him tight. Eventually Sasha held on to him.
He heard the horses give alarm, thought, For the god’s mike, Sasha, be sensible, don’t frighten Missy—
Then he heard the rising of a wind in the woods. Or not a wind.
He thought—Misighi?—because it might be leshys—they had a sound like that, when the great old ones were traveling.
One of the horses thundered away. The other followed.
His thoughts started scattering like the sparks from the lire, going out in the wind, one by one, and he fought it, thinking—I can’t go out, I can’t—dammit, no…
9
Wolves came on his trail, soft-footed, golden-eyed, and there was no escaping them or the memory of the house, and of Draga. There was no breath left to run, except in short, desperate bursts of failing strength, and the woods closed in among winding bramble hedges, high walls of leaves and hidden thorns.
The green maze branched. The left-hand corridor looked lightest and longest, and he took it, but it rapidly became more ominous than the last, shadowed and leafless and wild. He thought, This is foolish. I should never have taken this path, I should go back now—it leads nowhere I want to go— I might get back before they find the entry to this path—
Shadow fell between him and the light, shadow of a face, and something touched his arm. Ilyana said he should wake, they should go on now, where they were, and that helped him to the light. He struggled up on his elbows and to his knees, in a world gray and faint, shadowed with cloud like his dream. He saw Ilyana gathering up Patches’ saddle and felt for some reason that the dream was still going on, that it was a presentiment to do with where they were going, that he had always known where the chase must end.
A place of thorns. And wolves. He had run that corridor of thorns and they would find him there—or had run it, already. He longed for that meeting, and for the sight of Pyetr’s no matter how dreadful the moment, because after that he would not be alone with his dreams. After that—
“Yvgenie,” Ilyana said.
He thought, There’s safety there. Somehow there’s safety, but not the sort I want to find, and not a place she belongs. She won’t forgive me, she won’t ever forgive me for it.
As Owl brushed his face with a wing tip.
Why do I feel that all my choices were long ago?
Why does it seem I’m remembering all of this? Yvgenie, Yvgenie, boy, don’t sleep yet, it’s not time to sleep that deeply. Wake up, saddle the horse and let’s be moving.
Pyetr was my friend once, boy. You missed really knowing him. But he was in that place. Or he will be, again, and we might just die there. Maybe that’s what all this is leading to. Or from.
He waked on his feet, with the saddle in mid-heft, aimed toward Bielitsa’s back. It landed clumsily, and he straightened it and warmed his hands against her, knowing the risk in what he was doing, and the risk in where they were, and the dream he dreamed—but he did what he could. He saw Ilyana climb into the saddle. She had her hair in braids, the way it had been in the yard that day, when he was noticing edges of grass, and sunlight. He saw her that way now, as if he were slipping toward the dark and she were still standing in the light: the whole world was fragile, and poised to slip away—or he was already leaving it.
Sasha waked with his arm asleep, and with someone lying tangled on the cold earth with him—Pyetr, he was certain. Pyetr, now he remembered it, had been reasoning with a very foolish wizard who had had the safe ground fall from under his feet—
He could feel his old master’s knowledge stirring at the depth of his memory once he thought sanely about it, a discovery Uulamets had made and hidden from him, writing the one Great Lie in his book—the one that obscured all the other truths.
God, I know what he used when he brought Eveshka back. I know what Uulamets did to reach back from the grave—all the questions I couldn’t answer then I know; and it’s too damned easy. One daren’t even breathe, knowing it!
But breath did come—and with it, awareness of the whole world, brittle, prone to fracture at the very curiosity that discovered its substance. It was indeed Pyetr tangled with him—one knew Pyetr’s presence, and one could hear the rough, raw echo of the earth, feel the cold mustiness of dead leaves, the acrid smoldering of embers, and the fragility a sleeping and half-dead—
—girl.
His eyes flew open. His hand jerked toward the ground and pressed wet, gritty leaves. His waking vision was exactly the same: a girl was sleeping peacefully beside them, a girl with long blond braids, wearing gilt and blue silk embroidered with flowers. Mouse, he all but exclaimed at first glance, except she did not sound like the mouse, not inside. She sounded—
Pyetr bruised his ribs and his leg sitting up, sharp, welcome pain, that shoved the noisy world back, and convince him most welcomely that Pyetr saw the same thing.
“What in hell?” Pyetr breathed.
Whereupon the girl’s eyes opened and she stared at them both as if they had fallen out of the moon—or she had.
“Who is she?“ Count on Pyetr to ask the critical question, count on Pyetr to grab him by the shoulder at the brink of wondering too much too fast—as the girl thrust herself up on her arms, staring at them, frozen, quiet. Blue eyes, straw-colored hair that trailed free about a frightened face—
A rich girl’s gown all tattered and bedraggled, gilt threads torn, scratches on her hands—
“Yvgenie,” Pyetr muttered, in the same moment Sasha thought, too, of a red silk shirt and gilt collar.
The girl asked—she could hardly ask, she was shivering so: “Are you his f-father’s men?”
“I assure you, no,” Pyetr said fervently, and the girl:
“ Do you know where he is? “
No, Sasha warned Pyetr without half-thinking, and was sure on a second thought that he was right. Brave as this townbred girl might be, it was more than embroidery was raveled, surely, and it was more than young foolishness had brought her to them. Absolutely, magic was loose.
“We should make a fire,” he said, nudging Pyetr’s arm, wishing him to understand and be careful what he said. “Have breakfast.” The pan was lying next last night’s fire, with last night’s overdone cakes in it. The vodka jug sat beside it. He picked up the pan and offered it to the girl. “There are cakes if you’d like a bite—they’re cold, I’m afraid. We haven’t time to cook this morning. But we can make tea—”
“We need to find the horses,” Pyetr said sharply, giving his shoulder a shake. “We need to find Babi, dammit. The boy wasn’t alone, we can figure that, but we can ask her questions while we’re moving.”
“She’s not a shapeshifter,” he assured Pyetr, in case Pyetr was in doubt. He was virtually certain of it. “One of that kind would have been the mouse to our eyes.” He made smother offer of their untouched supper, wishing the girl to trust them at least that far, quite ruthlessly: she was white as a ghost herself, and her trembling, he was sure, was not all
from fright. The forest offered food to woodsmen, not to a girl in silk and gilt. “Go on. It’s all right. Take them.”
She took the pan, perforce, asking, “Please—where’s Yvgenie?”
“With my daughter,” Pyetr said harshly, and, leaning on Sasha’s shoulder, got to his feet. “Somewhere in this woods. We’re looking for them. We’ve been looking for them for two damned days now.”
Pyetr had been a long time from his courtly youth and the idle flattering of young ladies—Pyetr was in a hurry, the mouse was in dire danger, and he both frightened the girl and reassured her of his ultimate intentions, Sasha caught it in the girl’s thoughts and in the glance she gave Pyetr—the hope that they were not liars and that there was truly a lost daughter and a wife and a house and everything that could make two strange men reliable and respectable.
God, she was so beautiful.
“The horses,” Pyetr reminded him, and shook at his shoulder. “Sasha.”
The horses were out in the woods. Not far. Babi was with them, one of those occasional times one could feel Babi’s presence, fierce and warm as a cat with kittens.
“Sasha.”
“They’re all right. They’re coming.” He watched the girl break off a bit of cake in fingers that surely had never seen rough use before this woods, and said to Pyetr, absently, out of the welter of thoughts absorbing him, “It was leshys last night. They risked a fire bringing her to us, Pyetr. You know how they hate fires. Let’s not question a gift, shall we?”
“The leshys could damned well stay for tea if they’d an interest in co—”
A branch fell, breaking branches below it, over their heads. “Move!” Sasha said—and Pyetr stepped aside just in time, scowling up into the branches.
There was anger from the woods too, deep and dangerous. The leshys are upset at us, he thought. They’ve a surfeit of wizards on their hands. Young leshys. They don’t know us, but they’re watching... He said to Pyetr, never taking his eyes off the girl, who had frozen: “Fire. Tea.” And to the girl: “We’ve odd friends. Don’t be alarmed. Clearly they were the ones who brought you here. We assume there was reason.”
She only stared at him with wide, stricken eyes. Pyetr had walked over to the deadfall and began breaking it up for fire—be careful, he wished Pyetr, feeling the precariousness of the situation, hoping the leshy watching from the treetops would not take offense, and saw to his chagrin how he had left his book last night, with the inkpot left open. He hastily began to put that away, and to stow all the books out of reach—though there seemed no danger to them from a single frightened girl, who looked at them, between bites of cold cake as if she and they had collectively lost their wits.
She asked, swallowing a mouthful: “You’re a wizard, aren’t you?”
He made as courteous a bow as one could, sitting on the ground. “Sasha,” he said, raked his hair back and, to his chagrin, pulled a leaf from his hair. “Alexander.” So like in mouse when she frowned like that.
“I’ve heard of you,” she said. (Of course. People did know them downriver.) “I thought you were—”
What? he wondered helplessly.
“Older,” she said, in a way that meant much older, and made him feel like foolish fifteen again.
Wood landed beside him. Pyetr was annoyed, Pyetr thought he was woolgathering and Pyetr wanted the horse right now, dammit—he caught the edge of Pyetr’s opinions, while Pyetr took the tea-pan to the rock that poured a thin thread of water into a boggy puddle of a pool in this place. Sasha decided he should see to the fire, stuck a branch into last night’s coals and wanted it to light. It did.
She said, “Why is Yvgenie off with his daughter somewhere? “
He piled kindling onto the burning piece and answered her without quite looking her in the eye, “He thinks we’re upset with him. So does she.”
“Are you?”
“No. Not with him.” God, he thought, she must see us as liars at the least—and how do we tell her the truth? Forgive me, but a dead wizard’s possessed your young man, and he’s confused about who he’s with?—Because Yvgenie Pavlovitch, with so many dark spots in his memory, must be confused. The resemblance was so clear from some angles it upset one’s stomach.
He had the fire going. She had finished one of the cakes no knowing when she had last eaten, although the leshy would surely have left her in better health than they had found her. He opened the tea packet as Pyetr set the water on the fire, Pyetr muttering under his breath, “She looks like Ilyana. At least the hair. And about the same age, give or take. I think Misighi must have heard us, and made a mistake. They don’t tell one of us from the other very well.”
The girl’s eyes went from one to the other of them, doubting their sanity, Sasha was sure. He saw another tiny morsel of cake go down dry and wished her not to choke.
“There’ll be tea in a moment,” he promised her, while Pyetr unstopped the vodka jug, thinking shadowy thoughts. Pyetr poured a small dose of vodka, and said, “Here, Babi.”
Babi turned up. The pan clanged to the ground, the rest of the cakes in the girl’s lap.
She made not a sound. Or a move. Thank the god. Sash said quickly, as she gulped down a bite of cake. “He’s a dvorovoi. Don’t be afraid. He might go after the cakes—”
She picked one out of her lap and offered it hastily—tossed it as Babi came her direction. Babi swallowed the whole cake at a gulp.
“Behave,” Pyetr said sternly, and poured another dollop of vodka that never hit the leaves.
“It’s not everyone he likes,” Sasha said, fluttery about the stomach himself, considering Babi’s other shapes, while the girl drew small anxious breaths. “I don’t think he’d really hurt you. It’s absolutely only the cakes he wants—and he thinks you’re all right, or he’d let you know it.” He reached after the tea and burned his hand on the pan. Sucked a finger. “Why don’t you pour a bit of vodka in the tea, Pyetr? And some honey. I think honey would be nice, don’t you?”
Volkhi and Missy made a leisurely appearance through the trees, interested in the spring. The girl looked worriedly at that, at Babi, at them—
He poured the tea, sloshing it badly. Pyetr added vodka, milled honey and Sasha offered it to her. “There. We’ve only the two cups—Pyetr and I don’t mind sharing.”
“Pyetr,” she echoed faintly, and looked at Pyetr with—as seemed—an unwarrantably troubled look.
Pyetr lifted a brow and took a sip of tea-and-vodka. “Pyetr Ilitch Kochevikov. Notorious in Kiev and various other places, I gather. I’m flattered if my reputation’s gotten to such lovely ears.”
That was the old Pyetr. Rain would not fall on him, aunt Ilenka had used to say—meaning he was far too slippery. And far too false and angry to deal with a frightened girl. — Slop it, Sasha wished him. Can’t you see you’re scaring her?
Pyetr shut up. Sasha said gently, “Drink your tea. It’s gelling cold. We need to be moving as soon as we can.”
She sipped at it, holding the cup in both hands. Winced, swallowing, and blinked tears. Too much vodka for a young girl, Sasha thought, and took a sip of the cup Pyetr passed him. There certainly was. His own eyes watered. He thought of the mouse at the table, the last night she had been home, he looked at the girl and thought—
Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong here—While Pyetr asked, in a dreadful hush, “Where are you from, miss? Kiev?”
A shake of her head. The tears had kept running. She was staring at Pyetr.
“Where?” Pyetr asked sharply.
“Pyetr,” Sasha objected, suffocating in that silence. And stopped, because the girl had taken on a scowl that—god, he knew in a way that made his stomach turn over. The match for it was sitting beside him.
The girl said, with that hawk’s look, through a film of tears, “You are my father, aren’t you?”
Sasha drew in a breath, it seemed forever, and said, the instant he had wind enough, “More tea, actually—I think we could do with more tea,
here…”
Pyetr said faintly, “Who’s your mother?”
“Who’s my mother? You—”
Silence! Sasha wished, so abruptly the girl winced. He got up and hauled Pyetr to his feet. “We could use some more water, Pyetr.”
Pyetr was damnably hard to move when he wanted otherwise. “What’s your name?” Pyetr demanded, a question so absolute his own curiosity slipped, and the girl said, in a hard voice.
“Nadya Yurisheva.”
Pyetr sank slowly to his heels, stared his firstborn daughter in the face while she stared back at him, then stood up and without a word took the pan back to the spring—
In a silence thick as the leaves.
Sasha whispered—one could only whisper, “Excuse me, please,” and went after Pyetr. Anything might happen. Leshys were involved. One was still watching them, he was sure of it.
Pyetr leaned against the rock, put the pan against it to let clean water trickle in, while Volkhi and Missy blithely destroyed the little green that grew in that spot of sun.
Pyetr said, “She’s about eighteen, nineteen, do you think?”
Vojvoda, a stable, Pyetr run through and bleeding, Pyetr having left the Yurishev’s second story window very precipitately not an hour before—
“—Did you and Irina—?”
“Sufficiently, I assure you. Not that night—but certainly others.”
“God.”
“The leshys have a damned dark sense of humor, friend.”
“I—don’t think they’re altogether to blame—”
“I know who’s to blame! It’s quite clear who’s to blame! Nothing’s an accident, isn’t that it? Nothing’s ever an accident: her being here is no accident, her looking for that boy is no accident—She’s no damn substitute for the mouse, Sasha! I don’t know what’s going on, but she’s not what I’m taking home, I don’t care what the leshys intend!”
“Hush! She’ll hear you!”
Pyetr sank down on his heels and dumped the water from the pan. “God, Sasha.”