Chernevog (30 page)

Perhaps the wizards involved had worried too little, after all, about themselves.

One assumed, most particularly, that Eveshka had been taking care of herself; one assumed
...

But Eveshka had grown increasingly fey and difficult as the years passed, had worried Pyetr and worried
over
Pyetr so very passionately that Sasha could see now, increasingly since Pyetr had been alone with him, that Pyetr was—

Was—finally—the man he had left Vojvoda with, a Pyetr, however distressed, all of a sudden thinking again about what
would do and how he would deal with things instead of,
inevitably, always, what 'Veshka would think.

That idea scared him. It scared him terribly. He thought: What
did she do to him?

He thought: 'Veshka's been scared all along. She wanted so much to make Pyetr happy
...
but her running off into the woods, her tempers—

She was so terribly scared about using what she knows.

Magic,
rusalka magic, not wizardry.

God
...

Both of us have kept our hearts.

17

There was a terrible crash, the boat hit something, the tiller bar jolted. Eveshka caught at it, looked up in a fright—in dark, in woods, with branches sweeping over the bow and breaking against the hull and the sail. She wanted the boat free, wanted some way left to extricate it from its predicament before it lodged itself where even wizardry could not back it out.

But her father was there, whispering,
“
It's all right, it's all right, daughter, This is as far as the boat will go.
”

“
Where?
”
She saw nothing but shadowy trees, willows weeping into the water, a black tangle that ensnared the boat so completely she had no hope of freeing it. She wanted Pyetr with her—and desperately wanted Sasha—for the merest selfish instant, with the most terrible feeling that she might not see them again. She was going deeper and deeper into something that, in the night and on a strange shore, seemed to have no shape and no end, and if she had gone willingly at first, for Pyetr's sake— now she was no longer sure she had a chance at all.
“
Where are we going?
”
she asked.
“
Papa?
”

Like a small child again, angry and betrayed.

“
Don't doubt,
”
her father's ghost whispered.
“
Haven't I taught you better than that?
”

He was very real in the night, a shadow, a substance, against
a curtain of black willow boughs. The boat moved slowly, its bow
entrapped. That was real, too.

Her father's shadow-shape changed then, seemed to sink and flow away from her.

“
Pupa?
”
she said, and found herself alone, standing on the deck of a boat shrouded in willows.

“
I never could advise you,
”
the ghost whispered from some distance.
“
That's a dangerous way to grow up, girl: you always assumed the right course was opposite my advice. You called it freedom—but you were still taking your direction from someone else without understanding it. Haven't you an idea of your own, daughter?
”

“
You never gave me a chance to know what I wanted!
”

“
You never could tell my wishes from yours. So you fought everything, even your own good sense. Do you understand now? You'd better.
”

“
Papa, you're not making sense!
”

“
I can't stay. I can't—tell you—the most important—
Dammit!
”

“
Papa?
”

She could hear the creak and groan of the boat, the sighing of
the
leaves, the water breaking against the hull.

Nothing else.

“
Papa
, why did you bring me here? What do you want me to do, for the god's sake? —Damn you, papa, come back!
”

The willows sighed together. Finally something else was there, a sense of direction, an ominous significance in the dark heart of the woods.

Magic was there. She knew the feel of it, subtle and quiet and
da
ngerous, wanting her to leave the boat, come ahead. It assured her of her safety, it offered her—

God, she had left the house with the feeling of something wrong, she had thought she was going to deal with the leshys, but nothing after that had gone right. Papa showed up and papa left her here, papa said she had a baby and she had had no sense HI all of it happening until he had said that. She had not thought of children: she was so young in her own eyes, and she had never planned for children. But it seemed one had happened, all the same, and her whole life was moving at someone else's whim, the way papa had done to her and Kavi had tried to do.

Now an unplanned-for child did it, her own damned stupid fault.

She had hardly even wished against the possibility, and babies
did happen, given a chance. She was in a terrible situation that she now began to think had
never been what she had believed—and papa-Papa steered her into this dreadful place, lectured her on making up her own mind and then ran off somewhere. Papa wanted,
papa wanted, and her whole life turned on his wishes—and then
he told her to choose. It was not Chernevog she had to deal with after all. Papa
wanted this baby. Papa wanted something, and maybe it was
good and maybe it was bad, one never knew with him— But a wizard-child was a disaster to her and a terrible danger
to Pyetr. It was the end of their lives the way they had hoped to
live them. No, dammit,
someone
had wanted this baby. It could not happen, it could not wreck her life this way, unless someone had
wanted it against her wishes.
“
Papa,
”
she said, while the willows whispered against the
deck and the hull, and tears spilled from her eyes.
“
Papa, damn
you, what are you doing to me?
”

Often enough in his life Pyetr had waked ashamed of himself, and more than once dimly surprised to be alive, knowing he certainly had not deserved to be—both of which were the case at this gray edge of dawn. To his profound embarrassment he had the vodka jug still in his arms, and poor, faithful-to-duty Sasha had fallen asleep sitting up, with a book in his lap and a pen in his hand—while Chernevog slept wrapped in their canvas, not so far away.

Pyetr capped the inkpot, took Sasha by the shoulder, saying,
“
It's me, lad, go to sleep,
”
and, laying the book aside, pushed Sasha back among the blankets for whatever proper rest he could still get.

He kept a wary eye on Chernevog, stirred up the fire and heated up a few sausages and the rest of the water for tea and shaving, by touch, in the dark of the dawn. He did not want to push the boy this morning, no matter his own fever to be off. Just shave, take his time, no use breaking their necks in the dark—no matter that he had this most uncomfortable cold knot
in his stomach that breakfast was not going to warm, no more than the vodka had cured it last night; and no matter that he f
ea
red 'Veshka was in some dire trouble: if it was Uulamets they
had
now to deal with, then 'Veshka herself was in no danger und that trouble would certainly wait for them: it had waited all those years. If it was something more than that, then resting was Mill the wiser course this morning: it was foolhardy and it was useless to her to walk into it too tired to think.

Speed when it counted and deliberation when needed: he much feared otherwise he had lost his edge, forgotten the lessons
of a misspent youth and grown—well, to admit the fact,
soft.

He had come to rely too much on wizards and not enough on his own wits, that was the trouble. Sasha himself said that wizards were most susceptible to wizardry and magic (which seemed, the god only knew why, from Chernevog's view and lately from Sasha's, to be two different things). They were prone to delusion, and someone in this company had to use his head.

Nature and magic. Moving pebbles, Sasha said. This pebble, by the god, did not intend to be easy.

The tea boiled over, hissing in the coals: he nicked himself on the chin and grabbed for it.

“
Damn!
”

He burned his hand and the tea spilled. Sasha came out of the
blankets
, asking,
“
Pyetr?
”

“
Just the damn tea boiling over.
”
His chin stung, his finger was throbbing from the scald. He took a stick and fished the pan out of the sodden embers.
“
Sorry. There's sausages. No tea.
”

Sasha scrambled to his feet, looking at the lump of canvas where Chernevog was sleeping.

One hoped, at least, that he was sleeping. Pyetr looked that way with sudden misgivings and a scalded finger.
“
Well, if that was his best, he's lost a bit. And it's no tea for him.
”
He sucked on the burn, shook the hand.
“
Hell, boy, accidents do happen, don't they?
”

‘‘They shouldn't,
”
Sasha said.

Pyetr looked at him.

“
Not against me,
”
Sasha said.

Pyetr nodded toward Chernevog.
“
Think it's him? Think we ought to make another batch of that tea?
”

“
I honestly don't know.
”

“
Have your sausages. His can go begging. We'll load him on with the baggage.
”

“
Not my doing,
”
Chernevog said, from the canvas across the fire.
“
I could plead I wasn't awake. But your clatter makes it unlikely.
”

“
Tea,
”
Pyetr said.

“
Poison me and be done, damn you.
”

“
Sounds like headache,
”
Pyetr said brightly, and suddenly cherished the thought of slinging Chernevog head downward on a horse. He fished a sausage out of the pan, said:
“
Breakfast, snake.
”

“
Damn you.
”

He said to Sasha,
“
I think he's sincere.
”

They could joke about pain—when his simplest wish for relief trod that boundary where wizardry stopped and magic answered. It had been so very long since it had mattered at all which did—and to cure a damned, piddling headache he had to remember past the pain what unassisted wishes were, had to retrace the earliest and most simple wish he had made, back even before Owl, long before Owl.

Some petty wizard—perhaps his grandmother, who knew? Or not. He had lived with her. She had hated him, he hated her, he had grown cannier and she had wished him lost forever. He had wished her dead; and he had run and run-That was what wishes felt like—before Owl, before Draga: one simply trusted things to arrive in their own time, in then-own way, no second-guessing, no calling it back—that was what it felt like: fear and anger and damnably unpredictable consequences.

His magic had drawn down lightnings, made the ground shake: and to cure his various pains he was reduced to a child's feeble
effort
—simply trying to believe in certainties, while magic denied they existed and a damned, ignorant
boy
did it effortlessly.

By their laughter, they realized how helpless he had become, and Sasha surely knew what coin he had in hand. Pyetr was still his hope, but even Pyetr confounded him. One could take the man for a fool, but that was subterfuge; he could take him now
for hot-tempered and precipitate, but after everything was packed, Pyetr came to him and said he should ride a while, upright on the horse, though he did not, Pyetr added acidly, deserve any favors.

It might be his wishes working; it might be some reason of Sasha's; it might even be an ordinary man with notions of his own, more subtle than he could discover: Pyetr was not, one had always to remind oneself, a fool; and it did no good to work on one of them and not the other.

So he said, when he was riding alongside Sasha's mare, with Pyetr leading his horse,
“
I suppose you've both been thinking how to be rid of me.
”