Yvgenie

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.”

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 true 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.

Her whole life seemed suddenly caught up and sped along faster than she could sort out the images. Nothing was true but the things everyone had said were false, her father just had embarrassed her beyond bearing and yet known exactly what was wrong with her, and cared, more than that, cared for someone he had no time for, in his care for his other daughter—

In her life she had been nothing but convenient to everyone around her, when they had talked about Yvgenie’s father, and her wedding, and how she was going to bring the whole family to court at Kiev, and she was to remember how to mention this uncle to Yvgenie’s father, and that uncle—

She felt cold, thinking: They needed me, god, yes, they did.

She remembered one summer climbing up the stack of old boards by the garden shed, and up and up the last scary bit to the forbidden crest of the garden wall, where she could look out on the lane behind the house.

There was a girl who walked by sometimes, with heavy baskets. One supposed she was a servant. But she sang as she went. And the richest girl in Vojvoda had used to wish she were that girl, able to wander the town with no fear of wizards and murderers.

Fool! her mother had cried, when a cousin caught her at it and told. You fool! Don’t you understand anything?

Now she did. God, now she most certainly did.

Bielitsa lagged further and further behind, and Ilyana reined Patches around and rode back along the hill, seeing Yvgenie had gotten down and walked away from Bielitsa—on private business, she supposed. She got down from Patches and waited for him, taking the chance to adjust the girth that had been slipping the last while.

But something was wrong. It might be her mother wishing at them. It was coldness, it was demand, and need, and all those things she had felt lifelong from her mother—

Then she thought, with a chill, No, not mother—it’s him. It’s him, the same as my mother feels, sometimes—

She wanted immediately to know where he was, got a worse and worse feeling, and walked after him, leaving Bielitsa and Patches to stand.

She found him sitting on the hillside, on a carpet of old leaves, looking out at a hillside no different than this one. She walked up to him and he said, still gazing elsewhere: “I need to rest. Please. Just let me rest a while.”

She wished him well, then, but he made a furious gesture. “There’s nothing left, Ilyana.” He put a hand over his eyes and wanted something, but there seemed a wall between them, and a wall ahead, and a weakening of her own wishes that made her feel as if—as if her mother were wanting her again, calling her away from the river shore.

Ilyana, Ilyana, come home now—

And if she gave up and came home supper would be waiting on the table again and Babi would be there and Patches and Volkhi and Missy in the pen. Papa and uncle would be there safe and sound and no one would be angry with her.

She rubbed her eyes and thought no. It was a trick and a trap, and it would not be that way again, it never could be. She was not the child she had been and she could not go back and live as if nothing had happened. But she missed her father and her uncle, and worried about them, of a sudden; and caught a muddled unhappiness, a sense of secrets and things out of place in the world…

That was definitely her uncle, she thought: uncle was upset and thinking about her: uncle could feel that secretive and confused at once. She wanted him not to be distressed about her, she had achieved that much of calm. She said to him, Uncle, don’t follow me any further. Please argue with mother. I’m all right, Yvgenie and I are all right, if you’ll only not push us any more. This isn’t a good time. He’s so tired, uncle. We’re all so tired, please don’t chase us any more—please don’t let mother chase us.

—Uncle, I’m so scared…

The mouse was there for a moment, clear as if she were standing next to him, and Sasha said, “Mouse?” without even thinking—and felt an exhaustion and an anxiousness that turned his blood cold.

What you’re feeling is dangerous, mouse, it’s terribly dangerous, please listen to me. Stop and wait for us. We won’t hurt you or him…

But she caught some hint of wrongness, and fled him, then, wary and elusive as her namesake. Eveshka was walking near the river, he knew of a sudden, Eveshka was vastly upset, thoughts darting this way toward them and that way toward the mouse, violent and demanding—

No! he wished her, as Pyetr, riding beside him, said, “Sasha? Can you hear her? Can you make her listen?”

He was shaking of a sudden. He remembered that feeling,he remembered all too clearly, nearly twenty years ago, a wanting so nearly absolute—

Rusalka. That was the way it felt.

Pyetr wanted an answer, desperately wanted good news. He realized he was staring into nothing, and said, “She just tried to tell me she was all right.” But he could not lie to Pyetr, not in something going so desperately, persistently wrong. “I didn’t get that impression.”

“What? That she’s all right? That she’s not? What does she want?”

He looked at Pyetr, at Nadya behind him on Volkhi, two faces so like—both with reason to want an answer; and to dread it.

“We’ve been pushing them hard,” he said: Pyetr might understand what he was saying, Pyetr if no one else alive. “They’ve been pushing themselves. The boy’s exhausted— “

“Yvgenie?” Nadya asked faintly. “Do you know where he is?”

“Ahead of us, and going further now, as fast as they can.— Pyetr, I don’t like this, I’m sorry, but I’m desperately worried—”

“You’re worried. God. Did you ask her to wait?”

“She wouldn’t. She’s scared now. She knew I was holding something back from her.”

“Nadya,” Pyetr said heavily.

He knew now he should have told the mouse about Nadya. Immediately. He might have protected Nadya against the mouse’s startlement, might have caught the mouse’s curiosity and drawn her to them by that very means. But Eveshka had so overwhelmed him with that feeling of strength, and need—

I wanted Pyetr back to that moment eighteen years ago and other things were inevitably tied to it: what ’Veshka was then, what I was—god, a young fool, that’s what I was then! I’ve sent Eveshka back and done the god only knows what to myself in the bargain—

I was fifteen, I couldn’t read or write, I didn’t know what to do with magic except to be scared of it—

“Sasha?” Pyetr said. “Sasha, you’re white as a sheet. What’s going on?”

He had to get down. He had to stop moving and stop things from changing around him. Missy stopped and he slid off, taking his bag of books and the bag of herb-pots with him. He needed quiet. He needed to get hold of things. He went off looking for a place to sit down and catch his breath and heard Pyetr saying, faintly:

“Better get down.” And Nadya’s quiet, frightened voice: “What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know.” Pyetr said. “Something. Hush, don’t ask him questions right now.”

“Is it magic? What’s he going to do?”

“Hush!” Pyetr said. “Yes, and don’t bother him.”

He was grateful. Pyetr was upset, he knew it, but there was no reassurance to give him and he could not afford the distraction of lying. He was not sure what he had felt from the mouse and from Eveshka a moment ago, that was first trouble; he could not totally be sure which feeling he hail gotten from which place north of them: he knew Yvgenie might be a source of that disturbance, the same as Eveshka; and he was not sure of the accuracy of his memory even moments ago: magic could be like that, escaping recollection as quickly as water from a sieve. When a wizard wanted not to think certain things, the wizard in question could very well get his wish, and forget the unpleasantness that could be happening and believe some false thing more palatable, if he was an utter, self-deluding fool…

He found a flat rock to sit on, he set his bags down on the leaves and pulled out a book at random. He opened it and knew it then for his own.

Draga destroyed Malenkova. But Malenkova was too much for her. The beast took her and Draga became its purpose… ultimately that’s all Draga was in the world…

Pages back from that: Owl should not have died—

A sword should not have been able to kill a wizard’s creature. Pyetr’s had done it, in spite of all the wishes that should have protected Owl: Pyetr had killed the creature that held Chernevog’s heart, and Chernevog’s heart had necessarily come back to him—

But how? Chernevog’s wish? Chernevog had grieved for Owl, if for nothing else in his life. Chernevog had not wanted his heart, and tried immediately to put it elsewhere…

Leshys all around us, watching as Owl died, and Chernevog got his heart back, watching to see what wizards in their midst might do.

And when and where did the threads of Owl begin? When Chernevog was a boy—Draga had wanted him to find Owl, and bestow his heart on Owl, because she had a hold on the creature—

“Damn!”

—Pyetr wanted to kill Chernevog and couldn’t. So the leshys took him, held him asleep three long years before they let him wake—if they let him wake. Owl was Draga’s before it was Chernevog’s. And where is Owl, now, that’s another important question.

Owl’s with him, I much fear, with him and with—

Get away from that thought!

He made his eyes see the place he was in; and saw Pyetr trying to put a fire together nearby.

“Pyetr, I think I know something.”

“What?”

“Who’s sustaining Chernevog.”

“Which ‘him’? Who?”

“Chernevog. I very much think it’s leshys. They brought us Nadya. They had Chernevog asleep for all those years. And I think they killed Owl.”

Pyetr looked as confounded as Nadya did. He stood up. “They killed Owl. Why?”

“I don’t think Owl’s a safe place to have put a heart. I don’t think he ever was. I think they destroyed Owl, because they wanted Chernevog to have his heart back. I think—” One became aware of the whisper of the leaves, of the forest all around them, alive, self-interested, listening to everything that moved. And caution seemed of utmost importance.

“So we shouldn’t worry? I don’t think so, Sasha!”

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying I don’t know what kind of a game the leshys are playing. Or what kind they have played.” God, they had relied on Misighi, they had trusted the old creature, who had held the mouse in his arms—

A nest of birds and a child are the same to them. And was it ever certain what friendship means to them? I rarely saw Misighi after that. And not at all in recent years.

Dammit, Eveshka’s worked so long and remade so much that she destroyed, she had almost made her peace with the leshys before the mouse was born, and since, since, she’s not gone any time at all into the woods—too busy with housework, she said, since the baby came, too busy once there was a child to take care of—

God, ’Veshka, did I never see? I thought it must be motherhood or something, I thought it must be some natural change, with babies and all—but you loved the forest, you’d mended every damage you could set your hands to, you wished it life with all your heart—and you feared it so much you dreaded letting the mouse out of her own yard and into the woods?

Trust the leshys, I said.—The child knows their names, ’Veshka, of course she’s safe. Would Misighi ever let her come to harm?

He bit his lip, saw the bright spark of the fire Pyetr had been making, thought, distractedly: The leshys hate fire. I can’t wish it. Maybe that’s why we’ve gotten along. And she hasn’t.

—Eveshka, hear me—

But he thought instantly of Nadya, glanced at her and flinched, thinking, God, ’Veshka never did like surprises, and she’s not being reasonable, no more than the mouse. There’s no telling what either one of them might wish about this girl, or about us—

Burning papers. Stacks and stacks of papers and moldering birds’ nest and feathers and old, outgrown clothes—

Breathe the smoke. Let the fire mingle the elements of the problem, pinecones and curious dried beetles, old nests, old clothes, old papers, and lonely, disordered years—breathe it in and let it work—

God, she’s my doing. Most certainly she’s my doing, this—girl, this lost daughter of Pyetr’s, this—calamity—the leshys have dropped in our laps—

She can’t be. She can’t be what I wished up. She would have had to begin all those years ago, before I even left Vojvoda, before Pyetr and I even met—

Can we even choose? God, where are our choices, if I was Uulamets’ wish and everything that got Pyetr in trouble and brought Yvgenie to this woods and put the mouse in danger was only for a stupid wish I was going to make on a rainy night eighteen years later— I felt the whole world shift when I wished someone. And the lightning came and Yvgenie drowned. Was it all for her? Or is magic only riding the currents of what already will be—has to be?

Leaves on the water—

“Sasha?” he heard Pyetr asking him. But he could not move, could not get out of the current if that was the case—

No wizard could, if that was the case. There was no way back. He looked at Nadya and thought, The mouse won’t accept her. Eveshka won’t. How did things get so tangled? And what is the mouse doing out there in the woods, if this is all our doing? When did we ever wish it? Or is it Uulamets’ who did it to all of us? And what was the old man thinking of and what did he want in the world, but—

—but—

He drew a panicked breath. And wished the way he Iwi taught the mouse to do when magic began to go amiss—

Sasha fell before Pyetr could reach him, just sprawled on his side, senseless or dead, Pyetr could not tell until he could get a hand inside his collar and feel life beating steadily.

Then he could breathe, himself; but not feel in the least safe, not for himself and not for Sasha or for anyone he loved. It was nothing a sword could get at or an ordinary man even hear going on.

“What’s happened to him?” Nadya asked, and one could not even be sure of her, if Sasha had misjudged what shape shifters could do. But one had to trust, one had to deal sanely, and not act in panic.

“He’s fainted,” he said. “But I don’t know whether he wanted it or something else did.”

His daughter looked at the forest about them—but then-was nothing eyes could see. No Babi, either, which was not a good sign. The inkpot had tamed over, the ink had run out and blotted a page of Sasha’s book—and if that was any indication of how things were going, it was none he liked. He propped Sasha’s head on his knee, put a hand on Sasha’s brow and pleaded with him, “Wake up, can you? Come on. The ink’s spilled, Babi’s missing. I don’t like this, Sasha. I truly don’t.”

Nadya came and sank down close to them, tacked down in a knot with her hands clenched white before her lips. Scared, decidedly, this daughter of his in gilt and tattered silk. Worried. With damned good reason.