Yvgenie

6

The weathered wood of the landing showed pale gray in the evening light as the boat met the buffers, with no Pyetr and no Sasha to help bring it to shore. Eveshka leapt from the deck to the boards and managed to get a line snubbed about the mooring post, while the boat, with a reckless amount of way on it, scraped along the dock. It hit the limit of the rope: the rope held and the post did, and that was all she waited to see. She whirled and flew up the hill, skirts clinging and binding about her boots, catching at the hedge as she forced her way through. She ran across the yard and up to the porch.

“Pyetr!”

The door was unlatched. The house was dark, except the gray light from open shutters. Embers still smoldered in the hearth. The House-thing in the cellar groaned mournfully and the floor creaked with the peculiarly desolate sound of empty houses.

“Pyetr?”

She looked around her, with the most terrible conviction of wizardry still enveloping the house and the yard. She flung wide the door to her daughter’s bedroom, saw bedclothes in disarray, tumbled on the floor—and Pyetr lying beside the bed, not in the way of someone sleeping, but with a pillow under his head and a blanket over him all the same. She knelt and brushed back his hair, saw a trail of blood running back above his ear, from a lump on his forehead.

She refused to be angry. She refused to think of anything in the world but of Pyetr’s well-being. She took his cold hand in hers, saying, “Pyetr, wake up, Pyetr.”

His eyes opened. He blinked at her, confused at the dim light, at her presence, at the memory of their daughter: she eavesdropped without a qualm, demanding precisely what he last remembered, what he had felt—

Such hurt and such self-accusation—

She did not think about Ilyana. She did not want to be angry. She wondered only where Sasha was, wanting him to be all right; and thought how she loved Pyetr more than she could love her own life: that was what had saved him all those years past. Perhaps it still saved him—even while she wished his head not to ache and the lump to go away.

“She’s gone with him, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know where she is.” She framed every word carefully, holding Pyetr’s face at the center of her thoughts, reminding her who was hurt, not who had done the hurting. “North of here, with him, yes, I’m sure she is.”

Pyetr lifted his head off the pillow, reached for the bedstead to get up, and she gave him room. Somewhere nearby— the bathhouse, she thought—Sasha had waked, and she wished him up, on his feet and out the door, never mind his aches and his bruises, which he damned well deserved for his carelessness.

You knew better, she wanted Sasha to know, while Pyetr was staggering from the bedstead to the wall to the door, with every intention of riding after Ilyana, immediately, this instant.

She followed Pyetr into the kitchen, watched him gather supplies in an achingly random, confused way, while the blood traced a thin trail down his cheek. He was not upset with Ilyana, that was the hurtful thing. He believed it was his fault: Ilyana was only an innocent misled by a scoundrel—maybe not even a thorough-going scoundrel, at that, only a most desperate and unhappy ghost. Pyetr’s capacity for forgiveness outraged her sense of justice and was such gentle sanity when she borrowed from him—

But that borrowing was like the other borrowing, the killing one; and it reminded her that she could have the strength to stop her daughter. She could have it at any moment she wanted to take it…

While in the same reckless way Pyetr forgave Ilyana and Kavi, Pyetr forgave her, too, for things that, dammit, were not even true; and never had been. But how could one possibly refuse forgiveness for sins one had not done, when there were so many worse she contemplated?

He said, glancing around at her in shock, “God, where’s Sasha?”

“On his way.” A tear spilled down her cheek, all unexpected. His innocent dread made a complete wreck of her calm constructions. She wished not. She wished the whole business not, but that was mortally dangerous, oh, god, it was—

He flung his arms about her, hugged the breath out of her and said, “ ’Veshka, ’Veshka, they’re just young fools. I scared her. It’s all my fault. She thinks she’s protecting the boy, that’s all. Don’t panic. We’ll get her back.”

“She’s protecting him? Don’t! Don’t argue with me! You don’t know what they’re thinking, and I don’t want to wonder. Please—pleasel”

He caught her face between his hands, wanting her to look at him. “Wife, I was a handful. I know what she’s thinking. We locked her in and we locked her out, and she couldn’t breathe, that’s all. I would have run, in her place—and dumped my father on his head, too, if he was trying to stop me—but she didn’t mean to hurt anybody, ’Veshka. You know she could have done much worse—”

“Pyetr, dammit, she’s not all your daughter! Wishes are her mother and her father, and we even don’t know whose! I never knew why I had her!”

“She wanted to be born, that’s all, the same way she wanted the filly. Two fools like us hadn’t a chance.”

She caught his hands. “Don’t joke, Pyetr! God, don’t joke, you don’t understand what you’re saying, you never have understood me! She shouldn’t have been born… She shouldn’t exist, Pyetr, I don’t know how I ended up carrying her, to this day I don’t know!”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Pyetr, you don’t feel it, you don’t feel the silence out there. She’s pulled a curtain around her, she’s invisible, she’s the whole damned woods. Pyetr! God, I love her, but love’s not enough!—I should never have left you with her!”

He took her wrong. She hurt him. He turned away to his packing, saying, “I’ll get her back.” And, god—she all but wanted to want him to understand her, but he already blamed himself for losing her, and she was too confused to know what was right to want of him—

Meanwhile Sasha was on his way up to the porch, a very sore and repentant Sasha, who opened the door and said, cheerfully, “Well, she certainly did it, didn’t she?”

She restrained what she thought. She bit her lips on what she thought of Sasha’s damnable levity and Sasha’s choices thus far, until she tasted blood.

And thought of thorns.

Sasha said, “They’ve taken the filly, that’s all. We can overtake them.”

She said, “I’ll take the boat. And I’m not a fool, Sasha. Let’s have no arguments. You know my opinions. I’ll allow you yours. But for the god’s sake don’t tell me nothing’s wrong!”

Pyetr said, desperately, “Let’s not for the god’s sake quarrel. You pack. I’ll get after her. There’s more than one horse, Sasha. His showed up. ’Veshka, do you have any clear idea where she’s going?”

“North. And you’re not going after her alone. She has no idea what she’s going to do. I have no idea. She’s never fought us like this.”

“Then she’s damned scared, is all! Hell, ’Veshka, maybe we should all just let her alone, let her think! If we all take off after her—”

“With him, let her alone?”

“Hush,” Sasha said. “No. I agree with both of you. We shouldn’t press her, but we shouldn’t let her go off on her own either. There’s too much come loose the last few days— more wishes than hers are involved here, and she doesn’t know what she’s going to do: she doesn’t even realize what she can do—that’s the worst danger. She could have killed you, Pyetr, with a less specific wish.”

“Then she’s smarter than that. She knows what she’s doing, she’s doing exactly what you predicted she’d do—what anybody would do, who’s cornered… For the god’s sake, it’s Ilyana we’re talking about—”

“—in Kavi’s company,” Eveshka cried. “Is that what you want?”

He looked at her in distress and she was sorry she had shouted at him, she was sorry for wanting him to listen to her opinions. She put her arms about him, wanted him well, wanted him to understand her fears, at least. “Love’s no defense,” she whispered. “God, protect yourself.”

He said, his chin against her hair, “Love’s not a defense; that’s the entire point, isn’t it?”

He terrified her. He went at fear the way he went at fences, headlong. And if what he loved had no concern for him—

“Ilyana’s being selfish,” she said, as reasonably as she could. “She’s scared, yes. We’re so easily frightened. Everything’s so unstable to us. When your feet are sliding—it’s very hard to love anyone but yourself.”

“She’s your daughter,” he said. “And you do.”

“Don’t trust me, dammit!” She pushed away from him, and realized Sasha’s embarrassed presence. “God, you reason with him!”

She ran for the door, ran down from the porch and across the yard.

“ ’Veshka!” she heard Pyetr shouting after her, afraid for her, angry at her, she did not want to know. She wished she had kissed him goodbye. She wanted to run back now and do that, which would only make leaving him harder, and lead to arguments. She wished instead to welcome him home, sometime yet to come, which was as close as she dared come to wishing for their lives and this house—

But even that wish might have a darker side. Anything might. Everything might. Don’t trust me, was the safest wish for them: don’t love me, she had tried for years.

“ ’Veshka!” Pyetr shouted furiously, and maybe it was a wish that anchored him to the porch, maybe it was his own knowledge that his effort was foredoomed—but he had a sure notion which when he felt Sasha’s hand fall on his shoulder. Sasha said, “Let’s get packed. She’s had a good start.”

He shook the hand off, and was sorry he had done that. Sasha knew more than he did about what had happened, probably knew more than he did about Eveshka’s intentions at the moment and Sasha had made no attempt to stop her. “What’s she up to? What’s she going to do when she finds them? Reason with them? Not damned likely!”

Sasha said, “Come on. Let’s get what we need in the house.”

“She’s the one we ought to chase down! Why aren’t we stopping her? Is it your idea? Or mine? Or hers?” He slammed his hand onto the rail. “God, I’m going crazy!”

Sasha said, “I think it’s because neither of us can keep her here. And she could be right. We don’t know who wanted Ilyana to be born. It wasn’t ’Veshka’s idea.”

Heat stung his face. Anger welled up. “Babies do happen without magic, Sasha, and once they’re started, they do get born!”

“Not to wizards.”

No damned time or place to argue that point. He muttered,

“To wizards the same as anyone else, unless they wish not,” and started into the house to get his coat, his sword, provisions—

“The point is,” Sasha pursued him at the door, “she’s surrounded herself with protections for her life and her way. It shouldn’t have just happened—”

“Protections against what?” He turned around, stopping Sasha short in the doorway. “Against the fact we love each other? Is that safe, Sasha? Is that even sane? She loves the mouse!”

Sasha said faintly, “She knew the hazards, too.”

“The mouse isn’t a damned hazard! She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us!”

“There were others who could have wanted it. That’s the point, Pyetr. That’s what she’s scared of.”

“All right, all right, let’s say it, shall we? Her mother. Draga. Draga’s influence is what she’s afraid of. But Draga’s dead!”

He saw it coming, knew he had been the fool before Sasha even said the obvious: “So is Chernevog.”

Babi had come with them, trotting along with a slight disturbance of dead leaves, upset and growling all the way.

Which might tell you something, mouse, her uncle would say to her. She had wanted Babi to stay with her father to be sure he was safe until her mother got home (and afterward) but Babi had turned up by Patches’ feet as she led Patches out the gate—and now at the edge of dusk Owl joined them, too, flying ahead of them through the dark, a gliding wisp of white with black barring.

“What’s that?” Yvgenie asked anxiously.

“Only Owl.”

“He’s not a real owl,” Yvgenie objected, meaning, she supposed, that he was not a live owl. She said, distractedly, wishing silence close about them: “He’s real. Ghosts are real.” Yvgenie made her think of her father, so deaf to wishes, and so patient and good-hearted despite his weariness. She wanted to help him, but worrying about him or her father was dangerously distracting to her right now, and she longed for Kavi to speak to her again, but that was not fair. It was even dangerous to Yvgenie—

She thought it and Yvgenie’s head began to nod—perhaps that her wish had done it, perhaps that Yvgenie had grown too weak or too weary to care any longer about overhanging branches. “Stay on,” she wished him, riding Patches close where there was room among the trees. She pushed at his shoulder. “Please don’t fall off.” She had had enough of bumps on undeserving heads for one day, please the god, when she dared not even wish her father well now, dared not reach back into the house where her mother’s wishes hung so thick and so stiflingly strong.

Wishes in that house had been directing their lives from generations before she was even born or her father or Sasha had ever come to live there. Magic in that house was all about her, attached to the china, the doors, stitched into the clothes she wore—magic there must always be more convolute than she knew, different than she could possibly understand. She could feel it tonight reaching even into the woods—and most of it was her mother’s, she knew that now. All her life her mother had told her not to use magic, but her mother had been doing it all along, so subtly no one could catch her. Her mother had expected evil of her; her mother was afraid of anybody who wanted something in the least different than she did, that was the trouble with her mother: her mother wanted every living thing in the world to do what she wanted forever, to live all their lives as she wanted—that was how her mother’s presence felt in the house, now that she had felt its absence.

Her mother did not want to be known, uncle had admitted to her: her mother would never give her heart to a child, in any sense—because, for one thing, no one ever did anything good enough for her mother. No one could: her mother trusted no one. Her mother’s magic would strangle her, snarl her in its tangled threads and smother her father and her uncle if they tried to protect her, unless she could find somewhere a place those wishes had never reached—

Don’t trust her, papa, don’t listen to her, she’s so scared, and so strong, and she wants, papa, she wants, stronger than I can deal with—stronger even than uncle can deal with—

The mouse could never hurt anyone. But her mother had always believed she would hurt her father—and now, dammit, mostly thanks to her mother, she had done that, in every sense. Beliefs, she meant to write in her book, can come true like wishes, when you put them on people.

But her father and her uncle had refused to listen to a child. They had only worried about her mother’s feelings, and her mother’s hurt, and never, ever thought their fifteen-year-old daughter might understand a danger everybody older had failed to see.

The mouse was running away now, because she could not stay the mouse anymore, not after her mother had wanted her father to kill an innocent boy only for being near her. A wish like that could come true years from now, and they would never, never know when, or how, even if her father might like Yvgenie and never want to harm him: he could still, within that wish, be responsible for an accident.

She would find her Place, she would make a house of her own, the way her uncle had had his house on the hill (and still that had not proved safe). She had no idea whether her mother had had anything to do with that storm, but she had her suspicions and she meant to keep a further distance than her uncle had if it was only a lean-to in the woods. She would have this boy and Babi and Patches and the white mare, and once things were settled and she was sure her wishes were strong enough to protect them, then her father and her uncle could visit her house and say how well she was looking; and he would cook supper for them, yes, and ask how her mother was, and whether her mother was speaking to her yet—

Her mother was loosing the cable that bound the boat to the dock. Above the steady creak of saddles and the jingle of bridle rings came the sinister lapping of water and the groan of old timbers—

Ilyana, come out of the dark and the silence, Ilyana, you’re wrong. Listen to me while you still can listen. You’re making wrong choices. He’s already led you to hurt your father.

She didn’t want to hear. No! She made her silence back again, but anger was a flaw, wondering about her father was—

Your father trusted you, and now he can’t believe you: that’s the first thing you’ve done. You hurt him and you hurt your uncle, who could have been seriously hurt, young miss, and you’re not thinking about anything right now but your own way. That’s wrong. Look at what you’re doing. Are you acting like the daughter we taught?

“No!” she screamed aloud to the dark, struggling to keep her wits about her, and not to hear the river or the reproach in her mother’s voice. “You don’t love anything! You don’t care! You’re the one that’s selfish, mother, you’re the one that’s taking over everything and killing everything! I’d talk to you if I could, but I can’t, I can’t trust your promises! If I came back we’d fight, and that wouldn’t be good, would it, mother, because somebody might stop you from having your own way, somebody might tell you how you’ve hurt my father and my uncle all my life! Papa can’t laugh with you. But he can with me, mother! Stop wishing at him! Don’t tell me who’s hurting him!”

“God,” Yvgenie whispered, as the wind skirled round them and caught at the horses’ manes and sifted leaves down through the branches. Patches sidestepped and Ilyana held her in: her mother called that wind and wanted the horses to take fright and leave them. Her mother wanted harm to Yvgenie; but she wanted not. Patches was hers, Yvgenie was hers, the white mare was his, and her mother could keep her distance.—Dammit, just let us alone! Give me time! Give me room, mother! If you ever want to hear from me again, give me room! Patches shivered under her. The smothering feeling went away, like a cloud passing the moon, and Owl glided close, making an entire turn about them.

“Yvgenie, it’s all right. It’s all right. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not afraid,” he said, and added, with a stammer, “except of wizards. And ghosts.—Can your mother really hear you like that?”

“She can hear me,” she said. “But she’s not listening.” She wished not to shed the tears she found in her eyes. “She never listens.”

Yvgenie said, faintly, “Maybe we should go back and talk with your father. Even if he’s not happy with me right now.”

“No!” She shook her head and wiped her eyes and lifted her chin. “Someone’s needed to tell my mother no for a long time. Papa can’t. Uncle can’t. But I have. And by the god I will.”

“I don’t get a sense of where they are at all,” Sasha said as Pyetr came down from the porch with the baggage. Eveshka was already down at the shore—well away by now, Pyetr was sure.

“Fine,” he said, handing up Sasha’s baggage to him on Missy’s back. “In the woods. That’s where they are. Going north, with a long head start.—Where are the leshys? What’s Misighi doing, for the god’s sake? If she’s holding a silence out there, haven’t they noticed?”

“Not that I can tell. But I did hear her—just a moment ago, and I don’t think she intended that. I don’t really get the idea we’re unwelcome to follow her, either. It’s a very odd feeling. A spooky kind of feeling, to tell the truth.”

“It’s her mother she doesn’t want to meet,” Pyetr muttered. He flung two of their heavier bags up onto Volkhi’s back and tied them down tight. “I can’t say I blame her, all things considered. Sasha, if you get another chance, tell her I’ll come ahead and talk to her, myself, alone, no magic, nothing of the sort—”

“That wouldn’t be wise to do.”

“Wise, hell! She’s my daughter, Sasha, not some outlaw!”

“She’s not alone, either.”

“Fine, Chernevog’s with her!” He finished the ties. “I’m sure that gives me much more peace of mind!”

“I’m not putting you in Chernevog’s hands, not twice. We’re only lucky he’s on good behavior.”

“Good behavior.” He gathered up Volkhi’s reins while Sasha was securing his own baggage to Missy’s saddle. “It wasn’t good behavior that brought him here in the first place, it wasn’t good behavior that made trouble between my daughter and my wife, if you haven’t reckoned that. It damned sure wasn’t good behavior when he killed that boy!”

“Or kept him alive. I’m less and less certain he has killed the boy, in the strictest interpretation of things.”

“Interpretation? A handsome young boyaryevitch from Kiev just happens to fall in our brook in a rainstorm that happens to burn your house down? His horse just happens to find our front hedge the very hour my daughter runs off with Chernevog? So what do we call it? An uncommon spate of accidents?”

“No. But wishes can ride right over a boy who happened to be in their way. Anyone’s might have—even mine. Mine might still do him harm, I don’t know. Maybe wishing us well, I’ve unintentionally wished this poor boy into the brook that night.”

Dreadful thought. Paralyzing thought. A man couldn’t move who thought such a thing. “Sasha, that’s damned foolishness. You’ve never wanted anybody to die.”

“Hush,” Sasha said hoarsely. “Please, Pyetr.”

“Well, hell, leave your thieving uncle Fedya out of it! Reasons count for something, don’t they? And yours don’t kill innocents. Let’s not for the god’s sake sit and wait till everyone’s sure, shall we? Let’s wish my daughter to use the sense she was born with, first! Let’s wish she’d stop worrying about her mother and worry about herself—and talk sense into the young fool that’s running away with her. Hell, wish her to talk sense into Chernevog, while we’re about it!”

“I’ve done that.”

“And tell her I’m not upset about her dropping me on my head. It’s far too hard to hurt. Make her understand that!”

“I’ve tried.”

“ ’Veshka wouldn’t hurt her or the boy. Not when it really comes down to it—I’ve proved that, more than once. Oh, hell, never mind explaining everything. Tell her stop and wait for me. Tell her I won’t lay a hand on her or the boy.”

A damned lot of baggage to slow them down—only reasonable, Pyetr told himself: wizards needed books and herbs, und Sasha had needed time to gather such things out of the cellar—all of which had put them further behind, while Eveshka took a lead on them, not mentioning Missy’s slower pace giving the mouse that much more continual advantage over them.

Small blame he could pass to Sasha or ’Veshka for the mess. He had made the essential mistake: he had had his head bounced off the side of a substantial bedstead onto an uncompromising floor—not the first time in his life that had happened, the god knew, but certainly the most deserved. He had yelled at the mouse, he had scared his daughter like a fool, and the mouse had no more than protected herself. Absolutely it had been their mouse whose wish had dropped him on his head—he could think of no sane reason Kavi Chernevog would have delayed to put a pillow under his head mid a blanket over him, or waited while Ilyana did it, if he were in charge.

Besides which the mouse was terribly upset at leaving him behind. A man associated with wizards learned to trust his most unreasonable convictions as wizardous in origin—

In which light he knew the mouse had felt that crack on the head far worse than he had. It was entirely like a young wizard not to realize that a man wished asleep on his feet might fall onto the furniture—and, a former scapegrace him— he was even proud of the mouse for having the presence of mind afterward to take her book and her inkwell, to pack food and blankets, all very foresighted behavior for a youngster, never mind she had filched every last single sausage in the house, the pot of kitchen salt, and half the flour, but, by all they could figure, not a smidge of oil to mix it with. That was absolutely a youngster in charge. Then she must have caught Yvgenie Pavlovitch down by the stable fence, where he had found bits of severed rope and drops of blood in the dirt—appalling discovery, except that Chernevog directing matters would have taken all the horses—at very least opened the gate and run off Volkhi and Missy. The mouse had an unarguable naive honesty in her choices—and that gave them the chance they had.

He led Volkhi out of the yard and let Missy and Sasha pass the gate—latched it, out of habit, though there was no Babi to mind the yard while they were gone. Babi was probably frightened, Babi had probably gone to that Place Babi went to—

Which was well enough for Babi, but that place was trying to swallow up his daughter, too, in a place no living creature belonged, and he had his mind absolutely made up when he swung into the saddle.

“I’m going to ride ahead.”

“Pyetr—”

“I’m not afraid of Chernevog. God knows, we’re old acquaintances. We can talk. The two of us together can make more sense than some people I can—”

“No!”

“Sasha—” He shook his head to clear the cobwebs out, and rubbed his eyes. “Dammit, stop it. Tell her! Or just wish me to find her before trouble does.”

“It’s far too dangerous!”

“Tell me what’s too dangerous, with my daughter headed off into hills in the dark with Chernevog!”

“You haven’t any way to feel what’s going on!”

“My daughter’s in trouble out there! Let me go, dammit!”

“All right,” Sasha said, “all right, but—”

Sasha yelled something after him, but he reckoned he would hear that while he was riding—or if the silence swallowed him up, he reckoned there was nothing to do but what he was doing.

Yvgenie said, quietly: “We’re lost, aren’t we?”

“No. Of course we aren’t. I know where we are.”

“So where are we going?”

“North.”

“To what?”

“Where I want to go.” She was far from lost in the woods; and she was far from alone even in the silence: things near at hand were always talking to her, telling her where they were, even though the whole woods felt quiet and scary and pricklish with silence. She knew where home was, she knew where her mother was, and she would know her Place when she got there.

But if being lost meant missing supper and wanting a warm fireside, and being scared the way Yvgenie was scared, and having everyone in the whole world upset with them, they certainly were.

Yvgenie asked, “Where is that?”

“We’ll know, I said.” It was Yvgenie asking, she was sure. It was getting dark, he was beyond exhausted, and she had no idea how to answer him in terms ordinary folk understood—she had no idea what he did understand or how to reassure him: she trusted her friend for that; but her friend’s long silence worried her, as if—

He said, faintly, “I think we should stop and make a fire if we can.”

Something was singing in the brush, a lonely, eerie sound. A wolf had howled a moment ago. If she were on foot she might have been anxious herself. Things did not feel entirely right, now that he distracted her. Which might be her mother’s doing.

Some animal crashed away through the brush. Patches jumped, and Bielitsa did.

“It’s just a squirrel or something.”

“I really think we should stop.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No. Of course not.”

Another wolf called, in the far distance.

“That’s another one,” he said. “There must be a whole pack out hunting.”

“Wolves don’t hurt you. They’re very shy.”

“Wolves aren’t shy!”

“Have you ever seen a wolf?” She wanted not to be angry with him, but he kept worrying at her.

“I don’t know, I don’t know if I have and I don’t even know what I’m doing here!” He was frightened, he was angry at her, and she wished not: she wished herself safe from him—

But that was stupid. He could never harm her with his wishes, and now she had stolen his anger away from him, which was wrong, terribly wrong—

Talk to me, her father would say, when people forgot and wished at him:

Say it in words, ’Veshka—

God!

Pyetr meant to be careful, with his neck and Volkhi’s; but he put Volkhi to a far faster pace than old Missy could possibly sustain, down the hill behind Sasha’s ruined house, and under trees and over the next rise, into thicker woods, where the night had already begun to settle.

North. Owl’s grave was there—the leshys’ ring, where Owl had died, days north of here: a rusalka might haunt such a place, and be drawn there, against all reason—and whether their destination was Ilyana’s choice or Chernevog’s, it was certain at least that she would not follow the shoreline path, within reach of her mother.

So it was directly overland, by every advantage of ground he knew, so long as Volkhi could bear it, as fast as Volkhi could travel in this last of the twilight.

He personally hoped young Patches would do what a young horse would do and leave Ilyana stranded the first time a hare started from a thicket. That was the very likeliest way Sasha’s wishes might work to stop them, magic tending to take the easiest course. Patches taking his daughter under a limb was another, not the way he would want, given a choice—but that, too, if it gave him a way to catch her tonight. The specific wish overrides the general, Sasha maintained. Things happen that can happen, things happen when they can happen—and always at the weakest point.

Well, then, dammit all—the mouse must have wished her father well a thousand thousand times. So had ’Veshka and Sasha—and if the mouse’s father was very specifically risking his neck out here in the woods in the dark, then the hell with caution: the mouse’s magic might have a hard time tonight, working against itself.

“Come on, lad,” he urged Volkhi, and took the ways he knew through the woods—having ridden this land many more years than the mouse had. He had planted no few of the trees on these hills, he had seen the land when it was all dead and bare, and Volkhi knew the ground, even granted a deadfall or two: Volkhi footed it neatly through a maze of birch trees and mostly jumped the small brook that wound across their path.

Splash! and onto the far bank, up across the facing hill, along the ridge and down the other side through a maze of saplings.

Damned sure Ilyana and the boy could make no such time, except by wizardry—and by all evidences the mouse was being as quiet as she knew how to be, interested solely in putting distance between her and her mother.

Which he figured most definitely put the matter up to the fastest horse and the surest knowledge of the woods, and twilight daring the mouse to drop her father on his head a second time.

The wind held fair for the north, in the slow unfoldings of the river, and the star-sheen on the water was light enough to steer by. Eveshka had the rush of water and the singing of the rigging for company, and all too much time for a wizard to think of possibilities, running along a shore she could not touch and a forest that refused to trust her.

Silence lay heavy there, even yet, not the silence of solitude, but her daughter’s fear that excluded her; and there was evil hereabouts—evil as ordinary folk held it, meaning what threatened their lives. In that light, perhaps evil also described her: her understanding did not extend beyond the woods and the river and a handful of wizards, all of which could just as surely threaten the lives of ordinary folk.

But there were creatures who fed on others’ suffering, there were those that relished others’ pain: that was what she personally damned for wickedness. And just ahead now on the leeward shore, was a cave that smelled of such wickedness and fear. A willow there had resurrected itself, a tree the leshys abhorred, though they loved all others in the woods. It had its roots in the watery dark, that willow, in a den she had never seen while she was alive. She was anxious passing it and vastly relieved when it fell astern. She wished her husband well; and Sasha, forgiving for now all his failures and shortcomings, knowing her own all too keenly.

She judged people too harshly. Pyetr would tell her that. Pyetr would say, That’s your father, ’Veshka; he would say, with his vast patience: ’Veshka, you ask too much. Of yourself and other people. You’re doing what you hated your father doing.

It might be true—but true, too, that as much as she and her father had quarreled when she was alive, and passionately as she had hated him, he had judged her wilful heart accurately enough, said no when he should have said no, and wished her to stay out of trouble, until a young wizard she thought she loved had lured her onto the river shore and murdered her.

She could imagine laughter in that cave tonight. She could imagine doubt and conceit flowing out of it like poison:

Do you know what your own daughter’s capable of, pretty hones? Does she scare you? She certainly should.

The willow fell further behind. But northward, on the other shore of the river, was a hollow hill, on which, in her dreams, lightnings still crashed. Her mother had been so much like her, so very much like her: Draga, Malenkova’s student, Kavi’s tormentor and teacher.

She should have said to Ilyana, calmly, reasonably, while I here had been time, and reason:

Ilyana, Kavi might be my half-brother. Did he tell you so? My mother hinted at it. It might have been malice. She knew we were almost lovers and she wanted to upset me. But it is remotely possible he’s my father’s son, of a wizard named Malenkova—his teacher.

Child, I only tried to make you strong and hard enough. I never wanted you to hate me.

Now it was too late to say that. It was too late to say other things like: Don’t trust Kavi. Don’t listen to him. He was my mother’s lover, years before he knew me, but they were both, my mother more than he ever was, Malenkova’s creatures…

You don’t know about Malenkova. I hadn’t time to teach you. And Kavi doesn’t remember. He can’t. He didn’t hear from my mother what I heard—I hope to the god he never did. I’d spare him that—much as he deserves to know what I know—

She put her hands over her ears and looked at the sky above the sail, as if that could shut out the thoughts.

Never think about the anger, never think about betrayals, but never, ever think about forgiveness either: every damned lime one trusted Kavi, every time one in the least began to believe him—

She tried to make Ilyana listen. She went on trying. But the magic reached the forest edge and stopped. Nothing got in, nothing got out, and she began to fear it was no longer entirely her daughter’s silence. Not this, not the slow, deep strength of it, that had increasingly the mark of leshys: wizard-magic was not working within its hold, except, perhaps, perhaps, very close at hand, on very familiar, long-associated objects.

It might protect the forest. But leshys had nothing of wizards’ purposes. And leshys could be mistaken in their wider judgments. She wanted them to hear her. She wanted their help. They had served the woods, she had atoned for the killing with planting and with care—but she had no feeling that they heard her—nor any certainty that they had ever forgiven her, or that they had ever understood wizards in their midst. They were younger now, Sasha said. There were so many young ones about—

And Kavi—

God, she had not for years longed to shed the body she wore and go, lay insubstantial hands on what might truly answer to that touch. She had not felt this—anger—in years.

—You damnable fool, Kavi! Even if you love her, don’t touch her, don’t even think of touching her. You don’t want her to want you, god help you if she wants you: you can’t stop her, by your very nature you can’t stop her—

For the god’s sake, Kavi, tell her how you died!

Night made the forest a shifting confusion of gray and black. Branches raked and caught, trees floated past the eye like ghosts. The black furball was still with them and the ghostly owl flew ahead of them from tree to tree—guiding them, Yvgenie hoped.

To a place I know, Ilyana insisted, but he had no confidence in that. He had no confidence he would even get through this night and he desperately longed for the sun. The ghostly owl seemed more real now, so much so he feared if he nodded again he might never wake up. Pain could be more real than Owl was, pain could keep him awake—and he bit his lip and fought the lapses that made his eyelids fall and the sounds of their passage grow dim in his ears. He caught himself from time to time against the saddlebow, found his fingers growing numb. He thought of his father’s house, he thought of running away—he knew he had done that, he had, he had tried to take his life in his hands and do something honest that did not involve killing his father, or telling anyone about his father and the tsarevitch—

But Bielitsa took a sudden shift of direction and he found himself slipping helplessly: a grip on the saddle checked his fall, but only that—he swung completely off Bielitsa’s back, still clinging with both hands to the saddle leather as Bielitsa turned to keep herself from sliding downslope on the dead leaves. An embarrassing position, his horse about to fall downhill atop him, himself about to pull her down: he looked quite the fool in the wizard-girl’s eyes, he was sure. But he would not have Bielitsa fall, so he let go.

—And found himself after a dark space on his back at the bottom of the slope with a fair-haired shadow between him mid a tree-latticed moon.

“Are you all right?” Ilyana asked solemnly. And for some stupid reason he started to laugh. Was he all right? Was he all right? He was lying on his back, head downward on a hill with a dead wizard’s ghost slithering about inside his heart, and the girl asked Was he all right?

But breath ran out, tears of pain welled up and his stomach ached, so that he had to double over on his side—and he found himself facing the black furball’s glowing yellow eyes and hedge of teeth. It snarled, spat at him and snapped at his lace.

Ilyana said, sternly, “Babi, behave.”

He would never of his own will have taken his eyes off the furball. Of his own will he could not get another breath. But his chest moved, and took it, his arm moved and braced under him. The ghost turned his face toward her and said, “Wish us well, wish us well tonight, Ilyana. Us and this boy—something’s on our trail—more than your father.”

Leaning there, head downhill, with Babi breathing on his neck, he thought for no reason of an ominous stone overgrown with thorns—Owl had died there. Wolves gathered like tame dogs about Ilyana’s skirts. Solemn yellow eyes gazed at him with no glimmer of sanity.

He blinked the night back around him, and shoved himself up frantically on his hands and knees, uphill, with a stab of pain across his stomach as the furball hissed and snapped at him. He fell back down, sitting. It seemed to him he had never fallen into the flood. Ilyana had been riding with him, just then warning him of ghosts and wizards that lived in this woods, and he had been answering her only a moment ago that there were things much worse than ghosts.

But he could not remember how he had answered her. Kiev and the gilt pillars of his father’s house became a painted, shadowy porch, and the shadowed trunks of trees. Imaginings became wolves, wolves became Owl, and Ilyana drowned while he stood safe on the shore and wanted her to die.

God, no, that was wrong—he had been the one drowning and she had pulled him from the flood.

She said, trying to lift him by his shoulder, “We’ve got to go on. Please. Please get up.”

He tried. He shoved himself to his feet a second time and staggered upslope to catch Bielitsa’s trailing reins. He had tried a jump, in the fields near the city wall. He had fallen and hit his head—

His father, watching from horseback, leaned back in the saddle and called him a fool in front of his men.

He caught his breath, clung to Bielitsa’s neck and pressed his face against her mane, back in the dark and the woods.

I left Kiev. I had to take Bielitsa—there was nowhere safe for her.

But where are we running to? Where’s safe, anywhere, now?

He remembered leshys and madness at their hands, a woods of golden leaves—an endless succession of days, while suns and stars careered across the heavens, while autumns and springtimes sped past in torrents of leaves and wind-borne seeds. He remembered anger that shattered stones, forest-things as great as trees and very like them, with feet that were indeed backwards. He knew their names: Misighi and Wiun and Isvis and Priochni, scores of others—while he held Bielitsa’s mane to keep himself on his feet, and used Bielitsa’s strength to sustain him, knowing even while he look what was not his, that Kavi was betraying them—

But, god, he was so afraid of dying—

It needed only a little strength. Please the god and the Forest-things, too, only enough and not too much… the wizard-girl was in terrible danger of some kind, and he had come back from the grave for her sake…

But from whose grave—he was for a moment confused, Ilyana touched his sleeve. “Is something wrong? Are you all right? Yvgenie?”

He had a debt to pay. He had no choice. He turned his back to Bielitsa’s shoulder, looked into her night-shadowed eyes. “He wants—” The damnable stammer came back. He never would have thought of taking her suddenly in his arms, or of kissing her on the lips, which with his present dizziness, made all breath fail.

He thought, while he was holding her, god, it isn’t me doing this, it’s him, it’s Chernevog doing it—

But the whole night spun about them. He lost his breath, with all of life within his reach. The forest was full of it. Nothing could withstand them, nothing would be strong enough if he reached out and took it.

He wanted to warn her. He wanted to say—don’t trust him, Ilyana—because he truly was Yvgenie Pavlovitch, no matter whose wish had brought him to this place. He remembered drowning Ilyana, he remembered dying by fire and by water, and nothing could make sense to him. He thought that he would faint, he grew so dizzy, but life came with it, her life, life from the trees and the woods—from something vastly powerful—

God, stop it. Stop it, don’t do this, it’s wrong to do this—

Even if—god, even if it was the source of his next breath.

Ilyana fainted in his arms. He wanted to let her go. He fought for the will to do that. And the thing within him whispered, faintly, “Death’s so long, boy, and so damnably cold.”

Down one hill and up another, with, Pyetr was sure, his daughter’s wishes earnestly trying to mislead him and Eveshka’s and Sasha’s fighting to guide him. In that toss of the magical dice, the god only knew which would win, but distance did make a difference, every experience he had ever had with wizardry assured him that that was so, and as long as Volkhi could bear the pace he was narrowing that interval-Mouse, he intended to say when he found her and the boy—mouse, if you’re going to be a scoundrel, you shouldn’t leave your pursuers a horse to come after you—if, that is, you didn’t truly want to be caught.

But he believed she did in fact want that, in her heart, if only she could be assured he would not harm the boy. She would talk to him at safe distance, far from other wizardly interference. He had not heard a word or a stray thought from Sasha since they had parted company; and he hoped to come within Ilyana’s influence before the night was out. But they were past Volkhi’s first wind now, and he set a pace to hold as long as had to be.

But on the down side of a hill Volkhi began to shake his neck and object to the direction they were going, snorting and dancing about as if he had something entirely unpleasant in his nostrils.

“Whoa,” he said. On a vagary of the breeze he caught a whiff of it himself: river water where none belonged—

And snake.

Something heavy moved in the brush. A voice hissed, “Well, well, well, what have we? Is it the man with the sword? How extremely nice. We’re so pleased to find old friends.”

It spoke so softly. And it struck so suddenly, out of the dark brush. Volkhi shied across the slope as Pyetr spied a glistening dark body coming at them across the leaves and signaled Volkhi to jump over it.

A snaky shadow whipped out of the trees, hit his shoulder a numbing blow—that was his only startled realization as his loot raked across Volkhi’s back and he left the saddle.

Missy was doing her best, poor horse, and for far too long there had been no answer from Pyetr—not a wisp of an impression where Pyetr was now. Nothing had passed the smothering silence from the moment Pyetr had ridden away, exactly what Sasha had feared would be the case. Pyetr had salt and sulfur with him, against noxious and magical creatures: he had given Pyetr that before he left the house.

But what with their arguing, and Pyetr rushing off, not hearing his warning—the god only hope, Sasha thought, that it was Ilyana’s doing and that Pyetr had in fact found her, because for all his wishing he got now a fleeting sense of fright—which gave him no ease either.

“Misighi!” he called from time to time—but there was nothing from their old friend—and from the young leshys no answer, unless the Forest-things were contributing to the uneasy feeling in the night. The creatures abhorred magic and wizards: they were never easy neighbors to sorcery, and it was certainly an uncomfortably unpredictable lot of wishes I hat had gotten loose in the woods tonight.

Worse, there was a distressing feeling of self-will about it all, an irrational lack of forethought, or thought at all, and it was all too easy for a young wizard to make that mistake: Chernevog had made that mistake in his own youth, and that the mouse had run away made him fear that Eveshka was right, that they were not dealing with the mouse in her right senses. That the mouse had left her father lying bleeding on the floor, never mind the pillow, gave him no confidence at all tonight.

In cold truth, he was scared, he was terrified of the mouse’s inexperience and her quick assumptions of persecution where none existed: Think, mouse, he wished her. Is it reasonable that everyone who loves you has turned against you? I’m worried about your decisions, mouse. I want to talk to you. I promise I won’t harm your young man.

But he feared his wishes died in the silence and he could not breach it. He was not the naive boy who had bespelled the vodka jug: the years had worn away his certainties; and now a day removed from the fire that had taken his house and so many of his notes, he could not shut his eyes without seeing the flames; and knowing the books were worth his life, knowing now that they had almost cost Pyetr’s, the more he thought about it the more he was, stupidly, belatedly, panicked.

Dammit, Pyetr, doesn’t the silence mean something to you?

Doesn’t the fact that you aren’t hearing from me—mean something?

Pyetr, dammit, notice that I’m not talking to you! Stop and wait! I don’t like what I’m feeling right now.

Misighi, do you hear me? Please hear me.

Then a faint, far thought did come to him.

“Pyetr?” he asked softly, and did not like—did not like the uneasiness he felt in the air. He suddenly wondered what Volkhi was up to: that seemed the safest question—

Volkhi was angry, his saddle was empty and he was frightened, exhausted and lost, in a place where Volkhi was sure there were snakes—which was, emphatically, Not His Fault.

“Misighi, dammit! Wake up!”

He wanted, oh, god Missy to hurry, please! because he could hear a very quiet voice now that he knew beyond a doubt what to listen for, a sibilant and mocking voice, wholly untrustworthy.