Pyetr looked darkly at Sasha, not particularly wanting a boy’s advice at the moment.
“God,” Sasha said, and dropped his head into his hands. “I truly am sorry.”
“Don’t tell me that. Everybody’s sorry. I want my supper.” Pyetr rubbed Volkhi’s persistently intrusive nose; the horse jumped, threw his head and calmed again quickly under Sasha’s offered hand.
Which for some strange reason gave Pyetr a most uneasy image.
A man married to Uulamets’ once-dead and wizardry daughter, a man who daily dealt with wizards and leshys and the like got used to small, cold thoughts, some of which were not even his own to start with—and suddenly Pyetr had the wildest, most unreasoning impulse to stand up, wave Volkhi off to run back to whatever honest, safe stable he had escaped—
Even if Sasha loved horses and his touch was as true as his heart was.
But it was only one small cold thought. It was foolish to coddle his wife’s skittish temper, still more foolish to leave her alone with her hurt feelings and odd imaginings: the wizard breed was only scarcely sane, Sasha and Eveshka both confessed that quite freely—scarcely sane especially when they kept their hearts, which all the rest of their kind seemed to think impossible to do; and particularly when they tried to use those hearts and live like ordinary folk. Both the wizards he loved had warned him outright that loving him, that loving anything at all was very dangerous to them and to everything around them.
The dead trees were witness enough to that.
“’Veshka,” Pyetr called out, grabbing the rail and hauling himself up under it onto the walk. “’Veshka, dammit, it’s getting dark, it’s getting cold out here, and I want my supper, do you hear?”
There was quiet, serene simple quiet from the house.
He walked up to the porch and knocked on his own door.
“’Veshka? Let’s have some sense, shall we?”
Silence.
“’Veshka, I love you. Am I going to stand out here all night?”
The door opened. Without her touching it.
Pyetr looked back, then, earnestly hoping for Sasha behind him, looking for a way to make light of things, make a joke, and lift Eveshka out of her perilous despond. But Sasha, the coward, was still sitting down at the bottom of the walk-up, with traitorous Volkhi nosing his hand.
So he went inside, to the hearth where Eveshka was stirring up their supper cakes, squatted on his heels beside her and rested his arms on his knees.
“Smells good,” he said, and had only her profile, downcast eyes, pursed lips. Her pretty blond braids.
“Your father wanted me to be a toad,” he said, touching one of those braids, moving it for a better view. “It didn’t work.”
She did not find that amusing. Her mouth set quite firmly, she flinched aside, and she flung a dollop of batter hissing onto the griddle.
“I think you’ve frightened Babi away,” he said, “or he’d be here begging.” He stole a swipe off the side of the bowl, and put the finger in his mouth, getting this time a threat from the spoon and a thunderous blue-eyed scowl. “Mmmn. You don’t want a toad for a husband, do you?”
“It’s not funny, Pyetr!”
“So what’s the matter? You’re not jealous of a horse, are you? That’s silly.”
“I’m just—” The spoon went back into the batter, and Eveshka wiped her eyes. “Sorry. I’m selfish, I can’t help being selfish, I wish—”
“For the god’s sake, don’t!”
She rested her mouth against her hand. Shook her head, not looking at him.
“I want too much,” she said. “And it’s not fair to you. It’s not fair. It’s never been fair!”
Time was, he had been going cheerfully from trouble to trouble in Vojvoda, where ordinary folk lived and where wizards were, if gifted at all, hardly fit to cure warts. Now here he was, the god have mercy, with a wizard-wife who could have her way with passing thunderstorms.
He tipped her chin up, gently, tried with a quirk of his mouth to coax a smile from her. “Now in Vojvoda mere was this girl who wanted too much—”
Her lips trembled while she looked at him, scowling. There was the distinct smell of cakes well-done.
“But her papa wasn’t a wizard,” he said, tracing a line down her cheek. “He was a tavern keeper. And she wanted to live like a boyarina. She never wanted to work. She wanted the clothes, the jewels—any fellow who’d have her, she wanted to order around. So she settled on this handsome rich lad named Ivan—”
“Are you sure his name wasn’t Pyetr?”
“I wasn’t rich. Besides, I was too smart for her. And we figured out, some other lads and I, what she was up to. She’d gotten this potion from this wizard to slip into his drink—which had this dreadful effect. It didn’t make him fall in love at all. But then, we’d switched drinks. She was dreadfully sick for a week.”
“You don’t make love with potions!”
“Wizards do in Vojvoda. But then, they’re not very good wizards. I tell you, Sasha could set up shop—”
“My cakes are burning!” she cried, and escaped him to snatch for the spatula.
“A little dark,” he said, as she turned them. “Oh, they’re ruined!”
“Wish them unburned.”
“Wishes don’t work like that, you know they don’t. Damn!”
“That won’t help the cakes, either.”
“God.” She clenched her fists, bowed her head against them. “Pyetr, don’t.”
He sighed and put his arm about her. “What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you want Sasha to chase the horse back to Vojvoda? Is that the trouble? Will that satisfy you?”
“I don’t want that!” she cried, pushed free of him and got up, her wonderful hair all shining in the firelight—
“God, ’Veshka—”
“Don’t look at me like that! Don’t love me because I want you to! Oh, god, I knew, I knew you weren’t safe from me!”
“Dammit, I know what I want.”
She went across the kitchen and began taking random things off the shelves.
“What are you doing?” he asked, scrambling for his feet. He very well knew what she was doing: it would not be the first time Eveshka had gone out into the woods alone for a day or so, and come back better for it, the god knew, after worrying him sleepless—saying nothing of where she had been or what she had done. But she had never taken off in the dark, in the middle of a quarrel.” ’Veshka, for the god’s own sake, ask me what I want. Anything we both agree on, we can’t have because you want it? That’s crazed! That means we only get what neither of us wants! That’s damned stupid, ’Veshka!”
A piece of bread went into a basket; a handful of fruit. Eveshka stopped and leaned against the table, head bowed.
“ ’Veshka? Is it something I’ve done?”
She straightened her shoulders then, took the things out of the basket, wiped a knuckle across her cheek and wiped the hand on her apron. The basket went back on the shelf.
He came up behind her and put his arms around her, whispering, “I have exactly what I want.”
The grease scorched, meanwhile.
“My cakes!” Eveshka said, “oh, damn, Pyetr, —”
The cellar-supports shifted, the much-taxed domovoi getting the smell of smoke, perhaps, as Eveshka rescued the overheated griddle and the blackened cakes.
The house settled, then. Everything seemed to.
“Babi?” he said, remembering the dvorovoi. “Honeycakes, Babi.”
Babi did not put in an appearance. Perhaps Babi was waiting for higher bribes. Like vodka.
So Pyetr went to the door, put his head out and told Sasha there was a good chance of supper. Then he got down the jug.