"I just don't bother learning the family name till they've been here for a few centuries." Marek grinned.
"You seem cheerful enough, with her here."
"She didn't bring Bear with her," said Marek, "or much of his power, if any. There was no scent of him at all."
"Without him, she could never have made such a crossing," said Sophia. "So she does have his power."
"Not ready to hand," Marek insisted. "I know what I'm talking about. She left footprints, that's what I mean."
Everyone knew that Baba Yaga did not leave footprints on the ground or reflections in water. Katerina was astonished. "Is she weak, then? Is this our chance to kill her?"
"Don't even think of that," said Marek. "Even at a quarter of her normal strength, she's more than a match for any weapon in this world or yours. No, you must avoid her."
"I meant you could stop her... permanently."
Marek shook his head. "Don't you understand? That's not how my powers run. Sailors call on me because I have an affinity for wind and rain. Snow in the north. Sometimes a little lightning. Drought, if I'm angry enough, though it takes constant vigilance to maintain a good long one, and I rarely have the temper for it. I'm not much for war. And assassination is out of my league entirely. That's a matter for Petun, and those who put their trust in him are usually sorry, I can promise that. He's not good at clean killings. There are always some unintended targets that fall whenever he tries to bring down an enemy."
Katerina sank back in her chair. "So Ivan doesn't get his wish," she said.
"What wish?" asked Marek, looking from Katerina to Sophia and back again.
Sophia finally answered. "Vanya offered to annul the marriage as soon as you finish off the old bat."
"Why would he do something as stupid as that?" asked Marek.
Katerina felt a moment's triumph.
Then Marek rolled his eyes knowingly. "Being noble, wasn't he. You know he cares for the girl."
"Everyone knows it but him," said Sophia. "And the girl, of course."
Marek thought that Ivan cared for her? He seemed to say it as if it mattered, too. But why would it? Did even an immortal change to fit the world he lived in? She had always thought that one of the attributes of the immortals was their changelessness. Didn't Father Lukas say that God was the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow? Was there anything that she had believed in before that was still true now?
"What should we do?" asked Katerina. "Go back to Taina?"
"Oh, what a clever idea, you lure the most dangerous woman I've ever heard of into this world, and then you want to go right back and leave her here for other people to deal with. People who are singularly ill-equipped, I might add. You have your bits of spells, I assume, even if your mother didn't live long enough to teach you. But there are precious few here like Vanya's mother, seeking out the old lore and putting it into practice. What every woman used to know, hardly any even imagine in these benighted times. No, she'd create havoc here."
"How am I to prevent that?"
"I don't know if you can. She knows this land too well. Your best hope is for her to lose you here, and then give up and go home without finding you."
"Can we hide here?" asked Katerina.
"If I stayed in the house with you, yes. If I left all my lands unwatched-over, yes, you could stay. But I think it's better if you go somewhere else entirely. To a land where she doesn't speak the language, where she'll constantly be getting into trouble with the authorities." Marek grinned. "I'd love to see her come up against an American assault force. I wonder if they'd beat her as easily as they beat the vast military of Grenada."
Katerina had no idea what he was talking about, but Sophia chuckled. "Don't have much use for America, do you?"
"Arrogant newcomers who think they're smarter than everybody just because they can make a machine that washes dishes."
"In other words, no one there remembers your name."
Marek's temper flashed across his face. But he calmed himself. Katerina wondered what would happen to Sophia if Marek ever grew uncontrollably angry at her. But then she dismissed the thought—Marek wasn't the kind of man to lose control.
Man? How did she know what kind of man a god might be?
"This America you speak of—this is Ivan's birthplace?"
"No, no, he first went there when he was a child. But his parents live there. It's his home now."
"And we'll be safe there?"
"How should I know?" said Marek. "Safer than here, though, I imagine."
At that moment Ivan spoke up from the doorway leading to the stairs. "Safer, but I can't get her out of the country without a passport."
Katerina had no idea what a passport was, nor was she wondering. What occupied her mind was a different question: When did Ivan come back down the stairs? For that matter, had she ever heard him go up the stairs? Had he stood outside the kitchen door, listening to her entire conversation with Sophia? Monstrous thought!
"Passport," said Marek dismissively. "I'll have one of those drawn up, of course."
"You can't fight the witch, but you can conjure a passport?" asked Ivan.
"I won't conjure anything. I have a few friends left in this world. I can get her a legitimate legal passport. And an American entry visa—false ones are expensive on the black market, but we can probably get you a real one, since you're Ivan's wife. We'll get a certificate drawn up for that, too."
"You're taking me with you?" she asked Ivan.
"I took an oath, didn't I?" said Ivan. "That I'd protect you, right? I'm not a fighter, but I'm famous for running away."
His tone was so bitter and ironic that she ordinarily would have thought he was furious at her, that he hated her. But thinking of what Sophia had said, Katerina heard something different now. His ironic nastiness was because he thought that she scorned him.
Well, he wasn't a fighter. She couldn't help that, could she? And she didn't scorn him. She needed him. Taina needed him. And if it took pretending to love him, as Sophia had suggested, then she'd try to act as if she did. Nobody could expect more of her than that.
"Whither thou goest, I will go," she said, quoting a passage she had learned from the Book of Ruth—an unfortunate name indeed, she realized as she spoke. "Where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God..."
Her voice trailed off. He seemed not to recognize the words.
"Your family aren't Christian, are they?" she asked.
"If you refer to the Christian habit of plotting to murder their in-laws, then no, they don't qualify as Christian."
"Vanya," said Sophia sharply.
He did not apologize, though he did wither under her stare.
And why should he apologize, thought Katerina. His complaint was not unjustified.
"I'll follow you to your parents' home," said Katerina. "As you followed me to mine."
"Naked?" asked Ivan.
"Young man!" cried Sophia.
But Katerina only laughed. "I thought you told me I didn't have that option."
"I'll take you," said Ivan. "It's up to you whether I introduce you as a friend of mine, or as my wife."
"As you choose," said Katerina.
"That's not my decision," said Ivan.
"Yes it is," said Katerina.
"No it isn't," he said in a firmer voice. "If you are only calling yourself my wife out of duty to Taina, then I don't want to make such a claim. My parents will see at once how you feel about me, or, more to the point, how you don't feel about me. It will worry my mother. So you can only come as my wife if you promise to pretend to my parents that you think I'm a good catch."