Sasha had no more use for him anyway. Sasha had changed his mind and his loyalties, and who knew? Maybe the old man had ‘witched him into it.
But if magic did it, Pyetr thought, and Uulamets was the master in that, then what could Sasha do or what could he himself have done, except to have gotten them away before they ever fell this deep into Uulamets’ plans?
And what could he look for in Kiev, but more Dmitri Vene-dikovs and more betrayals and more of the same as Vojvoda? Sasha was the only friend he had ever had who would endure any inconvenience for him, the only one who would, god knew, have carried him through the woods or defended him from a ghost.
So why go to Kiev, anyway, if the only friend he had was here, at Uulamets’ beck and call?
He set the cup down and ran the sword back into its sheath, he cast a jaundiced glance at Uulamets sitting over at the table with his gnarled hands clenched in front of his forehead, his lips moving in some god-knew-what-kind-of-incantation, which might or might not work—he still had his doubts on that score, even if there were ghosts. There was no surety spells worked; there was no surety even if some spells worked, that Uulamets’ spells did, against—
—whatever she was.
Pyetr said, without moving from where he sat, “Well, what are we going to do about her?”
Uulamets went on talking to himself. Sasha stopped sweeping and leaned on his broom, looking at him with some indefinable expression: worry, maybe.
“So we find her tree,” Pyetr said, feeling increasingly foolish with every word that left his mouth. “Then what? Ask her to leave me alone?”
His wits kept trying to rearrange things sensibly. There had not been a wind, Sasha was not sweeping up broken pottery—but this time he deliberately set himself to remember that face that kept fading on him, and the wind, and the fear: he could not believe in it now, but he held on to it, reminding himself that he had made up his mind and that, reason aside, he was going to believe it, if that was what it took to exist here and deal with this woods. And Sasha still had the broom in his hands and a pile of broken pottery at his feet.
“Master Uulamets says he can bring her back to life.”
“Isn’t that kind of sorcery supposed to be dangerous?”
Sasha had no answer for that.
“How is he going to do it?” Pyetr asked. “What’s he need? I’ll tell you, I’ve heard recipes for witches—”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “He says he has to find out where she’s staying. He can’t see her or hear her. I can, almost, see her, that is. But you can see her plain as plain. Can’t you?”
Sasha wanted an admission. He stood there waiting for it. Pyetr nodded with ill grace and frowned.
“A rusalka’s very powerful,” Sasha said in a half-whisper, while the old man droned on at the other side of the room. Sasha came and hunkered down at the fireside, and leaned his broom against the stones. “Master Uulamets said she was just sixteen; and he doesn’t know whether it was an accident or not—if she just drowned, that’s one thing, master Uulamets said. That kind of rusalka is bad enough; but if she drowned herself—that’s almost the worst.”
One had to ask. “What’s worst?”
“The ones that were murdered.”
Pyetr gnawed his lip and considered the stones between his feet. “So what does she do? Look for men, I’ve heard that. So what does she do with them?”
Silly question, he thought then, seeing Sasha blush. But Sasha said, “I’m not exactly sure. I’m not sure anybody’s ever been able to say. They’re—”
“—all dead,” he said at the same time as Sasha. “Wonderful.”
“That’s why we have to keep close to you. We don’t know.”
He hated that “we.” He truly did. He scowled and looked at the sword in his lap.
“Rusalkas sleep a lot,” Sasha said, “until they want something. If nothing ever comes along at all, they just fade. But if they wake up, especially the violent ones—they’re terribly powerful. And she’s not the only haunt hereabouts. That’s what master Uulamets says. There’s a Water-thing.”
He stared at Sasha quite unhappily. “Oh, of course. A Water-thing, a Woods-thing, Things everywhere, and every ghostly one of them with a grudge to pay.” He shook his head. “Entirely unreasonable of them, I’d say.”
“Don’t—”
“—joke. They’ve got no sense of humor either.”
“No, they haven’t.”
“I don’t know why you’re so certain. Maybe they’ve been waiting all these years for a good joke.”
“Don’t—”
“—talk like that.” Pyetr made a little flourish of his wrist. “Absolutely. The whole world abhors levity. I’ll apologize to the first leshy I see.”
“Pyetr—”
“Earnestly.” He held up his cup. “Be a good lad. It’s been a hard night.”
“You shouldn’t have any more.”
“No, I shouldn’t.” He still held up the cup. Sasha took it and brought it back half-full, and Pyetr sat and drank and listened to the snap of the embers and old Uulamets chanting and muttering and mixing things in his pots.
Sasha watched a while, standing by with his arms folded. Maybe since Sasha was in some measure magical, Pyetr thought glumly, he had some special sense for what Uulamets was doing. Certainly Sasha looked neither confident nor happy in what he saw.
Pyetr tucked the blanket around himself and his sword, for all the comfort either was in the situation, and shut his eyes and tried to rest without seeing a wisp of white in his memory—
He could see her face when he shut his eyes now. It was a girl’s face, young and very pale, and desperately unhappy. She had long, fair hair, and a little chin and very large eyes, which looked at him so wistfully and so angrily-
It’s not my fault, he thought. I don’t know what I ever did.—Though I have my faults, his conscience added with unwanted honesty. He thought of a dozen escapades in Vojvoda. But his conscious self amended hastily, recollecting her nature: But nothing I ever did to you. It’s hardly fair of you, you know.
She was indeed hardly more than Sasha’s age. He would never introduce Sasha to some of the company he had kept or show Sasha some of the things he had seen—he could not say why, except it would embarrass both of them; and she was so young, she was so like Sasha, he found himself imagining her expression as offended innocence—and her pursuit of him less attraction than vengeful disgust for a scoundrel.
It’s still not my fault, he thought. I really don’t think I’ve done badly, considering my father’s faults. He really didn’t leave me a good example.
She hovered quite close to him—amorously close, he thought, much too close, for a young girl he had no wish to be in bed with.
He tried to wake up, he earnestly tried, in that sense of a dream about to go very wrong indeed…
He felt a grip on his arm and came to himself upright against the fireplace, sputtering and wiping furiously at his face and neck.
But there was no water. He was sitting amid his blankets in a room dark except for the embers, it was Sasha holding his arm, and the cold water running down his neck, real as it felt, was nothing he could touch.
“Are you all right?” Sasha whispered.
He caught his breath, leaned back against the stones of the fireplace and slid a glance toward the old man’s bed. He could still feel the cold water around him.
“Damn the luck,” he whispered to Sasha, and shuddered, pulling the musty, dry blanket up around his neck. “All the ladies I’ve courted and the only faithful one’s a dead girl.”
Sasha’s fingers closed on his arm. “Do you want me to wake master Uulamets?”
“It’s only a dream.” It came out with a shiver. “It’s nothing.”