Dip the bracelet in the river, Uulamets had said.
Lead it to the house, Uulamets had said.
His sword hand was scored by teeth he did not like to remember. He sucked at the worst of the scratches, looked at the wound in the gray, beginning dawn, and spat, revolted by the taste of blood and river water.
“It did that,” Sasha said in dismay.
“It did that,” he said; and looked darkly at Uulamets ahead of him on the trail, walking behind Eveshka~who had run away from her father, it now seemed.
So, by Uulamets’ own word, had the wife; and so had this Kavi Chernevog—for reasons he personally began to suspect as evidence of good character.
There was anger and unhappiness in the house, and Eveshka was fixing breakfast only, Sasha suspected, because she was evading her father. Pyetr had poured himself a cup of vodka. He had been limping a little on the way up, his hand was swelling, and Sasha wished master Uulamets would do something about it, but master Uulamets just sat watching Eveshka as if he was waiting for her to say something, and as if he was thinking thoughts no wizard should entertain—all too easy for Uulamets inadvertently to let something terrible fly, if he had not done it already, and Sasha had no wish to disturb his concentration if he was trying to deal with that—
But Sasha himself was angrier than he ever let himself get, considering Pyetr was hurt and Uulamets had had a great deal to do with that, whether through bad planning or callous disregard for Pyetr’s life. He understood why Uulamets had not used the salt at the knolclass="underline" Uulamets had come prepared to deal with a ghost, not Hwiuur, and might not be expected, in the midst of a working that wide and that dangerous, to prepare for everything—
Though the vodyanoi should have been primarily suspect—given Uulamets had known then that Hwiuur even existed, which was by no means a certainty—or given that Hwiuur himself had not slipped around the edges of Uulamets’ attention with powerful wishes of his own.
Perhaps—Sasha tried to be charitable and to control his own temper—perhaps Hwiuur had put more strain on the old man than any of them understood, or perhaps neither Uulamets nor any wizard knew enough about vodyaniye: I wish I could tell you exactly, Uulamets had said to Pyetr—which did argue for some attempt at honesty on Uulamets’ part; but Sasha was not mollified. If Uulamets had known anything more than a stable-boy knew about such creatures, he should not have sent Pyetr without protection (the creature would smell it, Uulamets had said) or given him the instructions he had given, to try to outrace the creature on a steep trail, when it was that fast and that capable out of the water—but no, Uulamets had insisted, choosing the porch for a trap, the sun will reach here—
If Uulamets had paid a tenth part of his attention to anything but his daughter; if he paid it now, or even said, Thank you, Pyetr Bitch; or cared to do something about a wound that was already swelling and that, made by a creature like that, might have effects a stableboy from Vojvoda had no idea how to deal with—if Uulamets showed any least concern, Sasha thought, or even asked now what he was doing, rummaging through the herb pots and mixing up wormwood and chamomile, which were only kitchen lore and a poor second to Uulamets’ knowledge—
“Excuse me,” Sasha said of a sudden, as his search for a bowl took him near Uulamets. His own vehemence surprised him, but he was beyond any capability, at the moment, for Uula mets to muddle him with a look. “That thing bit Pyetr. Do you think you could possibly do something?”
Uulamets looked at him, registering a touch of surprise along with annoyance, and Sasha glared, quite ready to face an ill-wish from master Uulamets, more master of his intentions at the moment, he was sure, than Uulamets was.
Which gave anyone, wizard or no, Uulamets had once said, a moderate advantage.
Uulamets’ expression showed some concentration, then, perhaps even the effort to collect himself; and he said with surprising mildness, “I’d better look at it.”
That was one thing.
But when Uulamets got up and went over to Pyetr, sitting in the corner with his cup and the jug, Pyetr said, sullenly, “I poured a little vodka on it. It’ll be fine.”
“Fool. Let me see it.”
“Keep your hands off!” Pyetr jerked away from Uulamets’ touch, spilling vodka as he did so, and lurched, wincing, to one knee and to his feet.
“Pyetr,” Sasha said, and blocked his escape from the corner, fully expecting Pyetr would shove past him all the same.
But Pyetr stopped and caught his breath and said, with a motion of the cup toward him, “You and I are getting out of here. We’re packing up, we’re taking what we’ve earned from this house, and we’re going.”
“You’ll go nowhere!” Uulamets said. “Your own life may be yours to lose. But think of the boy. Think of him, when you consider going anywhere in these woods.”
“I am thinking of him.” Pyetr turned on Uulamets with such violence Sasha grabbed his arm—but Pyetr shrugged that off as if it was nothing and stood balanced on the balls of his feet. “Don’t tell me about the danger in these woods! I’ve handled that damned creature twice now, and it’s less hazard than you and your advice. You were surprised when I came back the first time, weren’t you? Wear the bracelet, you said. Go down to the river, you said. You don’t need a salt-pot, you said, it’ll only drive it back into the river, and that’s not what we want, is it? No. We just give it a little taste of what it wants. We just let it take my arm off and good riddance to the only protection the boy’s got from you. He’s safer with the damned snake!”
Uulamets’ anger was all around them like a storm about to break. Sasha threw everything he had in the way of it, and put himself bodily between them, as somehow the cup broke and the pieces hit the floor—maybe that he had knocked it from Pyetr’s hand, or that Uulamets had broken it, or that Pyetr’s fingers had cracked it.
“Go ahead,” Uulamets said in deadly quiet. “Take what you like. Go where you like. But the boy will stay—do you hear me, Sasha Vasilyevitch? If Pyetr goes alone, I’ll guarantee his safety to the edge of this woods. But if you go with him—he’ll die, by one means or another, he will die. I promise you that.”
Sasha looked master Uulamets in the eye and tried to withstand him. But the least small doubt began to work in his mind and that was enough: he knew that that doubt was fatal, and that there was no chance for them.
“Nonsense,” Pyetr said, and took his arm and pulled him away; but Sasha resisted and shook his head.
“I can’t,” he said. “I won’t. He can do it, Pyetr, and I can’t stop him—I’m sorry…”
He was afraid; and sick at heart, because either Pyetr would leave him or he would not, and either was terrible; but he did not think Pyetr would, he truly did not believe it—and that was the worst.
“If I have to carry you—” Pyetr said.
“No,” he said, looking Pyetr in the face, afraid his chin was going to tremble—because mere was nothing he could do but fight Pyetr if he tried, and that was the last thing he wanted to do, in any sense. He got a breath and shook Pyetr’s hand off. “But there’s no sense in you staying, is there? And none in me going to Kiev. He can teach me. He needs to. I’m too strong not to know what I’m doing—I’m strong enough now to be dangerous. But I’m not strong enough to beat him. So you go. He’s not lying about your being safe to leave. I know that—because he wants me to help him; and he wouldn’t like what I’d do if I found out he’d lied.”
He wished Pyetr would go. He wished it especially hard, because he was close to breaking into tears; and he wished Pyetr’s hand would be well, even if Uulamets refused to help him.