Pyetr snatched at him and set him down hard on the boards.
“We’ll stop before dark,” Sasha said.
Thank the god, Pyetr thought.
Sasha pushed dried fruit and the jug at him.
Not even that.
No. Please god.
The boat pitched suddenly. Sasha grabbed his leg and grabbed the jug before it went sliding off the deck.
And had the temerity to grin at him. Pyetr scowled, jaw clamped, and took a tight hold on the rail. The wind had picked up, humming in the ropes, setting the very timbers of the aged boat creaking. Spray kicked up, a fine mist that slicked the rail and cooled the side of his face.
It went like that for a time, while the sun went down and the spray flew gold—until with a terrible ripping sound the sail parted, the deck pitched, and a rope snapped like twine and sang past their heads.
Pyetr grabbed Sasha, Sasha grabbed in vain at the jug, which went sliding halfway across the deck as the broken rope went on whipping about like a dying snake and the ripped sail fluttered and cracked overhead.
The boat righted itself and tossed like a drunken thing, but it still moved under its rag of a sail, gliding with fair speed toward a dark and tangled shore.
“I don’t like this,” Pyetr muttered under his breath, as the boat ran in. Trees were coming at them, dark and huge, shoreline branches rushing into their faces.
He flung himself down onto Sasha, knocking him flat and holding the rail with one arm as the boat shuddered over sand and branches came right over the bow, splintering and poking them with twigs.
The boat swung sideways to the shore then, floated free, and more branches splintered over their heads and all along the right side.
Then it was still, except the wild bobbing in the current, and Uulamets, astern, was shouting: “Fools! Get the ropes! Take down the sail! Hurry!”
Pyetr stumbled up to his feet, staggering in the pitch, and started untying the rope, cursing the while Sasha pulled to give him slack to get the knot free. The two of them let down the spar. Torn canvas billowed down around them while the boat scraped its whole side against the overhanging branches.
“Fine place,” Pyetr said, as Uulamets shouted at them to make the boat fast to the trees. Pyetr still felt the wobble in his knees when he crossed the uneasy deck; his firm hold on a small branch of a tree solidly wed to earth came as a profound relief in one sense. He flung the mooring rope over a larger branch and tied a solid knot.
But the deep night between the trees made him glad to look toward the twilight still sheening the water, and toward human voices aft—Uulamets sharply instructing Sasha how to tie a knot, Uulamets bidding Eveshka open the stores and make supper—
Certainly, Pyetr thought, they would get no farther in the dark tonight, and with the sail lying in rags, maybe not tomorrow. He dreaded the thought of going on, he felt uneasy to be spending the night against this wooded farther shore—and he felt especially uneasy that the sail had torn and the rope had parted all at once. A handful of wizards ought to manage better than that. Or at least—
“Have we gotten there?” he asked Uulamets as he came aft, with no more idea than he had ever had exactly where they were going. The last light was fast leaving, the river reflected a dim sky, and the constant lap of water and the scrape of branches against their hull made a dismally lonely sound.
“We’ve gotten where we are,” Uulamets muttered, and brushed past, leaving Sasha to whisper, ever so quietly,
“I think he was holding the boat together. I think he just gave out.”
“/think we’re in trouble,” Pyetr said.
Eveshka set up their little stove on the stern and lit a fire in its pan with wood they had brought, though the god knew they had twigs enough lying on the deck and accessible just off it. Soon enough there were cakes baking and Eveshka even brought out a little honey to go on them—while master Uulamets lit the lamp, set it on the ledge of the deckhouse, which was really too tiny for anything but the stores they had brought and stowed there, then sat down with his book and his inkpot to write down the things he had done—
And to think, Sasha supposed: certainly Uulamets would not want to be disturbed with questions this evening.
“How far have we come?” Pyetr asked Eveshka, as they sat with her around the little stove. “Do you have any idea where we’re going?”
Eveshka looked up. Her hair was plaited in two huge braids that made her face look very small and her eyes very large-eyes pale and softened, as it happened, by the little light that came up from the stove and down from the lamp. She had said hardly two words to anyone since breakfast. She had stood by Uulamets’ side the day long, helping her father and suffering his anger; and now she looked very worried.
“To find Kavi,” she said. Her voice left a hush like a spell on the air; any voice would seem coarse after that; and the water lapped and the branches scraped and the fire crackled and snapped.
“Where?” Pyetr insisted finally.
“My father knows where he is.”
A page turned, behind them.
The silence went on a moment or two while Eveshka turned the cakes, a scrape of the spatula on the stove top. She said, “I was foolish to trust him. My father was right. I know that now.”
“What are we going to do about this Kavi Chernevog?” Pyetr asked. “What’s this about hearts? What did the Thing mean, this morning?”
Eveshka stopped, then turned a last cake, her eyes set on her work. She said placidly, “I was foolish. My father was absolutely right.”
Sasha felt a little chill. Perhaps Pyetr did: he cradled his hand in his lap and looked at Eveshka as if he suspected what Sasha had begun to feel, that there was indeed something hollow about her.
Pyetr looked at him. Sasha said nothing, only sent him a warning look back, fearing that too many questions now might upset the peace—if there were more answers in Eveshka at all, or if she were free to speak them. The god knew what kind of hold Chernevog still had on her.
Eveshka served the cakes. They sat together in the flickering light from master Uulamets’ oil lamp, ate their supper, and had a little of the vodka—the first of their jars having fetched up against the deck house unbroken: Sasha had done that much. But Uulamets took his supper over in the light, sitting cross-legged on the deck, poring over his book and paying no attention to them.
Pyetr said, “I suppose we’ve got to fix that sail. Did we bring any cord?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “Eveshka?”
“Yes,” Eveshka said softly, and got up and went around to the deckhouse.
“What’s this about hearts?” Pyetr whispered urgently when she was out of earshot. “What was he talking about? What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha whispered back. “I never did understand.”
Pyetr looked disappointed in him—as if Pyetr expected wizardry answers from him. He could not so much as keep Pyetr’s hand from hurting—he knew that it was, even at the moment—and still Pyetr trusted him in life and death ways and expected him to come up with miracles.
That scared him more than the River-thing did—but maybe it was part of being a man, not to ask for help. Maybe it was part of being a man to try to do what people expected.
There was master Uulamets, for one thing, with his book that recollected everything he had ever done—while Sasha had never thought that he ought to do the same: at least he had never even imagined that he could write, until master Uulamets saw fit to teach him. But he thought now that he had not been very responsible throughout his dealings with Uulamets and the vody-anoi, wishing this and wishing that at random, simply because master Uulamets had told him he had the gift—exactly the kind of mistake master Uulamets had said most people made: but a wizard had to remember, that was all, had to figure out the connections before he made a wish, the very way he himself had used to sit and think in the quiet of the stable, sometimes for hours before he decided what he wanted about a thing.