He thought she said, while he was spinning and falling: “I have to do this, Pyetr. I have to. Or we’ll all of us die.”
“I don’t know what the hell she meant.” His hands were still shaking at breakfast, but the heart next to his was quiet, thank the god. Thank the god Ilyana was still sleeping—or thank Sasha, he thought, who was responsible for the breakfast and maybe for his sanity. “I’m not even sure she said it. It’s what I remember.”
Sasha sank slowly onto the other bench and stared at him.
“Have some tea.” Pyetr picked up the pot. It was the cracked teacup Sasha had this morning; and the magical patch from Uulamets’ time still held. So not everything had fallen apart, though his pouring splashed tea on the tabletop and the pot rattled as he set it down.
“She’s on the river somewhere south of here,” Sasha said, “she’s taken the boat. I think the vodyanoi’s gone after her.”
“Oh, god, fine! What more?”
“Worry about the vodyanoi. It’s even possible she’s called it. I can’t tell.”
“Good god, Sasha—”
“She’s very well this morning. She’s watching the sun rise, listening to the water—she’s improved a great deal since last night.”
A memory came back, with a brief shortness of breath. “I was scared to death she had gone at you. I couldn’t hear you.”
“She told me held Ilyana asleep and not to interfere.” Sasha was a little pale himself this morning, and unshaven as yet—razors did not seem a good idea, considering the amount of tea on the table. “I couldn’t, was the plain fact: I had to trust her. If we’d gone at it—”
Sasha did not need to finish. He had felt it. He did not want to remember that this morning. Sasha must have hauled him off to bed last night. And had breakfast on the table when he waked.
“Are you all right?” he asked Sasha.
“Considering. How are you feeling?”
“Better for the tea and the breakfast. What in hell are we I going to do?” That question unsettled Eveshka’s quiescent presence. He wondered if she had meant last night that she was not going to get better and she was not coming back, and that scared him.
Sasha said, “I don’t know, to both questions.”
“Don’t listen to me like that. She doesn’t like it.”
“She can be patient under the circumstances.” Sasha did something: he felt calmer of a sudden, numb in a certain spot. “She’s right, I think, about how long she can keep this up.”
“Keep what up, for the god’s sake?”
“Easy, easy. —Using magic. Using magic is what she can’t keep doing, considering her state of mind. I’m terribly afraid something’s loose.”
“What do you mean, “loose?” “
“The vodyanoi, maybe, but he’s not an instigator. He likes to think he is.”
’Veshka’s heart struggled to express itself, then calmed again, angry, now.
“She doesn’t like that idea,” he said.
“I think she knows it, though. The business with Chernevog—there are no coincidences in magic. No great ones, at least. Chernevog’s condition certainly isn’t coincidence. Anything that’s ever been associated is always associated.”
“What are you saying, he’s linked to her? Is—” The heart in him disturbed his own. —Is she fading? he wondered. Is that what’s going on —that she’s going back to—
“—rusalka-form?” Sasha caught up his thought. “I don’t I think that’s it. I certainly hope not. Calm. Easy. We’ll solve this.”
“I’d like to know how!” He was not sure now whose panic it was. He fought a shiver, bit an already bitten spot on his lip. “Sasha, she’s not doing well.”
“She’s doing very well indeed.” Sasha’s voice laid calm down like a blanket. “She knows exactly what she’s doing and she’s asking us to keep the mouse from foolishness. It’s what we knew could happen. I just never thought—never thought of Chernevog himself as an unsettled matter. But of course he was. It’s the things you don’t think about—and there may be a reason you’re not thinking about them—that make a way to you. Silences can be the most dangerous spots.”
“ Something made us forget him? He made us forget him?”
“He was very strong; he was very—cheated of his life. His appearance in that place certainly isn’t all that unreasonable.”
“You think he’s the cause? Or is something behind him?”
“I’m not sure,” Sasha said, and Eveshka’s heart shuddered in him, wanting—
“Certainly it’s not Eveshka at fault,” Sasha added in that same deathly hush. “If anything, this business came at her first—not a hundred years ago: I mean now, maybe with the mouse’s birth, maybe in something that happened when she was with her mother.”
Another shiver. Yes, he thought. And the shiver came through him, a twitch of his arms. “It might have been.”
“She believes in magic as a thing with intent. She believes there’s some—power behind the Yard-things and the Forest-things that doesn’t like us, or at least, isn’t like us. I don’t think so, not—truly. I think it’s something else, something far less alive, certainly less aware. Maybe she recognized some danger I didn’t, maybe she sensed some gap in our defenses I didn’t—I don’t know. But I do think she’s been fighting this back for longer than we know, without consciously knowing she was fighting anything specific, if you want my guess.”
“This—what “this?” “
“This slippage. This sliding into magic. I don’t know whether she’s fighting the danger or whether she is the danger.”
Cold silence lay next his heart. He could not tell whether it was agreement: he tried not to think about it. He leaned his chin on his hand and listened to Sasha saying:
“—If she did any one thing wrong, it was sealing herself off alone with the problem and not explaining—if it was actually awareness. If it was going on, I didn’t feel it going on. Or I didn’t feel what was going on. But maybe Ilyana did: she used to have a bad habit of eavesdropping; I suppose all children must, before they understand it’s wrong—but if the mouse got too close to her mother, I understand now why ’Veshka would have shut her out. Ilyana wouldn’t. Ilyana wouldn’t have any way to understand it: Ilyana started fighting her, and Ilyana still doesn’t understand. That’s our greatest danger. Our mouseling’s been hurt, very badly hurt, and she’s so young—”
Fear and hurt. Pyetr studiously found the teacup of overwhelming interest, picked it up and took a sip. The tea was cold. “What you’re saying is that ’Veshka’s the chink in our armor.”
“In many senses, yes. ’Veshka’s standoffishness from her daughter—she sees it as protective, holding questions off till the mouse is old enough. I feel she’s not chosen the best way—but ’Veshka—Honestly, ’Veshka can’t feel at ease with the child; can’t let go. Perhaps it’s a limit she’s decided for herself; but if it is—it’s still real; and I can’t answer the mouse’s questions, not the deep ones that ’Veshka’s rebuffs have created. I can say it—but the hurt’s still there. Which may mean it’s all on you. You’re the one point—the one person in this world who can possibly hold all our hearts.”
He shuddered, so badly his hand overset the cup and banged into the plate. He got a breath, rescued the cup before it reached the edge. “I’m sorry. I’m not doing so well this morning.”
“You’re doing very well. Steady. In one sense you already hold them. There’s not one of us would see you come to harm. In that sense you’re the most protected man in all the Russias. In another you know very well that you’re another vulnerable point.”