“Have your lunch, boy,” Pyetr said. “Or does turnip soup suit your appetites?”
“Be kind,” Sasha said.
“Kind, hell,” Pyetr said sullenly. “He needn’t stare at her like that.”
The soup held flavors too sharp to identify. The heat of it burned his mouth and left tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat.
A tear fell into the bowl, quite helplessly. It embarrassed him. He did not think he had been a coward. He tried not to be. He tried to think how to reason with them, or what he might say, but everything was confusion, everything scattered when he tried to think beyond this yard and the girl and the woods. He found nothing to say he had not said; he only tried to keep from shivering, so that he was hardly able to get up when they were finished, and when they wanted him to go back into the bathhouse. He tried to be braver. But the dark beyond the door seemed suddenly unbearable. He balked, spun about in the doorway to run, but Pyetr seized him and shoved him through.
He was blind, after, except the light from the smoke hole. He met a bench painfully with his shin and grabbed a post to save himself from falling. The door shut. The latch dropped.
God, he did not know why it had so offended Pyetr that he looked at his daughter, even that he had loved her, since he had never offered anything but a look, hardly spoken a word to her. He did not know why Pyetr should have brought him to his house, only for a wizard to lock him away in this place and ask him angry questions. Nothing made sense, not then, nor when Pyetr tied his hands behind him and Sasha made him kneel by the fire and breathe the bitter smoke-only that the thing inside him grew disturbed at that, and moved about his heart, tightening and tightening, like bands about his chest, and Pyetr stood by with the sword blade shining in the firelight, unsheathed, this time, to strike his head off, he supposed, when they had what they wanted—or if they did not, he had no idea.
He thought he heard Ilyana’s voice, far and clear and cold, crying, No, papa, don’t hurt him!
Then Sasha said:
“Eveshka’s coming home, as fast as she can.” And Pyetr said, “God, what can we do? If this Yvgenie lad is still alive—”
“We can get the mouse’s help, perhaps.”
“That’s not damned likely, Sasha!”
Sasha then, with an ominous frown: “Or Chernevog could speak to us on his own. If he wanted to.”
Yvgenie’s heart was beating so it felt about to burst. He said, for no reason he could think of, “Go to hell.”
“That’s Chernevog,” Pyetr said. “Or a boy with very bad manners.”
Yvgenie began to shiver then, and he said, again without thinking, “She’s her mother’s image, Pyetr Ilitch. And her grandmother’s.”
Pyetr grabbed his collar. Yvgenie turned his face away, sure that Pyetr was going to hit him or cut off his head. But Pyetr did not: Pyetr held on to him a moment, then shook him as if to see if anything else would fall out of his mouth. Yvgenie murmured, in his own defense, “I didn’t mean to say that, sir. I swear I didn’t. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
Pyetr said, “Damn.” And hauled him close and held on to him, the way someone had once, he could not remember how long ago. Pyetr held the sword against his back and smoothed his hair gently, saying against his ear, “It’s all right, boy. It’s all right. The Snake’s inside you, but he doesn’t have all of you. We’ll try to get him out.”
“I think I’m d-dead,” Yvgenie said, because something was telling him that. “I think I’m dead and he’s alive, and pretty soon there won’t be anything l-left of me.”
“Damn him,” Pyetr said. “Damn you, Snake, do you hear me? Kill the boy and I’ll have a neck to wring with a clear conscience.”
Something said, quite horridly, out of Yvgenie’s mouth, “This one isn’t to my account. I’d not have beaten him, or driven him to drown himself. But he’s avenged for that, dear Owl, I do swear to you. His father’s dead.”
“Dammit!” Pyetr said, while Yvgenie listened to his own mouth speaking, and heard, inside, a voice like his own, saying, Yvgenie, Yvgenie, the world won’t miss him. Surely you don’t. The men he’d have killed should be grateful. And he won’t be coming here.
He wept against Pyetr’s shoulder. He did not know why. It did not seem to him he had ever loved his father: he remembered the huge stairway and the gilt and the paintings; and his father holding him by the shirt and hitting him in the face—but he surely had loved someone—he had the strongest feeling he had loved the girl who had saved him, but his whole life was sliding away from him, all the things he might have loved, all the things he might have wanted, even his name, and his father’s name.
He had Pyetr. He had the memory of Ilyana and the river. He had a wizard who believed someone inside him was his enemy, and who wanted to drive this thing out of him—or get answers from it—while Pyetr waited to cut his head off— and, god, he wanted to live, if only to find out who he was, or what he might have been, or whether he deserved to be treated like this.
“Poor lad,” Pyetr said—he had hoped if he could once do right he might find kindness somewhere. But he heard his own voice whispering to him in his heart.
We’re old friends, Pyetr and I. And his wife. A most remarkable man—friend of wizards, and magical things, and quite reliable. He wants us both to be ghosts. Be glad he’s not the wizard.
Sasha was setting out herbs. Sasha said, quietly, “Just hold on to him, Pyetr.”
“What are you doing?” Pyetr asked. “What do you hope to do?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sasha said. “If I knew I’d do it. I just don’t want him wandering about tonight, in whatever form.”
“Salt in a circle won’t work. It never stopped my wife.”
“I’d say keep the rope on him for his own protection.” Sasha’s voice again, quiet, as he tossed pinches of dust into the fire. “His and ours.”
“We can’t just talk about him,” Pyetr said. “He’s not a sack of turnips.”
“Beware your heart,” Sasha said. “If there’s a shred of his own life left in him, we’ll try to find it—” Sasha moved between Yvgenie and the fire, a faceless shadow as he rested on Yvgenie’s shoulder. “Go to sleep!” he said suddenly.
“I don’t want to die,” he protested; he had heard the anger, he saw it in Sasha’s face, and said, while he was falling, “Pyetr, help me. Pyetr, dammit, listen to me—” as the shadow wrapped him in.
Not dead, Pyetr thought, with the boy’s weight gone heavy in his arms. “What in hell was that about?” he asked, and held on to the boy as much to still his own shaking as for any good he could do. Something was grievously wrong, he was sure of it, but Sasha gave him no answer. Sasha had leapt to his feet, looking out toward the walls, toward nowhere-crying, “No! Stay out, stay away, you can’t help us—”
Eveshka, Pyetr thought, and heard her like an ache in his heart. Eveshka had wanted the boy dead. She wanted him—
“ ’Veshka,” he muttered against the boy’s hair, “listen to Sasha. It’s a poor, drowned boy, ’Veshka, and it’s Kavi’s foolishness, don’t do anything—”
Something happened. Sasha moved between him and that source; or wished a silence, or something of the like. Sasha cried aloud, “Eveshka, you’re a fool. Do you understand me? Your husband won’t forgive you that foolishness. Your daughter won’t. Listen to me, dammit!”
It might have been a long while that passed. Pyetr’s leg began to tremble under him, in its uncomfortable bend, the boy’s weight grew heavier and heavier in his arms; he was sure something was going on, something both magical and desperate between his wife and his friend, and he ducked his head, pressed his brow against the boy’s shoulder and made his own pleas for calm.