Ilyana looked terribly pale, terribly frightened. Babi went on growling, and the domovoi in the cellar caught the fit, so that all the house timbers creaked. “Uncle would side with mother,” she said. “He thinks the boy is already dead, or good as, and there’s no hope. He’s no hope. He can’t help me, he won’t, he’ll say he’s being fair, but he wants him away from me, too. He’s upset and he’s not being very quiet about it.”
“Try.”
“No, papa!”
He started toward her, but he found the room spinning around him, and the floor and the edge of the bed came up at him.
He said, or thought he said, Mouse, stop! and thought that his daughter had tried to catch him, far beyond her strength to do, before he hit the bedstead and his head hit the floor.
Her shadow fell over him. He felt a somewhat damp kiss on the forehead, and the brush of her hand, and heard her say, Let her blame me for it, papa, not you. Please, please, papa, be all right…
Sasha had fallen with no warning, and no reason so far as Yvgenie could see, and he was sure any moment now Pyetr would come back and conclude it was his fault his friend was lying unconscious on the floor, and not ask further questions. Yvgenie sat frozen in dread of the next insane event, hoping Sasha would move or give him some clue that he was even alive; but when Sasha did not wake up in the next moment, or the next, or still the next, Yvgenie bit his lip and cast an anxious glance toward the door, beginning to think he might make a break for it, now, this instant, never mind that his hands were tied, and only hope not to meet Pyetr coming in. He was a fool to have waited this long—if he had not waited too long already. And with a deep breath and a great effort he wobbled to his feet and looked to see if he might by some stretch of luck find a knife among Sasha’s pots and herbs.
There was no such luck; and Sasha was most surely still breathing, though he was lying at a most uncomfortable angle, close to the hot stones. Yvgenie edged away, banged his knee on a bench in his retreat and stumbled into the door, sure that at the last moment Pyetr was going to arrive and cut his head off.
The door gave without resistance. Sun hit his eyes and fears welled up as he followed the side of the bathhouse toward the stable. That was where he reasoned he might find a knife, or some edge to free his hands; and a horse to carry him out of here before the wizard awoke and caught him.
He blinked his eyes clear, saw something white outside (he hedge, and it was Bielitsa, it was his horse out there—
He staggered along the fence to the stable itself, up under the shadow of the woods. He bent and ducked through the rails—
And heard a door open somewhere up at the house. He caught his balance in the corner of the fence and the stable wall and saw Ilyana looking at him from the side of the porch. He wished her, Please don’t tell your father. Please just go inside and don’t tell anyone—that’s all you have to do—god, please, miss.
She left the porch railing: he thought she was going back inside. But she came down the walk-up instead, casting anxious glances his way. She ran across the yard toward him as lie leaned helplessly against the wall, thinking-Thinking how the sun shone on her hair as she ducked through the fence, and how beautiful she was as she crossed the stableyard, and how if her father would kill him for looking at her, he would flay him alive for involving her in his escape—but seeing the distress on her face he wondered next if Sasha’s malady might not have befallen her father; she looked as if she wanted help, and, oh, god, he could hardly stand on his feet, let alone rescue fathers who wanted to kill him, for beautiful wizard-daughters who equally threatened his life.
She said breathlessly, “You’ve got to get out of here.” He agreed with that. He turned his back so she could get at the knots—to no avail, he felt after a moment of painful effort. She said, “Wait, I’ll get a knife.”
They were going to be caught, they were surely going to be caught and her father was going to cut him in pieces. He leaned his shoulders against the stable shed while she ducked into the shed—his head kept spinning and he could hardly hold his feet as it was, and somehow he had to get out of the yard, get on his horse and go fast enough and far enough— and he doubted he was going to get ten steps before the spell that had allowed his escape unraveled and he found himself with an indignant wizard and an irate father. More, he had no idea where he should go to escape: wizards he knew about sold curses and told fortunes. They did not crawl about inside one’s heart and talk from other people’s mouths and compel them to do whatever they wanted.
The girl came out again and cut him free, sawing his thumb in the process—her hands were shaking, he realized, which said that she was scared too. “I’m sorry,” she said, about his thumb, but he swore that he was all right, and turned about to thank her and take his leave.
She said, “There’s a horse. It’s his. I’ve my book and everything packed. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Where? he wanted to know. What ‘his’? A girl looked him in the eyes the way she looked at him and told him they were running away together—and the ghost inside him reached out his arm without his thinking about it and touched her arm with numbed, clumsy fingers, saying, “Ilyana, where are you going? What do you hope to do?”
“My mother wants you dead, she’s already wished that, do you understand? It’s too dangerous to talk to my father, he can’t help what he might do—”
His hand fell, painful and half-dead from the rope, and he believed her: he remembered Pyetr and Sasha talking, remembered them saying something ominous about Pyetr’s wife—
Who was not reasonable, not at all reasonable.
Eveshka was her name…
“Come on,“ she said, pulling at him. “My father’s asleep, but she isn’t, she’s coming here right now on the boat. She’ll be here before dark.”
He found himself crossing the stableyard before he realized where he was heading, but it was where he would go. He ducked through the fence, breathless and staggering, clung to it to hold him up as far to the hedge and the gate.
It was Bielitsa. He stumbled his way toward her and held onto the hedge, longing to touch her again, to touch anything that was his, any shred of his life that he could get back again—
Bielitsa did come to him, by tentative steps, let him catch her reins and hug her about the neck. He hung there, dizzy and catching his breath; and slowly felt stronger, as if her warm, solid presence brought sanity back to the world, and breath back into his body.
He knew one thing for true. He loved this mare more than anything in his life and if he had left her behind his father would have killed her for spite—because no one got away from his father, no one defied his orders, not his servants and not his son—
His father dead? God, his father was incapable of dying. Other people did. His mother had. Her sister had, and her sister’s son. He heard the thump of axes—heard the voices shouting into the winter air-He fumbled after the reins, patted Bielitsa’s chest and neck to steady her and managed to get his foot in the stirrup and himself into the saddle, courting dizziness to drive the memory out.
A face, and gilt, and paintings. He had seen the tsar-many times; and knew that if the tsar knew what he knew he would cut off his father’s head. He could do that to his father with a handful of words. He had had that power for years, and he did not know what had held his tongue, whether it was fear or the remote hope of being loved—because the tsar would never love him, the tsar would have no reason to trust a traitor’s son, and no one would trust him, then, no one in all the Russias would have him—