He thought, he could not help it: With your mother’s dowry and Yurishev’s money at stake, damned right your family kept their mouths shut, girl. And equally likely somebody profited getting the story to the bridegroom’s family.
But it was not Irina’s delicate petulance in front of him. It was an outraged daughter with a chin desperately set, eyes brimming with tears she was struggling for pride’s sake not to shed.
He said, “I didn’t kill Yurishev. I swear to you.”
“No. Of course you didn’t. Your friend did.”
“Sasha was fifteen, mucking out stables and washing dishes in a tavern. He didn’t even know me till after the fact. Did you grow up with the Yurishevs?”
“No. They mostly died.” A tear escaped and slid down her cheek, but fury stayed in her eyes. “My father’s whole family mostly died—ill-wished—in Vojvoda, in Balovatz, in Kiev… The wizards wouldn’t let them alone.”
Old Yurishev dropping dead after running him through, with no mark on him—the whole town in hue and cry so quickly after wizards and Pyetr Kochevikov—
God, he had lived so long with the misdeeds of wizards he had forgotten ordinary greed, relatives, and poisons. Yurishev had come back home unexpectedly that night, Yurishev might even have had time to drink a cup of wine before the alarm upstairs—
“Wizardry, hell. All of them, you say.”
“ What are you saying?”
“Plain and ordinary murder, girl. How did they tell you it was?”
Color flushed her cheeks. “That you broke into the house—that you—as-saulted—my—m-”
God. He reached for her hand, but she snatched it out of reach. So he said, gently, lightly, “Girl, I do assure you— whatever you’ve heard of me, force was never my style.” He settled back on his heels and met her cold stare with cool honesty. “It was an affair of some weeks. Someone told Yurishev, Yurishev chased me out of the house, ran me through when I tripped, and died in the street without my laying a hand on him. Leaving town seemed a good idea, right then. As simple as that. I don’t blame your mother—” An outright lie, the kindest he had in him. “She had to tell, to watch something, didn’t she?”
“Then why did all the other Yurishevs die?”
Not a silly girl, no. One close to an answer that could trouble her sleep at night. “Good question. Wizardry, perhaps—but not likely. Let me tell you: real wizardry’s not what they tell you in Vojvoda and Sasha’s not the kind of wizard you’ll find selling dried toads and herbs in shops. His kind won’t go to towns. They can’t. Towns scare them, and if you’ll believe me in the least, they don’t give a damn about the Yurishevs and the Medrovs and their relatives. Not to say his wishes can’t go that far—but not with any purpose against the Yurishevs. There’s no malice in him. None. Watering the garden—whether it’s going to take rain from other people—those are his worries. They keep him very busy.”
She was listening. The anger was a little to the background, now. Curiosity was at work, one could see it in the flicker of her tear-filmed eyes.
She asked, scornfully, “So was it all accident?”
“Sasha says there aren’t any accidents in magic. No accident in your being here, either. Your young man—I take it he’s the same you were about to marry—”
A quick, black scowl.
“Nice lad,” he said, “but in serious trouble. Let me tell you a name. Kavi Chernevog.”
“I never heard of him.”
“Not likely you would have. He’s not dealt with folk downriver in years. But things happened in Kiev because of him. Things are still happening because of him—no matter he’s dead. I don’t know why the leshys brought you here or what you were doing in the woods with this boy, but you haven’t heard the worst trouble: Chernevog’s gotten hold of him and run off with my daughter, who’s not being outstandingly sensible right now.”
“Gotten hold! Of Yvgenie?”
“Wizards can do that. Living or dead ones.” He saw the shiver, saw her wits start to scatter and grabbed her hand; and said, “Dead, in this case. Rusalka. Which means no good for your young lad, and no good for my daughter either. The way wizardry works, with three and four wizards involved, things may happen that none of the wizards precisely want, and ordinary folk like us can’t do a damn thing about it. Like Sasha over there—whatever he wants, we’d do. Absolutely.”
Her hands were clenched in his. She darted a fearful glance in Sasha’s direction, back again. He said, “That’s the way it works, girl. All he has to do is want something. No spells. Nothing. He has to be very careful what he does want. That’s why he doesn’t go into towns. No real wizard can. The world’s far too noisy for him.”
She was frightened. And still doubtful. She drew her hands away from him. “Can he stop this Chernevog?”
“He has before.”
She believed that part. He was sure of it. She looked him in the eyes and said, “They tell stories about you. They say you’re the wizard.”
He shook his head solemnly. “Not a shred of one. Not the least ability.”
“You’re different than they said.”
“Worse or better?”
A hesitation. And silence.
“Fair answer. —How is your mother?”
Her lips trembled. “She won’t forgive me. None of them will forgive me.”
“ For running off with Yvgenie? “
Silence. But the eyes said it was.
“So why did you?”
The tremor grew worse. The jaw clamped. Fast. Damn you all, that look said. It might have been Irina’s teaching. Or his temper. He had no idea, but he knew the hazard in it. He heard Sasha come walking over with the horses, he looked up as Sasha stopped and stood there, with the horses saddled.
Eavesdropping, he was certain of it.
Sasha blushed and looked at the ground and up again.
Which said he was right. But little enough he could blame Sasha. He got up, offered Nadya his hand, and thought she would refuse it.
She took it, at least, with grace he was not sure he would have had, with his father, who had, dammit, dropped out of his life and into it again only often enough to keep the pain constant.
He flung their packs over the saddlebow, climbed up and offered Nadya a hand and his foot to help her. She tried to settle sideways on Volkhi’s rump.
“You’ll fall,” he said. “Not in this woods, girl. Tuck the skirts up and hold on.”
They told stories in Vojvoda, how Pyetr Kochevikov and his sorcerer ally had shapechanged their way into birds after murdering her father in the street—Nadya had heard the dreadful stories long before she had ever heard the whispers about her parentage. Her mother had told her about all the murders, and her uncles had warned her how cruel and terrible the wizards hunting her were, and kept her close within walls.
For fear of spells, her mother had said, spells which might find her even in the safety of her own house, in her bed at night. Who knew what mistakes the other Yurishevs had made or what careless moment had killed them?
But one had only to look at Pyetr Kochevikov to know what her mother had really feared, the whisper that would mean she was not Yurishev’s heir, the whisper that would simply say: Kochevikov’s eyes, Kochevikov’s face, Kochevikov’s likeness. Her true father’s hair was even paler than her mother’s, of which she was so vain; he was incredibly handsome even years away from the event, and far, far younger than she would have ever expected, even so—all of which suggested an entirely different account of what had passed on her soon-to-be-widowed mother’s bedroom that night.