“I’m not saying that. I’m saying I don’t know what kind of a game the leshys are playing. Or what kind they have played.” God, they had relied on Misighi, they had trusted the old creature, who had held the mouse in his arms—
A nest of birds and a child are the same to them. And was it ever certain what friendship means to them? I rarely saw Misighi after that. And not at all in recent years.
Dammit, Eveshka’s worked so long and remade so much that she destroyed, she had almost made her peace with the leshys before the mouse was born, and since, since, she’s not gone any time at all into the woods—too busy with housework, she said, since the baby came, too busy once there was a child to take care of—
God, ’Veshka, did I never see? I thought it must be motherhood or something, I thought it must be some natural change, with babies and all—but you loved the forest, you’d mended every damage you could set your hands to, you wished it life with all your heart—and you feared it so much you dreaded letting the mouse out of her own yard and into the woods?
Trust the leshys, I said.—The child knows their names, ’Veshka, of course she’s safe. Would Misighi ever let her come to harm?
He bit his lip, saw the bright spark of the fire Pyetr had been making, thought, distractedly: The leshys hate fire. I can’t wish it. Maybe that’s why we’ve gotten along. And she hasn’t.
—Eveshka, hear me—
But he thought instantly of Nadya, glanced at her and flinched, thinking, God, ’Veshka never did like surprises, and she’s not being reasonable, no more than the mouse. There’s no telling what either one of them might wish about this girl, or about us—
Burning papers. Stacks and stacks of papers and moldering birds’ nest and feathers and old, outgrown clothes—
Breathe the smoke. Let the fire mingle the elements of the problem, pinecones and curious dried beetles, old nests, old clothes, old papers, and lonely, disordered years—breathe it in and let it work—
God, she’s my doing. Most certainly she’s my doing, this—girl, this lost daughter of Pyetr’s, this—calamity—the leshys have dropped in our laps—
She can’t be. She can’t be what I wished up. She would have had to begin all those years ago, before I even left Vojvoda, before Pyetr and I even met—
Can we even choose? God, where are our choices, if I was Uulamets’ wish and everything that got Pyetr in trouble and brought Yvgenie to this woods and put the mouse in danger was only for a stupid wish I was going to make on a rainy night eighteen years later— I felt the whole world shift when I wished someone. And the lightning came and Yvgenie drowned. Was it all for her? Or is magic only riding the currents of what already will be—has to be?
Leaves on the water—
“Sasha?” he heard Pyetr asking him. But he could not move, could not get out of the current if that was the case—
No wizard could, if that was the case. There was no way back. He looked at Nadya and thought, The mouse won’t accept her. Eveshka won’t. How did things get so tangled? And what is the mouse doing out there in the woods, if this is all our doing? When did we ever wish it? Or is it Uulamets’ who did it to all of us? And what was the old man thinking of and what did he want in the world, but—
—but—
He drew a panicked breath. And wished the way he Iwi taught the mouse to do when magic began to go amiss—
Sasha fell before Pyetr could reach him, just sprawled on his side, senseless or dead, Pyetr could not tell until he could get a hand inside his collar and feel life beating steadily.
Then he could breathe, himself; but not feel in the least safe, not for himself and not for Sasha or for anyone he loved. It was nothing a sword could get at or an ordinary man even hear going on.
“What’s happened to him?” Nadya asked, and one could not even be sure of her, if Sasha had misjudged what shape shifters could do. But one had to trust, one had to deal sanely, and not act in panic.
“He’s fainted,” he said. “But I don’t know whether he wanted it or something else did.”
His daughter looked at the forest about them—but then-was nothing eyes could see. No Babi, either, which was not a good sign. The inkpot had tamed over, the ink had run out and blotted a page of Sasha’s book—and if that was any indication of how things were going, it was none he liked. He propped Sasha’s head on his knee, put a hand on Sasha’s brow and pleaded with him, “Wake up, can you? Come on. The ink’s spilled, Babi’s missing. I don’t like this, Sasha. I truly don’t.”
Nadya came and sank down close to them, tacked down in a knot with her hands clenched white before her lips. Scared, decidedly, this daughter of his in gilt and tattered silk. Worried. With damned good reason.
10
A wolf—it might be the same wolf—slipped in and out of view, threading a path through the brush, and one could easily feel more anxious not knowing where it was than knowing. It had come closer a moment ago—but Bielitsa had made no protest, not even a twitch of her ears, and Yvgenie rubbed his eyes with chilled fingers, wondering was the wolf a ghost itself, and whether the ghost inside him knew it.
He was convinced there was a place ahead of them where the wolf could not reach, a terrible place, but safe from that danger. He had no clear memory any longer where the boundaries were between himself and the ghost, it was all a struggle now, moment by moment, to keep awake. Perhaps it was bewitchment. Perhaps it was simple weariness. But his hold on the world was slipping, that was the only way he could think of it; and he did not want to alarm Ilyana— everything seemed so precarious and so fragile now, and he did not want to talk about ghosts, or dying.
They reached the bottom of the hill and Ilyana reined in a moment, where there was water. The horses drank, wading into the stream, heedless of danger.
They can’t see it, he thought. They can’t smell it. It’s sun a ghost, like Owl.
It was there again, the wolf was, trotting across the slope in front of them.
“Do you see it?” he asked desperately.
“The wolf?”
“There,” he said. But by the time she had looked where he pointed, it had gone.
She patted Patches’ neck while Patches drank. Bielitsa gave a little twitch of her shoulders and lifted her head. “Probably he’s a little crazy. Uncle says they’ll kill one that’s too different.”
“Like people,” he said, and found himself remembering, not knowing what he was going to say, “My father had other sons.”
There had been another wife. His mother was dead. His father had had something to do with that, but he could not remember what, he could not remember his father’s face, try as he would. He only recalled a silhouette against a window; remembered nothing of home, though it seemed to him a while ago he had known more than that. He saw a gray sky above stark walls. He did not know why that image should terrify him or why people shouting should be so ominous. A dreadful thump, then, shocked through his bones.
The ghost said, against his heart, The man deserved what he got. Can you possibly mourn him? He gave you nothing but pain.
He understood then that it had been his father’s death he had just witnessed, and he was sure he had not been there—it had not happened when he had left. He thought, cold and sick at heart: The tsar must have found him out. The tsar must have learned he was plotting against him—but surely it wasn’t my fault—please the god it wasn’t my fault he’s dead—
Fool, the ghost said. I give you justice and you’re sorry? How can you forgive so much evil?