Memory of a gray sky. A feeling of justice done, but he could take no joy in it. The ghost’s question seemed wistful and angry at once, as if it truly did not understand. His hands felt chill as he drew up on Bielitsa’s reins, going on in the lead, he had forgotten where for the moment, and why, except he felt the wolf’s presence closer now, and he wanted them quickly on their way.
How can you forgive him? the ghost insisted to know, determined to know, because he had tried very hard and very long to understand what justice was. He did harm to everyone around him. How can you forgive him? How dare you forgive evil like that?
But Ilyana said, riding beside him, “What did he get? Who are you talking about?”
Her question confused him. He knew too many things, knew he had been hours ahead of his father’s men when he had reached Vojvoda; and he had known then they would kill Ilyana, and all her house—for nothing that was her fault—
No. The ghost was adamant. No. There had been a river shore.
She had said once, behind the stairs, I don’t know the town. I’ve never been outside the walls. My window only looks out on the garden. —And he had remembered that. And drowned her, for fear of what she was, or might become.
“Yvgenie?” she said.
He said, desperately scanning the branches and the sky, “Owl’s gone.”
“He’ll be back. He comes and goes.—You’re not worried about the wolf, are you?”
“Owl’s gone. The black thing is.” His heart was pounding in his chest, as if he were drowning. He knew that sunlight was still around him, he could see it everywhere, every detail of the branches and the leaves around them, every detail of her face and the sunlight on her hair. He kept remembering that day on the river, that he had known he loved her, quite, quite helplessly, and far differently this year than the boy he had been, the lost boy the woods had sustained in innocence—
There was no more innocence, once awareness came, only a struggle to love, and not to kill—this moment, and the next and the next—
He shut his eyes and rubbed them, with fingers gone quid chill, thinking, I can’t remember what’s mine any longer, god, whoever you were, Kavi Chernevog, whatever you did, give my memories back to me—or remember your own. I’m losing things. I’m trying to hold on, but I’m so tired—
But he remembered the river too, ill-matching pieces coming together for a moment, and said, “He forgives too much, Ilyana. There is evil in the world. There truly is evil. And he’s been too close to it. —So have I. And the wicked ones never tell you the truth. Do you know that?”
“Are you one of the wicked ones?”
“No.” He said—and it was a great effort to say, against the need he had for her: “Ilyana, don’t wish. Don’t wish anymore. Don’t expect things. You’re stronger than you know. Let go and let me lead you.”
She looked at him in dismay. She said, in a voice scarcely louder than the wind, “Who are you? Is it Kavi?”
He could not shape the words. He fought them out, not even understanding what the ghost made him say, “Ilyana, that place of yours—You’re wishing for what doesn’t exist. You don’t imagine how dangerous that is. You don’t know enough, Ilyana. You’re getting yourself deeper and deeper into trouble.”
“But can’t it exist? What else is magic, but wishing what isn’t yet? It will exist if I want it to—”
He saw the rooftops of Kiev, suns and moons careering above the golden domes, above the banners of the Great Tsar—remembered leaves and thorns, ominous as the echo of axes off snowy walls. He thought, in utter despair: I don’t want to do what I’m doing; but he could not remember why he felt so afraid of the place he was going, or so apprehensive of what might befall her there. He looked to the reddening and began to think, It’s because it’s too late. We can’t go back from here. There’s only wanting—his wanting, now, I’m so damned tired I can’t keep them apart, even know-what it’s doing—god, I’m not even sure it’s right—
“Wizards can do this to themselves,” Pyetr said, while Sasha slept.
Nadya looked at Sasha distressedly, and darted a look at him as he fed a few twigs into the fire. “Why?”
“Hell if I know.” But he did know. It was a way out of bud thoughts, dangerous thoughts, which were the straight path to unwise wishes. It was the powerful wizards that did it, so far as he knew of how things worked: small need the village toad sellers had of such defenses—if they could do it at all. To his observation only Sasha and the mouse could do it; and Eveshka, he supposed—last resort before one burned down Kiev or something—
Bad thought. Very bad thought.
And do what now? Throw Sasha over Missy’s back and keep going blind, completely unable to feel what was going on ahead of them, or what they might run into? He had no idea what had made Sasha do what he had done—or even whether Sasha had done it. Neither could he know whether his hesitation now was wisdom, cowardice, or someone else’s or Sasha’s wishes. It was only sure that Sasha was in no good way to defend them or himself if they ran into the least hazard in the dark.
“Just sit still,” he said, started to settle himself, and saw a glint of metal among Nadya’s skirts as she moved her foot. He made an unthoughtful reach after it. “What is that?”
Nadya evaded his hand, tucked her skirts about her ankles and gave him an anxious stare, all offended modesty.
But that had been bright, hard metal, not gilt. And, having been a father for no few years, he looked her quite steadily in the eye, expecting an answer, until finally she ducked his gaze, moved her foot and the hem of her skirts and showed a knife-hilt in the side of a very costly and sadly out-at-the-seams boot.
“What in hell do you intend to do with that?”
She tucked the foot under her, clasped her arms about her ankles and scowled at him.
“Let’s see it.” He held out his hand with the same no- nonsense expectation. “—Come on. Let me see that thing. “
She reluctantly drew it and laid it in his palm, an old bone-hilted kitchen knife, honed down to a sliver. He turned it to the light and felt a razor edge with his thumb. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? Who is this for? Bears? Bandits? Stray fathers?”
She set her jaw and looked embarrassed. He lifted an eye brow. “Well?”
“You think I’m a fool,” she said.
“I think I’ve seen better plans. I take it your young man had some idea in his head. He didn’t just pick any girl in Vojvoda and say, Let’s run away and drown ourselves in the woods.”
“No.”
“Did he give you this?”
A shake of the head.
“You always carry a knife in your boot.”
“For wizards,” she said, and clamped her jaw a breath and said, with a worried shift of her eyes toward Sasha and back again. “Not him.”
“Not him. Why not?”
“He’s not what they said.”
“I see. Just in case a whole band of wizards came down on you. In Vojvoda.”
“I never knew what might come. I never—” Tears started up, glittered in the firelight. “They told me people were trying to kill me. I wasn’t just going to stand there. Ever.”
God, he thought, and—held out an arm to her. But she sat where she was, with her hands clenched between her knees and ducked her head. He let his hand fall. “So you ran away with Yvgenie. Off into the woods with nothing to eat, no blankets, no shelter—”
“Because his family found out who my real father is, and his father was sending people to kill us!”
“Kill you, for the god’s sake. Why?“
She got a breath, wiped beneath her eye with the back of her hand. “If anybody who knew you had ever seen me, they’d have known who my father is. But no one ever did, except the servants. And Yvgenie. He came and he was going o marry me because I was rich.” Another pass of the finger beneath the lashes, in a face pale and angry. Justifiably angry, he thought, finding nothing to say for himself. “I was very rich. My uncles said I was going to marry someone close to the tsar and bring the whole family to Kiev. I thought I might have to marry Yvgenie’s father. But the Yurishevs weren’t noble enough. So he married somebody else and I ended up betrothed to his son.” Breath came easier for her now. Thank the god. He wanted to stop her but he wanted to know, too; and he listened, while she looked at the fire and not at him.