One had to be careful with ordinary folk. And when he did look at her, one could never know whether it was wizardry or not or whether she was only deceiving herself.
She said, with as much honesty as she could find, “People have to love me if I want them to, even wizards, especially wizards, uncle says, because we hear magic—but ordinary people, too, if we want them to. They can’t help it.”
“A spell?” he asked her.
“I don’t know what you call it. I don’t. I just didn’t want in be alone all my life and I wanted Kavi back—I never wanted anything bad to happen to anyone, I never did, I don’t know what’s gone wrong, or why it was, except it’s wrong to want people to love you—”
He touched her cheek and looked her in the eyes. “If I’m bewitched, I don’t care, so long as you love me back—that’s what matters, isn’t it? I love you, I do, the same as he does. And I don’t care why—”
It hurt. God, it hurt.
He said, then, faintly, “Damn him.” He shut his eyes, and she wished, aching, Don’t do that to him, Kavi. Please. It’s not fair.
Yvgenie sank down where he was, head on his arms, not looking at her. There was pain, that was all she could hear, pain and fear and not wanting her to die because of him, when he was already sure he would die, and follow her, and do anything he had to to stay with her until someone put an end to him—because he would not leave her—not so long as he existed—
Nor touch her again, so long as he could help it, no matter what he killed—
“Please,” he said without looking at her. “Please just leave me alone.”
She wanted—but wanting stopped short of hurting him again. She went back to her book and sat down and wrote.
I wanted someone like my father. I didn’t know what I was wanting. I don’t know what my father is with my mother, what Kavi is and what she was. Now I know what it feels like. Now I know and I can’t do anything. There’s nothing I can wish that doesn’t hurt and there’s nowhere for me to go but with Yvgenie, because—
A leaf fell onto the paper. Other leaves were falling, some on the ground, a few into the fire, where they flared and burned and perished.
11
A ring of salt, her father had said, and Nadya had done that as quickly as possible, around her, around Sasha, around the spotted horse, too. But she had not been thinking about firewood when she had been drawing the circle, and the fire was getting desperately low. She added leaves. She stood up and broke off overhanging twigs, and a branch and broke it up and saved it back as long as she could.
But the fire began to die. And the spotted horse made a soft, anxious sound. That made her think that she might have been fatally foolish, that with the fire grown so small, whatever was out there dared come closer and closer, and if the light did not even reach the bushes she would have to go out I here totally in the dark.
She had to do it. She took the knife from her boot and went out of the circle, breaking branches with cracks that sounded frighteningly loud in the hush about her.
Something hissed at her, right at her feet. She jumped, clenching her knife, and all but fell over her own skirts, seeing two round gold eyes looking at her.
It was the Yard-thing. Babi. Babi stared at her and growled and she very carefully backed away, taking her armful of wood and her knife back into the circle.
Babi turned up there, too. Pop. Babi crouched down his head on his paws and showed white, white teeth while she fed sticks into the fire and wished, please the god, that Sasha would wake up soon, and not be angry with her about being left—and that the Yard-thing would not decide she was a threat and bite her hand off.
Please.
Babi barked at her. And vanished. She sat there with her knife in her hand and her arms around her knees and waited, shivering despite the fire.
Sasha would not be angry with her. Sasha would not be angry with her. She had waited all her life for some ill-wish that would make her slip on the stairs or catch a fish-bone in her throat or even just take a fever—the silly knife was only because nobody took her seriously, the guards never took her orders, the guards and the servants would never listen to her if she was in danger, and at least if she had the knife she had something, if only against whoever might break into the house the way Pyetr Kochevikov had done.
Except he had not broken in, she believed that part. She believed everything else. Her uncles had snatched up the silver and the gold and her mother had gathered up her jewels and her best clothes and when she had come to say goodbye—because Yvgenie had said he would take her where people would forget who they were—her mother had said go where she liked. Go where she liked—and no truth even then.
She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, angry, dammit, for that, for all the years of lies, all the years of modest, lying virtue that had made her afraid of this and afraid of that, most of all afraid of—
Sasha’s eyes had opened. He was looking at her. He went on looking at her and the breath froze in her throat.
Anything he wants, her father had said.
He moved his elbow, and pushed himself up to look around. “God. Pyetr?” He staggered to his feet to look about firelit woods, and at her, with an accusation that made breathing difficult.
He remembered her father riding off into the dark, she remembered him telling her, Take care of Sasha… Tell him—you don’t have to tell him. He knows things like that. Just take care of him. He doesn’t remember to do that himself…
“Oh, god,” Sasha said, and she got up, she had no idea why, except he was in a hurry, and she could think of nothing but gathering things up and getting on the horse, whose name was Missy, and finding Pyetr before something found him, please the god—
Sasha was packing up his books. He said, “How long has he been gone?” and she answered, “A while,” shivering inside, because she realized then he was making her think of things, and he was sorry. He wanted her to forgive him and she did, she had no choice. Dammit!
“Please.” He cast her a look of purest misery. “I think I wished you here, I could have wished you born and Pyetr to trouble for all I know, and please excuse me, I’m not used to being near ordinary people, except Pyetr.”
Her father knew how to listen to him and answer him with just thinking, her father was a brave man with no fear of him, or of half the things else in the world he should be afraid of. Like vodyaniye. Like wizards and his other daughter and the rusalka who had taken Yvgenie…
“Please,” he said faintly, aloud, and she saw herself standing there with a knife in her hand, while he was standing there with his hands full of ropes and packs, and wanting her not to stand in his horse’s way, please, so Missy could reach him, so they could be moving. Something might have wanted Pyetr to go alone. Pyetr had had that notion from the beginning. And Pyetr had so little defense against the people he loved. Please be out of the way—and do what he asked— right now. Please.
Day came creeping through the tangle of branches, with the distant muttering of thunder—decidedly not the sound a man wanted to hear, with wizards involved. Pyetr dipped his hands in cold water, splashed his face and wiped his hair back for the moment it would stay out of his eyes, rocked onto his knees and sat with his eyes shut a moment, while Volkhi drank.
Not the wisest thing to do, perhaps, going off the second time alone, but in coldest sanity he did not think that surprising the mouse or ’Veshka with Nadya in his company was the best idea right now. Jealousy, hurt feelings, he had seen enough, even between his wife and the daughter he had known all her life.