He was dazed. Their grip hurt his arms. He found no sense in what the ghost was saying, and the captain of the tsar’s men leaned close to ask him and seized him by the hair, making him look up. “Where is Nadya Yurisheva?”
The name echoed strangely in his ears, recalling— recalling—
—a talk behind the stairs, vows exchanged besides the witnessed ones, with the bride they had contracted for him: they had conspired to try to love each other, his bride behind her walls, himself within his father’s treacheries and the Medrovs” climb to influence. Until someone had whispered the fatal secret, a taint of wizardry—’Where is she?” the captain asked, shaking him, but he saw only forbidding thorns, and ghosts, and the fire and Ilyana writing in her book. He had no idea how he had become so lost, or where he had lost Nadya and fallen in love with a wizard who wanted him for a ghost’s sake— For Kavi Chernevog, who had sustained his life and who with a confidence beyond courage was not afraid of these men, no. Kavi wanted them, he felt it coming—
“Let me go!” he pleaded with them. But the breath and strength that came flooding through his arms was theirs, all the arrogant violence they had brought to this woods. Two horses bolted, free through the woods. Go! he wished them, heard the captain cry, “Kill him!” and shut his eyes and wished not, wished all the horses free: it was his own mortality, that, and the ghost did not fight him on that point. It was too well satisfied with the life it had in reach, and with every gasp of breath came anger at his victims. He had tried all his life not to hate, had kept his father’s wicked secrets, poured all his love into a man whose only passion was cleverness and strength, and fear in the eyes of his dogs and his servants and his sons…
But that was over. They were gone now, his half-brothers were dead, his stepmother must be dead: everything he knew und understood was gone—he was drowning, and he caught at last at what he could. Branches, lives—it was all the same.
Finally he was sitting by the water with breath in his body, warmth where cold had been, and three dead men beside him. He had not intended it, god, he had not set out to do murder—it was the ghost. It was all the ghost—
—Well, well, well, something said, then, that was not harmless, either, that reeked of sunless cold and coils.—A boy. A boy with the smell of my old master all about him. My kind, dear master—is it help you want?
Fear washed over him—he had no notion of what, or why, only that the ghost knew its serpent shape, and that killing had drawn this creature here as surely as rot would draw ravens.
You’ve only to wish me, the creature said. I know what you need. I can supply everything you need.
It shivered up the streamside like a passing cloud. It brought cold where it passed. And stopped where a woman stood, a woman Ilyana’s image.
A woman he had murdered once. And rescued from magic. And lost again forever through his jealousy.
He said, in sudden despair, “—Eveshka.”
And the creature who smelled of dark and murder said, suddenly behind him, “The years do turn. Don’t they turn, old master?”
Something was ahead of them, not the mouse, Sasha thought, and said, quietly for Nadya, who was holding only to the saddle on this level ground:
“I’m hearing something. Someone. I don’t know who.”
“Is it my father?”
He shook his head, gazed through the sunlit forest, along the hills behind them. “It’s—” It was something out of the ordinary, not like the thoughts of deer or the earth-smelling habits of bears. He stood up in the stirrups and looked over his shoulder.
“It’s not near us. It’s north of here. Too far to hear—it feels like someone. Several someones. Like voices you can’t hear. I don’t like this.”
“The ones we’re looking for? Could it be?”
He shook his head. “I want them to ignore us. I want them not to see us.”
“I’m scared.”
“We’ve Babi. Wherever he is.” He reached back a hand without thinking, patted a bare knee with half-felt embarrassment. He did not like the feeling from the woods. “It’s not safe. But I’ve nowhere safer to put you.”
There was a little tremor in her voice. “My father said stay with you.” And she added, “I have a knife in my boot.”
“We don’t want them that close.” He had his own misgivings about putting her afoot and out of his sight—misfortune and magic tending to strike at the most vulnerable point. “Don’t be afraid. Just think about the wind, think about green leaves, that’s the sort of thing Missy thinks about.”
She thought about walking houses and wolves and dreadful wizards. She tried to see the leaves instead, and admire the sunlight: everything was brighter in the woods, the whole world was more dangerous and sharper-edged than she had ever imagined. She thought, I shouldn’t be alive, I shouldn’t be thinking thoughts like this—
Yvgenie rode all the way from Kiev for me—and he’s in trouble and we’ve got to save him; but I can’t even think about what to say when I see him. I never felt with him the my I feel now—I never imagined anybody like Sasha and it’s stupid! I can’t tell whether I’m shivering because I’m scared to death or only because he touched me…
Dammit, he thought, we’re fools, both of us are fools. I can’t afford to think of this girl, god, Pyetr’s in deep trouble out there, the mouse is—I need to talk to ’Veshka right now, and I can’t, I daren’t, because of Nadya.
God, one clear wish—one clear wish and I could break the silence. Two clear thoughts and we all might have a chance; and the girl has me so upset I don’t know my own name.
I brought her here. It’s my fault. Yvgenie is my fault. Or have I been assuming too much all along?
“Where is she?” Eveshka said, demanded everything, and ran through those memories like a fire through dry leaves. He remembered countless faces, he remembered desperation, going barehanded against Draga’s creatures, he remembered dying—and first meeting Eveshka’s daughter by the brook where Yvgenie would die.
He remembered Owl dying and the precarious bridge above the river; he remembered his heart lodged as a guest with Pyetr’s—and knew Eveshka the way Pyetr did, saw her the way Pyetr did, in the sun and the wind, at the helm of the old ferry; he forgave her the way Pyetr did—with the firelight on her face and thoughts in her eyes he could never, ever speak to—
Thoughts like doubt of one’s own life, one’s own right to walk the earth, doubts that echoed off his own wizard-bred despair.
She still remembered loving him. And she hated that. She remembered him wishing harm on Pyetr with no reckoning of Pyetr himself, only his own pleasure in pain and mischief—that was always at the core of what he did and what he chose. He enjoyed mischief. That was who he was. She believed it.
He did not dispute her—but the enjoyment of it he could not now remember, could only recall that he had done it, and knew that of men alive or dead, he regarded Pyetr as his friend: “I never knew anyone who was good, but him, ’Veshka, allow me that much and don’t argue with me now-listen to me!” A pit was at his back: he could recall all life behind them pouring like a waterfall over an edge that gnawed its way closer and closer to the world and this place. He wanted her to see it, he wanted her to understand he had tried to stay with Ilyana.
“ ’Veshka, I love her, I was never supposed to fall in love with her. They wanted me to bring her here, to them. But they’re dead, and I couldn’t stop her—”