“Damn you! You couldn’t face me, you couldn’t come to me with your “bring her to them—” What were you going to do, Kavi? What did the leshys intend with my daughter?”
“To make her safe, that’s all they wanted—”
“Was it? Was it now?” The sunlight dimmed before the dark and the anger in front of him. She would kill the boy, he was sure, kill Yvgenie and him and take the magic he had, she was that strong and desperate to be stronger—rusalka no less than himself, a sink of life as deadly as that place beyond the hedge—
While life and magic poured over that rim and threatened to sweep her and him and everything they loved into itself.
“Eveshka,” he said. “Eveshka, don’t help it, don’t—wish against them—”
“Bonesss,” the vodyanoi said.
The whole world tottered for an instant. Breath failed. But she spun about and stalked away from him, and laid her hand on a bare white trunk.
Something whispered, slithering to the other bank: Don’t trust him, pretty bones. He’s not at all nice. But there is a place that wants him, there is a place that would certainly trade for him, trade for something very, very nice—
It was day. The vodyanoi could not abide the sun—except someone enabled him, except Eveshka was listening to the creature. And who was so foolish, god, who but him had ever been so foolish?
Eveshka rolled a glance at sky and woods, looked at him last, desperate, angry for all the long seasons of cold and dark he had damned her to. She hated him, for lying, for pain, for deception and his theft of her peace and her daughter—
She wanted the strength he held. She took it, in one dizzy rush, that left him on his knees; and wanted him from her sight, now, that was the single grace she gave him, because there was a wisp of life left in him and she would not kill— from moment to moment, so long as she could, she would not kill…
“Run, damn you, Kavi! Runl“
He found the strength somewhere. He fled the streamside, blind, raked by thorns—he stumbled and fell and ran again, mindless, until he found himself lying on dead leaves in the sunlight, watching an ant make anxious progress across a sandy, mold-eaten leaf among other leaves, and stop, and quite suddenly— Shrivel and die.
His heart gave a painful thump. A leaf fell. Another followed. He wiped his mouth with a gritty hand and tried to get up.
Green, untimely leaves showered about him. His teeth chattered with winter cold as he gathered his feet under him and kept going, where, he did not know, except he felt powerless against what moved him —he, Kavi, Yvgenie: the distinction was no longer exact in his thoughts.
He wiped tears that ran on his face, revolted by the chill of his own hand, and slid as much as walked down the face of the hill, gathered himself at the bottom and stumbled further, thinking—the god help him—that if he could only find the horses—they could carry his failing body in more then one sense.
But there was no trace of them, and from Yvgenie nothing but terror and grief. Yvgenie loved the white mare. Ilyana loved the filly. So did he, for Ilyana’s sake. And his living always required murder, it had before and did again, even of what trusted him.
The sun sank below the treetops. In a deeply shadowed passage Volkhi blew and shook his head, and Pyetr shivered for no reason that he could think of—a passing wish, perhaps, either good or ill, if any magic at all could reach him. Volkhi had his head up, smelling something of interest, that much was certain. Pyetr asked a little more speed of him and Volkhi picked up his pace, pricking up his ears and flattening them again, listening and worrying. The mouse? One could only hope. No, god, it was Patches, riderless, with Yvgenie’s white horse behind, coming slowly down the wooded hillside. His heart said hurry; but he rode quietly so as not to startle them, and saw bloody scratches and countless welts on their hides, thorns snarled in manes…
Sasha could easily have asked them the questions he most wanted to ask. All an ordinary man could learn of them was the evidence of a panic flight through thorn thickets: dirt from falls, scratches all over them, and everything Ilyana and the boy owned still bound to the saddles—god, Ilyana’s book was there along with the rest of her belongings. She would never have parted from that—willingly.
He slid down, slipped Patches’ bridle, tied it to the saddle, and sent the filly off with a whack on the rump—home, he hoped, where young Patches understood home to be; or to Sasha, or whatever refuge she could find on their own. He held on to the white mare for a change of horses, swung up onto Volkhi’s back, argued Volkhi and the mare into an uphill track, and rode along their backtrail, not breakneck, but slowly, observing an occasional print of a hoof on soft ground, a snag of white horsehair in brush. The horses had both gotten away clear: life had escaped Chernevog’s grasp, and if it was Chernevog’s fault what had happened, the horses could not have gotten away without magic.
Which could most reasonably mean the mouse—who, being the mouse, might have driven them off for their own safety, if things were going wrong; but she would not have chosen to send them away with the book and their food and their blankets, not unless something had gone very wrong, very quickly, or she had some destination in mind for them. Like her uncle. Like—the god knew. The book might have every answer he needed, which he might know now if Sasha were with him, which, dammit, Sasha was not—nor could possibly be, this fast.
So he was here—for what little he could do: at least whatever he could do was sooner than he could do it at Sasha’s pace; and if the mouse’s wish or Sasha’s was indeed guiding the horses, Sasha might yet get his hands on the book and the answers in time, and ride to the mouse’s rescue.
Or his, if he was on the right track—and by all evidence he was.
Only granting, please the god, Sasha had ever waked up.
“Babi’s left,” Nadya said, and Sasha looked about at her, saying, “What?” so distractedly she was sorry she had said anything. It was getting toward dark, he insisted on walking and letting the horse follow him, and if he was working magic she might just have ruined things.
“No,” he said.
It was very disconcerting to have someone answer her thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and patted Missy’s neck as they walked. “Pyetr and I do it. I forget. I’m dreadfully sorry.”
“I shouldn’t bother you when you’re thinking.”
“You couldn’t bother me.”
It was an odd thing to say. She was not certain whether it was good or bad. Maybe she was too silly to bother him. Ha uncles called her a damned nuisance when they thought sin was out of earshot. They called her stupid girl—
“You’re not,” he said, and stopped a moment and looked up at her. “You are distracting me. I’m sorry. Please don’t talk to me. I’m trying to think of something.”
“What?”
“A wise wish.”
“Wish us home,” she said.
He had the most distressed look on his face. He stared at her and went on staring. He said, finally, “Home.”
She said, “Mine’s not in Vojvoda. I don’t know where it is but it’s not there.”
He said, “Mine burned.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry—”
“It wasn’t mine, really. Or it was. It didn’t matter. It was just full of papers and things.”
She did not understand. She did not understand how she had troubled him, but she had. She frowned and wondered what she had said so dreadful.