Yvgenie Page 22

  —girl.

  His eyes flew open. His hand jerked toward the ground and pressed wet, gritty leaves. His waking vision was exactly the same: a girl was sleeping peacefully beside them, a girl with long blond braids, wearing gilt and blue silk embroidered with flowers. Mouse, he all but exclaimed at first glance, except she did not sound like the mouse, not inside. She sounded—

  Pyetr bruised his ribs and his leg sitting up, sharp, welcome pain, that shoved the noisy world back, and convince him most welcomely that Pyetr saw the same thing.

  ‘What in hell?’ Pyetr breathed.

  Whereupon the girl's eyes opened and she stared at them both as if they had fallen out of the moon—or she had.

  ‘Who is she?'' Count on Pyetr to ask the critical question, count on Pyetr to grab him by the shoulder at the brink of wondering too much too fast—as the girl thrust herself up on her arms, staring at them, frozen, quiet. Blue eyes, straw-colored hair that trailed free about a frightened face—

  A rich girl's gown all tattered and bedraggled, gilt threads torn, scratches on her hands—

  Yvgenie,’ Pyetr muttered, in the same moment Sasha thought, too, of a red silk shirt and gilt collar.

  The girl asked—she could hardly ask, she was shivering so: ‘Are you his f-father's men?''

  ‘I assure you, no,’ Pyetr said fervently, and the girl:

  '' Do you know where he is? ‘

  No, Sasha warned Pyetr without half-thinking, and was sure on a second thought that he was right. Brave as this townbred girl might be, it was more than embroidery was raveled, surely, and it was more than young foolishness had brought her to them. Absolutely, magic was loose.

  ‘We should make a fire,’ he said, nudging Pyetr's arm, wishing him to understand and be careful what he said. ‘Have breakfast.’ The pan was lying next last night's fire, with last night's overdone cakes in it. The vodka jug sat beside it. He picked up the pan and offered it to the girl. ‘There are cakes if you'd like a bite—they're cold, I'm afraid. We haven't time to cook this morning. But we can make tea—’

  ‘We need to find the horses,’ Pyetr said sharply, giving his shoulder a shake. ‘We need to find Babi, dammit. The boy wasn't alone, we can figure that, but we can ask her questions while we're moving.’

  ‘She's not a shapeshifter,'' he assured Pyetr, in case Pyetr was in doubt. He was virtually certain of it. ‘One of that kind would have been the mouse to our eyes.’ He made smother offer of their untouched supper, wishing the girl to trust them at least that far, quite ruthlessly: she was white as a ghost herself, and her trembling, he was sure, was not all from fright. The forest offered food to woodsmen, not to a girl in silk and gilt. ‘Go on. It's all right. Take them.’

  She took the pan, perforce, asking, ‘Please—where's Yvgenie?''

  ‘With my daughter,’ Pyetr said harshly, and, leaning on Sasha's shoulder, got to his feet. ‘Somewhere in this woods. We're looking for them. We've been looking for them for two damned days now.’

  Pyetr had been a long time from his courtly youth and the idle flattering of young ladies—Pyetr was in a hurry, the mouse was in dire danger, and he both frightened the girl and reassured her of his ultimate intentions, Sasha caught it in the girl's thoughts and in the glance she gave Pyetr—the hope that they were not liars and that there was truly a lost daughter and a wife and a house and everything that could make two strange men reliable and respectable.

  God, she was so beautiful.

  ‘The horses,’ Pyetr reminded him, and shook at his shoulder. ‘Sasha.’

  The horses were out in the woods. Not far. Babi was with them, one of those occasional times one could feel Babi's presence, fierce and warm as a cat with kittens.

  ‘Sasha.’

  ‘They're all right. They're coming.’ He watched the girl break off a bit of cake in fingers that surely had never seen rough use before this woods, and said to Pyetr, absently, out of the welter of thoughts absorbing him, ‘It was leshys last night. They risked a fire bringing her to us, Pyetr. You know how they hate fires. Let's not question a gift, shall we?’

  ‘The leshys could damned well stay for tea if they'd an interest in co—’

  A branch fell, breaking branches below it, over their heads. ‘Move!’ Sasha said—and Pyetr stepped aside just in time, scowling up into the branches.

  There was anger from the woods too, deep and dangerous. The leshys are upset at us, he thought. They've a surfeit of wizards on their hands. Young leshys. They don't know us, but they're watching... He said to Pyetr, never taking his eyes off the girl, who had frozen: ‘Fire. Tea.’ And to the girl: ‘We've odd friends. Don't be alarmed. Clearly they were the ones who brought you here. We assume there was reason.’

  She only stared at him with wide, stricken eyes. Pyetr had walked over to the deadfall and began breaking it up for fire—be careful, he wished Pyetr, feeling the precariousness of the situation, hoping the leshy watching from the treetops would not take offense, and saw to his chagrin how he had left his book last night, with the inkpot left open. He hastily began to put that away, and to stow all the books out of reach—though there seemed no danger to them from a single frightened girl, who looked at them, between bites of cold cake as if she and they had collectively lost their wits.

  She asked, swallowing a mouthful: ‘You're a wizard, aren’t you?’

  He made as courteous a bow as one could, sitting on the ground. ‘Sasha,’ he said, raked his hair back and, to his chagrin, pulled a leaf from his hair. ‘Alexander.’ So like in mouse when she frowned like that.

  ‘I've heard of you,’ she said. (Of course. People did know them downriver.) ‘I thought you were—’

  What? he wondered helplessly.

  ‘Older,’ she said, in a way that meant much older, and made him feel like foolish fifteen again.

  Wood landed beside him. Pyetr was annoyed, Pyetr thought he was woolgathering and Pyetr wanted the horse right now, dammit—he caught the edge of Pyetr's opinions, while Pyetr took the tea-pan to the rock that poured a thin thread of water into a boggy puddle of a pool in this place. Sasha decided he should see to the fire, stuck a branch into last night's coals and wanted it to light. It did.

  She said, ‘Why is Yvgenie off with his daughter somewhere? ''

  He piled kindling onto the burning piece and answered her without quite looking her in the eye, ‘He thinks we're upset with him. So does she.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No. Not with him.’ God, he thought, she must see us as liars at the least—and how do we tell her the truth? Forgive me, but a dead wizard's possessed your young man, and he's confused about who he's with?—Because Yvgenie Pavlovitch, with so many dark spots in his memory, must be confused. The resemblance was so clear from some angles it upset one's stomach.

  He had the fire going. She had finished one of the cakes no knowing when she had last eaten, although the leshy would surely have left her in better health than they had found her. He opened the tea packet as Pyetr set the water on the fire, Pyetr muttering under his breath, ‘She looks like Ilyana. At least the hair. And about the same age, give or take. I think Misighi must have heard us, and made a mistake. They don't tell one of us from the other very well.''

  The girl's eyes went from one to the other of them, doubting their sanity, Sasha was sure. He saw another tiny morsel of cake go down dry and wished her not to choke. .

  ‘There'll be tea in a moment,’ he promised her, while Pyetr unstopped the vodka jug, thinking shadowy thoughts. Pyetr poured a small dose of vodka, and said, ‘Here, Babi.’

  Babi turned up. The pan clanged to the ground, the rest of the cakes in the girl's lap.

  She made not a sound. Or a move. Thank the god. Sash said quickly, as she gulped down a bite of cake. ‘He's a dvorovoi. Don't be afraid. He might go after the cakes—’

  She picked one out of her lap and offered it hastily—tossed it as Babi came her direction. Babi swallowed the whole cake at a gulp.

  ‘Beha
ve,’ Pyetr said sternly, and poured another dollop of vodka that never hit the leaves.

  ‘It's not everyone he likes,'' Sasha said, fluttery about the stomach himself, considering Babi's other shapes, while the girl drew small anxious breaths. ‘I don't think he'd really hurt you. It's absolutely only the cakes he wants—and he thinks you're all right, or he'd let you know it.’ He reached after the tea and burned his hand on the pan. Sucked a finger. ‘Why don't you pour a bit of vodka in the tea, Pyetr? And some honey. I think honey would be nice, don't you?’

  Volkhi and Missy made a leisurely appearance through the trees, interested in the spring. The girl looked worriedly at that, at Babi, at them—

  He poured the tea, sloshing it badly. Pyetr added vodka, milled honey and Sasha offered it to her. ‘There. We've only the two cups—Pyetr and I don't mind sharing.’

  ‘Pyetr,’ she echoed faintly, and looked at Pyetr with—as seemed—an unwarrantably troubled look.

  Pyetr lifted a brow and took a sip of tea-and-vodka. ‘Pyetr Ilitch Kochevikov. Notorious in Kiev and various other places, I gather. I'm flattered if my reputation's gotten to such lovely ears.’

  That was the old Pyetr. Rain would not fall on him, aunt Ilenka had used to say—meaning he was far too slippery. And far too false and angry to deal with a frightened girl. — Slop it, Sasha wished him. Can't you see you're scaring her?

  Pyetr shut up. Sasha said gently, ‘Drink your tea. It's gelling cold. We need to be moving as soon as we can.’

  She sipped at it, holding the cup in both hands. Winced, swallowing, and blinked tears. Too much vodka for a young girl, Sasha thought, and took a sip of the cup Pyetr passed him. There certainly was. His own eyes watered. He thought of the mouse at the table, the last night she had been home, he looked at the girl and thought—

  Something's wrong. Something's very wrong here—While Pyetr asked, in a dreadful hush, ‘Where are you from, miss? Kiev?’

  A shake of her head. The tears had kept running. She was staring at Pyetr.

  ‘Where?’ Pyetr asked sharply.

  ‘Pyetr,’ Sasha objected, suffocating in that silence. And stopped, because the girl had taken on a scowl that—god, he knew in a way that made his stomach turn over. The match for it was sitting beside him.

  The girl said, with that hawk's look, through a film of tears, ‘You are my father, aren't you?’

  Sasha drew in a breath, it seemed forever, and said, the instant he had wind enough, ‘More tea, actually—I think we could do with more tea, here…’

  Pyetr said faintly, ‘Who's your mother?’

  ‘Who's my mother? You—’

  Silence! Sasha wished, so abruptly the girl winced. He got up and hauled Pyetr to his feet. ‘We could use some more water, Pyetr.’

  Pyetr was damnably hard to move when he wanted otherwise. ‘What's your name?’ Pyetr demanded, a question so absolute his own curiosity slipped, and the girl said, in a hard voice.

  ‘Nadya Yurisheva.''

  Pyetr sank slowly to his heels, stared his firstborn daughter in the face while she stared back at him, then stood up and without a word took the pan back to the spring—

  In a silence thick as the leaves.

  Sasha whispered—one could only whisper, ‘Excuse me, please,’ and went after Pyetr. Anything might happen. Leshys were involved. One was still watching them, he was sure of it.

  Pyetr leaned against the rock, put the pan against it to let clean water trickle in, while Volkhi and Missy blithely destroyed the little green that grew in that spot of sun.

  Pyetr said, ‘She's about eighteen, nineteen, do you think?’

  Vojvoda, a stable, Pyetr run through and bleeding, Pyetr having left the Yurishev's second story window very precipitately not an hour before—

  ‘—Did you and Irina—?’

  ‘Sufficiently, I assure you. Not that night—but certainly others.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘The leshys have a damned dark sense of humor, friend.''

  ‘I—don't think they're altogether to blame—’

  ‘I know who's to blame! It's quite clear who's to blame! Nothing's an accident, isn't that it? Nothing's ever an accident: her being here is no accident, her looking for that boy is no accident—She's no damn substitute for the mouse, Sasha! I don't know what's going on, but she's not what I'm taking home, I don't care what the leshys intend!’

  ‘Hush! She'll hear you!’

  Pyetr sank down on his heels and dumped the water from the pan. ‘God, Sasha.’

  What did one say? What did one do? Or wish?

  Pyetr said faintly, ‘I don't know this girl. The daughter I know's off in trouble somewhere, not being reasonable, and I honestly don't think this is going to help, Sasha!’

  ‘We don't know that. We—’

  ‘Magic strikes at the weakest point, doesn't it? Things go wrong at the weakest point, and our weakest point's my own damned— ‘

  '' You said yourself the mouse is no hazard.''

  ‘Yes, and you've been making wishes all these years to protect my daughter, haven't you, and something certainly has, clear from Vojvoda! You wanted the leshys to bring my daughter to us, and they certainly did! Something's satisfied all your wishes, if it had to start eighteen damned years ago to do it!''

  Pyetr was uncannily good at magic for a man who had never believed in vodyaniye until one all but took his hand off. Sasha sank down on his heels by the water's edge, trying now Pyetr said it, to think exactly how he had framed his wishes for the mouse or how he had thought of her all these years—whether he had left a way for disaster. He could not pull order out of his ideas about the mouse, could not determine how he thought of her, and that was frightening.

  He said to Pyetr. ‘I was getting too damned cocky. We're not giving up on the mouse. We're not letting her go. The world's protecting itself, that's all.'' He recollected last night, recollected how easy—how dreadfully easy magic could be—

  ‘You're not making sense, the world protecting itself—’

  ‘The world does. Nature's far harder to wish than you are. What you see makes you doubt what you know. For the god's sake don't make this girl hate you.’

  '' Make her hate me? God, what's she got to thank me for? The same my father left to me? Gossip behind my back and doors slammed in my face? Why don't you wish her to be grateful, Sasha? It's a damned sight easier than waiting it.’

  That bitterness went deep; but he knew Pyetr's heart, at moments too delicate to eavesdrop. ‘You don't mean that any more than you really want me to send her away into the woods.’

  Pyetr shook his head, looking at the water, the rock, the god only knew. Not at him. Not at anything present.

  Sasha said, ‘I think you'd better talk to her.''

  Pyetr whispered, furiously: ‘I think we'd better get moving. We're not stopping for any damn cup of tea, Sasha. Magic's switched the dice on us. I'm not sitting here. Not now.’

  ‘Pyetr, magic's brought her. Deal with her. Be fair with her. Always at the weakest point, you just said it. You can't make her your enemy!''

  ‘What am I going to say, for the god's sake? All of Vojvoda thinks I killed Yurishev—and you and I both know who gained from it!’

  Irina's relatives. No question. With Irina very likely in on the deed. He said to Pyetr, ‘I think you'd better find out what she does think.’

  ‘You.’

  He blinked, looked Pyetr straight in the eyes.

  Pyetr whispered, ‘Dammit, are you wishing me?’

  ‘I'm honestly trying not to. It's yourself pushing you. Or it's someone else's wish. One can never be absolutely certain, at such moments. —When in doubt, do right. Harm has far too many consequences.’

  ‘Damn,'' Pyetr said, shook the remaining water from the pan and left him with the horses.

  The woods might be thicker here, or the sky had faded. But when Yvgenie looked up he could see the sun through the branches, white and dim as a sun hazed with unseen cloud. He saw the l
acy shadows of branches ripple over Ilyana and Patches, he knew by the sharpness of the edges that there were no clouds, and yet it seemed all the colors in the forest Kid sky were fading.

  A cold touch swept past his shoulder: Owl. He put out his hand without thinking: Owl settled briefly on his arm, a feint icy prickle of claws. Then Owl took off again, as a gray-brown shape crossed the hillside ahead of them.

  ‘A wolf,’ Yvgenie said.

  ‘Where?’ Ilyana asked, and it was gone. He could not swear now that it had been there, but his hands had grown so cold he could scarcely feel the reins. ‘Yvgenie?’

  ‘My eyes are playing tricks,'' he murmured; but he feared he had been dreaming again, and he feared what those dreams might mean. He thought, I'm slipping. And saw his own hands reaching after branches in the dark, remembered the water pressing his body against the brush, the roar of the blood in his ears, and knowing he was going under—

  —even while he was riding in the sunlight. He was dying, finally, he knew he was, and soon he would grasp after anything to save him, even those things he loved.

  She was so like the mouse. So like her. Pyetr sank down on his heels, tucked the empty pan away in the pack.

  Easier to look at the ground instead. He gave Babi's shoulder a scratch, looked up. There was the anger he expected. And hurt; and curiosity: all the mouse's expressions; Irina's nose and his mouth—that was the combination that made Nadya different.

  He said, quietly, ‘No one told me either. I didn't keep any ties to Vojvoda. How did you find out?’

  She opened her mouth to answer, angrily, he was sure; then seemed not to have the breath for it. She made a furious gesture with a trembling hand and looked away from him, at the ground, at the sky, at the fire—at him, finally, with her jaw set and fire in her eyes. But no answer.

  He said, ‘Is your mother still alive?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  Himself—of a drunken father, in a dark street outside The Doe: What do you care?

  She said, ‘I grew up as Nadya Yurisheva. My mother’s family kept me safe. I never heard. I never did, not in all my life until the month I was going to be married, and I didn't believe it even then, until I laid eyes on you. It turns out I'm the daughter of a gambler and a murderer who had to ask me who my mother was! How many sisters do I have across the Russias?''