Sasha said, a whisper, “He’s listening. He knows we’re here.”
“I heard.”
Sasha sat there a long time on his heels, elbows on knees, firelight shining on scarcely blinking eyes. Pyetr held himself on the shaking arm, dared not move, hardly dared breathe, thinking, eventually,
God, is he all right? Ought I to wake him up? What use am I, except to keep some bear from eating him?
Sasha murmured, finally, scarcely a movement of his lips, “The quiet is the leshys’ doing. They want us up there, fast as we can.”
“They damn near got me killed!” Pyetr whispered. “Don’t they know that? They’ve gotten ’Veshka off alone, the god only knows where she is— If they want us up there, why didn’t they damn well say so?”
Sasha said, in the same hushed tone, “They’re preventing things, that’s all. All magic. They’re allowing only what agrees with them. I think they’re in some kind of trouble.”
“Fine. Fine. We know what kind. Is Misighi hearing from ’Veshka? Did you ask him?”
“I asked him. He said—he just said hurry.”
God, he did not like the sound of that.
“We’ve got to go,” Sasha said. “Now.”
In the dark. Of course. Now. Immediately.
Pyetr grabbed up mats and blankets and started packing.
Fast.
Daylight found a wholesome woods, wide-spaced growth. A fox crossed a hillside, stopped and wondered at them.
They were out of the vodyanoi’s woods, Sasha said; and in small truth, whether they had suddenly passed within the leshys’ healthy influence or whether it was the sheer relief of knowing Misighi was at least aware and answering, Pyetr felt as if they had some real hope: he kept moving as fast as he could possibly walk, despite the occasional stitch in his side, keeping Volkhi’s pace and insisting Sasha ride more than he did—”It’s all right,” he said to Sasha. “My legs are longer.”
Ride and walk and walk and rest—the latter only by short stretches: time to splash water in one’s face and wash the dust into some spring. Walking warmed wet clothes, wet boots wore blisters, and the whole day became one long confusion of leaf-strewn hills and bracken patches.
But the change in the woods itself was heartening. Leshys’ work, for sure, Pyetr told himself: there was hardly a fallen branch in their path, no reason not to go on after dusk and into dark; and when the dark got too deep, they simply unrolled their blankets, tucked down and rested without a fire, with the branches sighing over them.
“It feels safer here,” Pyetr murmured dizzily, on the edge of sleep: “It feels healthier. Thank the god.”
“You’ve got to ride tomorrow,” Sasha said.
“Faster otherwise.”
Sasha said nothing to that. Pyetr had second thoughts then that maybe it was only that his walking felt faster, the god knew Sasha pushed himself as hard as he could—
“Besides,” he amended it, “you don’t think when you’re busy watching your own feet, and my thinking doesn’t help us: yours does.”
Further silence. Then, a shaky: “I am trying, Pyetr.”
“I know you are. Did I ever say not?”
“When I was little,” Sasha said on a sigh, “when I’d burn myself or smash a finger—I’d want it to stop hurting—and it would. And that would scare me. So I’d want it to hurt again. And then I’d want it to stop, because it hurt. I feel like that sometimes.”
He thought about that. It was more like Eveshka than he wanted to think about at the moment. He said, “I can understand that.”
“Can you?”
“Nobody knows what they really want. Everybody has doubts. That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s the point.”
“You should have dumped that skinflint uncle of yours in the horse trough, you know that? You put up with too much.”
“I was scared.”
“You were too damn polite, you truly were. You always have been.”
“That’s what I mean! I’m not—not like you.”
“Thank the god. What do you want? The boyars after you for a hanging?”
“I’m not as brave as you are. In a lot of ways.”
“God, what does that mean? —Because I said I walked faster?”
“You take chances. Chances don’t scare you.”
Walking a balcony railing. Irina’s upstairs window. An icy porch and a prodigious icicle. “They scared hell out of me! I was a gambler, I knew the odds. I wasn’t brave. I was broke.”
“But you did it. You always knew what you were doing.”
“I guessed.”
“I wouldn’t have had the nerve.”
“You’re a wizard. You wouldn’t have to.”
“No. I could cheat.”
“Ridiculous. Fedya Misurov was the cheat. And you wouldn’t even dump him in the horse trough.”
“I was afraid of him.”
“No.” Pyetr lifted his head off his arms and looked at Sasha, who lay with Babi sleeping on his chest. “You were afraid of yourself, friend. You were afraid when you did dump him, it wouldn’t be a horse trough.”
A sigh. “You’re right about that.”
“Better damn well do something, hadn’t you? You can’t do worse than nothing.”
“But that’s it, Pyetr, that’s exactly it—if somebody’s wishing me into mistakes.”
Pyetr leaned on his elbow. “Maybe doing nothing’s a mistake. You think of that?”
Sasha turned his head and looked at him. “If you were a wizard,” he said, “I think you’d be a good one.”
“God, no, I wouldn’t.” The thought appalled him. “Not me.”
“What would you do? “
“I’d wish him dead! I’d wish the woods safe and ’Veshka back home. That first.”
Sasha scratched Babi’s head. “How?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“That’s too general. How are we going to make that happen?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m asking you. —I’m serious, Pyetr, you’ve a good head for right wishes. You think of things. Think of getting around what somebody else might have wished—think of something he won’t have thought of. You always were good at that.”
That was a hard one. Pyetr rolled onto his back and looked up at the dark branches.
“I wish—I wish ’Veshka to make right decisions, for a start.”
“Not bad, but too general. Specific things win out.”
“What, then?”
“I’m asking you. You’re good at getting around things.”
“Tavern keepers. Creditors.”
“Are wizards smarter? —What would you wish?”
“I want ’Veshka safe! Can’t you wish that, with no equivocation?”
“Safe could mean—”
One lived with wizards, one learned such simple truths. “God,” Pyetr sighed and put both arms over his eyes. “Get some sleep, boy, just for the god’s sake, get some sleep.” He thought a moment more. The idea would not turn him loose.
The fact was, what he truly wished was embarrassing—but he thought it might help if Sasha threw it in. “I wish her still to love me.”
“Is that fair?”
“To protect her—absolutely it’s her!”
Sasha said nothing to that. Pyetr thought about it, and worried over it, and Eveshka’s damnable independence, and said, finally, thinking that by morning he was going to be embarrassed about this: “Then wish me to be someone she’d rely on.”
‘ “That’s already true,” Sasha said.
“Wish it anyway. I do. —And while you’re about it, wish us smarter than our enemies.”
“I don’t think you can do that. You either are or you aren’t. That’s how you win and lose. You have to be specific.”