“Then—” He thought of Vojvoda’s upstairs windows, of balconies, latches and shutters. “Wish us not to forget the little things. Wish us—” He thought about the years of his boyhood, that he had gambled his way up from tavern cellars to the fellowship of young gentlemen—and deluded himself about their loyalties. “—to see through our most cherished self-deceptions.”
“That’s good,” Sasha said. “What else? What about Chernevog?”
Pyetr shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.” God, he found himself don’t-knowing, the same as Sasha. But there was so damned much to keep track of.”Wish a snake to bite him. Wish a bear to eat him.”
“Awake or asleep? Now or later? You can’t put much complication in a wish. There might not be a bear in the neighborhood.”
“Well, find one! God, what can you predict? What use is the damn bannik, if it doesn’t give you that? —Get some sleep, for the god’s sake. We’re crazed, we’re getting nowhere closer, talking all night.”
“Uulamets used to say, Never ill-wish.”
“Well, it never damn well stopped Uulamets. Did it?”
“No,” Sasha admitted, and then said, on another sigh, “A bear isn’t really such a bad idea.”
12
Slow thump of hooves on earth, quicker and quicker—an ominous sensation of presence behind him —
Sasha looked over his shoulder. Eyes shone out of the dark. Babi hissed, or something did.
White mane flew in his face, dead branches rushed past him. He was riding he had no idea where with something clinging to his back, riding double on the horse —
Volkhi made an odd noise, and Sasha waked with a start in fogbound daylight—with the pale horse of his dream leaning over him.
A white and brown spotted horse, actually, looking at him down a very familiar bowed nose.
He scrambled up, sending the horse shying back in offense; he asked, wobbling on his feet, “Missy?”
Ears pricked forward to his voice—and switched back again as Pyetr staggered upright, “God, boy, where are you getting them?”
“I didn’t intend to. I honestly didn’t intend to—”
“Isn’t that the carter’s horse?”
“It’s Missy, yes.”
“Well, god, don’t let her get away! —Here, Missy. Good Missy, here, girl, Volkhi’s a gentleman, I swear to his behavior.”
Missy shied back from Pyetr’s enticements, even from Babi; but Sasha cheated, afraid she might indeed bolt back into the woods. He wished and whistled softly, stood with his hands held out as Missy took one cautious step and another, until he had her soft nose smelling over his fingers.
Old friends, old memories, in the midst of troubles—god, it was good to see her. It was wonderful to put his arms around her neck. “Poor old girl,” he said against her warm, broad cheek. “Poor old girl, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have brought you here. This is a dreadful place.”
Missy distractedly butted him with her head, cracking his teeth, looked up and surveyed Volkhi and Pyetr and Babi with a worried eye, doubtless asking herself what this odd gathering was, or what an honest working horse might possibly have to do with present company.
But that something had gone right suddenly began to seem too improbable. Missy’s presence, however loved, became a threat. He had dreamed about a white horse: he had never thought of white-maned, white-rumped Missy.
“I wished for her the night Volkhi came,” he said dazedly, holding Missy’s cheek-strap while Pyetr was busy throwing the packs together. “I knew I’d done it. I thought I’d stopped it. That was why I was up writing, when the shelf fell. I wished other things—god!—about my uncle—”
‘ “The black god take your uncle. And I doubt Missy had much to do with the shelf.”
“It doesn’t. But she had to have come straight up from town— to where we were going to be this morning…”
“Well, damn little use her coming to the house today, is it? Your wish just took care of us, friend, it crossed a flood getting here—”
“But that’s just it. She didn’t go the way we did. There wasn’t time. The only way she could have gotten here since I wished is straight across from Vojvoda, not even by the road, no path, nothing—since that night.”
“So maybe she got a head start. Maybe for your wish to work she had to.”
“You don’t do things like that. Things don’t happen before they happen.”
Pyetr looked at him under one brow. “Good. I’m glad. The world should work like that.”
“I mean I honestly don’t know. Pyetr, I don’t like it, I don’t like any of this. I’m telling you I don’t think it was my wish that got her here.”
“Maybe it was ’Veshka wished it.”
“’Veshka didn’t even want Volkhi!”
“Which means you did it. I damn well don’t think Kavi Cher-nevog did.” Pyetr gathered up two of their packs and flung them over Volkhi’s back, shaking his head. “Just let’s get moving this morning. Whatever it came from, whyever it came here, isn’t it what we do with it that counts? Let’s just wish not to be fools.”
“Wishing’s never helped that,” Sasha muttered. “Babi? — God, where’s Babi?”
“There,” Pyetr said, indicating about head-high. Sasha looked over his shoulder, ready for disasters, and found Babi perched comfortably on Missy’s rump, a ball of black fur for all the world like a slit-eyed and comfortable stable cat.
It made him feel better about Missy being Missy.
But not about the other things.
Andrei Andreyevitch’s mare having had the decency to run off wearing a halter, it was only a spare bit of rope she needed for a rein—if she even needed that, Pyetr thought, considering Sasha’s peculiar talents. “Hauling turnips may be safer,” he murmured into the mare’s white ear while he knotted the rope to the ring. “But the lad’s all right. Do what he tells you. He’s not all crazed. Now and again he’s even right.”
He had no notion himself why he felt in better spirits the last two days—as if, somewhat like the night he had fallen off The Doe’s shed roof, this whole business with Eveshka running off had hit him hard and left him dazed; but eventually, even after a fall like that, one started walking straight and realizing nothing he had done lately was sensible.
He got saner and Sasha got crazier—precisely the trouble with wizards, Sasha and Eveshka both.
Hell, she needed him, absolutely she did—she was doing something crazy and she needed both of them. They would catch her…
He swung up to Volkhi’s back and Babi scrambled out of Sasha’s way as Sasha tried the same trick getting up on Missy. —And failed, his booted heel sliding down Missy’s flank while Babi watched from the ground.
“Not as light as you used to be,” Pyetr observed, leaning on Volkhi’s shoulders, watching the second attempt, Missy wincing, standing quite staunchly still through this. “Taller, though. Wish, why don’t you?”
Sasha gave him a dark look and made it, not elegantly, hauling himself up belly-down while Missy started to travel. He managed in a most remarkable way not to dislodge the baggage.
At which Pyetr found himself chuckling, as if there were truly hope in the world, as if—
—as if he had had a right to laugh, without Eveshka to approve it.
As if he had no right to a joke with Sasha, that she would not approve—that he had not had certain rights—for a very long time.
God, he did not want to feel what he was feeling, damn, he did not! He wanted ’Veshka to be happy: he had done everything to make her happy…
… which mostly seemed to mean giving up one and the other habit of his that ’Veshka could not abide, considering her delicate state, until there were bits and pieces of himself just…