Sasha made me so angry today. There are hardly any wishes in this book. Just things that happen, no matter what he says. I don’t even wish our happiness. My father’s heir — says not to, as if I’m afoot I wish he’d quit suspecting me, every time something goes right or wrong. That is a wish. It could even be dangerous. And I’m not sorry…
He thought, carefully, It was dangerous. It is. To be blind to her—god, that’s very dangerous… Why didn’t she talk to me? Why didn’t she tell me how she felt?
Maybe she did. Maybe I didn’t want to hear. I’m not beyond fault in this, god, I’m not. I should have seen, I should have tried, but she was so damned private about her magic—
The dreams won’t let me alone. I’m so scared… I can’t want them to stop: that’s so dangerous. I’d tell Sasha — but I’ve heard his advice: Papa would say, Find out what you’re doing before you do anything. But I don’t know the consequences, god, I can’t know, because I don’t know what I am. I doubt my own life, I doubt my own substance, I want to know what’s still in that cave under the willow — and I’m afraid to know, I’m afraid to go there alone. I can’t ask Sasha, he can’t keep secrets from Pyetr, and most of all I don’t want Pyetr to go in there and find out I’m still in that grave. I don’t think he thinks about that now — but after that, how could he forget? When I came back from the dead, did the bones come out of that cave? Where did the flesh come from? Or what am I made of? My father’s wishes? I wonder sometimes, what terrible thing Pyetr’s sleeping with… and what I’m still borrowing from, to keep the life I have…
We finished the bathhouse. I tried not to want anything about it. I’ve tried not to think about it. Nothing happened, thank the god…
Missy lifted her head from her search for remaining grains. Her ears were up. Sasha wished her not to make a sound and she stood with a little shiver down her foreleg—listening and smelling.
Volkhi. And the friendly person. Missy was glad.
Sasha was not. He shut the book and got to his feet, thinking of shapeshifters and vodyaniye and wishing to the god Babi would show up now, please the god, he did not want this…
It certainly looked like Pyetr coming through the trees. It looked like Volkhi. But eavesdropping could not always unmask a shapeshifter once the creature had gotten well into stolen shape and stolen thoughts.
Pyetr rode up to Missy, slid off and started toward him, but Sasha wished not, and Pyetr stopped, made a small helpless gesture toward him. That hurt. “He sent me,” Pyetr said. “He’s not far from here. He wants you to come there—”
“What do you say?”
“I don’t know,” Pyetr said shakily. “I don’t know. He’s been tolerably reasonable—for a snake.” He touched his heart. “It’s still with me, you know. He eavesdrops most of the time…”
He did not want Pyetr in this pain, he did not want to go back to Chernevog, he wanted Pyetr free, dammit!
“It’s a short ride back,” Pyetr said, and gathered up Volkhi’s trailing reins. “He wants me back. He says—tell you—don’t argue, I don’t know what’s going on. He says—how do you want me to find it out?”
“Don’t do that to him, dammit! Don’t treat him like that!”
“He says—the question stands.” Pyetr gave a twitch of his shoulders, threw the reins over Volkhi’s head, looked back. “Sasha, —it’s all right. Don’t do what’s stupid. I thought—you should make up your own mind—I didn’t argue. I should have made him work for this. God, don’t be a fool—I should never have done this.”
“Wait!” He snatched up the canvas and started rolling it, while Pyetr hesitated with his hand in Volkhi’s mane.”Dammit, Missy can’t carry me, she’s had enough.”
“He says—says she will.” He left Volkhi, came and picked up the heaviest of the sacks, stopped then, looking at him as if he wanted to argue, and was in so much doubt—of himself, of what they were doing and where they were going. Sasha did eavesdrop, he took those thoughts, he told Chernevog go to hell, said, to Pyetr, as bluntly and brutally as he could, “’Veshka’s in trouble. Her mother’s alive.”
He felt Chernevog’s panic; he felt Pyetr’s, like a knife to the heart, and said, sharply, snatching up the rest of the baggage. “Don’t. I’ll talk to Chernevog. If she’s wishing you in her direction, everything may be working that way, everything we’ve done—everything Chernevog’s done.” He grabbed Pyetr’s arm and made him look him in the face. “Pyetr. We’re going to deal with this. He has to. You understand?”
“Good,” Pyetr said in a shaken voice. “Good. I’m glad we’re going to do something. I like that idea.”
Sasha flung things onto Missy’s back, took Pyetr’s assistance up, took the reins, prey to shivers himself—the notion that at any moment they might be overheard here. Whatever-it-was might make another try—by whatever agency.
He thought, as Pyetr led off, He’s not gone, thank the god, he’s not gone— But he tried desperately hard not to listen to his heart again, because there was no reason in it at all right now, only fear, and a willingness to give anything he had to give to get Pyetr free.
Chernevog had stretched one of their two canvases between two birches, made a fire—it was a proper camp Sasha saw when he and Pyetr came riding in, Chernevog rising to meet them. Sasha had his apprehensions that it might indeed be a trap they were riding into—that Chernevog might have some way to use Pyetr and him to his own advantage that his own poor knowledge could not anticipate.
But Chernevog offered no immediate treachery: in truth he looked disquieted and anxious. They dismounted—Sasha held Missy’s mane, and slid off the careful way, face to the horse, not trusting his legs for Pyetr’s leg-over slide, having nothing of Pyetr’s balance or Pyetr’s grace—he thought about that at such a moment, that he was not going to grow up like Pyetr, the chance for that was past, growing up had happened and left him a little awkward, a great deal deliberate—
He said to Chernevog, not aloud: What you didn’t do— deserves something.
Chernevog said, Everything you can give. And don’t ask me to change our arrangement. It’s worked so well.
Snake, Pyetr called him. Sasha drew a deep breath, and said, If things were working well, you wouldn’t risk him coming after me.
27
It was two wizards standing and thinking at each other in complete silence, that was what went on, for longer than would let anyone think they were sane: Sasha was not happy and Chernevog was not happy—that was what Pyetr saw, standing there with two horses in better condition than they possibly had a right to be.
Two wizards discussing his wife, and him; and the god knew what else of the world’s fate.
“Uulamets knew it?” Chernevog had said early in this, and after that, nothing, while Sasha frowned. Something went on that made that cold spot next to Pyetr’s heart very disturbed.
He turned his back on it in despair, leaned on Volkhi’s shoulder and tried not to think what they might be saying to each other. Wizards did these things, and wizards fought over things that sane people could not even see…
And the god only knew, the god only knew whether Sasha was holding his own at all, or what Chernevog might ask or want of them, with him for a hostage and his wife being threatened.
He had his sword. He had his hand on its hilt without thinking he even had it.
But something stopped him—perhaps the thought that they needed Chernevog; and he no longer knew if it was his thought or Chernevog’s cynical dismissal of him.