Yvgenie

5

Uncle was awake, at the table in the kitchen—uncle was being as quiet as anyone could be, but Ilyana had heard the cellar door open and close a long while ago, and waked again hearing the scratch of uncle’s pen, and the creak of her father’s door, just now. “There’s tea,” her uncle whispered; then her father’s voice said, very low: “How long have you been up?”

“Not that long.” Ilyana strained to hear something she did lose, and heard her father walk across the kitchen. Pottery rattled. Tea cups, she thought.

Then she remembered the most remarkable event of a very remarkable yesterday and wondered if their guest was all right—whether he had slept last night, or whether he was feeling better this morning.

She thought, Yes, without a reason for knowing that.

And then she thought, He really can’t stop me from hearing him. I think I just woke him up. —Please don’t be scared, Yvgenie Pavlovitch.

He was more than scared. He was terrified, waking on the ground, against the door: she heard a pounding from far away and knew that was him trying to open the bathhouse door.

That’s odd, she thought. Why doesn’t he just lift the latch?

No. The door was barred from outside. But there never had been a latch outside. That was terribly dangerous, on a bathhouse. When had that happened?

How long have I been asleep?

She caught terrible fear, so strong it stopped her breath. — Please, she wanted Yvgenie to know, no one’s going to hurt you. They’ve only locked the door to keep you from wandering off last night. I’m sure that’s the reason.

—Ilyana! Go to sleep!

Her uncle frightened her, he was so strong and so angry, surprising her like that. She heard, with her ears, him saying to her father: “She’s fighting me.”

Then her father’s voice, sternly: “Mouse, go back to sleep.”

That confused her. Her father was kind, her father would never hurt anyone, he was not on her mother’s side. So why had they latched the bathhouse door? Why did the boy remember them threatening him?

She tried to tell her father, The boy won’t hurt anything. You’re scaring him!

And her uncle: Ilyana! Don’t wish at your father. Go back to sleep.

She wanted not to. She was determined not to. Her father was saying, “… take him down the river, fast—if we had the damn boat.”

Her uncle gave off terrible thoughts of a sudden, houses all crowded together, afire, and horses and men in metal, with swords.

Then uncle knew she was still listening: uncle was very angry at her and wanted her very sternly to mind him and go to sleep.

She said, making her lips work, too, so her uncle could not make her forget what she was saying, “Stop it, please stop doing this to me.”

She felt cold and afraid. She was numb and cold in her right leg and bruised about the shoulder and her hand that she had used on the door—

“Ilyana!” her uncle said, and her door opened (but not that door) and she was lying warm and in bed with Babi at her feet.

“He’s cold,” she said. “He’s cold and the fire’s out and he’s scared, uncle, please don’t scare him any more.”

Her uncle came and sat on the side of her bed and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Her uncle looked worried, and tired, and harder than she had ever seen him. Her uncle said, somberly, touching her under the chin,” Ilyana, you haven’t been dreaming, have you?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing about Owl?”

Another shake of her head. God, she had not even thought about Owl last night. Or her friend. She had outright forgotten. Damn!

Her uncle said, “Ilyana, you can’t take things as you want them to be. I very much fear your young man drowned last night.”

“He didn’t! There’s nothing wrong with him, except the fire went out—” She had not meant to forget her friend, please the god he knew that—her father had made her sleep—

“Mouse, listen to me. Look at me. I don’t want you to argue with me. It’s very dangerous for you to argue with me, dangerous to your father and to you and to me. Don’t think about Chernevog.”

“Don’t eavesdrop!” Thoughts of her friend went skirling away, like the mist. She could not hold them, could only feel the fear coming from the bathhouse—”Stop it, uncle!”

“Mouse, calm. Be calm. I’m not going to hurt anyone. Or frighten him unnecessarily. But you mustn’t fight me. Go to sleep now.”

“I don’t want to go to sleep! I want to see him. I want you to let him out of the bathhouse! Please!”

“Don’t be frightened, mouse.” Her uncle touched beneath her chin, looking worried, but hard and distant, too. Like a stranger. “And don’t listen to the boy. That’s very dangerous. Do you hear me?—Do you hear me, Ilyana?”

“Yes,” she said. She had to say yes. Her uncle put his hand on her eyes then, and wished her to sleep.

And she was not strong enough to stop him.

The door creaked and gave way abruptly: Yvgenie felt it go, too late, and sprawled in the dust at someone’s feet—someone with a sword in his hand, who gathered him up by the arm while his eyes were confused by the sunlight. There were two of them—he could make that out; one of them was the dark-haired wizard.

“Come on,” Pyetr’s voice said: he was the one with the sword. But he could only take hold of Pyetr’s sleeve and hold on to him, blinded as he was, and with his foot asleep. Pyetr tolerated it, put his other arm around him and helped him walk. Pyetr took him as far as the first bench and let him down. The door was still open, the smoke hole let in light, and he could make out shapes again, through the watering of his eyes from the sun. Pottery clattered. He smelled hot tea, that Sasha was pouring, that Sasha then offered to him, and he held out both hands for the cup, not trusting one alone not to spill it.

It warmed his hands, it warmed his face, and he had not known till then how thirsty he was. It had a little vodka in it, besides the honey, and it soothed his throat of a pain he had not realized he was suffering.

He thought, They’re not so bad, they don’t mean me any harm after all.

Then Pyetr shut the door and latched it, and faced him with the sword crosswise in his hands. Yvgenie’s heart went cold. He sat there with the empty cup in his hands, and Sasha asked him:

“More tea?”

“Please,” he said, trying not to stammer, and looked away from Pyetr to hold out his cup, watching the teapot and the stream of tea and the swirl of bubbles, anything but the wizard’s eyes. He drank the second cup more slowly, not chancing any glance at their faces. Then Pyetr left the door to stand behind him. Sasha poked at last night’s ashes, and put on the last of the wood, provoking a few bright flames. Then he added herbs that sparked up like stars, and made a thick gray smoke.

“Did you sleep well, Yvgenie Pavlovitch?”

He could not make his tongue work right: “Well enough, sir.”

“No dreams?”

He wanted not to recall those dreams: fire and shadow, and something touching him.

Sasha said, “Are you comfortable now, Yvgenie Pavlovitch?”

He still felt warm, felt, in fact, flushed with heat, but his fingers were growing numb again. He was going to lose the cup. He tried to hold on to it, but Sasha took it from his I hands, and he sat stupidly trying to remember Sasha getting up—stared into Sasha’s eyes when Sasha lifted his chin.

So he was caught. His heart pounded with fright, his head I spun with the smoke. Sasha’s whispered something to him, he had no idea of the words, until Sasha said, “Answer me, Chernevog,” and he felt his lips move.

He said, not saying it, “My name is Yvgenie.”

He thought, I’ve gone mad. And Sasha slapped his face, saying, “Kavi—”

It hurt. Not the slap. Something in his chest constricted about his heart, and he remembered that thing in the shadows last night, coming closer and closer to him, waiting for him to sleep or faint.

He had. He had been afraid when he waked this morning that it was too late, and now it answered for him, saying over and over again, in his voice, My name is Yvgenie Pavlovitch, I come from Kiev; while all the while he knew he had no home there, not now. His father had forbidden him to leave the house, and he had taken Bielitsa and run—

But he had forgotten why he had done a thing so desperate, except he had been running down little streets, going to a certain house.

He had been in love. But he was not now. He had found someone kind to him. But there was no one now. His father had ordered differently, and no one defied his father.

Pyetr and Sasha gave him honeyed tea, and spoke together—he could hear them, even when they thought not, saying that he was dead, that he had drowned last night, poor boy.

Sasha came and said to him that he should lie down on the bench, and sleep a while. He shook his head, hazily thinking of the blond girl of his dream warming him, pleading with him not to sleep, not to listen to them. He heard a frantic pounding at the bathhouse door, while his head was spinning and full of echoes. He leaned on his elbow and saw Pyetr go to that door and open it on blinding sun.

His rescuer was there, her hair like a flood of sunlight itself. She said, “I want to see him,” and her father said, sternly, “Mouse, go do what your uncle told you. Not everything’s right down here.”

She leaned a little onto one foot, then, so he was looking right at her, and he took that vision of the girl and the sunlight like something holy, while her father shooed her outside and left, too—after more wood, he said to Sasha.

The door shut, the dark came back and he was alone with Sasha, whose face, lit from below with fire and above with sun filtering through from the smoke hole, became a vision, too, a hellish one. Sasha said, “Lie down, Yvgenie Pavlovitch. I wouldn’t want you to fall and hurt yourself,” and he had no choice: his arm began to shake under him. So he let himself face down on the smooth warm wood of the bench und watched Sasha feed bits of weed into the fire. He felt levered, caught in a dream from which there was no hope of waking.

Sasha said, “How old are you, Yvgenie?”

He said, “Seventeen,” but he knew at once that was not so, he was far older than that.

Sasha asked him, “Why did you come to this woods?”

And he said, or something said, “For—”

There had been a reason, something different than escape. Perhaps that would satisfy them. But he could not think of what. That reason fell away from him. It did not want to be there. And it was not.

The door banged, light flashed on the wall. It was Pyetr with the wood. And Sasha held up a hand, and said, very sternly, “Yvgenie Pavlovitch, what’s his name?”

“Pyetr.”

“And mine?”

“Sasha. Alexander Vas—”

“Tell me my name,” the wizard commanded him, and something twisted next his heart, making him cold through and through.

He thought, Alexander Vasilyevitch. But he did not say so. He only knew that was the truth. He was in the bathhouse of a ferryman’s cottage on a river that ran down to Kiev. The girl in the sunlight was a wizard, too, a young one, dangerous to everyone for that reason.

He knew then that he was going mad, or that something very scary had burrowed into his heart and made itself a nest it was not going to come out of. He let his head down against his hands and tried to remember who Yvgenie Pavlovitch was, or who his father was, or why he had no memory of a mother he thought he had loved, and vaguely knew was dead.

“I don’t think I was mistaken,” Sasha said at the edge of his hearing. “I very much fear not—but I can’t lay hands on our visitor: he doesn’t want to talk to us.”

“I’ll shake it out of him,” Pyetr said, to Yvgenie’s alarm, but Sasha said:

“No, I don’t think you’ll come at him that way. Be patient.” Sasha walked over and put his hand on Yvgenie’s head, wanting something, Yvgenie could not quite hear.

But Pyetr muttered something about rope and Sasha said that they might let him out into the sunlight a bit instead and see how he fared.

He did not understand. But Pyetr hauled him up by the arm and walked him out the door into the light, and kept him walking despite the wobbling in his knees. The sun hurt his eyes. Tears ran down his face, only from the light, at first, but then they seemed to pour out of the confusion of his heart. He saw the sun on a weathered rail, the light edging grass and flowers, saw a black horse staring at him over the rail of a pen—a horse he had—

—known somewhere. He knew this place. He knew this house, and knew these two men wanted to keep him from Ilyana’s sight. They intended to take him back into that dark place very soon and by wizardry or by plain steel, take his life away—because they could never trust him—he had deserved too much ill of them, and done Pyetr too much hurt for Sasha ever to trust him—

Yvgenie thought, Where have I met them? What did I do to them?

They let him sit in the light a while, on the bottom rail of the fence, where he could look at the house, and the woods beyond the yard, and the horses that might have been a way of escape if he had had the strength or the quickness to escape them—but he did not—and he could not. The girl with the wonderful hair had it in braids when she came to say there was soup ready, and they might bring him into the kitchen. He knew of a sudden what that kitchen would look like; he knew the furniture inside—and the fireplace. He had sat there before—and he was in love with this girl-But her father said, “We’ll have ours out here, mouse. Thank you.”

He listened to her voice, and watched his last hope of help or even understanding walk away from him, head bowed— watched her go, in the same way he looked at the sun or felt the wind—storing every precious detail, against the dark waiting for him inside—

Pyetr went into the house after her, and brought the soup back himself, in no good humor, and he told himself then he had had his last sight of the girl if her father had his way, or if Sasha had his.

“Have your lunch, boy,” Pyetr said. “Or does turnip soup suit your appetites?”

“Be kind,” Sasha said.

“Kind, hell,” Pyetr said sullenly. “He needn’t stare at her like that.”

The soup held flavors too sharp to identify. The heat of it burned his mouth and left tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat.

A tear fell into the bowl, quite helplessly. It embarrassed him. He did not think he had been a coward. He tried not to be. He tried to think how to reason with them, or what he might say, but everything was confusion, everything scattered when he tried to think beyond this yard and the girl and the woods. He found nothing to say he had not said; he only tried to keep from shivering, so that he was hardly able to get up when they were finished, and when they wanted him to go back into the bathhouse. He tried to be braver. But the dark beyond the door seemed suddenly unbearable. He balked, spun about in the doorway to run, but Pyetr seized him and shoved him through.

He was blind, after, except the light from the smoke hole. He met a bench painfully with his shin and grabbed a post to save himself from falling. The door shut. The latch dropped.

God, he did not know why it had so offended Pyetr that he looked at his daughter, even that he had loved her, since he had never offered anything but a look, hardly spoken a word to her. He did not know why Pyetr should have brought him to his house, only for a wizard to lock him away in this place and ask him angry questions. Nothing made sense, not then, nor when Pyetr tied his hands behind him and Sasha made him kneel by the fire and breathe the bitter smoke-only that the thing inside him grew disturbed at that, and moved about his heart, tightening and tightening, like bands about his chest, and Pyetr stood by with the sword blade shining in the firelight, unsheathed, this time, to strike his head off, he supposed, when they had what they wanted—or if they did not, he had no idea.

He thought he heard Ilyana’s voice, far and clear and cold, crying, No, papa, don’t hurt him!

Then Sasha said:

“Eveshka’s coming home, as fast as she can.” And Pyetr said, “God, what can we do? If this Yvgenie lad is still alive—”

“We can get the mouse’s help, perhaps.”

“That’s not damned likely, Sasha!”

Sasha then, with an ominous frown: “Or Chernevog could speak to us on his own. If he wanted to.”

Yvgenie’s heart was beating so it felt about to burst. He said, for no reason he could think of, “Go to hell.”

“That’s Chernevog,” Pyetr said. “Or a boy with very bad manners.”

Yvgenie began to shiver then, and he said, again without thinking, “She’s her mother’s image, Pyetr Ilitch. And her grandmother’s.”

Pyetr grabbed his collar. Yvgenie turned his face away, sure that Pyetr was going to hit him or cut off his head. But Pyetr did not: Pyetr held on to him a moment, then shook him as if to see if anything else would fall out of his mouth. Yvgenie murmured, in his own defense, “I didn’t mean to say that, sir. I swear I didn’t. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

Pyetr said, “Damn.” And hauled him close and held on to him, the way someone had once, he could not remember how long ago. Pyetr held the sword against his back and smoothed his hair gently, saying against his ear, “It’s all right, boy. It’s all right. The Snake’s inside you, but he doesn’t have all of you. We’ll try to get him out.”

“I think I’m d-dead,” Yvgenie said, because something was telling him that. “I think I’m dead and he’s alive, and pretty soon there won’t be anything l-left of me.”

“Damn him,” Pyetr said. “Damn you, Snake, do you hear me? Kill the boy and I’ll have a neck to wring with a clear conscience.”

Something said, quite horridly, out of Yvgenie’s mouth, “This one isn’t to my account. I’d not have beaten him, or driven him to drown himself. But he’s avenged for that, dear Owl, I do swear to you. His father’s dead.”

“Dammit!” Pyetr said, while Yvgenie listened to his own mouth speaking, and heard, inside, a voice like his own, saying, Yvgenie, Yvgenie, the world won’t miss him. Surely you don’t. The men he’d have killed should be grateful. And he won’t be coming here.

He wept against Pyetr’s shoulder. He did not know why. It did not seem to him he had ever loved his father: he remembered the huge stairway and the gilt and the paintings; and his father holding him by the shirt and hitting him in the face—but he surely had loved someone—he had the strongest feeling he had loved the girl who had saved him, but his whole life was sliding away from him, all the things he might have loved, all the things he might have wanted, even his name, and his father’s name.

He had Pyetr. He had the memory of Ilyana and the river. He had a wizard who believed someone inside him was his enemy, and who wanted to drive this thing out of him—or get answers from it—while Pyetr waited to cut his head off— and, god, he wanted to live, if only to find out who he was, or what he might have been, or whether he deserved to be treated like this.

“Poor lad,” Pyetr said—he had hoped if he could once do right he might find kindness somewhere. But he heard his own voice whispering to him in his heart.

We’re old friends, Pyetr and I. And his wife. A most remarkable man—friend of wizards, and magical things, and quite reliable. He wants us both to be ghosts. Be glad he’s not the wizard.

Sasha was setting out herbs. Sasha said, quietly, “Just hold on to him, Pyetr.”

“What are you doing?” Pyetr asked. “What do you hope to do?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sasha said. “If I knew I’d do it. I just don’t want him wandering about tonight, in whatever form.”

“Salt in a circle won’t work. It never stopped my wife.”

“I’d say keep the rope on him for his own protection.” Sasha’s voice again, quiet, as he tossed pinches of dust into the fire. “His and ours.”

“We can’t just talk about him,” Pyetr said. “He’s not a sack of turnips.”

“Beware your heart,” Sasha said. “If there’s a shred of his own life left in him, we’ll try to find it—” Sasha moved between Yvgenie and the fire, a faceless shadow as he rested on Yvgenie’s shoulder. “Go to sleep!” he said suddenly.

“I don’t want to die,” he protested; he had heard the anger, he saw it in Sasha’s face, and said, while he was falling, “Pyetr, help me. Pyetr, dammit, listen to me—” as the shadow wrapped him in.

Not dead, Pyetr thought, with the boy’s weight gone heavy in his arms. “What in hell was that about?” he asked, and held on to the boy as much to still his own shaking as for any good he could do. Something was grievously wrong, he was sure of it, but Sasha gave him no answer. Sasha had leapt to his feet, looking out toward the walls, toward nowhere-crying, “No! Stay out, stay away, you can’t help us—”

Eveshka, Pyetr thought, and heard her like an ache in his heart. Eveshka had wanted the boy dead. She wanted him—

“ ’Veshka,” he muttered against the boy’s hair, “listen to Sasha. It’s a poor, drowned boy, ’Veshka, and it’s Kavi’s foolishness, don’t do anything—”

Something happened. Sasha moved between him and that source; or wished a silence, or something of the like. Sasha cried aloud, “Eveshka, you’re a fool. Do you understand me? Your husband won’t forgive you that foolishness. Your daughter won’t. Listen to me, dammit!”

It might have been a long while that passed. Pyetr’s leg began to tremble under him, in its uncomfortable bend, the boy’s weight grew heavier and heavier in his arms; he was sure something was going on, something both magical and desperate between his wife and his friend, and he ducked his head, pressed his brow against the boy’s shoulder and made his own pleas for calm.

Eveshka said to him then, so clear it seemed to ring in winter air, Pyetr, I’m on my way home. I want you to let go of the boy, I want you not to touch him, not to think about him, I want you to go to the house immediately and take care of our daughter, do you hear me? Now!

So many wants. An ordinary man had no choice without a wizard’s help. As it was, he had trouble letting the boy down gently and standing up.

He said, “ ’Veshka—”

But she was not listening. She refused to hear him, and speech damned up in his throat. So he thought, instead, about the heart he had held for her, about its terrible selfishness, that weighed a lost boy’s life so little against its wants and its opinions, and thought, I’m safer from him than from you, ’Veshka. He could only threaten what I love. You are what I love. What can I do against that?

He saw Sasha take a breath. He found one of his own.

“God,” Sasha breathed then. And: “Mouse!”

The door banged open. His daughter was standing there in the sunlight. She looked at the boy on the floor, she looked at them, and said, faintly.

“Mother’s coming home.”

Pyetr crossed the floor to reach her, but she fled the doorway, out into the blinding sun, and ran across the yard before she so much as stopped to look back at him, not wanting them to touch her, no.

“Mouse, we need your help!”

“I don’t want to help you!” she cried, and turned and bolted along the side of the house, braids flying, running like someone in pain.

“Oh, god,” he said, and took out after her, fearing she might head for the river, or loose some foolish wish. He heard Volkhi protest something, a loud and clear challenge, he heard Ilyana running up to the porch before he rounded the corner of the house, and she looked down at him from that vantage. She was crying.

“Mouse, I’ve got quite enough with your mother right now. Are you going to wish me in the river? Or are you going to listen to me first?”

“No one ever listens! I told you he wasn’t any harm!”

“But he is, mouse! He may be your friend, but he’s killed that boy, mouse, he’s wished your uncle’s house burned, he nearly killed your uncle—do you call that no harm?”

She set her hands on the rail and bit her lip. Maybe she was listening. Or maybe his daughter was wishing him in the river, he had no idea. He heard the horses snorting and stamping about behind him, but he kept his eyes on his daughter and his jaw set as he advanced as far as the walk-up.

“Your mother is on her way back here,” he said, setting his hand on the rail. “She’s not in a good mood, mouse, and I’m trying to reason with her. But it’s not easy.”

“She’d better look out, then. She’s not going to kill him, papa! Nobody’s going to kill him!”

“I’ve talked to your friend. He’s here to see you, mouse-mouse, dammit—”

But his daughter had gone inside, and the door slammed.

He started up to the porch. He lost his conviction halfway up, that he truly wanted to go into the house, or talk to his daughter. He looked aside in frustration and saw—god, a strange white horse with its nose across the hedge, a horse bridled and saddled, holding discussion with their three horses in the stableyard.

Damn! he thought. He did not like this. It took no wizardry for a lost horse to smell out the only other horses in these woods, and Yvgenie had lost one in the flood. It was the sudden accumulation of coincidences that set his nape hairs on end—that and the storm feeling hanging over the house.

That was from his daughter—who might or might not be responsible for the horse, which, dammit, was at least an indication that wizardry was lending them more trouble, and might have something to say about someone needing to get somewhere; or might mean only that Ilyana thought the boy should have his horse back. He set his jaw and doggedly did what he did not want at all to do, walked up to the porch, banged the door open and said, before he had realized it, in his own father’s most angry voice:

“Mouse?”

She was in her room: the door was shut.

He knocked. He softened his voice. “Mouse, this is no time for tantrums. I need you, your uncle needs you and there’s a visitor at the fence. Dry your eyes and come out here.”

She said, through the door, “I don’t know why anybody asks me when they never believe what I say. I’m sure the horse is my fault. Everything else is!”

“No one’s saying anything’s your fault, mouse, don’t put words in my mouth. Come out here and be reasonable.”

A long silence.

“Mouse?”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” a small voice came back. “Papa, mother’s going to do something awful to him. She’s coming back and she’s going to kill him.”

“She’s not going to kill him, mouse. She may even think she will, but she hasn’t seen him. He seems a nice lad, other visitors aside—I’m sure he owns the horse out there, and it’s not at all remarkable it came calling. Horses’ noses work very well without magic. But Chernevog is involved in his being here, and you won’t get your way slamming doors, mouse. Certainly not with your mother. We didn’t hurt the boy, I swear to you we didn’t. We need to talk about this.”

Another long silence.

“Mouse, we’re all very tired. Your uncle’s at his wits’ end and so am I, please don’t cry.”

“I won’t let mother kill anybody and I won’t let her make you do it!”

“Neither will I, mouse. That’s a promise. But I want you to listen to me. Please. I want you to be ever so good and reasonable, and please don’t scare your mother, for the god’s sake, mouse.”

“She wants you to kill that boy!”

“It’s not her fault. It was a mistake and she knew it. And I’m not easy to wish. Do you mind if I open the door?”

“No! Don’t!”

He dropped his hand from the latch without thinking about it. He said, patiently, reasonably, “Ilyana, we’re going to help him.”

“How? By wishing him dead? Why not? All my friends are dead. I don’t have any living ones.”

His own vinegar was in that remark.

“All right,” he said to the door, “mouse, I suppose I’ll have to do without your help. And I could truly use it right now.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He pushed the door open. She was sitting in the middle of the bed. Babi was in her arms. Babi growled at him. Babi was not wont to do that. But he was not wont to fight with his daughter either.

He said, quietly, “There’s a strange horse out there. That’s one thing. And there’s the house and the mud. I don’t want your mother to have anything to complain about when she gets here.”

“I did that, papa, you haven’t even looked. I even scrubbed the floors.”

He had not noticed. Not a bit. He looked at the floor, looked up at his daughter’s reddened eyes.

“I’m terribly sorry, mouse. I really am.”

“You’re being awful to that boy, papa. You’re scaring him, I can hear it!”

“Chernevog deserves it. The boy doesn’t, not by anything I see. But in all truth, mouse, I’m afraid there’s very little of the boy left. Rusalki do that kind of thing. Between Chernevog and your mother, I don’t know where we stand—but the boy hasn’t a chance in hell if certain people don’t use their heads right now. If you and Sasha can agree about the boy, the two of you might have a chance of convincing your mother. I don’t know about Chernevog—but if you do have any influence, reasoning with him wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.”

Ilyana looked terribly pale, terribly frightened. Babi went on growling, and the domovoi in the cellar caught the fit, so that all the house timbers creaked. “Uncle would side with mother,” she said. “He thinks the boy is already dead, or good as, and there’s no hope. He’s no hope. He can’t help me, he won’t, he’ll say he’s being fair, but he wants him away from me, too. He’s upset and he’s not being very quiet about it.”

“Try.”

“No, papa!”

He started toward her, but he found the room spinning around him, and the floor and the edge of the bed came up at him.

He said, or thought he said, Mouse, stop! and thought that his daughter had tried to catch him, far beyond her strength to do, before he hit the bedstead and his head hit the floor.

Her shadow fell over him. He felt a somewhat damp kiss on the forehead, and the brush of her hand, and heard her say, Let her blame me for it, papa, not you. Please, please, papa, be all right…

Sasha had fallen with no warning, and no reason so far as Yvgenie could see, and he was sure any moment now Pyetr would come back and conclude it was his fault his friend was lying unconscious on the floor, and not ask further questions. Yvgenie sat frozen in dread of the next insane event, hoping Sasha would move or give him some clue that he was even alive; but when Sasha did not wake up in the next moment, or the next, or still the next, Yvgenie bit his lip and cast an anxious glance toward the door, beginning to think he might make a break for it, now, this instant, never mind that his hands were tied, and only hope not to meet Pyetr coming in. He was a fool to have waited this long—if he had not waited too long already. And with a deep breath and a great effort he wobbled to his feet and looked to see if he might by some stretch of luck find a knife among Sasha’s pots and herbs.

There was no such luck; and Sasha was most surely still breathing, though he was lying at a most uncomfortable angle, close to the hot stones. Yvgenie edged away, banged his knee on a bench in his retreat and stumbled into the door, sure that at the last moment Pyetr was going to arrive and cut his head off.

The door gave without resistance. Sun hit his eyes and fears welled up as he followed the side of the bathhouse toward the stable. That was where he reasoned he might find a knife, or some edge to free his hands; and a horse to carry him out of here before the wizard awoke and caught him.

He blinked his eyes clear, saw something white outside (he hedge, and it was Bielitsa, it was his horse out there—

He staggered along the fence to the stable itself, up under the shadow of the woods. He bent and ducked through the rails—

And heard a door open somewhere up at the house. He caught his balance in the corner of the fence and the stable wall and saw Ilyana looking at him from the side of the porch. He wished her, Please don’t tell your father. Please just go inside and don’t tell anyone—that’s all you have to do—god, please, miss.

She left the porch railing: he thought she was going back inside. But she came down the walk-up instead, casting anxious glances his way. She ran across the yard toward him as lie leaned helplessly against the wall, thinking-Thinking how the sun shone on her hair as she ducked through the fence, and how beautiful she was as she crossed the stableyard, and how if her father would kill him for looking at her, he would flay him alive for involving her in his escape—but seeing the distress on her face he wondered next if Sasha’s malady might not have befallen her father; she looked as if she wanted help, and, oh, god, he could hardly stand on his feet, let alone rescue fathers who wanted to kill him, for beautiful wizard-daughters who equally threatened his life.

She said breathlessly, “You’ve got to get out of here.” He agreed with that. He turned his back so she could get at the knots—to no avail, he felt after a moment of painful effort. She said, “Wait, I’ll get a knife.”

They were going to be caught, they were surely going to be caught and her father was going to cut him in pieces. He leaned his shoulders against the stable shed while she ducked into the shed—his head kept spinning and he could hardly hold his feet as it was, and somehow he had to get out of the yard, get on his horse and go fast enough and far enough— and he doubted he was going to get ten steps before the spell that had allowed his escape unraveled and he found himself with an indignant wizard and an irate father. More, he had no idea where he should go to escape: wizards he knew about sold curses and told fortunes. They did not crawl about inside one’s heart and talk from other people’s mouths and compel them to do whatever they wanted.

The girl came out again and cut him free, sawing his thumb in the process—her hands were shaking, he realized, which said that she was scared too. “I’m sorry,” she said, about his thumb, but he swore that he was all right, and turned about to thank her and take his leave.

She said, “There’s a horse. It’s his. I’ve my book and everything packed. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Where? he wanted to know. What ‘his’? A girl looked him in the eyes the way she looked at him and told him they were running away together—and the ghost inside him reached out his arm without his thinking about it and touched her arm with numbed, clumsy fingers, saying, “Ilyana, where are you going? What do you hope to do?”

“My mother wants you dead, she’s already wished that, do you understand? It’s too dangerous to talk to my father, he can’t help what he might do—”

His hand fell, painful and half-dead from the rope, and he believed her: he remembered Pyetr and Sasha talking, remembered them saying something ominous about Pyetr’s wife—

Who was not reasonable, not at all reasonable.

Eveshka was her name…

“Come on,“ she said, pulling at him. “My father’s asleep, but she isn’t, she’s coming here right now on the boat. She’ll be here before dark.”

He found himself crossing the stableyard before he realized where he was heading, but it was where he would go. He ducked through the fence, breathless and staggering, clung to it to hold him up as far to the hedge and the gate.

It was Bielitsa. He stumbled his way toward her and held onto the hedge, longing to touch her again, to touch anything that was his, any shred of his life that he could get back again—

Bielitsa did come to him, by tentative steps, let him catch her reins and hug her about the neck. He hung there, dizzy and catching his breath; and slowly felt stronger, as if her warm, solid presence brought sanity back to the world, and breath back into his body.

He knew one thing for true. He loved this mare more than anything in his life and if he had left her behind his father would have killed her for spite—because no one got away from his father, no one defied his orders, not his servants and not his son—

His father dead? God, his father was incapable of dying. Other people did. His mother had. Her sister had, and her sister’s son. He heard the thump of axes—heard the voices shouting into the winter air-He fumbled after the reins, patted Bielitsa’s chest and neck to steady her and managed to get his foot in the stirrup and himself into the saddle, courting dizziness to drive the memory out.

A face, and gilt, and paintings. He had seen the tsar-many times; and knew that if the tsar knew what he knew he would cut off his father’s head. He could do that to his father with a handful of words. He had had that power for years, and he did not know what had held his tongue, whether it was fear or the remote hope of being loved—because the tsar would never love him, the tsar would have no reason to trust a traitor’s son, and no one would trust him, then, no one in all the Russias would have him—

Ilyana led her horse up to the house, and left it to stand while she ran up to the porch and inside—to get her belongings, he supposed, while his heart pounded against his ribs and he waited for disaster. He wished they might have reasoned with her father—not a wicked man, he thought, only someone with just reason now to kill him.

Something fell into place then with the ghost next his heart, an eerie familiarity with Pyetr, and that situation. I’ve been here before, he thought. I’ve fled this house before. God, why? It seems all the same reason. It seems all the same time—but I do it again and again, until somehow I get away— but where to, but worse than this? That seems where we’re bound, and it’s happened before, it happens over and over again, forever—oh, god, where’s an escape for us?