Yvgenie

by CJ Cherryh

  ‘The god only knows, Pyetr. I'm afraid neither of us was that clever. The things we want do come true: we make them happen, we shape them with what we say and what we do. It's not the mouse's fault. Not even his, I think. We made the mouse lonely. She wanted a playmate. She wished one up and he wanted—perhaps to come home. I don't know.—But you taught her things. How to hold a baby bird. Do you remember?''

  Pyetr frowned at him, upset and confused. ‘Not how to hold lives in her hands.’

  ‘How to hold a fox kit. You said, 'If he bites it's only fear. Be careful.' Do you remember that? That's a very important lesson.''

  ‘A bite isn't a betrayal. It isn't your whole damned far against you. Or your mother wanting someone dead.’

  ‘ I wish her to remember what you taught her, Pyetr. That's the wish I make for her.’

  ''God, don't put it down to me!''

  ‘All those years she should have been with you, all the years we kept you apart—what you did teach her, in spite of that, the mouse sets most store by. You were the forbidden. You were the one out of reach.—What would you wish for her now?’

  ‘To wait for me, dammit, that's what I've been saying—for her to talk to me. That's what I want.''

  Dangerous wish. Dangerous and indefinite and putting Pyetr at risk. But Pyetr was, he had had faith in it for years, wiser and braver about such things than he was. So he said, slowly, with the awareness of everything unhinged, and everything in doubt:

  ‘I wish that, yes. And I wish you well, Pyetr... as well I know how.’

  Pyetr looked at him as if he were mad, looked at him in the gray dawn, that time that ghosts began to fade, and said, no faintly he could hardly hear: ‘Wish yourself well, Sasha.’

  Because he had chosen the wish he had—foolish wizard that he was: he had deceived himself for so many years that he wished Pyetr's welfare completely unselfishly, for Pyetr’s benefit, and not his: Let Pyetr be well, let nothing change—

  He thought, not for the first time, All of us brought him from Kiev. Who knows, maybe we wished him into trouble to do that, and he never would have played dice with the tsarevitch or crossed Kurov. As it was, it got him home, and it put him here, where he nearly died last night.

  Babi turned up in his lap, Babi grabbed for his neck and hung on, fiercely, with his small hands.

  —Babi knows something Babi doesn't like. I wonder where Babi was before he showed up last night. Things aren't going well, Pyetr's right.

  ‘Have you done that?’ Pyetr persisted. ‘Do you wish yourself well, Sasha? Or have you done something completely foolish?’

  Pyetr could tell he was woolgathering. Pyetr knew his habits, and his expressions.

  ‘I wish myself to keep you alive,’ Sasha said slowly. It was all he dared wish this morning. In their fear for the mouse's abilities, they had wished nothing about a wizard too old for a child's mistakes, a wizard who had done a child's naive magic twice now—unwisely in both in stances.

  He got to his feet. He picked up the vodka jug and deliberately let it fall.

  Babi turned up below it, caught it in his arms and glared at him reproachfully.

  But it had not broken. He could not harm it, even trying. In its way it was dangerous. Fall holding it—and the jug would survive.

  It was Pyetr's coat, Eveshka had no doubt of it when she had fished it out of the river. ‘Pyetr!’ she cried aloud to the forested shore, to the winds and the morning; she wanted Sasha to answer her; but no answer came, not from her husband, not from her daughter, not from Sasha, not even from the vodyanoi, who wanted to torment her. She knew its ways; oh, god, she knew them—knew that it lied, but one could never rely on that.

  What she wanted now was a breeze—with the sail canted, the tiller set—just a very little breeze, please the god. Ever so slight a breeze—while she trembled with fear and wider wishes beckoned.

  The sail flipped and filled halfway. The boat moved, ever so slowly.

  And stuck fast again.

  She did not wish a storm. She shut her eyes and wished— please, just a little more.

  The boat groaned, the sail flapped and thumped.

  The wind was there. It took so little for a stray puff of wind to come into this nook, skirl among the trees along the little stream, and come skimming across the water...

  Something wanted me toward this shore. Then want me inner, dammit! I've no intention to swim for it!

  The boat heeled ever so slightly and slid free, bow facing the brushy water edge.

  She lashed the tiller and ran forward, past the deckhouse, under the sail and along the low rail to the bow, with the snaggy wooden hook they used for an anchor. She swung it around and around her with all her might and loosed it for the trees.

  It landed. She hauled on the rope and felt it hold, threw a loop about the bow post and hauled, not abruptly, but with patience.

  Wizardry waited to swallow her up. The river did, while the vodyanoi taunted her with cruel laughter and told her lies. It was a big boat, a very big boat, but on the water the slightest breeze and the slightest of women could move it.

  There were terrible holes in the coat she had fished out of the water, and stains, despite its soaking, that were surely blood.

  Hwiuur could not be killed, that she knew, not in this world—but there were powers outside this world, in that place where magic lived.

  Branches cracked against the hull. The old ferry jolted and scraped along the shore.

  The forest that shut out her magic could not shut her out—kill her if it could—but not stop her short of killing her.

  Sasha would talk about morality. Sasha would talk about the safety of people she had never met, and children she had never seen, and beg her to have pity on them, remembering that magic sought a way into the world—which wizards must never, give. But Pyetr was her right and wrong. Pyetr was her world outside the woods, and the world inside her heart. Without him, if anything should have happened to him—

  Sasha had warned her against killing and against dying— You know what you'd become…

  Oh, absolutely she did.

  8

  The horses had not the strength now for hard going. No more did Pyetr—small wonder that Pyetr seemed thinner and paler than yesterday: he noticed it especially when they had come to a small in and let the horses rest and drink. Pyetr stripped off his bloody shirt and splashed water over him, sending a trail of stained water curling away over the moss-but of the wound there remained nothing but a white scar on his back and another on his chest. Pyetr touched the one he could reach, examined it, awkwardly situated as it was, and looked up with worry in his eyes that Sasha did not want to read—realization how close he had come to dying last night, certainly; and perhaps of the magic it might have cost to call him back.

  ‘I didn't borrow,’ Sasha said. ‘If that s what you’re wondering. You're white as a ghost and some bit thinner to prove it —That shirt's beyond washing. God, don't put it back on.'' He pulled Pyetr's spare one from Missy's baggage. Pyetr shook the water out of his hair, dried it with the dirty shirt and put the clean one on.

  After which they took the chance to wash and shave, filled their water-flasks and left the brook behind at a pace Missy and Volkhi could keep.

  In the white sunlight, without dirt and stubble looked paler still, the fine lines on his face smoothed away. He seemed—

  Drawn thin, the way he had been in the days master Uulamets had first snared them, and used Pyetr for bait for his ghostly daughter. The god help them, he had snatched after an image last night, that very moment a young fool had worked his best magic—they had been young, they had been on an adventure that would end well—but time had glossed the fear and the weariness and Pyetr's sure attraction for what he knew would kill him—the very destruction Pyetr had been, one feared with the clarity of hindsight, courting all his young life—

  Because Pyetr had had that inclination in his youth: Pyetr the gambler's son, who valued his life less than his free
dom and his own way. Old Uulamets had wanted a wizard lad, had wished for one for a hundred years, till a certain stable boy had been shaken out of Vojvoda—to rescue Pyetr from an unpleasantness occasioned by a lady's window and an irate husband who had dropped dead in the street.

  They rode a narrow space between the hills, with noon sun slanting through the leaves. Babi was off somewhere, but Babi would do that—sometimes there and sometimes not, as Babi pleased.

  Sasha murmured, out of his own thoughts: ‘When we first came to this woods, Pyetr, do you remember, master Uulamets wanted me to meet 'Veshka. You were an accident. He wanted me out of Vojvoda.’

  ‘I wanted the hell out of town. There was a rope involved. I call that a reason.—What are you talking about?’

  ‘He wanted me. He wanted a wizard to attract Eveshka back to him. And after a hundred years of his wanting someone like me—and after my being born and growing up, and all, just to satisfy his wish—what did Eveshka do but fall in love with you instead?’

  ‘Love, hell! The old goat meant you to die, friend. You weren’t supposed to survive the honor.’

  ‘But he didn't need a wizard for that. He certainly didn't need one fifteen years old—’

  ‘She was sixteen a hundred years. She was still sixteen then. It wasn't that unreasonable.’

  ‘But—’ The train of thought was getting more and more uncomfortable, now it had started. ‘She'd have been sixteen another year or so. I'd have been older. It might have worked then.’

  ‘Thank the god not. By then, I'd have been hanged.’

  Chilling thought. ‘But his wish worked too soon, didn't it? Or didn't get me born soon enough. Maybe something pulled his wish off a year or so. Maybe it was mine for my own welfare. Or 'Veshka's for help. —Or maybe it wasn't even me that was going to work: you were his answer, and he wouldn't see it. He had his mind made up how everything was going to be, just like 'Veshka: it was me he still wanted, after you were right under his nose; and why, with you at hand, did he still want a wizard, when we all know the doubly-born are so dangerous? Did he want Ilyana?’

  Pyetr frowned at him, thinking thoughts he most definitely did not want to overhear. Then Pyetr said: ‘Does a rusalka want anything but its own way? Maybe 'Veshka did it. Maybe her father wanted you and she wished me up to spite him.’

  A ridge loomed in front of them. The horses took it at a brisker pace, and after that it was a climb down again, through thin new growth, past a fallen tree. Since the forest's re-growth, young trees had grown old and massive; and some had died.

  He said, had been waiting to say, when they came side by side again, ‘But all along we've said wizards shouldn't marry wizards. You were ever so much—’ Pyetr arched an eyebrow.

  —safer? Hardly flattering, to the rascal Pyetr had so studiously been. His face went hot and he mumbled instead, ‘I just don't know why he was furious that she went for you.’

  ‘What in hell are we really talking about?’

  Impossible to explain. They were coming to another rough spot. ‘I don't know.’

  Their course took them apart again, around a tree, along a hillside, Missy dropping behind. He overtook Pyetr at the end of a stand of trees and a thorn thicket and Pyetr said, ‘By everything you say, 'Veshka herself being born was no accident. The old scoundrel must have loved Draga once, I'll suppose he did—why else marry her? Or maybe—’

  Missy had to drop back again, and Sasha started to eaves drop for the rest of it, but it felt too private, something about Eveshka; and when they were side by side again, Pyetr asked:

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘That Draga couldn't have carried 'Veshka without wanting her—or stayed near Uulamets if Uulamets hadn't been willing for her to—a baby's just too fragile. He knew his wife was trying to kill him. He knew his wife wanted that baby, but he wanted Eveshka, too—not just after she was born. He had to—if a wizard-wife can wish not to have a child—so can her husband, granted he's thinking in those terms.''

  ‘Not a sure thing,'' Pyetr muttered, ‘granted wizards are like the rest of us.’

  ‘Eveshka's told me she wasn't even thinking about having a child, herself, before she conceived Ilyana, which—’ He was sure his face was red. ‘—considering you both, was incredibly forgetful on her part.''

  ‘She didn't exactly have a mother's kindly advice.’

  A hill intervened. He rode it, trying not to overhear Pyetr's thoughts, and Missy picked her way down at Volkhi's tail. Babi turned up again and left by the time he overtook Pyetr on flat ground.

  Pyetr said: ‘She's getting more and more like her father, if you want my opinion: scared to death of magic and using as little as she can.’

  ‘But why did Uulamets want a wizard to marry his daughter?’

  ‘Forget 'marry. He wanted to kill us!’

  ‘You were the one he specifically didn't want and it happened anyway.’

  ‘What are you saying? I was Draga's choice?''

  ‘No,’ he said in consternation. ‘No, I don't believe that. I’m saying I don't know what he wanted me for. Unless he was sure I could attract his daughter into his reach, and that I could help him—’

  ‘—Be his damn servant,’ Pyetr corrected him.

  ‘But the point is, if it's so terrible to have a child that gifted—what in the world did he want with me?’

  ‘Better not to ask.’

  ‘No, it's important to ask. Why was he so upset that she wanted you instead?’

  What are you getting at?’

  ‘I don't know. I absolutely don't know. I wish I—’

  He checked himself short of that precipice. He hit the saddlebow in frustration and looked at the trees, the leaves in the sunlight—anything but wish. God!

  Pyetr said: ‘Nobody could know she was a wizard until she was born. We didn't know—’

  ‘But Patches' spots were a good possibility—considering Missy. And if Uulamets didn't argue with having a grand-child—which I don't get the impression he did, he was for it.’

  ‘Get to a point, for the god's sake.''

  ‘That I don't believe all the danger is in Ilyana.''

  ‘Oh, god, that's comforting.’

  He said distractedly, staring ahead into the sunlit green: ‘We've been listening to very few advisors. And doing everything we've done on 'Veshka's say-so. 'Veshka's not the most level head in the household. You have to admit that.’

  ‘I'll admit it. She'll even admit it, once and twice a year. I’ll also admit the mouse is fifteen. And Chernevog's not a moral guide, Sasha. I know him, god, I know him—’

  ‘She's convinced her daughter is dangerous. That someday she'd do exactly what she's done, and go—where we know not everything's been all right, for a very long time.

  But so's 'Veshka dangerous. I'm dangerous. My misjudgments certainly are. I'm only hoping I haven't made one’.

  ‘In what?’

  Maybe being thinner gave Pyetr that fey, remembered face. There was the tiny scar on his forehead, above the eye—he had gotten that one the year Chernevog had died. That seemed fainter today. Maybe it was the light. Maybe he was being foolish in his worry.

  ‘Sasha?’

  ‘I'm not sure Uulamets' wishes are out of this game not sure 'Veshka's right in her worries. I—’

  Birds started up, ravens, rising out of the hollow ahead of them.

  Death was there. That was not unusual. There was no reason to turn aside. It only cast a solemnity on them as they rode further, into a patch of younger trees, where sunlight sifted through bright leaves. Insects buzzed here.

  A deer had died. Such things happened—there were wolves. The sick and the lame died.

  But no four-footed creature had hacked it in pieces, leaving most.

  So many things were amiss with the world. Babi turned up in Ilyana's lap as they rode, and vanished again—with a hiss.

  ‘Why does he do that?’ Yvgenie asked.

  ‘He's upset,’ was all she coul
d answer. So was she. The sun showed Yvgenie so pale, so dreadfully pale—but the kiss this morning had had nothing of chill about it. She caught a furtive, troubled glance as they rode, seeing how leaf-dappled sunlight glowed on his face and shoulders, how he cast her kind and shy looks when he thought she was not watching: if her uncle Sasha were in love, she thought, he would look at someone like that; god, she wanted to help him and not to have any harm come to him. He was kind, he was shy and gentle, and thoughtful, for all her father's bad opinion of boyars' sons—and even if he had had a terrible father, somebody had taught him kindness. She caught sometimes the image of a fat, gentle-faced woman who had hugged him and held him and told him stories—

  Not flattering stories, about wizards and magic birds; and bears that talked and wicked sorcerers who hid their hearts in acorns—she supposed one could, but acorns seemed a very dangerous place; and bears talked, but nothing like people. So she told him, now that the silence was easier, about hear in the garden, about uncle Sasha and the bees, about—

  About Owl and Kavi Chernevog, and how she had known him for years and years. It was hard to remember he could not hear her pictures, not as easily as her father could. She had to tell them in words, which she was not good at—

  ‘How did he die?'' he wanted to know—and that question echoed around and around in their heads, his fears, hers—

  She did not, she had to admit, know that answer: he gave her a most vivid and grisly image of beasts and fangs and I in and she shivered and wanted not to have any more of it right now, please—

  Because she had the most dreadful growing suspicion that papa was right and that Kavi had done something both wicked and desperate—though, not, she thought, by intent: surely if the boy had been drowning, he could be far worse off than having Kavi find him and hold him among the living—and Kavi would not have made him fall in the brook.

  (Mouse, uncle would say, sternly—don't hope things are so. Be sure. Know the truth, even if you don't like it…)

  But Yvgenie reached out his hand, then, across the space between Patches and Bielitsa. A touch of his fingers, that was all it needed for that wonderful tingling to run from her arm to her heart. She felt warm through, as if she no longer needed the sun.