Yvgenie (11 page)

And she did.

‘
Mouse?
’
Pyetr asked. She looked so pale, and so sad, and so frighteningly still against the pillows, in the lamplight of her bedroom.

Sasha said, at his side:
‘
Wake up, mousekin. It's all right. We won't talk about it. Your mother's bringing some supper for you.
’

She had just become a weight in Pyetr's arms, just gone out of a sudden; and scared him so he was still shaking, scared 'Veshka, too, he understood. Sasha was the calm one, Sasha still was:
‘
Wake up,
’
Sasha said; and without any fuss at all,
Ilyana
's eyelids fluttered and she began to wake up.

A little confused at being in bed, maybe.
‘
You fainted, mousekin. You scared me.
’

‘
I'm sorry,
’
she said, hushed, as if breath were still very short.
‘
I'm really sorry, papa.
’

‘
Ilyana, it's not your fault. Nothing's your fault. I'm not even mad at Chernevog. I was as close to a friend as he had in the world.
’

Maybe she did not quite believe that exaggeration. But it confused her. A great many things surely confused her—and confusion might multiply wishes, but it subtracted effectiveness.

‘
We'll talk about it,
’
he said.
‘
Later. Are you going to be all right?
’

‘
Yes,
’
she said.
‘
Yes. I'm fine.
’

‘
A fib, but I'll take it for a promise.
Don't
do that to me again.
’

‘
I'm
—
’

‘
—sorry. You've been talking to your uncle. So
rr
y's his word. Don't be sorry: you don't have to apologize to anyone. There's not a thing in the world you've done wrong, except I wish you'd told us a long time ago what was going on.
’

''Mother would have said don't.''

He understood that. Eveshka said 'don't' to anything chancy. He was not in the habit of telling Eveshka when he had decided to risk his neck, either.

Your daughter, Sasha had said.

He said,
‘
I got drunk once, jumped a fence that scared the hell out of me. Risked my horse's neck, not mentioning mine. It didn't scare me at the time, of course. But to this day I have nightmares about that fence coming at me.''

‘
What's that to do with—?''

‘
Just that's who your papa is. A fool, sometimes. And prone to rush into things. But your papa didn't have anybody worrying about him. He never had anybody who gave a damn whether he survived. Mouse, you do have. Break your neck and you're going to make all of us very unhappy. But not with you. Do you understand what I'm saying?
’

Maybe he shocked her, telling her things like that
.
It was the speech Sasha had talked about this morning, not the one he would give his daughter: the one someone should have given him—if anyone
had
cared whether he lived or died, before Sasha had begun to.

She said, faintly,
‘
I didn't think it was dangerous. I still don't. He never, ever hurt me.
’

‘
I believe you,'' he said, on an uneasy stomach.
’
I almost believe his intentions. But I don't believe he can hold to them.'' He remembered Eveshka's touch—then, in those days when it was both dizzying and deadly. He knew the compulsion—on both sides; and thinking of his daughter trapped in it, his daughter locked in an embrace like that—
‘
It's like vodka, mouse. It corrupts your judgment about the next cupful. Or the next wish and the one that patches it. You could die like that and not care. I know what you're not telling me. You don't have to tell me what it feels like.
I’ve
felt
it.
’

Stop, he heard her say in his head; and Sasha laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘
Mousekin,
’
Sasha said.
‘
I know. It's all right. Rest. I'll stay here in the front room tonight. I'll be here. I'll bring you your supper in bed. All right?
’

‘
All right,
’
she said. And Sasha got him out the door.

Distress hit him then, like a weight in his chest: Eveshka's heart settled against his and he stood there, unable to move, scarcely able to breathe, the pain was so acute. Eveshka was finishing
Il
yana's supper tray. She laid a napkin on it and gave it to Sasha to take into the room, all quite easy, quite calm. He realized that he was in the way: he opened the door for Sasha and shut it after him.

‘
How is she?
’
Eveshka's voice asked him; but her heart had already found that answer and the anxiousness smothered, it suffocated him.

‘
She's doing a lot better,
’
he said, struggling for calm.
‘
Eveshka, listen to me, you've got to give her more rein. A lot more, not less.
Trust
her.
’

He felt her panic arguing with his—he remembered things a man did not want to remember about his wife: and remembered things about himself, the young fool who had gotten himself skewered by a jealous husband, ensnared by a rusalka and damned near killed by Chernevog—before he had carried Che
rn
evog's heart a while himself: he knew Chernevog, by that, the way he knew his wife, the way he knew Sasha, and all the pieces of their lives came together in him, or refused to go together at all—

He forced them to meet, dammit, one with the other, in his own opinions of what to do: trust Ilyana, he thought; and he thought unawares of Ilyana and Chernevog; and dying, and killing, and a watery cave that figured in their nightmares. He propped himself against the fireside stones, breaking a bit of kindling in his hands, snap, snap, snap, thicker and thicker pieces, until he could not break them any longer, then did break them once more. There was blood on his hands, then.

‘
God, you fool,
’
Eveshka whispered. Her heart struggled to escape his. She wanted her daughter to herself, she gave no credence to his unwizardly opinions that were blind to the dangers reaching out for them, out of magic, out of that
unnamable
pla
ce
magic used
—

He said, leaning there, sucking a bloody knuckle,
‘
You've made a mistake, wife. You understand me. Beat the horse— and she'll kill you, sooner or later. Don't do it with my daughter.''

He was not talking to the heart lodged next to his, he was talking to a wizard, doubly and triply born—who found his daughter a cipher, and hurt his daughter because
she
let her nightmares override her good sense—

‘
A mistake,
’
he said,
‘
that's still able to be fixed. But not by doing the same thing your father did to you. Don't hedge h
er about with rules, '
Veshka. Chernevog will be back, I don't know when, but he'll be back: I doubt you drove him that far. This isn't something that's solved and panic won't help.
’

‘
The vodyanoi is awake,
’
Eveshka said quietly, turning her back on him.
‘
Sasha drove him off. More than that may have slipped its peg with what happened out there.
’

Glistening black coils, sleek as oil; cold, and mud, and bones. She was making him remember. He was dizzy for a moment, and the wife who feared anything unplanned came face to face with the boy who had walked The Doe's rooftree drunk, on a dare—that boy and the hard young man who had done it thereafter on bets—for money, because in Vojvoda, you had to have money or you fell further than that. . .

Eveshka did not understand that place. But she knew fighting for what she wanted, and she knew fighting to stay alive.

‘
What's a rusalka,
’
he asked her, in that one point of und
erstanding,
‘
but a wish so strong it drinks the life out of anything it wants? How close will you hold Ilyana? Or me?
If
it's
that
again, 'Veshka—then,
dammit,
stay to me. Don't do it to our daughter!
’

There was anger in front of him, then, terrible anger inside
him. And fear. Her heart wanted free of obligations. It wanted—

But her heart had no magic to fight with. Neither did he.

The anger in front of him did. The anger could do anything i
t
wanted. It would be a fool to do any of those things to a man who had her heart, and they both knew that—but that heart began to go this way and that in panic at the thought of it.

He said,
‘
'Veshka, is
the word 'wrong' so damned diff
icult? Take it
back,
'Veshka, I know it hurts, dammit—but I don't like what I'm seeing.''

She looked at him coldly. She walked away and picked up a basket from the stack in the corner, and put it on the table.

Packing, then.

‘
What does that mean?
’
he asked.

‘
It means you can do what you like with her. Maybe you can do better.
’

Her heart was saying something else. It was feeling betrayal and terror and wanting fools it loved to do exactly what it thought safe.

She wanted him to do what she said, wanted not to hurt him any further, and wanted out of here before she killed him—because she was drowning in confusion—

And when she could not breathe, she would grab anything and anyone that could give that next breath to her—she would do it again and again, the way she had done, to live, her way
—

He held on, he shut his eyes to shut it out, but the panic was not coming from the outside, it was inside him, a panic that must not get to his daughter—he could not let it get to her—

She said, a living voice,
‘
I'm taking the boat. It's stocke
d
isn't it?
’

He nodded, in the mome
nt's sanity her cold voice made.
He left the fireside, managed to reach the kitchen table an
d
sit down, with the sudden thought that there had been n
o
sound from Ilyana or Sasha. Sasha must be taking care her, Sasha must be trying to get hold of the situation
—

He leaned his head on his hands, tasted blood and realiz
ed
he had bitten his lip. He did it then deliberately, pain to
stop
him thinking, pain like sunlight to distract a man's eyes from ghosts.

He heard her steps echo in the bedroom and eventually
come back again; he heard her pass behind him to the door,
g
etting her cloak. It was not like the first years of their mar
ri
age, when she would bolt and run—heart and all. He did not know now if she meant to take her heart back when she left or whether she might leave him like this, because what she was now was safe, and clearheaded, and cared for nothing more than itself. Perhaps she had no choice. Or she found no reason now to suffer with ordinary folk.

She said, the part of her that had no heart:
‘
I'll call for it—when I can
.
’

‘
Sasha?
’
he murmured, hoping Sasha could hear him— wondering if Sasha was all right. If Ilyana was. If Eveshka was not about to kill all of them along with her heart, a coldly reasoned self-murder—against the nightmare she had feared all these years—

‘
No,
’
she said aloud. He heard the door open, felt a
gust
of cool night air against his left side.

He thought, he could not help himself: Chernevog wasn't worse than this. God, what has she become?

‘
Too strong,
’
his wife's voice said from the door.
‘
Too powerful to deal with magic.
’

Pain surpassed pain. He slumped onto his folded arms, wanting her to go, put distance between them; but he heard her walk back, while the whole house groaned in pain, felt her shadow against the wind as she bent over him. Her lips
brushed his temple and he began to fall then, a long helpless slide into dark.