R1 - Rusalka (34 page)

"He had to have made some noise," Sasha said, walking to the forest side, a proximity to the trees that made Pyetr nervous. "We slept through it. I don't sleep like that…"

"We were tired," Pyetr said. "We wouldn't have heard thunder." He walked up beside Sasha and looked into the depths of the woods—seeing past the dead brush along the bank the green of vines and leaves. That evidence of life should have comforted him. It only looked thick and tangled through there, the kind of place an old man however crazy ought to have second thoughts about going, afoot, loaded down with, the god witness, the basket with that damned book and whatever pots he had taken.

More conjurings? he wondered.

"Old grandfather probably went off to sing at something," he muttered. "He was reading last night. He probably figured out something and decided he'd go hunt up some roots or something, what can you expect? He'll be back."

They had their breakfast on the forward deck, and Sasha kept hoping for master Uulamets to come back, he did not know why—master Uulamets not having been particularly kind to anyone; but Uulamets having gotten them here, he had no confidence anyone but Uulamets could get them back again.

But Pyetr said that they ought to see about the sail, thinking, Sasha was sure, that they should be going back downriver soon.

So they got the cord and the awl and started sewing the rip up, himself doing the pulling and the holding and Pyetr doing the punching and threading of the cord through the canvas—his hand was purpling around the wound, but he swore it was no worse than yesterday.

"I'll make a poultice for it," Sasha said. Since they had no choice but to sit and wait, it was at least a chance to help Pyetr; and Pyetr did not shrug off the offer.

They had the sail stitched by noon. "I've no idea whether it'll hold," Pyetr said; and for the first time talking about the chance of Uulamets and Eveshka not coming back: "But I think, going back, we should just go with the current, if we can. The boat ought to work with that, a lot slower, maybe, but I don't mind that."

"Me either," Sasha said, and glanced toward the forest.

"You suppose the River-thing got them?"

It was the first time Pyetr had talked about that, either, not that both of them were not virtually convinced of it by now.

"I'm not sure it ever lost her," Sasha said glumly, and thumped Pyetr on the arm. "Come on. I'll boil up something for the hand."

«
^
»

P
yetr watched
while Sasha started a fire in the stove and boiled up a concoction of wormwood, chamomile, willow, and salt—the last of which Pyetr protested as willful cruelty; but Sasha insisted, saying that if vodyanoi disliked it, it might help.

It stung, of course. But the heat helped, and Pyetr sat warming himself in the sun, his hand wrapped in a hot rag which he changed from time to time, between feeding the coals in the pan a twig or two—and quite uncharitably hoped that the vodyanoi had made a meal of Uulamets
and
his book—not, he told himself, that he particularly wished harm to the old man and certainly not to Eveshka, but he saw no reason for loyalty either.

"Give him till the sun touches the trees over there," he said finally to Sasha, and nodded toward the far shore. "Then let's untie and see if we can get this boat turned around."

"Maybe he's just trying to get us to break our word."

Uncomfortable thought. Pyetr cast a look to the nearer woods and back. "We've waited all morning and half the afternoon. If he decided to go off he could at least have said to wait—and hang us if we didn't. That's one thing. But I don't think he had a choice. I don't know why he left, I don't know what he thought he was doing—but, one—" Pyetr held up his thumb. "He packed, and, two—" The first finger. "He was quiet about it. Book and staff and all. He's gone off before, but he's never taken the book. So, one, he thought he'd need it, or, two, he didn't want to leave it with us, because he wasn't coming back, or, three, Eveshka got enough of papa and stole it and ran off to her lover…"

"If she did that, he'd have waked us," Sasha said. "He brought us all this way—"

"If he trusted us he'd wake us. Which he doesn't. We know he's on the outs with his daughter. We were talking with her last night—weren't we? And he was damned quiet about packing up, or we were sleeping sounder than usual—which he could wish. If you were asleep you couldn't tell a thing. Could you?"

"No," Sasha said.

"So? What do we owe him? The man's threatened our lives."

"Absolutely he's dangerous," Sasha said, "and he's wished this boat safe, and maybe to stay on this shore. If we try to move it-"

"You don't know that."

"I don't know he hasn't; and I certainly would, in his place. I'd wish it with everything I had."

"He could have said he was going. His wishing us asleep didn't hold up. Did it? Same with his hold on the boat."

"I'm not so sure."

"You can't always be sure!" Pyetr said. "Sometimes you just have to move. You're worried about Uulamets . I'm more worried about another night on this river. If Uulamets couldn't out-wish his daughter or the vodyanoi or whoever, I beg your pardon, Sasha Vasilyevitch, but I'm not sure you can, either. So what are we going to do tonight?"

"We won't be any safer out in the middle of the river. We're a long way from the house—"

"To the black god with the house. We're bound for Kiev. Forget the old man. You don't need him."

"I do need him," Sasha said. "And if he doesn't come back, I still have to go back there."

"For what? God, you're quit of him! You don't believe his nonsense. He wants you to believe you have to rely on him. Trust
me
instead, why don't you?"

Sasha said in a muted voice, "Pyetr, I'm not sure what I'm doing. I'm not even sure what I've done. I'm scared of that…"

"Because you're listening to him. Forget it! Let's get this boat out onto the river, let's put this place behind us, that's all."

He was halfway to his feet when Sasha caught his arm.

"No!" Sasha said, and all of a sudden Pyetr doubted he was right, all of a sudden he was sitting down again, a little shaken, and Sasha was saying. "Please. Till tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning we'll go."

Pyetr looked at him suspiciously, a little angry, but Sasha refused to flinch. He had his jaw set and looked him in the eye as straight as straight.

"You're 'witching me," Pyetr said. "I don't like that. I ought to take this boat—"

But he felt extremely uneasy about doing that. He thought how Sasha had been right, sometimes.

"Stop it," he said.

"No," Sasha said, "I won't."

Sasha was upset, he was upset. He thought that he could get up, cast off the ropes and take them out anyway.

"Damn it," he said; and got up and walked over to the forest-side rail to prove the point.

But he could not even stay mad. It was enough to drive a man crazy. He looked into the forest and thought that this was a better place to be than out on the river tonight, and he knew, damn it all! where that notion was coming from.

He bowed his head, he stood there with his arms folded. He felt Sasha wishing him not to be upset, and insisted on being furious. He turned around, on Sasha's grace, he suspected, and said, "Boy, that's not polite."

"I'm sorry," Sasha said earnestly.

"Being sorry doesn't patch it! Don't interfere with my judgment! Don't
do
that to your friends!"

"I haven't got a choice," Sasha said.

"Why? Because
Uulamets
wanted us here? Because something else does? What if you're wrong and it's not your wish, can you even tell?"

"If it's that much stronger than I am," Sasha said after a moment, "then you wouldn't be arguing to do what it doesn't want, either, would you?"

Sasha made a kind of sense. Pyetr hoped so. Otherwise nothing in the world was reliable.

And Sasha wanting him not to be mad was infuriatingly hard to resist.

Pyetr walked over to where he had been sitting, and slammed his hand into the side of the deckhouse, so it hurt.

That was a feeling he could rely on, at least.

Sasha came and sat down near him, contrite, Pyetr imagined: he squeezed out the water from the reheated compress and wrapped the cloth about his hand without so much as looking up.

"Pyetr, please."

"Don't talk to me," he said, because he had decided he was going to say that before he felt sorry for the boy. But he did glance up, and the boy looked so shaken it went through him the way the pain of his hand did.

At least he supposed it was his own feeling.

"Tomorrow morning," Sasha said, his voice trembling. "I don't care how mad you get, I
won't
let us have an accident."

"Who won't let us?" Pyetr retorted. "Didn't you say once, wizards are easier to affect? Maybe you don't know better. Does that thought occur to you?"

"It does," Sasha said. "And I don't want you mad at me, Pyetr, I'm sorry, I can't help that, but what do I do?" Sasha looked to be at the end of his wits, and bowed his head, his hands tangled in his hair. "Don't want to go. Be patient. Don't do things like that—"

The pain in Pyetr's hand diminished, markedly. And the boy sat there with his head in his hands, throwing everything he had into that relief, Pyetr reckoned. He felt his anger ebb and could not even make up his mind whether it was himself or Sasha deciding it.

He slumped back against the wall of the deckhouse, set his jaw and glared at Sasha in a moment that felt as though they were both irretrievably mad—and searched back to his first days in Sasha's company, trying to recover his balance.

But one never knew about those moments, either…

Except that Sasha had attacked the vodyanoi for his sake, with a salt pot and a stick—which he could not forget.

"You want me to remember that?"

"What?" Sasha asked, looking up, looking bewildered.

Innocent, then. But then, he did not in any sense doubt he could trust Sasha; what frightened him was the degree of trust he began to understand it took—to live with a wizard.

"Let me tell you," Pyetr said, "I don't know how far Uulamets ever pushed us—he could, I don't doubt it, and maybe he's so good neither one of us could catch him at it, but I don't think so." He soaked the rag again and squeezed it, so he had somewhere else to look besides Sasha's pale face. "Do me a favor. Don't do that again. It's not the way to get along with people."

"I don't want to do it… I don't want you to get killed, either!"

"Fine. Neither do I. You think there's some kind of spell on the boat. I think there's a Thing somewhere around here that got breakfast and it's coming up suppertime. What do you say to that?"