Yvgenie (21 page)

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 Pavlo
vitch?
’

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 th
e smoke hole, became a vision, t
oo, 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
Il
itch. 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 yo
u. His f
ather's dead.
’