C. Cherryh - Chernevog

“Keep it, if you’ll refrain from using it on me. Do we agree?”

“I want to find him. I don’t like the look of this.” He gathered up Volkhi’s reins and looked around at Chernevog, wondering and trying not to wonder… what was going on with Eveshka and whether—

Whether there was any hope for her—or ever had been—or whether he had loved her enough while there was a chance; or what he had done and not done to bring her and all of them to this.

It was not a confidence he wanted to share with Chernevog. He would have balked at sharing it with Sasha; and now he was not even sure whether his doubts in that intimate matter came from his own heart or Chernevog’s at work in him.

She had a baby?

All he could feel was fear.

“You’re right,” Chernevog said. “You’re very right. I’d no notion why this might be happening. Now I do. —Are you absolutely certain that baby’s not Sasha’s?”

That dark spot wrapped all about his heart. He actually considered that possibility, actually considered it, in one black moment—appalled to realize he would not be utterly surprised nor even irrevocably upset with either one of them— hurt, yes; but he would understand it—the boy becoming a painfully lonely young man, and Eveshka frustrated with a husband who was (the folk in Vojvoda had quite well agreed with Ilya Uulamets’ opinion) no fit match for her.

Chernevog said, “If it is his—”

Chernevog tried to make him know something. All it made him was afraid.

Chernevog said, quietly, “If it is his, Pyetr Ilyitch, there’d certainly be a reason he’s avoiding us.”

“Damn you, it isn’t, and you don’t know him!”

“If it is—none of us will see it grow up. That’s the truth Pyetr Ilyitch. I lie as a matter of course—but this is the plain truth. I killed Eveshka because I’d gotten myself in a trap because she’d have killed me if I hadn’t.”

“ ’Veshka never killed anything—” —in her life, he started to say, like a fool. But that was the ’Veshka who saved fieldmice. In death, she had killed, the god knew she had killed.

“Her mother sent me,” Chernevog said. “A child like his. doubly born—that’s power… until she grows up. Draga wanted her dead when she couldn’t get her away from her father. Draga tried to kill her when she was born. I tried to find her father’s hold over her. I got caught in his book; I had to get away and I had to kill her. I had her heart. I thought I might hold her—but I couldn’t and you know what happened. Now we’re here—and she’s carrying a child that I hope to hell is yours.”

“Why?” Pyetr cried. “What’s the threat in a baby?”

But he thought of Sasha saying, ’Veshka’s mother was a wizard, her father was, she got her gift from both sides…

Sasha saying, Chernevog himself was scared of her…

Chernevog did not answer that. Chernevog wanted him on the horse, Chernevog wanted them on their way with no more questions. Pyetr threw the reins over Volkhi’s neck and thought with anguish that if Chernevog was lying, he no longer knew his way out of the maze of Chernevog’s reasons. If Chernevog was lying, he feared the last thing he would lose would be himself, Chernevog’s, ultimately, like Owl, no damn bit more than that. The god only knew but what ’Veshka was going to fight Chernevog— and he was going to be with him, where Sasha had put him, the god help him.

He helped Chernevog up behind him, he all but lost his stomach when Chernevog took his hand and his arm and used him for a ladder—himself leaning far over the other way and Volkhi shifting under him. He said, between his teeth, “Do me a favor. Sit back, keep your hands off, and don’t be wishing at me.”

“All I want is your help.”

“Stop it, dammit!” he cried, and, drawing a calmer breath, reminded himself how he had had to teach Sasha manners at the first.

He hurt the way he had hurt when an old man’s sword had gone through him—only shock at the first, seeing the blade shorter than it ought to be up against his side. He could not even say what had hit him tonight, but he was like that. When he had gotten the old boyar’s sword through his side he had gotten quite a ways afterward before the pain had set in—being an ordinary man, and dull as dirt. He patted Volkhi’s neck, said, as Volkhi started to move, “I’m sorry, lad.”

Chernevog said, “I assure you, I can keep the horse safe. It’s not harming him. Nothing I’m doing is harming him.”

“What about my wife?” he asked between his teeth. “What about Sasha, dammit?”

Chernevog said, equally short, “One thing at a time. One damn thing at a time!”

So Volkhi and whatever else Chernevog was doing was all Chernevog could manage.

Chernevog had said himself… that magic was resisting him.

Don’t wish, dear, Draga said, don’t wish yet…

Whatever you do, dear, don’t do anything short-sighted, make any decision until you know the height and the width of it.

Chase away the straying thoughts, chase everything away. This is the simplest wish you’ll ever make. It must be the simplest.

“There’s not forever, dear. Not if you sit too long.”

Eveshka sat with her chin on her knees, staring desperately into the hearthfire Draga tended through the night.

Wish nothing until you’re sure.

But Papa said—kept running through her mind. Papa had said, It’s a damned fool who wishes more magic than he’s born with…

Papa had been with her on the boat, she truly believed that had been no shapeshifter—she had thought about it and thought about it and she had resolved that doubt in her mind. Papa had not been able to stop her from coming here, papa was dead and his presence in the world had grown very faint, but papa had stayed with her and, changed by his death and being again the kind man of her earliest childhood, had feared for her, had watched over her on the river, had wished—

Wished her asleep, most of the time.

Why?

To wish things for her and her baby she would not remember?

To wish things against her mother?

“Your father’s dead,” Draga said, feeding more twigs into the fire, a fistful of herbs, that flew up on the draft, all sparks, into the red-smoked dark. “The dead don’t always tell the truth. Your father didn’t want you out of his hands either. Don’t deal with him. You might be his bridge back to the world. Your child might be. Don’t think about him. Forget him. The dead have to be forgotten. Think of what truly matters.”

She thought about Pyetr, but that led at once to thoughts of Kavi holding him prisoner, doing hateful things, spiteful, terrible things to him. Her mother said, quickly,

Don’t! Think of flowers. Blue flowers, dear, blue and white—

… Spells stitched in hems, spells against too much memory, spells to keep the ghosts at bay.

Spells for forgetting the dark, one stitch and the next, blue thread, green thread, colors the dead could recall but never, ever see.

That was what it was to be dead, and she never wanted to die again, she never wanted anything she loved to die…

“Flowers!” her mother said. “Be careful, daughter!”

She thought of the garden at home, careful rows, thought of her own front porch and the fireside in the evenings, the three of them happy and snug in that house…

“Sasha’s coming here,” her mother murmured, stirring the embers. The smoke smelled of papaver, and hemp, and strong and dangerous herbs, making her nose sting and her chest burn and her eyes swim. “I know that he is. He’s running here for help. But he’s dealt with Kavi. He’s compromised himself already. I know that, too.”