C. Cherryh - Rusalka

It seemed imprudent to make that clear to the old man.

So he watched the boy sweat and wear his hands to blisters.

And he slept on the porch in the little sun that reached the house, listening to the ring of the axe and the whisper of the river while the sun lasted.

He kept near Sasha at least, telling himself at one moment that now that he was better he might object to the old man’s lordly orders, he might simply put his sword to the old man’s throat and tell him they were taking the boat, blankets, and whatever in the house they fancied.

But whenever in the circle of his thoughts he was convinced that that was the better course he remembered that his healing was proceeding ungodly fast, and then he would remember that thing the other side of the door last night, and he would think that it might be the prudent course to think it all through one more time.

It was all very unsettling to a man’s stomach.

Meanwhile Uulamets took to his book again, inside, where the light could only be worse, and Sasha sweated and chopped until the stack of wood was higher than his head.

After which Sasha had the washing to do, which meant heating water in a kettle and stirring the clothes about with a stick and fishing them out again to dry.

He could do something, then, he thought, with a little touch of conscience, so he went over and wrung out the steaming clothes and hung them on a bare-branched tree to dry.

Sasha, poor lad, simply washed the wood chips off his shoulders with handfuls of wash water and sluiced it down his sides until his breeches were mostly soaked, but he had nothing else to put on—

Until old Uulamets came out onto the porch and said he should add their clothes to the pot as well, that he had clothes they might wear until their own dried—no, they might even have them; and they should bathe and wash as well.

“God,” Pyetr muttered. “Hospitality. What’s into the old man this morning?”

There was no bathhouse—or there was, but the roof had fallen into it, atop the rusty things stored there. Hospitality meant the warm wash water, and clothes meant two musty, wrinkled coats, a cap in the same condition, shirts and breeches that halfway fell off Sasha and which Pyetr found a little short, but it was still a relief. Uulamets even offered a razor and a bronze mirror, and Pyetr sat on the chopping log and scraped stubble while Sasha washed their clothes, in an ever so much more cheerful frame of mind.

Except when he tried to think why the old man was suddenly so pleasant, after last night, or where the dog was that had tried to come in the door, or whether everything was part and parcel of the drink he had had last night.

He did not at all like the answers he kept coming to, as if reason lay in this narrow borderland, and the conclusions he kept reaching were a pit constantly widening its edges, closer and closer to him.

“Did he talk to you last night?” he asked Sasha finally, while they were sitting at the woodpile waiting for the clothes to dry.

“I told him we wanted to go to Kiev,” Sasha said. “He wished I’d help him with something before we leave. He said he’d be glad to give us food and blankets after that.”

Sasha was not looking at him when he said that. Sasha was gazing out across the yard, toward the gray-limbed forest.

Sasha was not telling him all the truth, he thought. There was a difference between the bright, worried lad who had been so resourceful along the way—and this young man who refused to look at him when he answered, and who spoke with that quiet, measured voice that sounded all too rehearsed.

“What does he want you to do?” Pyetr asked.

Sasha hesitated at that. And still did not look at him when he said, “I think it involves magic.”

Pyetr snorted—and immediately wished he had not reacted that way, because it at once put a barrier between them.

“You’ve told him you’re a wizard.”

“I’m not,” Sasha said. “Not—to rank with him at least. No. I haven’t said anything. But you have.”

“I have?”

“You’ve said you think it’s nonsense. That’s not the kind of helper you’d look for in something—if you were a wizard. When you doubt something—I think that could hurt the spell or whatever, even when you’re as powerful as he is.”

Pyetr kept his mouth firmly shut for a moment and tried to think the way a young and credulous boy might think, who respected wizards and goblins, a boy he firmly intended to get out of this place, even if the boy persisted in being a fool.

Why should I care? he thought. If the boy’s content, leave him. Who made me responsible for fools?

And then he thought in less habitual ways, down paths that had no words around the thought at all, only a remembrance of the boy all but carrying him here, and the boy lending him his coat and offering him most of the food, and the comfort it was to have somebody who looked up to him without his having to exert himself, and who had no barb in his wit such as ’Mitri had had, and no selfishness either.

The fact was, the boy was comfortable to be with. The fact was, the boy, without a penny to his name, was his friend in a way ’Mitri and the rest could not in their limited hearts imagine to be; and instead of thinking of ways to avoid work, and of ways to protect himself from practical jokes and from ’Mitri putting jobs off on him, he found himself feeling he really ought to do something while Sasha was working his fingers to the bone.

That was an entirely unaccustomed feeling, one he did not quite understand, any more than he understood why he did not just slip off this morning, forgetting all debts, and go.

“Don’t trust him,” he said to Sasha in a low voice. “He’s no saner than he was. I don’t ask where he got these clothes. They’re not his size. I don’t think they ever were. The god only knows what happened to the owner. What we ought to do, right now—” He thought of going into the house, taking up his sword and taking what they wanted. But Sasha was too honest to countenance that. “—we should go down to the river and cut the boat loose and just sail out of here.”

After a moment Sasha said, “I don’t think we’d get far.”

“You’re giving the old man too much credit. It’s cups of tea we have to worry about.”

Sasha looked at him then, worried. “No,” he said. “Please. Give it one more day. We did talk, he said he’s willing to help us if we help hun…”

“Help him—help him do what , for the god’s sake? What did he ask you to do?”

“He wasn’t entirely specific—”

“God.”

“He could be a lot of help.”

“For the god’s own sake, boy—”

“I think he has to keep his word, that’s what they always say about—”

“They. They. The fakes in Vojvoda, who lie three times an hour to every client they have. This man will lie, Sasha Vasilyevitch. He absolutely will lie. Harm he might do us, poisoning us, god knows what. But help—”

“He can’t lie in something magical. I don’t think so.” Sasha’s brow furrowed. “You don’t know that the wizards in Vojvoda are all fakes. Maybe a lot of them are like me—just a little magic, not enough to really do anything but push things into happening. But I know things, and I know it’s dangerous to lie. It’s dangerous not to know what you really want. It’s dangerous to make wishes without thinking. I know , Pyetr. I’m not good, but I know how things work because I feel them.” He tapped his chest. “Here. I can’t explain better than that.”

“Good god.”

“Things are just like that. Things come back at you and you know better next time.”

“All your poor life. Boy—”