C. Cherryh - Rusalka

He held back the outcry. He let his breath go. He could not get another for a moment, or see anything past the haze, except he heard deeper voices in the yard, Fedya Misurov’s voice saying, “What did he do?”

“Murder,” came the answer. “By sorcery.”

“Who?”

“The boyar Yurishev himself. Master Yurishev caught him in his upstairs hall, at his wife’s door, and chased the wretch into the street before he fell dead—”

No! Pyetr thought to himself. They’re lying!

“If you see him,” the man said, “take no chances. There was no mark on the victim.”

Men die, Pyetr thought. The fools! He was an old man!

And he waited in bitter anticipation for Sasha Misurov to speak up and say, I know where to find him—because there was no reason Sasha should not. The stakes had risen much too high for a stranger to risk for anyone.

But the riders took their leave and rode away.

God, he thought, is the boy still out there?

Perhaps Sasha was inside the tavern, perhaps it would still happen, the boy would hear and tell Fedya and Fedya would say Run after them—

But he heard the elder Misurov say, “Lock the gate tonight.” and young Sasha say, not so far from the stable wall, “Yes, uncle. I will.”

Pyetr let go the straw he clenched in his fists and felt his last strength leave him, so that tears leaked from his eyes. Every breath was edged with the pain in his back and his side.

He saw the boy come back into the stable, saw him break into a ran to reach him. The boy said it had been the town watch looking for him, asked him to keep still, said he would bandage the wound and take care of him—

Pyetr had no idea why.

PYETR WAKED with the scent of hay and horses in his nostrils, and felt the pain that came whenever he waked, but the night was past, dusty sunlight shafted through the chinks of logs and the pain, thank the god, was finally bearable. He was afraid to move and start it again. He lay there thinking about moving, he listened to sounds: the horses doing bored, horsely things, the tavern waking up, distant shouts from mistress Ilenka— Sasha , she was calling, take both pails, you lazy lout ! A cock crowed somewhere in the neighborhood.

Then he began to remember why he was lying here on his face in the straw, and remembered that the tsar’s law was looking for him, that old Yurishev was irrevocably and truly dead, gone from Vojvoda where he had lived all Pyetr’s life, and Yurishev’s fool retainers were claiming witchcraft—It was all too absurd: he remembered Yurishev’s shocked face in that moment that they had scared each other, and thought it likely old Yurishev had never used a sword in his life. Probably the shock had frightened the old man into his grave, on the spot—and as for witchcraft, good god, Pyetr Illitch Kochevikov could hardly afford a two-kopek charm to ill-wish the old miser, let alone hire some foreign sorcerer powerful enough to strike a man dead on the spot—because certainly no wizard who had ever set up shop in Vojvoda could do a thing like that.

Not at least any of the local ilk, who held forth in cramped little shops and collected and dispensed the town’s gossip for coin. If there were genuine wizards, Pyetr thought, there were certainly none in Vojvoda. What had happened was an old man dying, and Yurishev’s guards protecting their reputations. Probably one man had offered that inspired excuse to the inquiring magistrates, and the rest had immediately taken up on it, that was the truth of what had happened last night. Pyetr Kochevikov believed in human weakness far more than he believed in wizards, human weakness being everywhere evident and sorcery being a matter, like the Little Old Man who should ward the stables, of people’s absolute will to believe in other people’s responsibility.

He had profited from it. Now that same human frailty bid fair to hang him—or give him shorter shrift than that. The watch would run him through without a beg-your-pardon, Pyetr Illitch… for fear of themselves dropping dead like old Yurishev.

He had to get out of Vojvoda, that was the only safety he could count on now, and to do that he had to pass the town gates—

—where, one supposed, the drowsing gate watch occasionally did their jobs and paid attention to who came and went. With a supposed murder in town, they might very well be looking for him to leave, and there was certainly no chance of getting out in broad daylight, as it was beginning to be. So there was nothing for him to do but hide in The Cockerel’s stable until dark and take his chances then—providing that he could walk, which, he discovered as he tried to sit up, was by no means certain.

And his wound hurt, god, it hurt, although nothing— nothing so bad as it had done last night.

“Are you all right?”

Pyetr grabbed the nearest stall rail to pull himself up. But it was only Sasha Misurov silhouetted in the doorway, buckets in hand, and he let go and sank down against the post.

“I brought you an apple,” Sasha said. “And a bit of bread.” He lifted one of the buckets he carried. “The water’s clean. It only goes into the troughs.”

“Thanks,” Pyetr said, not cheerfully, regretting the breakfast table at The Flower, and his own bed and his belongings and his horse in the stables—as good as in the rnoon, all he owned. And none of his friends wanted anything to do with him—which left only The Cockerel’s boy, who was, the whole town knew, odd—cursed with ill-luck from his birth, the tongue-clackers said, rumors Pyetr Illitch had afforded the same credulity as he afforded wizards, wise women, or tea leaves. The boy’s parents died in a fire, the culmination of a series of disasters which everyone recalled had begun the day the boy was born—

Look out , people would say in The Cockerel nowadays, bumping each other’s elbows, if young Sasha put his nose into the tavern proper, spill a drop for the House-thing, there’s the neighborhood jinx with us —

He had done it in jest himself, he and his friends.

And if he was tempted on that sudden thought to reflect that his own affairs had certainly gone wrong in young Sasha’s presence-Call him a fool, but if he had had luck anywhere in Vojvoda last night, it had been here, in Sasha Misurov’s company.

“How are you this morning?” Sasha asked, squatting in front of him. Sasha fished the bread and the apple from inside his coat and gave them to him.

“Better,” Pyetr said, remembering snatches of the night, Sasha bandaging his wound and sitting with him whenever he waked. Or maybe Sasha regularly slept in the stable. It was possible, given the relatives’ stinginess with the boy.

“They’re saying,” Sasha said, “that you broke into the boyar Yurishev’s house last night.”

He blinked, stopped with the apple on the way to his mouth. “Visiting a friend,” he said. “I’m not a thief.”

Of course, he thought, the lady and the lady’s rich relatives would come out with the charge of burglary. Never let it be said the boyarina Irina was anything but the grieving widow.

“They’re saying—you were hired to bring a spell into the house.”

“Bring a spell—”

Sasha looked acutely uncomfortable.

“I didn’t,” Pyetr said with a sinking heart. “—But that’s what they’re saying, is it?”

“That it had something to do with old Yurishev’s business, that somebody hired a wizard and the wizard hired you to bring a spell inside the house, and that was why he died.”

“Oh, good god,” Pyetr said.

“The thieftakers are looking for you. They were here, I don’t know if you heard last night.—Dmitri Venedikov is your friend. Or Vasya Yegorov. I could take a message to them.”