C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“Excuse me,” Sasha said of a sudden, as his search for a bowl took him near Uulamets. His own vehemence surprised him, but he was beyond any capability, at the moment, for Uula mets to muddle him with a look. “That thing bit Pyetr. Do you think you could possibly do something?”

Uulamets looked at him, registering a touch of surprise along with annoyance, and Sasha glared, quite ready to face an ill-wish from master Uulamets, more master of his intentions at the moment, he was sure, than Uulamets was.

Which gave anyone, wizard or no, Uulamets had once said, a moderate advantage.

Uulamets’ expression showed some concentration, then, perhaps even the effort to collect himself; and he said with surprising mildness, “I’d better look at it.”

That was one thing.

But when Uulamets got up and went over to Pyetr, sitting in the corner with his cup and the jug, Pyetr said, sullenly, “I poured a little vodka on it. It’ll be fine.”

“Fool. Let me see it.”

“Keep your hands off!” Pyetr jerked away from Uulamets’ touch, spilling vodka as he did so, and lurched, wincing, to one knee and to his feet.

“Pyetr,” Sasha said, and blocked his escape from the corner, fully expecting Pyetr would shove past him all the same.

But Pyetr stopped and caught his breath and said, with a motion of the cup toward him, “You and I are getting out of here. We’re packing up, we’re taking what we’ve earned from this house, and we’re going.”

“You’ll go nowhere!” Uulamets said. “Your own life may be yours to lose. But think of the boy. Think of him, when you consider going anywhere in these woods.”

“I am thinking of him.” Pyetr turned on Uulamets with such violence Sasha grabbed his arm—but Pyetr shrugged that off as if it was nothing and stood balanced on the balls of his feet. “Don’t tell me about the danger in these woods! I’ve handled that damned creature twice now, and it’s less hazard than you and your advice. You were surprised when I came back the first time, weren’t you? Wear the bracelet, you said. Go down to the river, you said. You don’t need a salt-pot, you said, it’ll only drive it back into the river, and that’s not what we want, is it? No. We just give it a little taste of what it wants. We just let it take my arm off and good riddance to the only protection the boy’s got from you. He’s safer with the damned snake!”

Uulamets’ anger was all around them like a storm about to break. Sasha threw everything he had in the way of it, and put himself bodily between them, as somehow the cup broke and the pieces hit the floor—maybe that he had knocked it from Pyetr’s hand, or that Uulamets had broken it, or that Pyetr’s fingers had cracked it.

“Go ahead,” Uulamets said in deadly quiet. “Take what you like. Go where you like. But the boy will stay—do you hear me, Sasha Vasilyevitch? If Pyetr goes alone, I’ll guarantee his safety to the edge of this woods. But if you go with him—he’ll die, by one means or another, he will die. I promise you that.”

Sasha looked master Uulamets in the eye and tried to withstand him. But the least small doubt began to work in his mind and that was enough: he knew that that doubt was fatal, and that there was no chance for them.

“Nonsense,” Pyetr said, and took his arm and pulled him away; but Sasha resisted and shook his head.

“I can’t,” he said. “I won’t. He can do it, Pyetr, and I can’t stop him—I’m sorry…”

He was afraid; and sick at heart, because either Pyetr would leave him or he would not, and either was terrible; but he did not think Pyetr would, he truly did not believe it—and that was the worst.

“If I have to carry you—” Pyetr said.

“No,” he said, looking Pyetr in the face, afraid his chin was going to tremble—because mere was nothing he could do but fight Pyetr if he tried, and that was the last thing he wanted to do, in any sense. He got a breath and shook Pyetr’s hand off. “But there’s no sense in you staying, is there? And none in me going to Kiev. He can teach me. He needs to. I’m too strong not to know what I’m doing—I’m strong enough now to be dangerous. But I’m not strong enough to beat him. So you go. He’s not lying about your being safe to leave. I know that—because he wants me to help him; and he wouldn’t like what I’d do if I found out he’d lied.”

He wished Pyetr would go. He wished it especially hard, because he was close to breaking into tears; and he wished Pyetr’s hand would be well, even if Uulamets refused to help him.

Pyetr folded his arms and turned away and looked at the floor.

“Tell him,” Pyetr said after a moment, “he’d damned well better think twice where he sends me after this, because you’ll take it out of his hide someday.”

“I will,” Sasha said. He had never in his life intended harm to anyone: but he did, for whoever harmed Pyetr, and had no qualms and no doubt about doing it.

For a moment he realized that he was capable of wanting harm. In a heartbeat more he realized that he already wanted it; and that that wanting was a wish already sped at Uulamets—

Who was far more callous and by that degree, more powerful.

“Do as you please,” Uulamets said, and added with malice: “I’d advise you try healing, boy.—It’s much harder; and much more to the point right now.”

Sasha looked at Pyetr. And knew—was suddenly sure—that Uulamets’ warning was absolutely real; and that Uulamets was absolutely confident he would fail.

“Or do you need help, boy?”

He looked back at Uulamets.

“So you don’t know everything,” Uulamets said. “I’d suggest you reason with your friend. Your threat is a future one—at best; but if the day comes, boy, that you have your way, believe this for a truth—he’ll be far more at risk from you then than he is now from me.”

He did not like to hear that. Uulamets might lie. He had a feeling this was not one of those times.

But Uulamets walked over to the fireside to investigate the cooking.

“Master Uulamets—” Sasha said.

“Let it be,” Pyetr said, catching his arm, and Sasha saw how Eveshka slipped away from her father, never looking at him as she gathered up bowls and spoons from the shelf.

“He’ll come around,” Sasha said, and looked at Pyetr. “I’ll talk to him. You don’t have to. Just please don’t—don’t fight with him.”

Pyetr said nothing for a moment, his jaw set so the muscle stood out. Then he folded his arms again, tucking the injured hand under as if it hurt him, and said, with an evident effort at reason, “There’ll be a way out. I’m not leaving you here.”

“I wish—”

“For the god’s sake don’t wish. Haven’t we got enough?”

It was cruel; and true. Sasha shut his mouth and stopped wanting other than what Pyetr wanted, especially about Pyetr leaving—Pyetr having very good sense when he was using his head: and having more wit than he had when it came to ways to get around people.

“We just mind our manners,” Pyetr said. “You think about it. Think, that’s all. I can put up with grandfather.”

“You’ve got to get along with him.”

“I can get along with him,” Pyetr said, and assumed a deliberate, thin-lipped smile. “I’ve no difficulty with that. I’ve dealt with thieves before.”

“Pyetr, please!”

“I’ve even been on good terms with them.” Pyetr gave Sasha’s shoulder a light rap with the back of his hand and made a quick shift of the eyes toward the fireside, reminder that Uulamets might well overhear. “So he’s got us. Nothing lasts. You use your head, and trust me to use mine, hear me?”

Sasha nodded; and glanced to the fireside where master Uulamets was ladling out a bowl of porridge, talking the while to Eveshka, who stood staring at the floor, hands folded, not responding at all to her father.