C. Cherryh - Rusalka

By then he had patched the knee of his breeches, cut a binding for a split in the side of his left boot, and had another sullen dispute with Sasha over nothing more substantial than how much water ought to be in the stew; after which he felt disgusted with himself, so he had another drink after supper. Then he sat down with his sword braced between his shoulder and his boot, using a whetstone to renew the much-abused edge, a small, steely sound—at least the hope occurred to him—to remind any Thing out there in the brushy dark beyond their fire that here was both steel and salt, and a man in no good temper.

Grandfather read even while he ate; Eveshka stayed to the edges of the firelight, evading questions; Sasha let the supper dishes lie and took to making notches in a stick he had peeled, which Pyetr took at first to be some sort of rustic pothook, if they had had a pot: certainly Sasha seemed quite purposeful about where he bored little holes and cut little lines.

“Bear?” Pyetr asked, after a while, thinking he saw a face developing. “No,” Sasha said without looking at him.

A man could feel unwelcome at this rate.

He looked glumly out at Eveshka, wondering was it only him or whether the whole world was out of joint this evening—not that he wanted Eveshka’s attention, the god knew, although…

Eveshka did at least seem to care about him.

The whetstone slipped. He nicked his finger and quickly carried it to his mouth, wincing, while he watched that shimmer of mist, and saw her watching him.

“Deep?” Sasha asked him, meaning his cut finger. He looked at it. It was in a painful spot, on the inside of his thumb—on the hand the vodyanoi had gotten, the same one the damned raven had scratched.

“No,” he said, sullenly, shaking it. “What’s one more?”

“Here, let me see it.”

“No.” He put the wound to his mouth, shook it again after, and applied a little vodka to the cut, applied a swallow to his stomach, and then a second one, casting a foul look at Uulamets.

“Old man,” he began at last.

“Hush,” Uulamets snapped.

“Grandfather—” Pyetr persisted, doggedly, grimly polite, but Sasha signaled him no, not to bother Uulamets.

One supposed by that, that Uulamets was making some progress. It certainly did not look that way to him.

“So what are we going to do?” Pyetr said. “The vodyanoi lied , grandfather, it’s lied from the start. It says you have to find this Kavi—”

“Shut up, fool!”

He gave Uulamets’ turned shoulder a long, cold stare, thinking of things he had done in Vojvoda he was ashamed of, considering how much more this old man deserved them. Poor old Yurishev, for one, had spitted him mostly by accident—he had no grudge for that: indeed he had never even drawn his sword against the old man, nor thought of it at the time, not being the sort who would readily think of violence against a man three and more times his age—

Until lately.

“Pyetr,” Sasha said quietly, at his elbow, “don’t, please don’t quarrel with him. He didn’t mean it. He’s trying to think.”

“Good,” Pyetr said. “About time.” He stopped the jug and set it down. “Trust the vodyanoi, why don’t we? It swears on its name, doesn’t it? We trek into this woods after one of his old—”

“Shut up!” Uulamets said, and as Pyetr looked around at him: “ It couldn’t lie. Not on its own.”

There must be something magical going on, Pyetr thought: he could see the old man talking, see the sweat glistening on Uulamets’ forehead, but his voice sounded distant, like listening through water.

“We’re in serious difficulty,” Uulamets said. “Are you listening to me? I’ve been trying to draw our shadow in. It’s not reliable, nothing it says is reliable, but it does have very much to do with my daughter’s life. We have no choice, you least of all, Pyetr Illitch. I suppose I owe you some small debt—”

“Small!” Pyetr cried.

“—which I will pay,” Uulamets snapped, “with your life so far as I can save it! But my daughter’s life is ultimately all that will save any of us. You know names. Don’t speak them again. Don’t ask me my intentions. Do as I tell you and don’t follow impulses that seem strange and dangerous to you: I cannot personally conceive how you see magical things and I don’t know how else to warn you. You’re both more difficult and more vulnerable a target. You must do what we tell you, because your own opinions are not reliable, do you understand me? Do you understand me, Pyetr Illitch?”

Pyetr worked on that thought, unpalatable as it was, and looked into the old man’s eyes with the suspicion, no, the sure knowledge—that the old man insisted he. say yes, and that that was the feeling thick in the air. “Sasha,” he said, desperately trying to resist it. “Sasha—”

Sasha said, laying a hand on his shoulder, “He’s telling the truth, Pyetr.”

A man had no chance. He truly had no chance. He had thought he was standing by what Sasha would want.

So he gave Sasha a reproachful look, another to Uulamets, and went back to sit at the fire, unstopped the jug and had another sip, disconsolately watching the patterns in the embers and thinking quite fondly at the moment of The Doe’s hearthside and ’Mitri and the rest of his double-crossing friends. They at least were willing to applaud when he risked his neck.

“Pyetr,” Sasha said, at his shoulder—sounding concerned.

Good, he thought.

“Pyetr, he’s right. We haven’t any choice.”

He folded his arms on his knees, clamped his jaw and wished he could come up with a viable choice—damn it all, how could a body think with two and three wizards nattering at him?

And one of them with his feelings hurt and probably wishing hard for him not to be mad—even if he was an honest boy and knew how absolutely furious that would make him.

“God! I’m going crazy!” He thrust himself to his feet and gave a disgusted wave of his arm. “What chance have I got, with the lot of you?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not doing anything!”

“Good! I’m glad! Thank you!” He shoved both hands into his belt and faced back to the safe formlessness of the fire-patterns. “Grandfather’s not that polite. Neither’s his daughter. So we’ve got to go find this Chernevog—”

“Please. Don’t throw names around.”

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter with a name? I’m not magical! My wishes don’t work. What is this nonsense?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha confessed. “I truly don’t know, just—”

“It’s because,” Uulamets said from behind them, “when you name a name we hear it; and having weaknesses we want that person or we don’t want: the one’s a call, the other’s an attack, and it’s damned foolish to do either in our situation, since we don’t particularly want notice, does that answer your question?”

“Well, then, why don’t we call something friendly,” Pyetr retorted, “like the leshy? It seems to me we could use the help.”

Uulamets to his surprise actually seemed to think about that.

“It was friendly,” Sasha said in Uulamets’ silence. “It didn’t like Eveshka being here, it didn’t like my borrowing from the forest, but—”

“Did you?” Uulamets asked sharply.

“Yes, sir,” Sasha said.

Uulamets fingered his beard and plucked a twig from it, and sat there looking at them, one eye cast in a band of light between their two shadows, his face a maze of old secrets.

“Clever lad,” Uulamets said. “Clever boy. And a leshy helped you. A leshy fed a rusalka. That’s quite remarkable.”