C. Cherryh - Rusalka

God, so precarious, and so scared—the way Sasha was scared, of himself as much as anything.

But being half-crazed himself—every innkeeper in Vojvoda would swear to that—he quirked an eyebrow, smiled at her, which he had long ago learned was his straightest way to a lady’s heart, wherever kept and however perilously guarded. “Trust me, not that scoundrel.” A wink and a grin. “Show them. Give me a little kiss—I’ve no doubt of you.”

Ghostly eyes blinked, wide and apprehensive.

“Pyetr,” someone else said, as she slipped icy arms around his neck and gave him the kiss he asked for, a chaste touch of cold lips, a little remembered tingling down his spine. It took nothing. But: “Eveshka!” someone said, faraway, and she drew back, staring at him wide-eyed as he might for all he knew be staring at her, a little lost—

“Eveshka!” Uulamets said harshly; and “God! stop it!” Sasha cried, unlike himself—so worried-sounding that Pyetr thought that just perhaps, if Sasha Misurov was down to swearing at him, he might be in more trouble than he thought.

“I’m quite all right—”

“All right, indeed!” Uulamets snarled, and thrust his arm between them, waving Eveshka off. “There’s been quite enough foolishness here—and you , my girl, had best take quick account of your judgment.”

“I know what’s best for me, papa!”

“— and bring your wants in line with mine for once, impossible as that may seem! A wizard who can’t keep track of what she wants is absolutely helpless in this business. You’ve gotten better—god, you had no mind when you’d just died, you were only a blind intention. It’s my spells have brought you back as far as you’ve come, it’s my teaching has kept you as sane as you are, and by the god, you’ll make it back the rest of the way—”

“With what ? Papa, I died! I can’t come back except through somebody else, and you had to bring Pyetr into this, dammit , papa!”

“It wasn’t supposed to work that way.”

“ Wasn’t supposed to work that way! “

“It wasn’t,” Pyetr said, made himself say—because on both sides wizardry tempers looked to be getting destructively out of hand. “Your father wanted to know what had happened to you, and you couldn’t tell him.—What else he intended, the god only knows, but he did get you back. He certainly wants you alive.”

“He didn’t get me back, he didn’t want me back, he took that thing—”

“It wasn’t easy to see through. It fooled all of us.”

“He wanted his daughter, his own way!”

Pyetr shook his head, hands tucked in his belt, and said—god, he could not believe he was saying: “He risked his neck for you—a damn lot more than my father would have done for me, I’ll tell you.”

Eveshka just stood there, losing and collecting little gossamer threads of herself.

“So,” Pyetr said with a shrug, everyone else leaving matters to him, “so maybe you should wonder why. The god knows your father’s got his faults, but he’s been at his game a long time. It only makes sense to work with him, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what I said!” Uulamets snapped.

“Not very well, papa!”

“Shut up,” Pyetr said. “Everybody. You—” he said to Eveshka. “Don’t fight. Just don’t fight. Not everything’s important all the time. First things first. Like getting out of here. Old grievances don’t help.”

“They certainly don’t,” Uulamets said. “Think, girl! Our enemy’s wanting us to act like fools, he wants us to forget he’s in the game, he’s damned powerful, and we don’t gain anything by sending it one more help—which you’d assuredly be, going off on your own, daughter, don’t you mistake it. When we came up here, I had some naive hope of dealing with him reasonably, but that’s clearly out of the question.”

“Out of the question! Papa, you can’t talk with him, you can’t—can’t come near—”

Eveshka seemed to lose her way in mid-word again, staring off into distances, lips still shaping some word, part and parcel of other things that seemed to be going on where it came to Kavi Chernevog, things that collectively sent a chill down Pyetr’s back.

“Seems to me,” Pyetr said, looking momentarily at the ground to break the spell Eveshka’s own face cast, “seems to me we’ve been doing a lot of odd things since we got here. As if we didn’t have this—” He remembered about names in time, not so much that he believed the warning, but that he wanted no argument with Uulamets. “—As if you’d never had a reason for leaving the boat and trekking off through this woods—”

“He’s right,” Sasha said thickly. “Pyetr’s harder to magic, isn’t he? Maybe we should listen to him.”

“Damn right somebody should listen to me! Does anybody remember what we’re doing here? We buried a Thing that won’t stay buried, the vodyanoi’s trying for the rest of me, nobody’s talking about doing anything but sit here while everything in this woods has a go at us, and I’m not sure who’s to blame for the sail, but I don’t think there’s much chance involved with this many wizards.”

“There’s not likely to be,” Uulamets said, looking narrowly at him. “Pyetr Illitch, you’re certainly someone’s; tonight I really wonder whose.”

Upon which Uulamets walked off to the fireside alone.

“What does he mean?” Pyetr asked Eveshka and Sasha, looking from one to the next. “What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said, while beyond the fire:

“Damn you!” Uulamets cried suddenly, jabbing his staff into the moldy ground.

Pyetr ran, sword in hand: Babi and he arrived one after the other, Uulamets still stabbing with the heel of his staff at a traveling lump of leaves. His book had fallen from the log where he had earlier been sitting to lie open on the ground, and a separate lump of leaf mold flowed over it on the retreat, escaping Uulamets’ staff—after which with a curse Uulamets fell bodily on the book and covered it. Pyetr whacked one leaf ball in two as it moved, and both halves and the whole rippled off toward the brush with Babi in pursuit.

Pyetr had no urge to chase it. He grimaced in disgust, looked at his sword, fearing something noisome might have stuck to it—leaf fragments had—then reached down to help the old man up.

Uulamets gained his feet with his help and struck away his arm once he was up, hitting him twice more for good measure.

Pyetr did not hit him back, Pyetr fended him off with a lifted elbow and contained his thoughts of knocking him flat, as Eveshka and Sasha arrived to get between them.

“Is it all right?” Eveshka asked.

Meaning the book, Pyetr understood, but Uulamets gave her no answer, as courteous with family as with friends, it seemed—only sat down on the log and started turning pages in rapid succession.

Trying to find that answer, Pyetr supposed. Time was, he would gladly have chucked the book in the fire, and Uulamets after it: but not here and not now, in their precarious situation. “The River-thing was distracting us,” he said, feeling his knees shaky. “We knew it had help, dammit, we were over there arguing and it was over here trying to steal the book—”

“It couldn’t do that,” Eveshka said, faintly. “It’s protected.” He felt her against his side. After a moment one could not feel the cold she brought. He thought distractedly, That’s dangerous.

She shouldn’t do that… But in their situation that presence against his side felt reassuring as Sasha’s was, in a night grown altogether too lonely and too dark.

Sasha said quietly, “Sir, can it read?”