R1 - Rusalka Read Free Page 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