The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  “Dasha!” Svetochka was already at the well when she arrived. Her hair was curling wildly from the sweat that had dampened it, and her face was smudged with charcoal and tears. “Is it as bad with yours as it is with mine? So terrible! What were done to those children…an’ now they’re orphans. It’s too awful for words!”

  “I know,” said Dasha.

  “I can’t…who would do such a thing? Animals! Monsters! They shouldn’t be allowed to walk the earth!”

  “It’s terrible,” Dasha agreed. “But…”

  “But what?” demanded Svetochka.

  But it’s nothing my own kin haven’t done themselves, Dasha thought, but, looking at Svetochka’s outraged face, decided not to say. How many villages just like this had Miroslava Praskovyevna left behind as smoking ruins, as she united Zem’? Many, Dasha guessed, and she had done many worse things as well. And now Zem’ was large and strong and rich, and the people of one province did not attack the people of another province, but sent aid instead.

  “But nothing,” she said. “You’re right: it’s terrible. At least we can help a bit.”

  “We should do more!”

  “I wish we could,” Dasha said. “And I’ll make sure that word is sent to the nearest princesses, so that they can send help with the rebuilding, but…”

  “We need to go after those who done this!”

  “I’m sure Vladya plans to,” Dasha said. “Her soldiers…”

  “She wants to go after ‘em, I heard her telling Oleg Svetoslavovich she wants to go after ‘em, but he an’ Vadim Sofiyevich said we mustn’t be foolish, we gotta scout first, an’ maybe there’s nothing we can do an’ we should just leave ‘em! Even Olga Vasilisovna said so!”

  “If it’s a large party they may be right,” Dasha said. “The people I spoke to said there were at least thirty or forty of them, and we only have twenty soldiers.”

  “So what are supposed to do? Just leave ‘em?!”

  “If we have to,” said Dasha.

  “You don’t mean that! I can tell just by looking at you that you don’t like that idea any more ‘n me!”

  “I don’t,” agreed Dasha. “But it won’t do anyone any good if we lose all our soldiers in an ill-conceived raid.”

  Svetochka gave her a look as if she had grown a second head, and then said, “Well…me an’ Vladya an’ some of the soldiers, the ones what is on our side, are gonna meet to talk about this in a bit. Just us. The others’ve already made up their minds, we can tell, and we won’t get no hope outta them, but we’re gonna do something. Soon as I bring the water back I’m going. You should come with us. You could help.”

  “Help how?” Dasha asked. “Help with what?”

  “Maybe your visions could tell us something. Like where they’re hiding, or how many of ‘em there are, or something like that.”

  “Maybe,” said Dasha. “I can try, at least.”

  “Good! You see that barn off that way, the one that’s only smoking a bit? Should be safe enough by now. Come as soon as you can.”

  “I’ll come as soon as I bring back the water,” Dasha promised.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dasha did not need any particular gift of foresight to guess that whatever the others were planning to do would be rash and that she probably didn’t want to go along with it. She thought about running off to tell Oleg and Aunty Olga instead of going to the meeting. But when she thought of that, the visions she got were all bad. It was the sensible decision, the right decision…but it wasn’t. And when she thought about not going at all, the feeling she got was even worse. She needed to do this, the visions were whispering to her, even though it was a bad idea. So she brought the bucket of water back to the house where Sister Asya was waiting, and asked her if she could go rest for a while.

  “Of course,” Sister Asya told her. “It is easy to spend too much of yourself when you are helping others. It is good that you see this. Go rest, and I will sit here with them. Alik can stay here with me and help me if I require it.”

  “I can’t leave the Tsarinovna without an escort,” said Alik.

  “Seva is waiting outside for me,” Dasha lied. She half-hoped that Alik would catch her in her lie, even though she knew things would be bad if he did, but he nodded and told her that in that case, she should go rest as best she could, as there was nothing more she could do for the moment and they might be setting off in the morning.

  Relieved and regretful, sure that she was doing the right thing but wishing she weren’t, Dasha dashed off before he could rethink his decision, although she did tell herself that when she had children, she would need to institute some kind of protocol amongst their guards to prevent this kind of thing. How many times had she escaped out from under her guards’ noses? Not that many, really, but more than she should have. Except that she only did it when it seemed like a good idea. So maybe she would be doing more harm than good by preventing her future children from doing the same. Or maybe they would be cleverer than her about it, and manage to sneak off no matter what she did. And maybe this was a subject for her to mull over at a later time, when she wasn’t actually in the middle of sneaking off.

  Dasha worried and hoped that she might encounter someone as she walked along, someone who would stop her and demand to know why she was walking around without an escort, but she slipped along in the shadows unnoticed by the only person she encountered, who looked from where she was standing in the corner to be one of the soldiers, walking to the well. In any case, he didn’t so much as turn his head in her direction as she lurked in the late evening shadows.

  It was almost completely dark by the time she made it to the still-smoking barn, which meant it must have been nearly midnight. Pulling the collar of her shirt up over her nose, she stepped inside, into even deeper darkness.

  “Dasha? Is that you?” Light flooded out, revealing Svetochka, who was holding a dark-lantern she had just opened. Shadows stretched out from it, moving and twisting from the flickering candle like they were full of living things. Which they very well could be, Dasha thought. She looked around for any sign of little figures and shining black eyes, but saw nothing. Which didn’t mean they weren’t there. But aside from Svetochka, all she saw was Vladya and a dozen of Vladya’s soldiers.

  “I’m here,” said Dasha. “What’s the plan?”

  “Denisik here,” Svetochka nodded to the soldier standing nearest to her, “says that they’ve found the raiders.”

  “They think they’ve found the raiders,” Vladya corrected her. The two shared a glare before Vladya continued, “They’ve found their tracks, at least, or so they think. And they think from questioning the villagers that they know where they might have gone.”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Dasha. “Have you told Oleg Svetoslavovich?”

  “He knows,” said Svetochka, her mouth pursed. “But he don’t want us to do anything about it.”

  “If their numbers are as great as the villagers say they are…”

  “We could still stop ‘em! If we did it right. If we snuck up on ‘em an’ took ‘em unawares, we could stop ‘em.”

  “Kill them, you mean,” said Dasha.

  Svetochka shrugged. “We’d do what we had to,” she said. “It ain’t nothing they don’t deserve!”

  Dasha looked over at Vladya.

  “Svetochka is right,” said Vladya. “If we could take them unawares, we could take them all down before they did any more harm. I won’t have any more raiders on my land. I won’t have any more foreigners harming my people. We’ve been letting them come and go as they please for too long. My mother, Olga Vasilisovna, even Oleg Svetoslavovich—all of them are content to sit on their hands and do nothing. You’ve seen it. We need to shake things up. Those of us who care, who can do something other than sit around with our arms folded, need to do something. And Denisik here and the others of my soldiers agree. We’re tired of others far away telling us what to do when they don’t know what to do themselves. We’re
taking control.”

  “You already have control,” Dasha said. “All Severnolesnoye is afraid of you, and does what you say!” The words came out with more of a laugh to them than they should have, and Vladya’s face tightened.

  “It’s not enough,” she said. “I need to be able to run things without constantly having to get the permission and agreement of people who don’t know what they’re doing, who don’t care, who’d rather do anything than act. I need to take up my role in truth. You showed me that, Dasha, by telling me the orders for the changes you wanted have to come from me, not from my mother. The thought has been stewing in my mind for years, and now I know it’s time. When I heard them talking and arguing and doing nothing tonight, I knew. It’s time for someone who will do something to take control. And Denisik and his men agree. You know, there’s always been rebellion brewing in our guards. They haven’t been happy with the way things are for a long time. But most of them thought rebellion was abusing the serving women and stealing sweets and vodka behind their mothers’ backs. That’s not what we need. We need real rebellion, real changes. And we’re going to start tonight.”

  “How?” asked Dasha.

  “Can you tell us where they are?” Vladya asked. “Can you use your visions to tell us where, exactly, the raiders are hiding?”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Dasha told her. “Even if I could control them, which I can’t, that’s not how it works. It’s not farseeing. I can’t just send my mind ranging over the land, like my foremothers could. I see possible futures, not actual places.”

  Vladya gave her a very nasty look. “Try,” she said. “Your problem is that you don’t try enough, Dasha. You never have. You’ve always been willing to give up too easily. You could learn to farsee if you just tried, I’m sure of it. After all, you saw the village when we were waiting up there above the river, didn’t you? That was farseeing. So you can do it. You just never try.”

  “That’s not true!” Dasha cried.

  “So prove it! Try!”

  “Fine,” said Dasha. “I’ll try. But you’ll see. I won’t see anything.” She looked around. “I can’t just do it while I’m standing here,” she said. “I need to go somewhere…over there. I’ll go sit over there in the corner, where it’s quiet.”

  “Just be quick about it,” Vladya told her.

  “Since I’m not going to see anything, being quick won’t be a problem,” said Dasha. She stepped out of the light from the lantern, into the corner. The wooden walls closed around her, making her feel safe, like she was hiding. There was a strong smell of dirt, and wood, and smoke, and all the comforting earthy smells of a barn. Wanting to make herself as small as possible, as if that would conceal her from the others, or from her visions, or whatever it was she was hiding from, Dasha squatted down, her back resting against the walls. She could see the others, standing in the pool of light from the lantern, but, she thought, they couldn’t see her. An impulse to hide her head in her arms and disappear entirely rose up in her, but what good would that do her? She couldn’t actually slip away through the shadows like a domovaya, and so eventually she would have to come back out into the light and face the others. Why had she agreed to come here? She should have gone straight to Oleg and Aunty Olga and told them everything. This was a bad idea, she knew it. Only she knew, even with the half-visions dancing around on the edge of her mind, that telling Oleg and Aunty Olga would be even worse. They would…well, they would stop Vladya and Svetochka and the others, and then the party would fall out, and Vladya would go storming back to Lesnograd with all her soldiers with her and her army waiting for her there, and then Lesnograd would be at odds with itself and with Krasnograd, because for sure Vladya would never forgive Dasha for running and tattling on her like a little child, or denouncing her like a spy and a traitor, and then the country would tear itself apart, just when they had desperate raiders attacking their villages, and foreign armies massing at their borders, and…things would be bad. Dasha wasn’t sure how much what she was seeing was very likely, but it felt possible, and she could sense, with rock-hard certainty, that the safety of Zem’ depended on her not falling out with Vladya, and not giving Svetochka more reason to dislike and distrust her. So she would go through with this, somehow or another; somehow she would make this work out for the best.

  Something was touching her leg. She shifted, and had the strong sensation that a tiny hand was pressing against her knee, but when she shifted again, it was gone. She looked around in the darkness, looking for any signs of a domovaya, but all she saw were shadows.

  Enough stalling, she told herself. Pretend to try to have a vision, and then tell them…what? Try to have a real vision that will tell you what to tell them! She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wood. She could smell and feel it, and sense both its current life as a barn wall, and its previous life as a tree. Sprouting…growing…its needles rustling in the wind…many other trees were rustling around it…they were a whole forest, with a path winding between them…a small hand was resting against hers now…a path winding through the trees, leading away from the village towards the cart-ford. There was a cabin near the ford for people who fished the river, or who were just passing through, to stay the night in. It was hidden back from the road, since the people of the village didn’t actually care much for travelers, and didn’t want them to use what they considered to be their cabin. But tonight it was full. Tonight there were shadows moving in the windows, and voices coming from the stable, and even people out in the yard, and more standing guard at the gate. A man came running up to them: a scout. He was dressed in a tunic of a funny cut, with no embroidery. When he began speaking to the others, the words were foreign, as were their answers. They held an animated discussion, gesticulating as if in disagreement, and then one of the guards ran and got some of the others, and soon a group of ten had gathered up their weapons, jamming funny round helmets, not the pointed helmets Zemnians wore, on their heads, and thrusting axes and short straight swords in their belts. They ran off. The path wound through the woods ahead of them, before coming to the ford where the carts with Ratibor and Yaromir and Birgit were shackled…Dasha’s eyes flew open.

  “We have to go to them!” she cried, jumping up. And then she had to hobble into the light in a half-crouch, since her knees had frozen and her legs had gone numb while she had been sitting there in the corner. “We have to go to them!” she repeated. “They’re being attacked at the ford!”

  “The foreigners?” demanded Vladya.

  “No! They’re the ones doing the attacking. The carts. Our carts. They went around to the cart-ford and crossed it and then set up camp on this side of the riverbank. Only the raiders found out about them, and are going to attack them. Right now! We have to go to them!”

  Dasha thought the others would welcome this news, as it gave them a clear and inarguable reason to carry out their plan to go after the raiders, but instead Vladya shared a glance with Svetochka, before saying, “We won’t be in time. And that’s a good thing. We should wait for them to return to their camp. Did you see where it is?”

  “Yes! The travelers’ cabin hidden away near the ford. But we need to go now! Maybe we can still rescue them—our people, I mean, Ratibor and Yaromir and Birgit.”

  “Rescue them?” said Vladya. “Rescue them? Birgit isn’t one of ours! She’s one of theirs!”

  “I don’t think they’re going to treat her very well even so,” said Dasha. “I think she’s better off with us. I think she needs rescuing from them.”

  “Anything that happens to her with her own people is no more than justice. I’m not going to lift a finger to rescue her. Good riddance, I say.”

  “But she could be useful to us! And what about the others?”

  “Ratibor and Yaromir are our people, that is true. But you know what kind of people they are!”

  “They’re ours,” Svetochka put in suddenly. “Birgit—I don’t care what happens to her; let ‘em kill her for all I care,
but Ratibor an’ Yaromir are ours!”

  “Our rapists! Our murderers!”

  “Ours,” repeated Svetochka. “We can’t let the foreigners have ‘em! An’ the drivers as well. They’re ours too.”

  “Oh very well,” said Vladya. “If we can save them we will. But the main thing is stopping the raiders. The travelers’ cabin, you said? That should be easy enough. We sneak up on them there, and then catch them unawares.”

  “And then what?” asked Dasha. “Slaughter them in their beds?”

  “It would be worth it to stop them,” said Vladya. “One quick pain, and then no more. Think of all the suffering we’d save.”

  Svetochka and Denisik were nodding in agreement. Dasha wanted to nod in agreement as well, but she didn’t.

  “We’ll sneak in under cover of darkness,” Vladya said, “so they’ll never expect us. And then we’ll set the cabin and the stable on fire and bar the doors. By morning there’ll be nothing left of them but ash.”