Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [70]
Katya had made several attempts at making friends without using magic, and they had all ended badly. The truth was, the creature was a stupid, vicious, violent thing in a beautiful young woman’s body. There was nothing there to make friends with. There was nothing anyone sane would want to make friends with.
Katya was beginning to get worried though. The paper crane should come back at any moment, and she wasn’t sure if it could find her in their room—
Worse, surely a brightly colored paper bird flitting down the hallway was bound to be noticed.
But the Rusalka had made the garden impossible for any of them to stay in.
As Katya was thinking just that, the Wolf-girl, Lyuba, dashed in wearing her Wolf form. She skidded to a stop and her shape writhed in a way that made Katya’s eyes water, and instead of the Wolf, there was something halfway between Wolf and human on all fours in the middle of the room.
“Quick!” the thing snarled frantically. “Help! Yulya!”
Then she transformed back to the Wolf and dashed out, with Katya and Marina right on her heels.
Katya was expecting the worst, so when she spotted the Rusalka with both hands around Yulya’s neck, trying to shove her under the water in the fountain, she was hardly surprised. Lyuba snarled and charged the evil creature; she slammed into the thing with her shoulder, but couldn’t dislodge it. Marina flung herself at the Rusalka and tore at her hands, to no effect.
Katya weighed the alternatives all in a moment, closed her eyes, and then exerted her power over water creatures, closing her hand into a fist and concentrating on the Rusalka’s throat.
The Rusalka choked and gasped, and let go of Yulya.
As the creature’s hands went to its own throat, Marina and Klava ran in and pulled Yulya out of reach, and Lyuba slammed her shoulder into the thing a second time. This time she managed to knock it off balance and into the fountain. Katya released her hold on the thing, and the five of them retreated to their room.
Yulya’s throat was bruised and she was gasping for breath, but there was fire in her eyes at last, and she looked ready to go back and take on the Rusalka.
“Don’t even think about it,” Katya warned, before she could gasp out anything. “Think back to all the fights you must have had with your sisters. Who got in trouble? The one who started it? Or the one who got caught hitting back?”
Yulya frowned, rubbing her neck. “She almost killed me,” the swan maiden whispered hoarsely. “Surely the Jinn—”
“I think,” Lyuba put in, speaking slowly, as she always did, “that the Jinn cares only for how many of us he has.”
Katya nodded. “That was my thought.” She held up a hand. “I have an idea. I have a trick in my pocket—and I just made that insane creature very angry with me. If the Jinn catches her in the act of attacking me, I do not think he will be lenient with her.”
Klava blinked. “You mean to let her try to kill you?” Even Yulya stopped massaging her bruises to stare at Katya then.
“Only when the Jinn is there,” Katya reminded them, and grimaced. “I’d rather not have a bruised neck myself, but she can hold me under the water all she likes and I won’t drown.”
They all gaped at her then. She listened as hard as she ever could for the telltale hum of the Jinn, and heard nothing. One corner of her mouth quirked up. “Oh yes. Water is the same as air to me. I’m not a bereginia. I’m the Sea King’s youngest daughter.”
After a moment of shock, they began to babble at her. She held up her hand for silence, and got it.
“I will tell you more, later. Right now, before that devil gets her wits about her, we need to arrange for the Jinn to get rid of her himself.”
Sasha’s eyes felt as if they were going to pop out of his head when he saw their destination.
He had heard about Baba Yaga’s hut, of course. Who hadn’t? But hearing about it and seeing it were two very different things. In tales it had sounded utterly absurd, laughable almost.
Take a small peasant hut, no larger than a single room.
Now attach two giant legs to the bottom of it, so