Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [78]
He felt the pressure of The Tradition looming over him. And he did something he had never, ever done in all of his life.
Wordlessly, as he spooned up the tasteless soup, he asked it, Is my bargain broken? Can I free her beasts? Can I rescue Sergei?
He did not get an answer in words, but the pressure lifted off, and he sensed currents moving and a kind of vague yesness settle over him.
She waited impatiently for him to finish. He looked up at her face, just beginning to scowl, and quickly drank up the last of the soup, using it to wash down the bitter kvass. She crooked a finger at him, and he jumped up and obediently followed her out through the piles to the door, then out into the open yard.
It was very late evening; already the stars were out, and the moon was just rising. She pointed at the stable and mimed sleeping. Well that was pretty much as he had expected. And really, the last thing he wanted was to be sleeping under the same roof as that hag. The saints only knew what she would do to him in the night.
Obediently he trotted out to the stable and bedded down in the stall next to Sergei’s, using a pile of hay for a pillow and an old horse blanket for a coverlet.
But then—he heard her shuffling footsteps as she entered the stable herself.
He curled up in a tight ball like a hedgehog, and feigned sleep. He heard her go off to the right first.
“Wolf, Wolf,” he heard her say, “am I your master?”
He heard the Wolf growl then, and reply, “As long as I only eat flesh slain in anger, you are my master.”
She gave a grunt of satisfaction, and this seemed to be the answer she was looking for, but his heart leaped, because the Wolf himself had told him earlier that he had, inadvertently, freed it! It had eaten bread, his bread, the bread baked in kindness by a woman who thought well of him—
He heard her shuffling over to the left, and heard her pause at the stall of the Goat. “Goat, Goat,” she grated, “am I your master?”
The Goat gave a derisive baa. “As long as I only eat that which was harvested in despair, you are my master,” the He-Goat replied sarcastically. And Sasha had to wince at that, because of what that implied about the grain, the hay, and the straw that Baba Yaga had provided for her slaves. The saints knew that the life of a peasant farmer was hard…but there were lords who made those lives harder still. When a peasant was not merely a peasant, but a serf or a slave…every grain, every blade of grass, every stalk was grown in despair…it would be easy enough for the witch to supply a hundred stables with such provender.
But Led Belarus was not such a kingdom…and the bread had been made with hope and happiness, not despair.
She shuffled over another few feet. He not only heard her stop at the door of the stall he was “sleeping” in, he practically felt her eyes boring into him.
He wriggled a little and tucked his head down farther, putting his arm over the top of it.
Satisfied, she moved on.
“No bargain would hold you, now, would it, my slippery little devil?” she chuckled. “And few spells. A pity I am the master of most spells, eh?”
He heard her take the odd flute down from the wall, and then she started to play.
He concentrated as hard as he could. It was a strange little tune, no more than five notes, and oddly minor. It had, he guessed, nine bars to it, and she repeated it nine times. By the third time he knew he had it memorized, but he still concentrated on it as hard as he could. He wanted, he needed to have every note exactly right.
The witch shuffled out again, pausing to hang the flute back up on the wall.
Sasha waited a long time, waited for the sounds outside to settle, waited to make sure the witch wasn’t coming back out.
Only then did he whisper to Sergei, “Has she gone to bed?”
“Oh yes,” the Little Humpback Horse said. “She won’t awaken until dawn. And since she has you to do the work of tending us, not then. What did she feed you?”
“Sour