Juniper & Thorn(10)
Nothing happened. My prayers were always awkward and stammering, and besides, our gods had no power in capitalist Oblya.
With great difficulty, I cleared my throat. “And how long has it been since you came from Askoldir?”
“Six months,” said Sevastyan. His gaze flickered to Derkach. The other man’s hand was still on his knee.
“Yes, that’s right,” Derkach said. “Give or take a few weeks.”
There was something overbright and false about Derkach’s smile. It reminded me of Undine’s porcelain figurines, with their relentlessly cherubic grins. They had all been repatriated to my bedroom ever since she’d proclaimed herself too old to play with dolls.
“What is your relation?” The words flooded past my lips before I could stop them. “To Sevastyan, I mean.”
“I’m his handler,” Derkach replied, chest puffing with pride. “I have been ever since Sevas was twelve years old. I was the one who secured his position as principal dancer in Oblya’s ballet theater.”
Abruptly the room went silent. My father took his fork from his mouth mid-bite, and a darkness came over his face. The familiar furrow between his brow and the sharp breath that whistled through his teeth made me freeze with fear. I stood as still as the rabbits in our garden did right before our spiny-tailed monster pounced at their throats.
“You’re a dancer,” Papa said. The syllables ticked out of him like blood dripping onto the floor.
“Why, of course,” Derkach said. “The youngest principal dancer Oblya’s ballet has ever seen.”
I made a strangled noise that no one seemed to hear. Of all the things Papa loathed about capitalist Oblya, he loathed none more than the ballet theater. He railed against it more than he did the Ionik merchant sailors, who he said brought with them the fish-stink of the east, and more than he did the Yehuli, who he claimed were out to drain the city of its wealth the way an upyr sucked the blood of virgin women. He hated the cotton mills and the day laborers, and the factories that chuffed black smoke into the sealskin sky. But he hated the ballet theater most.
Fodder for wealthy hags whose husbands won’t touch them, and wealthy men who are too shy for the brothels, he often said. I flushed even more deeply now, remembering his words, and thinking of my own hand slipping between my thighs.
“Right,” said Papa coolly. His gaze swept over Derkach, over Sevastyan, and then over me. “Marlinchen, go on.”
How many rubles had they offered him to swallow his revulsion? I was certain that a year ago no price would have bought Papa’s silence, but I would never know. Papa always took money from the clients on my behalf. I wasn’t smart enough to make sure they didn’t stiff me, he said.
Miserably, I looked at Sevastyan. Derkach had lifted his hand from his knee, and I gave my own unconscious twitch of relief.
“I will do my very best to name your affliction,” I said, which was what I told all my clients, usually with a demure smile. I couldn’t manage one now. “Where would you prefer to be touched?”
Sevastyan’s gaze snapped up. “What?”
“Marlinchen is a flesh diviner,” my father said impatiently. He was gripping his grease-marbled knife in his hand, blade turned up. “Her readings require skin-to-skin contact.”
There was that odd fear in Sevastyan’s eyes again, and I couldn’t make sense of it. All my clients were men, and none had ever been anything less than enthusiastic when I told them how my readings worked. If my father was not in the room, they would smile their languid smiles and try to guide my hand over their gleaming belt buckles. I would laugh weakly and rebuff them the best I could without causing offense, without making them rescind their rubles.
They all relented eventually, grinding their teeth, all except Dr. Bakay. And my father had been in the room then.
For years I had prayed every night for the absent gods to grant me a witchcraft like Rose’s or Undine’s, something that I could perform from a careful distance. As much as I envied their beauty, it was mostly because it rendered them impregnable. Untouchable.
“Yes,” I said shakily. “I’ll do it however you find most comfortable.”
Sevastyan stared up at me, shoulders rising and falling with his heavy breaths. I thought of how he had struck down the Dragon-Tsar, the muscles in his arms quivering like the plucked string of a balalaika, and the way he had run his hands so fluidly over the tsarevna’s hips.
Desire tensed inside me, shameful and aching. Whoever desired a Vashchenko girl was doomed, but the opposite was also true. Wanting anything ended only in misery. And even as I waited for him to speak, for this to be over, I dreaded the thought of watching him leave.
Slowly, Sevastyan reached up and began to unbutton his blouse. The collar fell open, exposing the pale column of his throat.
“Here,” he said, tilting his head. “Do it here.”
Derkach clapped his hands together, eyes sparkling. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to watch a real witch do her work.”
I almost told him that I wasn’t a real witch; the Wizards’ Council had disbanded before I could earn my official title. The last true witch in Oblya was Titka Whiskers, whose real name was Marina Bondar. She’d adopted the moniker Titka Whiskers for a bit of calculated flair, the Old World charm that our clients sought. I had realized when I was quite young that most of them did not want to be helped, not really. They came to us for the same reason they came to the ballet theater: spectacle. Distraction.