Juniper & Thorn(38)
“This is mad,” Undine said in an angry whisper. “If only Papa had done this ages ago—if only he stopped warding against every type of person that piques his anger on a particular day, we’d have twice as many clients and no money troubles at all. If he allowed us to make house calls, we’d have even more. I’m not going to sell my things.”
“Yes, you are. Better than listening to him rage for hours on end,” said Rose. “Besides, we don’t need to sell very much. Only a couple of pieces of jewelry each—less if Papa will part with one of his lamps or cat-vases.”
Undine scoffed and stalked away, slamming against my shoulder on her way. I watched Papa, a sick feeling boiling in my belly. He was getting very close to the juniper tree, its green fronds dripping with berries fat and black. I had been careful not to leave even the smallest mound of dirt where I’d buried the compact, no evidence that the soil had been disturbed and something planted within it. Still I wondered if Papa’s most quotidian, instinctual magic might uncover it, like a hound suddenly catching the scent of a fox on the wind, ears pricking even as it lay slack by the fire. Papa was bred to sniff out secrets, and he always anticipated deceit.
I swallowed noisily, and with a start Rose gripped my hand.
“You got rid of it, didn’t you?” Her eyes were as thin as knife slits.
I nodded. “Of course.”
She released me again, her breath going out with relief. My lie felt heavy, like a bone in broth, leaching its essence into all my thoughts. But all I had to think of was Sevas’s shining blue eyes and the feel of his arm circling my waist to remember why I had told the lie at all, and why I would do anything to keep it buried.
Papa swept past the tree and didn’t look to the ground at all.
His magic came down like the dome of an old church, caving in on itself splendidly. I could not see it, not quite—it was just a shimmer of pale light in the air. But I knew how dead magic smelled: like grease and oil, like asphalt newly poured.
Finally Papa turned away from the fence and trudged back toward the house.
“It’s done,” he said. “I won’t hear any more recriminations from either of you, or your wicked-tempered sister. None of us can eat gold.”
As if they could feel the magic recede—as if its absence was an invitation—in another hour, our house was filled with men of all stripes. There were merchants who peered at us over the half-moon glasses that they balanced precariously on their noses, or squinted through their monocles as if they were portholes on a ship; skupshchiks who fingered our fringed lampshades and turned my father’s cat-vases upside down to check if there was an artist’s watermark.
Those were the ones who seemed to take a keen and genuine interest in our wares, but most of the others were only there for the same reason that most of our clients came to us—spectacle. We had already shut up the goblin and warned Indrik away from any of the guests, but still the visitors tried to sneak glimpses up the stairs or into the kitchen, glancing over our shoulders as they spoke to us, only pretending to swallow our words. They looked down long hallways as if they were staring down my sisters’ bodices, eyes unblinking and mouths opened stupidly, like gutted fish.
I hated it so much that it made my skin itch. I imagined a horde of spiders had been spilled inside my dress. Papa stood at the top of the second-floor landing, arms folded over his chest and doing some good magic of his own to look like the Great Wizard Zmiy Vashchenko. The visitors deftly avoided his probing stare, and if they spent too long talking to my sisters or me, or if they stood a little too close, my father would look them down until they flushed and spluttered and slunk away.
I watched Rose hand off one of her peridot earrings to a petty buyer who rubbed it between his finger and thumb like he was trying to get some of the gold to slough off onto his skin. After a moment he slid the earring into his pocket, and then deposited a handful of rubles into Rose’s open palm.
“Excuse me,” said a voice, and I turned with a stutter of alarm. There was a thin man standing behind me whose face was shaven so clean I could see the rash where the barber’s blade had been. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, Ms. Vashchenko. I’m a broker with the firm of Fisherovich & Symyrenko. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of us.”
He drew a square of thick paper from his pocket and held it out to me. I could hear Papa’s breathing hard from all the way at the top of the stairs, so I clenched my fingers in my skirts and didn’t take it.
The man cleared his throat and put the card away again. “Normally we deal in much larger quantities of goods, but we have a specific foreign buyer in mind who might be interested in certain very particular wares. Are you in possession of any cursed objects? Any stones imbued with spectral magic? Dolls that stand up and move of their own accord. Any bottled spirits or haunted amulets? Please, do let me know if you are willing to sell.”
My throat felt so dry and tight I almost could not speak. “Who is the buyer?”
“I’m not at liberty to disclose names, but the objects would be gathered for a gallery collection in one of Ellidon’s new museums.”
Ellidon, the tiny gray island that lipped the edge of Papa’s ancient atlas. She birthed whole fleets of warships like white-muzzled wolves that ran voracious circles around the world in order to spread this wonderful thing called “democracy.” Ellidon seemed farther than anything I could imagine, a kingdom where the sun shone only an hour a day through the veil of clouds and factory smog.