Juniper & Thorn(42)
An idea was pricking at my mind with the relentless rhythm of needlework: I could go out again.
The black sand was safely buried under the juniper tree, and I had already proven that there would be no gruesome midnight transformation, no furtive spellwork in the garden or any insurmountable dangers in Oblya’s streets. I had lied to Papa and he had not tasted it in his liver or kvass; would it be so terrible to test my luck a second time?
The stories tended to give you three chances for these sorts of things. Three nights of revelry before your carriage turned into a gourd. Three questions to ask the wolf before he showed his teeth. Three bites of an apple before you ate the poison in it. I could mete out my three chances carefully, savoring them like caramels; I could suck on them and spit them out again into my hand. Even the imagining of it felt thrilling and tasted sweet.
I brought Papa’s tray into the sitting room and placed it on the cloven-footed table in front of him.
“Thank you, Marlinchen,” he said. The bags under his eyes looked smaller than they had in some time, and they were a washed shade of lavender. He must have slept well knowing that the icebox was full at last.
His praise and easy acquiescence made me soften. “Thank you for going to the market. There was so much food in the kitchen.”
“Yes, but we will have to be careful. You and your sisters can’t eat too much. Women need less to sate themselves than men, and none of you are cursed. If you’re hungry between lunch and supper, eat some fruit from the garden.” He glanced out the window but did not seem to notice the swath of damage that the storm had drawn across his property, vine tendrils still lashing limply in the scant breeze like the tail of a very old dog.
I was not very hungry, which came as a surprise. Ordinarily I watched Papa eat with miserable, guilt-ridden envy, wishing I could allow myself such rich foods, and then chastising myself for my own ugly, indecent desires. Now I felt very little as I listened to the sounds of Papa eating, and when I looked out at the garden, my mind filled like a tavern’s coffers with thoughts of Sevas and vodka and the boardwalk at night.
I had the compact. I had the feather. I had, perhaps most important of all, the memory that assured me that it was possible to escape and return without consequence. Three secrets, three lies. Threes and threes and threes, like the stories said. Surely I could not be doing anything so terribly wrong if I was following the edicts of the tales in the codex so closely.
My vision glazed over and I almost didn’t notice the man coming down the street toward our house until he stopped right at the gate and started rattling it with desperate vigor. For a moment I thought it might be Derkach again, but this man was young and had the lean, hungry look of so many of Oblya’s day laborers. I didn’t recognize him as any of my clients, or Rose’s, or Undine’s. I had never seen him before.
After a few more moments of futile rattling at the locked gate, the man began to yell.
Papa lurched up from his seat and joined me at the window. A dangerous breath feathered against my cheek. “Marlinchen, who is that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, stomach knotting. “He isn’t one of mine.”
“It looks like he might be mad. So many of Oblya’s young men are these days, driven to lunacy by the wheeling carousel of pleasure houses and gambling dens and two-ruble taverns. If he doesn’t leave soon, I’ll have to cast a spell.”
As far as I knew, Papa had not erected a new skeleton of magic over the house; we were as exposed as a crab without its conch, which only made Papa meaner and angrier.
But I did not see any sheen of madness in the man’s eyes, only a fervent distress that squeezed out a drop of pity from me. A hasty, reckless lie rose in my throat, and before I could stop it, I said, “I think I do recognize him after all. He is one of my clients. He’ll have money for me.”
Papa’s gaze shifted in a way that was almost magic, in a way that almost made me spit out my lie like a sip of bad milk. But he only said, “Let us go out and see this client of yours.”
Together, and leaving his plate half-finished, we opened the door and stepped out into the ravaged garden. The goblin ran up to me crying and Papa made a noise of such scathing reproach that I felt sorrier for it than ever, and I just barely resisted the urge to scoop up the goblin into my arms. What had it ever done wrong?
My bare feet sank into the wet dirt, and crushed flower petals pasted themselves to my ankles. When he saw us coming, the man stopped rattling and only stared, eyes wet and shining.
I knew now without a lick of doubt that I had never seen him before, and I tasted the awful bile of my deception.
“The young men in this city have no sense of courtesy,” Papa spat. “It’s hardly past dawn, boy. Why are you rattling our gate like some dog in its kennel?”
“Please, sir,” he said. “My name is Nikolos Ioannou. Niko. I’m a flatmate of Fedir, Fedir Holovaty. He told me he’s one of your regular clients. Ms. Vashchenko’s, I mean.”
He was Ionik—I almost wished I had realized before I’d gone out to meet him. It would rile Papa even more.
Papa’s anger blew off him like tobacco smoke, oily and hot. “And what need do you have of her services?”
Niko’s face blanched. “Not me, sir. It’s Fedir. He’s terribly ill, and no doctors in the city will see him. He said that they don’t believe him, that he’s really sick. But he is, Ms. Vashchenko, I swear it. He’s been vomiting for hours now, and our whole flat smells of death. He told me you’re the only one who would see him—he said you promised him you would come if he called.”