Juniper & Thorn(44)
“There’s no work for them today,” Niko said. “Most of us don’t have regular jobs, you see. We can go around to the factories and the shops and ask the foremen and owners if they need anything, but a lot of the time they don’t, or someone else has gotten there first. And no jobs means no money and of course nothing to eat.”
One man’s eyes latched onto me, sharp and bright as the ends of kitchen knives. He leaned over and whispered something to another man beside him, and they both smirked like sated cats. A bit of sweat chilled on the back of my neck, and then Papa grasped me by the wrist and ushered me along.
Niko led us to a small grocery with Ionik lettering in gold along its glass windows and a green awning that drooped and sagged like one of Papa’s cheeks. Inside, hunched behind the counter, was an acorn of a man with three precise tufts of black hair: one over each of his ears and one feathering across the top of his round head. He craned his neck slowly toward Niko, like a very fat dog rolling over, and the moment he saw him he began a muffled tirade, words inaudible behind the grease-smeared glass.
Niko’s face went pale, and he hurried up to the building’s side door, took out his key and twisted it, then beckoned Papa and me inside.
The hallway was dark and warm and had the wet, musty smell of laundry left too long in the wash basin. Papa stiffened up, his shoulders around his ears, and barked, “I’m losing my patience, boy. For a trip through the festering slums you’ll owe us five rubles, and that’s before my daughter even sees your patient.”
“We’re almost there,” Niko mumbled, his face still bloodless. He led us up the narrow staircase, my knees starting to go weak beneath me and Papa’s breath growing heavier and hotter against my neck. Perhaps I had made a bad mistake.
We reached another small door, and Niko began to take out his key again, but before he could manage to get it in the lock the door swung open before him. In the threshold was a black-haired man with blue eyes and such a craggy, handsome look that I recognized him at once, even squinting through the half-light.
Sevas.
He saw me over Niko’s shoulder and his mouth opened once, wordless, then closed again. Papa’s face was inches from mine but I didn’t even glance back at him; I could tell from the hitch in his breathing that he recognized Sevas too. Silence fell over the darkened stairwell.
“Move, Sevas,” Niko said. “I brought the witch and her father.”
Still looking at me blankly, Sevas stepped aside and let Niko shuffle past. I followed him more slowly, each step groaning under my weight, all the while feeling the press of a hundred daggers at my back.
When I reached the landing I stopped, my stomach turning over on itself, and even though I knew Papa was there with his knives I whispered to Sevas, “I didn’t know—how could I know—”
“Marlinchen.” Papa’s voice was like a pour of cold bathwater. “If you leave me standing on these stairs another moment I will turn you into a bluefish and gut you myself.”
Very quickly I stepped farther into the apartment, a feverish red rising in my cheeks. The whole flat was only one room with three cots and a single dingy window. Right away I could smell bile and blood, both so strong that my eyes went fierce with water and I had to put a hand over my mouth.
Fedir was lying on one of the cots, bare-chested and still, sick crusted in the corners of his lips. There was a pail of it on the floor beside him and even more splattered on the wood. A heap of filthy rags had been used to clean it, and him, and now they were littered around the flat like a strewing of beached carp. My fingers curled around the spine of the herbalist’s compendium, the whole room tilting and heaving.
It began to crystalize in me that I had indeed made a bad mistake.
Papa saved me from speaking. He shouldered right past Sevas and up to Niko. “Before my daughter does a lick of work I want to see that you have the rubles. Ten for coming all the way to the slums, and twenty more for your friend’s healing.”
“Outside you said five!”
“I’d be happy to take my leave again if the price doesn’t suit you. But as you said, no other doctors in the city will see you, and your friend doesn’t look like he has time to spare for your haggling.”
Niko’s face pinked. He went to one of the small cabinets and took out a sack of coins. Mutinously, he counted out ten rubles. I thought of the men I’d seen outside on the stoop, the gray, blank hopelessness on their faces, and I could feel something tightening around my heart like a length of copper wire.
Papa took the coins and stuffed them into his pocket, distending it badly, the way I sometimes saw his cheeks swell when he ate too much too fast. Sevas was standing so close to me that I could feel the air stiffening between us, and while my father argued with Niko over the rest, finally I turned to look at him.
I had not seen him in such a state since that first night in the alley, and this was perhaps even more disarming. Sevas’s eyes were exceptionally bloodshot and his hair was falling over his forehead with none of its usual deliberate dishevelment. Above his sharp cheekbones were two sleepless bruises, like daubs of violet paint. And I could tell by the coiled tension in his shoulders and how quickly his chest rose and fell that he had been kept awake these nights by panic, by terror. A swallow ticked down his throat.
“Marlinchen,” he said, and even now hearing my name on his lips made me quiver. “Please. I don’t know if there’s much you can do for him, with your magic or otherwise, but you must try. Fedir is my friend. He’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve to die—as if death has any care for who deserves it.”