Juniper & Thorn(64)
“One of Zmiy Vashchenko’s daughters,” Derkach said, through the clench of his jaw. “The wizard who lives up on Rybakov Street. I warned her and her sisters to stay away from the theater, as it was apparent that Sevas found her presence to be a distraction.”
Mr. Kovalchyk frowned, mustache quivering, and looked me up and down with bemused scrutiny. He must have been pondering how I could have been a distraction to Sevas, with my homely looks, my unremarkable ugliness. Even I could scarcely believe it myself. But I remembered with fervent clarity the feeling of his arms braced around my waist, every ridge and groove of his bare chest pressing against me through my dress. I flushed deeply even thinking of it.
At last Mr. Kovalchyk said, “It’s no matter if she’s a witch or a girl or a particularly alluring pigeon. If her presence is a detriment to Sevas, we must have her gone.”
Fear gripped me for the briefest moment, like a corset made of cold steel. I was preparing to stammer out a reply, but before I could Sevas looked up from the ground and said, “No.”
Derkach raised one pale brow. “What was that, Sevas?”
“No,” said Sevas, at last meeting Derkach’s gaze. “She isn’t going anywhere. I want her to stay. You’re the one who should leave.”
A low chuckle rumbled out of Derkach’s throat, and his eyes grew bright with amusement. “Sevas, please. So many years have gone by and you still behave like the child you were when we first met, twelve and petulant, protesting every small rule just for the sake of it. It’s disappointing how little you’ve learned. You’ve always had a penchant for the impossible. Come home with me and we can put this misbehavior behind us. Far better than the filthy flat in the slums that you paid too many rubles for.”
So that was the promise Sevas had made to ebb my father’s wrath—he’d gone to live with Derkach again. There were so many hideous things drifting through my mind, the same thoughts that I visited upon myself every night before I fell asleep: those small, imagined violences. I imagined Derkach clipping off Sevas’s nipples with a pair of gardening shears, two neat cuts so they fell like flower petals, bloodless and pink. I imagined him pulling back the white band of flesh around Sevas’s nail, peeling it in spirals like potato skin, until his whole hand was gloved in red. My stomach churned. I remembered how I had seen Derkach’s face float up when Sevas had taken my hand, that deeply submerged thought leaching into me like dark water. A stammered noise of protest escaped my lips, but no one was paying me enough mind to hear it.
“I liked that flat,” Sevas said. “And my flatmates, and living in the slums. That’s where you found me, anyway—the ghettos of Askoldir. I’d rather that a thousand times than living under your bell jar like a taxidermied dove.”
Derkach only shook his head, laughing again. “Oh, Sevas. Sevastyan. These little rebellions have gone on long enough. You can fool yourself into thinking that you would have enjoyed that kind of life—a life of derelict misery, sharing a one-room flat among three men and swallowing more vodka than bread—but the truth is you couldn’t have survived it. You’re too delicate, too precious, too wanting. And you could hardly have hoped for better back in the slums of Askoldir, if I hadn’t found you. What do Yehuli boys from Yehuli ghettos have to look forward to? Street-sweeping jobs and rocks tossed through their windows? I absolved you of that ugly fate and furnished you with the most enviable position of any dancer in the whole Rodinyan Empire—principal dancer of Oblya’s ballet company.” He sniffed. “I won’t ask for slavish gratitude, but I will ask for obedience. Come with me now, Sevas.”
I had seen Sevas wear Ivan’s face before, his warrior’s grave frown and then his saint’s resplendent smile, and I had seen him pin up that infallible smirk, the one that made it seem like nothing could touch him, the one that made you wonder if your knees would ever stop quaking. Now he wore a guise of beautiful rage, his eyes like two chips of smoldering sea glass, and it terrified me to think that this had been living in him all along, fettered under his lying bogatyr’s clothes.
Sevas tore the feathered mantle off his back, white down floating up like kicked snow. He lifted Ivan’s sword and hurled it against the far wall; it hit the mirror and shattered it, hard, shiny bits constellating the still air.
Before any of us could speak he leapt forward, chasing after Ivan’s sword, and plucked it up again and beat the hilt of it against the mirror, over and over and over. All the glass split further, with a sound like a pearl necklace snapped and scattering across a wooden floor.
“Sevas, stop it!” Mr. Kovalchyk cried. There was broken glass gleaming in his mustache.
Derkach lurched toward him, grasping Sevas by the shoulders. I could see his skin turn red in ten places where Derkach’s fingers pressed in. Derkach’s eyes were glazed with his fury and there was a streak of blood across his cheek, just kissing the corner of his mouth. I hadn’t realized that I was bleeding too until I put my hand up against my own cheek and my palm came away smeared.
“What are you going to do to me?” Sevas demanded, and his lips curled into a savage smile, the wicked cousin of the smirk that always left me weak in the knees. “No one will pay to see an Ivan with a blackened eye or a limp. Strike me if you like, Mr. Derkach, but be sure not to leave a mark.”
For a moment I truly thought that he would. I even gasped out, “No!” but all Derkach did was dig his fingernails further into Sevas’s bare shoulders and give him a brisk, vicious shake.