Juniper & Thorn(66)
“You could never be ugly,” I said, heat coiling in my belly. “And besides, it isn’t so bad.”
“What isn’t?”
“Being ugly. I used to think it was a curse, that my sisters were beautiful and I wasn’t, but not anymore. Now I think that there are some advantages to being plain of face.”
Sevas frowned so deeply it carved trenches into his cheeks. “And who says you’re plain of face?”
I almost laughed, because where would I even begin with naming them all? “Undine of course, and Papa, and Mama before she was a bird, and sometimes Rose when she’s in her foulest moods, half our clients—even if they don’t say it with their mouths, they say it with their eyes, and Dr. Bakay . . .”
“Oh,” Sevas said. “Dr. Bakay told me that the sixth Organ of my Mind was twice the size of a normal man’s, and that the sixth Organ of the Mind is what measures Destructiveness.” He glanced around at the matting of broken glass on the floor and the mirrors veined with cracks. “What a resounding endorsement of phrenology I’ve just given. I didn’t realize his services also included evaluating the plainness or beauty of women’s faces.”
My chest ached. Part of me wanted to say no more of Dr. Bakay, ever, until his face rinsed from my mind like dirty water down the drain. But there was another part of me that wanted to scream his name through empty hallways so I could hear the way it echoed. I wanted to whisper it into the ear of every person I ever met; I wanted to burn it onto me like a brand. I wanted, most of all, for someone to steal the wretched, awful burden of it away from me, and to explain precisely how wretched and awful it was. I wanted someone to write it down like a story in Papa’s codex so I could know what lesson there was to be learned.
“He told me I was as quiet as a mouse,” I said, at last. “And he liked that about me. He never measured the Organs of my Mind but he evaluated all the things that made me a woman, back when I was only a girl, and said it was because he wanted to understand witches.” And there it was, the neat dissection of my life: girl, woman, witch. Three small things that were easy to swallow. “Dr. Bakay was not a wizard, but he worked good magic all the same. You should have seen the way I became a woman under his hands.”
Sevas tensed. I could see the cord of muscle straining in his throat, the blades of his shoulders pressing high and close. He said, “That’s not right, and that’s not magic. Magic is the first sip of good wine that makes the edges of your vision blur. Magic is the cool breeze of the boardwalk at night and organ music in the air. Magic is landing a grand jeté and nearly going deaf with the crowd’s applause. Magic is the low flicker of tavern lights and the girl you’re courting leaning close so you can kiss.”
As he spoke I felt an unnamable feeling bubble up in me, something even crueler than grief. His words were so lovely but strange; he might as well have been speaking in his Yehuli tongue. I didn’t want to weep again after hearing how much it had distressed him, yet I felt tears gather along the line of my lashes, and Sevas’s face swam before my eyes.
“I’ve never tasted wine,” I said, around the hot thing in my throat. “I’ve only once been to the boardwalk at night and heard the organ music; the one time I’ve ever gone inside a tavern was that night with you. And I’ve never been kissed. I only know the old magic of what this place was before the tsar ever planted his flag here. Before there were electric streetlamps on every road and rotary presses ticking away in basement copy shops. If the tsar had never come, I would be better for it. I could’ve run away to the hut of a forest hag—they give shelter to young girls with cruel families and all they ask for in return is for you to separate grains of rotten corn from the sound, and poppy seeds from soil. I never would have needed to come here and ruin everything for you. Sevas, what am I going to do?”
“You haven’t ruined anything that’s worth replacing,” he said sharply. “I could have stayed up onstage and finished my performance like a good boy, like Derkach’s docile little puppet, like Kovalchyk’s perfect Ivan. But I’m so tired, Marlinchen. I’ve been playing Ivan since I was twelve years old. How many more times can I kill the Dragon-Tsar? Maybe one night I will let him kill me instead. Just for the thrill of something new.”
And then the most astonishing thing happened: Sevas put his hands over his eyes and began to cry. His shoulders trembled with his sobs and all I could do was stare and stare as he dropped to the ground, pulling his knees to his chest.
I had never seen a man cry before. I felt as if I might die myself, just from watching it. I didn’t think I could stand to live in a world that could make him weep like this, as plaintively as a child. Even with my mind spasming around the thought, I found myself kneeling beside him.
“Please, Sevas,” I whispered. “I don’t want to see you die.”
He gave a muffled whimper and his arms lifted to circle my waist. I scarcely even thought of what I was doing as I lifted my own arms and gathered up his head to my chest. His cheek was flush against the bare skin of my breast, right above where the tattered line of my corset ended. I held him there with the ferocious tightness of a bear-mother cradling her cub, of a merchant clutching his most precious ware.
In several moments his sobs ebbed, shoulders stilling. My heart was beating so rapidly and crookedly I wondered if it might wear itself to the bone like an old racing hound. Sevas turned his head and, very briefly, pressed his lips to the cleft of my breasts.