Juniper & Thorn(9)
From the window, I watched my father speak to the men through the locked gate. I hugged my housecoat around myself, excruciatingly aware that my hair was as tangled as a briar patch, curls falling over my face, and that I reeked of cooking oil and onion. To my father’s credit, he did not care what my clients thought of how I looked. If they wanted to see someone beautiful, they would patronize my sisters.
One of the men passed the bag of rubles through the bars. The other one skulked back, hands in his jacket pockets, head down. He had black hair and looked very pale.
The gate unlatched, and the two men followed my father down the garden path. The goblin’s scratching grew furious. I hurried to the door, heart beating as soundly as footsteps on a marble floor. I told myself that whoever it was, at least it was not Dr. Bakay. I would have known his hunched silhouette and his silver hair anywhere.
As the door swung open, my breathing had steadied. My father stood in the threshold with the two men. The older one was blond, with hair that was gelled thickly, as if to compensate for its encroaching thinness, and he had the jaunty look of a carriage horse, eagerness in the flashing of his gray eyes.
The other man was a dour, unsmiling Sevastyan Rezkin. I choked on air.
“Hello,” the jaunty man said. “I’m Ihor Derkach.”
I waited for words to come, but they only gathered brittle and unspoken on my tongue like burnt sugar. My father gave a rattling cough of annoyance, the loose skin of his cheeks flapping, and stepped over the threshold.
“This is my daughter Marlinchen,” Papa said. “As you can see, she is quiet—and discreet. If you value a secret kept, she is the witch for you.”
“Excellent,” said Derkach. “We’d like to get started right away.”
Sevastyan was staring at the ground, but at Derkach’s prodding he looked up. Our eyes met for the briefest moment, but in that time I saw the flicker of recognition, and under it something odder and unexpected: fear. It was gone again before I could puzzle over it.
Perhaps he was afraid of witches. Rodinyans were superstitious. As I watched him walk toward the living room, I almost burst into tears at the terrible absurdity of it all: Sevastyan Rezkin pacing my floorboards, perched on my chaise longue, scarcely four long steps from the kitchen where I hummed wordless songs to myself while I beat eggs for mlyntsi. Had my furtive nighttime desire somehow summoned him here? I dismissed the thought at once. I didn’t have that sort of magic.
No, this was just a confluence of awful luck, and now everything might be ruined.
Papa sat back on the couch and directed Sevastyan toward the armchair. His voice sounded distant and deadened, the way it did when I held my head underwater in the bath.
Derkach was chattering animatedly. Papa had gone back to his food. I stood there stupidly, trying to will the tears from welling up in my eyes, and then Papa said loudly, roughly, “Marlinchen, don’t be rude. Offer our guest a refreshment.”
I gave myself a brisk shake, as if I were a dog with fleas. I tried not to look at Sevastyan. As I spoke, even the familiar words felt like ash on my tongue.
“Would you like anything to drink, Mr. Derkach? We have blackberry kvass.”
“No thank you, my dear.” He gave me a tight-lipped, bracing smile. “Tell me, what sort of witchery do you practice? Are you a soothsayer? A hedge-witch? A phrenologist?”
I stiffened. My gorge rose. I might have retched right there on the carpet, but Papa’s swift and cutting gaze forced me to mumble out, “No, sir.”
“I took Sevas to a phrenologist here in Oblya, but he didn’t give me much help. He told me that the Yehuli’s brains were adapted to capitalism—well, you only need to look down their streets to surmise as much. Their businesses are thriving! Anyway, I am hoping you can succeed where other doctors have failed, and diagnose Sevas’s affliction.”
I was scarcely able to hear him over the spring-water rush of blood in my ears. Painfully, I turned toward Sevastyan. He was slouched in the armchair, a petulantly indignant expression on his face. There were shadows under his eyes, but he did not seem otherwise particularly ill. I remembered how he had looked last night in the alley, sick dripping off his chin. Aleksei had assured me that he would be fine in the morning. I wondered if it was possible that Derkach didn’t know he’d downed half a liter of vodka.
“And what has been ailing him?” I asked Derkach, unable to bring myself to address Sevastyan directly.
Derkach leaned across the table, and patted Sevastyan’s knee. Sevastyan tensed instantly, and there was a beat of silence as his shoulders rose beneath his black jacket. Time jerked forward again, and Sevastyan looked up at me, strands of dark hair feathering across his forehead.
“There isn’t much to tell, Ms. Vashchenko,” he said. His voice was low, level, and he held my gaze. “I’ve been, ah, falling ill after my recent performances. It happened sometimes in Askoldir, but it has been more frequent since I’ve come to Oblya.”
Hearing my name on his lips made me flush profusely. I couldn’t help it. Could he somehow sense, when he looked at me, that I had pleasured myself last night while holding his face in my mind? It was unbearable to contemplate. Even more unbearable to realize that he knew me, recognized me, and at any moment he might reveal me. I prayed to every god that I could remember from Papa’s codex for something that would stop him, for the ceiling to crumble and bury me, for Indrik to wake and start his deafening lamentations, for one of the eyeless ravens to fly into the window and shatter it.