Dimitri looked at her, and she back at him.
And then, slowly, Dimitri resigned himself to parting his lips, placing the tablet on the center of his tongue and tilting his head back to swallow as Lev let out a shout no one could hear.
“It’s a new product, as I said,” Marya informed the room, brushing off her skirt. “Nothing any different from what will eventually come to market. The interesting thing, though, about our intoxicants,” she said, observing with quiet indifference as Dimitri shook himself slightly, dazed, “is that there are certain prerequisites for enjoyment. Obviously, we have to build in some sort of precautionary measures to be certain who we’re dealing with, so there are some possible side effects. Thieves, for example,” she murmured softly, her eyes still on Dimitri’s face, “will suffer some unsavory reactions. Liars, too. In fact, anyone who touches our products without the exchange of currency from an Antonova witch’s hands will find them … slightly less pleasant to consume.”
Dimitri raised a hand to his mouth, retching sharply into his palm for several seconds. After a moment spent collecting himself, he lifted his head with as much composure as he could muster, shakily dragging the back of his hand across his nose.
A bit of blood leaked out, smearing across the knuckle of his index finger.
“Understandably, our dealers wish to partake at times, so to protect them, we give them a charm they wear in secret. Of course, you likely wouldn’t know that,” Marya remarked, still narrating something with a relevance Lev failed to grasp. “Trade secret, isn’t it? That it’s quite dangerous to try to sell our products without our express permission, I mean. Wouldn’t want someone to know that in advance, obviously, or our system would very well collapse.”
Dimitri coughed again, the reverberation of it still silent. Steadily, blood began to pour freely from his nose, dripping into his hands and coating them in a viscous, muddied scarlet that may well have been streaked with black. He sputtered without a sound, struggling to keep fluid from dripping into his throat while his chest wrenched with coughs.
“We have a number of informants, you know. They’re very clever, and very well-concealed. Unfortunately, according to one of them, someone,” Marya murmured, “has been selling our intoxicants. Buying them from us, actually, and then turning around to sell them at nearly quadruple the price. Who would do that, I wonder, Dima?”
Dimitri choked out a word that might have been Marya’s name, falling forward on his hands and knees and colliding with the floor. He convulsed once, then twice, hitting his head on the corner of the table and stumbling, and Lev called out to his brother with dismay, the sound of it still lost to the effects of Marya’s spell. She was the better witch, by far; their father had always said so, speaking of Marya Antonova even from her youth as if she were some sort of Old World demon, the kind of villainess children were warned to look for in the dark. Still, Lev rushed forward, panicked, only to feel his brother Roman’s iron grip at the back of his collar, pinning him in place as Dimitri struggled to rise and collapsed forward again, blood pooling beneath his cheek where he’d fallen to the floor.
“This hurts me, Dima, it really does,” Marya said. “I really did think we were friends, you know. I certainly thought you could be trusted. You were always so upstanding when we were children—and yes, true, a lot can happen in a decade, but still, I really never thought we’d be… here.” She sighed, shaking her head. “It pains me, truly, as much as it pains you. Though perhaps that’s insensitive of me,” she said softly, watching Dimitri gasp for air; her gaze never dropped, not even when he began to jerk in violent tremors. “Since it does seem to be paining you a great deal.”
Lev felt his brother’s name tear from his lungs again, the pain of it scratching at his throat until finally, finally, Dimitri fell rigidly still. By then, the whole scene was like a portrait, gruesomely Baroque; from the crumpled malformation of his torso, one of Dimitri’s arms was left outstretched, his fingers unfurled towards Marya’s feet.
“Well,” exhaled Marya, rising from the chair. “I suppose that’s that. Ivan, my coat, please?”
At last, with their brother’s orders fulfilled, Roman released Lev, who in turn flung himself towards Dimitri. Roman looked on, helpless and tensed, as Lev checked for a pulse, frantically layering spells to keep what was left of his brother’s blood unspilled, to compel his princely lungs to motion. Dimitri’s breathing was shallow, the effort of his chest rapidly fading, and in a moment of hopelessness, Lev looked blearily up at Marya, who was pulling on a pair of black leather gloves.