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.
Nothing happened. My prayers were always awkward and stammering, and besides, our gods had no power in capitalist Oblya.
With great difficulty, I cleared my throat. “And how long has it been since you came from Askoldir?”
“Six months,” said Sevastyan. His gaze flickered to Derkach. The other man’s hand was still on his knee.
“Yes, that’s right,” Derkach said. “Give or take a few weeks.”
There was something overbright and false about Derkach’s smile. It reminded me of Undine’s porcelain figurines, with their relentlessly cherubic grins. They had all been repatriated to my bedroom ever since she’d proclaimed herself too old to play with dolls.
“What is your relation?” The words flooded past my lips before I could stop them. “To Sevastyan, I mean.”
“I’m his handler,” Derkach replied, chest puffing with pride. “I have been ever since Sevas was twelve years old. I was the one who secured his position as principal dancer in Oblya’s ballet theater.”
Abruptly the room went silent. My father took his fork from his mouth mid-bite, and a darkness came over his face. The familiar furrow between his brow and the sharp breath that whistled through his teeth made me freeze with fear. I stood as still as the rabbits in our garden did right before our spiny-tailed monster pounced at their throats.
“You’re a dancer,” Papa said. The syllables ticked out of him like blood dripping onto the floor.
“Why, of course,” Derkach said. “The youngest principal dancer Oblya’s ballet has ever seen.”
I made a strangled noise that no one seemed to hear. Of all the things Papa loathed about capitalist Oblya, he loathed none more than the ballet theater. He railed against it more than he did the Ionik merchant sailors, who he said brought with them the fish-stink of the east, and more than he did the Yehuli, who he claimed were out to drain the city of its wealth the way an upyr sucked the blood of virgin women. He hated the cotton mills and the day laborers, and the factories that chuffed black smoke into the sealskin sky. But he hated the ballet theater most.