Papa measured his own virtue by our virtues; our patronymic, he said, could not be noble and clean if there were any blackened, putrid parts. I knew that a single rotten branch would kill an entire tree, so he was right about that.
But I did not know the scope of his spell, how many lies the potion could dredge out of me. It had never made me spit up my other secrets before, but none had ever bloomed so quick and bright in my mind, like flowering marigolds.
The clock ticked its remorselessly steady rhythm.
Finally, Papa let me go. I put my hand to my mouth and wiped; my fingers came away smudged, as if with blood. My cheek stung where his nails had dug their small divots. My ribbon was still on my wrist, my compact was still tucked inside my slipper, and Sevastyan was still safe in the vault of my mind. My stomach lurched, but nothing threatened to come back up, least of all organs. I nearly shuddered to the floor in relief.
“You know why I have to do this, Marlinchen, don’t you?” Papa asked, returning the empty vial to his pocket.
Another trap laid at my feet. “Yes, Papa.”
“The city has taken so much from me. The tsar forced me to auction off my land to foreign tradesmen and scheming merchants, and watch them build apartments and factories and municipal banks upon it. I had to watch the tsaritsa coax foreigners to Oblya like a shepherd calling down his flock. I had to watch them tear up the beautiful steppe—do you know what they used to say about Oblya? That it was the place where two oceans met: there was the sea itself, and then the steppe, and the covered wagons that navigated it were like ships with white sails. They killed an entire ocean, Marlinchen. And there are so many little deaths as well. When the cotton-spinning factories ripped up the grasslands, they took with them the last steppe foxes. We on the Wizards’ Council used to do so many spells with the fur or eyes or teeth of a steppe fox. I even used its tail once for a cleansing ritual—when I spoke over it, the tail flew up and swept the grime from the mantels and lampshades!”
We had all seen Papa’s fox tail. I still used it every Sunday to dust the sitting room. But I didn’t dare remind him of that. I was still dangling over his pit of spikes.
“But worst of all is how much they love it.” Papa’s hand was on my face again, thumb stroking my cheekbone. “You would think this town was forever on holiday, with how the night air is always filled with music and laughing and the tobacco smoke floating from cafés. The day laborers stumble drunkenly from flophouses to gambling dens with giddy smiles on their faces. I have to hear their joy in five languages. And the ballet theater, the wretched ballet theater. How many rubles did they spend to raise up that monstrosity, to lure performers from all over Rodinya, to costume them in feathers and gold? I have lost so much, Marlinchen—you understand that. The least they could do is not dance on the ashes of it all.”
“Yes, Papa,” I whispered.
He grabbed my face again, holding it tighter than before, and then kissed my forehead gently. “You have always been a sweet and dutiful daughter, better than your sisters. Sometimes I think your mother made you just to look after me when she was gone. So you understand that I have to keep you safe, and keep the rats from the door. They can wriggle in through the very cracks—Yehuli men, ballet dancers, the worst of this whole debased city. But the spell I’ve cast is a good one. If anyone from the theater tries to cross the threshold, they will turn to a mass of vipers, just like that infernal witch Titka Whiskers. I wouldn’t even eat them, Marlinchen.” He leaned close. “It would make me sick to my stomach.”
At last he lowered his hand. I waited and waited, without breathing, to make sure all the daggers at my back had been sheathed, to make sure there was no steel in his smile. I knew I had been released when Papa turned and stalked toward the foyer, but I didn’t sprint up to my room until I could no longer hear his footsteps on the floor.
Upstairs I knelt before my wardrobe and took the compact out of my shoe. In that brief, suspended instant when even the labored breathing of the monster under my bed had gone silent, I wondered if perhaps I had dreamed it. The black sand.
I lifted the lid of the compact. The mirror was flecked with tiny scratches, and the once-ivory powder was now an ashen gray. Salt-smell curled into my nose. I snapped the compact shut again.
Now the desire in my belly began to unfurl, like the smallest shoots of green. I could leave again, if I chose. And there would even be a good reason for it: I could imagine Sevas finishing his performance and running outside to retch again, Derkach finding him in the alley by a puddle of his own sick. He would rail against the guileful witch who had swindled him out of his rubles. He would march in an indignant fury back to our doorstep with Sevastyan in tow, and they would both turn into a spew of black vipers as soon as their boots crossed the threshold.