“Go fetch some, please. As much as you can.”
Niko nodded and went off, and I stared down at the book in brow-furrowed concentration, trying to close my ears to the sound of Derkach’s voice.
When I dared to glance up again, he was gently stroking Sevas’s cheek. I felt as sick as Fedir.
In another moment, Niko came back with a pail full of water. I opened the satchel of herbs I’d taken from Rose and sifted through until I found the ones I needed—thyme and motherwort and crushed poppies—all for treating men who needed to be convinced of their own illness, and the potency of its cure. Denial was, after all, a Disease of the Mind.
“Will you help me get him up?”
Niko crouched beside me and pushed Fedir into a sitting position. While he did that, I gently pried apart his lips and laid the herb mixture on his tongue. Then I pinched his nose and covered his mouth with my hand until he choked and coughed and swallowed it. I let my hands drop to my sides. Fedir groaned, head lolling, chin thumping onto his chest.
Seconds dragged past, like garbage caught in a sea net. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Derkach’s lips move against the shell of Sevas’s ear, and I looked away, flushing, and then at last Fedir said, “I’m so thirsty.”
Relief broke open in me, so warm and sweet that I smiled and even laughed. “Here,” I said, as Niko pushed the bucket toward me. I cupped water into my hands and lifted them to his mouth. “Drink.”
And he did and he did and he did. He lapped water out of my hands like a puppy and then cried like a child, and I felt my own eyes grow misty when he leaned over the bucket and scooped out water himself, beads of it falling past his lips and down the grooves of his chest, splashing onto the cot and floor. A bit of color returned to Fedir’s face, just two faint pink circles like rouge applied with little attention.
I sat there and watched Fedir drink until, above us, Papa cleared his throat.
“You owe me forty rubles for my daughter’s work,” he said.
Niko’s jaw went slack. “But we agreed on thirty—please, sir! That’s more than I made these past three weeks and twice as much as I owe in rent to Mr. Papadopoulos. I have work lined up tomorrow at one of the printing shops on Kanatchikov Street, but it will take me some time to come up with the money.”
The blood in my veins turned to ice. Niko had made a bad mistake, and now we would all suffer Papa’s anger, the rage of the great wizard Zmiy Vashchenko. The words of a spell were already rising in his throat and magic was lifting off him in waves of cold, a frigid mist stealing over the whole small flat. My teeth started to chatter so hard that it hurt, and I bit down on my own tongue and tasted a burst of coppery blood.
Across the room Sevas’s lips were bleeding too, the scabs split open and made new. There was a mark of red where Derkach’s hand had rested against the back of his neck.
“My daughter doesn’t work for free, boy,” Papa snarled, “and I don’t trust Ionik scum to pay back their debts, especially when they can’t make rent! I should call the Grand Inspector; I should have his men come and burn down this whole derelict slum. I’m loath to waste any more spellwork on you, but there must be fitting punishment for your silver-tongued deceit, for all the false tears you shed and all the sympathy you roused in my daughter’s simple mind. No—I think I know what I shall do. I think I shall turn you into a yellow-billed magpie. They sing pretty songs too.”
“Papa, no!” I cried, and I couldn’t believe the vehemence in my voice, my boldness. It was like a little bit of the girl who had danced with Sevas in the tavern had leaked into me. “Isn’t it better to have the promise of money in the future than nothing at all? We have no use for a yellow-billed magpie, but a man can work and pay us back over time.”
Papa took one step toward Niko and then stopped. When he turned to me his eyes were flashing, like two bright lights were shining out from inside his head.
“This is not only a matter of money,” he said. “For your kind and generous heart, you have always been mostly empty-headed, Marlinchen. It isn’t your fault, but it’s why I have protected you from the world, protected you from the likes of these men, here—inebriates and grifters, little better than the drunkards we saw passed out in the road. They are a mere day’s work, or lack thereof, away from being beggars themselves. You see this one and feel pity because you are soft of heart. But more of these men will come and they will descend on this city like a pack of dogs on a dead mule, and so we must hold ourselves fast against the tide of it. Oblya will not miss a single day laborer. If anything, it means more work for the rest.”