“You’ve done a commendable job of it up until now, Lyosha.” Se vas’s smile was crooked and strenuous; I could see the great effort that it took to quirk his lips. “I don’t blame you for growing exhausted of it.”
Aleksei’s mouth went pale and tight, but then he clapped a hand over Sevas’s shoulder. He held it there for a moment, saying nothing, while Sevas stared at him from under his thick, dark lashes, some mute communication happening between them that I could not understand. Aleksei’s gaze flickered briefly to me, then back to Sevas again.
I wondered if he thought it was all my fault. Most likely it was. I hadn’t considered what might happen if I’d let Sevas see me; I hadn’t even considered that Derkach had warned me and my sisters away from the ballet theater. I’d only been cold and stupid and desperate.
Aleksei’s lips parted, but before he could speak the door clattered open behind him.
It was Derkach of course, and with him the man in the velvet suit who had tried to calm the riled crowd. He had an extravagant mustache, once waxed but now drooping at the corners, and his brow was beaded all over with sweat. He took a handkerchief to his forehead and began to mop it while Derkach said, “Aleksei, out.”
His words struck the air like two loosed arrows. Aleksei let his hand drop from Sevas’s shoulder and then he slouched toward the door, vanishing through the threshold with only one last helpless glance over his shoulder.
In his absence Sevas straightened, chest swelling. “You can be cross with me later,” he said.
Derkach’s eyes misted. He traversed the room in two long, brisk strides, pausing with no more than an inch between Sevas’s face and his own. “I’ll be cross with you now, and later, and whenever I damn well please.”
“Now, now, Ihor,” said the man in the velvet suit, folding up his handkerchief into a small triangle and placing it back in his breast pocket. “Anger won’t get us anywhere; there are already half a hundred angry audience members ready to beat down my door. They’ll be wanting refunds, of course, but we may be able to—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Kovalchyk,” Derkach cut in coldly, “but Sevas is my charge. You may be the manager of the company, but it’s my prerogative to care for Sevas, and punish him as I see fit.”
Mr. Kovalchyk stared at him with his mouth as wide as a hooked trout. “Well, Sevastyan is my charge insofar as it relates to his dancing, and it’s my theater’s coffers that empty to pay both of your salaries. Certainly there must be appropriate consequences for his behavior; we are happily in agreement there. But I’ve seen many a principal dancer collapse inward on himself because his superiors demanded the impossible. We must both also agree that Sevas is too valuable to lose.”
Sevas said nothing. His gaze dropped to the floor while Derkach and Mr. Kovalchyk squabbled like two speculators over the same spit of land, caring nothing for it except that they might be able to till it and till it until the soil had exhausted itself. An awful feeling rose in me, and I wanted nothing more than to take his hand, the way he had taken mine and pulled me up into the carriage with him, to carry him off away from this place. But guilt unmoored me from that wishful fantasy.
“It’s my fault,” I said in a rush, stomach clenching painfully. “I made him lose his focus; I shouldn’t have come at all . . .”
I trailed off, wilting under Derkach’s vicious stare. But Mr. Kovalchyk only blinked at me, his face sweaty and stupid. “And who are you exactly?”
“One of Zmiy Vashchenko’s daughters,” Derkach said, through the clench of his jaw. “The wizard who lives up on Rybakov Street. I warned her and her sisters to stay away from the theater, as it was apparent that Sevas found her presence to be a distraction.”
Mr. Kovalchyk frowned, mustache quivering, and looked me up and down with bemused scrutiny. He must have been pondering how I could have been a distraction to Sevas, with my homely looks, my unremarkable ugliness. Even I could scarcely believe it myself. But I remembered with fervent clarity the feeling of his arms braced around my waist, every ridge and groove of his bare chest pressing against me through my dress. I flushed deeply even thinking of it.
At last Mr. Kovalchyk said, “It’s no matter if she’s a witch or a girl or a particularly alluring pigeon. If her presence is a detriment to Sevas, we must have her gone.”
Fear gripped me for the briefest moment, like a corset made of cold steel. I was preparing to stammer out a reply, but before I could Sevas looked up from the ground and said, “No.”