The Impossible Cube

“Of course.” He nuzzled at the girl’s cheek. “Lilya knows of another house of plague and we must go right this moment, must we not? Exactly on your schedule, and no one else’s, because you are English.”

Either he was oblivious to Alice’s outrage or he was a master at ignoring it, which only added to Alice’s fury. The girl was all but hanging out of her blouse and Feng’s… arousal was all too evident. There was certainly no possibility she could reenter the house and face the looks of the two strangers, so she marched down the back stoop and around the corner of the house, her face growing hot again as she heard Feng bid the couple good night in Ukrainian. Gavin came after.

“You are quite a… What is it you say? A piece of work,” Feng drawled. He was holding Lilya’s hand, and she was all but skipping along beside him, apparently now enjoying her adventure. She was pretty, he was handsome, and they would have made an attractive couple under other circumstances.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Alice snapped. A few blocks away, a stack erupted in bright yellow flame, then went out with a whump.

“You and Gavin carry on very plainly, like two animals in—”

“Watch your words, Feng,” Gavin growled.

“Why? Will you strike me?” Feng shot back. “I am tired of hypocrisy. You two have no stronger a connection than sweet Lilya and I do. You are not married or even engaged to be married, so by the rules of your own society, you are a pair of”—Gavin inhaled sharply, and Feng shifted ground—“a pair of very bad people. Yet you enjoy yourselves together for weeks. And then you have the nerve to tell me I should not do the same?”

“Enjoy?” Alice whirled on the narrow sidewalk to face him, almost too affronted to speak. Smoky fog curled around her body, and the amber-headed parasol banged against her shin. “What do you mean by that?”

Feng made a scoffing noise. “That is so English of you. Perfectly willing to tell everyone else what is right while you ignore your own rules. You and Gavin sent me to hide with those acrobats so you could—”

“What do you mean enjoy?” Gavin’s face was turning red. “What are you telling people about us?”

“I need speak not at all. Which is how well I get along with those smelly monkeys you forced me to live with.”

“We thought that you’d get along with them fine,” Gavin said.

“Just because they are Chinese? Ha!” Feng spat, and Lilya cast about uncomfortably, clearly uncertain about what was going on. “They are not fit company for the emperor’s goats, let alone his nephew. As much to hide you with a family of Scottish coal miners.”

“That isn’t the point,” Alice snapped. “You are accusing me of—”

“Yes, it is always you,” Feng snapped back. “You, you, you, and that cure of yours. You dragged me all over Luxembourg and Berlin and Warsaw and now to filthy Kiev for your cure. So you can save everyone. The world revolves around the great Lady Michaels, who guards her chastity during the day so her not-so-secret lover can spend himself on her at—”

Alice slapped him.

Her hand left a mark that changed from white to red on Feng’s ivory skin. Feng stared at her. Alice stared back, a little startled at herself. She had never struck another person in her life. But the fury continued to burn and she refused to move or flinch. Beside her, Gavin tensed, fists clenched. Lilya looked ready to run away. The narrow street stretched in both directions, its unwavering lights pinned to earth like half-dead stars.

“Keep your filthy false accusations to yourself, Feng,” Gavin said evenly.

After a long moment, Feng said, “Translate on your own.” He turned on his heel and stalked away.

“Should I go after him?” Gavin said.

“Certainly not.” Alice turned to the still-uncertain Lilya and gestured with her iron gauntlet. “Go on, girl.”

Lilya may not have understood the words, but she got the message. Timid again, she led Alice and Gavin to another flat, laid out exactly like the previous one. Lilya explained to the mystified inhabitants why Alice had come and then fled immediately, leaving Alice and Gavin no way to speak short of smiles and sign language. Still, Alice managed to cure a man, a child, and a baby, which cried incessantly after Alice scratched and bled on it. Although the family appeared grateful, the wailing infant put a definite damper on their mood. Alice and Gavin left as quickly as they could.

“That was difficult,” Alice said once they were back outside. “Now what?”

“We should probably just go back to the circus.” Gavin scanned the smoky street and its looming gray buildings. He coughed at the soot in his throat. “We’ll have to walk, too. Doesn’t Kiev have even delivery vans that run at night?”

“That wretched Feng,” Alice muttered, taking Gavin’s arm as he slung his fiddle case over his back. “What’s gotten into him, anyway?”

“No idea. He seemed pretty angry.”

Alice’s chin came up, which made her almost as tall as Gavin. “I’m certainly not going to apologize.” She paused. “Do you think we should apologize?”

Like intelligent men everywhere, Gavin fell back on prevarication. “Uh…”

She continued talking, half to herself. “I mean, it isn’t as if we did anything wrong. I honestly thought he’d get along better with people who spoke his own language.”

“Absolutely.”

“It may have been a little presumptuous to assume he’d be happy with a troop of Oriental acrobats just because he himself is from the Orient any more than I—we—might be happy socializing with any random person we met from England—or America.”